Super Democratic awesome-man Rep. Alan Grayson, from Orlando, is like the a left wing version of Joe Wilson, but slicker and funnier. After proposing a a federal paid-vacation law and his hilarious rants against the Republican health care "plan"--Plan A: don't get sick, Plan B: if you do get sick, die early--Grayson has become, as they say in the political game, a rising star. And as any liberal star must do before coronation, he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher last night.
A true showman, he had great lines for every topic of current affairs. Maher even complimented Grayson at one point (kind of), noting, "You came with some material tonight."
On the Nobel controversy, Grayson suggested President Obama will eventually win two more Nobel prizes (one for ending the war in Afghanistan, another for ending the war in Iraq).
He said the Republican idea of health care reform "would be to allow you to take your gun to the doctor's office."
Maher suggested that the real problem with health care, citing recent studies, is that a full third of the money this country spends on health care goes to tests, procedures, and prescription drugs that are completely unnecessary. Grayson disagreed:
"I don't think so. I think the problem is that we spend 35 percent more than any other country in the world on health care and that 35 percent goes straight to the insurance companies. And they make money by denying people care. That's the problem."
"You're like an old-school progressive," Maher said at one point.
Grayson agreed, saying he models himself on Huey Long. (There might be some red flags of some sort there, since the "Kingfish" was notoriously corrupt and eventually murdered.) But he added this line: "You've gotta put some jam on the bottom shelf so the little man can reach it."
"I've never heard that one," Maher replied. "It sounds kinda dirty."
Oh, the joys we have thinking of what will eventually come of Mr. Alan Grayson.
