Quote of the Week

"I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare.'"

-- President Obama, summing up the amusing insanity of the army of elderly dupes that's been mobilized by right-wing fear-mongers in their fight against health care reform

Rachel Maddow and Bob Cesca have both been hammering away at this subject for the past couple of weeks, exposing the inexcusable hypocrisy of scaring America's seniors into rallying against their own interests. I've said it before but it bears repeating: Health care reform is the most important issue facing this country right now. Seriously, the most important. And watching the usual bought-and-paid-for shills in Congress (on both the right and the left) as well as the buffoonish carnival barkers like Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity basically try to convince old people that Barack Obama wants to kill them is just repugnant.

The very idea that we're even arguing over the potential opportunity for affordable health care for every American is staggering. What civilized country doesn't take care of its citizens? What moral society actually subscribes to the notion that only the wealthy are deserving of the kind of medical care that can determine whether someone lives or dies?

But now, in a move that's mind-boggling in its irony, the very people who are assured quality health coverage by the government are acting like immature teenage hooligans and disrupting town hall meetings where the health care crisis is being debated. They've been told that they need to "shout down" anyone who feels that, say, a public option for health insurance coverage is something akin to evil socialized medicine and should be dismissed as the insult to the American Way that it supposedly is. So they show up to these meetings, scream literally incomprehensible nonsense -- much like they did during those ridiculous "tea parties" -- then sit the hell back down, satisfied that they've struck a blow against the encroaching commie threat.

Maddow and Cesca have rightly tried to at least be respectful to the senior citizens who've unwisely assumed their roles as stage props in this whole ugly farce. I won't be so kind: It's nothing short of tragic that so many of America's seniors are this impressionable, gullible and flat-out dumb -- that people who should know better after decades of life experience so willingly allow themselves to get taken.

You know those stories you always hear about old people falling for the kinds of scams that just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together would see coming a mile away? Well, the Republican assault on health care reform is the biggest scam of all -- and a lot of the elderly are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.

The Huffington Post: "Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" by Bob Cesca/8.5.09