Back in October of 2002, we remember sitting around the TV watching debate on the Iraq War resolution the Senate was passing.

We did not believe the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war with Iraq. The whole case for taking the paper tiger of Baghdad out because he supposedly had weapons of mass destruction that could assault the United States was as plausible to us as claiming war was necessary because “Saddam Hussein must not build a time machine!”. Iran was, and remains, a great threat to the United States, with our worst enemy in the region actually Saudi Arabia, our supposed “friend and ally”. The Saudis fund global terrorism.  Sending the House of Saud the way of the House of Bourbon, guillotines included, is the quickest way, in our book, to cut terrorism to the quick. Iran, through proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, is behind every attack on Israel. Saddam Hussein, at the time the Iraq War resolution was debated, spent his days drawing elaborate plans for mosques to be built in the shapeof his thumbprint.  He had blood taken out every day so a copy of the Koran could be written in it, for installation in his thumbprint mosque.  The man wrote bad romance novels, then turned them into stage plays, and produced them into unwatchable movies.

Not a nice man, for sure, with two of the craziest and most dangerous sons to ever walk the Earth, but on the list of targets we’d have pursued, he’d barely crack the top ten.

In retrospect, we now see why the Bush Administration did what it did, and appreciate the fact the Senate received briefings far more detailed and revealing than what the public has been made aware of.  War with Iran, or Saudi Arabia as we’d like to see, would have been untenable, for a host of reasons.  Saddam was a paper tiger, Baghdad fell in days, and the US now has a strategic foothold in the region with new bases to replace previous ones in Saudi Arabia.  We respect Bush for putting his presidency and legacy on the line to get us that new foothold, from which Iran will one day indeed be taken down; Iraq was a stepping stone to a much larger fight, and George W. Bush was a prescient, courageous, and selfless man to lay the groundwork for a future fight we need to have with the REAL menaces in the region.

But, in 2002, our hearts broke when Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War resolution — not so much because we didn’t want to go to war, but because we knew it sunk her presidential chances.  Back then, we expected Clinton to run for president in 2004.  We felt certain the public, while revved up for war in 2002 (just a little more than a year after 9/11), would sour on the concept by the next presidential race…and that Clinton would be harmed in the future if another candidate arose who could claim he was against the war, and thus rally gullible Liberals to his side. As much as we hate Liberals, Clinton needs them in her coalition to win…and she lost them in October 2002, never getting them back.

Clinton did the right thing for America, and the wrong thing for herself.  In very real terms, she lost the presidency because of that, but whatever information the Bush Administration gave her was worth taking the stand that she did.  Some day, when those Iraqi bases are used to take down the Muslim theocracy of Iran, and one of the greatest threats to Israel and the United States is at last removed, her sacrifice will be validated even more.

That one vote was a Before/After moment for Hillary Clinton, where nothing would be the same for her again once she cast her Yes in the Senate.

Today, Democrats in the Senate all face a similar Before/After moment.  Perhaps they have more information than we do, and know better than all of us who see unmitigated disaster coming in the form of Utopiacare.  But, every man, woman, and Harry Reid in the Senate needs to appreciate the fact that once they vote for Utopiacare, that’s the only thing that’s going to matter to many people.

Just as we knew voters would turn against the Iraq War lickety-split once 9/11 faded more deeply into memory, voters will turn against — with great anger — those Senators who vote to socialize medicine and take over the American economy.

Today, riding the bus, we passed one of Chicago’s hospitals and thought about the fact none of us here currently has health insurance.  Back when we had actual, permanent, office jobs, only two of us even bought health insurance, and to be honest it was a waste of our money.  We went for physicals, and found out we were totally healthy.  The deductibles on that were twenty or thirty dollars.  To find out nothing was wrong.  Twenty or thirty dollars is groceries for a week.  It’s also about three trips to Sidetracks for showtunes sing-a-long night, or two sausage and marshmallow After School Special pizzas from Pie Hole.

And the insurance cost something outrageous like $80-100 a month.  That’s more than our utility bills.  That’s a pair of new boots for the winter.  It’s like 10 sport coats from Ragstock or Brown Elephant.  It’s tickets to see 5 plays in the little theaters around Chicago. That’s almost 100 books from the resale shop.

For guys who eat right, exercise, brush our teeth, take care of ourselves, and rarely if ever get sick, sending $100 a month to Blue Cross didn’t do us much good…and deprived us of all the fun little things we could have done in Chicago with that money.

Feel free to lecture us on how not having health insurance is bad.  One of us here had a bad skiing accident a few years ago, which cost him $1,500.  Another one of us had a car accident, and that, too was several thousand dollars in bills.  But, those rare events cost less than paying insurace premiums would have cost us.  As ridiculous as that probably is.

When we passed by the hospital on the bus, we got angry thinking about the government FORCING anyone to buy health insurance.  The government should not be able to FORCE you to buy anything.  Where in the Constitution does the government have the power to FORCE you to buy things?

There’s provisions in the Constitution for the goverment to levy income taxes, which it does. We pay them because under the Constitution that’s a requirement of us as citizens.  We may not like it, but it’s right there in the Constitution, clear as day.  Forcing us to buy things is not in the Constitution, so we have a major problem with that.

There is no precedent for the anger this boils inside us.

We have a feeling that sentiment will be shared with tens if not hundreds of millions of other out there.  What Democrats are doing rushing through Utopiacare will come back to haunt them in a firestorm they personally have summoned.  God help them all, because we certainly won’t.

Since Ben Nelson’s been bribed, and is now on board with this madness, the bill will indeed pass.  The MSM will cheer.  The White House will gloat.  Democrats will congratulate themselves.  And voters will seethe with anger, getting madder and madder every day as they have the opportunity to read and fully understand the lunacy Democrats have wrought.

Doctors will be forced to abandon their practices.  Health insurance premiums will skyrocket.  The government will intrude into private lives like never before, telling people with little money how to spend the few bucks they have left. Employers will stop hiring because they won’t be able to afford insurance coverage.  Hospitals will go out of business.  What’s still being called merely “The Great Recession” will indeed become a full-blown Global Depression…all because of the 60 idiots voting for Utopiacare.

This act on their part will permanently split many from the Democrat party; these are the people who haven’t left already, the people who will become Palin Democrats in 2012.  It’s clear to us Mitch McConnel is allowing Utopiacare to pass because he knows what a party-destroying disaster it’s going to be for Democrats in 2010 and 2012.  We hope that means Republicans have a plan for eliminating this madness once they take Congress back next year.  This will now be a solid part of the Republican 2012 presidential platform, so we will look with great anticipation for what Governor Palin has to say about the way forward.

There are a lot of Democrat Senators we like very much, on personal levels.  Some of these people we got to know fairly well in the 2008 campaign.  We don’t think, after this vote, that we’ll ever be able to help these people in any way going forward.  We certainly won’t be able to stop the public backlash against them.

We hope this vote is worth losing their careers over.  Hillary Clinton knew what she was doing in 2002, and probably gave the presidency away to further US strategic interests longterm.  Whatever these Democrats are sacrificing their careers and futures for, we hope it’s as worth it to them.