Senate: ‘socialism' and ‘sham' - Conason

[BridgeTheGap]

Listening closely to the politicians with the most clout in the debate over health care, it is startling to discover how little they actually seem to know about the subject.

Ignorance rules, even among the bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Six,” who supposedly have immersed themselves in the details of this life-and-death issue for many months. If they understood even the most basic facts about how the United States and other advanced countries provide and finance medical care, they simply could not utter the stupid comments that regularly emanate from their lips.

Every catalog of mindless remarks about health care must include at least one rant by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who has wasted the country's time by pretending to seek a bipartisan solution when he simply wants to stall or kill President Obama's proposed reforms.

Not so long ago, Grassley alleged he had been told that “government-run” systems in other countries would have denied treatment to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy for the brain tumor that ended his life in August because he was 77 years old. That statement drew outraged attention from British doctors, who believed that the Iowa senator was talking about their practices. “Jaw-droppingly untruthful,” protested the chairman of the British Medical Association, who said he found such attacks astonishing.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091007/OPINION04/910070405/1054/OPINION/Senate++‘socialism++and+‘sham+

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Why, oh why won't people heed Jackpine's Second Law?

Never ascribe to mere ignorance or incompetence anything that is better explained by malign purposes.

It's not that they don't know. They have a mission to subvert the public good.

Purely ignorant statements are seldom “Jaw-droppingly untruthful.” That kind of effect generally arises only from deliberate lies told in the interest of advancing evil.

To put it yet another way, they are not idiots. They are psychopaths.

[ljm2002]

2. Hear, hear!

Your mini-rant is right on the money!