Tick, Tick, tick.

This was today; one of apparently A DOZEN guns at the Obama event in Phoenix.

Yeah, this a debate.  One side thinks it's about death panels and they're carrying automatic weapons.

I thought Obama's pulling the public option from consideration, guaranteeing failure of American health care (currently ranked 37th in the world.  U-S-A!  U-S-A!) would be the worst news of the day.  And then came this.

As Krugman notes today, the wackos protesting some type of universal health care as socialist are really protesting health care as practiced by the rest of the world.  Even Switzerland, a gun loving, free market haven, has a public option.

Further, over the weekend, the Washington Post picked up on my contextualizing this debate with previous conservative blockades to social justice, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.   The right wing position on social security, on unions, on the minimum wage, on civil rights has long been relegated to the dustbin of history - we don't look at George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door in 1963 and think he was one side of a vibrant debate over federalism.  If we had cable news when Wallace tried to stop the desegregation of elementary schools or had his candidacy for President supported by the John Birch society, or became Alabama's governor while saying "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" the take would be about how passionate the opposition to civil rights is and how the Democrats needed to abandon their liberal base and reach across the Mason-Dixon line to accomodate the very understandable fears of the south.  Too much change after all.  Why does it need to happen so fast?  It took LBJ 6 months to pick out a dog but yet he has to rush civil rights legislation?

How did Johnson become President again?  For some reason I can't seem to recall.