In our little town out on the lonesome Texas prairie, General Cable installed a plant one year. As they paid nearly two dollars every blessed hour to start, they found plenty of failed farmers to fill up their roster without resorting to such emergency tactics as offering health care.

And so when, as often happened in the land that health forgot, the boys went down with maladies, a means of ad hoc health care was devised: a coworker on the line would walk the plant with a tin cup, asking for donations to help John Paul and his family over their medical trouble.

Cletis sniffed at the cup when it was offered one night, said, "I don’t believe in it." You see, Cletis was a conservative, who believed every self-reliant stalwart Marlboro Man should be able to take care of himself and family without bothering his neighbors nor the gumint neither. Cletis, he wouldn’t cotton to no welfare, nawsir!

The trouble with that position was, Cletis himself had gone into the hospital not many months prior and he had gladly accepted the welfare from his comrades when it was kindly offered by the Good Samaritans out on the line.

In April of 1912, a ship wrecked on ice, and there were too few lifeboats. As is always the case on such occasions, the political spectrum was represented by positions in the icy water. Those still struggling amidst the ice were liberals, in that they believed in aid and comfort and the kindness of strangers. The ones who had been already saved were conscious of their relatively dry seats and the fear of capsizing were too many of these bleating beggars still floating around to be hauled aboard. The most avid liberal would move rapidly rightward on being pulled aboard a dory in them cold wet northern waters.

Robert Jordan mused on that interesting phenomena in For Whom the Bell Tolls. He wondered at the political orientation of the leader of the guerella band, Pablo. The classic swing from left to right, probably. Pablo had stolen plenty of ponies for the Republic but he had grown accustomed to having and handling all the horses and was reluctant to see them go, to the Repuplic or anybody else.

I watched a funny video just yesterday featuring the indomitable Larry O’Donnell interviewing Congressman Cletis from the Texas plains. O’Donnell alluded to another clip featuring one of the screeching town hall tyros demanding we return to those thrilling days of yesteryear provided us by the Founders before we were dragged down into socialism and ruin.

(One survey at these staged events by a participant showed only two in the audience who did not have health insurance. All the fat keesters were firmly in the lifeboat, lamenting the socialism which would save those poor wrecks still floating in the stream.)

O’Donnell elicited the kneejerk agreement of Congressman Cletis with the screaming meme. Oh, yes, she’s my hero, he says. We’re together, all us bleating bozos who already have our place at the trough. Well, then, are you ready to place a bill in play when you return to Congress to revoke Social Security? How about MediCare, a clear case of socialized medicine? Want to pull the plug on that one too?

After all, one program was authored in 1935 and the other 1965, so that’s quite a ways from 1787, the pre-socialism year to which you and your hero want to return. Both programs take from the able, the workers, and present to the elderly and infirm, in keeping with "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," as sung by Lennin and McCartney.

Cletis, he kept trying desperately to mount his little one-trick stick horse. Gumint spending! Why, they’s six hundred billion in grants!

Larry O’Donnell was very good at holding his feet to the fire. These little frogs in shallow ponds never have to think, because they spend their entire public lives back home amidst nodding bobbleheads. This is why nobody watches MSNBC! declares Congressman Cletis. You won’t allow us mealymouths to deliver our stump speeches! Well, if it’s numbers he’s after, maybe Cletis should pull his head out from under the lilypad and gaze at recent poll results, as well as the election of 2008. How are these Conservative Republicans doing these days? I mean, out beyond their small, fetid ponds.