Exhibit 24.16

A Political Post

Ah, I remember when I used to do these back before this blog became 10 posts a month, most of which somehow include a manifestation of my hangups about my basketball deficiencies. Well, here we go.

Healthcare reform must pass. No, not because of the poxed masses or whatever heinous things insurance companies do. Those are good reasons I'm sure--hell, they're great, important reasons--but things have moved beyond that. Specifically, things have moved somewhere lower, somewhere pettier. The rhetoric has moved to such ridiculous extremes that it's trumped the content of the bill itself. The most important result of passing the bill at this point is not any tempered reform of our broken system but the deflation of millennialist rhetoric which somehow equates benign measures like outlawing the rejection of coverage based on pre-existing conditions to Stalinism. Two examples from the last week:

* Healthcare bill an affront to God
* Ramifications of healthcare reform will be like great war of Yankee aggression

So healthcare reform must pass because of Mondays.

If both the House and the Senate approve the bill this Sunday and Obama signs it on Monday, then a week will go by and it will be Monday again. Then another week, another Monday. And then months and months of Mondays will go by and most people's coverage won't change at all, the deficit will be (slightly) reduced, bearcats won't be performing surgeries, the system will be flawed but better, and Monday Monday Monday.

I don't think it's possible to overestimate how silly so much of the talk from the right will look after each passing Monday. None of this is to suggest that the sentiment is going away--or that it isn't, at least in some cases, heartfelt--but only that Democrats need to be aware of how damning their failure would be. It puts this sort of ridiculousness back on the table for every major issue facing the country. Immigration reform = Losing the "real" America. Reasonable federal education standards = Maoist indoctrination. Wall Street oversight = Collectivization. It's going to be like the post-1993 Clinton years + crazy.

Whereas letting the continued existence of the world and America put such apocalyptic rhetoric in the proper context is reason enough to pass the bill no matter its content. O, the right is not going away and nor should they--and no matter what the Democrats will take some lumps in November--but this is the administration's only chance to make them play in something resembling good faith. Rallying the troops with 3-corner hats and talk of revolution works great now, but 100 Mondays after the bill passes, Ma and Pa Whitey aren't going to run into the streets to yell about insurance exchanges and medicare reimbursement rates.

Mr. Beck and the like can never be proven right--that's the power of their position--but they can certainly be proven wrong.