PLENTY of PASSION, LOW on REASON
Quite a number of signs, banners, and interviews associated with the participants on last weekends 'Conservative' march on Washington championed the idea of increasing governmental encroachment on personal freedom. Perhaps this is so but there was virtually no one validating this serious claim with objective evidence. Quite to the contrary there was one indisputable fact that indicates that the very opposite of their passionate convictions is closer to the truth of the matter.
Seque to an article in todays' New York Times.
A report from Iran indicates that broadening punishment for those protesting the recent election results is taking the form of arresting the children and grandchildren of some of the dissidents.
I imagine that many Americans will greet such news with a preverbial HO HUM - what else is new?
But this is just the point.... At least up to today our present government is no where close to 'punishing' anyone who protests anything with such draconian measures. To censure Joe Wilson is fair and reasonable in the context of agreed upon boundaries of agreed upon civility. This limitation to personal freedom is equivalent to the prohibition to censure anyone in a theatre yelling fire.
Seque back to the conservative protestors.
Many of their signs and comments were provocative to say the least if not by most reasonable peoples' standards a bit over the top. Really now: Obama is a facist: the equivalent of Hitler and Stalin rolled into one. And all the other not too thinly veiled racist and fear mongering non sense.
My point is - that with all of this free flowing surge of pure hatred might it occur to the protestors and their adherents that at least up to today the current administration is more than tolerant of their provocations but even endorsing their right to protest even in their mean spirited way.
I challenge the protestors to imagine they are doing the same thing in the same way on the streets of Teheran.They would likely be shot or at least imprisoned quickly.
I hope I have managed to confuse them with the facts of the matter.
God Bless America! And as for President Obama: A Plus.
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Comments: 41
also in D.C. on the 12th
press hits:
Billionaires Thank Tea-Baggers at Glenn Beck's March on Washington
"For the last decade, health-care costs have been moving in the right direction: up!" said Phil T. Rich
AlterNet on 9/14/09
You Lie!
"... sang songs about how health care reform would destroy their posh lives."
Slate on 9/13/09
Protesters upset over federal spending descend on D.C.
Phil T. Rich: "We're here to thank the teabaggers that are here that are helping us save those profits..."
Chattanooga Times Free Press on 9/13/09
Thousands of downtown DC protesters blast Obama
"Monet Oliver D'Place ... says he and his colleagues in the health care industry like it just the way it is."
Associated Press on 9/12/09
More...
After 4 years of hearing sore loser aimed at the Democrats because Democrats complained about rigged elections that were almost a wash, the Republicans are the real sore losers and they can't take it.
Imagine Jesse Jackson jr yelling "you lie" in the middle of a George W. Bush State of the Union Speech after one of those "oooh be very afraid of WMDs in Iraq" statements. It is doubtful that the Republicans would have been content to merely admonish him, as was done in the case of Joe Wilson.
Any lie they agree with is a fact.
It's the one thing they do well. It's more of Turdblossom Plan - "Accuse others of what we do/are."
I ran across a book by Max Blumenthal yesterday "Republican Gomorrah," that explains the "mindset" of these people.
Persistent denial of reality, un-apologetic ignorance, and the confidence of self-righteousness
Who can beat that?
Ditto when these conservative gun slingers showed up at the town hall meetings.
None were arrested.
Looks to me as though the Democrat president is allowing more freedoms than the Republican president did.
The Republicans will then turn to our new immigrants, there are sufficient numbers to keep winning elections. Muslim refugees, Mexican and South American, and they are all having lots of babies.
Numbers count.
So the main reason the Republicans are losing interest is that there are no longer enough of them to swing an election.
What we have now- which by the way Bush & Co set up and Obama & Co have so far merely carried out- is really bad. But it's still better than it could have been if we had just thrown up our hands and said, let it work itself out.
What business or bank has been taken over by the goverment?
Bush had as many if not more czars.
No one wants to hijack your health care but only control the runaway cost and get all Americans covered.
You seem to be protesting something that is not true.
Not true, Marilyn. You know this is not true but continue to say it anyway. Why? This isn't even about health care, it's about insurance.
