Photo: James GallowayA terrific local blog is Hasta los gatos quieren zapatos. It's a family-friendly blog by two sisters with common sense thoughts. I can't link directly to the health care post, only to the front page of the blog, so I copied the entire post here.
Common Sense in Congress? When Pigs Fly. Common Sense in America? When Pigs Tap Dance.
Hasta los Gatos Quieren Zapatos
August 9, 2009
Joseph L. Galloway over at McClatchy Newspapers wrote a thoughtful column about the lies, fear-mongering and distortions being fed to the American public by the corporate forces that feel that reforming health care would be ruinous to the country. It turns out that only THEY would lose. The rest of this highly enlightening and straightforward commentary is here. Also, do yourself a favor and go read about Mr. Galloway, linked above. You'll discover that he's not some crackpot picking on the right wingnuts, he has more credibility and is thinking much clearer than some of the bought and paid for muddle-headed people that have been elected to Congress. More is the pity.
If ever there were a time for comprehensive health care reform, it's now, and yet the forces of darkness are lining up against this urgent need, buttressed by lies, mobs inflamed by those lies and millions of dollars changing hands and changing votes in Washington, D.C.
The idea that doing nothing and going on without changing the way this country's health care is delivered works to the benefit only of the insurance companies, the giant health care providers and the big pharmaceutical companies.
That industry is now pouring $1.4 million A DAY into lobbying — read that buying or renting members of Congress — to water down or delay or preferably kill health care reform and hope it goes away for another 20 years or so.
Part of that high-dollar industry budget is going to the low end of Washington's K Street lobbying corridor, the firms and the folks who specialize in dirty tricks, panicking the uninformed and most vulnerable citizens, financing the creation and spread of lies written, spoken and spread like viruses by robot dialing machines.
The Republican Party, on life support itself, somehow sees an opportunity in encouraging and participating in this flim-flam operation. It ought to, and should, seal the GOP's fate.
Each night for the past week, we've been treated to the sight of mobs screaming and ranting and shouting down town hall meetings where congressional representatives had come to answer their constituents' questions.
No questions got answered. No information got provided. No one left more informed than he or she was when he or she arrived.
That's because they and their organizers were following on-line playbooks that are telling them where to go, where to sit, how to make it appear as if there are more of them than there are and, above all, to stop the program and allow no discussion of this issue.
They scream that any government-run health care is socialism or Communism. But look at them; look at their gray hair and thickened waists. At least half of them probably depend entirely on Medicare, a government-run program and a damned good one, for their own health care.
They scream that the bills still being written and amended in Congress will deny vital treatments for older Americans and doom them to an early and unnecessary death. Some dare call it euthanasia.
What utter, unadulterated BS.
The only outfits in America that have the right to refuse you treatment for an illness or deny you an organ transplant are the health care corporations, if you're unlucky enough to have to depend on that wonderful private insurance the right wingnuts are so loudly praising and defending.
This is the same wonderful health coverage that's driven hundreds of thousands of American families into bankruptcy because their private insurers refused to pay for urgently needed surgery or cancer treatment, or simply canceled their coverage.
All of us need some people in Congress who haven't been bought or rented by the pirates, liars and thieves to speak out in favor of filling those real needs.
What we need right now is a huge outburst of common sense and enlightened self-interest.
Those gray-haired Medicare recipients who're playing angry mob need to stop screaming and start listening and reading, separating fact from fiction and learning who’s manipulating them and why.
Common sense is difficult to come by for some when idiots with microphones feel that their useless and uninformed blather is important enough to bring to the table, when in reality it's nothing more than ignorant lies and distortions.
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