Dear Republicans,

[proud2BlibKansan]

Dear Republicans,

Over the past week, we have seen your passionate protests and heard your concerns about Democratic proposals for health care reform. We have considered your insightful and well reasoned arguments, and on behalf of progressives everywhere, I am here to say: OK! We give up! We are willing to compromise on the proposals that concern you. You've won! Yay!

In accordance with your cogent and potent criticisms, these are the terms of our concession:

1. We will not euthanize your grandmother. This is the big one, and I really hope you guys appreciate how much of a concession this is on behalf of the progressive movement. Since the days of the Bull Moose Party, progressives have wanted nothing more than to slaughter old people by the millions. That much is obvious. After all, if we wanted senior citizens to have long and healthy lives, why would we have created Social Security and Medicare? Think about it. Death to grannies has long been the core of progressive policy, so it's not without some consternation that we give it up. So there: no euthanizing old people. You've got it.

2. Rahm Emanuel's brother will not kill Sarah Palin's baby. While this will require us to gut HR 3200 "America's Health Choices and Murder Sarah Palin's Baby Act of 2009," we're currently working with Henry Waxman to remove the extensive Sarah Palin's baby-killing provisions from the final bill. While this will probably cost us Andrew Sullivan's support, we recognize that this is a necessary sacrifice for securing broad bipartisan support of health care reform.

3. The government will not nationalize hospitals and other health service providers. This is another big one. Though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has correctly pointed out that current Democratic proposals involve adopting the British health care system, we now recognize that this is not politically viable. The final bill, accordingly, will not involve the nationalization of hospitals and other health service providers. This will be a major setback to Obama's well known communist agenda, but again, we progressives agree with the Blue Dogs that we need to reach a broad national consensus by responding to Republican concerns.

4. We will make the health care reform bill available for all Americans to read as soon as possible. I know that conservatives and pundits have been eagerly anticipating an opportunity to read the final health care reform bill, and after extensive discussion, we have decided to comply with your request. While we would like to have unseen drafts languishing in committee forever, we have asked Senate Democrats like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad to deliver a bill as soon as possible in order to allow the public to read it. As you know, progressives wanted nothing more than to keep these drafts hidden for as long as possible, but in the interests of transparency and bipartisan consensus, we recognize that it's vital to move the legislative process forward. In fact, it is our hope that Baucus and Conrad will return from the August recess early in order to ensure that the public has as much time as possible to inspect their work.

5. We will not subsidize abortions with your hard-earned tax dollars. Despite the fact that both FactCheck.org and Politifact insist that we already made this concession months ago, we're going to make extra-special-super sure that we did. Just give me a second...



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