Victory! Victory!

The Senate Democrats have mustered the votes to break the threatened filibuster of the health insurance reform bill by the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats. Since it takes 60 votes to break a flibuster but only 50 to pass a bill, the bill is sure to pass. There will be endless Republican attempts to add frivolous amendments but they will be just gestures. The bill will pass. The bill has already passed the House.

BUT the House bill and the Senate bill are not the same. The two bills will soon go to a reconciliation committee. Expect last ditch attempts to sabotage it there. Expect to hear even less about what is actually going on in that committee than we have heard of actual news about the struggle to pass it in the two houses.

In thirty years it will be unimaginable that the United States could see its legislative process so nearly hijacked by a single industry and that they could do it so publicly and brazenly.

But that will be after the press has stopped covering the question and left it to historians. Historians are only on the payrolls of universities and merely tell the truth as best they can. Sadly the same cannot be said of journalists and the media corporations they deny control them.

It is a great victory for the people of the United States. The Republican claims of impending catastrophe are belied by the fact that every developed country in the world except ours has some form of national health insurance. Much as one may dislike the Democrats, it is hard not to despise the Republicans far more.

I remember a friend who described people, typically conservatives, as subscribing to Evilism. Sadly even that would be more principled than the Republicans' actual calling - mere corporate venality.

But this is not a time for even justified recrimination, but for rejoicing. Hooray for the health insurance reform bill! Hooray for the United States of America! Hooray for the people!

Assuming we don't get screwed in the reconciliation committee.....