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Public Option and Court Intrigue

I don't want to get too cheery about a Public Option
in health care because every obscenely wealthy insurance
company in the whole country knows that a commonly-
available Public Option--that is to say, a government-
enabled, non-profit plan--is the only way to squeeze
their profits.  We can be quite sure, even if we do get
a Public Option, that the for-profit insurance companies
will maneuver to unload the tough cases onto the public.
Even so, the pressure of competition will be there.

What is just as intriguing is the maneuvering in Congress.

Long ago and far away, almost at the periphery of what
I remember, I read novels about medieval court intrigue.
The novels were based on real, historical events.  They
scared me half to death!  Nothing was as it seemed.
Lady Flutterby put poison in her lover's wine.  Bishop
Goodface hired mute monks to assassinate Princes,
and King Lollipop skewered his wives in bed.

I think Washington, D.C., is something like that, on a more
political level.  Do you really believe that Harry Reid
just decided this last week that he supported a Public Option,
or was he lining up votes?  Was all that talk about a Co-op
just a way to flirt with a couple of GOP Senators?
Now that she has been left to her own anti-government
opinions, does Olympia Snowe feel a little silly about
thinking she was going to hold up the other 60% of the
Senate, and get things done her way?  How much was
Barack Obama's seeming reticence to say what he wanted
a carefully orchestrated way of making the Democrats
have to get their act together, because if they could not blame
Obama, they would have to take the blame themselves?

Are the Administration's snide remarks about Snide Rush
Limbaugh really about the fairness of news, or are they a way
of back-handedly encouraging right-wing neanderthals to
rally to Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and Conan the Barbarian,
in order to move the Republican Party to a hopeless fringe?

All of this Court intrigue is making me nervous. 
I am afraid that if I really begin to think this way,
I will start to understand Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck,
and next I will be hearing voices and seeing Communists,
and that might be a fate worse than death. 
Then I would really need a Public Option!

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