There are the misinformed who believe that health reform is just a euphemism for killing the elderly, but at least I can understand why they’re protesting health reform, even if they’re wrong. The rest of the contingent, though, is making less and less sense. The teabaggers are a prominent force in the protests, which seems odd given that Obama has pledged that health reform will not add to the deficit. There also appears to be a sizable contingent of birthers involved. There would have to be, given that only a minority of Republicans believe Obama is a US citizen.
Suddenly, in the last few days, the protests have expanded to include a new, completely unrelated group of conservative gripers — gun-toting right-to-bear-assault-rifle activists:
About 12 people were carrying guns, including at least one semi-automatic assault rifle, outside a building where President Obama was speaking today.
…The man spotted carrying the assault rifle and a pistol, who gave his name only as “Chris”, was asked why he was armed. “Because I can do it,” he said. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms.” [Emphasis added]
Damn Obama and his plan to use health reform to take away your assault rifles!
If you think this is completely illogical, you’re right. What we’re seeing here is the right wing coming unhinged. They’re not really interested in health reform — that’s simply the topic of the moment. They’ve been whipped into a frenzy by the hard-right media, and they’re now venting their anger over any and every bit of misinformation they’ve been handed over the last 30 years. Bringing assault rifles to confront the President?! Are you kidding me?
The big question is how this will all end. Will right wing rage be able to hold up progress when we need it most? Or will Americans realize how deranged the right has become and throw their full support to the party actually working to make a difference?
which seems odd given that Obama has pledged that health reform will not add to the deficit
If other, nonpartisan sources could verify Obama’s claim, I don’t think there would be the sentiment against his health reform. You’d be left with just a handful of irrelevant wackos yelling about killing grandma.
Unfortunately, that claim by Obama is enough in question — by credible and nonpartisan sources — that it is casting a shadow on his entire plan.
You’d be left with just a handful of irrelevant wackos yelling about killing grandma.
So, DtM, you really think that if “credible and nonpartisan” sources verified Obama’s claim, that would silence the 42% of republicans (hardly a handful) who believe Obama’s not a citizen? Puleeze!
Despite your numerous attempts to poo-poo these people, they ARE a major force to contend with. This is the right laid bare.
I’m so dang naive. I actually think this is all about the healthcare bill.
“I’m so dang naive. I actually think this is all about the healthcare bill.”
You give yourself too much credit. That’s not simple naivete’
“What we’re seeing here is the right wing coming unhinged”
I think you should look at the left to see who’s coming “unhinged”!
You’re correct: The right has always been unhinged. We’re just noticing it more these days.
Ahaha! That was great, you’re response was like “No, you’re really the one whose crazy!” You sure showed him!
Rhetoricians have struggled for centuries to refute the dread “I know you are, but what am I?” metastasis.
Sort of your version of… “Who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?”
When is it proper to bring semiautomatic weapons to political events, other than maybe a Ku Klux Klan meeting in the woods? You can not tell me that the average American citizen, not too involved in politics but votes once in a while, is looking at these gun nuts swanning around and saying “Good idea.” Even fairly apolitical people understand that tempers flare at demonstrations and that most of the citizens there are unarmed and peaceful. There isn’t a single soccer mom or dad in America who is getting good vibes for the Republicans out of this. Should anything actually happen involving these penile deficient gun nuts, independents are going to run away from the Republican Party.
As a partisan DFLer I say keep going… bring the missiles, grenades and thermonuclear weapons you use for hunting and make sure you look real menacing. You will see huge Democratic majorities if the Republicans continue this theater of the damaged and demented.
Thanks for providing a stellar example, CMan.
I’m rubber, you’re glue. No tags back. Nyeah, nyeah.
