Surprised?

Stays on top today - G

I'm not.

Via a combination of Republican Noise Machine, insurance lobbying groups, and the aggregate stupidity of the American public, this weekend we kissed any sort of 'public option' being included in the health care reform package goodbye.

I had as much 'hope for change' as anyone did after the elections last November, a majority in the House and Senate and a Dem President, I thought the sky was the limit. I know a lot of you did too. After all the rhetoric during the campaign and after, how could we not?

Once again we got screwed. Correction, 46 million Americans got screwed royally. The rest of us, those who fought for coverage for all Americans, merely were ignored in the face of special interest and the ranting of the 'Dead End Quarter'. For all the change we were promised, business-as-usual prevails. The insurance companies will still be in control with little regulation and no competition, still retaining their vast influence over public policy. Once again we, those who got these clowns elected, get handed a shit sandwich.

It's what it comes down to in the end. The average American is only worth listening to until his vote is cast, until any campaign contributions he can afford are issued, and then quickly forgotten. The 'Washington Bubble' seems to be impenetrable by voices from the outside, the voices of those our representatives owe their existence to. Even the 'town hall meetings' gave off the stench of manipulation by insiders, controlling the gullible to disrupt and sidetrack the 'debate'. And the worst offenders were the news media, giving the crazy credibility and playing the perfect 'straight man' to the Machiavellian machinations of the insurance industry, acting as if the obvious was an illusion.

The Fourth Estate, entrusted to protect the American people, abdicated any responsibility to us decades ago and instead adopted willful ignorance as its modus operandi. Lies taken at face value and allowed to sit unchallenged before the public, the most fantastic of them given a hearing and put up for debate when they should have been met with only laughter, did much to rouse the rabble, the gullible, and the uneducated. What passes for news nowadays is a joke, an industry now a full fledged accomplice of the corporate oligarchy of the United States. I wonder if Wolfie, John King, Charlie Gibson, and the rest ever worried about their financial situation whenever they got sick, wondering if this would be the illness that broke them. I would think not.

The whole evolution of this 'reform' package has me disgusted beyond belief. After what we were promised, after the hope we were given, I think this failure troubles me more than what happened throughout the Bush years. We knew what we were up against then, knew the forces that were arrayed against us, and knew it would be an uphill battle, especially after the '04 elections. But after '06, and again last year, we thought (at least I did) it would become easier. They were on our side and we had a majority. Anything (at least things within reason) was possible and health care reform was high up on the list. It seems anything meaningful is no longer a priority. It seems, once again, nothing will change.

Thank you, Democrats, for living up to my very cynical expectations of you. Once again you have proven you are no more fit to lead than the Republicans. I was hoping you'd surprise me this time.