Hooray for Pie!

(Boo for Kendrick Meeks, who is about as safe as any man in Congress, and yet behaves like he’s walking a tightrope. And, a reserved “rah” for Moran, who at least had the ability to give straight answers, but still won’t take the pledge to vote against a bill without a public option.)

Still no leaders in Virginia on this issue. Moran won’t take the pledge, and AFAIK hasn’t agreed to vote against any bill that has a federal insurance mandate but no public option. Too bad such an educated and liberal congressional district doesn’t have an advocate in Congress to really fight the good fight, instead of just an alright backbencher.

Very cool. Cherry pie?

I prefer Clyde’s chili with a shot of Jack.

That used to be my Sunday brunch when I lived in N Va.

there’s nothing quite so infuriating as willful ignorance, except, perhaps, those who take advantage of that ignorance.

Meeks is running for the Martinez senate seat here in Florida.

I so wanted to be there, but classes started this week and I teach Tuesday and Thursday evenings (not good for the prof to skip his first class!). I have emailed Moran numerous times and will continue to do so.

But, I really want to hear more about the meeting. How many tea-freaks showed up?

My baby sister took her 3 year old daughter to a very unfriendly Steve Scalise LA-01 healthcare meeting. She had her daughter hold a sign that said “Obama is my President”. The niece added her own two cents to the mix and kept saying over and over “Obama is my President and I am 3″. My sister’s sign said “Healthcare Now”. Best part is the cutest 3 year old protester ever made the front page of the local daily.

Our family friend who attended with her had a sign that said “stop the lies”. He was standing with the 3 year old and had people coming up to him and threatening him. He was even threatened by a member of the press corps. This was all in the ten minutes my sister was parking the car.

These three were the only people in the room not threatening people and acting crazy. Representative Scalise kept spewing lies about the healthcare reform. The crazies were eating it up.

Thanks for the live tweeting last night, Jane. Really captured the feeling of the event. Never ceases to amaze me how many of the people walking around us in this country are operating on intellectual fumes, so to speak.

What’s even sadder is that he wants to be Senator. We already have enough DINO’s in the Senate. We don’t need another.

I feel sorry for you. Thankfully we have someone willing to challenge Snarlin’ Arlen here in PA. Someone who can and will win.

Was it one of the cops who said Terry was a “great American” at the end? Nothing like an unbiased police force I say.

Turncoats of whatever stripe don’t sit well with Pennsylvanians.

I thought I’d describe my experience at this event.

I didn’t get in, though I got close, even though I was in the back half of a line that literally went a half a mile. So I stayed outside with the pro and con picketers, holding a sign I got from someone that said “Insurance Companies = Death Panels”. The antis are as repellent as you imagine and I wasn’t interested in engaging any personally, until some snot-nosed kid started talking condescendingly to a middle-aged woman in my camp next to me about “our liberties”. I told him he was a snot nosed kid who should mind his manners, respect his elders (I’m a forty year old suburban man with two kids, and I had just come from work in my work clothes) and not taunt them with bullshit slogans. Then I took it down a notch and kind of engaged him “on the merits”, just so he would have an example of civility to emulate. He was being civil, in fact, and then things went very wrong. He started in with, “You know, Hitler in the 30’s…” (National Socialist, get it?) . Well, how, exactly does one respond to something so maliciously irrational, so jeeringly provocative and contemptuous of history? And then I thought: my wife is Polish; her family’s country was occupied for five years, nearly all of its Jews murdered, her own people terrorized, starved and enslaved, and its cities razed by those Nazis. I just told the kid I was going to punch his fucking face in for pulling that shit. At which point five counter protesters all converged on me to argue with me (what could I possibly argue? That they weren’t making a correct appraisal of the history of German Social Democracy, much less militarism and racial theories? Was I supposed to talk about Bismarck?). They were somewhat disparate, of different ages and sexes, yet there was unanimity in their acceptance of his argument that was horrifying. At a certain point I just told them to back the fuck off and I engaged the least aggressive, most sentient (if brainwashed) one out of them (a woman, of course), in a very civil dispute (she had played the trick of holding up a copy of a big fat bill and saying “have you read this? Have you read this?). I wasn’t really interested in changing her mind – I just needed to reestablish some measure of civility with someone, who for all I might have know, might have been a neighbor, or had kids going to the same school as mine. This was what I found so ugly about the experience: the understanding that these very same potential neighbors would rush to side with the vicious slogans of some punk, against me, someone they have things of substance in common with.

