From The Washington Post -- March 31, 2010:
The Party's Over for RNC Head Michael Steele
By Kathleen Parker
What a difference $2,000 in a lesbian bondage strip club makes.
Then again, the latest Republican National Committee scandalita (Press three for Spanglish: "Small scandal") is, alas, just that -- the latest in a string of problems plaguing the RNC when it should be stocking champagne for November.
Who are these goofballs?
The responsible committee staffer has been fired for authorizing donor reimbursement to cover a night out for some "young donors" to the forever-grateful Voyeur, a West Hollywood lesbian bondage-themed nightclub for the discriminating diner. That is, one who finds gustatory stimulation in the presence of, for example, a woman with a horse's bit in her mouth being strapped to the wall by another woman.
To each his own appetizer, I suppose, but something tells me the family-values crowd may not be down with this fundraising approach.
But let's be clear: RNC Chairman Michael Steele had absolutely nothing to do with it. Got that? He wasn't there. He doesn't approve of it. Moving on.
There's just one problem: RNC and lesbian bondage are now tattooed on the American brain, and the buck stops at the top. Moreover, if G-string spending were the single offense under Steele's leadership, then perhaps this stain would fade, as have others, in time for Republicans to tap into voter frustration. Alas, this is hardly the first or the worst example of Steele's leadership deficit.
More egregious are his spending sprees and preening self-regard. As one party leader put it in an e-mail, the GOP is in trouble when it is seen "as the party of limos (taxis work fine), $6K hotel bills, $2K strip clubs, private jets. What happened to Orbitz or Expedia?"
Wrote another:
"It doesn't matter if he [Steele] was there or not. He doesn't have a clue how to spend money and [Republicans] put him in charge at their peril."
Dozens of other comments reflect similar sentiments. To be sure, Steele has many attractive qualities. Telegenic and passionate, he was viewed as the right face at the right time for a party widely seen as bland and too white. Well, we can scratch "bland."
But Steele is also a prominent personality whose performance offers little evidence of the skills necessary for a party on life support. He can raise money, but he doesn't spend it well.
Questions of impropriety also have been raised about Steele's book tour and speaking calendar, both personally profitable distractions on party time. Although Steele has broken no committee rules in accepting speaking fees of up to $20,000, many have criticized him for trading on his chairmanship. Giving speeches without pay is part of a party leader's job description, along with raising money for candidates.
Steele has a relatively poor record in this department, too. A Politico analysis comparing Steele's fundraising and spending to that in 2005, the last comparable year before a midterm election, suggests too much expense for too little gain.
When he assumed the chairmanship, Steele inherited a $23 million surplus. Through late last month, he had raised $10 million less and spent $10 million more than the party did in 2005. Much of the spending has gone for private jets, limos, Ritz-Carltons and Wolfgang Puck-catered dinners. While big donors and committee members sup on ahi tuna cones, bubbacrats and Tea Partyers hear: "Let them eat catfish."
In January, the RNC spent $9 million of its $10 million monthly haul, much of it on its annual winter meeting in Hawaii. Keeping a buck out of every 10 is probably not inspiring confidence in donors, who are beginning to put their money elsewhere.
A couple of organizations that are benefiting and that may make Steele less relevant are the Republican Governors Association, run by former RNC chair and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, run by Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
Steele's future, meanwhile, is probably and strangely secure. To terminate the chairman, which has never been done before, 16 states have to call a meeting, followed by a two-thirds vote of committee members. And, of course, the hardest and least likely part among the humility-challenged: admitting they made a mistake.
Oh, go ahead. You'll feel better.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Montana Sandbags The Tea Baggers; --- Birthers, Baggers and Blowhards -- Begone!
Montana said...
Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?
Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?
The Hutaree Militia Is Confirmation That Conservatives Are America's Real Terrorists
From The Washington Post
The Hutaree militia and the rising risk of far-right violence
By Eugene Robinson -- Tuesday, March 30, 2010:
The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism -- and potential violence -- in the Age of Obama.
I put the word Christian in quotes because anyone who plots to assassinate law enforcement officers, as a federal indictment alleges members of the Hutaree militia did, is no follower of Christ. According to federal prosecutors, the Hutaree -- the word's not in my dictionary, but its Web site claims it means "Christian warrior" -- are convinced that their enemies include "state and local law enforcement, who are deemed 'foot soldiers' of the federal government, federal law enforcement agencies and employees, participants in the 'New World Order,' and anyone who does not share in the Hutaree's beliefs."
According to the indictment, the group had been plotting for two years to assassinate federal, state or local police officers. "Possible such acts which were discussed," the indictment says, "included killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking the funeral procession motorcade" with homemade bombs.
Nine members of the Hutaree were named in the indictment. Eight were arrested during weekend FBI raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana; one suspect remains at large. The group's Web site shows members in camouflage outfits traipsing through woods in "training" exercises. They could be out for an afternoon of paintball, except for the loony rhetoric about "sword and flame" and the page, labeled "Gear," that links to several gun dealers. Along with numerous weapons offenses, the Hutaree are charged with sedition.
The episode highlights the obvious: For decades now, the most serious threat of domestic terrorism has come from the growing ranks of paranoid, anti-government hate groups that draw their inspiration, vocabulary and anger from the far right.
It is disingenuous for mainstream purveyors of incendiary far-right rhetoric to dismiss groups such as the Hutaree by saying that there are "crazies on both sides." This simply is not true.
There was a time when the far left was a spawning ground for political violence. The first big story I covered was the San Francisco trial of heiress Patricia Hearst, who had been kidnapped and eventually co-opted by the Symbionese Liberation Army -- a far-left group whose philosophy was as apocalyptic and incoherent as that of the Hutaree. There are aging radicals in Cuba today who got to Havana by hijacking airplanes in the 1970s. Left-wing radicals caused mayhem and took innocent lives.
But for the most part, far-left violence in this country has gone the way of the leisure suit and the AMC Gremlin. An anti-globalization movement, including a few window-smashing anarchists, was gaining traction at one point, but it quickly diminished after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An environmental group and an animal-rights group have been linked with incidents of arson. Beyond those particulars, it is hard to identify any kind of leftist threat.
By contrast, there has been explosive growth among far-right, militia-type groups that identify themselves as white supremacists, "constitutionalists," tax protesters and religious soldiers determined to kill people to uphold "Christian" values. Most of the groups that posed a real danger, as the Hutaree allegedly did, have been infiltrated and dismantled by authorities before they could do any damage. But we should never forget that the worst act of domestic terrorism ever committed in this country was authored by a member of the government-hating right wing: Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
It is dishonest for right-wing commentators to insist on an equivalence that does not exist. The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction -- the right, not the left. The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day -- and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies -- is calibrated not to inform but to incite.
Demagogues scream at people that their government is illegitimate, that their country has been "taken away," that their elected officials are "traitors" and that their freedom is at risk. They have a right to free speech, which I will always defend. But they shouldn't be surprised if some listeners take them literally.
The Hutaree militia and the rising risk of far-right violence
By Eugene Robinson -- Tuesday, March 30, 2010:
The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism -- and potential violence -- in the Age of Obama.
I put the word Christian in quotes because anyone who plots to assassinate law enforcement officers, as a federal indictment alleges members of the Hutaree militia did, is no follower of Christ. According to federal prosecutors, the Hutaree -- the word's not in my dictionary, but its Web site claims it means "Christian warrior" -- are convinced that their enemies include "state and local law enforcement, who are deemed 'foot soldiers' of the federal government, federal law enforcement agencies and employees, participants in the 'New World Order,' and anyone who does not share in the Hutaree's beliefs."
According to the indictment, the group had been plotting for two years to assassinate federal, state or local police officers. "Possible such acts which were discussed," the indictment says, "included killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking the funeral procession motorcade" with homemade bombs.
Nine members of the Hutaree were named in the indictment. Eight were arrested during weekend FBI raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana; one suspect remains at large. The group's Web site shows members in camouflage outfits traipsing through woods in "training" exercises. They could be out for an afternoon of paintball, except for the loony rhetoric about "sword and flame" and the page, labeled "Gear," that links to several gun dealers. Along with numerous weapons offenses, the Hutaree are charged with sedition.
The episode highlights the obvious: For decades now, the most serious threat of domestic terrorism has come from the growing ranks of paranoid, anti-government hate groups that draw their inspiration, vocabulary and anger from the far right.
It is disingenuous for mainstream purveyors of incendiary far-right rhetoric to dismiss groups such as the Hutaree by saying that there are "crazies on both sides." This simply is not true.
There was a time when the far left was a spawning ground for political violence. The first big story I covered was the San Francisco trial of heiress Patricia Hearst, who had been kidnapped and eventually co-opted by the Symbionese Liberation Army -- a far-left group whose philosophy was as apocalyptic and incoherent as that of the Hutaree. There are aging radicals in Cuba today who got to Havana by hijacking airplanes in the 1970s. Left-wing radicals caused mayhem and took innocent lives.
But for the most part, far-left violence in this country has gone the way of the leisure suit and the AMC Gremlin. An anti-globalization movement, including a few window-smashing anarchists, was gaining traction at one point, but it quickly diminished after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An environmental group and an animal-rights group have been linked with incidents of arson. Beyond those particulars, it is hard to identify any kind of leftist threat.
By contrast, there has been explosive growth among far-right, militia-type groups that identify themselves as white supremacists, "constitutionalists," tax protesters and religious soldiers determined to kill people to uphold "Christian" values. Most of the groups that posed a real danger, as the Hutaree allegedly did, have been infiltrated and dismantled by authorities before they could do any damage. But we should never forget that the worst act of domestic terrorism ever committed in this country was authored by a member of the government-hating right wing: Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
It is dishonest for right-wing commentators to insist on an equivalence that does not exist. The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction -- the right, not the left. The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day -- and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies -- is calibrated not to inform but to incite.
Demagogues scream at people that their government is illegitimate, that their country has been "taken away," that their elected officials are "traitors" and that their freedom is at risk. They have a right to free speech, which I will always defend. But they shouldn't be surprised if some listeners take them literally.
There's No One Who Can Doubt It Now -- Conservatives Are Clearly America's Real Terrorists
From Color of Change -- March 30, 2010:
Just over a week ago, Tea Party protestors hurled racial and homophobic slurs and spat at members of Congress. That was followed by a rash of vandalism and death threats targeting Democratic members of Congress.
Republicans have done almost nothing to tamp down this dangerous atmosphere and have even egged the protesters on. And when the Republican National Committee was asked to endorse a bi-partisan “civility” statement that would send a message to the protesters, they refused.
It's time to demand that Republican leaders stop turning a blind eye to violence and hate before it gets out of control and someone gets hurt.
Since the passage of health care reform last week, at least ten members of Congress have received threats and requested additional police presence.4 Windows and doors were smashed at several representatives' offices, and a gas line was cut at what vandals thought was the house of Congressman Tom Perriello. One office had to be evacuated when it received a threatening letter filled with an unidentified white powder.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have tried to justify the vandalism or blame Democrats for inviting it on themselves, and others have escalated their use of violent rhetoric. Sarah Palin told her supporters "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!", and published a map with cross-hairs over the districts of some Democrats who voted for health care reform. RNC Chairman Michael Steele said "let's start getting Nancy [Pelosi] ready for the firing line this November."
Last Saturday's protest and this week's past events are just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it's been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it's usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it's completely unacceptable and has to stop.
We're calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:
Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.
Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.
The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off last weekend's assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called "isolated incidents" crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous:
At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!" The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership. After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the Tea Partiers. " Some Republican governors even planned a "Tea Party 2.0" for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies' momentum.
The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott." Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking. Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.
Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" on his blog. Instead, members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday -- the day that the historic health care bill passed the House -- Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.
Despite all of this, Republican leaders have courted the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.
Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate.
Please take a moment to call on Michael Steele, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell to denounce the racist rhetoric and fear-mongering of the Tea Party movement, and tell those who embrace these divisive and Un-American beliefs that they have no place in their Party.
Just over a week ago, Tea Party protestors hurled racial and homophobic slurs and spat at members of Congress. That was followed by a rash of vandalism and death threats targeting Democratic members of Congress.
Republicans have done almost nothing to tamp down this dangerous atmosphere and have even egged the protesters on. And when the Republican National Committee was asked to endorse a bi-partisan “civility” statement that would send a message to the protesters, they refused.
It's time to demand that Republican leaders stop turning a blind eye to violence and hate before it gets out of control and someone gets hurt.
Since the passage of health care reform last week, at least ten members of Congress have received threats and requested additional police presence.4 Windows and doors were smashed at several representatives' offices, and a gas line was cut at what vandals thought was the house of Congressman Tom Perriello. One office had to be evacuated when it received a threatening letter filled with an unidentified white powder.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have tried to justify the vandalism or blame Democrats for inviting it on themselves, and others have escalated their use of violent rhetoric. Sarah Palin told her supporters "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!", and published a map with cross-hairs over the districts of some Democrats who voted for health care reform. RNC Chairman Michael Steele said "let's start getting Nancy [Pelosi] ready for the firing line this November."
Last Saturday's protest and this week's past events are just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it's been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it's usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it's completely unacceptable and has to stop.
We're calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:
Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.
Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.
The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off last weekend's assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called "isolated incidents" crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous:
At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!" The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership. After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the Tea Partiers. " Some Republican governors even planned a "Tea Party 2.0" for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies' momentum.
The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott." Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking. Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.
Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" on his blog. Instead, members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday -- the day that the historic health care bill passed the House -- Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.
Despite all of this, Republican leaders have courted the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.
Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate.
Please take a moment to call on Michael Steele, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell to denounce the racist rhetoric and fear-mongering of the Tea Party movement, and tell those who embrace these divisive and Un-American beliefs that they have no place in their Party.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The GOP "Who's On First?"
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello used to have a very famous and popular baseball routine called "Who's On First?"
Their baseball team had three shortstops, whose names were: "I Don't Give a Darn", "I Don't Give a Damn", and "I Don't Care".
Those three shortstops have switched teams.
All three of these ballplayers are now playing for the Republican Party.
Their baseball team had three shortstops, whose names were: "I Don't Give a Darn", "I Don't Give a Damn", and "I Don't Care".
Those three shortstops have switched teams.
All three of these ballplayers are now playing for the Republican Party.
Tea Party Activists Are America's New Storm Troopers; Palin Puts the "Twit" in Twitter
Tea Party activism is not about political dissent - It's about Vile, Storm Trooper Sound Bites
By MIKE LUPICA - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, March 29th 2010:
Rep. Bart Stupak was called a baby killer, Obama is accused of being a Lefty, while Palin talks constantly of being a 'Good American.'
We are 100 yards, no more than that, from the front entrance to a school. There is a Stop Sign here, and underneath the word "Stop" someone has spray-painted "Obama."
Stop Obama.
Why has somebody done it? Because, in the current climate, people have been convinced they can. Or, more likely, that they should.
My son is in the seat next to me in the car. He says: "This isn't the only one. There are others in different parts of town."
At least here it is only vandalism about this President and the country's new health care bill, not phone threats left for some members of Congress. It is not an honorable old hero of the civil rights movement like Rep. John Lewis hearing the kind of racial insults he heard nearly 50 years ago in America. Or other congressmen being spat upon, all in the name of democracy at work.
At least here it is not Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, being called a "baby killer," or a brick through a lawmaker's window. It is not Sarah Palin on her Twitter page - this woman who officially puts the twit in Twitter - posting the following message:
"Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD."
As always, you wonder where this patriotism and righteousness and Tea Party activism was during Bush-Cheney. You wonder if all the people who want to take to the streets - and to the television cameras now - decided they weren't needed for eight years because they thought the country was going so good. Or maybe they have just convinced themselves that the Obama who must now be stopped didn't just inherit this America, he created it.
This is no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate. This isn't the kind of honest debate on which our system of government has been built. It is vile, back-alley fighting, getting worse by the day, with no end in sight. People say that opposition to all Presidents, even the most unpopular white ones, sounds like this. No, it doesn't.
"It's so good to be here for the showdown in Searchlight [Nev.]," Palin says on Saturday. "So proud to be with all you who are proud to be Americans."
