A Child's Treasury of Health Care Hijinks from This Weekend's House Debate
Congratulations, America, your House of Representatives stopped dithering and passed a health care reform bill — final tally, 220-215. Yay/boo. Now the focus shifts to the Senate, but they'll have a tough time surpassing the amount of crazy that went down in the House during Saturday's interminable debate.
Here is a child's treasury of health care debate hijinks, starting with an actual child courtesy of Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ). See, Maddie wants patient choice. Maddie does not want her mom's taxes to go up. Maddie/Trig '44!
Oh, there's more.
Beloved teabagger Michele Bachmann (R-MN HI??) took to the podium wearing a traditional floral lei, because… come on, do we have to spell it out for you? "The one who created this lei also created our freedom," she says. Thank you, tourist vendor in Honolulu, for giving us this gift.
Last but not least, how's the conservative blog reaction to Louisiana's Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, the only Republican to vote yes on the bill? About as reasonable as you'd expect. Over at the Free Republic there's an ongoing "profile in treason" thread packed with punderful gems like "ciao, Cao," "Caoward," "deport the SOB" and "how now, Yellow Cao?" (Get it? Anh Cao is not brave.)
Others have taken a completely different approach to the traitor in their midst…
I am seriously starting to distrust those of eastern decent. [...] How do we not know that it is some sort of a plot to take over America?
We don't not know that! But we do know that Rep. Cao is basically the same as Chairman Mao, another politician famous for supporting health care legislation.
Finally, a record was set for the most expletives and racial slurs in 140 characters. Never before has the "top conservatives on Twitter" hashtag been so richly deserved.
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Many thanks to Jon and Stephen for continuing to spotlight the HR and Senate shenanigans.
Now, to be perfectly boring about the vote itself:
The real news about the passage is both surprising and saddening: the margin was only 5 votes. Since polls have shown that at least 70% of Americans support health care reform, a Yea vote total of 304 would have reflected the population's support more accurately. Even if you use 60% — the lowest figure quoted in recent months — it translates to 261 votes in favor of passage. Granted, the HR vote isn't expected to be a precise monitor of the general popular vote, but such a large deviation shows a disconnect between what constituents want and what their legislators will provide.
Weeellll… As you know who used to say, as he sucked up credit for the fall of communism in the Eastern bloc and avoided credit for unleashing the hellhounds of partisan blindness… the"publicans and sinners think nobody has read the legislation, since they so obviously haven't–which Jon demonstrated so masterfully in his interview/dissection of Ms. McCoughey, of "death panel" fame. My private insurance provider, one of the honored monopolistic giants, has already done to me ALL the things the blockheads fear–and they may have lost count of how much of "giant gummint bureaucracy is actually the work of outsourced civilian/ex-gov. contractors loosed on us by the so-called "free enterprisers"–not counting those rascals at Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater/Xi (pronounced "she."
I'm glad Jon is standing up for Americans. Yay! They passed health care legislation twice as long as the last one, and they still didn't read it! There couldn't possibly be anything bad in there!
Ignorance is required, Jon!
Funny how things change when his favorite party in in power.