I won’t repeat the experience. I think the phase of noisy public agitation in this debate is over. The anti protesters were making a very big deal over the fact that an Obama organization (OFA, I believe) had handed out signs, as if showing up for the miserable event and standing in the heat wasn’t enough of a commitment. I’m not going to go argue with these fucking wankers over placard authenticity.

I did get on tv at 11:00, though. Washington’s Channel 7 news asked for the opinion of a “supporter” (whatever that means, given the absence of a bill) and I said, “I don’t believe our health care system in this country should be built around middlemen, namely, insurance companies. I think they’re scammers who don’t compete fairly, and that’s why, at the minimum, I want a public option in which the government steps in to enforce competition with them.” They had me, but cut me off after “scammers”.

Shepherd’s pie? Assault and battery is, I believe, still actionable in the state of Virginia, tho, Reston is the nascent planned village (yuk!).

P.S., Thanks for the anecdote, brendanx.

About time.
Sure took the police force enough time to throw one of the “screamers” out. If these had been Code Pinkers or a bunch of hippies or immigrants continuously interrupting these town hall meetings their asses would have been hauled off to the pokey a long time ago.

Pie is nature’s most perfect food.

So will the MSM deign to cover the black eye episode? There’s a bit of mileage, if anyone will get off their fat ass and step up.

And O/T: I was watching WJ this morning on the passing of Kennedy..a plethora of wingnuts calling in with the usual crap. Hey wingnuts: Not even enough decency to let the body get cold?

These really are despicable human beings.

It’s the same sensibility that leads to killing without compunction. This is the same crowd that McCain/Palin were whipping up last fall.

IMHO, you, as well as anyone else not there, cannot tell.

From the volume change, I would suggest it was someone close to the camera, likely, not a cop.

A woman going up and down the line at this even with clipboard (forget name and organization) was taking names and numbers and I mentioned to her that I would like to get a few people to go to Warner’s office (I’m a recent transplant to VA from DC and making up for years of having no representation) to state our viewpoints. She said this is something her organization is hoping to encourage.

Wow. Well, Hunter has had it too, and I’m right with him.

The bit in the video where Terry, Randall starts talking in Spanish to that reporter simply because she had an accent (sounded more Italian at first listen), and she says, “Uhhh….in English please…” was freakin hysterical. Such a revealing moment of the Repub mentality.

I was at town hall on Monday night and really the tea baggers that were there were really ignorant for the most part. Jane’s right, seeing them in person give you a true sense of what these people are like. They really are ignorant.

brendanx @14
I’d handle “Have you read this?” with “Yes, have you?” I would also have studied the table of contents and maybe a few key points first, to have something to quote.

I don’t see what the interlocutor could say then.

I thought that was the skinny white guy they had just passed, not the cop. (I thought it was the cop at first as well, so I watched that part again)

The other dispiriting thing is the understanding that all the money and power stand on the side of these same jeering baboons, and against the rational, empirical, mild-mannered, productive people who make up the majority of my new district.

I’ve been hoping places like FDL can start offering more help in this regard. I feel it’s crucial for long-term momentum for single-payer and other issues that we start educating more “independents” and reasonable Repubs. It’ll have to be organized education efforts and active outreach to these folks.

Saw this in the NYTimes this morning, and made me think it needs to get started now before we fall too far behind:
http://prescriptions.blogs.nyt…..e-revival/

The Family Rescreech Council is distrubuting “Town Hall Kits” to churches. Say what you want about religious groups and churches, they are damn good at organizing people, and we would do well compete with them on those levels as well.

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. This woman had an earnestness I kind of respected. I suspect she may actually have read it.

Very good read. Thanks.

They are undoubtedly ignorant, but their voices are drowning out the voices of sanity, thanks to a stupid and slavish MSM. As I see it, the question remains: How do we flip the argument in such as way as to get the MSM to actually cover it in a semi-literate manner? A tall order, I know, but still…

“The Family Rescreech Council is distrubuting “Town Hall Kits” to churches.”

How can this not be stepping over the line in terms of their tax-exempt statuses? Where is the IRS when we really need it?

