Grassley is not usually seen as a right wing extremist, but the GOP has gone over the cliff and it is taking all its members with it.
Over and over the terminally obsolete, extremist right wingers attending town halls, echoing their leaders-- Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and now, Charles Grassley-- are all talking about opposing "socialist healthcare."
Of course, Medicare is socialized, not socialist medicine. But the right made up their minds that they were going to LIE to their base, gin it up with fear and characterize universal health care-- any reform of health care-- as socialism verging on Russian communism. They've moved from fear of terrorists to fear of communism. No wonder granma is scared. The right wing is pushing some very old buttons from the cold war.
It's clear that the right wing extremists have decided that it is time for death to grannie. With Senator Charles Grassley, jumping on the "Deather" train, it has made things a lot easier for the Obama administration.
Now that Grassley's signed on to the Death Panel lie and its accompanying rhetoric, it makes it that much less defensible for Obama and his shills, Max Baucus and the Blue Dogs to argue for a bipartisan solution. The American people gave the Democrats and Obama a filibuster-proof Senate and a massive majority in the House. They don't need a bi-partisan vote. The American people gave them the tools to pass Strong, solid healthcare legislation without one damned rightwinger.
Obama has a choice. He can sell out the Dems and progressives who elected him and his Democratic congress or he can suck up to the half-assed Blue Dogs who also won with the help of progressives and pretend to be bi-partisan. His history suggests he will do the latter.
What he needs and deserves, to move him to do the right thing, are hollering, angry, shouting progressives going to the townhalls demanding the most cost effective healthcare system: single payer. He and the Blue Dogs and Republicans need progressives shouting at townhalls, demanding that the GAO do a study, ASAP, on the cost of singlepayer healthcare, so that cost can be compared with the stupid corporate welfare plan Obama and the Blue Dogs are selling. It is inexcusable, with so much on the table, that this option is not seriously evaluated and included in the overall discussion of what is best for America.
Granny is getting screwed, killed, executed, thrown in front of the train all right-- but the right wingers, Blue Dogs, and also Obama are the ones doing it. And let's not forget about that deal Obama cut with big Pharma, to not negotiate prices. Talk about being anti-capitalist. Why aren't the Blue Dogs screaming about that?
Poor Grannie. She's scared shitless and doesn't know where to turn. For months, I've been saying that single payer advocates must educate seniors on medicare explaining to them why single-payer would be an improvement over medicare-- less drug costs, more services covered, and a more healthy long-lived health care system not on the way to running out of money.
Bottom-line, if the US does not move to single-payer, Obama will have sold out the American public in favor of corporate health insurer welfare and salvation. The answer to America's health care needs is indeed, to kill-- to kill the healthcare insurance industry, where sociopath CEOs take salaries of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Health care should not be for-profit, just as churches should not be for-profit. Capitalism will not die if it is taken out of health care. It's time that the US took back its integrity and rescued Granny from the corporatists and their dupes who have been killing grannies every day.
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