Boehner, Remixed

Whoever produced this is brilliant. It is brilliant because it is true. Hate never wins. Fear never wins. They may capture the occasional victory, but such victories are always short-lived.

I don't want to gloat or celebrate in the wake of the passage of the healthcare insurance reform bill. I find it hard to celebrate because there is so much work to still be done. And it's tough to celebrate something like the guarantee of a basic level of healthcare insurance, which is no big deal in other, civilized countries. And it's not a single-payer system, so much of the burden is still on employers, for one. But it's a giant step in the right direction. I don't want to gloat, or sing, but then I remember the text message I got from my former friend on the night Barack Obama was elected president, which stated, "Hope isn't any good when planes fly into buildings." I also think of the lies that were spread by those who opposed reform from the start, and I think of all those who from the moment he was elected, devoted their lives to derailing the presidency of Barack Obama.

I think of the Congressman who shouted, "You lie!" at the president. I think of Rep. Boehner shouting "Hell no!" in Congress. I think of smug John McCain, who though he lost to Barack Obama, couldn't get the smirk off his face during the president's bipartisan meeting on healthcare reform, the same meeting in which the Republicans went to and treated as a campaign debate then got their asses handed to them, wrapped up quite nicely, by this president. I think of the police officers I sometime hear on the police scanners late at night saying things like, "tell Obama to take care of them," when a dispatcher or another officer says someone has been injured or wounded on the city's streets. I think of the editorial writers and cartoonists who have been saying for the past year that freedom as we know it would cease if Obama got his way (of course none of them offered any workable alternatives). I think of the racist imagery so often used to criticize the president, and on, and on, and on, and I can't help but think ... you lost. You all lost. You lost the election, you lost on healthcare reform, and you're going to lose again and again. "Hell no!" sounds like the last words of a movement going down in flames. We've said it before, we can say it again -- Yes, we can.