Hattip to my friend and blogging colleague Darwin Catholic. The indispensable Iowahawk gives his own unique take on the famed “Band of Brothers” speech.
ACT XXIV, SCENE 13. On the eve of the health care battle.
Enter the PRESIDENT.
PELOSI.
O that we now had here
But one one-hundred of those Blue Dogs
That face no re-election to-day!
OBAMA.
What’s she that wishes so?
My handmaiden Pelosi? No, my fair lady;
If by ballot we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our party loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of ear-marks.
Who cares! I pray thee, wish not one vote more
Than is needed for simple majority.
By Alinsky, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed at my state dinners;
It yearns me not that Ashton and Demi my t-shirts wear;
Such outward things are cool but dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet permanent state control,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, Madame Speaker, wish not a man from a swing district.
Screw that! I would not lose so great a bill
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the last hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Pelosi, through my hosts on CNN,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And a token DNC contribution put into his media fund;
But speak not again his traitorous name,
For his re-election is likewise screw’d.
Go hereth to readeth the rest.
Update: Father Z has some talented commenters in his comboxes:
Mark Anthony Obama
Easter Monday 2010
Friends, Chicagoans, flaming liberals, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Health Care, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interréd with their bones,
So let it be with Health Care…. The noble Boehner
Hath told you Health Care was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Health Care answered it….
Here, under leave of Boehner and the rest,
(For Boehner is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Health Care’s funeral….
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Boehner says he was ambitious;
And Boehner is an honourable man….
He would hath brought many people to the emergency room,
Whose expenses would the general coffers empty:
Did this in Health Care seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Health Care hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Boehner says he was ambitious;
And Boehner is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the congressional floor
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice fail to pass: was this ambition?
Yet Boehner says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Boehner spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Health Care,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Comment by Eric
OBAMA.
Wherefore was that cry?
EMANUEL.
Health Care, my Lord, is dead.
OBAMA.
It should have died hereafter;
The time for spin would have been post election.
Republicans, and Republicans, and Republicans,
Creep in their petty pace from state to state,
Till the last second of the open polls,
And all my speeches have lighted none but
yellow dogs. Out, Out brief majority!
Politics is but a poor speaker
that hams and haws and umms through his address
Until the prompter spurs his words. It is
The Ouroboros, circling endlessly,
Progressing nowhere.
Comment by Ernesto Gonzalez