If there’s one thing that irks me more than conservatives willfully ignoring the facts to advance the agenda, it’s when liberals do the same thing. Which brings me to Obama’s healthcare pep rally last week, interrupted by a representative from South Carolina who yelled “You lie!” when Obama said the plan doesn’t include people who are here illegally. It was undignified, certainly. It was rude. It was the sort of thing that would be best left at the bowling alley, perhaps, but I think the truth is on the side of the representative, not the President.
There are two problems with Obama’s claim. First, while there is wording in a number of draft plans that specifically prohibit providing services to undocumented residents, it’s widely acknowledged that proving who is documented and who isn’t is nearly impossible. That’s kind of odd, and kind of scary, I think, given that my entire life history can be stored and recalled and shared and projected from a chip smaller and thinner than my thumbnail. The second pothole in Obama’s absoluteness is that nobody – including people who aren’t legal citizens – will be denied care at an emergency room because of their status. If that doesn’t constitute providing healthcare to illegal residents, I don’t know what does.
The whole issue of lying about it – or, at the least, seriously spinning it – isn’t my main gripe. What bugs the hell out of me is that the liberals are as susceptible to hysteria about “the illegals” as the conservatives who started the fire in the first place are. In corporate America, big companies often cut costs by “redeploying” support staff while continuing to add vice presidents. It’s a smokescreen, a cheap and easy move designed to make it appear that something responsible is being done. Entertaining the notion that “the illegals” are to blame for this country’s financial predicament is the real lie, I think. It’s another scare tactic, another fire in the dark movie theater.
I cannot speak to the issue of being able to easily and quickly identify people’s citizenship status, but when it comes to emergency room care, here’s what I wish Obama would say. Yes, in the United States, under my plan we will treat the sick and wounded in our emergency rooms before the forms are filled out because we are a civilized society. When someone’s life is on the line, our focus is compassion, not cash. I fail to understand why politicians can’t just come out and say that, although my guess is that it has something to do with the messaging people. You can always count on the PR experts to complicate the living hell out of the simplest human inclinations, murk an issue up so that it requires more and more fine tuning and massaging, more explanation – if you can call it that – all of which ensures they still have a job.
But alas, the weirdest part of it, to me, was the reaction. I heard and read several comments on Thursday and Friday, all of which expressed shock and sadness at the decline in decorum. Which made me wonder: Have these people been to the grocery store in the past decade, or gotten behind the wheel and gone for a drive? It’s only a matter of time before we revert to carrying clubs. Good manners in this country, like rotary telephones and good penmanship, are relics.
There are two problems with Obama’s claim. First, while there is wording in a number of draft plans that specifically prohibit providing services to undocumented residents, it’s widely acknowledged that proving who is documented and who isn’t is nearly impossible. That’s kind of odd, and kind of scary, I think, given that my entire life history can be stored and recalled and shared and projected from a chip smaller and thinner than my thumbnail. The second pothole in Obama’s absoluteness is that nobody – including people who aren’t legal citizens – will be denied care at an emergency room because of their status. If that doesn’t constitute providing healthcare to illegal residents, I don’t know what does.
The whole issue of lying about it – or, at the least, seriously spinning it – isn’t my main gripe. What bugs the hell out of me is that the liberals are as susceptible to hysteria about “the illegals” as the conservatives who started the fire in the first place are. In corporate America, big companies often cut costs by “redeploying” support staff while continuing to add vice presidents. It’s a smokescreen, a cheap and easy move designed to make it appear that something responsible is being done. Entertaining the notion that “the illegals” are to blame for this country’s financial predicament is the real lie, I think. It’s another scare tactic, another fire in the dark movie theater.
I cannot speak to the issue of being able to easily and quickly identify people’s citizenship status, but when it comes to emergency room care, here’s what I wish Obama would say. Yes, in the United States, under my plan we will treat the sick and wounded in our emergency rooms before the forms are filled out because we are a civilized society. When someone’s life is on the line, our focus is compassion, not cash. I fail to understand why politicians can’t just come out and say that, although my guess is that it has something to do with the messaging people. You can always count on the PR experts to complicate the living hell out of the simplest human inclinations, murk an issue up so that it requires more and more fine tuning and massaging, more explanation – if you can call it that – all of which ensures they still have a job.
But alas, the weirdest part of it, to me, was the reaction. I heard and read several comments on Thursday and Friday, all of which expressed shock and sadness at the decline in decorum. Which made me wonder: Have these people been to the grocery store in the past decade, or gotten behind the wheel and gone for a drive? It’s only a matter of time before we revert to carrying clubs. Good manners in this country, like rotary telephones and good penmanship, are relics.