Palin is in Nevada because Sen. Harry Reid is a Democratic candidate she and other lovers of America are "targeting" this November. Of course, the implication, as always, is that anybody on the other side of the debate - about health care or anything else - isn't nearly as good an American as she is.
Palin is such a fighter and great American that she quit on her stool as governor of Alaska because there was more money to be made in the other 49 states, shouting about death panels and health care and "European socialism" and writing unreadable books. In so many ways, she is a perfect media darling for our times. She doesn't scrawl graffiti, she thinks in it.
If you even think that this President ought to be given a chance, that he might have some good in him, that he doesn't hate America the way the radio idiots say he does, then you must be someone just like him and she will help shout you down. You are another lousy, lefty Socialist who doesn't understand the new health care bill is unconstitutional. Why? Because the screamers say so, that's why. They learned it online.
"The country does not like this [health care] bill," Republican strategist Mike Murphy says on television Sunday.
The country. Another guy speaking for the whole country, coast to coast, Washington Heights to Starbuck, Wash. Is America divided over health care right now? Sure it is, the way it was divided over Social Security under FDR and Medicare under LBJ and just about every important social program in the country's history.
Will a bill be presented to my children and their children on this bill someday? It likely will be. And economists say that Iraq will eventually be a $3 trillion war for this country. But all those who have taken to the streets because of the bill that Obama signed the other day must think that Iraq has paid for itself, no matter how much money it continues to cost this country, how many dead or broken bodies.
But Obama is the one who must be stopped, on health care and everything else. Stop Obama. Sometimes you wonder what that really means. Sometimes you probably find yourself wondering just how much you have to hate this President before you love America enough.
By MIKE LUPICA - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, March 29th 2010:
Rep. Bart Stupak was called a baby killer, Obama is accused of being a Lefty, while Palin talks constantly of being a 'Good American.'
We are 100 yards, no more than that, from the front entrance to a school. There is a Stop Sign here, and underneath the word "Stop" someone has spray-painted "Obama."
Stop Obama.
Why has somebody done it? Because, in the current climate, people have been convinced they can. Or, more likely, that they should.
My son is in the seat next to me in the car. He says: "This isn't the only one. There are others in different parts of town."
At least here it is only vandalism about this President and the country's new health care bill, not phone threats left for some members of Congress. It is not an honorable old hero of the civil rights movement like Rep. John Lewis hearing the kind of racial insults he heard nearly 50 years ago in America. Or other congressmen being spat upon, all in the name of democracy at work.
At least here it is not Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, being called a "baby killer," or a brick through a lawmaker's window. It is not Sarah Palin on her Twitter page - this woman who officially puts the twit in Twitter - posting the following message:
"Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD."
As always, you wonder where this patriotism and righteousness and Tea Party activism was during Bush-Cheney. You wonder if all the people who want to take to the streets - and to the television cameras now - decided they weren't needed for eight years because they thought the country was going so good. Or maybe they have just convinced themselves that the Obama who must now be stopped didn't just inherit this America, he created it.
This is no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate. This isn't the kind of honest debate on which our system of government has been built. It is vile, back-alley fighting, getting worse by the day, with no end in sight. People say that opposition to all Presidents, even the most unpopular white ones, sounds like this. No, it doesn't.
"It's so good to be here for the showdown in Searchlight [Nev.]," Palin says on Saturday. "So proud to be with all you who are proud to be Americans."
Palin is in Nevada because Sen. Harry Reid is a Democratic candidate she and other lovers of America are "targeting" this November. Of course, the implication, as always, is that anybody on the other side of the debate - about health care or anything else - isn't nearly as good an American as she is.
Palin is such a fighter and great American that she quit on her stool as governor of Alaska because there was more money to be made in the other 49 states, shouting about death panels and health care and "European socialism" and writing unreadable books. In so many ways, she is a perfect media darling for our times. She doesn't scrawl graffiti, she thinks in it.
If you even think that this President ought to be given a chance, that he might have some good in him, that he doesn't hate America the way the radio idiots say he does, then you must be someone just like him and she will help shout you down. You are another lousy, lefty Socialist who doesn't understand the new health care bill is unconstitutional. Why? Because the screamers say so, that's why. They learned it online.
"The country does not like this [health care] bill," Republican strategist Mike Murphy says on television Sunday.
The country. Another guy speaking for the whole country, coast to coast, Washington Heights to Starbuck, Wash. Is America divided over health care right now? Sure it is, the way it was divided over Social Security under FDR and Medicare under LBJ and just about every important social program in the country's history.
Will a bill be presented to my children and their children on this bill someday? It likely will be. And economists say that Iraq will eventually be a $3 trillion war for this country. But all those who have taken to the streets because of the bill that Obama signed the other day must think that Iraq has paid for itself, no matter how much money it continues to cost this country, how many dead or broken bodies.
But Obama is the one who must be stopped, on health care and everything else. Stop Obama. Sometimes you wonder what that really means. Sometimes you probably find yourself wondering just how much you have to hate this President before you love America enough.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
How to Beat Today's Demagogues: Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Etc.
From The Daily Beast -- March 28, 2010:
How to Beat the Demagogues
by Mike Signer
In the last few days following the passage of a new health care system in the United States, Tea Partiers have spit at U.S. Representatives entering the Capitol. They’ve throw bricks through the windows of congressional district offices. On her website, Sarah Palin has put a rifle target on the districts of lawmakers she opposes.
While Americans may flirt with demagogues, they marry the constitutional system.
With unemployment still around 10%, home values falling, and real incomes stagnating, people have been feeling stability slip away for years. The tendency for such insecurity to become anger instead has proven a treasure trove for opportunists—for politicians like Sarah Palin, in votes and speaking fees, and for entertainers like Glenn Beck, in advertising dollars.
In these charged, uncertain times, we’d do well to recall the lessons of the post-Depression 1930s. This was when the Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey Long prowled the national stage, when the charismatic Detroit “radio priest” Father Coughlin assailed FDR’s “communist” methods in favor of religiously-driven economic populism, and when the anti-Semitic reverend Gerald L.K. Smith agitated audiences across the country.
America ultimately emerged stronger than we went in. We directly confronted demagogues like Long, educated ourselves about our constitutional traditions and lawfulness, and tailored reform around action, rather than rhetoric. The 1930s hold several key lessons we should remember today:
1. Ad hominem attacks can backfire. In 1935, Americans around the country walked into soda shops and lunch counters to see the word “Demagogues” on the front page of Newsweek. The week before, General Hugh Johnson, the revered director of FDR’s National Recovery Administration, had lambasted Long as a combination of “Peter the Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, the Mahdi of the Sudan, Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky, and the Leatherwood God.”
However, Johnson didn’t realize that he had given the canny Louisiana Senator just the opening he needed to achieve national legitimacy. After Johnson’s speech, Long demanded that NBC, which had covered the speech, give him equal time. The network eventually agreed to give Long 45 minutes, free and clear. A stunning 25 million people tuned in. During his speech, Long spent about five minutes calmly dismissing the charges against him, and proceeded rationally to describe and proselytize for his “Share the Wealth” plan. A correspondent wrote that Johnson’s attack had managed to transform the Kingfish ‘from a clown into a real political menace.’” One of FDR’s aides estimated that Long would win six million votes in the 1936 presidential election.
In the end, whether you’re Nancy Pelosi or Keith Olbermann, you need to realize that political outrage is not self-fulfilling; ad hominem attacks against opportunists like Beck and Palin can often backfire, making them both more popular and even more sympathetic opportunists like Beck and Palin.
2. Help educate people about our constitutional traditions. 1935 was also the year that the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Sinclair Lewis addressed the issue of demagogues. At a blistering pace, Lewis took only a few weeks to pen a novel titled It Can’t Happen Here, a rollicking, terrifying novel that imagines a fascist dictator named Buzz Windrip rising up in the United States, supported by a force of “Militiamen,” similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts.
Lewis’ work was satire, but it was also deeply serious, clearly and thoughtfully aimed at convincing a popular audience to contemplate the constitutional consequences of a demagogue with power. The book was a national best-seller, reaching number five in 1936 (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was number one). Lewis’ book impressed even Sir Winston Churchill, who said, “Such books render a public service to the English-speaking world. When we see what has happened in Germany, Italy and Russia we cannot neglect their warning.”
The lesson is that the chattering class must translate its concern about stability into forceful, thoughtful, sustained attempts to educate the citizenry about the systemic dangers of demagogues. In 1950, as the world surveyed the wreckage left behind by demagogues like Hitler and Mussolini, a group of social scientists wrote a book titled The Authoritarian Personality. “It seems apparent that any attempt to appraise the chances of a fascist triumph in America must reckon with the potential existing in the character of the people,” they wrote. “[I]t is up to the people to decide whether or not this country goes fascist.” In other words, lawlessness is best defeated by the people themselves.
3. Extreme opportunists usually self-destruct. On Election Day in 1936, Coughlin’s Union Party put up a little-known Republican congressman from North Dakota named William Lemke as its presidential candidate. The candidate imploded, as FDR won with the most lopsided margin in American political history. Yet, Coughlin honestly thought his party could take over the country. When Coughlin heard the results, he sat in his office in Michigan, completely stunned, tears streaming down his cheeks. For him, one expert writes, it was “beyond comprehension.”
The lesson is that while Americans may flirt with demagogues, they marry the constitutional system. So those seeking to turn their opportunism into actual political power should beware their own hubris. Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, even the nativist Lou Dobbs (rumored last year to be looking at a presidential run) may look longingly at actual national power. But they will most likely collapse if they actually seek it and refuse to let go their demagogic ways.
4. Side with the people and show them results. Despite FDR’s incredible electoral successes upon taking office in 1933, Huey Long achieved traction in 1934 and 1935 with economic plans that promised immediate action for an aggrieved, disenfranchised rural majority. After a visit to the U.S., the British novelist H.G. Wells wrote in 1935, “I do not think it is possible to minimize the significance of their voices as an intimation of a widespread discontent and discomfort. . . The actual New Deal has not gone far enough and fast enough for them, and that is what the shouting is about.”
Long took advantage. In his posthumously published My First Days in the White House, he wrote that his economic plans would “give hope and encouragement to the ambitions and aspirations of 125,000,000 more people rather than to excite the greed of fifty-eight.” Long would have limited individual fortunes to $5 million and yearly incomes to $1 million.
FDR entered 1935 in political torpor. Long’s attacks prompted him to move more quickly and effectively to distribute relief through direct job creation, a progressive taxation system, and the “second New Deal.” “I am fighting Communism, Huey Longism, Coughlinism, Townsendism,” FDR told a friend. “I want to save our system, the capitalistic system; to save it is to give some heed to world thought of today.”
Today’s opportunists are also seizing an opening: broad discontent about the pace and delivery of relief plans, and the perception that programs like the bank bailouts help the elites of “Wall Street” rather than the everyday folks—“Main Street.” Democrats should respond by reassuring angry, unsettled voters that health care and other economic security measures, even if imperfect, are motivated not by an elitist conspiracy to oppress, but a genuine desire to help. They should focus on direct job creation people can see, rather than economic theories they have to believe.
Demagogues have always been a mirror for the people. When democracies turn to lawlessness, it’s because the people abandon constitutionalism for the lowest common denominator. Conversely, when audiences choose the law over vandalism, it’s because the people have decided to protect their country.
The same might be said today. As we digest the recent turmoil, our leaders will need—just as in the 1930s—to educate, work with, and trust the body of the people. Figures like President Obama can emerge stronger than before, leaving melodramatic opportunists like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck where they belong: in the wake of history.
How to Beat the Demagogues
by Mike Signer
In the last few days following the passage of a new health care system in the United States, Tea Partiers have spit at U.S. Representatives entering the Capitol. They’ve throw bricks through the windows of congressional district offices. On her website, Sarah Palin has put a rifle target on the districts of lawmakers she opposes.
While Americans may flirt with demagogues, they marry the constitutional system.
With unemployment still around 10%, home values falling, and real incomes stagnating, people have been feeling stability slip away for years. The tendency for such insecurity to become anger instead has proven a treasure trove for opportunists—for politicians like Sarah Palin, in votes and speaking fees, and for entertainers like Glenn Beck, in advertising dollars.
In these charged, uncertain times, we’d do well to recall the lessons of the post-Depression 1930s. This was when the Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey Long prowled the national stage, when the charismatic Detroit “radio priest” Father Coughlin assailed FDR’s “communist” methods in favor of religiously-driven economic populism, and when the anti-Semitic reverend Gerald L.K. Smith agitated audiences across the country.
America ultimately emerged stronger than we went in. We directly confronted demagogues like Long, educated ourselves about our constitutional traditions and lawfulness, and tailored reform around action, rather than rhetoric. The 1930s hold several key lessons we should remember today:
1. Ad hominem attacks can backfire. In 1935, Americans around the country walked into soda shops and lunch counters to see the word “Demagogues” on the front page of Newsweek. The week before, General Hugh Johnson, the revered director of FDR’s National Recovery Administration, had lambasted Long as a combination of “Peter the Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, the Mahdi of the Sudan, Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky, and the Leatherwood God.”
However, Johnson didn’t realize that he had given the canny Louisiana Senator just the opening he needed to achieve national legitimacy. After Johnson’s speech, Long demanded that NBC, which had covered the speech, give him equal time. The network eventually agreed to give Long 45 minutes, free and clear. A stunning 25 million people tuned in. During his speech, Long spent about five minutes calmly dismissing the charges against him, and proceeded rationally to describe and proselytize for his “Share the Wealth” plan. A correspondent wrote that Johnson’s attack had managed to transform the Kingfish ‘from a clown into a real political menace.’” One of FDR’s aides estimated that Long would win six million votes in the 1936 presidential election.
In the end, whether you’re Nancy Pelosi or Keith Olbermann, you need to realize that political outrage is not self-fulfilling; ad hominem attacks against opportunists like Beck and Palin can often backfire, making them both more popular and even more sympathetic opportunists like Beck and Palin.
2. Help educate people about our constitutional traditions. 1935 was also the year that the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Sinclair Lewis addressed the issue of demagogues. At a blistering pace, Lewis took only a few weeks to pen a novel titled It Can’t Happen Here, a rollicking, terrifying novel that imagines a fascist dictator named Buzz Windrip rising up in the United States, supported by a force of “Militiamen,” similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts.
Lewis’ work was satire, but it was also deeply serious, clearly and thoughtfully aimed at convincing a popular audience to contemplate the constitutional consequences of a demagogue with power. The book was a national best-seller, reaching number five in 1936 (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was number one). Lewis’ book impressed even Sir Winston Churchill, who said, “Such books render a public service to the English-speaking world. When we see what has happened in Germany, Italy and Russia we cannot neglect their warning.”
The lesson is that the chattering class must translate its concern about stability into forceful, thoughtful, sustained attempts to educate the citizenry about the systemic dangers of demagogues. In 1950, as the world surveyed the wreckage left behind by demagogues like Hitler and Mussolini, a group of social scientists wrote a book titled The Authoritarian Personality. “It seems apparent that any attempt to appraise the chances of a fascist triumph in America must reckon with the potential existing in the character of the people,” they wrote. “[I]t is up to the people to decide whether or not this country goes fascist.” In other words, lawlessness is best defeated by the people themselves.
3. Extreme opportunists usually self-destruct. On Election Day in 1936, Coughlin’s Union Party put up a little-known Republican congressman from North Dakota named William Lemke as its presidential candidate. The candidate imploded, as FDR won with the most lopsided margin in American political history. Yet, Coughlin honestly thought his party could take over the country. When Coughlin heard the results, he sat in his office in Michigan, completely stunned, tears streaming down his cheeks. For him, one expert writes, it was “beyond comprehension.”
The lesson is that while Americans may flirt with demagogues, they marry the constitutional system. So those seeking to turn their opportunism into actual political power should beware their own hubris. Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, even the nativist Lou Dobbs (rumored last year to be looking at a presidential run) may look longingly at actual national power. But they will most likely collapse if they actually seek it and refuse to let go their demagogic ways.
