July 23, 2009, Great expectations Bleak House
It seems the Senate isn't having the President's arbitrary healthcare bill deadline of August 7th (Barack's birthday is August 4th, for those keeping track, whether in Hawaii or Kenya or Mars...)
Anyway... when your opening message is "We're going to reduce your coverage, increase your costs, and mess with something 85% of you have and are generally satisfied with... and still manage not to insure millions of people"... it comes as no surprise that when a majority of people favor single-payer health care ... and its not even part of the first offer... you'll end up with a wholly unsatisfactory program... a program the President has, probably foolhardily, made a signature piece of his program. (Then again, in the end, failing in health care reform didn't hurt Bill Clinton all that much...)
Hey, garbage in, garbage out, right? I mean, the miserable "public option," which might have been the result after hard bargaining with a tight majority is now thrown in as something to be readily sacrificed in negotiations at a time when the President's party has huge majorities in both houses of Congress, including 60 votes in the Senate.
Well, dream big, I guess. Like... some day, we might have a political establishment that cares about anything other than taking bribes raising campaign cash from special pleaders like bloodsucking homocidal parasites the health insurance industry.
I've said it before: America, it seems the only thing we have to change is change itself... ladies and gentlemen, start... lowering your expectations.
Update: Might the democracy be striking back? It seems we have a hero in Rep. Henry Waxman, who is standing up to the assholesBlue Dogs traitors and sell-outs in his own party, and threatening to by-pass his own committee to get a decent health care bill out of the House... the kind of cojones we've been sorely missing from Democrats for... well, as long as I can remember. Might the tide be turning? Not how you bet, of course... but we'll take what we can get.