Grr! If I have to hear one more conservative talk about HIS or HER America, I'm going to go berzerk.
Cuz you know what I want?
I want MY America back. I want MY country back.
I want an America where I'm free to choose how I pay for health care.
I want the freedom to choose how I pool risk and through whom. Don't ram private insurance or co-ops down my throat anymore.
Conservatives want their country back?
Screw that. I want my country back. I want back the ideals I was raised to believe about my country. America as a nation of freedom and choice, stronger united than divided.
I want an America where anybody with a better idea has the freedom to start a small business, rather than staying at a dead end job because it offers at least some kind of insurance.
I want an America where somebody with a pre-exiting condition or a young family or a sick family member has the freedom to leave their job and strike out on their own, or tell an abusive boss to shove it, rather than staying and staying and staying but only for fear of losing health care.
I want an America where people without work or people at economic disadvantage aren't further disadvantaged because they can't get proper medical attention when they need it. Exacerbating their medical condition and driving them further out of the work force.
I want the Freedom to leave behind an industry, the Health Insurance Industry, that has failed to provide a good or a service that is beneficial to its buyers.
When I went to Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra's town hall meeting several weeks ago he suggested that reconciliation would lead to partisan retaliation. The Democrats, he told us in the audience, would not always be in power. If the Dems used reconciliation, a rule that allows laws to be passed through a simple majority vote, the Republicans would then use reconciliation to pass things when they regain power.
Stuff like ramming tax cuts for the wealthy down our throats and then ramming MORE tax cuts for the rich down our throats. And then ramming long term tax cuts for the rich down out throats, back in 2001 when the Republicans used Reconciliation to cram through tax cuts, and again in 2003.
I'm sick of having this shit rammed down my throat.
I want my America back.
I want my freedom.
Who has been ramming the soiled plunger down whose throats? My whole life the Republicans have been wresting from US Citizens the choice to leverage the American government for its economies of scale, for its massive bargaining power, for its security and reliability and consistency.
Screw that.
I want my friggin' country back. The one I was raised to believe in. The one I was raised to believe was governed by the people, of the people, and for the people.