4. Side with the people and show them results. Despite FDR’s incredible electoral successes upon taking office in 1933, Huey Long achieved traction in 1934 and 1935 with economic plans that promised immediate action for an aggrieved, disenfranchised rural majority. After a visit to the U.S., the British novelist H.G. Wells wrote in 1935, “I do not think it is possible to minimize the significance of their voices as an intimation of a widespread discontent and discomfort. . . The actual New Deal has not gone far enough and fast enough for them, and that is what the shouting is about.”
Long took advantage. In his posthumously published My First Days in the White House, he wrote that his economic plans would “give hope and encouragement to the ambitions and aspirations of 125,000,000 more people rather than to excite the greed of fifty-eight.” Long would have limited individual fortunes to $5 million and yearly incomes to $1 million.
FDR entered 1935 in political torpor. Long’s attacks prompted him to move more quickly and effectively to distribute relief through direct job creation, a progressive taxation system, and the “second New Deal.” “I am fighting Communism, Huey Longism, Coughlinism, Townsendism,” FDR told a friend. “I want to save our system, the capitalistic system; to save it is to give some heed to world thought of today.”
Today’s opportunists are also seizing an opening: broad discontent about the pace and delivery of relief plans, and the perception that programs like the bank bailouts help the elites of “Wall Street” rather than the everyday folks—“Main Street.” Democrats should respond by reassuring angry, unsettled voters that health care and other economic security measures, even if imperfect, are motivated not by an elitist conspiracy to oppress, but a genuine desire to help. They should focus on direct job creation people can see, rather than economic theories they have to believe.
Demagogues have always been a mirror for the people. When democracies turn to lawlessness, it’s because the people abandon constitutionalism for the lowest common denominator. Conversely, when audiences choose the law over vandalism, it’s because the people have decided to protect their country.
The same might be said today. As we digest the recent turmoil, our leaders will need—just as in the 1930s—to educate, work with, and trust the body of the people. Figures like President Obama can emerge stronger than before, leaving melodramatic opportunists like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck where they belong: in the wake of history.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Obama Provides Billions for College Students Over The Dead Body of The GOP Party of Nope
From The Daily Beast -- March 27, 2010:
Obama Touts Billions for College Students
A week after passing his landmark health-care bill, President Obama is not slowing down on reform, with higher education next on his agenda. In his weekly radio address, Obama said that his student loan bill—which he is expected to sign into law Tuesday—would save taxpayers $68 billion while generating more student lending in order to give the United States the highest proportion of college graduates worldwide within 10 years. "To make sure our students don't go broke just because they chose to go to college, we're making it easier for graduates to afford their student loan payments," he added. The GOP, meanwhile, used its weekly radio address to argue for a repeal of the health-care bill. "We can do better," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
Obama Touts Billions for College Students
A week after passing his landmark health-care bill, President Obama is not slowing down on reform, with higher education next on his agenda. In his weekly radio address, Obama said that his student loan bill—which he is expected to sign into law Tuesday—would save taxpayers $68 billion while generating more student lending in order to give the United States the highest proportion of college graduates worldwide within 10 years. "To make sure our students don't go broke just because they chose to go to college, we're making it easier for graduates to afford their student loan payments," he added. The GOP, meanwhile, used its weekly radio address to argue for a repeal of the health-care bill. "We can do better," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
Republican Morons Fought to Deprive US Taxpayers of an $8 Billion Profit
From The Daily Beast -- March 27, 2010:
Citi Bailout a Windfall for U.S.
Citigroup was among the largest—and weakest—banks to receive emergency federal aid during the financial crisis, with the government buying a stake considerably bigger than in many other financial institutions. Now that its stock prices have stabilized, however, the U.S. bailout is set to bring taxpayers some serious profit. The government is getting set to sell its portion of Citi shares at an estimated $8 billion profit, which would free the bank from strict government oversight. "It's unprecedented to do [a stock sale] of this size right after the financial industry has been so battered," one industry official told the Washington Post. "It's just a very bullish sign."
Citi Bailout a Windfall for U.S.
Citigroup was among the largest—and weakest—banks to receive emergency federal aid during the financial crisis, with the government buying a stake considerably bigger than in many other financial institutions. Now that its stock prices have stabilized, however, the U.S. bailout is set to bring taxpayers some serious profit. The government is getting set to sell its portion of Citi shares at an estimated $8 billion profit, which would free the bank from strict government oversight. "It's unprecedented to do [a stock sale] of this size right after the financial industry has been so battered," one industry official told the Washington Post. "It's just a very bullish sign."
Obama Challenges Republicans to Repeal the New Health Care Law
From The New York Daily News -- March 27, 2010:
Speaking in Iowa City, Iowa, President Obama dared Republicans mounting a drive to repeal the landmark legislation: "Go for it."
Exulting in his hard-won victory, Obama couldn't resist mocking his vanquished foes, saying they're still describing the health care bill in apocalyptic terms. "They called it Armageddon, the end of the world," Obama said, his arms and voice rising.
But, in the weeks ahead, he added, Americans will go to their regular doctors and discover nothing has changed - except more protection against insurance companies raising their rates and denying coverage.
Before the Senate vote was taken, Republicans joined Democrats in a moment of silence in honor of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who had made health care reform his life's cause.
Speaking in Iowa City, Iowa, President Obama dared Republicans mounting a drive to repeal the landmark legislation: "Go for it."
Exulting in his hard-won victory, Obama couldn't resist mocking his vanquished foes, saying they're still describing the health care bill in apocalyptic terms. "They called it Armageddon, the end of the world," Obama said, his arms and voice rising.
But, in the weeks ahead, he added, Americans will go to their regular doctors and discover nothing has changed - except more protection against insurance companies raising their rates and denying coverage.
Before the Senate vote was taken, Republicans joined Democrats in a moment of silence in honor of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who had made health care reform his life's cause.
Charles M. Blow Blows Down The Tea-Bagger Fools and "Patriot" Pinheads
From The New York Times -- March 26, 2010:
Whose Country Is It?
By CHARLES M. BLOW
The Far-Right Extremists Have Gone Into Conniptions.
The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.
It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.
Hence their anger and frustration, which is playing out in ways large and small. There is the current spattering of threats and violence, but there also is the run on guns and the explosive growth of nefarious antigovernment and anti-immigrant groups. In fact, according to a report entitled “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism” recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “nativist extremist” groups that confront and harass suspected immigrants have increased nearly 80 percent since President Obama took office, and antigovernment “patriot” groups more than tripled over that period.
Politically, this frustration is epitomized by the Tea Party movement. It may have some legitimate concerns (taxation, the role of government, etc.), but its message is lost in the madness. And now the anemic Republican establishment, covetous of the Tea Party’s passion, is moving to absorb it, not admonish it. Instead of jettisoning the radical language, rabid bigotry and rising violence, the Republicans justify it. (They don’t want to refute it as much as funnel it.)
There may be a short-term benefit in this strategy, but it’s a long-term loser.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday took a look at the Tea Party members and found them to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party. For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated ... than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.” This at a time when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future.
You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.
Whose Country Is It?
By CHARLES M. BLOW
The Far-Right Extremists Have Gone Into Conniptions.
The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.
It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.
Hence their anger and frustration, which is playing out in ways large and small. There is the current spattering of threats and violence, but there also is the run on guns and the explosive growth of nefarious antigovernment and anti-immigrant groups. In fact, according to a report entitled “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism” recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “nativist extremist” groups that confront and harass suspected immigrants have increased nearly 80 percent since President Obama took office, and antigovernment “patriot” groups more than tripled over that period.
Politically, this frustration is epitomized by the Tea Party movement. It may have some legitimate concerns (taxation, the role of government, etc.), but its message is lost in the madness. And now the anemic Republican establishment, covetous of the Tea Party’s passion, is moving to absorb it, not admonish it. Instead of jettisoning the radical language, rabid bigotry and rising violence, the Republicans justify it. (They don’t want to refute it as much as funnel it.)
There may be a short-term benefit in this strategy, but it’s a long-term loser.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday took a look at the Tea Party members and found them to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party. For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated ... than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.” This at a time when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future.
You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.
Republican Lies About Obamacare Start to Be Exposed
From New York Daily News
Improved benefits ahead for New York's 2.8M Medicare subscribers under Obama's new health care law
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL -- DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 27th 2010
Medicare beneficiaries won't see a decline in care, they'll receive improved benefits under the new health care law.
No one is "pulling the plug on granny" under the health care bill President Obama signed this week. If anything, experts say, granny will soon be pulling down new benefits.
While Obama's health care overhaul does eventually trim subsidies to Medicare Advantage - which are privately managed policies that some seniors pay extra for - older Americans should see little or no decline in care.
New York's 2.8 million Medicare beneficiaries should actually find several new goodies in the new law, among them $250 rebates this year to help fill the so-called "doughnut hole" in prescription drug coverage.
"This health reform improves benefits, it does not take away benefits, for seniors," said Tricia Neuman, vice president for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "It strengthens Medicare by keeping it fiscally stronger for longer, and it puts in place reforms that should genuinely improve quality of care."
The new law also eliminates co-pays for checkups and other preventive procedures under Medicare starting in 2011 and guarantees balanced books for Medicare through at least 2026.
There are changes in store for Medicare Advantage - privately run plans that some 360,000 city seniors pay a little extra for.
The policies were created in the 1980s, when private insurers argued they could meet or beat Medicare's services in exchange for federal dollars that were about 5% less than regular Medicare.
Today, the math is reversed: Taxpayers fork over 14% more to Medicare Advantage companies to care for seniors - a $12 billion pot that Obama called an unnecessary windfall for the industry.
The law will freeze Medicare Advantage payments to insurers in 2011, then gradually align them with regular Medicare payments by 2014.
Some have worried that the trims could force Medicare Advantage plans to raise premiums, but experts say it's unlikely - the bill also includes cash bonuses for companies that keep costs down and health up.
"What we hope will happen is a race to the top among plans that really want ... to get those additional bonus payments," said Joe Baker, president of the nonpartisan Medicare Rights Center.
Improved benefits ahead for New York's 2.8M Medicare subscribers under Obama's new health care law
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL -- DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 27th 2010
Medicare beneficiaries won't see a decline in care, they'll receive improved benefits under the new health care law.
No one is "pulling the plug on granny" under the health care bill President Obama signed this week. If anything, experts say, granny will soon be pulling down new benefits.
While Obama's health care overhaul does eventually trim subsidies to Medicare Advantage - which are privately managed policies that some seniors pay extra for - older Americans should see little or no decline in care.
New York's 2.8 million Medicare beneficiaries should actually find several new goodies in the new law, among them $250 rebates this year to help fill the so-called "doughnut hole" in prescription drug coverage.
"This health reform improves benefits, it does not take away benefits, for seniors," said Tricia Neuman, vice president for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "It strengthens Medicare by keeping it fiscally stronger for longer, and it puts in place reforms that should genuinely improve quality of care."
The new law also eliminates co-pays for checkups and other preventive procedures under Medicare starting in 2011 and guarantees balanced books for Medicare through at least 2026.
There are changes in store for Medicare Advantage - privately run plans that some 360,000 city seniors pay a little extra for.
The policies were created in the 1980s, when private insurers argued they could meet or beat Medicare's services in exchange for federal dollars that were about 5% less than regular Medicare.
Today, the math is reversed: Taxpayers fork over 14% more to Medicare Advantage companies to care for seniors - a $12 billion pot that Obama called an unnecessary windfall for the industry.
The law will freeze Medicare Advantage payments to insurers in 2011, then gradually align them with regular Medicare payments by 2014.
Some have worried that the trims could force Medicare Advantage plans to raise premiums, but experts say it's unlikely - the bill also includes cash bonuses for companies that keep costs down and health up.
"What we hope will happen is a race to the top among plans that really want ... to get those additional bonus payments," said Joe Baker, president of the nonpartisan Medicare Rights Center.
Friday, March 26, 2010
The NJDC Takes On The Lying, Deranged, Misbegotten GOP
From the National Jewish Democratic Council -- March 26, 2010:
Dems Defeat GOP Fear-Mongering
Now that President Obama’s health care reform is the law of the land, Democrats around the country can feel proud about our victory over the fear-mongering campaign perpetrated by Conservative activists and GOP leaders. For over a year, activists, pundits, and politicians attempted to lie, obstruct, intimidate, and threaten Democrats into doing nothing about our country’s broken health care system. As NJDC CEO Ira N. Forman discussed in The Hill and NJDC President David A. Harris wrote in Politico, the rhetoric and mischief reached its apex over the weekend during the lead-up to the House vote; however, none of the malicious incidents, nor any other event from the past year, derailed health care reform. Obama and the Democratic Party earned a huge victory on behalf of the American people despite the unfortunate tactics used by conservative activists.
Dems Defeat GOP Fear-Mongering
Now that President Obama’s health care reform is the law of the land, Democrats around the country can feel proud about our victory over the fear-mongering campaign perpetrated by Conservative activists and GOP leaders. For over a year, activists, pundits, and politicians attempted to lie, obstruct, intimidate, and threaten Democrats into doing nothing about our country’s broken health care system. As NJDC CEO Ira N. Forman discussed in The Hill and NJDC President David A. Harris wrote in Politico, the rhetoric and mischief reached its apex over the weekend during the lead-up to the House vote; however, none of the malicious incidents, nor any other event from the past year, derailed health care reform. Obama and the Democratic Party earned a huge victory on behalf of the American people despite the unfortunate tactics used by conservative activists.
Bill Maher Slams That Greedy Poisonous Old Reptile, the GOP --- Conservatives, Be Damned!
From The Huffington Post
Posted: March 26, 2010:
New Rule: You Can't Use "There Will Be No Cooperation for the Rest of the Year" as a Threat If There Was No Cooperation in the First Half of the Year
By Bill Maher
New Rule: You can't use the statement "there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year" as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here's a word the president should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that's happened this year is when President Obama finally realized this and said, "Kiss my black ass, we're going it alone, George W. Bush style."
Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, "The health care bill is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection." Well, if it's dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi. Seriously, the last time a Democrat showed balls like that John Edwards' girlfriend was filming it. Make all the botox jokes and she-shops-too-much jokes you want, but this is the biggest political victory a woman has ever achieved in America. Yes, Nancy Pelosi likes nice clothes. So does Sarah Palin. The difference is Nancy Pelosi pays for hers.
But, even before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap, they were already being warned not to get used to the feeling, and not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats: do a shot, and then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do.
Democrats should not listen to the people who are now saying they shouldn't attempt anything else big for a while because health care was such a bruising battle. Wrong -- because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the Right lose this one: when they're losing, they squeal like a pig. They kept saying things like, the bill was being "shoved down our throats" or the Democrats were "ramming it through." The bill was so big they couldn't take it all at once!
And I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something: Tiger Woods' text messages to his mistress that were made public last week, where he said, and I quote, "I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I fuck that ass that I own. Then I'm going to tell you to shut the fuck up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise." Unquote.
And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party: "Shut the fuck up while I slap your face for making noise -- now pass a cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me: 'global warming is real!'"
The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if a cap-and-trade bill isn't popular, neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.
So don't stop: we need to regulate the banks, we need to overhaul immigration, we need to end corporate welfare including at the Pentagon, we need to bring troops home from... everywhere, we need to end the drug war, and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts, starting with Dick Cheney.
Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th -- and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how's that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?
Posted: March 26, 2010:
New Rule: You Can't Use "There Will Be No Cooperation for the Rest of the Year" as a Threat If There Was No Cooperation in the First Half of the Year
By Bill Maher
New Rule: You can't use the statement "there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year" as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here's a word the president should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that's happened this year is when President Obama finally realized this and said, "Kiss my black ass, we're going it alone, George W. Bush style."
Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, "The health care bill is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection." Well, if it's dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi. Seriously, the last time a Democrat showed balls like that John Edwards' girlfriend was filming it. Make all the botox jokes and she-shops-too-much jokes you want, but this is the biggest political victory a woman has ever achieved in America. Yes, Nancy Pelosi likes nice clothes. So does Sarah Palin. The difference is Nancy Pelosi pays for hers.
But, even before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap, they were already being warned not to get used to the feeling, and not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats: do a shot, and then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do.
