so, Healthcare...

I'm about to lose all hope in American political discourse. The lunatic fringe is firing off their bullhorn, and no one is calling them to the floor on it. They shout down Senators at meetings, and the Senators never call them out on which organization they belong to, or how educated they are on the issue they're so riled up about. They read one facebook post by Palin, hear a few installments of Rush, and think they're experts on health care. They think Death Panels will be instituted, with bureaucrats deciding who lives and dies. They think we're going to devolve into some sub-Canadian death camp (because, you know, the Canadians are so unhealthy and all). I've heard the charge that the public option, even though it isn't intended to be a single payer system, would become one because it would run private health insurance firms out of business. Now, aren't the people making these accusations the same people who constantly harp about government inefficiency and bloat? Why do they suddenly think that the government is going to be a masterful insurance company? Kinda seems to me like the argument is being adjusted to fit the desired result. You can't have it both ways. Either the government sucks at everything it tries to accomplish, in which case private companies have nothing to worry about, or the government is efficient and capable in it's business endeavors, which would hurl decades of conservative arguments out the window.

I would really like to see what would happen to some of these people hurling baseless accusations at statesmen if they turned off their TVs, radios, and soulless talking heads for just two weeks, and sought out their own information. No major news networks (All Punditry! All the Time!), no talk radio, just independent news sources, news papers, and internet news-ags. I sincerely believe the arguments would cease and the loud people at these meetings would start to understand that it's not a bad thing to help a single, hard working mom who just lost three desperately needed hours a week so the business owner she works for doesn't have to pay her health insurance; or the 12 year old who's family loses their insurance the moment the company finds out he has leukemia. These things happen in this country every day. Helping them is not overly sensitive hippie socialism, it's our duty as human beings. The President isn't trying to reform the health care system so that our government gets to decide who lives and dies (like the insurance companies already do), he's doing this to help people too powerless to solve the problem themselves. People who already have health coverage they are happy with (like me, for instance) can keep their existing plans, with a few notable changes, like the removal of "pre-existing condition" exclusions.

I would really love the talking heads to go to some town hall meetings themselves and throw down with a Senator or two, not just whipping their dittoheads into a fevered frenzy, then sending them out to do their bidding. Of course that will never happen, because Sean Hannity barely graduated high school, and he would get absolutely bitch slapped going to toe to toe with a Senator on health reform in a public place, so instead his ugly, oddly shaped face hides behind innuendo, constant fear, thinly veiled racism, and a TV camera.

Fucking Cowards, all.