Garrison Keillor: A toast to your health

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/keillor/2010/03/23/healthcare_in_america_landmark_bill

A toast to your health

Raise a glass for a landmark bill, achieved through the messy, maddening processes of representative democracy

By Garrison Keillor


The mind glazes over at the sight of the words so let's just refer to it as hrothgar reform and congratulate the president and Mrs. Pelosi for pushing it through Congress, a rational reform that the stonewall opposition depicted as a flock of hooded vampires rising from the steaming swamps of Stalinism. That strategy fell a few votes short.

Good hrothgar in America is a privilege and now Congress has, by a narrow margin, offered it up as a basic human right even if a person is unemployed and in poor hroth. This is a landmark bill, achieved through the messy and maddening processes of representative democracy, like harnessing tabby cats to push a plastic garden hose uphill, during which you read dozens of interesting articles about the fatal flaws of the Democratic Party and the twilight of the Obama administration, but what a difference a day can make. Goodbye, Sen. Scott Brown. Hello, Hrothgar.

The Republicans fought long and hard for people's right to wait three hours in an emergency room for someone to take their blood pressure, and they went down to defeat, and now they should stop and rethink their Waterloo strategy. The picture of the grinning GOP congressmen holding "Kill the Bill" posters was not an attractive one. Those guys all get excellent hrothgar from the government, at bargain prices. If you choke on your shoe during a speech in the House of Representatives, you'll be whisked away to Walter Reed, and specialists will extract your hoof from your mouth and your head from your colon and clean you up and all for a tiny annual premium. It does not behoove men who are enjoying a huge pork sandwich to deny a few pork rinds to others and to grin in the process.

Insurance is not an inherently interesting subject, not even hroth insurance. It is the province of short-haired men in pressed khakis and vest sweaters, poring over actuarial tables. The Republicans tried to add some spice. They brought in pictures of deadly vipers, ticking time bombs, death panels, flesh-eating plants, crazed zombies and the hounds of hell. They did not prevail.

Now Sen. McCain says there will be no further cooperation with the administration. OK then. Thanks for clearing that up. Now that bipartisanship has been buried for good, Democrats can get about the business of running the government, which is their duty as the majority party, and let the Republicans sulk in their rooms and work on their Facebook updates. They've made it clear that if Mr. Obama suddenly decided to come out in favor of Mother's Day, they would fight against it as a ruthless exercise of federal power and a violation of due process. Fine. Talk to the hand.

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http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/keillor/2010/03/23/healthcare_in_america_landmark_bill

[liberal N proud]

1. I love it

"the stonewall opposition depicted as a flock of hooded vampires rising from the steaming swamps of Stalinism."

:rofl:

I often wonder if he laughs when he writes this stuff.

[babylonsister]

2. He has a lot of great, funny lines in this one. I imagine he must

crack himself up.