In case you have any doubts, Corporate America has officially been given free reign over Washington DC and American ‘democracy’. The Supreme Court decided yesterday by a 5-4 margin that:

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads… The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, removes limits on independent expenditures that are not coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.

In America, we are hitting a cross-roads with health care reform. It has fragmented and polarized political discourse while political leaders have failed to come up with an adequate compromise. As a contributor to a great blog like Prose Before Hos, it is my responsibility to think “outside the box” and come up with solutions to the nations greatest ills.

The largest constituency that is opposed to health care reform are the elderly, evidenced by a recent CNN poll where “six in 10 seniors opposed to the president’s proposals [for health care reform]“. Conventional thinking would say “Oh no! How do we convince slobby gross old people to agree to sign up for Obama’s death panels?”

This is why conventional thinking is worthless. Maybe Chuck Todd will send his grandparents into the FEMA Health Care-O-Caust camps being set up by Rahm Emmanuel. But you know what that means? You still have a gross geezer body covered in vermouth and stall Cheez Its to dispose of. And that takes a lot of time and money, especially considering FEMA’s specialty is making sure minorities die during national disasters, not disposing of the social and economic vampires that are the elderly.

I know we should all be proud of Bill Clinton for saving the journalists in North Korea. Good work, whatever, etc.

But, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s thought this — how likely is it that those two girls are pleasuring Slick Willy on the ride back to the Land O’ Freedom? I mean, he just saved them from years of agonizing brutality and it’s a hell of a flight back from Korea to the United States. Let’s just not act surprised when they come off of the tarmac with ’stains’ all over their DPRK prison uniforms.

One of the highly entertaining aspects of Sonia Sotomayor nomination and confirmation process has been the constant refrain of “Affirmative Action” pushed by conservatives as they seek to undermine Sotomayors reputation. You see, in conservative circles, affirmative action is synonymous with a person of color getting a job that they didn’t deserve (when there is probably a much more qualified White Male available!).

Apart from being laughable given Sotomayors extensive judicial experience and readily apparent intellectual discipline, conservatives seem to have a comically short-term memory in relation to their own less-than-qualified picks for the Supreme Court. Or, in short, Clarence Thomas.

I’m not necessarily saying Clarence Thomas was selected by George H.W. Bush for the Supreme Court because he was black. But I am saying Clarence Thomas has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court for his 18 years on the Supreme Court, displaying a complete lack of even basic understanding of Constitutional Law and repeatedly falling asleep during oral arguments on some of the most important constitutional and civil right cases of the past 2 decades. Incidentally, Sotomayor was appointed by H.W. Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York around the same time Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court.

Fox News, once the Kristol/Krauthammer central of Palin cheerleading, is angry at the self-centered idiocy that has become Sarah Palin (which makes on think they are all too aware of coming scandals involving Ms. Palin):

If you remember the platforms of the 2008 campaign, Obama and other Democratic nominees endorsed health care reform centered around providing a low-cost public option, allowing quicker and wider distribution of generic pharmaceutical alternatives, and investing in America’s antiquated medical infrastructure. Obama went as far as to suggest in late 2007 that “The time has come for universal health care in America… I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country.” [source]

Public option health care plan is becoming more of a dream and less of a reality thanks to heavy lobbying of Congress by the health care industry. The estimated $1 to $2 trillion dollars in health care reform is starting to resemble a bailout that will solidify the monopolies of health care companies. The new health care reform bill championed by centrist Democrats encourages ‘free-market’ principles, or, for those unfamiliar, the active encouragement by the legislative branch of collusion between health care companies and exploitation of American consumers. Essentially, the health care reform bill has been transformed from a consumer-oriented reform package to a massive kick back to the health care industry, with a mere wrist-slap for their more unscrupulous practices.