Some of these crazies are at best intimidating and clearly potentially dangerous. TPM has been reporting on this story:
“While “Chris” was the guy who carried around the assault rifle at the Obama event in Phoenix yesterday, it appears to have been another guy, Ernest Hancock, who organized the whole thing. And Hancock, who was also on the scene with a holstered handgun, turns out to have had very close ties to a 90s-era Arizona militia group called the ‘Viper Militia’ most of whose members were eventually sent to federal prison on various weapons and explosives charges tied to plans to bomb federal buildings.”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
I’ve taken the kids to political protests and rallies but wouldn’t stick around if I observed a bunch a people carrying weapons in a charged atmosphere. So much for free speech. I wonder what republican leaders will have to say about this latest form of armed protest if it continues and grows in number.
I’ll give the Neoconservative Republican conmen credit:
They took every Wacko Walnut, Brazil Nut & Peenut & rattled their cages.
Then slapped them all together into one insane mob.
Not even Nicaraguans nor Cuban revolutionaries could do this very well!
Its easier to kick sandcastles down, than build them.
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Has Phelps & Westboro Church joined up yet?
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Your reference to teabaggers takes you to a link to one of your own posts on the tea parties. What evidence do you have to support that a majority of townhall protestors are also involved with the Tea Party movement. Have you been to any of these townhalls, yourself?
I have and I can’t tell you the number of people, mostly seniors who say they have never participated in anything like this before and never thought they would. But, they are tired of their voices not being heard by politicians. Any politicians, Republicans and Democrats. An underestimation by the left of what source is behind the passion of these protests guarantees further success in the future for the conservative movement.
An interesting observation:
The conservative yahoos appear to driving the agenda of the Republican party. This is not news to most of you, but I’m seeing it more and more. The faction that is going nuts about healthcare reform represents 5% of the country, but they appear to be speaking for 40% of the country.
As the christian conservative / uber libertarian wing of the party dominates, it chases moderates out of the party.
Where do those moderates go? Because as we’ve seen with your treatment of the Blue Dogs in this healthcare debate, they are statistically welcomed into the Democratic party, but ideologically shunned. Just because I disagree with Republicans doesn’t mean I buy in to all of your core policies.
There is no way that the Democratic party can be a big enough tent for people who have moderate views on issues like healthcare to be seriously accepted. We’d have to change our views to be accepted, and that is non-negotiable.
The tent isn’t as big as you make it out to be. There has to be room for a 3rd party.
Then join a third part, Dtm! I have said before you would be a good blue dg, and good to have in the room. I don’t think we shun Peterson, and he is seriously Blue. But yeah, philosophically I really do believe healthcare is human right and the civil rights issue of our time. Constitutionally I believe the pre-amble speaks to it in the common welfare clause, and fiscally our system is killing small business, making it harder to venture on your own and start your own business, and making it harder for our corporations to compete worldwide, not to mention bankrupting our citizens who happen to get sick.
So, for me, universal care is a spiritual, moral, constitutional, and fiscal imperative. I suppose it would be hard to reconcile that.
One question I wish you would answer, DtM, is how Eamnual’s plan accounts for the fact that the bottom line is, the more care insurance companies deny, the more money they make. Profit is the free market motivator and responsibility to their share holders. How are you going to stop them from denying every single thing they can? This is not hyperbole. This is what they do. Denying care is how they make money.
Thanks,
Alec
We need not care about how much the guy on the other side of the fence makes. We need only care that we are getting the best quality care for all at a fair price.
Government’s job isn’t to police profits. Government’s job is to drive standards and a basic welfare for its citizens.
It’s a tomato-tomahto thing. I don’t see the issue so much as “policing profits” as I do not being overly solicitous towards the parties who were big players in creating the whole mess in the first place. Sure, they may get their toes stepped on, but if they had acted better in the first place, it might never have happened.
Someone always gets burned by change. I can understand their fears and angers, but we can’t defer or deny needed change just to spare the feelings of those who profited from an unfair situation. It isn’t (always) intended as punishment.
Government’s job isn’t to police profits. Government’s job is to drive standards and a basic welfare for its citizens.
