Letting the CHIPs Fall
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Our regular poster, twowheelfish, has goaded me out of my silence. Way to go, twowheel! Since you’re an avid fisherman, you know I have to take the bait.
But mostly, I’ll toss this post off to you faithful visitors to mullentown. What can we liberals, who see nothing particularly wrong with moving toward national health insurance (you know, that gol-durned socialized medicine) in the first place, do about this piece of plywood who occupies the White House for 15 more months?
I know the answer to that question: We gotta be patient and wait for our turn. I guess I was simply offering a rhetorical scream in the wilderness.
And what about the Democrats, who now control both houses of Congress? Where is their power — their will, really — to muster up necessary votes to override George W. Bush’s veto of SCHIP (state children’s health insurance plan) reauthorization?
I’m absolutely floored, totally undone, by this man’s complete lack of courage, compassion and lack of political will when it counts. One reckless decision of his seems to bleed right into another, day after day after day. One longtime conservative and very active Republican in Salt Lake City who has given piles of money to his party mentioned the other day that he sees Bush as absolutely having destroyed the Republican Party, especially since the election last November.
Even Bush’s once-blindly loyal followers here in Utah are losing faith.
What does it take to find even the slightest serving of compassion in this country anymore?
(I’m drawn to this thought because I’m back to the Jean Smith biography, FDR. I let Ted borrow it and he read the 900-page monster in about two weeks. Now there was a president who knew compassion. The fact that he could blend it with political instincts and timing made all the difference at a moment when this country was seriously deteriorating.)
Where do Americans go from here? Will we ever get an insurance plan that addresses the needs of the population? If we can’t even extend coverage to children and increase their benefits when necessary, I don’t know where we as a society can go from here.
Canada, maybe? I don’t think they’ll have us!