I watched on Cspan, hoped to see Jane in the crowd. Rep Moran made a very reasonable offer to let Terry take the first question, but guess that just wasn’t a rational enough alternative for his theatrics.

Thought Dr. Dean answered the Tort reform question honestly, though I would have added that Tort legislation is left to the states.

I watched on CSPAN and I thought overall Jim Moran handled himself quite well although he seemed a little taken aback at times by the crazy. The comedy gold moment was when Rep Moran was calling a name from a card, “Mary Smith, is Mary Smith out there.” And some woman ambles to the front and takes the microphone and starts spouting teh crazy. Rep Moran said ” Well, you’re not Mary Smith, are you? YOu need to go back to your seat.” Then he gave them a little scolding about let’s not all get the idea to do that. And the woman went back to her seat with the craziest smile on her fact. The most unfortunate. other than Terry & Co., was the question from the man, who when Rep Moran turned to Howard Dean, told Rep Moran, “Don’t ask him, you’re my representative I want to hear from you.” I thought that was quite rude. Rep Moran demonstrated he understood the bill as well as any of the reps I’ve heard, and Howard Dean added a doctor’s perspective. Overall, well done, I may send Mr. Moran some Love$>

Folks,

This is what we need a lot more of at all the GOoPer and Blue Dog town halls. Coburn’s failure to say anything about the woman’s obvious distress and his complete nonanswer (we should all take care of each other without the gummint getting in the way) ought to disqualify him from ever holding responsible office.

The way to spot a wingnut is the absence of facts in their rants.

This point came up on an earlier thread, but make no mistake about it. There is a concerted effort on the part of those who lost the election to devalue the public’s faith in government, to delegitamize it. They did the same thing to Clinton, but had the aedvantage of being able to go after him personally, which is not the case with Obama, despite the ‘birth certificate, which is a pale imitation of the Whitewater accusation.

This is one of those stand tall or be crushed moments in our history.

I don’t know why after reading all that, all I have to wonder is: where the hell does one purchase a Cato Institute t-shirt?

Yeah, the birth certificate crap is just a beard for people who wish the constitution said the Presidency requires BOTH parents be American citizens, just to be sure no foreigners end up running the place. ‘Specially black ones. These people will stoop to anything and are fools putty for the vested interests in the Republican Party. Rarely do you see such enthusiasm for acting against one’s own best interests. Not excusing the Dem Reps from heaving to their own vested interests, of course, b/c there is way to much of that too.

Wow, I’m sorry you had such a bad experience. I went to a TH last night on the left coast, and there were a lot of conservatives there and some tea partiers, but the worst were the anti abortion nuts with their stupid dead baby signs. Gross and disgusting and utterly non contributory to the discussion. In fact, the only time things got nasty was over abortion.

My impression was that there were a lot of mis-informed folks there who are very suspicious of government and government programs. These are the people we have to reach. I sat next to a very nice retired lady who said, “I want health care reform, but not this socialist stuff.” I asked her if she was on Medicare. She said, “Yes, but there’s a lot of fraud in Medicare.” I told her, “If I could sign up for Medicare tomorrow, I would. I have a family to support, and the premiums are killing me.” She had no response to that, but I HOPE she’ll think about that later, when she’s at home.

We have to have sane, rational discussions with these folks, and they are out there. Let the hoopleheads stew in their own broth. But try, at least, to get out there and talk to regular, sensible people.

Everyone be careful out there. The right wingers have been stirred up like a hive of yellow jackets!

Yellow jackets? Heck, brownshirts.

BRENDANX (#14)

So. Let me get this straight, sir.

You didn’t care enough to show up in time to get inside, you couldn’t be bothered to make your own sign (”holding a sign I got from someone” with a message that you obviously didn’t create), you picked a fight with a “snotnosed kid” and threatened him (”I was going to punch his fucking face in”), you managed to alienate a group of another 5 people in the area, and you are proud of the fact that you managed to get some TV face time.

Does that about sum it up, hero? And the anti-bill people are the morons?

I was there, too, and I regret that we did not have the opportunity to meet. I didn’t threaten anybody, I made my own damn signs, and I actually had some decent conversations with a few obamabots.

