News from the Plains: All this RED can make your BLUE
Mmm ... good cracker
by Barry Friedman
The story goes that towards the end of World War II, Churchill and Roosevelt were discussing the difficulty of dealing with de Gaulle when Roosevelt asked, "Why don't you just stop his food?"
Just saying.
He said the law will mean "your medical records are not private anymore so some lady in Brazil can look at your medical records and steal your identity."
Ai, Caramba!
And then there's this.
"I've got a book at home that someone sent me in England where the British think they have dental care but they can't see a dentist and there's pictures of the patients holding their own teeth. They just go to the hardware store and get a pair of pliers and pull their own teeth. Ritze, a physician, said his father was an oral surgeon, "so I've looked at teeth a lot."
That's Oklahoma State Representative Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, the brains (such as they are) behind the
Ten Commandments Statue at the state capitol in OKC, talking about ... well, we have no idea what he's talking about. He says it's about the effects of the Affordable Care Act on Oklahomans, but he's having the kind of conversation you have in a bunker with like-minded people who are all futzing with the transistor radio antenna, attempting to contact the mothership, when someone's mercury filling falls out ... and Obama gets blamed.
Which in a sense is exactly who he was with and what he was doing.
Panelists at a Tulsa County GOP event Wednesday discussed ways Oklahoma and its citizens can resist the Affordable Care Act's requirements, including the possibility of passing a "nullification law" and refusing to pay fines for failure to carry insurance.
The group, Tulsa County Republican Men's Club, actually met to discuss how to break the law.
Next week's topic: The Misunderstood Klan.
I joke, of course. It's not next week.
But for the love of Henry Bellmon, it's what the radical wing of the GOP does around here. It perpetuates lies. It encourages Oklahoma to ignore federal law. It advises residents to do things against their best interest. It mocks and de-legitimizes the president. And then it prays to Jesus.
And why all this batshit vitriol? Because the president--and many others--wanted to do something about the nation's 47-million uninsured and decided to adopt a plan that the GOP presidential candidate used in Massachusetts--a plan that would, among other things, tell insurance companies they can no longer drop patients who had cancer, like Ritze, because of pre-existing conditions?
That is why they're storing food and preparing for End Times.
If one health exchange is allowed to operate, they'd have you believe, the Founding Fathers will be propelled from their graves and the government, like Zeus, will be able to send thunderbolts to smite your ass.
Pedford, a former board member of the Oklahoma City Tea Party, said the Affordable Care Act gives the federal government "control over almost who lives and who dies."
How much do you have to hate America to sling around this much dung? How often can you stomp your feet when the electoral process doesn't go your way? How do you not stick yourself in the heart with your own flag pin when you pledge allegiance to a country that you believe only belongs to you?
One panelist at the event called President Barack Obama's administration an "oligarchy" and "an undercover dictatorship." Another panelist claimed that the federal health-care law allows federal officials to inspect the homes of people who homeschool their children and to share citizens' medical records.
Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, I read you.
We continue.
Aside from everything else--like the truth--as Tulsa World Enterprise Editor Ziva Branstetter, who reported this story, points out, the issue is being ginned up beyond recognition.
Enrollment in insurance plans offered under the law began last week. People who have health insurance through their employers or government programs such as Medicare do not need to take any action because they already have insurance.
What Ritze and the echo chamber do, then, is not laughable; it's treasonous. Stupid. Dangerous. It tells constituents that someone is out to get them--in this case, the government, especially the
black guy who shouldn't even be president --and take from them their dignity, their land, their doctors ... their
guns. What Ritze does is worse than throwing gasoline on a fire--he throws sanctimony and fear and prejudice and
anger.
Any official, agent, or employee of the United States government or any employee of a corporation providing services to the United States government that enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation of the government of the United States in violation of this act shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction must be punished by a fine not exceeding Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00), or a term of imprisonment not exceeding five (5) years, or both.
He is calling for the arrest and imprisonment of federal officials for the crime of carrying out the law of the land and wants to fine those who dare help a single mother figure out how to maneuver the new healthcare law so she may get her child tested for diabetes or allergies.
Whether it's crazy or evil (or both), for the sake of the country, for the sake of decency, for the sake of sanity, it needs to stop.
It won't.