A friend of mine, J.D.Rhoades, a lawyer, columnist and hard-boiled crime writer, also writes a blog titled, appropriately, What Fresh Hell Is This? (I love that blog title, by the way, so I stole it for this post.) I always enjoy his column at The Pilot, a newspaper from his home state of North Carolina. His opinions are somewhat in the minority in that red state, but he keeps plugging away, and I admire him for it. I’d hate to get the hate mail he probably gets from the people in that state, though knowing him, I’m sure it provides a good chuckle. I seem to find myself nodding my head regularly at his political columns, the most recent of which he also posted on his blog.
Here’s a taste, then head over there to read the rest.
A week ago, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to enact a sweeping reform of the nation’s health-care system. A lot has been written about who should take the credit (or blame) for passage of the bill after almost a year of often acrimonious debate. But today, I want to thank the people who really made it possible, the unsung heroes, if you will, that really helped make health-care reform the law of the land.
I’m talking, of course, about the Republican Party.
To complement Dusty’s column, Bill Maher did a nice job this past week of reinforcing the Democrats’ recent acquisition of balls. Steel balls. Since they are the political party in power, they need to act like the political party in power. Obama attempted his bi-partisionship ploy, but the Republicans said “take your bi-partisanship and shove it”, clearly telling the American people that they are not interested in participating in the democratic process, so the majority party has no choice but to go it alone.
And now, they are acting like spoiled little children, threatening to take their toys and leave the playground. Political hacks like John McCain say that they won’t accept this defeat, they will encourage civil disobedience of the Health Care Reform, and they will run their mid-term elections on a Repeal The Act platform. Alf Landon did that in 1936, when the Republicans, then, were calling Social Security “big government run amok”. We all know how that worked out for him.
I will not shed a tear if the Republican party disappears over this miscalculation.
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Nice post by your buddy, Dusty and great clip by Maher. He was on fire that night.
It cracks me up when the Republicans complain about getting the government involved in health care when they didn’t seem to have any problem involving the federal government in the Terri Schiavo case.