Stay classy San Diego
Click to viewI have learned since the beginning of the 2008 Presidential campaign that class, credibility, and sober reasoning, preferably based on verifiable assertions and evidence, are clearly without value to a large and vocal group of Americans.
I hereby revoke all high-ground I conceded to Conservatives when some Anti-War movement people cried "Bush-Hitler" on the preposterous proposition that the aggressive invasion of a foreign country for the purposes of conquest (Poland and others) was exactly the same as "preventative" war with Iraq*. After all, Bush did not plan to exterminate 11 million people.
The cries of "Obama-Hitler" however are coming from FoxNews network in dedicated hour-long segments based on the proposition that shouldering a tax-burden to cover 47 million uninsured and under-insured Americans with a public health insurance option, because the free market refuses to cover them and only the most costly of emergency care is available to them, is exactly the same as creating a master-race by putting 11 million undesirable citizens to death. Hell, we can just leave it like it is and those undesirables, you know people who are laid off and took out bad home loans or own small businesses, will die of poor health care as it is. So, this makes Obama Hitler, and an Isreali who supports socialized medicine in Isreal is now a Nazi?
There is a reasonable discussion that can be had here about health care funding (we aren't even talking about care, we are talking about financing) on both sides, but clearly one side has decided that they have nothing useful to contribute. So they resort to lies, fear, uncertainty, and doubt to get people angry enough to spew meaningless outrage to attempt to intimidate dissent.
Remember that the only people really benefiting from the current system that would be significantly hurt by reform are the executives of health insurance (financing, not care) companies; companies now squandering your free-market acquired premiums to incite riot to influence the rules of the market rather than paying for people's care and working on competitive efficiencies that will drive down costs for you the consumer.
* As a matter of full disclosure, I more or less supported the invasion of Iraq based on what I heard and learned later to be untrue. But, it wasn't the deception that really galled me, but the cost and the depth of incompetence in the war effort displayed once Saddam's army was defeated. We will never get those dollars or those lives back, and the credibility of the war's advocates, both in honesty and in competence is permanently damaged for me.