Time For a Senate Steel Cage Match

This is what I want to see: an elected representative so passionate about his convictions that he or she will don tights and wrestle in a steel cage match to the death with another Senator who disagrees with him.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure (and by "pleasure" I mean the same type of joy you get by cutting) of listening to an NPR interview with Joe "You Know What? I'm Happy..." Lieberman who was appalled at the ad hominem attacks of those calling him the Senator from Aetna because of his filibuster threat that would derail health care if the public option were included in the bill. Joe has no clue why people are so upset and assume he's in the pocket of the insurance industry because, after all, he voted for the Patients Bill of Rights and he supports the anti-trust legislation.

So I want Lieberman to get into Ben Nelson's face, who for some reason is protecting the insurance companies' rights to fix prices and fuck their customers in the ass.

Given what is riding on the [health care] vote, party leaders have been busy talking to holdouts, negotiating deals in an effort to get them on board as wavering lawmakers exert their leverage at a critical moment. In response to demands from Nelson, for instance, the leadership appears willing to drop plans to use the legislation to strip health insurance companies of their antitrust exemption.

Who is Ben Nelson representing? Is he worried about the nearly 30% of his Nebraskan constituents who don't have health insurance or the $2 million and counting he's received from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office?

First up in the steel cage, "Holy Joe" Lieberman, who wants to filibuster health care reform if there's a public option inclusion, and Ben "The Helmet Head" Nelson, who is against health insurance anti-trust legislation.  What a couple of gems, huh?  Maybe during the match Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin will sneak into the cage and pound these assholes over the head with folding chairs.