Frank Rich on the "national existential reordering."

On the same day that my former personal physician merrily foams at the mouth in the Tribune, one of the most insightful of mainstream pundits charts the dimensions of white, tea-bagging America's feverish demons. Perhaps the only question now is whether they'll secede before or after the inevitable, and whether the sensible among us should even give a damn.

The Rage Is Not About Health Care, by Frank Rich (New York Times).

... If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

"Sometimes one had to wonder why some of these people are Democrats in the first place."

As we await Healthblogger's impending exodus to Paraguay and occupancy of the late General Stroessner's idyll in Little Nurnberg, here is lucid commentary on last night's health care vote.

Verily: Anything so good and proper that every last Republican voted against it probably should have been even more radical than it was, and if certain quasi-Democrats weren't so cowardly and unprincipled, it would have been. But it's a step in the left direction. The Congressional fallout will be less than expected, and President Obama likely has assured his re-election in 2012. I imagine Travis Hankins will secede from the Union.

Perhaps there is room at Alfredo's. Shall we pack the Courtesy Bus?

Healthcare vote: Barack Obama passes US health reform by narrow margin, by Michael Tomasky (Guardian Daily).

It did not, you may have noticed, come easily. The Democrats pulled it out in the end, but they – especially the Democrats in Congress – behaved abominably throughout this process. Dozens of Democrats – mostly moderates, but a few on the left, too – acted more like members of a small-town city council considering a zoning application than legislators considering one of the most momentous votes in recent American history. And while it's certainly true that a "yea" vote last night will prove to be a risky one for some members, and will cost a few of them their jobs, even that reality is no justification for the preening and fretting we've witnessed in these recent weeks, weeks they could and should have spent promoting the bill.

Sometimes one had to wonder why some of these people are Democrats in the first place.

Candidate Hankins to Indiana: Let's secede from the Union to preserve our right to inadequate health care.

This one's so good it needs to be run in its entirety.

Contemplating Hankins' conservative credentials, as reprised below, reminds me of the many phrases used by "Barney Miller's" Detective Harris to describe the trip to Bellevue hospital.

Candidate Hankins, the Courtesy Bus to the Hotel Silly will be here in just a moment. Wonder if Mike Sodrel's the driver?

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Hankins Calls on Indiana and Gov. Daniels to Act

Columbus - Today... Travis Hankins has asked Governor Mitch Daniels and the Indiana state legislature to convene a special session to exclude Indiana from any and all pieces of the Federal legislation potentially passed in Washington concerning healthcare.

Hankins comments, "I am calling on Governor Daniels and the state legislature to do the right and legal thing and preserve our state’s tenth amendment rights. Regardless of whatever else the other states are doing, in Indiana we must have legislation outlawing a federal individual health insurance mandate. I am calling on the state to pass legislation making ObamaCare illegal in Indiana."

Hankins seeks specific and clear legislation passed that makes an individual mandate to purchase health insurance illegal.

Hankins also requests that Attorney General Greg Zoeller take legal action against any potential “health care reform” in order to have it overturned by the courts.

Travis Hankins, as an individual, is also in the process of beginning to prepare legal briefs to petition the courts to overturn any “health care reform” passed in Washington.

Travis Hankins is a real estate investor and conservative activist seeking the GOP nomination in Indiana’s ninth Congressional district.