Democrats should not listen to the people who are now saying they shouldn't attempt anything else big for a while because health care was such a bruising battle. Wrong -- because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the Right lose this one: when they're losing, they squeal like a pig. They kept saying things like, the bill was being "shoved down our throats" or the Democrats were "ramming it through." The bill was so big they couldn't take it all at once!
And I realized listening to this rhetoric that it reminded me of something: Tiger Woods' text messages to his mistress that were made public last week, where he said, and I quote, "I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore. I want to hold you down and choke you while I fuck that ass that I own. Then I'm going to tell you to shut the fuck up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise." Unquote.
And this, I believe, perfectly represents the attitude Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party: "Shut the fuck up while I slap your face for making noise -- now pass a cap-and-trade law, you stupid bitch, and repeat after me: 'global warming is real!'"
The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile. Who cares if a cap-and-trade bill isn't popular, neither was health care. Your poll numbers may have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.
So don't stop: we need to regulate the banks, we need to overhaul immigration, we need to end corporate welfare including at the Pentagon, we need to bring troops home from... everywhere, we need to end the drug war, and we need to put terrorists and other human rights violators on trial in civilian courts, starting with Dick Cheney.
Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th -- and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how's that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Republican Party Crashes and Falls On Its Sword -- Bye, Bye, Baby
From The Huffington Post -- March 23, 2010:
By Robert J. Elisberg -- Columnist and screenwriter
GOP Applies for Health Care for Self-Inflicted Wounds
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a good thing when it's Easter. In politics, though? Not so much.
The Republican Party put all its eggs in the "Tear Down President Barack Obama and Defeat Health Care Reform" basket. This was a questionable action at best. At worst, they could end up breaking their own kneecaps.
Unanimously fighting health care reform was questionable at best because few in America didn't think the health care system had to be fixed in at least some way.
But at worst - yipes.
Yipes, because the President of the United States won the election campaigning on it. Both houses of Congress won majorities campaigning on it. And from the start, polls showed that the majority of the public wanted some kind of health care reform. Including a public option.
Yet in the face of all this, the Republican Party in Congress put every single one of its fragile eggs in a single basket and chose to unanimously fight health care reform.
The bill contained over 200 Republican proposals, and Republicans still unanimously voted against it.
The GOP was simply going to do whatever they could - unanimously - to defeat health care reform and bring down President Obama. Turn "Yes, We Can" into "No, He Can't." Republicans didn't just want the seats a party out of power traditionally picks up in an off-year election. They wanted it all. Majorities in 2010. The White House in 2012. At any cost. They got greedy. They were going all in - holding just a lowly pair of threes. Everything in one basket, no matter how flimsy that basket was.
Blinded by hatred, fear and pure politics, Republicans saw only their improbable reward. They ignored the profound risk.
No doubt the Republican Party thought things were going well. They had road blocks all over health care reform. They broke the Democrats' 60-vote super majority. Polls showed the American public unhappy with gridlock in Washington, unhappy too with the health care bill - as presented to them by the GOP Message Machine.
All the eggs were in one basket.
And the basket crumbled. And all the eggs crashed.
The problem is that Republican leadership believed their own lies. They forgot that they knew there weren't actually Death Panels in the bill, that it was still illegal to get federally-funded abortions, that everyone can really keep their private insurance, that the new proposals actually brought deficit down - by eventually trillions of dollars. And forgot that the public was, in fact, for health care reform. And for the public option.
When polls showed that Americans were unhappy with the health care reform bill, GOP leadership forgot that some were unhappy because It Didn't Go Far Enough. And others were unhappy because they simply didn't understand the bill. When similar polls explained the bill, the results showed that the public was... in favor of it! Just like at the beginning.
But more, Republicans thought they had an ace up their sleeve. They ignored that they didn't even have a sleeve.
Republicans thought that once the health care reform bill passed, they could campaign on repealing it. "It" being a bill the American public supported. Because it improved their health care. Republicans thought this plan was A Winner.
Winner?
Imagine giving a new kidney to someone, and then later saying, "We'd like it back."
Campaigning on repealing health care reform would be like campaigning to repeal Social Security, Medicare or Civil Rights. Even the most radically-reactionary Republicans aren't foolish enough to do that.
Once people have health care reform - even many who were against the bill - they will be loathe to give it up. Benefits will be seen immediately. Like reduced costs of prescription medication. Like small businesses getting tax credit. Covering all children. Not allowing insurance companies to drop you because you got sick. Like letting young people stay on their parent's policy until they're 26. Right now, this year. Give that up? Take back health care reform, once someone has it? Republicans actually, really, seriously want to campaign on this.
And so they may well have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Where once the GOP saw dreams of a majority in November, they may be lucky now to squeak by with that traditional handful of new seats.
You see, that whole "gridlocked Congress" and "Democrats had a majority and couldn't get anything done" thing - it's now gone. Out the window. The Democrats broke the Republican-forced gridlock. They passed the first-ever, comprehensive health care reform bill. By themselves. With no Republican support.
Republicans had a chance to claim a share of the reform. But they cut themselves out. By choice. They never even offered an alternate bill! Because they were putting all their eggs in one basket.
And the basket crumbled.
The public will now see the Democrats as alone being able to provide deeply-needed reform. And the public will now see the Republicans as the block that wants to take it away.
While Republicans are campaigning to repeal health care reform, Democrats will make the case, "Yes, the bill isn't perfect. So, elect more Democrats to get the improvements and also get the public option. That you want. If you elect Republicans, they will take away what you now have - they've told you so!"
But it's actually worse than that for Republicans. Because Republicans, who are usually so good at coming up with fake catch-phrases like "Death Taxes" made their biggest gaffe of all. Gargantuan.
You see...for the past year, Republicans have called this bill (say it all together now) - "ObamaCare."
Health care reform is now known to everyone - thanks to Republican Talking Points - forevermore as ObamaCare.
They gave President Barack Obama full name credit.
ObamaCare. ObamaCare. ObamaCare. ObamaCare.
Care.
President Barack Obama - cares.
And the Republican Party is the one who told you, who drilled it deep into your consciousness.
And the Republican Party in its blocking unanimity released Barack Obama. Faced with the reality of zero Republican support, the president finally took to the road and energized the Democratic Party. And energized himself. He kept his word to the public. He got a health care bill. And "Yes, we can" was proven. His Gallup poll numbers have already improved seven points.
The Republicans did it all to themselves. They put all their eggs in one basket. And in the end, the eggs were rotten. And the basket crumbled.
By Robert J. Elisberg -- Columnist and screenwriter
GOP Applies for Health Care for Self-Inflicted Wounds
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a good thing when it's Easter. In politics, though? Not so much.
The Republican Party put all its eggs in the "Tear Down President Barack Obama and Defeat Health Care Reform" basket. This was a questionable action at best. At worst, they could end up breaking their own kneecaps.
Unanimously fighting health care reform was questionable at best because few in America didn't think the health care system had to be fixed in at least some way.
But at worst - yipes.
Yipes, because the President of the United States won the election campaigning on it. Both houses of Congress won majorities campaigning on it. And from the start, polls showed that the majority of the public wanted some kind of health care reform. Including a public option.
Yet in the face of all this, the Republican Party in Congress put every single one of its fragile eggs in a single basket and chose to unanimously fight health care reform.
The bill contained over 200 Republican proposals, and Republicans still unanimously voted against it.
The GOP was simply going to do whatever they could - unanimously - to defeat health care reform and bring down President Obama. Turn "Yes, We Can" into "No, He Can't." Republicans didn't just want the seats a party out of power traditionally picks up in an off-year election. They wanted it all. Majorities in 2010. The White House in 2012. At any cost. They got greedy. They were going all in - holding just a lowly pair of threes. Everything in one basket, no matter how flimsy that basket was.
Blinded by hatred, fear and pure politics, Republicans saw only their improbable reward. They ignored the profound risk.
No doubt the Republican Party thought things were going well. They had road blocks all over health care reform. They broke the Democrats' 60-vote super majority. Polls showed the American public unhappy with gridlock in Washington, unhappy too with the health care bill - as presented to them by the GOP Message Machine.
All the eggs were in one basket.
And the basket crumbled. And all the eggs crashed.
The problem is that Republican leadership believed their own lies. They forgot that they knew there weren't actually Death Panels in the bill, that it was still illegal to get federally-funded abortions, that everyone can really keep their private insurance, that the new proposals actually brought deficit down - by eventually trillions of dollars. And forgot that the public was, in fact, for health care reform. And for the public option.
When polls showed that Americans were unhappy with the health care reform bill, GOP leadership forgot that some were unhappy because It Didn't Go Far Enough. And others were unhappy because they simply didn't understand the bill. When similar polls explained the bill, the results showed that the public was... in favor of it! Just like at the beginning.
But more, Republicans thought they had an ace up their sleeve. They ignored that they didn't even have a sleeve.
Republicans thought that once the health care reform bill passed, they could campaign on repealing it. "It" being a bill the American public supported. Because it improved their health care. Republicans thought this plan was A Winner.
Winner?
Imagine giving a new kidney to someone, and then later saying, "We'd like it back."
Campaigning on repealing health care reform would be like campaigning to repeal Social Security, Medicare or Civil Rights. Even the most radically-reactionary Republicans aren't foolish enough to do that.
Once people have health care reform - even many who were against the bill - they will be loathe to give it up. Benefits will be seen immediately. Like reduced costs of prescription medication. Like small businesses getting tax credit. Covering all children. Not allowing insurance companies to drop you because you got sick. Like letting young people stay on their parent's policy until they're 26. Right now, this year. Give that up? Take back health care reform, once someone has it? Republicans actually, really, seriously want to campaign on this.
And so they may well have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Where once the GOP saw dreams of a majority in November, they may be lucky now to squeak by with that traditional handful of new seats.
You see, that whole "gridlocked Congress" and "Democrats had a majority and couldn't get anything done" thing - it's now gone. Out the window. The Democrats broke the Republican-forced gridlock. They passed the first-ever, comprehensive health care reform bill. By themselves. With no Republican support.
Republicans had a chance to claim a share of the reform. But they cut themselves out. By choice. They never even offered an alternate bill! Because they were putting all their eggs in one basket.
And the basket crumbled.
The public will now see the Democrats as alone being able to provide deeply-needed reform. And the public will now see the Republicans as the block that wants to take it away.
While Republicans are campaigning to repeal health care reform, Democrats will make the case, "Yes, the bill isn't perfect. So, elect more Democrats to get the improvements and also get the public option. That you want. If you elect Republicans, they will take away what you now have - they've told you so!"
But it's actually worse than that for Republicans. Because Republicans, who are usually so good at coming up with fake catch-phrases like "Death Taxes" made their biggest gaffe of all. Gargantuan.
You see...for the past year, Republicans have called this bill (say it all together now) - "ObamaCare."
Health care reform is now known to everyone - thanks to Republican Talking Points - forevermore as ObamaCare.
They gave President Barack Obama full name credit.
ObamaCare. ObamaCare. ObamaCare. ObamaCare.
Care.
President Barack Obama - cares.
And the Republican Party is the one who told you, who drilled it deep into your consciousness.
And the Republican Party in its blocking unanimity released Barack Obama. Faced with the reality of zero Republican support, the president finally took to the road and energized the Democratic Party. And energized himself. He kept his word to the public. He got a health care bill. And "Yes, we can" was proven. His Gallup poll numbers have already improved seven points.
The Republicans did it all to themselves. They put all their eggs in one basket. And in the end, the eggs were rotten. And the basket crumbled.
Let's Dump Social Security
America needs millions more homeless elderly people living on the streets -- and the Grand Old Party of Nope is doing everything it can to give that to us.
Republicans in 2010 Plan to Campaign to Repeal Health Care Reform --- Bring It On!
From Salon -- TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2010:
Why healthcare reform could work for Democrats now.Passing the healthcare bill may mean it's no longer weighing down Democrats -- and GOP repeal plans may help, too
BY MIKE MADDEN
(Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., talks about her opposition to the health care reform bill during a press conference on Sunday).
WASHINGTON -- About six weeks before the November elections, insurance companies will be legally prohibited from dropping coverage for patients when they get sick. They'll be required to offer policies to children with preexisting medical conditions. Parents will be able to keep their kids on their own insurance until those kids turn 26. And lifetime caps on how much an insurance provider will pay for your care will go out the window.
All that will take effect six months after President Obama signs the healthcare reform bill into law -- which he's doing Tuesday morning at the White House, thanks to the House passage Sunday night of the landmark legislation. Many of the bill's changes to the healthcare system are years off -- but not all of them. Some of the most popular provisions in the legislation will be active far sooner, just in time for the elections.
Which is why some Democrats are practically begging Republicans to make repealing the healthcare law the centerpiece of the fall campaign, the way top GOP leaders have promised to do. Sure, polls now show voters are upset with the way the legislative process worked, and in some districts, they're really angry about it. But the legislation will probably never be as unpopular once it's law as it was when it was being endlessly debated. When no one from the federal government shows up to kill Granny the day after the law is enacted, after all, it's going to be a lot harder to scare people about "death panels."
"You saw it with the Republicans, when they passed the prescription drug plan," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. "There was a net opposition when that was voted in, and then within six months -- way before any benefits started to accrue -- there was a net support for it ... [The healthcare bill] is never going to get any less popular. It only has room to improve."
Some of the opposition to the bill isn't even the kind of opposition the GOP is banking on in November. Thirteen percent of the people against the bill in a CNN poll out Monday said they thought it wasn't liberal enough; those voters aren't likely to get on board for repealing it. The same poll showed 51 percent of respondents trust President Obama to handle major changes in the healthcare system, compared to 39 percent who trust Republicans in Congress.
But the GOP is already revving up the repeal platform. Rep. Mark Kirk, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, promised last week -- even before the bill passed -- to "lead the effort" to get rid of it. Not wanting to waste a moment, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., introduced legislation Monday to repeal the bill; clocking in comfortably at under a page (in fact, only 75 words!), Bachmann's legislation is obviously far more American than the 2,074-page version the Democrats cooked up. Nearly 200 Republican candidates, and 49 GOP lawmakers, have already signed a pledge by the anti-tax Club for Growth to "rescue America from government-run healthcare."
Forget for a moment that repealing the bill next year would require Republicans to pick up 41 seats in the House to get a majority (possible, but not likely) and 19 seats in the Senate to get the repeal legislation past a filibuster (impossible, with only 16 Democratic-held seats up for grabs this fall), as well as do something about the guy in the White House who would veto the plan. It would also require the GOP to tell seniors they no longer get the $250 rebate, which they will get this year, to offset the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole"; convince small businesses to give up tax credits, also available this year, that offset up to 35 percent of the cost of healthcare premiums for their workers; persuade parents that insurance companies should be able to deny coverage for kids with preexisting conditions; and get everyone in the country on board with bringing back absurdly low annual limits on what insurance companies will pay for. Plus tell 30 million uninsured Americans that they won't be getting access to healthcare in a few years, as planned. All that might be a tough sell even at a tea party convention.
"It frames them as just an angry 'no' party," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. "Repeal is not a solution to healthcare problems."
That's not to say Republicans will be playing defense this fall. Some Democrats -- like freshman Rep. Betsy Markey, of Colorado -- could well lose their seats because of the vote. And if the White House and key Democratic allies don't do a good job of explaining what the bill will do, voters will still listen to GOP attacks.
"I think it's comical that the Democrats think they can sell the benefits of healthcare reform only after the debate is over," said Republican strategist Alex Conant. "Remember, it's not as if this legislation was popular before all the backroom deals were made -- to the contrary, its unpopularity was why they needed to make the backroom deals! If they can't sell this when people are paying close attention, then how do they expect to sell it when people's attention shifts to the economy?"
Still, the White House isn't planning to sit back just because the House passed the bill. (For one thing, the Senate still needs to pass a budget reconciliation measure to amend the bill.) Obama will head to Iowa City, Iowa -- where he rolled out his healthcare policy in 2007, in the early days of the presidential campaign -- on Thursday, to talk about the bill's benefits. And aides say they're ready to defend it.
