Okay.  

That's it.  

Emergency.  Sound the five alarm idiot bell.

The Republican party is off the reservation.  They are now the official pace car of the lunatic fringe.   

They are not the right wing.  They are the something is seriously wrong wing. 

And I'm not just talking about Senator Chuck Grassley.  

I'm talking about the whole lot.  De Mint. Inhofe. Shelby.  Bachmann. Cantor. McConnell. Boehner.  Cornyn.  Bond.  Coburn. Graham.  Gingrich.  Kristol. Krauthammer.  Jindal. Palin. Beck.  Limbaugh.  

Collectively, they couldn't mount a brain wave if they tried.  

The entire party is an intelligence-free zone and we are lucky--lucky I tell you--that they're no longer leading this nation.  But they're still very capable of doing damage. 

Get out of the way of their crazy bus--they've thrown it into reverse, floored it and are about to side-swipe the age of enlightenment on a maddening turbo-powered race back to the dark ages.  

Have fun, guys.

Don't let the door of the 21st century hit you on the way out.   

Inspired by a post by Ripper, I thought this summed up the choice your elected officials have regarding health reform pretty succinctly.  The only other option to healthcare is the status quo. It's what we have right now.  

And no matter how you look at it, the status quo is highway robbery.  

It is an unsustainable system that is not only bankrupting Americans.  It is killing them. Rescission is as close as insurance companies can get to a license to kill.  Dropping someone's coverage right at the moment they most need it is criminal.  

Imagine waking up tomorrow, wondering which will spread faster, health reform or your cancerous tumor?

We need reform now.  And regardless of what the medical industrial complex or lobbyists or pundits say, this is not a complicated issue.  

Your rep or Senator is either fighting for healthcare. 

Or fighting for highwayrobberycare.  

Imagine a meeting of two different civilizations.  One is ours, the other far more advanced than ours--like the beautiful water aliens in The Abyss--so full of understanding and empathy and warmth.  So brilliant and magnanimous.  We have waited for this transcendent moment for so long.  We proudly show them our bag of progress.  They look through it, then look up and their eldest most senior being says:

Really?  That's it??  Bombs and cash?  No?  Not cash?  Credit default swaps?  I see.  Okay.  Credit default swaps.  A currency of some sort.  No? Just paper? Okay.  So. This is how you plan on traversing the universe some day?  This.  This is the master plan?  

Bombs and credit default swaps.  

And you say you're the leaders?  Nothing personal, but you don't look like artists and musicians and poets and philosophers.  There's probably not one sculptor or painter or philanthropist among you.  To be honest, you look more like... government and military personnel.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But since when are the leaders of an entire civilization comprised of government and military personnel?   Seriously, right?  No?  Not funny, okay.  What about the children?   Where are the children?  You're all adults.  How far do you expect to get without the creative intuition and naturally inclusive open-minded social consciousness of children?  I mean, who are your teachers?  

Bombs and credit default swaps.  

Seriously.  What have you been doing for--how long have you been here now, millions of years?  What's that?  Just 5000 years???  But we scanned some of your cave paintings and, well frankly, you'd have to be an idiot to think...come to think of it,  why didn't you keep up with those cave paintings?  So beautiful.  So inspiring.  So full of promise.   When did you drop that?  That's where everything comes from.  The knowledge, the shared wonder, the infinite humility.  And where are those caves, anyway? What about the mountains?  The oceans?  The lush forests?  Under an invisibility cloak?  What's an invisibility cloak??  Never mind.  

Bombs and credit default swaps.
Who..who are you people?  

And just where do you think you're going with all this???