ABC reveals the truth about universal health care: sinister plot hatched by space aliens!

Excuse me, miss: Can I see your birth certificate?

Like any good reporter on an election night, I stayed home and watched a remake of a bad  '80s sci-fi television miniseries.

We figured ABC was cynically getting a jump start on the 2012 hysteria. Silly us. Turns out they've got high-minded policy goals. 

In case you haven't yet heard, the alien-invasion thriller V has been reborn as a very-thinly-veiled right-wing propoganda film -- one aimed directly at the craziest, fringiest elements of the American lizard brain. We predict that by next week, red-state bloggers will be whispering that Obama has green scales under his mixed-race skin. 

As in the original, mankind awakes one morning to find the Earth's biggest cities quaking in the shadow of some really, really big flying saucers. The Visitors come wearing smiles, promising peace and technology. Not everyone's stoked: even though the Vatican puts out a press release declaring the aliens "God's creatures," a renegade NY priest has his doubts. So does a terrorist-chasing FBI-agent mom, who comes home to find a YouTube-like video of her idealistic teenage son spray-painting pro-Visitor slogans on walls. 

Son to mom: "You call it tagging, but the Visitors call it 'spreading hope'!" 

Oh they do, do they?

Still, that little dig qualifies as subtle next to the part where a go-along-to-get-along television reporter has an intergalactic, exclusive sit-down with the hot, olive-skinned alien leader, Anna. Thirty seconds before they go on the air, Anna threatens to cancel unless the reporter asks only nice questions. "We can't be seen in a negative light," she smiles. He caves. And then when the cameras come on, Anna announces the aliens are going to expand their futuristic alien "healing centers" to every city on earth. 

Hot alien babe (who secretly plans to enslave the human race): "We want to proivide complete medical services to everyone."

Reporter: "You're talking about . . . universal health care?!"

Hot alien babe (who secretly plans to enslave the human race): "I believe that's what you call it."

(They're just getting started: according to the crazy-dude-who-sees-through-all-this-nice-guy-Visitor-crap, sinister space aliensare also responsible for religious zealotry, economic collapse, and "unnecessary wars.")

When the reptile death panels come knocking, don't say Disney didn't warn you.