"If people want to campaign on taking tax cuts away from small businesses, taking assistance away from seniors getting prescription drugs, and want to take away a mother knowing that their child can't be discriminated against by an insurance company -- if that's the platform that others want to run on, taking that away from families and small businesses, then we'll have a robust campaign on that," press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
Why healthcare reform could work for Democrats now.Passing the healthcare bill may mean it's no longer weighing down Democrats -- and GOP repeal plans may help, too
BY MIKE MADDEN
(Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., talks about her opposition to the health care reform bill during a press conference on Sunday).
WASHINGTON -- About six weeks before the November elections, insurance companies will be legally prohibited from dropping coverage for patients when they get sick. They'll be required to offer policies to children with preexisting medical conditions. Parents will be able to keep their kids on their own insurance until those kids turn 26. And lifetime caps on how much an insurance provider will pay for your care will go out the window.
All that will take effect six months after President Obama signs the healthcare reform bill into law -- which he's doing Tuesday morning at the White House, thanks to the House passage Sunday night of the landmark legislation. Many of the bill's changes to the healthcare system are years off -- but not all of them. Some of the most popular provisions in the legislation will be active far sooner, just in time for the elections.
Which is why some Democrats are practically begging Republicans to make repealing the healthcare law the centerpiece of the fall campaign, the way top GOP leaders have promised to do. Sure, polls now show voters are upset with the way the legislative process worked, and in some districts, they're really angry about it. But the legislation will probably never be as unpopular once it's law as it was when it was being endlessly debated. When no one from the federal government shows up to kill Granny the day after the law is enacted, after all, it's going to be a lot harder to scare people about "death panels."
"You saw it with the Republicans, when they passed the prescription drug plan," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. "There was a net opposition when that was voted in, and then within six months -- way before any benefits started to accrue -- there was a net support for it ... [The healthcare bill] is never going to get any less popular. It only has room to improve."
Some of the opposition to the bill isn't even the kind of opposition the GOP is banking on in November. Thirteen percent of the people against the bill in a CNN poll out Monday said they thought it wasn't liberal enough; those voters aren't likely to get on board for repealing it. The same poll showed 51 percent of respondents trust President Obama to handle major changes in the healthcare system, compared to 39 percent who trust Republicans in Congress.
But the GOP is already revving up the repeal platform. Rep. Mark Kirk, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, promised last week -- even before the bill passed -- to "lead the effort" to get rid of it. Not wanting to waste a moment, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., introduced legislation Monday to repeal the bill; clocking in comfortably at under a page (in fact, only 75 words!), Bachmann's legislation is obviously far more American than the 2,074-page version the Democrats cooked up. Nearly 200 Republican candidates, and 49 GOP lawmakers, have already signed a pledge by the anti-tax Club for Growth to "rescue America from government-run healthcare."
Forget for a moment that repealing the bill next year would require Republicans to pick up 41 seats in the House to get a majority (possible, but not likely) and 19 seats in the Senate to get the repeal legislation past a filibuster (impossible, with only 16 Democratic-held seats up for grabs this fall), as well as do something about the guy in the White House who would veto the plan. It would also require the GOP to tell seniors they no longer get the $250 rebate, which they will get this year, to offset the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole"; convince small businesses to give up tax credits, also available this year, that offset up to 35 percent of the cost of healthcare premiums for their workers; persuade parents that insurance companies should be able to deny coverage for kids with preexisting conditions; and get everyone in the country on board with bringing back absurdly low annual limits on what insurance companies will pay for. Plus tell 30 million uninsured Americans that they won't be getting access to healthcare in a few years, as planned. All that might be a tough sell even at a tea party convention.
"It frames them as just an angry 'no' party," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. "Repeal is not a solution to healthcare problems."
That's not to say Republicans will be playing defense this fall. Some Democrats -- like freshman Rep. Betsy Markey, of Colorado -- could well lose their seats because of the vote. And if the White House and key Democratic allies don't do a good job of explaining what the bill will do, voters will still listen to GOP attacks.
"I think it's comical that the Democrats think they can sell the benefits of healthcare reform only after the debate is over," said Republican strategist Alex Conant. "Remember, it's not as if this legislation was popular before all the backroom deals were made -- to the contrary, its unpopularity was why they needed to make the backroom deals! If they can't sell this when people are paying close attention, then how do they expect to sell it when people's attention shifts to the economy?"
Still, the White House isn't planning to sit back just because the House passed the bill. (For one thing, the Senate still needs to pass a budget reconciliation measure to amend the bill.) Obama will head to Iowa City, Iowa -- where he rolled out his healthcare policy in 2007, in the early days of the presidential campaign -- on Thursday, to talk about the bill's benefits. And aides say they're ready to defend it.
"If people want to campaign on taking tax cuts away from small businesses, taking assistance away from seniors getting prescription drugs, and want to take away a mother knowing that their child can't be discriminated against by an insurance company -- if that's the platform that others want to run on, taking that away from families and small businesses, then we'll have a robust campaign on that," press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
It Now Looks Like a Democratic Landslide in 2010
From Salon -- MONDAY, MAR 22, 2010:
Why John Boehner is Angry -- and Republicans Should Worry
By JOE CONASON
Health Care Reform Passage may clear away the propaganda and let voters understand healthcare reform -- a scary prospect for Republicans.
What is the reward for acting with courage and principle, confronting the worst slurs, threats of violence, waves of falsehood, major monied interests, and widespread predictions of electoral defeat? As President Obama said in his remarks to the House Democrats on the eve of their vote for healthcare reform, the only certain compensation for doing what is right will be history’s judgment. Yet perhaps all the forecasts of doom will prove wrong -- as they so often do in Washington -- and voters will honor lawmakers who finally stood up for the core values of their party.
A few days before Sunday night's vote, Dan Balz noted in the Washington Post that the electorate sounds even angrier at Congress than usual -- a threatening portent for incumbents in November. Even in that poll, however, the lowest status was reserved not for the Democratic congressional leadership, whose numbers have indeed dropped, but for the Republican leaders.
No doubt John Boehner is well aware of that public contempt. Watching the minority leader speak on the House floor, pretending to be a populist demagogue rather than a corporate stooge, his anger seemed less provoked by the specifics of the healthcare legislation than with its likely political impact. If he feels so confident that the people will massively repudiate this bill in the midterm election -- and thus make him speaker --why was he so furious? Why did the bill’s imminent passage turn his usual orangey-tan complexion almost incandescent red with rage?
The answer could be found in the subtext of Boehner’s speech, which did not dwell on the bill’s specific provisions, beyond its alleged expense. He knows that arguing the bill’s specific provisions is very dangerous to his party, because so many of them are quite popular and the public will hold Republicans in disrepute for opposing them.
An informed public was always the ultimate peril for the Republicans in this process, so distorted during the past year by wild propaganda about death panels, government takeovers, and the entire mythology of the Obama administration’s socialist-communist-Nazi-totalitarianism.
Creating those crazy expectations was a strategy that depended on the bill never passing. If and when people learn what is actually in the legislation, many of them will realize that they were misled, and will end up appreciating most of what the Democrats have passed, after all.
Certainly that possibility is what troubles David Frum, who expressed his fears yesterday evening in a post titled “Waterloo” (after the triumphal predictions of Sen. Jim DeMint of the consequences for Obama if healthcare reform were to be defeated). Before he became notorious for writing war-mongering speeches for President Bush, Frum was admired among conservatives for uttering unvarnished criticisms of his own movement, notably in a 1995 book titled "Dead Right" (a passionate screed that urged the party toward deeper ideological consistency -- much the opposite of his current complaint).
The Republicans bet on killing healthcare reform and lost, says Frum -- and by November, voters will come to understand the appealing aspects of the legislation, even as the broader economic and political environment improves for Democrats. Now he warns, “It's a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November -- by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.”
Frum is harshly realistic about the chances to reverse this historic step forward: “No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the ‘doughnut hole’ and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year-olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there -- would President Obama sign such a repeal?”
Political scientist Ruy Teixeira found hard evidence that underscores Frum’s fears in a public opinion experiment undertaken by Newsweek last month. The magazine’s pollsters first asked respondents whether they support or oppose the president’s healthcare reform plan, with predictable results: 40 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed, 11 percent undecided.
Then the pollsters described major aspects of the bill -- the insurance exchanges, the strict regulation of insurance company policies, the requirement for insurance with government assistance to those who need help, the tax on expensive plans, the fines on those who don’t get insurance, and the public option. Not only did most of those aspects of the bill poll favorably, but the overall legislation ticked up by 8 points when the pollsters asked the same people again whether they support or oppose it. The second time reversed the initial results: 48 percent in favor, 43 percent opposed, 9 percent unsure.
That sharp turnaround in opinion occurred in a matter of minutes during a telephone call with a stranger. Now the president and the congressional Democrats have seven months to make the same argument, and smart Republicans are properly terrified that they will.
The GOP Wrecking Squad That Has Tried So Hard to Wreck America Now Looks Like It's Ready for the Dump Heap.
Why John Boehner is Angry -- and Republicans Should Worry
By JOE CONASON
Health Care Reform Passage may clear away the propaganda and let voters understand healthcare reform -- a scary prospect for Republicans.
What is the reward for acting with courage and principle, confronting the worst slurs, threats of violence, waves of falsehood, major monied interests, and widespread predictions of electoral defeat? As President Obama said in his remarks to the House Democrats on the eve of their vote for healthcare reform, the only certain compensation for doing what is right will be history’s judgment. Yet perhaps all the forecasts of doom will prove wrong -- as they so often do in Washington -- and voters will honor lawmakers who finally stood up for the core values of their party.
A few days before Sunday night's vote, Dan Balz noted in the Washington Post that the electorate sounds even angrier at Congress than usual -- a threatening portent for incumbents in November. Even in that poll, however, the lowest status was reserved not for the Democratic congressional leadership, whose numbers have indeed dropped, but for the Republican leaders.
No doubt John Boehner is well aware of that public contempt. Watching the minority leader speak on the House floor, pretending to be a populist demagogue rather than a corporate stooge, his anger seemed less provoked by the specifics of the healthcare legislation than with its likely political impact. If he feels so confident that the people will massively repudiate this bill in the midterm election -- and thus make him speaker --why was he so furious? Why did the bill’s imminent passage turn his usual orangey-tan complexion almost incandescent red with rage?
The answer could be found in the subtext of Boehner’s speech, which did not dwell on the bill’s specific provisions, beyond its alleged expense. He knows that arguing the bill’s specific provisions is very dangerous to his party, because so many of them are quite popular and the public will hold Republicans in disrepute for opposing them.
An informed public was always the ultimate peril for the Republicans in this process, so distorted during the past year by wild propaganda about death panels, government takeovers, and the entire mythology of the Obama administration’s socialist-communist-Nazi-totalitarianism.
Creating those crazy expectations was a strategy that depended on the bill never passing. If and when people learn what is actually in the legislation, many of them will realize that they were misled, and will end up appreciating most of what the Democrats have passed, after all.
Certainly that possibility is what troubles David Frum, who expressed his fears yesterday evening in a post titled “Waterloo” (after the triumphal predictions of Sen. Jim DeMint of the consequences for Obama if healthcare reform were to be defeated). Before he became notorious for writing war-mongering speeches for President Bush, Frum was admired among conservatives for uttering unvarnished criticisms of his own movement, notably in a 1995 book titled "Dead Right" (a passionate screed that urged the party toward deeper ideological consistency -- much the opposite of his current complaint).
The Republicans bet on killing healthcare reform and lost, says Frum -- and by November, voters will come to understand the appealing aspects of the legislation, even as the broader economic and political environment improves for Democrats. Now he warns, “It's a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November -- by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.”
Frum is harshly realistic about the chances to reverse this historic step forward: “No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the ‘doughnut hole’ and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year-olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there -- would President Obama sign such a repeal?”
Political scientist Ruy Teixeira found hard evidence that underscores Frum’s fears in a public opinion experiment undertaken by Newsweek last month. The magazine’s pollsters first asked respondents whether they support or oppose the president’s healthcare reform plan, with predictable results: 40 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed, 11 percent undecided.
Then the pollsters described major aspects of the bill -- the insurance exchanges, the strict regulation of insurance company policies, the requirement for insurance with government assistance to those who need help, the tax on expensive plans, the fines on those who don’t get insurance, and the public option. Not only did most of those aspects of the bill poll favorably, but the overall legislation ticked up by 8 points when the pollsters asked the same people again whether they support or oppose it. The second time reversed the initial results: 48 percent in favor, 43 percent opposed, 9 percent unsure.
That sharp turnaround in opinion occurred in a matter of minutes during a telephone call with a stranger. Now the president and the congressional Democrats have seven months to make the same argument, and smart Republicans are properly terrified that they will.
The GOP Wrecking Squad That Has Tried So Hard to Wreck America Now Looks Like It's Ready for the Dump Heap.
The Duplicitous Hypocrisy of Mitt Romney and the GOP on Health Care Reform
From Salon -- MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2010:
Mitt Romney's Healthcare Hypocrisy and the GOP Base
Just four years ago, Conservatives saluted him for signing a Healthcare Law that's very similar to ObamaCare.
BY STEVE KORNACKI
It's not news when man bites dog, so why should it be any different when Mitt Romney makes a brash and insincere pronouncement?
And yet there was the one-time Massachusetts governor forcing his way into Monday morning's headlines with what may have been the most over-the-top of all of the over-the-top Republican reactions to the House's passage of Barack Obama's healthcare plan.
"An unconscionable abuse of power," Romney declared while asserting that the president "has betrayed his oath to the nation."
When Mitt starts talking like this, it's usually because he knows his own past record makes him vulnerable on the issue at hand.
And when it comes to healthcare, his hypocrisy is particularly galling. Romney is actually the only governor in American history ever to impose an individual health insurance mandate on his citizens. And an individual mandate, of course, is at the heart of Obama's reform package.
Nor is the mandate the only common ground between RomneyCare and ObamaCare; the Massachusetts plan that Romney signed into law in 2006 is essentially the blueprint for Obama's plan. Both rely on the same basic formula: a requirement that everyone purchase insurance and government assistance for those who can't afford it.
But Romney can never admit this. He's the early front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nod and the party's base is convinced that Obama's reform package represents some kind of Marxist plot. So Romney must be against it -- really against it. It's as if he believes the combination of heat and volume in his response to the House vote will cause Republicans to ignore his own Massachusetts record.
It's worth remembering how Romney got himself into this pickle in the first place, because it says a lot about the irrational nature of the GOP opposition to Obama's healthcare push.
In the spring of 2006, Romney and his office worked closely with Massachusetts' Democratic-dominated Legislature to craft the state's new healthcare law -- individual mandate and all. Romney's motives had nothing to do with currying favor with the state's left-of-center electorate. He had long since shifted his attention away from the Bay State and to the national stage. He switched his position on abortion and announced he wouldn't seek a second term in 2005, and by '06 he was spending nearly as much time out of the state as in it -- never missing a chance to warm up national conservative crowds with cracks about his home state.
This is important to note because it establishes that Romney saw his healthcare law as an opportunity to distinguish himself from his '08 GOP rivals -- not as the political albatross it has become. And he had good reason to feel this way. With the law, he could point to a singular gubernatorial achievement, bolstering his executive credentials. It also created an unspoken contrast with John McCain, the GOP's front-runner and a creature of the legislative branch.
Nor did Romney have to fear a revolt from the right. Back in '06, the standard for healthcare reform was still Bill Clinton's failed 1994 scheme, which would have issued citizens their own insurance cards and set up a complicated new bureaucracy. Romney's plan was the antithesis of that: a private insurance-friendly individual mandate and a new "connector" that would allow consumers in the individual and small group markets to shop around for the best deals. Notably, Romney sought and received the blessing of the Heritage Foundation before signing the bill at a lavish ceremony (during which a Heritage representative spoke).
So what changed between then and now? It's pretty simple, actually: Obama became the president. And the right decided from the beginning that his healthcare push (just like his stimulus bill and cap-and-trade and so on) represented creeping socialism.
