“It’s armageddon,” Boehner says; health care bill passes and “will ruin our country.”

By Dan Brooks in health care 10 Comments

House Minority Leader John "The" Boehner, who believes that words mean something.

I don’t know if you guys heard this, but the House of Representatives passed some sort of doctor bill last night. Assuming the President signs it—and does not just scrawl “Surprise, fuckers!” across the bottom before tearing his shirt off and tongue-kissing Michael Steele—the new law will remove lifetime caps on medical insurance payments, prohibit denials based on pre-existing conditions, expand Medicare to those 50 and older and, eventually, establish insurance exchanges that provide subsidized policies. I’m no lawyer, doctor, economist or constitutional scholar, but I think the implications are pretty obvious:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCZI3Z24mV8

And thus continue the circumspect deliberations of America’s legislative branch.

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My god, I hope this isn’t real

By Dan Brooks in conservatism 8 Comments

It's time to wrest polits away from the politians and return it to the American people, 16% of whom appear to be utter morons.

While I was languishing in the airport yesterday, beacon of vigilance Ben Fowlkes sent me the most recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of registered Republicans. It is disturbing. It starts off okay, with a healthy number of respondents expressing their intention to vote in the 2010 congressional election and their reluctance to settle on a candidate for president in 2012. It’s disappointing to see Sarah Palin in the lead—and terrifying to see Dick Cheney in third—but three years ahead of the actual election, name recognition is pretty much all there is. Things start to get a little crazy with question three, in which 39% of Republicans opine that President Obama should be impeached. Exactly what crime he has committed goes unspecified, but perhaps respondents were rushing to get to the next question, in which nearly two-thirds of those polled agree that the president is a socialist. Thus begins a series of money shots, in a barrage of insanity that leaves the reader crouched numbly on the floor like a Japanese girl on the internet. If this poll is to be believed, 73% of Republicans think homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to be schoolteachers. Seventy-seven percent want the Biblical account of creation from Genesis to be taught in public schools. Thirty-one percent want to outlaw contraception. And fully 23% of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States of America.

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