| by Ed Tubbs Page 1 of 2 page(s) | |   |
I don’t have any: associates, friends or relatives who are Republicans, who voted for George Bush or for any Republican. When my Tampa Bay partner’s step-daughter got married 18 months ago in Atlanta I refused to attend. The family was staunchly GOP. Consider my position extreme. (I don’t even own any red-colored apparel!) But for me it was a matter of principle: No it is not just a difference of political opinion when more than a couple million have had their lives shredded and, for an included uncountable number, their bodies dismembered or lives ended by a president and party hell bent on creating a hell on earth while to hell whatever the financial cost to future generations might be. I don’t give a damn how often someone attends church services, whether they say grace before dinner or prayers before bed. As far as I’m concerned, no volume of pious pontifications heavenward can perfume over the stench of the foul sins these hypocrites have engaged.
So, I have no such pariahs to contend with. Rather, regardless that I’m an atheist, I borrow the advice of Jesus of Nazareth: I show them the dust of my sandals. Nonetheless others may not, others may, for any number of reasons I cannot reconcile with the most remote Christian doctrine, in fact tolerate these miserable miscreants in their midst, thereby becoming themselves either accessories to the fact, or after it. I’m not making any claim to be pure or the least bit more pure than those who hang onto family and what they prefer to call friends. No, I’m just damned angry.
And a goodly part of what angers me so is the Orwellian/Goebbelian turn of the Big Lie into so readily accepted TRUTH by so many in our country. Example: even the most cursory perusal of facts demonstrate that Ronald Reagan was an abject failure as a president. Yet the GOP spin machine transformed him into a near god, with his funeral a beatification ceremony an Egyptian pharaoh would have envied.
Say it loud enough and sufficiently frequently and voila, IT’S THE TRUTH REVEALED! It doesn’t matter that the “truth” may be 180 degrees removed. Just say it loud and often.
Now George Bush has vetoed the SCHIP bill that would have provided nine million children, now without access to health care, access to health care.
Compassionate George and a few of his legislator supporters squawk “creeping socialized medicine!” That logic would prevent any non-private entity from supplying water to someone dying of dehydration on the premise the poor soul might become dependent on government-provided water, or that he might elect government water over corporate bottled in the future.
Parenthetically, without the parentheses, our present private insurance healthcare delivery system hasn’t done an especially fine job of delivering healthcare. Relative to the healthcare delivery systems of the nations of the earth, the US ranks 41 for longevity of its citizens. In fact, the only indicator where we rank Number 1 is in cost. No one spends close to what we do. Oh, Switzerland does.
They’re No. 2. But they get wonderful results. Yeah, now there’s a reason to wave that big “No.1” glove in the air. “We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!” (And that’s after the insurance carriers have cherry-picked the health risks.)
Gregarious George also propagandized the bill would have “federalized healthcare.” No it would not have! The program is run by the states, and not one letter in the bill would have amended that.
He also claimed as justification for his veto as “I don’t want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers.” That’s a line of C**P as long as his tedious presidency has proven to be. The program is a “private” health insurance plan. But I want to stick with his obvious preference for private for a moment.
Ask your doctor, ask any doctor how many hours he or she spends arguing, literally fighting, with an insurance clerk over a therapy the physician considers appropriate to a patient’s care, then also ask your doctor how many times the private insurance clerk tells the physician “no.” And if you can’t get to a doctor for the answers to those questions, ask someone you know, a cancer patient or a friend or relative of a deceased cancer victim whether the private insurance company ever declined the physician’s recommendation for a therapy.
However I have saved one of the best (or worst?) absolute lies for last, one that those who yet tolerate Republican and Limbaugh-O’Reilly-Hannity-Savage- listening misfits in their company will likely hear repeated Orwellian-like. It’s the claim that the vetoed program would have insured children from $83,000 per year families, and that was never the intent of SCHIP. The $83,000 figure derived from a request by New York State to insure children in families earning 4 times the poverty level. The request was stamped “DECLINED” by the Bush administration, and Fudging Georgie knew that, because he was the one who said “NO!” last month!
And as to that $83,000 as being out of line: I’ve been hawking health insurance — Blue Cross, United, etc — for more than a decade. I have the premium rate charts. Insurance is similar to buying a car in that you can purchase different options, each and all of which will affect the cost. That said, and without venturing into arcane minutiae, the health insurance premium for a family of four, depending on zip code, can exceed $25,000! Subtract the deductions from the wage-earner’s income and you get net income. In many parts of the country, $83 grand less deducts doesn’t leave a family of four feeling one of George Bush’s “Haves and have mores” Rangers.
But I’ll bet you this: You’ll hear the serpentine associates and simian-brained family members who support George, and who slobber over right-wing shock-talk radio and Fox TV News claim the plan would have insured middle-income folks in the $80,000 per year bracket. And they will argue it, and argue it because that’s what the herd heard. However they likely will not, ask, beg, cajole them to visit www.house.gov and/or www.senate.gov for the bill. It’s in there. Actually, it’s in both. Then ask, beg, cajole them to provide you with that part of the bill that Bush vetoed that had even the first reference to an $80,000+ (4 X poverty level for family of 4) entitlement.
And after they won’t, just ask, beg, cajole them to quit embarrassing themselves with their ignorance. It’s dangerous when a population gets moved by it, and it needs to stop now.
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An "Old Army Vet" and liberal, qua liberal, with a passion for open inquiry in a neverending quest for truth unpoisoned by religious superstitions. Per Voltaire: "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."
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