Back in 2006, Romney could use healthcare to position himself as the heir to George W. Bush's "compassionate conservative" mantle: See, he would say, I found a conservative, market-friendly way to solve a problem that Democrats -- like Bill and Hillary in '94 -- tried and failed to address for decades.
But that doesn't work with Obama in the White House. Last summer and fall, Romney was able to say that his law was different from Obama's plan because Massachusetts lacked the public option that Democrats in Washington were pushing for. This was disingenuous, obviously, but at least it made for a good sound bite.
Now he can't even claim that: Despite the best efforts of liberal groups, there will be no public option in the final bill that Obama signs. So Romney is left with the right's favorite old fallback: states' rights. What I did works for my state, his new message goes, but it would be a disaster to do it nationally. (He can thank Sen. Scott Brown, who voted for RomneyCare as a Massachusetts state senator in 2006, for introducing this argument during the state's recent Senate special election.)
It's easy to snicker at Romney's healthcare problem -- just desserts for a man who has so thoroughly and shamelessly reinvented himself over the years. But it actually says more about the irrational state of today's GOP base, which is vilifying President Obama for doing almost exactly what it hailed Romney for doing just four years ago.
Mitt Romney's Healthcare Hypocrisy and the GOP Base
Just four years ago, Conservatives saluted him for signing a Healthcare Law that's very similar to ObamaCare.
BY STEVE KORNACKI
It's not news when man bites dog, so why should it be any different when Mitt Romney makes a brash and insincere pronouncement?
And yet there was the one-time Massachusetts governor forcing his way into Monday morning's headlines with what may have been the most over-the-top of all of the over-the-top Republican reactions to the House's passage of Barack Obama's healthcare plan.
"An unconscionable abuse of power," Romney declared while asserting that the president "has betrayed his oath to the nation."
When Mitt starts talking like this, it's usually because he knows his own past record makes him vulnerable on the issue at hand.
And when it comes to healthcare, his hypocrisy is particularly galling. Romney is actually the only governor in American history ever to impose an individual health insurance mandate on his citizens. And an individual mandate, of course, is at the heart of Obama's reform package.
Nor is the mandate the only common ground between RomneyCare and ObamaCare; the Massachusetts plan that Romney signed into law in 2006 is essentially the blueprint for Obama's plan. Both rely on the same basic formula: a requirement that everyone purchase insurance and government assistance for those who can't afford it.
But Romney can never admit this. He's the early front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nod and the party's base is convinced that Obama's reform package represents some kind of Marxist plot. So Romney must be against it -- really against it. It's as if he believes the combination of heat and volume in his response to the House vote will cause Republicans to ignore his own Massachusetts record.
It's worth remembering how Romney got himself into this pickle in the first place, because it says a lot about the irrational nature of the GOP opposition to Obama's healthcare push.
In the spring of 2006, Romney and his office worked closely with Massachusetts' Democratic-dominated Legislature to craft the state's new healthcare law -- individual mandate and all. Romney's motives had nothing to do with currying favor with the state's left-of-center electorate. He had long since shifted his attention away from the Bay State and to the national stage. He switched his position on abortion and announced he wouldn't seek a second term in 2005, and by '06 he was spending nearly as much time out of the state as in it -- never missing a chance to warm up national conservative crowds with cracks about his home state.
This is important to note because it establishes that Romney saw his healthcare law as an opportunity to distinguish himself from his '08 GOP rivals -- not as the political albatross it has become. And he had good reason to feel this way. With the law, he could point to a singular gubernatorial achievement, bolstering his executive credentials. It also created an unspoken contrast with John McCain, the GOP's front-runner and a creature of the legislative branch.
Nor did Romney have to fear a revolt from the right. Back in '06, the standard for healthcare reform was still Bill Clinton's failed 1994 scheme, which would have issued citizens their own insurance cards and set up a complicated new bureaucracy. Romney's plan was the antithesis of that: a private insurance-friendly individual mandate and a new "connector" that would allow consumers in the individual and small group markets to shop around for the best deals. Notably, Romney sought and received the blessing of the Heritage Foundation before signing the bill at a lavish ceremony (during which a Heritage representative spoke).
So what changed between then and now? It's pretty simple, actually: Obama became the president. And the right decided from the beginning that his healthcare push (just like his stimulus bill and cap-and-trade and so on) represented creeping socialism.
Back in 2006, Romney could use healthcare to position himself as the heir to George W. Bush's "compassionate conservative" mantle: See, he would say, I found a conservative, market-friendly way to solve a problem that Democrats -- like Bill and Hillary in '94 -- tried and failed to address for decades.
But that doesn't work with Obama in the White House. Last summer and fall, Romney was able to say that his law was different from Obama's plan because Massachusetts lacked the public option that Democrats in Washington were pushing for. This was disingenuous, obviously, but at least it made for a good sound bite.
Now he can't even claim that: Despite the best efforts of liberal groups, there will be no public option in the final bill that Obama signs. So Romney is left with the right's favorite old fallback: states' rights. What I did works for my state, his new message goes, but it would be a disaster to do it nationally. (He can thank Sen. Scott Brown, who voted for RomneyCare as a Massachusetts state senator in 2006, for introducing this argument during the state's recent Senate special election.)
It's easy to snicker at Romney's healthcare problem -- just desserts for a man who has so thoroughly and shamelessly reinvented himself over the years. But it actually says more about the irrational state of today's GOP base, which is vilifying President Obama for doing almost exactly what it hailed Romney for doing just four years ago.
Ah, The Singular Beauty of White People
From Salon --- MONDAY, MAR 22, 2010:
"The History of White People": What it Means to be White
How bad science and American culture shaped a racial identity -- and why America can't stop obsessing over it
BY THOMAS ROGERS
In 2000, the Human Genome Project finally answered one of the most fundamental questions about race: What, if anything, is the genetic difference between people of different skin colors -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian? The answer: nearly nothing. As it turns out, we all share 99.99 percent of the same genetic code -- no matter our race -- a fact that, geneticist J. Craig Venter claimed, proves that race is a "social concept, not a scientific one."
But as Nell Irvin Painter explains in "The History of White People,"her exhaustive and fascinating new look at the history of the idea of the white race, it's a social construct that goes back much further and is much more complicated than many people think. In the book, Painter, a professor of American history at Princeton, chronicles the evolution of the concept of whiteness from ancient Rome -- where, she points out, the slaves were largely white -- to the 21st century America and explains how, in the era of Obama, our once-narrow concept of whiteness has become at once far broader and less important than ever before.
The elevation of some ethnic groups -- Germans and Scandinavians -- as "whiter" than others can largely be tied to a small number of scientists who shared an obsession with both measuring people's skulls and pinpointing the world's "most beautiful" people. As Painter writes, a number of social and demographic upheavals (which she dubs "enlargements of whiteness") over the last two centuries have gradually thrown many of those assumptions into question.
Salon spoke to Painter over the phone, about the meaning of "Caucasian," America's obsession with racial difference, and the real meaning of Stuff White People Like.
Why write a history of whiteness?
We've spent so much time in this country on various racial issues. It's our national sport, in a way, and it's always as if there is only one side: nonwhite. But this is one of those binaries where you need both sides to make sense of it.
I want to point out that this book is not about white nationalism. It's not about how bad white people are. It's about how we have thought about people now considered white. I used to encounter reservations about the project, and people would ask, "Why are you doing this as a black person?" People hear it's a book called "The History of White People" and that it's by a black author, and make assumptions.
We've all seen the word "Caucasian," usually when we're filling out forms, but most of us have no idea where it came from. What is a Caucasian, exactly?
It comes from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who applied it to a large swatch of humanity on the 11th of April, 1795, with the publications of the third edition of his dissertation, in Latin, about the varieties of mankind. He used the word "Caucasian" because he wanted to underscore the beauty of white-skinned people. He thought they were the most beautiful. He located these people in Europe, east into Russia, south into India and southwest into North Africa. The Caucasus is a border area between Europe and Asia and it's an area freighted with mythological baggage -- Jason and the Argonauts, Mount Ararat.
The Human Genome Project found that there's no genetic basis for racial difference. Is this the end of race?
This is nothing new. As long as there's been a discussion about race, there's been a disagreement about how many there were and how to make the distinction -- shade, color, height, where the hole in your skull is for your spine to go in, shape of the hand. There have been all these different criteria and nobody ever agreed. Even somebody like Blumenbach called them varieties. Varieties shade imperceptibly into one another. Different experts differed on how many varieties there are. Some people said two -- beautiful and ugly. Blumenbach said six.
But just as there's been the discovery that race is a concept with no scientific meaning, there's also been a cultural movement to rerace knowledge. When the genome was completed in 2000, the headlines were, "Race is meaningless," "We're all the same," and then three to four years later there came, "I am a race-profiling doctor." There was heart medicine marketed to black people. What's really interesting about finding race in the genome in terms of diseases is that diseases that have been discovered so far with a strong genomic cause are among white people, not black people.
Why do Americans have this persistent desire to create racial difference out of nothing?
Our culture was founded in 1789 right about the same moment that Blumenbach was inventing Caucasians -- this moment of racialization. Some people say race is in our national DNA so that we just can't get away from it. I don't know if we ever will.
As you write in the book, there were four great expansions of what America considers whiteness. What were they?
The first three are expansions of whiteness, because the assumption was that to be American you first had to be white. The first occurred in the Jacksonian era, in the first half of the 19th century, when citizenship criteria were changed from wealth to race. That's when adult males of any income were allowed to vote, as long as they were considered white. Things changed in the 20th century, when different groups came in as immigrants and people of Irish background were incorporated into the notion of American whiteness. The third great enlargement took place in the mid-20th century, starting with the New Deal in the 1930s and WWII. Politics and the mobilization of Americans to fight the Great Depression and to fight the Second World War opened up American-ness to people who had been considered alien races and their children and grandchildren.
We're currently in the midst of the fourth great expansion, which is an expansion of the idea of the American -- that an American doesn't necessarily need to be white to be considered American. "American" now includes Hispanics, for example, and people who identify themselves as multiracial. Because of this sort of great enlargement, we can no longer sum up the American as one person or the white man as one person.
What do you think is behind this latest change -- "American" no longer meaning "white"?
The two big reasons are immigration and the opening of the American economy after the Civil Rights Act. A huge proportion of Americans are now immigrants, and immigrants don't necessarily think in black-and-white terms. Less than half of immigrants identified themselves as white in the 2000. Now sometimes people who are white are identified by race. And in writing about the tea parties, for example, journalists will now often note that the crowd is mostly white, whereas before I don't think that would have been pointed out; [it would have been assumed].
How do you think the election of Barack Obama plays into this?
Whenever you tinker with one part of the equation, it affects the rest of it. I think to the extent that we realize that Obama has a white mother and a white family, this alerted us to the existence of people with parents from different backgrounds. People have been migrating and fornicating forever, so there's no such thing as a pure person, and I think Obama's background just puts that front and center in our attention.
It's conspicuous that many of the scientists who were trying to determine the "most superior" white race were obsessed with figuring out which race was best-looking.
Physical beauty and race were thought to be something physical and permanent that can be passed down generation to generation, but if you look at magazines from the 1960s or the 1920s, you see that ideas of beauty change. What I find so fascinating is that if you look carefully at the faces of many models today, they would not have passed as beautiful in the middle of the 20th century. Now we look more at bodies. We like bodies to be very thin -- like thinness is beauty.
Every few years there also seems to be a new fashionable ethnicity for runway models -- one year it'll be Russians, the next it's Brazilians.
It's called fashion for a reason. Popular culture is a many-splendored thing. I was in New York recently, where I saw a great big billboard of Kimora Lee Simmons, who is a brown person who is an embodiment of beauty. Then if you look at a fashion magazine, you'll see a parade of white people selling things. You can find it all.
In the 1960s you couldn't find that kind of array [of people], partly because there weren't so many outlets, but also because these markets were not seen as big. As brown-skinned people got more money to buy things, what they wanted to see began appearing in advertising. It's all bound up with advertising and marketing and purchasing.
One of the biggest whiteness-themed pop culture sensations of the past few years was the blog Stuff White People Like. Many people thought it was racist. What did you think?
I was a professor at Princeton for a long time -- and I did my Ph.D. at Harvard -- and I circulated among wealthy people. So much of what is considered "what white people like" is what middle-class people like. I live in New Jersey and we have middle-class people of every background and we all like those same things. It's very common, particularly in the 20th century, to make the equation that white means middle-class.
It's a lazy equation, and as time goes by it becomes lazier and lazier.
"The History of White People": What it Means to be White
How bad science and American culture shaped a racial identity -- and why America can't stop obsessing over it
BY THOMAS ROGERS
In 2000, the Human Genome Project finally answered one of the most fundamental questions about race: What, if anything, is the genetic difference between people of different skin colors -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian? The answer: nearly nothing. As it turns out, we all share 99.99 percent of the same genetic code -- no matter our race -- a fact that, geneticist J. Craig Venter claimed, proves that race is a "social concept, not a scientific one."
But as Nell Irvin Painter explains in "The History of White People,"her exhaustive and fascinating new look at the history of the idea of the white race, it's a social construct that goes back much further and is much more complicated than many people think. In the book, Painter, a professor of American history at Princeton, chronicles the evolution of the concept of whiteness from ancient Rome -- where, she points out, the slaves were largely white -- to the 21st century America and explains how, in the era of Obama, our once-narrow concept of whiteness has become at once far broader and less important than ever before.
The elevation of some ethnic groups -- Germans and Scandinavians -- as "whiter" than others can largely be tied to a small number of scientists who shared an obsession with both measuring people's skulls and pinpointing the world's "most beautiful" people. As Painter writes, a number of social and demographic upheavals (which she dubs "enlargements of whiteness") over the last two centuries have gradually thrown many of those assumptions into question.
Salon spoke to Painter over the phone, about the meaning of "Caucasian," America's obsession with racial difference, and the real meaning of Stuff White People Like.
Why write a history of whiteness?
We've spent so much time in this country on various racial issues. It's our national sport, in a way, and it's always as if there is only one side: nonwhite. But this is one of those binaries where you need both sides to make sense of it.
I want to point out that this book is not about white nationalism. It's not about how bad white people are. It's about how we have thought about people now considered white. I used to encounter reservations about the project, and people would ask, "Why are you doing this as a black person?" People hear it's a book called "The History of White People" and that it's by a black author, and make assumptions.
We've all seen the word "Caucasian," usually when we're filling out forms, but most of us have no idea where it came from. What is a Caucasian, exactly?
It comes from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who applied it to a large swatch of humanity on the 11th of April, 1795, with the publications of the third edition of his dissertation, in Latin, about the varieties of mankind. He used the word "Caucasian" because he wanted to underscore the beauty of white-skinned people. He thought they were the most beautiful. He located these people in Europe, east into Russia, south into India and southwest into North Africa. The Caucasus is a border area between Europe and Asia and it's an area freighted with mythological baggage -- Jason and the Argonauts, Mount Ararat.
The Human Genome Project found that there's no genetic basis for racial difference. Is this the end of race?
This is nothing new. As long as there's been a discussion about race, there's been a disagreement about how many there were and how to make the distinction -- shade, color, height, where the hole in your skull is for your spine to go in, shape of the hand. There have been all these different criteria and nobody ever agreed. Even somebody like Blumenbach called them varieties. Varieties shade imperceptibly into one another. Different experts differed on how many varieties there are. Some people said two -- beautiful and ugly. Blumenbach said six.
But just as there's been the discovery that race is a concept with no scientific meaning, there's also been a cultural movement to rerace knowledge. When the genome was completed in 2000, the headlines were, "Race is meaningless," "We're all the same," and then three to four years later there came, "I am a race-profiling doctor." There was heart medicine marketed to black people. What's really interesting about finding race in the genome in terms of diseases is that diseases that have been discovered so far with a strong genomic cause are among white people, not black people.
Why do Americans have this persistent desire to create racial difference out of nothing?
Our culture was founded in 1789 right about the same moment that Blumenbach was inventing Caucasians -- this moment of racialization. Some people say race is in our national DNA so that we just can't get away from it. I don't know if we ever will.
As you write in the book, there were four great expansions of what America considers whiteness. What were they?
