USA TODAY: Protests tilt views on health care bill

[Iason Ouabache]

Good thing we have a representative government that isn't easily sway by the mob mentality, right guys?

Right??

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?_r=4&hp

Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority's cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans' purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month's Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

[LMNO]

Ok, Howard Dean was on NPR yesterday, and he mentioned something I found interesting, if implausible.

Basically, the Dems took the Public Option off the table to see what the Republicans would do; and instead of backing off, they all but explicitly stated they wanted to kill any healthcare reform, because their goal was not to serve the people, but to hurt Obama.

So, now that their goals have been revealed, the Dems can group together and actuall use their majority to pass the bill they want.



I mean, sure, the Dems are a bunch of pussies, but it's a nice idea...

[Cain]

The Pwogs will pussy out, because they are the WORST SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENT EVAR, the Blue Dog Dems are in the pocket of the pharmaceuticals and the Republicans are batshit insane and filled with malice and hate.

Game, set and match to the forces of pure irrationality and bile, every single time.

[LMNO]

Yeah.


Mrs LMNO asked me this morning why people were going so batshit insane about healthcare at the townhall meetings, and all I could say was, "because they like angry, simple lies better than boring, complicated truth."

[Cain]

The Siftung Leo Strauss said it best, on Stop the Spirit of Zossen:

Still so clueless about with whom they grapple. Bleating like a beaten baby seal: 'Where's the rational dialogue?' Beyond pathetic. Claire Mccaskill Exhibit no. 1. Pure mewling.

We're not going to repeat for the 10,239th time what the Movement is up to, etc., Weimar, yada, yada, yada. Go read Digby or Greenwald for the 'shock.' We can't be bothered to write it anymore. If a governing majority is determined to yank defeat from the jaws of recent victory, be our guest.

Still depressing. America's future still steered by the cynical, self-dealing, manipulative class. Their vessel? Poorly educated, white, easily scared and angered, Baby-Jesus-loving mobs with some racism sprinkled in. The same Plutocrats who prospered under the Warlord floating on a sea of venom, hatred and irrationality making steady progress for the Port of Status Quo.

We've spent too many hours with people who helped set up 'Fox Nation' and communicate with Ailes, Norquist, Newt et al. Their utter disdain for any moral consequences of their political activity is bottomless: especially when overlooking Right Wing moral hypocrisy. Expediency doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. But they know what all the Democrats (netroots aside) don't — you only need to pretend to believe in democracy to *gain* power. An energized minority can overawe the sheople. Be the wedge for the Dictatorship Of The Entitled to govern. Nazis. Guns. Lynching. 'Deal With It!' as the angry internal Fox memos say.

All these Neo-Upper-West-Siders (in spirit if not fact) Starbuckians now on MSNBC crying foul. They wimper and plead for calm discourse over another frappuccino, preferably in NPR tones. They gasp and careen into run on sentences blurting the discovery that lobbying groups are involved! Yeah, for real. Get out !

Democratic consultants tut tut about how these 'crazy' tactics ignore pluralism and politics of the middle. What's the point of supporting the willfully dim? Recall – it took the greatest economic collapse since the Depression to seal the deal last November even with Katrina, Iraq, etc., etc.

...

The very estimable Frank Rich wonders if we're getting 'punk'd'. DOH. See the spectral-looking founder of Politico, Jim VanderHei, equivocate, lamenting that all the town hall shouting and violence makes it hard to see definitively how much *might* be coordinated or a real grass roots phenomenon. He's worse than a battered spouse – he seemingly yearns for the Warlord's boot of fear and punitive control. Laurence O'Donnell then ponders the percentage of 'astro turfing' or 'a genuine uprising' (think about the flinch in those words). But then O'Donnell thinks everything is a sham unless it occurs in the Senate Finance Committee. Did you know by any chance he once ran Committee staff?

Well, we did get Obama out 12 days into August. Should we do cartwheels because Obama had one town hall today? With a gun toting wing nut carrying a sign calling for bloodshed in the audience?

