Cross-posted at BloggingForMichigan.com
You've got to hand it to Thaddeus McCotter. Not only is he a member of the House GOP leadership--head of the Policy Committee, to be exact--but he's firmly established himself as the Walter Mitty of that body.
Last year at this time, you might remember the "speak-in" he organized in the House chamber. That was a make-believe House session--albeit with real, but very right-wing members--he called after the real House adjourned for the summer. McCotter was upset that the House hadn't passed an energy bill: the GOP energy bill, also known as the Drill, Baby, Drill Act of 2008.
Not satisfied with starting a repertory company, McCotter recently tried his hand at writing rock songs.
This is a lateral career move for McCotter, who already fancies himself a rock star. He's been a member of The Second Amendments, a rock band formed by members of Congress. All but McCotter are no longer employed there.
But I digress. McCotter's latest opus is "A Health Dirge Night," an anti-health-care reform version of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Each of the songs has been re-titled, and annotated with McCotter's unique brand of the Queen's English. Who else would use a phrase like "reprised promotional chicanery"?
Here are a few excerpts from "A Health Dirge Night":
[M]uch of the current crisis stems from government waste, fraud and abuse....By focusing on "cost control" (i.e. rationing), the government will cut the supply of health care while inflating costs by pumping more public money into the system.
Not a peep about private-sector administrative costs--namely, insurance company employees who are paid to find ways to deny claims.
Yes, everyone wants lower health care costs; however, this does not mean that absent government rationing of care the entire American economy will collapse.
This one worries me. McCotter smokes, and the combination of lighted tobacco and straw men creates a serious fire hazard.
Stunned by the spontaneous reaction of grassroots organizations that existed prior to this bill, the administration and its blank check Congress intensified their smear campaign against their opponents, perversely sinking to the gutter tactics of calling them "un-American" and accusing them of waving swastika covered flags.
This comes straight out of the Right Wing Debate Playbook. Page 8 of the version someone threw over my transom says, "Accuse the other side of what you're guilty of."
However, a cursory review of the U.S. Constitution finds no "right" to someone else's hard-earned money and talents.
Maybe a little too cursory, Thad. Article I, Section 8, begins: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
And McCotter concludes with this:
President Obama's Lefty Hearts Club Band's radical "concept" of health care reform "doesn't go anywhere," except down the tracks of higher costs, lower quality, fewer choices and lost jobs; its stale redistributionist tenets could fit on any nineteenth century socialist handbill; and, no matter how vehemently they says otherwise, it isn't needed by and won't work for Americans.
"Health Dirge Night" is strictly K-Tel quality. With any luck, it might be the first "join-now-and-get-this-free" audio offering from the Conservative Book Club.