It didn't take 24 hours for that sell-out bastard to ruin my buzz. Which was probably the first good sustained one since the stim package passed.
Okay, or maybe the Cairo speech.
First, I'm a Democrat, same as that sociopath prick from blue-blood Connecticut used to be. So I ain't happy on that level, to say the least. But here's the deal: I work for a small business, a sleepy little country weekly newspaper in eastern, rural, working-class West Virginia.
A shoestring shop operation that qualified for that damn measly little public option. And there's not a single person in that office that either couldn't have used it or didn't outright need it...
I been up since 12:30 a.m, over 21 hours straight now. It's a friendly, toothless little weekly where I work, and Tuesday's the "pressure" day. We publish tomorrow. So I'm really too frakkin' tired for a full-on rant, but we survived our customary once-a-week workplace "family" solidarity today, and I'm thinking about my buddy, whose family owns the damn thing, and his wife and their two sweet little boys (aged four and six).
They say their insurance premiums tripled last year, and they're, like, a little worried these days. (What a surprise, huh?)
And no, they ain't no "BFL's" (big fucking liberals), neither. He's from an old, landed-gentry, once-upon-a-time Democratic family. Today, though, he's a pressed-upon, 40-year-old Gen X'er, a scion of the meretricious, Age of Reagan 1980s days of American plenty.
A conservative farm bureau independent.
His wife is a Republican.
Then there's this other woman in our little office. The smartest one there. IQ off the charts. She was on a path to be high-school valedictorian 42 or so years ago. Until she got knocked up by a logger when she was, like, 16, and then dropped out. The logger husband? Abusive, drunk. Violent. He used to beat on her.
She's got two kids from another marriage. They went to college on what's called a PROMISE scholarship for relatively high achievers here in West Virginia. (Thank you, former Governor Bob Wise.) They're young and doing okay. One lives in New York State with her boyfriend. She's looking for work. Another, her son, has a nice starter job in the high-tech industry over in Virginia.
She don't make no money. Enough (more or less) to get by. You think she has any serious health insurance? You think I do? Any of the rest of us?
Fuck you Joe Lieberman.