Mike Luckovitch cartoon for the day demonstrates the depth of the disconnect between the once middle class and the new but unimproved teavangelist\GOPers.
After the symbolic suspension of Congressional business subsequent to the shootings in Tucson, the House returned to operational status by wasting several days “debating” and passing a bill calling for the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Reform Act – Obama Care. In the House, the GOP touted this as a “symbolic” victory, proving that the populace does not want the current new health care law. In my opinion, the only applicable symbol is the GOP rolling over on its back for the teavanagelists.
Luckovitch’s cartoon is quite succinct. Americans need jobs, real jobs, paying jobs, not symbolic bills that are written to satisfy the demagogues and ideologues of the far right in American politics.
The GOPer/teavangelist combined party has no hope of putting a repeal through the processes needed to make it law. Instead they plan to spend more time trying to carve away segments of the new law and existing laws that are effective until 2014. They want to leave all health care decisions to the for-profit insurance companies that have already benefited so heavily from the Bush prescription abomination and the Advantage Medicare programs that allow them to overbill the government for services. They want to do away with the portions of the law that prohibit lifetime caps, that prohibit dropping patients, that eliminate the pre-existing condition patient dump. And of course, they want to start stirring up the ideological morass that comes when the word “Abortion” is uttered.
The teavangelist/GOP oppose abortion. They don’t care what the cause or reason. Women who have non-viable fetuses, women who are victims of rape and/or incest, women who are at personal physical risk due to pregnancy, must all be punished by carrying a non-viable, unwanted, dangerous to gestate fetus to term and deliver it so that the Roman Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptists, teavangelicals, fundamentalists, can thump their chests in the public square and shout that they have “prevailed over Satan.”
Then they will collectively find means and mechanisms to ignore the offspring produced by forced gestation, providing no funding for their food, health care, education, or housing. This will serve to punish those unwanted, mostly unloved products of undesired conception for having the horrid luck to be born into a society that preaches love and forgiveness while practicing exclusion, bigotry, and hatred.
While no one should be required to undergo abortion at the state’s request, neither should anyone be prevented from undergoing abortion after consultation with a licensed physician and without the interference of any agents of any religious organization.
While our first amendment allows great range in freedom of speech, it allows no range what so ever in establishment of a state religion. While the teavangelists my believe that their election results and the numerical majority of our populace claiming to be Christians, they are wrong. This is not and never shall be a “Christian nation.”
For me, the question of abortion funding is simply answered. It is far cheaper to pay for an abortion than it is to house, feed, educate, and immunize a child, perhaps adding the cost of imprisonment as an adult. That sounds cold and callous. It is far more callous to require a child to be born into a world that does not want and will not take care of it in a manner to allow it to develop its full potential. This is the GOP/teavangelist solution to abortion.
There will also be the cost of funerals for those women who die as a result of a pregnancy that was lethal to them. I guess the GOP will consider those symbolic, sacrifices to the Christian fundamentalists. I doubt their families will be happy to see them displayed as symbols in the GOP battle against abortion.
The GOP plans to restore the cuts made to the Medicare Advantage plans. These are pure give-aways to the insurance companies, allowing them to bill Medicare at increased rates while luring patients into their programs with free gymnasium hours or some such perk that has a little drawing power. Then when the patient pool becomes filled with more sick insures than planned for the companies close the program and leave the insured scrambling to find new doctors.
The GOP has already salted the ground with misconceptions and outright lies about who wants and who doesn’t want the new health care law. They lie with statistics quite capably.
I am opposed to this law but should not be numbered among those cited by the GOP as wanting repeal. I want the public option; I want a single payer insurance program for all citizens. I favor public funding of abortion but unlike the GOP, I oppose government funding of fertility therapy. There are millions of surplus children who would be happy to become family members rather than spend their youth as foster children.
I’ll leave it to Eugene Robinson to deal with the numerical battle. He has it exactly right.
The GOP's rude awakening on health-care repeal
By Eugene Robinson Friday, January 21, 2011
“A recent Associated Press poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed opposed the reform law and 40 percent supported it. But when asked what Congress should do, 43 percent said the law should be modified so that it does more to change the health-care system. Another 19 percent said it should be left as it is.
More troubling for the GOP, the AP poll found that just 26 percent of respondents wanted Congress to repeal the reform law completely. A recent Washington Post poll found support for outright repeal at 18 percent; a Marist poll pegged it at 30 percent.
In other words, what House Republicans just voted to do may be the will of the Tea Party, but it's not "the will of the people."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR2011012003890.html
Shabbat Shalom!
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