I'm not a political junkie, but as one of your friendly neighbour from up north, I try to follow the general political atmosphere of my "Etats-Uniens" neighbours from the heights of one of those Jules Verne's balloons: I don't necessarily see all the details, but I have at least a macroscopic view of what's going on.
It's mind-blowing to me the length your representatives will go to deny more than half of your population this very basic necessity: To receive medical care, when needed, at a price that will keep you and your family not on the verge of bankruptcy, but as productive members of society.
But then, I decided to look at these pages.
Of course, the information contained in the links above is not exactly new on this site. It's pretty clear that when the pharmaceuticals/health products, health professionals, health services/HMOs, and hospitals/nursing homes industries are all in the Top 20 list of your contributors, well, let's just say the length they will go to is pretty long. I don't have an American dollar bill with me, but I guess it measures about 6 inches in length right? In the case of Max Baucus and the pharmaceuticals/health products industry for example, $507,313 amounts to about 253,656 feet, if the dollar bills were lined up from end to end. At 253,656 feet, Baucus must have lungs of steel to be able to run away that far and fast from the wishes of the American people.
But then, I started to think about all this running away. The R's ran away from Katrina when they were in power. They ran away from Bin Laden in Tora Bora when they were in power. They ran away from an August memo when they were in power. They ran some bird shots away into someone's face when they were in power. Arnold Scharzenegger used to be a freaking Running Man before he was in power. And of course, they ran away from 12 billions in cash stacked on pallets in Iraq when they were in power. Lost, apparently.
That's when I realized the Democrats need to start acting like true Republicans: Apparently "lose" or "don't recall" any trace of campaign contributions given to you by the industries mentionned above. From what I heard, that's the Republican's way of doing business, but they do it with the contributions of their rightful constituents, real people, not corporations. Then turn into a Democrat once more and vote for what is right, for fuck's sake. The people who put you in power don't want a freaking free lunch, what they want is that if they get sick one day, they'll be able to eat their properly purchased lunch from the table's surface in their home, not a back-alley trash can after they got bankrupted by insane insurance and medical bills.
Yes, I realize that those industries might not be happy that you used their practices on them, and their precious campaign contributions will probably disappear. But think of the upside: Instead of building your lungs of steel groveling your way 253,656 corporate feet at a time, you might end up building the heart of your re-election campaign from medical dollars saved by your constituents, happy that you finally voted for them.
And as an added bonus, think of your photogenic head, held high and looking good on national TV, when the historic "Healthy American Act" is signed into law. Just don't use the Wolfowitz method of hair placement before going on camera though. You never know where that might end up...