I’m old, but not so old that I don’t remember the fight against apartheid. I recall Ronald Reagan and the Republicans refusing to condemn the racist policies of South Africa, and how the US officially considered Mandela “a terrorist” until Clinton got into office. 
And I see where Dick Cheney still stands by that designation. Bill O’Reilly yesterday called Mandela “a Communist.”
But maybe I am being too harsh. After all, many of today’s Republicans weren’t in office back then, and we don’t know how they would have voted.
Still, I can’t help but be amused by Rick Santorum (yeah, I know, that’s a constant), who today likened the fight against Obamacare to the fight against apartheid.
Clearly! Logically! Why, the two are so identical, it’s easy to confuse them.
But even Rick can’t forgive Mandela for taking the radical view that black people and white people should live together in harmony. “Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he’s mourned today,” Santorum said. “But … what he was advocating for wasn’t necessarily the right answer.”
I suggest that Rick prove the comparison by spending 27 years in prison.
Obamacare is like a woman with an abusive boyfriend who stays with him with the explanation that he doesn’t hit her as much as the old boyfriend.
I hate being saddled with having to defend Obamacare, because I really don’t like much of it. 
However, I find myself doing so because the attacks on it are often just so damned stupid, wrong, and outright lies (Death panels? Babies aren’t covered? Seriously, people really believe this crap?)
Some criticisms are from reasonable people who are upset that the website isn’t as good as it should be (a legitimate complaint). Some are upset that their rates are going up (which they did before Obamacare too, if anyone cares to remember — the key now is that you can shop around and apply for subsidies to help pay for it). And some are complaining that their weak-ass plan that was a rip off is no longer being provided to them, without realizing that this is a good thing.
Many on right criticize Obamacare because it’s “socialism.” Those on the left criticize it because it isn’t socialism.
The fact is that there are parts of Obamacare that just about everyone likes, whether they’ll admit it or not. No more “pre-existing conditions” keeping people from getting insurance. No more kicking kids off insurance when they get sick. Limitations on how much insurance companies can spend on things unrelated to health care.
The part almost everyone hates is the mandate requiring people to buy insurance.
Liberals have always been against that. After all, that idea is a Republican idea, meant to keep the insurance companies happy and in business. It was previously called “Romneycare” and before that it was in the Republican platform. This is why it is so frustrating to argue with conservatives who promoted the idea and were all for it until Obama did it. Suddenly it was a terrible idea and “socialism.”
We liberals wanted a single-payer medicare-for-all plan like every other advanced country in the world. Insurance companies (that provide no health care themselves) would be out of the picture, so we’d save a ton of money that way. We’d spread the costs over every single American, thus reducing the costs to individuals (that’s how insurance works, you know). Health care would be treated like a public service in the same way we provide police protection, fire protection and education, without regard for whether you can pay for it yourself or not. Best yet, we already have the bureaucracy in place with medicare. No need for a fancy website that breaks down, no need to set up new regulations and policies.
So when you see those polls saying most people do not support Obamacare, remember that those numbers include people like me, who don’t support it because we want something better, not because we want to get rid of it completely.
Fox News reported this terrible fact recently after Cornelius Kelly found that his new insurance through Obamacare covered all of his children except for his baby!
Kelly, a failed Tea Party candidate for the New York State Legislature, did what anyone in that situation would do: he contacted the insurance company, checked over his application paperwork, and did some research as to why this would be.
Ha ha! Just kidding. You might have missed the part where I said he was a Tea Party candidate. Instead, he went straight to The New York Post (owned by Fox News) to report this terrible aspect of Obamacare. (Apparently, of the tens of thousands who have so far signed up for Obamacare, not one had babies and therefore this loophole was previously unknown. That was me being sarcastic.)
Fox, being the ever-vigilant heroes of journalism that they are (Oop! Sorry, almost threw up in my mouth there), reported the story. After all, since they are “fair and balanced” there is no need for investigation. They report — you decide. (They never claim their reporting is accurate or true. That’s for us to decide.)
Turns out ol’ Cornelius’ baby wasn’t covered because — I know, this will be hard to imagine — he forgot to put the baby on the form. Completely forgot. Named his other kids, forgot the baby.
He got some great publicity out of it, but he didn’t do much to help the image of the “stupid party.”
Outraged! Right wing columnists and reporters are outraged that the Pope is speaking out about inequalities in our system. 
Outraged that he thinks governments should do more to stop the huge divide between rich and poor.
Rush Limbaugh warned of this Pope promoting “pure Marxism.” Fox News’ Stuart Varney criticized the Pope’s mixing of religion and politics. Sarah Palin called the Pope the worst name she could think of: “Liberal.” All of them said that the Pope had no business discussing politics.
You all remember how mad these right-wing pundits got about religion intermixing with politics when churches lobbied for laws against abortion, fought to prevent gays from getting married, and pushed to have creationism taught in public schools? (If you do remember, please remind me, because I can’t think of a single example — but clearly there must be, or else these people would be raging hypocrites now, wouldn’t they?)
Meanwhile, the Pope, ignoring them all, is doing his job, which includes sneaking out at night dressed as a normal priest and administering to the poor. Clearly, he is an evil, evil man that must be stopped.
An old cartoon, but still relevant.
Republicans hate immigrants, clearly. They come here and steal all our jobs (like actor and Governor).
And if there is one thing they really hate, it’s when foreigners aren’t born in ‘Murica. That Kenyan-born guy, for instance. Should never have been President. There’s a reason the founders required all Presidents to have been born on American soil.
What’s that? Ted Cruz, born in Canada, wants to be President? And now Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in Austria?
Well, that’s an elephant of a different color! Ahnold would be a great President, they say. (Let’s leave out the part where, under Arnold, California went into terrible debt and how, in the few years since the Democrats took over, it has turned itself around and now has a budget surplus.) 
Ahnold now says he wants to run in 2016, where he will his crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentation of the Democrats. He says he will “file legal paperwork to change the rules” to allow him to run.
I am not making this up. A man who wants to be President knows so little about the United States Constitution that he thinks he can “file legal paperwork” and get to run.
The only way he could do this is by changing the Constitution, which requires 2/3rds of both the House and the Senate to approve of the wording of the amendment, and then 2/3rds of the states to pass it. And he only has a few years in which to do it. He’ll have a big problem convincing a Senate controlled by Democrats to give him what he wants.
Mind you, I think the Constitution should be changed in many ways, and this is one of them. There is no reason someone born in another country shouldn’t be able to run for President. Maybe Arnold’s quest may allow this to finally happen — but after the election, when it won’t benefit him personally.
ventrellaquest.com 