We want a tax supported health plan with a public option. We know exactly what it means in taxes and know that we will have more control over our health care and money than when buying an individual policy from a private provider.
Medicare is an excellent program. The largest money problems are from persistent over-billing by some of the insurers and the for profit hospitals.
There is something I don't really understand. And forgive me for missing your transformation into gather's anti-tax total self responsibility goddess.
I was on gather, then gone for or two or three years Anyway, I remember now that you once told us how you had been unable to work for years, and had been during all that time trying to get Social Security Disability, which comes with Medicare and that you had to apply for and accept aid for families for yourself and your children to survive.
I would think there is a huge conflict in your thinking/action.
Cena, you're right. I am disabled. And I have been since 2002. And that government that you think should decide all of your health needs has told me to find a job where I can wear a diaper, where I can pick and choose what days and hours I can work, where the employer will understand when I have to be drugged for the pain or when I have to take a 2 hour nap with about 10 minutes notice, one where I don't have to have public contact because of the skin condition on my hands, where I don't come into contact with any chemicals because of my sensitivities. And on and on.
People think that makes me bitter and that I don't want anyone else to have something I cannot.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
It makes me realistic. It makes me realize that if you put your health in the hands of the government, you will be let down. I've seen that with my own family and friends on Medicare and Medicaid. I've seen it with my dad and the horrible VA care he got. There is no way in the world that we should let all Americans be forced to have Uncle Sam deciding everyone's care. And that is exactly where we're heading.
And what people don't seem to realize - one that door is opened, it means the next president and the next and the next, the next Congress and the next and the next - will be the ones deciding your health.
does not allow price negotiation and was a nice gift to the insurance companies. The republican health plans and that dog of a plan from Dem. Baucus is just a giant gift to the Insurance companies.
A health care plan is going to be passed. I hope you contact your legislators and tell them that a plan without a public option is not worth having.
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Marilyn - I don't think there is one person who would not ideally agree with you about the 4 things you want. Of course you are talking about living in a utopia. Now if you are ready, willing and able to live in the 'real' world you will have no choice but to face the facts that we are living and have been living in extraordinarily difficult times - world wide.
The real concerns for all of us is how to adopt those policies which can get us to the point where we can get closer to having those 4 values of your matched and sustained.
We can save billions upon billions of dollars by instantly unilaterally ending our participation in the war in Afganistan - to of course an admittedly who know what for sure future. If you ruled the country would that be your decision? I think not.
As far as health care hijacked right at the moment there are 5 bills waiting to be voted on. It appears that the drug companies, the insurance companies are way in front of the government with respect to the final outcome. I would be interested in your stating any evidence based on real facts that would validate your sweeping obviously passionate but seemingly unrelated to reality statements.
Contray to what you are saying - I don't think you have an iota of a clear idea as to what you are protesting that squares up with what is realistically going on.
I wish we all did not have to wait for this big dramatic whining to take however many years it is going to take to wear itself out, Republicans had their chance to show us what they were, and they took it.
Doesn't it make you wonder?
Brainstorm for Healthcare
MSNBC did it awhile ago. Here is the link.
No one I know is against much needed and much overdue health care reform, but to say this current proposal is anything but health care insurance transfer of authority is creative imagination. As it stands, it's all about power and all about money with a nice, fresh, creamy frosting to hide the moldy cake.
The Democrats want to put in the public option. All the republican plans and that very bad Baucus plan are strictly for the insurance companies.
I hope you will contact your legislators and tell them you want a health plan and that it must have a public option.
True. Apparently, some people would rather help them keep their obscene profits than help others get the care they need. I think we just have to accept what this says about the character of those people and move on without them.
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care parade is rationality. Iraq's excuse can only
be a 6,000 year history of regional tyrannical
dictatorship, dating back to the Pharoahs of
ancient Egypt.
What excuse the Republicans have is anybody's
guess. Might have something to do with bribery.
In either case, there is one aspect I see in
common: both are absolutely consumed with
thoughts of death and dying.