As sick as the Scott Brown win in Massachussetts makes me — I love how Republicans, self-styled patriots, flee to the anti-constitutional technique of filibuster whenever it looks like equality is on the horizon, as if 41% minority were somehow a majority — this AP text makes me all the more nauseated:

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Coakley’s loss won’t deter his colleagues from continuing their practice of blaming George W. Bush’s administration … Wall Street watched the election closely. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points … Across Massachusetts, voters who had been bombarded with phone calls and dizzied with nonstop campaign commercials for Coakley and Brown gave a fitting turnout despite intermittent snow and rain statewide

Since when did the Associated Press start allowing Bill O’Reilly to write wire service copy?  They even fell for “tea party” being grassroots.  And NPR posted it rather than their own content.

Now with a 41% minority and astroturfing, millionaires are going to be allowed to tell tens of millions of other Americans and me that we don’t deserve health care.

These lyrics were written near the end of the Clinton years, in response to the WTO protests in Pearl Jam’s home, Seattle.  Remember that?  Remember those?  Remember, before Bush Ⅱ, when the scale of world conflict was muted enough that trade imbalances made front page news?

Bush has come, Bush is gone.  And gods did I hope I would not have cause to trot out these lyrics.

But yesterday and today, with news of Lieberman holding health care hostage in the Senate, with an intended destruction of the public option — the option that keeps the US from further becoming a corporate state, in the way that the U.S. is a corporate state insofar as its economy is concerned — and news that Obama is tentatively supporting this castration — It.  Is.  Fucking.  Time.  For these lyrics.  Senators (most are millionaires): This is our blood.  We need our blood.  We want our independence from bloodthirsty corporations.  We are deserving — we all are deserving — something more.

Grievance

Have a drink — they’re buying!
Bottom of bottle of denial

Big guy, big eye watching me
Have to wonder what it sees
Progress laced with ramifications –
Freedom’s big plunge

Pull the innocent from the crowd
Raise the sticks then bring them down
If they fail to obey
Oh, if they fail to obey

For every tool they lend us, a loss of independence

I pledge my grievance to the flag
‘Cause you don’t give blood then take it back again
Oh, we’re all deserving something more!

Progress!  Taste it!  Invest it all!
Champagne breakfast for everyone!

Break the innocent when they’re proud
Raise the stakes then bring them down
If they fail to obey
Yeah, if they fail to obey

Pledge your grievance to the flag!
Oh, come on!  Don’t give blood then take it back again!
Oh, we’re all deserving something more!

Have a, have a drink, drink!
Have a, have a drink, drink!

I want to breathe part of the scene
I want to taste everyone I see
I want to run when I’m up high
I want to run into the sea
I want to life to be –
I just want to be –
To be –
I will feel alive as long as I am free

Pledge your grievance to your senators.  Right now, while you’re emboldened and thinking about it.