I want the credit, as the Dustin Hoffman character said in Wag the Dog as his final minutes arrived. I actually watched a fair amount of Rainbow Brite's speech last night. I started watching shortly after arriving home from my instructional duties, along about the time Da Prez was explaining that he'd be graciously pleased to allow you to keep your present medical insurance if you're happy with it (and, I suppose, if you chose it in the first place; for most of us, our employers choose it). I kept watching (or "listening," I should say, as I was changing clothes and taking care of the other dull minutiae of my bourgeois existence) through the long list of what "shouldn't be" in America, such as going broke because you get sick; and the list of what will soon be against the law for those eeee-vill insurance companies, and a much shorter list of what will be against the law for you: failing to do business with those eeee-vill insurance companies. I didn't actually bail out until it was being explained that implementation of the all-new HealthCare System™ should be viewed as obligatory because it was so important to the late, sainted "Boozer" Kennedy -- even for the credit, that was way too much for me. Along the way, I heard about how truly eeee-vill those insurance companies really are, and how the hoped-for-but-not-really-necessary Public Option™ would keep them honest by competing with them; and I also heard about how parts of the all-new HealthCare System™ were going to be financed, in part, from fees collected from the eeee-vill insurance companies and the almost-as-eeee-vill drug companies. I also heard about how the hoped-for-but-not-really-necessary Public Option™ was going to be much more cost-efficient than the eeee-vill insurance companies, due to its freedom from "overhead" and the generally superior ability of taxfeeders to be efficient and frugal.
I kept wanting to interrupt Da Prez with many questions and an impertinent observation or two, such as the fact that the whole shape of the horrible, horrible HealthCare System under which we now labor was and is set by our supervisors, between Medicare, Medicaid, and WWII-era wage controls. But rather than a hundred questions about the details, and a hundred impertinent arguments, wouldn't it be better to ask one large and simple question: Where is the text in the Constitution that authorizes the central government to ...
Aw, never mind. What's the use in asking that?
3 comments:
After taking some anti-nausea medicine, I managed to watch the whole thing. I, too, kept wanting to interrupt - and then Joe Wilson did. "You lie!" he shouted.
It's a good things it was him and not me, because I wouldn't have been nearly as polite - and they never would have gotten me to apologize.
Wow -- you got through the whole thing? You are truly a strong person.
Myself, I cannot recall ever "enjoying" an entire presidential speech -- ever. And I've been around a while. It's just a question of how bad it's going to be. I'll say one thing for Obama: while he seems to have lost some IQ points since wrapping up the Demo. nomination last year, he's still head and shoulders above Dubya, or his pappy, or Bubba Clinton, in terms of not mangling the language and apparently being able to think on his feet. Of course, when he uses these gifts in the service of evil, that just makes him worse. (It's also a rather low standard of comparison.)
My roommate insisted on watching as well. Afterwards, we watched Way of the Gun by way of stress release. Damn that boy talks pretty.
Post a Comment