Dick Armey’s Army

Like a lot of people, I’m still bothered by South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s “YOU LIE!” outburst. Bush had a couple of shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned for his action (although I suspect the actual crime was his embarrassing of al Maliki), but what Wilson did speaks to something deep and dark going on in the fringes of American politics. I worry that there might be another Timothy McVey out there, plotting against a government that he feels needs to be “taken back” from those he believes would destroy the country from within.

But it’s not just Wilson’s outburst that bugs me, it’s the fact that he’s wrong. Obama wasn’t lying. The health care legislation doesn’t give free health care to illegal immigrants. Even if there were any real truth in the assertion, it’s just another diversionary tactic. The Right is, I have to acknowledge, excellent at rallying the troops and making diversions seem like the core of an issue.

But let me tell you, the problem of immigrants in emergency rooms is a very real one, even if nothing about health care coverage changes. My wife worked at Waltham (MA) Hospital, and the place shut down — closed forever — due at least in part to uninsured immigrants. But they certainly were not the only uninsured patients who were treating the emergency room as a primary care facility.

Bill Moyers has a feature on Dick Armey, about the hypocrisy of a wealthy man who has benefited from government health care coverage most of his life, while telling people they shouldn’t have the same benefit. Why hang onto the delusional rants of a totally irrational loon like Glenn Beck, and refuse to listen to a calm, reasonable and thoughtful analysis by Bill Moyers?

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The real issue underlying all of this protesting is the fact that Obama is half black and his father was Muslim. This scares the hell out of a lot of people of a certain mindset, who are outraged that a young white girl let herself be seduced by an African man, and from that union came a President. These people are being used by Dick Armey and his ilk. They listen to the rhetoric and the talking points that get hammered out over and over again. They don’t think things through for themselves and see what makes sense, because nothing these people are saying about Obama having a private army, and wanting to destroy America, makes any sense.

But I must say that the Acorn people deserved what happened to them with the outrageous pimp sting. It’s the sort of thing the late radical Abbie Hoffman would have loved. It’s also a distraction from the much more serious issue of Wall Street returning to business as usual, without a return to Glass-Steagal and the separation of the investment banking, commercial banking, and insurance industries.