....

Note to Dems, before you get stomped on (again) like hapless chinchillas, go rent 'Terminator':

Kyle Reese: Listen, and understand. That terminator Ring Wing Movement is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Tattoo *THAT* on your foreheads you idiots.

[LMNO]

Somebody's been channeling Spider Jerusalem...

[Triple Zero]

Game, set and match to the forces of pure irrationality and bile, every single time.

that's Our Lady!

[LMNO]

This was fun: I just heard a Republican pundit say that we don't need a Public Option... all we need is "more regulation of the health care industry."   

[Remington]

This was fun: I just heard a Republican pundit say that we don't need a Public Option... all we need is "more regulation of the health care industry."   

Americans, I'm sorry. I'm doing my best to try and keep an open mind, but I grow to hate your country more and more by the day.

[That One Guy]

This was fun: I just heard a Republican pundit say that we don't need a Public Option... all we need is "more regulation of the health care industry."   

A Republican ... arguing FOR increased governmental regulation ...

I ... I just, well ... that's ...

[Cainad (dec.)]

This was fun: I just heard a Republican pundit say that we don't need a Public Option... all we need is "more regulation of the health care industry."   

A Republican ... arguing FOR increased governmental regulation ...

I ... I just, well ... that's ...

... completely in line with the batshittery of the previous eight years?

[That One Guy]

Sad but true. No issue is too important to completely reverse your position on as long as it opposes the Democrats, after all!

In a semi-related note, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/18/frank.heath.care/index.html

Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA) made news by calling the protesters to task. Rather than following the usual "ignore it and hope it goes away" strategy that Dems seem to have been following in the Town Hall meetings during the Recess, Frank bit right back at them.

"When you ask me that question, I'm going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked.

"You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis," he said, adding such behavior demonstrated the strength of First Amendment guarantees of what he called "contemptible" free speech.

"Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table," Frank said to the woman. "I have no interest in doing it."

[LMNO]

This really does show the Democrats' complete lack of organization. 

It seems obvious that as soon as someone noticed that town halls were being heckled by Right Wingnuts, the DNC should have put out an emergecny email instructing congressmen and senators how to deflate and defeat them, with constant talking point updates. Instead, all we got were shots of cowering befuddlement, and a few stumbles towards, "if you don't want gvt healthcare, then stop using Medicare."

W might have been an asshole, but at least his team knew how to deal with the public.

[Jenne]

I wrote this to the assholes from the O Administration who keep emailing me (I don't unsubscribe just so I can see what the fuck they are up to with their "grassroots" efforts and how (in)effectual they are) as well as my Facebook where Obama himself (quote/unquote) is spamming me:

You know, if the Obama Administration is going to back down on universal health care, then I'm out of this discussion entirely.  I fought hard to win support for this president while he was running, but he's bending to the Republican wave of trash all too easily.  These people crowing loudly at the town hall meetings aren't really mad about universal health care--they are mad because they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They won't vote him or Democrats out of office for sticking to their guns and actually getting them affordable health care through the government.

But they will continue to question and be dismayed, as Indpendents and Democrats that are pro-Obama's plans so far are beginning to be, if promises that were made in the campaign fall flat to the floor through a little opposition.  The Bush Administration was able to push through an unpopular war with relative ease through its own opposition...and that has destroyed millions of lives and continues to do so.  Why can't the Obama Administration pass one health care bill that will save millions?  Don't give in to the pressure.  Don't give in to the trash and the refuse that the punditry have been so far very surprisingly yet disgustingly effective in destroying what momentum had been gained in the campaign for this effort.

[Jenne]

And I'm sorry if this is repost, but the Barney Frank response to the "Obama = Hilter" strawman is hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

"on what planet do you spend most of your time"

"it is a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of bile and nonsense is so freely propogated"

"trying to argue with you is like arguing with a dining room table"

to Frank, though he definitely is not interested in the engagement, I have to say, THANK YOU SIR FOR VOICING MY OPINION