Fuck You Republicans, Media: Part 967

I don't know how the health care debate reached this point without it being pretty widely known that the health insurance industry has an antitrust exemption, and that this is a large reason for our broken health care system. OK, I do know how this happened. It's an issue that includes not only the word "insurance," but also the word "antitrust." After hearing both of these words together, most journalists' eyes glaze over, because they know that these words bore people, and because they know that these words signal a real, substantive political issue that involves no baby killing or photos of middle aged women with short hair kissing each other and it might require some work to simplify it and explain it to people. (It's not like it's their job to do that, or anything.)

Republicans, Ben Nelson, and Lieberman crying socialism at the prospect of allowing capitalist market competition in the insurance industry is the absolute height of cynicism. Congress is totally fucked with industry lobbyists. The "serious news" media is totally fucked with a celebrity-stalking ratings frenzy and self-fulfilling assumptions about this country's illiteracy and retardation. This country is basically fucked.