[Photo by Reuters]
[Photo by Getty Images]
Republicans in Congress were overcome with glee when the non-healthcare bill scraped its way through the House by a meager 4 votes! Republicans in Congress hold to the belief that the government should make them and their friends rich or richer and ignore the needs of the rest of the population (especially the minorities and immigrants) and thus they could not contain their joy at literally killing many thousands of our American citizens which is what the healthcare bill will do!
Look at the photos! Notice not just the unrestrained joy, but the fact that almost without exception the pictures show white men, the majority of which we know to be millionaires.
These are the people who want to take healthcare away from 24 million of our citizens - our children, parents, siblings, grandparents, great-grandparents, friends, as well as the poor, the mentally challenged, and those stricken with catastrophic sickness.
The mindset of these Republican nogoodniks was summed up in a comment made by a Congressman just the other day to the effect that people are poor and sick because they do not bother to take care of themselves, ergo they are undeserving of healthcare.
But in the end we find it really hasn't been about healthcare at all. Republicans don't give a damn about healthcare. If there was a way to pass a healthcare bill which would provide coverage from birth to death and provide the rich huge tax cuts, they would jump all over it.
What this is all about is making the rich richer at the expense of the least of those among us. Many of these clowns call themselves followers of Jesus. If their Jesus was indeed a real person and is now in heaven looking down upon them he must be again in tears, begging the "Father" to be merciful for they know not what they do.
But they do know what they do. And what the healthcare bill does, other than drag many Americans screaming and crying from their homes to funeral homes is give the rich massive tax cuts. Or, as the New York Times put it, "billions and billions" in tax cuts.
This should be no surprise. Trump told us he saw the presidency as a means of increasing his fortune and he's doing just that. But an important side effect was that Republicans everywhere rejoiced for they finally got "permission" to do what they've been doing right along - running the government in such a way that they and the wealthiest among us can expand their portfolios exponentially on the backs of the middle-class and the poor. Trump, their god and savior, showed them it's okay to be corrupt - to lie, steal and cheat. He's been doing it for years and lives in houses adorned with gold. Well, except for the White House but now, I understand, he's taking bids to wrap his desk in gold leaf.
It's not now and never was about health care.