Oh, The Things I'd Do To Joe Lieberman

My surgery was a success... the doc got the bone spurs out nice and easy, and he said I should be good as new in three months. I told him I wished he could say the same for our health care system. He just stared at me.

What a fiasco. I knew I should never have gotten "public option" tattooed in 256-point font on the left side of my body, stretching from ankle to armpit. (When I play, the only part visible between my shorts and socks is the "-blic"... Vlad tells me that's the name of his hometown newspaper.) I knew Obambi was a corporatist at heart, but I thought we'd get an opt-out or a trigger or Medicare buy-in or something. But nope -- it all fell to shit. ClintonCare all over again. And here I am, laid up in one of the very fee-for-service ho$pitals that's bankrupting this country, watching our progressive dreams get murdered by a man named LIEberman.

I've spent the past two days writhing in my hospital bed and thinking about the stuff I'd do if Joe Lieberman and I were alone in a room together (in my head it's sort of a classic TV den). I've narrowed it down to five main things:

1) reading off a list of uninsured New Haven residents with a principled quiver in my voice, pausing to catch my emotions after every seventh name

2) telling him to imagine that Aetna CEO Ronald Williams is sitting on the couch, and to imagine that I'm him (Lieberman), then kneeling in front of the couch and simulating fellatio on the imaginary Williams, emitting loud noises to make it clear to Lieberman that I (i.e. him) am enjoying this

3) Pretending to be asleep, and then when he gets up to leave, bolting awake and just screaming and screaming in his face

4) producing a picture of his hero, former Connecticut governor and progressive legend Abraham A. Ribicoff, and slowly tearing it in half, while imperceptibly shaking my head

5) telling him that I appreciate his hard work on climate change and offering a handshake, then grabbing his hand, spinning him around so his back's to me and delivering a crazy, sloppy axe-handle punch to the back of his smug-ass neck

More later, diary.