Our guest blogger today is Bill Brent (Birdman) who has some clear opinions about the political parties.
d'blank
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The healthcare/health insurance reform bill has passed. There are a couple of issues brought up in the senate that will require a revote in the house but, by all accounts, this won’t be a particularly onerous road block. Polls are starting to turn in favor of the bill and Obama. The stock market didn’t crash. The sun came up the next morning and conservatives have not found themselves in liberal gulags doomed to a future of lectures on the joys of Mao’s little red book and reading William Burroughs “The Naked Lunch” in Esperanto.
Republicans and their Tea Party shock troops have responded with death threats and bricks through the windows of democrats offices. A dozen or so republican (and one conservative democrat in LA) attorneys general have filed suit in federal court claiming the bill is unconstitutional. Senate republicans are blocking committee meetings on everything from military readiness to the environment.
Every state in the union is dealing with financial troubles to the pointing of cutting education funding and other vital services. Wasting limited financial resources on legal arguments settled in 1832 is irresponsible to the point absurdity.
I can only hope that the patina of respectability that these hard right conservatives have enjoyed in the past, has worn off. And, yes, the Republican Party that has encouraged and nurtured them falls into the same category.
I've had it with these people who tear up when they hear the national anthem, declare their love of country to point of pugnacity, and drape themselves in the flag but have no sense of a larger community and shared sacrifice for the greater good. They appear to be saying "this is my country, not yours", I've got mine, f**k you." Just as the recent threats and acts of violence are not isolated, I don't think this is an isolated view either and certainly not limited to the south. If right-wing republicans don’t want to participate in government they should simply go home and leave the job to responsible adults.
This is a big opportunity for democrats but I’m sure they’ll squander it if for no other reason than tradition.
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15 comments:
Repeating myself, this legislation was a platform which Mr Obama ran on and was elected to fulfill. The mandate was for reform, he was not elected over the multitude of details. The hardened core of the opposition to everything he represents has been a drag on American politics since day one. The heart of this movement is kicking and screaming about loss of its entitlements. They have lost power to women's votes, to access to slavery, to other people's civil rights. They have been on board and been trying to pull up the gang plank since the War of Independence. Denial of science, except for technology that fits into their hands, and service to the god of their creation, underscores their hypocrisy. They act as if their progenitors did lightly give up their own prior beliefs to be forced to wear the yoke of the values that they now call theirs.
Certainly not culturally, but in a biological sense they are our brothers. If not for accident of birth we too would be screaming and hollering about change. Perhaps we as humans cannot manage such a large society.
Put another way:
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
NOW YOU GET MAD when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans... oh Hell no.
First of all Hankster, who are "they". and how do you know they are all screaming and hollering. I'm not mad. Just wondering how a bill could be passed that supposedly no one really knows what all is in it. Kinda like when the current POTUS was voted in.
I for one, am all for sharing as well as volunteering and I have. However I have too much negative experience showing the true "colors"/nature of what people are capable of. Therefore, I quit giving people the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.
This is not really the point here, but between the media and everyone's opinion about the military, until they have been there, I don't think anyone should critisize them. There is an excellent possibility they like standing up for their country. I think I'd rather go along with a terrorist being waterboarded then seeing anyone anywhere have their head cut off.
If it is true that no one on the right got angry about those things d'blank posted, it is because we were made to feel safe in this country at one time. No one feels that way anymore. We were told to show solidarity after 911. Now we are broken.
I remember after the current POTUS was voted in, he made a joke about his kids taking Air Force One out on a joy ride while buzzing NYC. Real funny joke.
Truthfully, right now I'm torn. I read AARPs page on medicare and I want to believe it. However, I voted for Clinton to see what he could do about this situation here, and while from what I understand he did some good, he also ignored the 'chatter' about the 911 attacks. We all know who ended up being the scapegoat for that.
Anyways, this is the fourth time I've tried responding here to "health care reform -- the next day".
SC Transplant is incorrect about Clinton and chatter. Richard Clarke wrote that there were constant meetings at the WH about it and Clinton wouldn't let it drop even to the point of annoying his staff.
Then when W came in, he did not view the monitoring at the WH a priority the way Bill did.
This is not in anyway to say that W wanted it to happen or the government was behind the attacks. Just that according to Clarke the monitoring of terrorists was not as high a priority to W as it was to Clinton.
Clinton also bombed Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan after terrorist bombings of US embassies in Africa. The republican response was that he was only doing it to get Monica Lewinsky off the front pages.
