Yesterday’s rally in Albany against mandatory experimental flu vaccinations got a mention on the NBC evening news last night (rare that I actually watch that, but it happened to be on). A brief mention, but a mention nonetheless. I looked at the coverage on the Albany Times-Union website yesterday, and there was a brief article that happened to mention that some of the people who organized the event were the same folks who organized the “tea bag” dog and pony shows (funny, they didn’t mention that NYSNA – the NY State Nurses Association – and PEF – the Public Employees Federation – were also involved and are opposed to Mengelese-style forced medical experimentation). There is considerable bile and hatred expressed in comments to the story – against the “right wing” loonies who would deign to be opposed to having a concoction that consists of (among other things) squalene and a mercury-based neurotoxin force-injected into their bodies (the package insert for the Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine manufactured by Novartis has supposedly been leaked on the Internet [pdf], and admits that known side effects include guillain-barre syndrome, vasculitis, anaphylactic shock and even death). So, yes, my dirty little secret is out – I’m a teabagging, Glenn Beck-worshipping, right wing loony. Funny how the story didn’t mention that the NYS DOH Commissioner and his Goldman-Sachs wife support the likes of Chuck Grassley, Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani, and GW Bush. I suppose then the crowd would have been characterized as a bunch of liberal stooges or something. Oh well.

The Senate Finance Committee failed report out a health care reform bill that includes a public option, in spite of the fact that somewhere in the vicinity of 70% of “we the people” want it. This is either a devastating blow to Barack Obama (as the NBC Nightly News seemed to suggest last night), or an encouraging sign that a public option will be part of the final bill, since it got 10 votes in the very conservative (aka, in the pocket of Big Pharma and the insurance industry) SFC. Meanwhile, people continue to lose their jobs, their health insurance, and their homes.

Oh well, now that I’m a rightwinger, I guess I don’t have to care whether people have health care or jobs anymore. Time to start stocking up on the canned food an ammo, I guess (as soon as I buy a gun; I wonder when this guy will hold his next “Machine Gun Social“).