I Called Senator Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) Mount Pleasant office to leave a message about the shutdown. The phone message advised people calling about problems with the healthcare exchange to call the Whitehouse. This is deliberately deceptive. There is of course a massively staffed hotline for processing all sorts of inquiries about the healthcare law which is fully functional right now. I've called it and it is working fine, and better every day. It's utterly inappropriate for our US Senator to misdirect people looking for help applying for health care coverage which many of them desperately need. Certainly you should call the Whitehouse if you want to leave a message for the President, but if you want help applying for coverage through the exchanges, that number is 1-800-318-2596; TTY: 1-855-889-4325. Of course more and better options are available online at www.healthcare.gov
Watching Senator Graham being beaten into submission by the Tea Party has been an ugly thing to see. They have now transformed him into a manipulative liar. He faces tea party challengers in his upcoming primary and they're vicious. Three years ago he was a decent, if conservative US Senator like many of the Republicans I have worked with over the years. Misdirecting desperate people who hope to end their years of heart breaking anxiety over how their families will be able to see a doctor descends to a level which frankly, I can't imagine Strom Thurmond descending to.
The terror of what is being done to our government is not that Lindsey Graham has failed as a Senator. The horror is this is what the Tea Party wishes to do to us all. The Tea Party wants the entire nation to become the slaves of men like the Koch brothers, desperate, frightened and hateful. They want nothing less than to annihilate the dignity of being an American. They are happy to use the fear of sickness and death, racism, economic desperation, war and the rising power of a police security state to accomplish this. They've read so little history that members of the Tea Party (and the Republican party they've compromised) believe this process stops with us and never reaches them. I suggest they ask Hitler's brown shirts about the night of long knives.
As I've said before. South Carolina is not stuck in the past. We are someone's plan for America's future. It is a future capitulation in the current contest assures for much of America. That will be a place where some frightened sell out like Lindsey Graham is your US Senator, serving the super rich while knowing better, and you can't see a doctor when you are sick.
Fighting bullies never changes. Your next fight will always be more frightening and destructive. Better to fight now and hard before the gang of bullies grows by recruiting frightened followers like Lindsey Graham who lies to people about where go get help signing up for healthcare.
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