WHAT BLUE DOGS REALLY WANT -- AND WHY THEY RULE

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Blue dogs claim they oppose the “public option” in any health care bill because they defend moderation in spending. In reality, a public health option, by presenting insurance company leeches with price competition, would moderate spending. Blue dog Democrats don’t favor a rational budget. They’re front-line champions of the busted financial structure championed by the corporations that pay them off. If these guys cared about a balanced budget, why did they cut taxes for the super-rich while they supported Bush’s $2 trillion war in Iraq?

The blue dogs’ buddies, their Republicans across the aisle, oppose any health bill in any form whatsoever because protecting insurance company profits isn’t enough for them. They, like their pill-addled hero Rush Limbaugh, want the Obama presidency to fail and the country to sink further into the poisonous swamp of lunacy fashioned from nearly three decades of domination by the corrupt, crazy remnants of what used to be the Party of Lincoln.

What’s fascinating is that the corporate greedheads that form the dominant Republican and Blue Dog coalition can find thousands of brainless foot soldiers to take to the streets in favor of a failed health structure ruled by insur-o-crats. But anything or anyone that opposes Obama is something these “You lie!” zombies can root for. Life was so much simpler when they had their “colored” drinking fountains. The only reason the tea-party nutsos call Obama a socialist is because they understand it’s no longer acceptable to call him a nigger (outside the comfort of their own little enclaves).

Almost equally confounding is how the Big Media can so consistently fail to look into the records and finances of the politicians on the take from the global companies that make the rules. MSNBC (that is, the GE Corporation) provide us with would-be comics like Keith Olberemann and Rachel Maddow to smirk their way through the nightly news, but they don’t hire real journalists who dig up facts. They figure we’ll be satisfied with vaudevillean, liberal counterparts to O’Reiley, Lumbaugh, etc. If these made-up TV clowns on the left or right had to chase down a real story they’d probably burst into flames.

Our country limps along on a constitution that bestows tremendous power on rural constituencies that elect people like the South Carolina governor who figured he could pave his way to the presidency by turning down federal funds to help unemployed people. Montana’s Max Baucus, who’s been screwing around for months to formulate a health plan that would supposedly be acceptable to Republicans, represents a state that has far fewer residents than Brooklyn. But it gets two senators. If we lived in a genuine democracy, a voter in Wyoming wouldn’t have ninety times the political clout of a voter in Long Beach, California. Imposters like Baucus and his blue dog pals wouldn’t be in the catbird seat.