Ten-dimensional Rigelian Chess in the Neutral Zone

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I can't keep up with it, being just meat and bone and a small nugget of gray matter on a stick. In my guts I feel it would be expecting too much to view the President's healthcare reform "summit" as an intentional gimmick to trap Republican Senate leadership into showing the public how gormless they are; how unprepared they are to withstand any rhetorical pushback; how full of shit they are. But the Republicans themselves have already let that cat out of the bag: they fear it and are stupid enough to say so. And, significantly, Obama has proactively taken ownership of the "Obamacare" sobriquet by throwing his own proposal on the table, so his own executive prestige is on the table, too. To me that means Obama is going to use all his good offices to make sure we have a Democrat-driven healthcare reform package signed into law within a few weeks if not sooner. Likewise, Sen. Dick Durbin (majority whip) also put his manhood on the table by declaring that Democrats will move forward to pass legislation without Republicans. They really have no choice now except to do it or reap permanent contempt from all sides, forever.

Good show, blokes. Except Obama, Durbin, and others like Tom Harkin are pretty much declaring that the public option is dead in the process. Why? In a game 10-dimensional Rigelian chess, you see, it doesn't matter that most people in this country are strongly in favor of government-administered health insurance for people who can't afford private insurance, or that analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that a healthcare bill would be less expensive with a public option than without one. (Google your own sources tonight, kids; I'm tired.) What really matters, according to the rules of this game, is The Spectacle and, especially, how the adversary perceives it.

Maybe we'll get something and maybe we'll get another 9 months of melodrama. Will Glenn Beck holler "rape!" at a NARAL convention? Will Harry Reid get another Lieberman tattoo on his inner thigh? Will Barack Obama carve an "O" in Sarah Palin's forehead for real this time? I'd be satisfied with a more modest spectacle: Democratic Senators publically dripping contempt on their esteemed sociopathic friends across the aisle.

When Republicans declare that most Americans oppose the House and Senate healthcare reform proposals, I wonder why 33rd Degree Rigelian Chessmaster Obama doesn't kindly reply that two-thirds of that opposition comes from people who think the law needs a public option. And then kindly order Reid, Durbin, Pelosi, and Hoyer to make it so on penalty of immediate reassignment to administer umox at a Ferengi leper colony. It would be a regular spectacle.