Monday, June 29, 2009

Say Again?

Your WTF? moment of the day:
In a meeting with journalists last week, [Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel proposed that health-care legislation could be bipartisan without Republican votes.

In related news, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or:
The Obama administration is rushing towards a unilateral plan to imprison people without trial, according to a huge, new joint article from the Washington Post and ProPublica. The proposal would completely cut Congress out of the process by using an executive order to essentially bring Gitmo stateside.
Happy times. They tolja you'd miss Joe Stalin after he was gone.
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The first linked article is more blather about the so-called "public option," which fans of nationalizing health care see as a gateway drug to single-payer. Don't be fooled-- it is the first step in a massive reduction in health care available to productive citizens, cloaked in a flimsy veil of "fairness." Why is it fair that you or I should work to pay for medical care for bums and addicts? Congress is ginnin' up to roll right over those of us who work for a living and it's time we stood up and told 'em STOP!

8 comments:

og said...

Sweet. Eventually they'll just take the whole check and give an allowance. Or no alowance.

Check your mail.

Joanna said...

My sister and I are planning a trip to the DC 9/12 protest. We're going to make shirts that say "In Canada, I'd be dead."

BobG said...

Do you get the feeling that Orwell and Huxley are spinning in their graves?

Mark said...

Bobbie dear, the US has been imprisoning without trial since 2002.

I think the real question is: "After eight years of ruining it, is the Constitution dead?"

It was "An Inconvenient Document" under Bush II, and now is weaker than it's ever been.

Shall we now throw it away? It didn't defend us against the Terrists. It didn't even defend us against the demcrats!

Why don't we just throw that messy thing away. It ovvyusly dunt help.

*sighs, takes a large, strong drink*

Roberta X said...

Call me "Bobbi, dear" again and you'll be wantin' something stronger than drink; and as for your other insulting assumptions about me, Mark, please get stuffed.

You don't know me. You did not know me before 9/11 and you didn't know me during the rest of the second President Bush's time in office, either.

I did not vote for the guy, not either time. I voted LP, as I so often do, and when we went into Iraq at Presidential whim under the bedammed War Powers Act or whatever it was, I said, "The die is cast," because there we were, one charismatic leader away from Caesarism. (That's right: George W. Bush's redeeming attribute was that a lot of people loathed him). Well, Mark, now you've got your charismatic d00d in the Presidency and he had every rod, lever, string and power his predecessor had, only this time under an approving press; and what was left of Federalism as originally conceived is dead.

I'm about half convinced I'll see the office become hereditary in my lifetime.

"After eight years?" After Roosevelt -- either one! After that tough but untrustworthy bastard Andrew Jackson, for that matter. You do understand why someone with Cherokee ancestors is no fan of him, right?

Oh, one other thing? The U. S. was imprisoning without trial under Lincoln. And those fellows were U. S. citizens.

Mark said...

Yeah, I deserved to me smacked for that post, in whole and in it's parts. When I'm scouting on the floor for my teeth, I'll bear that in mind.

But I do have to own my sense that the things this country claimed as it's founding definitions have been kinda thrown away.

Roberta X said...

We disagree on when and by whom, Mark.

Mark said...

Roberta, (And believe me, I do regret being a patronising twonk in my mode of speech),

In many ways, it's gone even beyond that. I honestly no longer believe that rational, or even simply "more plausible" schema of thought will have a damned thing to do with politics. So I'm abdicating from the whole mess, in the simple hope that I can have a happy life, and die without regrets. I hereby submit my retirement from politics, of any stripe, because I do not believe that any thinking person is welcome there - and the only time I feel like voicing an opinion on the matter is when I'm pretty damned drunk.

I apologise once again for indulging in posting drunkenly, and the idiot manner I assume when I'm in such a state.