To My Liberal Friends

This is for all of my so-called liberal friends who tried desperately to get me to vote for Obama.

We've seen this healthcare trigger before

'The past is never dead,' wrote William Faulkner. 'It's not even past.' As today's trigger proposal shows, that's particularly true when a 'change' election preserves the same corrupt forces, cynical tactics and bedeviled details.

It is time for you to stop licking his asshole and telling me it tastes like honey. Ultra-liberal news media outlet Salon.com was critical all through the Bush years. I was surprised as they continued to be critical of Obama. Now, my liberal friends, it is your turn.

Anyone who signs a bill with a public option 'trigger' included is duping you.

On importation, triggers gave corporatist politicians a way to seem like they were remaining true to their pro-consumer platitudes and "free trade" dogma at the same time they were strengthening an extreme form of anti-consumer protectionism for pharmaceutical companies. On health reform, a trigger will let those same legislators look as if they support a public option that increases insurance competition, reduces costs and therefore delivers on promises to decrease the deficit. But if/when the bill's final language is inevitably designed to make pulling any trigger impossible, it will preclude a public option from ever existing.

Or if you prefer to live with the delusion that Obama is still the savior of America, then you better get yourself politically active and make certain that your representatives don't try to pass off a bill with some bogus trigger in it.

Even scum bag Republican Tim Pawlenty knows that triggers are bogus.*

* "So rather than murder the drug legislation outright, congressional leaders joined the Clinton and Bush administrations in backing a "compromise": Importation bills were passed, but only those that gave the secretary of Health and Human Services the power to trigger -- or not trigger -- final implementation. Specifically, the secretary would have to first certify that imported medicines were "safe." (Drug companies promote the lie that Canadian medicine is mortally dangerous -- prompting Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an importation proponent, to ask, "Where are the dead Canadians?")"