Public option health bill CHEAPER and more popular; Reid shows his weakness, GOP hypocrisy coming home to roost

Let's see how the fiscally-conservative Blue Dogs react to this news. For months they've been distancing thekmselves from a public option because it would be 'too expensive'. Now comes this report:

On Tuesday, House Democratic leaders received a new cost estimate of $871 billion from congressional budget umpires who measured a robust version of a so-called public option for health insurance, according to a Democratic aide. [...]
The House bill with the strong public plan would extend coverage to 96 percent of uninsured Americans and significantly reduce budget deficits.

With that news comes this hard-charging jewel of a quote from the spineless leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid. Ol' blood and guts had this to say:

“We’re leaning towards talking about a public option.”

Harry Reid (Cognitive Dissonance Award Winner)

Leaning towards talking....


Now, as to the notion that it's just "teh lefties" (TM) who are for the public option, this graph should dispel that.

That's a shitload of lefties.

Or maybe it's true, maybe we are going a little lefty. Maybe the clusterfuck of the Bush Years really did push shove the electorate to the left. Read the following from ABC News/Washington Post:

Only 20 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the fewest in 26 years. Just 19 percent, similarly, trust the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for the country's future; even among Republicans themselves just four in 10 are confident in their own party. For comparison, 49 percent overall express this confidence in Obama, steady since August albeit well below its peak.

And why don't people trust the GOP? Because they're hypocrites, that's why. Here's just the latest example: They made a huge stink about the stimulus that's saved the economy. They went in front of the cameras and 'turned down' the money, only to go back and take it in the dead of night. And then they had the balls to take credit for taking the money!

Let's summarize:The president is at 57 percent approval, and the public option is at 57 percent. The public has no belief in nor trust in Congresional Republicans, who seemingly have no boundaries to their hypocrisy. Yet Congress doesn't get it and the media is pushing this story like it's an athletic contest. The media like close contests because it gives them a story with angles to report on. So they manufacture an artifical reality where this is a close call, when in all reality, the public option has won over America.

And yet both government and the media will scratch their heads and wonder why people don't have any faith in them.

Amazing.

One other warning: woe be to any legislator that kils this and pisses off 60% of the electorate.