The first three are expansions of whiteness, because the assumption was that to be American you first had to be white. The first occurred in the Jacksonian era, in the first half of the 19th century, when citizenship criteria were changed from wealth to race. That's when adult males of any income were allowed to vote, as long as they were considered white. Things changed in the 20th century, when different groups came in as immigrants and people of Irish background were incorporated into the notion of American whiteness. The third great enlargement took place in the mid-20th century, starting with the New Deal in the 1930s and WWII. Politics and the mobilization of Americans to fight the Great Depression and to fight the Second World War opened up American-ness to people who had been considered alien races and their children and grandchildren.
We're currently in the midst of the fourth great expansion, which is an expansion of the idea of the American -- that an American doesn't necessarily need to be white to be considered American. "American" now includes Hispanics, for example, and people who identify themselves as multiracial. Because of this sort of great enlargement, we can no longer sum up the American as one person or the white man as one person.
What do you think is behind this latest change -- "American" no longer meaning "white"?
The two big reasons are immigration and the opening of the American economy after the Civil Rights Act. A huge proportion of Americans are now immigrants, and immigrants don't necessarily think in black-and-white terms. Less than half of immigrants identified themselves as white in the 2000. Now sometimes people who are white are identified by race. And in writing about the tea parties, for example, journalists will now often note that the crowd is mostly white, whereas before I don't think that would have been pointed out; [it would have been assumed].
How do you think the election of Barack Obama plays into this?
Whenever you tinker with one part of the equation, it affects the rest of it. I think to the extent that we realize that Obama has a white mother and a white family, this alerted us to the existence of people with parents from different backgrounds. People have been migrating and fornicating forever, so there's no such thing as a pure person, and I think Obama's background just puts that front and center in our attention.
It's conspicuous that many of the scientists who were trying to determine the "most superior" white race were obsessed with figuring out which race was best-looking.
Physical beauty and race were thought to be something physical and permanent that can be passed down generation to generation, but if you look at magazines from the 1960s or the 1920s, you see that ideas of beauty change. What I find so fascinating is that if you look carefully at the faces of many models today, they would not have passed as beautiful in the middle of the 20th century. Now we look more at bodies. We like bodies to be very thin -- like thinness is beauty.
Every few years there also seems to be a new fashionable ethnicity for runway models -- one year it'll be Russians, the next it's Brazilians.
It's called fashion for a reason. Popular culture is a many-splendored thing. I was in New York recently, where I saw a great big billboard of Kimora Lee Simmons, who is a brown person who is an embodiment of beauty. Then if you look at a fashion magazine, you'll see a parade of white people selling things. You can find it all.
In the 1960s you couldn't find that kind of array [of people], partly because there weren't so many outlets, but also because these markets were not seen as big. As brown-skinned people got more money to buy things, what they wanted to see began appearing in advertising. It's all bound up with advertising and marketing and purchasing.
One of the biggest whiteness-themed pop culture sensations of the past few years was the blog Stuff White People Like. Many people thought it was racist. What did you think?
I was a professor at Princeton for a long time -- and I did my Ph.D. at Harvard -- and I circulated among wealthy people. So much of what is considered "what white people like" is what middle-class people like. I live in New Jersey and we have middle-class people of every background and we all like those same things. It's very common, particularly in the 20th century, to make the equation that white means middle-class.
It's a lazy equation, and as time goes by it becomes lazier and lazier.
The Loons and Kooks Have Turned "Conservative" Into A dirty Word And Are Now Trashing The Word "Patriot"
The Limbaughistas and Beckites have turned the GOP into a Party of Fools and Scoundrels. The Party of Nope is Running on Empty.
Monday, March 22, 2010
No Wonder the Garbage Obstructionist Party (GOP) Is So Violently Against Health Care Reform
TEN THINGS EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM
From MoveOn.org -- March 22, 2010:
1. Once reform is fully implemented, over 95% of Americans will have health insurance coverage, including 32 million who are currently uninsured.
2. Health insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny people coverage because of preexisting conditions—or to drop coverage when people become sick.
3. Just like members of Congress, individuals and small businesses who can't afford to purchase insurance on their own will be able to pool together and choose from a variety of competing plans with lower premiums.
4. Reform will cut the federal budget deficit by $138 billion over the next ten years, and a whopping $1.2 trillion in the following ten years.
5. Health care will be more affordable for families and small businesses thanks to new tax credits, subsidies, and other assistance—paid for largely by taxing insurance companies, drug companies, and the very wealthiest Americans.
6. Seniors on Medicare will pay less for their prescription drugs because the legislation closes the "donut hole" gap in existing coverage.
7. By reducing health care costs for employers, reform will create or save more than 2.5 million jobs over the next decade.
8. Medicaid will be expanded to offer health insurance coverage to an additional 16 million low-income people.
9. Instead of losing coverage after they leave home or graduate from college, young adults will be able to remain on their families' insurance plans until age 26.
10. Community health centers would receive an additional $11 billion, doubling the number of patients who can be treated regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.
If it's Good for the American People, The Garbage Obstructionist Party (GOP) Is Against It.
From MoveOn.org -- March 22, 2010:
1. Once reform is fully implemented, over 95% of Americans will have health insurance coverage, including 32 million who are currently uninsured.
2. Health insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny people coverage because of preexisting conditions—or to drop coverage when people become sick.
3. Just like members of Congress, individuals and small businesses who can't afford to purchase insurance on their own will be able to pool together and choose from a variety of competing plans with lower premiums.
4. Reform will cut the federal budget deficit by $138 billion over the next ten years, and a whopping $1.2 trillion in the following ten years.
5. Health care will be more affordable for families and small businesses thanks to new tax credits, subsidies, and other assistance—paid for largely by taxing insurance companies, drug companies, and the very wealthiest Americans.
6. Seniors on Medicare will pay less for their prescription drugs because the legislation closes the "donut hole" gap in existing coverage.
7. By reducing health care costs for employers, reform will create or save more than 2.5 million jobs over the next decade.
8. Medicaid will be expanded to offer health insurance coverage to an additional 16 million low-income people.
9. Instead of losing coverage after they leave home or graduate from college, young adults will be able to remain on their families' insurance plans until age 26.
10. Community health centers would receive an additional $11 billion, doubling the number of patients who can be treated regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.
If it's Good for the American People, The Garbage Obstructionist Party (GOP) Is Against It.
President Obama's Response to the Garbage Obstructionist Party (GOP) On Health Care Reform
The White House Blog -- March 22, 2010
This Is What Change Looks Like
After a historic vote in the House to send health reform to the President, he speaks to all Americans on the change they will finally see as they are given back control over their own health care:
Good evening, everybody. Tonight, after nearly 100 years of talk and frustration, after decades of trying, and a year of sustained effort and debate, the United States Congress finally declared that America’s workers and America's families and America's small businesses deserve the security of knowing that here, in this country, neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams they’ve worked a lifetime to achieve.
Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics. We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. We didn't give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges. We proved that this government -- a government of the people and by the people -- still works for the people.
I want to thank every member of Congress who stood up tonight with courage and conviction to make health care reform a reality. And I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people. But it was the right vote. I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her extraordinary leadership, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn for their commitment to getting the job done. I want to thank my outstanding Vice President, Joe Biden, and my wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, for their fantastic work on this issue. I want to thank the many staffers in Congress, and my own incredible staff in the White House, who have worked tirelessly over the past year with Americans of all walks of life to forge a reform package finally worthy of the people we were sent here to serve.
Today’s vote answers the dreams of so many who have fought for this reform. To every unsung American who took the time to sit down and write a letter or type out an e-mail hoping your voice would be heard -- it has been heard tonight. To the untold numbers who knocked on doors and made phone calls, who organized and mobilized out of a firm conviction that change in this country comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up -- let me reaffirm that conviction: This moment is possible because of you.
Most importantly, today’s vote answers the prayers of every American who has hoped deeply for something to be done about a health care system that works for insurance companies, but not for ordinary people. For most Americans, this debate has never been about abstractions, the fight between right and left, Republican and Democrat -- it’s always been about something far more personal. It’s about every American who knows the shock of opening an envelope to see that their premiums just shot up again when times are already tough enough. It’s about every parent who knows the desperation of trying to cover a child with a chronic illness only to be told “no” again and again and again. It’s about every small business owner forced to choose between insuring employees and staying open for business. They are why we committed ourselves to this cause.
Tonight’s vote is not a victory for any one party -- it's a victory for them. It's a victory for the American people. And it's a victory for common sense.
Now, it probably goes without saying that tonight’s vote will give rise to a frenzy of instant analysis. There will be tallies of Washington winners and losers, predictions about what it means for Democrats and Republicans, for my poll numbers, for my administration. But long after the debate fades away and the prognostication fades away and the dust settles, what will remain standing is not the government-run system some feared, or the status quo that serves the interests of the insurance industry, but a health care system that incorporates ideas from both parties -- a system that works better for the American people.
If you have health insurance, this reform just gave you more control by reining in the worst excesses and abuses of the insurance industry with some of the toughest consumer protections this country has ever known -- so that you are actually getting what you pay for.
If you don’t have insurance, this reform gives you a chance to be a part of a big purchasing pool that will give you choice and competition and cheaper prices for insurance. And it includes the largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in history -- so that if you lose your job and you change jobs, start that new business, you’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable care and the security and peace of mind that comes with it.
This reform is the right thing to do for our seniors. It makes Medicare stronger and more solvent, extending its life by almost a decade. And it’s the right thing to do for our future. It will reduce our deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade, and more than $1 trillion in the decade after that.
So this isn’t radical reform. But it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like.
Now. as momentous as this day is, it's not the end of this journey. On Tuesday, the Senate will take up revisions to this legislation that the House has embraced, and these are revisions that have strengthened this law and removed provisions that had no place in it. Some have predicted another siege of parliamentary maneuvering in order to delay adoption of these improvements. I hope that’s not the case. It’s time to bring this debate to a close and begin the hard work of implementing this reform properly on behalf of the American people. This year, and in years to come, we have a solemn responsibility to do it right.
Nor does this day represent the end of the work that faces our country. The work of revitalizing our economy goes on. The work of promoting private sector job creation goes on. The work of putting American families’ dreams back within reach goes on. And we march on, with renewed confidence, energized by this victory on their behalf.
In the end, what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American Dream. Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge -- we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
This Is What Change Looks Like
After a historic vote in the House to send health reform to the President, he speaks to all Americans on the change they will finally see as they are given back control over their own health care:
Good evening, everybody. Tonight, after nearly 100 years of talk and frustration, after decades of trying, and a year of sustained effort and debate, the United States Congress finally declared that America’s workers and America's families and America's small businesses deserve the security of knowing that here, in this country, neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams they’ve worked a lifetime to achieve.
Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics. We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. We didn't give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges. We proved that this government -- a government of the people and by the people -- still works for the people.
I want to thank every member of Congress who stood up tonight with courage and conviction to make health care reform a reality. And I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people. But it was the right vote. I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her extraordinary leadership, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn for their commitment to getting the job done. I want to thank my outstanding Vice President, Joe Biden, and my wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, for their fantastic work on this issue. I want to thank the many staffers in Congress, and my own incredible staff in the White House, who have worked tirelessly over the past year with Americans of all walks of life to forge a reform package finally worthy of the people we were sent here to serve.
Today’s vote answers the dreams of so many who have fought for this reform. To every unsung American who took the time to sit down and write a letter or type out an e-mail hoping your voice would be heard -- it has been heard tonight. To the untold numbers who knocked on doors and made phone calls, who organized and mobilized out of a firm conviction that change in this country comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up -- let me reaffirm that conviction: This moment is possible because of you.
Most importantly, today’s vote answers the prayers of every American who has hoped deeply for something to be done about a health care system that works for insurance companies, but not for ordinary people. For most Americans, this debate has never been about abstractions, the fight between right and left, Republican and Democrat -- it’s always been about something far more personal. It’s about every American who knows the shock of opening an envelope to see that their premiums just shot up again when times are already tough enough. It’s about every parent who knows the desperation of trying to cover a child with a chronic illness only to be told “no” again and again and again. It’s about every small business owner forced to choose between insuring employees and staying open for business. They are why we committed ourselves to this cause.
Tonight’s vote is not a victory for any one party -- it's a victory for them. It's a victory for the American people. And it's a victory for common sense.
Now, it probably goes without saying that tonight’s vote will give rise to a frenzy of instant analysis. There will be tallies of Washington winners and losers, predictions about what it means for Democrats and Republicans, for my poll numbers, for my administration. But long after the debate fades away and the prognostication fades away and the dust settles, what will remain standing is not the government-run system some feared, or the status quo that serves the interests of the insurance industry, but a health care system that incorporates ideas from both parties -- a system that works better for the American people.
If you have health insurance, this reform just gave you more control by reining in the worst excesses and abuses of the insurance industry with some of the toughest consumer protections this country has ever known -- so that you are actually getting what you pay for.
If you don’t have insurance, this reform gives you a chance to be a part of a big purchasing pool that will give you choice and competition and cheaper prices for insurance. And it includes the largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in history -- so that if you lose your job and you change jobs, start that new business, you’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable care and the security and peace of mind that comes with it.
This reform is the right thing to do for our seniors. It makes Medicare stronger and more solvent, extending its life by almost a decade. And it’s the right thing to do for our future. It will reduce our deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade, and more than $1 trillion in the decade after that.
So this isn’t radical reform. But it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like.
Now. as momentous as this day is, it's not the end of this journey. On Tuesday, the Senate will take up revisions to this legislation that the House has embraced, and these are revisions that have strengthened this law and removed provisions that had no place in it. Some have predicted another siege of parliamentary maneuvering in order to delay adoption of these improvements. I hope that’s not the case. It’s time to bring this debate to a close and begin the hard work of implementing this reform properly on behalf of the American people. This year, and in years to come, we have a solemn responsibility to do it right.
Nor does this day represent the end of the work that faces our country. The work of revitalizing our economy goes on. The work of promoting private sector job creation goes on. The work of putting American families’ dreams back within reach goes on. And we march on, with renewed confidence, energized by this victory on their behalf.
In the end, what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American Dream. Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge -- we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
The Tea Party Tea-Baggers Have Turned Loose The March Hare, The Mad Hatter, The N-Word, The F-Word, and the K-K-K-Krazies
N-Word and F-Word Shouted by Tea Party at Black, Gay Lawmakers
From Diversity, Inc. -- By Gail Zoppo - Mar 22, 2010:
Democratic U.S. Congressmen John Lewis, who is Black, and Barney Frank, who is openly gay, were targets of hate-filled racist and homophobic epithets on Saturday; Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, who is Black, was spit upon.
Although historic legislation passed by Congress Sunday night would extend healthcare to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, many wonder if the Tea Party demonstrators' actions were a platform for virulent racism and homophobia.
What motivated the mob of about 1,000 protesters in Washington, D.C., on Saturday?
Former President Jimmy Carter said that racism was a key factor in the Tea Party's opposition to the bill. That racism is directed at President Barack Obama and also takes into account that Blacks and Latinos, who disproportionately have lower incomes, would receive the most benefits from the healthcare bill.
On Saturday, Lewis, a civil-rights leader who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the '60s, was leaving the Cannon office building across from the Capitol when he heard protesters shout "Kill the bill, kill the bill," reports McClatchy Newspapers. "I said, 'I'm for the bill, I support the bill, I'm voting for the bill.'" That's when Cleaver, who was walking a few yards behind Lewis, reportedly heard the N-word hurled from the crowd and was spit upon. U.S. Capitol Police led him into the building to ensure his safety.
According to UPI, the person who allegedly spit on him was released after Cleaver declined to press charges.
Protesters also hurled racial epithets at Rep. Andre Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, according to BusinessWeek.
"I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, told UPI.
According to the Post, Frank was confronted by about 100 protesters inside the Longworth House Office Building where he was targeted with anti-gay slurs and urged to vote against the bill.
"The healthcare bill is proxy for a lot of other sentiments, some of which are perfectly reasonable, but some of which are not," Frank reportedly told the Boston Globe.
