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Lieberman's objections are traitorous
It’s sad times for 95 percent of the American population. Just when it was looking as if we were going to get a public option in healthcare reform, after Congress got rid of it, now Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is now looking to be the first politician in American history to cross party lines and vote against their own party to filibuster a bill to death.
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Lieberman isn’t even a Democrat anymore, he’s an independent, but for some bewildering reason he’s still allowed to participate in the Democratic Caucus. It’s high time Democrats kicked him out.
Lieberman is the guy that thought it was perfectly acceptable for anyone to ask if Obama was a Marxist and amp up fear of a black president. The same guy that’s been nothing but a mouthpiece for Republicans since Gore and he lost the presidential bid in 2000. The very same “Democrat” that campaigned against Obama and attended the RNC national convention and campaigned for McCain in 2008. In short, Lieberman is a traitorous pig.
Likely, there will be weeks of debate in the Senate before Lieberman’s treachery takes place, ample time for everyone in America who isn’t a conservative crazy to phone up Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and let them know we want consequences for anyone that calls themselves a Democrat and then turns around and betrays their party and the people.
For a while it looked grim for the public option, looking like it was going to be murdered in a dark alleyway of bipartisanship by Olympia Snowe and blue-dog Dems.
But then there was a glimmer of hope when Reid came out of nowhere and outflanked Congress and the GOP and wrote the public option back into the Senate overhaul bill. Now Lieberman, along with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), has dragged the helpless victim of the public option back down into darkness.
This changes things. Lieberman and Bayh aren’t just voting to block a vote, they won’t even let a debate take place. Never before has there been such treachery on the floor of the Senate, save perhaps except for before the outbreak of the Civil War.
But why the public option? Because I was stricken with kidney stones that cost me well over $30,000 last year, and that was with insurance. That’s a new car, or a down payment on a house, or tuition and living expenses for a couple years. At the very least, it’s a helluva lot of money for a college student.
Because the public option creates real competition with health insurance companies that for years have fed off the suffering and pain of anyone who isn’t obscenely rich.
At the very least, the public option pisses off the same conservatives who have nearly destroyed America with unregulated capitalism. The same conservatives that thought it was perfectly acceptable for companies like AIG and Lehman Bros. to do something as stupid as loan themselves money.
Passing healthcare reform without a public option makes about as much sense as loaning yourself money, which you will have to try and do if final “reform” lacks that option and you find yourself with any malady that requires actual medical treatment instead of prayer.
If we don’t get the public option, whoever opposed it should get a bad trouncing come Election Day.
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.
Comments
A recently released fact check by the AP reveals health insurers profits to be around 6%. Hersheys, Yahoo and Tupperware all have a larger margin. (see http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091025/ap_on_go_co/us_fact_check_health_insurance )
As for the idea of "loaning yourself money" being senseless(which it is), think of the money we loaned ourselves with the "stimulus" package. Inflation hasn't caught up to us from that yet, and we're being told that we've got most of the bang we're gonna get for our buck already.
Next, there's Cash for Clunkers, which we just found out cost U.S. taxpayers ~$24k per clunker. Real smart.
That's what we need another government program, funded by dollars confiscated from those that work to pay for those that don't.