Continuing my general rant against the clusterfuck that is the holiday season (as well as my recycling of titles from previous posts), I regret to admit that I didn't manage to catch the Daily Show last night--since I'm still on school time, and I was up late the night before so my ability to "wake up" was a bit compromised.
So, of course, it was just after I'd woke up this morning when I finally managed to catch his interview with four of New York's finest.
It's an eye opener, frankly, for those of us...who happen to get our news from America's number-one trusted fake newsman...to find out the plight of those 9/11 rescuers who are in need of health care.
The bill in question, formerly called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, would provide $7.4 billion in free aid and medical care to rescue workers who have suffered from health problems as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center. However, following its maiden voyage from the House, it has drowned in a sea of Senate filibusters.
The filibusters, if Google magic is to be believed, have been driven by a pact between Senate Republicans, who have signed an agreement not to support any other legislation until the long-awaited issue of the Bush tax cuts has been approved. Apparently, this includes refusing health care to 9/11 workers and rescuers.
Republican Senators have vowed to resolve the tax cut issue following the New Year, saying that it would be disrespectful to Christians and the spirit of Christmas to spend the holiday week between. Stewart, as you might imagine, took issue with our elected representatives deciding to twiddle their thumbs while our finest Americans are left to fend for themselves with ailments such as...let's see...brain cancer, throat cancer, heart disease, lung disease, back problems, cancer of the lymph nodes (which may or may not be synonymous with throat cancer)...and this was just between the four guys who were in good enough shape to show up on the Daily Show.
Stewart also lambasted the mainstream media for not covering what, in so many words, is basically a moral travesty of the highest magnitude. Taking matters into his own hands, and making up for the lost time of the entire press (save Al-Ja-freaking-zeera), he invited four 9/11 responders to discuss the situation with him and a nationwide audience.
There's also a sense of a disconnect between the politicians and the 9/11 workers, as evidenced by Senator Mitch McConnell giving a tear-filled speech for...this buddy of his who's retiring. Jim Bunning, a baseball player who went on to politics, and who apparently dressed up one time. To be fair, he sounds like a much more forceful and dynamic personality than, say, the men and women who rescued people from a hundred-story burning building.
And, as I Google John Kyl (the guy who doesn't want to go in to work during the week after Christmas), it kills me...kills me inside...that the only result I see that's remotely related to his refusal to resolve the filibuster over Christmas is...well, this.
Now I could rant and rave about this all day, but the fact of the matter is that the audience for my blog is negligible at best. I plan on Facebooking it, and I plan on Tweeting it, and dear God I might even MySpace it, but the first thing I plan on doing is showing this video to my mom. Because people need to know about this. For God's sake, people need to know about it.
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