Gotta Hand It To Republicans

At this hour Republican Darrell Issa is chairing a House Oversight Committee hearing on the ACA rollout.  Again.  I've lost count.  Today they're grilling the IT people, and I can't watch another Issa hearing. 

 

The key web site "fixer"is pushing hard against the November 30 timeline when Americans have been assured the web site will be working effectively—if not totally glitch-free by then.  The poor guy has been catching sleep as he can, on his office floor, to maximize time spent resolving issues with the ACA site.  AND YET, a subpoena was issued for him to appear at one of the committee's inquisitions.  The Administration decided not to bother fighting it.  But it required the Fixer to take time out to prepare and appear as ordered.  Valuable time spent away from where he needs to be, a fact that I'm sure isn't lost on the Republicans who insisted on his immediate testimony.

 

You gotta hand it to the Republicans.  If there were a"devious opportunists" award, they'd win, hands down, every time.  Excuse me—make that the Heartless, Devious Opportunists Award .  Teapublicans have no problem repeating the same lie two seconds after being confronted with fact-supported truth.  I don't know how they do it.  Over and over again. Maybe because so many reporters or cable news hosts don't press them when they give unrelated talking points instead of answers to follow-up questions.  And too often there are no follow-up questions.  GOP talking heads and members of Congress continue to yowl about how the President "deceived the American people" on keeping their old insurance plans.  Of course that's a complex accusation involving an insurance industry that's played fast and loose with its customers for too long—and the "not being able to keep their current plan" explanation is more than most Americans' attention spans are willing to embrace.  Still, I wish the Administration could/would find a way to effectively refute all the misleading information Republicans and their benefactors continue to manufacture.  The smears and misinformation are taking hold; you could almost hear our President's approval rating fall to a thudding 39%, an all-time low for him.  I hope it remains the all-time low.

 

Some Americans' anger has been carefully stoked by misleading ads and right-wing talkers telling them they're being "forced" to have different health insurance plans—in reality, plans that will actually pay their medical bills and keep them from plunging into debt or bankruptcy. That's what many uninsured or under-insured Americans have actually been forced into after finding too late that their policy didn't cover all they thought it did—or their policy was simply cancelled as they were dealing with a catastrophic illness. 

So, in a fully functioning government (considering all that's going on in the Country and the world) the web site would not hold center stage in Washington and become the lead in nearly every cable news show for so long.  Even the horrific devastation in the Phillipines is a sidebar, a footnote to the latest accusation about the web site!  The talks with Iran on the nuclear issue?  Not a big deal in comparison, it seems.  But ours is no longer a fully functioning government.

 

All the red herrings seem to be working as planned.  Far too many Americans now are focused on the problems of one web site rather than on the irresponsibility of the Republicans' government shutdown and all it cost--the treasury and the individuals seriously affected by it.  And nobody's asking how the House-Senate conferee meetings are going—whether they're actually reaching some compromises.  The red herrings also are intended to make us forget the Teapublicans took us dangerously close to wrecking the world economy and possibly sending us to the brink—or over the brink—over a Depression.  The inquisitors at this morning's hearing will no doubt talk about web site costs to the government.  Of course they didn't worry one bit about the cost of the government shutdown.  They don't worry about some of their relatives getting huge goverment farm subsidies; they don't worry about refusing to cut subsidies to the oil industry, even as those companies making record profits.  And they don't mind fighting for tax breaks for billionaires while voting against help for hungry children, the disabled, and our war heroes who desperately need the food assistance they've just been denied.   By Republicans.

 

There's so much wrong with this picture, it defies words.  It defies human decency.  And it boggles my mind how anyone can fail to see what Republicans are doing to destroy this Country—even as they go on and on about "Obama" and the Democrats changing America.  Even as they talk about "taking back their Country."  I want to see our Country taken forward, out of this quagmire of insane greed and self-interest Republicans (along with the crazy election and lobbying laws) have managed to manifest.  Time for Americans to wake the hell up and get  informed:  Step 1: Turn off Fox Noise and all the right-wing talkers.  Step 2:  Broaden your information sources.  Spend some time in the company of facts so you'll understand what you're talking about.  Step 3: Invest time in learning to think!