It "appear[s] that at least some of the opposition is rooted in something other than philosophical differences over individual mandates," stated NPR's Frank James. "Some of us have long suspected that at least part of the opposition to the overhaul is part of the freeform hostility some Americans feel toward the political ascendacy of people who don't look like them or who have a different sexual orientation."
A posting on NPR concurs: "From what I have observed, the election of the first [B]lack president has made it impossible for those who were sort of able to contain their feelings on race, almost impossible for them to do so. I do believe much of the anger and hatred expressed at the town hall meetings during his campaign, and at the political rallies now, and in the rhetoric of entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and others, and in the protestors waving signs with racial slurs, all of it, is the same mentality that did allow people to call [B]lack people n****rs, and allowed segregation and discrimination, allowed lynching and the acquittal of the murderers, and allowed open Klan rallies, and allowed Klan members to serve in Congress and on the Supreme Court, and allowed cops to command their dogs to bite or turn their fire hoses on people. How we see it being manifested today may be different, but the motivation is the same…"
From Diversity, Inc. -- By Gail Zoppo - Mar 22, 2010:
Democratic U.S. Congressmen John Lewis, who is Black, and Barney Frank, who is openly gay, were targets of hate-filled racist and homophobic epithets on Saturday; Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, who is Black, was spit upon.
Although historic legislation passed by Congress Sunday night would extend healthcare to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, many wonder if the Tea Party demonstrators' actions were a platform for virulent racism and homophobia.
What motivated the mob of about 1,000 protesters in Washington, D.C., on Saturday?
Former President Jimmy Carter said that racism was a key factor in the Tea Party's opposition to the bill. That racism is directed at President Barack Obama and also takes into account that Blacks and Latinos, who disproportionately have lower incomes, would receive the most benefits from the healthcare bill.
On Saturday, Lewis, a civil-rights leader who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the '60s, was leaving the Cannon office building across from the Capitol when he heard protesters shout "Kill the bill, kill the bill," reports McClatchy Newspapers. "I said, 'I'm for the bill, I support the bill, I'm voting for the bill.'" That's when Cleaver, who was walking a few yards behind Lewis, reportedly heard the N-word hurled from the crowd and was spit upon. U.S. Capitol Police led him into the building to ensure his safety.
According to UPI, the person who allegedly spit on him was released after Cleaver declined to press charges.
Protesters also hurled racial epithets at Rep. Andre Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, according to BusinessWeek.
"I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, told UPI.
According to the Post, Frank was confronted by about 100 protesters inside the Longworth House Office Building where he was targeted with anti-gay slurs and urged to vote against the bill.
"The healthcare bill is proxy for a lot of other sentiments, some of which are perfectly reasonable, but some of which are not," Frank reportedly told the Boston Globe.
It "appear[s] that at least some of the opposition is rooted in something other than philosophical differences over individual mandates," stated NPR's Frank James. "Some of us have long suspected that at least part of the opposition to the overhaul is part of the freeform hostility some Americans feel toward the political ascendacy of people who don't look like them or who have a different sexual orientation."
A posting on NPR concurs: "From what I have observed, the election of the first [B]lack president has made it impossible for those who were sort of able to contain their feelings on race, almost impossible for them to do so. I do believe much of the anger and hatred expressed at the town hall meetings during his campaign, and at the political rallies now, and in the rhetoric of entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and others, and in the protestors waving signs with racial slurs, all of it, is the same mentality that did allow people to call [B]lack people n****rs, and allowed segregation and discrimination, allowed lynching and the acquittal of the murderers, and allowed open Klan rallies, and allowed Klan members to serve in Congress and on the Supreme Court, and allowed cops to command their dogs to bite or turn their fire hoses on people. How we see it being manifested today may be different, but the motivation is the same…"
The Garbage Obstructionist Party Strikes Again
The Health Care Reform bill passed the House yesterday by a vote of 219-212 -- without a single vote from the GOP.
The Garbage Obstructionist Party Strikes Again.
The GOP: All for the Big Insurance Companies and the Super-Rich --- Zilch for the Middle Class and the Working People.
The Garbage Obstructionist Party Strikes Again.
The GOP: All for the Big Insurance Companies and the Super-Rich --- Zilch for the Middle Class and the Working People.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tea Party Tea Baggers Showed Their True Colors Yesterday
Anti Health Care Reform Protesters Get Rowdy, Racist
March 21st, 2010
Everybody Has a Right to Protest.
Shouting (the N-word!) to — and spitting on — Black elected officials because you disagree with their politics is unacceptable, downright racist, un-American and, as some Tea Partiers found out, illegal.
Yesterday, Tea Party and other anti-health care protesters crossed the line outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
As Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and three Black staffers walked out of the Cannon Building at the U.S. Capitol, a group of demonstrators closed in on them and shouted the n-word. Another protester spat on another Black lawmaker, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.)
Capitol police pushed back the unruly group of protesters that assaulted Lewis and arrested the man who spat on Cleaver.
“It was absolutely shocking to me,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn. “I heard people saying things today I had not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.”
Another angry group lobbed another favorite that begins with “F” at Rep. Barney Frank (D-Ma.)
All around the Capitol grounds and nearby in Washington’s Union Station yesterday, it was common to see protesters walking around holding signs with clearly racist words and images.
Cleaver’s office released a statement shortly after the incident. “The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the other Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care,” it read. “After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.”
March 21st, 2010
Everybody Has a Right to Protest.
Shouting (the N-word!) to — and spitting on — Black elected officials because you disagree with their politics is unacceptable, downright racist, un-American and, as some Tea Partiers found out, illegal.
Yesterday, Tea Party and other anti-health care protesters crossed the line outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
As Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and three Black staffers walked out of the Cannon Building at the U.S. Capitol, a group of demonstrators closed in on them and shouted the n-word. Another protester spat on another Black lawmaker, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.)
Capitol police pushed back the unruly group of protesters that assaulted Lewis and arrested the man who spat on Cleaver.
“It was absolutely shocking to me,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn. “I heard people saying things today I had not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.”
Another angry group lobbed another favorite that begins with “F” at Rep. Barney Frank (D-Ma.)
All around the Capitol grounds and nearby in Washington’s Union Station yesterday, it was common to see protesters walking around holding signs with clearly racist words and images.
Cleaver’s office released a statement shortly after the incident. “The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the other Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care,” it read. “After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.”
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Brother Michael Moore Declares Bart Stupak Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain
My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain
By Michael Moore
From The Huffington Post -- March 20, 2010
I live in Michigan, in one of the 31 counties represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by none other than Mr. Bart Stupak, a Democrat. You've probably never heard of him. He's a pretty quiet guy, a former Michigan State Police trooper who boldly decided to run some 18 years ago as a Democrat in a rural part of Michigan that votes almost exclusively for Republicans (yes, I know -- what am I doing here? I'll save that story for a future letter).
His voting record is pretty conservative for a Democrat, but he's had a few shining moments. In the wake of the Columbine shootings, he voted for some gun control, a not-too-popular position to take here in northern Michigan. The NRA came after him with all they had in 2000.
But the good people of this area knew Bart's story and understood: He's been touched personally by gun violence. In a terrible tragedy, his teenage son, depressed and confused from the medication he'd been prescribed, killed himself with the family's .38 revolver. Despite the NRA's best efforts, Bart was returned to Congress by an overwhelming margin.
Yet, here we are, just days before a weak, simple-minded, but now ultimately necessary health care bill has a chance of making it through Congress -- and Bart Stupak is threatening to derail it because he wants to make sure that no woman who buys her own insurance with her own money is able to have a medically-insured abortion. We're not talkin' about federally-funded abortions -- those were stupidly outlawed long ago. Bart Stupak doesn't like that the Democrats' bill doesn't prohibit private insurance programs, set up for those whose employers don't provide it, from providing abortion coverage if they get any federal funding -- even to an individual woman paying without any government help. That's it.
A group representing most of America's 59,000 Catholic nuns has written to Congress and said that Obama's health care plan should be passed. Stupak, instead, has chosen to diss the nuns. Last night he went on TV and dug his heels in -- he said he intended to stop this health care bill and he didn't care what anyone had to say.
Now, it would be easy for some to just pass this attitude off on his Catholicism -- he believes what he believes and you have to respect him for that, even if you don't agree with him. But it's not that simple. It turns out that Stupak has been living in a subsidized room in the "C Street House," run by the infamous right-wing Christian cult "The Family." It was in this former convent that GOP Rep. Chip Pickering (according to his former wife) carried on the affair that ended his marriage. It's where South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford sought refuge as his marriage fell apart thanks to his affair. And then there's C Street roommate Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who cheated on his wife with the wife of one of his top staffers. (The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Ensign committed a felony while paying off his aide to keep him quiet.)
C Street is where power, money, sex and religion meet. So am I led to believe that Bart Stupak lives in a brothel and belongs to a cult? He says he was just renting a room there. But that just doesn't ring true. Something stinks to the high heavens here, and Stupak sees no irony in taking his holier-than-thou position while living in a house that should be dubbed "Hypocrites' Hideaway."
If Stupak were truly pro-life then he'd vote for this bill. Right now, a mother in the U.S. has a ten times greater chance of dying in childbirth than a mother does in Ireland. If you really wanted to reduce abortions, you'd have to ask yourself this question: Why does godless France, where abortion is nearly free (it's covered by their universal health insurance), have 20% fewer abortions per capita than we do? What's even more amazing about that statistic is that you can't even get an abortion in America in 87% of our counties because there isn't one single doctor in those counties who will perform one! 87%!! The Right has scared them to death -- sometimes literally -- out of performing an otherwise legal, safe procedure. So, you can say women have "choice" in this country, but the reality is the "choice" doesn't exist in the majority of the nation. "Right to Life" has essentially won this battle. (My personal position: I don't get to have a position -- I don't have a uterus. If a Senate that was 90% female told me I couldn't have a vasectomy or made it a crime to leave the toilet seat up, I guess I might object.)
What is "life"? An egg is life, a sperm is life. Those sperm aren't running on a battery pack. They are living creatures, as is a fertilized egg. But they're not "human beings." A human being is something that can exist outside the womb of a mother. If you think a fertilized egg is a human being, then I respectfully ask you to go down to the DMV today and have them change your birthday on your driver's license to 9 months older than what you've been telling everybody.
So back to my question. Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France's (and more than twice as high as Germany's), especially considering most doctors here won't perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don't become bankrupt over medical bills -- those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.
And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the "Christians." If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn't the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?
Because it isn't about "universal health care." It's about controlling women, period. It's about sticking your nose in other people's business. It's about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One -- even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You've just gone and made it up about "life beginning at conception." Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women's uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.
After all, isn't it enough that women can't get an abortion in any of the 31 Michigan counties you represent in Congress? There is not one single abortion provider here in the north of the state, according to Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan. Hey, Bart -- you've already won! Women's rights have been stamped out in your entire Congressional district! Woo hoo!
So why don't you leave the rest of the country alone, step out of the way, and let them have the minimal health coverage this bill will give them? You wouldn't really crush the sick and infirm because of your own personal agenda, would you? What would Jesus do?
In the meantime, Bart, my neighbors and I are going to make sure a real Democrat runs against you in August's primary here. One of our religious beliefs in these parts is to never impose our religious beliefs on others.
Right On, Brother Moore. Way To Go, Baby.
By Michael Moore
From The Huffington Post -- March 20, 2010
I live in Michigan, in one of the 31 counties represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by none other than Mr. Bart Stupak, a Democrat. You've probably never heard of him. He's a pretty quiet guy, a former Michigan State Police trooper who boldly decided to run some 18 years ago as a Democrat in a rural part of Michigan that votes almost exclusively for Republicans (yes, I know -- what am I doing here? I'll save that story for a future letter).
His voting record is pretty conservative for a Democrat, but he's had a few shining moments. In the wake of the Columbine shootings, he voted for some gun control, a not-too-popular position to take here in northern Michigan. The NRA came after him with all they had in 2000.
But the good people of this area knew Bart's story and understood: He's been touched personally by gun violence. In a terrible tragedy, his teenage son, depressed and confused from the medication he'd been prescribed, killed himself with the family's .38 revolver. Despite the NRA's best efforts, Bart was returned to Congress by an overwhelming margin.
Yet, here we are, just days before a weak, simple-minded, but now ultimately necessary health care bill has a chance of making it through Congress -- and Bart Stupak is threatening to derail it because he wants to make sure that no woman who buys her own insurance with her own money is able to have a medically-insured abortion. We're not talkin' about federally-funded abortions -- those were stupidly outlawed long ago. Bart Stupak doesn't like that the Democrats' bill doesn't prohibit private insurance programs, set up for those whose employers don't provide it, from providing abortion coverage if they get any federal funding -- even to an individual woman paying without any government help. That's it.
A group representing most of America's 59,000 Catholic nuns has written to Congress and said that Obama's health care plan should be passed. Stupak, instead, has chosen to diss the nuns. Last night he went on TV and dug his heels in -- he said he intended to stop this health care bill and he didn't care what anyone had to say.
Now, it would be easy for some to just pass this attitude off on his Catholicism -- he believes what he believes and you have to respect him for that, even if you don't agree with him. But it's not that simple. It turns out that Stupak has been living in a subsidized room in the "C Street House," run by the infamous right-wing Christian cult "The Family." It was in this former convent that GOP Rep. Chip Pickering (according to his former wife) carried on the affair that ended his marriage. It's where South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford sought refuge as his marriage fell apart thanks to his affair. And then there's C Street roommate Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who cheated on his wife with the wife of one of his top staffers. (The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Ensign committed a felony while paying off his aide to keep him quiet.)
C Street is where power, money, sex and religion meet. So am I led to believe that Bart Stupak lives in a brothel and belongs to a cult? He says he was just renting a room there. But that just doesn't ring true. Something stinks to the high heavens here, and Stupak sees no irony in taking his holier-than-thou position while living in a house that should be dubbed "Hypocrites' Hideaway."
If Stupak were truly pro-life then he'd vote for this bill. Right now, a mother in the U.S. has a ten times greater chance of dying in childbirth than a mother does in Ireland. If you really wanted to reduce abortions, you'd have to ask yourself this question: Why does godless France, where abortion is nearly free (it's covered by their universal health insurance), have 20% fewer abortions per capita than we do? What's even more amazing about that statistic is that you can't even get an abortion in America in 87% of our counties because there isn't one single doctor in those counties who will perform one! 87%!! The Right has scared them to death -- sometimes literally -- out of performing an otherwise legal, safe procedure. So, you can say women have "choice" in this country, but the reality is the "choice" doesn't exist in the majority of the nation. "Right to Life" has essentially won this battle. (My personal position: I don't get to have a position -- I don't have a uterus. If a Senate that was 90% female told me I couldn't have a vasectomy or made it a crime to leave the toilet seat up, I guess I might object.)
What is "life"? An egg is life, a sperm is life. Those sperm aren't running on a battery pack. They are living creatures, as is a fertilized egg. But they're not "human beings." A human being is something that can exist outside the womb of a mother. If you think a fertilized egg is a human being, then I respectfully ask you to go down to the DMV today and have them change your birthday on your driver's license to 9 months older than what you've been telling everybody.
So back to my question. Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France's (and more than twice as high as Germany's), especially considering most doctors here won't perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don't become bankrupt over medical bills -- those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.
And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the "Christians." If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn't the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?
Because it isn't about "universal health care." It's about controlling women, period. It's about sticking your nose in other people's business. It's about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One -- even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You've just gone and made it up about "life beginning at conception." Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women's uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.
After all, isn't it enough that women can't get an abortion in any of the 31 Michigan counties you represent in Congress? There is not one single abortion provider here in the north of the state, according to Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan. Hey, Bart -- you've already won! Women's rights have been stamped out in your entire Congressional district! Woo hoo!
So why don't you leave the rest of the country alone, step out of the way, and let them have the minimal health coverage this bill will give them? You wouldn't really crush the sick and infirm because of your own personal agenda, would you? What would Jesus do?
In the meantime, Bart, my neighbors and I are going to make sure a real Democrat runs against you in August's primary here. One of our religious beliefs in these parts is to never impose our religious beliefs on others.
Right On, Brother Moore. Way To Go, Baby.
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