Health care, Blue Dogs and Prostitution

Hearing about all the quid pro quo going on between Congress and health care industry lobbyists leaves vile images in my head: crusty old white men giving other crusty old white men hand jobs and lap dances. As the struggling working class and poverty-striken battle each day to simply live their lives with dignity, all that our legislators can do is prostitute themselves.

Olbermann concurs (sitting in a darkened cave in a black turtleneck and holding a human skull; addressing the audience in his best Olivier-as-Hamlet delivery):

You were elected to serve the people. And if you fail to pass or support this legislation, the full wrath of the progressive and the moderate movements in this country will come down on your heads. Explain yourselves not to me, but to them. They elected you, and in the blink of an eye, they will replace you.

If you will behave as if you are Republicans -- as if you are the prostitutes of our system --you will be judged as such. And you will lose not merely our respect. You will lose your jobs!

Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports health care reform, and the essential great leveling agent of a government-funded alternative to the unchecked duopoly of profiteering private insurance corporations. Cross us all at your peril.

Because, Congressman Ross, you are not the Representative from Blue Cross. And Mr. Baucus, you are not the Senator from Schering-Plough Global Health Care even if they have already given you $76,000 towards your re-election. And Ms. Lincoln, you are not the Senator from DaVita Dialysis.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, President Lincoln did not promise that this nation shall have a new death of freedom, and that government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation, shall not perish from this earth.

That is all.