When Clinton tried to freeze the assets of International organizations suspected of funneling money to Al Qaeda, Republican Phil Gramm killed the legislation. Once 911 happened Bush was able to get a Republican Congress to do exactly what Clinton proposed.
SC transplant -- I am a veteran and I don't think anybody was/is criticising the military. I do, however, take issue with the civilian decision makers in the Bush administration that cavalierly sent soldiers in harm's way under a false premise.
But that's ancient history by now and not relevant to our current situation. This canard that "nobody knows whats in the bill" is simply a republican talking point meant to blur the fact that much of the bill will be popular with American people.
Republicans treat passed legislation they don't like the same way they treat elections that don't go their way. They attempt to deligitimize and demonize the winners. That's not really how democracy is supposed to work now is it?
OK, I stand corrected.
I seem to recall the Democrats treating the election of Bush '00 in exactly the same manner except multiply by a factor of 10. There are many examples of left wing demonstrators carrying far worse messages than the Tea Party folks. Signs that said Kill Bush, pictures of Bush with bullet holes in his head, a noose around his neck, etc. The media did not find those messages so abhorrent. Can you imagine the response if it was Obama in those pictures? The Republicans did not go ballistic over those signs about Bush, they chalked them up to kooks and quacks not the Democratic party.
I am not SC Transplant. I am SC Explant :)
I would refer everyone to Frank's column of Sunday. "They" are not apoplectic over health care. They are apoplectic over a black president, a female speaker, a wise Latina Justice and a gay man as chairman of one of the most important House committees. When "they" say they want to take "their" country back - that's who they want to take it back from. I don't think it has a whole lot to do with health care.
Fenway is right on the mark regarding the point of Frank Rich's column. The Tea Party was out from day one saying screaming about tax increases and Obama had not even proposed a tax increase.
I am an old white southern and a former marine. The Tea Party and the GOP see me as their target audience. I am the person who should be against change, the person who is uneasy at best about a blackman as President.
People like me are supposed to wax nostalgic for the good old days where it was a white Christian world and we even made the Jews sing Christmas carols in school.
I lived in the segregated south and knew it first hand. When 16 I was the only white guy cutting grass at the Chattanooga Airport for my summer job. The rest were black guys who had families. It didn't seem right then and I have no desire to go back, but I suspect that I'm in the minority of my old fart brethren. But I do know instinctively what emotion they are preying on, and it is not charity for all.
I could care less about off-shore drilling. Does that make me Sarah Palin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRX4R9cYeDQ
Anything changed in the last 40 years? War? Government? Rich vs. Poor? You?
I say we all get together & talk about everything in Kent. This is the 40th anniversary of the May 4th murders.
http://www.m4tf.org/
"Just wondering how a bill could be passed that supposedly no one really knows what all is in it. "
Do we have any people here who reads legislation? From what I understand, it is always thick as a brick, full of hidden gems and untested.
"They?" There is a heart of darkness within the breasts of all men. It does not appeal to the noblest of ideals. It is tit for tat. An eye for an eye rather than turning the other cheek. It is built on making more of oneself by making less of others. It speaks of freedom but is really about unregulated access to limited resources. It doesn't care about who is downstream. It is all of us when we don't want to be bothered by the details of the conditions of the animals which are raised for our food or the soldiers who have to defend the flow of oil when we could be weaned of the oil pipeline and, instead of being soldiers, they could be building a better world for their children. It is those who accuse others of being unpatriotic.
You might take me for an elitist SOB but those things you have used to defend your POV have been soundly refuted by quicker tongues. They are made of straw. None on this screen has as much power as a pawn on a chessboard. Collectively, we don't have the power of a passing thought in the mind controlling the hand which moves the chess pieces. But we do love to vent. Don't take anything I say emotionally. However, there are people on this blog who are looking for a face to swing at in this frustrating era of general decline. I am one of them.
See the link below for photos of posters by anti-Bush protesters. They make the Tea Party protests seem tame by comparison. www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621
There will always be kooks. There's now denying that and I don't anybody is trying to. What seems to be different here is that these kooks are literally being cheered on by republican members of congress.
The fellow on Zombietime said that nobody had been charged for threatening Bush. A quick google search found 3 hits on first two pages of people charged with threats on W.
The Washington Post gave more play to Tea Party people protesting in DC than to any of the anti war demostrations. It was all over the front page.
Then again the Post was for invading Iraq and the surge, so they had no incentive to show anti-war protesters if there goal is to only cover their political agenda.
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