Plenty of Blame to Go Around

We continue to see the evisceration of the public option by the Senate, and this time they are getting plenty of help.

First, the President gives them a "pep talk" behind closed doors and fails to mention either the public option itself, or the looming threat of the anti-abortion amendment movement in the bill.

Then, Ben Nelson compounds the danger of the Stupak amendment from the House by duplicating it on the Senate side. This is classic Republican strategy: introduce a wedge issue having nothing really to do with the issue at hand, and use it to distract people from what they are trying to accomplish. In most cases it has to do with trying to win election by addressing the issues. Here, it is trying to pass healthcare legislation that is about a century overdue. But no, instead we're debating abortion (which, by the way, is constitutionally guaranteed. But then, the Right is all about legislating away our rights, not in enhancing them).

You know, the right-to-lifers like to hold up pictures of dead fetuses at their rallies. If this abomination goes through, maybe the body of every woman who dies because she was compelled to get an illegal abortion (just like in the good old days) should be delivered to the office of Ben Nelson. No? Not enough room there for the expected mountain of coffins?

Finally, the so-called "public option" being touted these days (if Olympia Snowe deigns to come down from her mountain to give it her approval) looks like this: the fed gives buckets of money to the uninsured to allow them to buy coverage from the same old bloodsucking insurance companies at whatever rates they see fit to charge. This will be called a "nonprofit" plan, though how that will work out is profoundly unclear.

What it means in reality is that it will mean another sloppy wet kiss to the same companies who are the source of the problem. Their profits will reach even higher heights, allowing them to "donate" even more to their favorite whores, namely; Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and of course, our little Joe, to ensure that real reform will not threaten them again for at least this generation, and probably the next.