Do Not Let Health Care Debate Make You Ill

Felling OK?  Com­fort­able?  Feel like a drink?  A Xanax?  Total Sen­sory Deprivation?

Because I have to tell you that the home stretch of the Health Care mon­ster is going to be like a blind­folded back­wards race on a merry-​​go-​​round.

Look­ing back­ward (apolo­gies to Edw. Bel­lamy — see?  The Nolan­im­rod can apol­o­gize with the best of ‘em) we can find a pre­view of what the Democ­rats are going to pull.

Remem­ber l’affaire Plame?  A spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor was appointed to see if any­one had vio­lated the laws against dis­clos­ing the iden­tity of active CIA field agents when he talked to Bob Novak and Judith Miller.

Fitzger­ald waded through Wash­ing­ton and George­town search­ing for the male­fac­tors who had dis­closed Plame’s iden­tity while Plame’s hus­band, a James Bond man­qué, talked non­sense to any reporter who would lis­ten (there were plenty) and started on a book and a lawsuit.

Mean­while the peo­ple who daily try to grind our minds into mush with their con­tin­u­ous assaults on logic and fact were howl­ing for the blood of Dick Cheney.  Said James Bond man­qué, Joe Wil­son, was mewl­ing to the press at every chance, even though it was start­ing to become clear that when he had taken a job for the admin­is­tra­tion and then come back and called his employer a bunch of naughty names he had divulged a bunch of top secret info.

No mat­ter.  They were out for Cheney and pos­si­bly Bush so they were tak­ing all the help they could get.

It didn’t mat­ter that the “expo­sure” of Judith Plame didn’t meet the require­ments of the act.  She wasn’t an agent.  She had a desk at Lan­g­ley and an ID with her pic­ture on it and if you wanted to find out if she were work­ing for the CIA all you had to do was call up and make an appointment.

It didn’t mat­ter that Richard Armitage, who was Colin Powell’s deputy, was the one who men­tioned Judith Plame. It didn’t mat­ter that Colin Pow­ell knew this.  It didn’t mat­ter that Patrick Fitzger­ald knew this. All that mat­tered was that Fitzger­ald spend a lot of time and mil­lions of dol­lars inves­ti­gat­ing a mat­ter that every­body in Wash­ing­ton knew the answers to.

And they con­victed Scooter Libby of a per­jury for lying about a crime that didn’t exist when the author­i­ties knew from before the inves­ti­ga­tions started who did it.

I cry no tears for Libby; he’s a polit­i­cal pro, he knows the score, and if he want to play in that arena he has to take his lumps.

But for six months or a year it was front page stuff and we were all sup­posed to care about it.

Well, push is com­ing to shove in the Health Care thing and we’re all going to feel efforts to enlist us on one side or another.

Remem­ber: the Plame thing was about a crime that didn’t hap­pen “com­mit­ted” by a per­son who was known even to the inves­ti­ga­tor before he began his inves­ti­ga­tion. But we still heard about it for half a year.

An avalanche of  … what did Howard Beal call it?

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Tags: healthcare, Political Maneuvers, reality