I’m glad you cleared that up for the nation, DtM. Here’s the problem though. What happens when profits get in the way of the best interests of the nation’s citizens? I also noticed you didn’t say ALL it’s citizens. Can we please establish a couple of points? The working poor and the out of work poor don’t have equal access to health care. People are dieing as a result of that situation. You want government standards? How about mandating a standard Health Care fee insurance companies can charge? How about the Insurance industry get charged a fee to pay for all the uninsured who use the system but can’t pay for it? How about standardized forms for the insurance industry? We could have government pay directly to the insurance industry out of a pool everyone pays their health care premiums into. Would that make sense? Or, if co-ops become a choice, every citizen could join, if they want, a single co-operative. We could call it the Citizens of the United States Health Care Co-operative.
DtM,
You didn’t even remotely answer the question! When the profit motive demands that an insurance company deny care, as a first resort, how can this private system ever be cost effective and efficient?
When their first impulse is to reject, that starts the bureaucratic paper shuffle all over again with appeals and resubmissions. That is costing us billions.
I agree, you cannot stop a corporations from making profits. That is why the free market can never provide good health care, because providing good care and making profit are diametrically opposed. To provide care, an insurance company must cut into their profits.
That is interesting Alec as DTM insists he is a fair, capable and well quality manager of business. I was taught the most basic idea in business management is that people do what they are rewarded for… thusly you need to examine how your business is “rewarding” your employees to change any direction or company culture. At present Insurance Companies reward employees who deny healthcare to customers… our system rewards Insurance companies with profit if they can either deny or delay paying for healthcare needs. The Health Insurance system is fundamentally at odds with the purpose of the Medical health system.
Take the focussed profit motive out of the Insurance system and what happens?
Take the focused profit motive out of the Insurance system and what happens?
That depends. Amuseinc, you raise good points about how organizations are incentivized.
Is a Public Payer incentivized as other federal government departments are incentivized, by following policies and procedures and spending down their budget each year? Or they incentivized to push the envelope on innovations, being rewarded when they find more efficient ways of doing things and finding a way to make the program run with no general revenue support?
It’s amazing that a few years ago, people were arrested for trying to attend a Bush rally wearing “No Bush” t-shirts. Now, a man walks around with a semiautomatic assault rifle outside a presidential town hall, and the only thing stuck in his face is a tv camera.
Don’t try to tell me that this isn’t a perfect storm of ignorance, racism, far-right politics, and misinformation. The wingnuts are coming out in force, and it’s time now to go forward without them.
I have prused these boards for the last few nights and I’m truly amazed at what I read. Mr. Hancock knows quite a bit about the Vipers and we all know they were eventually released after serving their prison time. Don’t you realize that they have returned to mainstream America? Hardened Constitutionalist will never change their views. This group is far from “whacked out”, “crazy”, “nut jobs” and “loons”. I am going to bet dime to dollar not one of you have read any official Federal documentation about the case. It’s evident by the posts except perhaps one, none of you have a clue. The Vipers ahd it right back then when they forsaw a socialistic and tolitarian government coming down the pike. Now, I don’t agree with blowing up buildings, retribution against civil servants and so forth but then again when you read the case, well, there wasn’t a case. I am of the mindset that it was a politcal year. Arizona politicians needed a platform and the Vipers answered the call. Before you knew it, statesmen everywhere were jumping on the band wagon. Political careers were made and careers were destroyed on the backs of these people. No - I’m not a Democrat nor am I Republican, a leftie, a rightie, a Conservative, Libertarian or an Independent. I am merely someone who believes in the freedoms set-forth by our Founding Fathers. Simple freedoms at that. When s*%t hits the fan and we all know it will (some are more redescent in their opinions)I do believe that I would want a militia on my side protecting my rights. Should it ever get that far, it’s obvious the powers that be were NOT for THE PEOPLE or BY THE PEOPLE. Maybe it is time to water the tree of liberty ..