What We Have Here Is A Failure To Reconcile

One of my favorite baseball stories involves a baserunner trying to score from second on a teamate's single... Shag Crawford, an animated umpire, was waiting to make the call at home plate. As the runner slid into home plate, the catcher was waiting there with the ball and tagged him "out" according to umpire Crawford...

Of course the runner believed he was safe and engaged in a heated argument with the umpire. Until finally, the umpire told the angry base runner, "If you don't believe you're out, read tomorrow's paper!" The umpire:  "Yes, I can call you out!." The base runner:  "Hell no you can't!" This was a classic, yet comical case of a 'failure to reconcile' on the part of the base runner. He remains "out" to this day.

Healthcare legislation has been signed and delivered. Unfortunately, some Republicans can't reconcile their ideals with the facts of the matter. Those republicans perhaps need to turn off Fox News and pick up tomorrow's newspaper... They need to stop with the foolish healthcare reconciliation amendments, and accept their defeat. What we have here is no simple failure to reconcile... What we have is an abdication of legislative duty.

Let's not fool ourselves. Obama's presidential victory has sent the "right" in the wrong direction. They have marshaled their troops in a futile attempt to stop this President, and now they have become the party of "Hell No!"

But it is more than about healthcare. Everyone believes that the deficits are too high, but that didn't start with Obama. Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney once told Treasury Secretary Paul Volker that deficits didn't matter...  Why do they matter now, and why are Republicans now willing to excoriate Obama while he deals with the deficits that they created? The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office gave its approval to President Obama's health care plan saying it would shave trillions of dollars off the deficit run up by Republicans. But the Republicans say the CBO is wrong. What gives?

Since Ronald Regan's presidency, there has been a steady erosion of the middle class, and a redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the rich. Since the Republican Party is the party of the wealthy and the wanna-be wealthy, this party takes it personal when progressive politicians and activists work to right the economic and social inequalities within the United States. When Democrats like the Kennedys and Pelosis and Obamas work for the people, they become the targets of the corporations and their political puppets like Ronald Reagan and John Boehner and George W. Bush.

Republican supported "tea baggers" chanted "nigger" as Congressmen John Lewis, D-GA, and Emanuel Cleaver, D-MO walked into congress to vote on H.R. 3490, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Carson got spit on... In the absence of this vitriol during the run-up to the Iraq War, and it's consequential effects on the American economy, coupled with the tax breaks given to the rich (all of these events taking place under a Republican run executive and legislative branch), you have to conclude that this anger has nothing to do with health care at all...  As the late Julian "Cannonball" Adderly would say, "It's somethin' else!"

Corporations like Americans For Prosperity and Freedomworks fund the "tea-baggers" who hurl the racial epithets, and who throw the bricks through the windows at the homes of Democratic law-makers.  They have strong lobbyist ties to Republican politics, and give generously to conservative causes. Republican politicians may not directly endorse the racists who join these fringe conservative groups, but they encourage it for their own advancement. But the "tea party" movement is just a gathering of disgruntled people who are dedicated to challenging black Obama's right to be an executive. They are unable to reconcile with the fact that "President" Obama can now enforce public policy on them:

A major failure to reconcile truth with fantasy...

I suggest these people read any newspaper dated November 5, 2008. And if they don't accept those headlines, then they should read tomorrow's paper as well... But no-matter how these angry people see it, health care has passed, and President Obama has signed it as law.

G.L.M.

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