You can refer to me as a tea-bagger or whatever. Could care less. We are now motivated. There will be a reckoning.

There were so many sheep there last night bleating subservience to The Divine One that it made me feel sorry for Northern Virginia. I’ve always been proud to be a Virginian and proud of my heritage.

How sad that you are all in a rush to commit national suicide and hand over your lives to big government.

For the record, I did not observe anything more than exchanges of words between parties. I think that anyone who claims to have actually been in some kind of fistfight is lying, to put it simply. Any such activity would have been splashed all over the news and quickly stopped by the many police that were present.

Skiritae

Thanks for the video. I didn’t realize until seeing it that this Randall Terry is the same person who was earlier conducting street theater out in front of the west entrance to the venue. He was dressed as a doctor murdering plastic doll babies. What was really striking about his little drama, though, were the two middle-aged white guys in blackface representing Obama, who had whips and were flogging other white people dressed up, their clothing stained red from their notional flogging, as a patient and as a taxpayer. The message seemed to be, forget about 400 years of black slavery, that was all some mistaken theory. The real truth is that Black Power holds the whip on oppressed middle-aged white guys in our society. What’s next, “Jews, the true oppressors of the innocent Nazis”?

I was there to get declarations signed by people waiting in line, but it was early, the line wasn’t growing very rapidly, so I decided to stand center of the notional stage these psychodramatists had defined. I figured that the reality of an actual, flagrantly non-oppressed, aging white guy in the middle of their spectacle would break up whatever suspension of disbelief these folks were trying to create. Well, after a while, this person who I now recognize to have been Randall Terry, accused me of being rude. I told him that folks who had two white guys in black face treating white people like slaves was so far beyond “rude” as to make the concept meaningless. Oh, they said, the Obama-as-Simon-Legree impersaonators. That’s just satire, and didn’t I have a sense of humor. Well, I said, in normal people the sense of decency overrules the sense of humor. After that they accused me of being a baby-killer, describing the gory details of so called partial birth abortions, etc.

I’m glad I didn’t know that I was in the presence of that renowned arbiter of manners, Randall Terry. I might have acted in such a manner as to not be a credit to my race.

Xlint article. Thanks!

THANKS for showing this! On the sad day of hearing about Kennedy, this brought a smile to my face. I don’t know which part I liked better, the bimbo who said THANK YOU to Terry before she whined, “You guys are a bunch of BULLIES!” OR Terry’s anger. I have rarely seen him this truly mad. Did he think he was going to easily take over this event? I am sure he was shocked when everyone told him to get the hell out.

Mr. Teabag Virginia – What sort of reckoning do you imagine? 20% of the population cannot reckon a whole lot in America, do you realize this? Does the republican party still believe in majority rule?

Which Southern Virginian “heritage” is that? Segregation? Lynching? Or anti-miscegenation laws? Or were you thinking Jefferson? You’d have tried to burn him for witchcraft if you’d been around then.

How sad that you are all in a rush to commit national suicide and hand over your lives to big government.

No, that sounds more like the heritage of belles in too-tight corsets fanning themselves to keep from fainting. You are a hysterical drama queen, but to your credit, you’re at least not equating a national health system with genocide, just suicide.

If you think of Northern Virginia as a foreign country, you’re worse than the deluded xenophobes who think the kind of national health care the rest of the developed world has is “fascism” or “Marxism” — you really are the bearer of the “heritage” of the America-hating slaver secessionists who preceded you and tried to destroy the country by force of arms as their “reckoning”. Enjoy your concealed weapon permit, your stars n’ bars, and your squirrel brains.

Awesome. Thank you for not disappointing me.

You immediately got to the name calling, race-baiting, and guns ‘n stuff. Very nice. You lost me a little with the “squirrel brains” thing, but that’s OK.

I didn’t mean to have you all jump off the cliff over the “rekoning” comment. Mercy. I was referring to the next election. Duh. We’ll start by taking back the Virginia governorship, then stun everyone in 2010 by throwing out both Democrats AND Republicans. Probably more Democrats….

Conservatives screwed up the last election by sitting it out. Won’t happen again soon.

Skiritae

I actually appreciate the clarification of the “reckoning” and it helps me go to a point: reflect on whether you, too, are guilty of any name-calling here (”sheep”, pity for “Northern Virginia” as if there were some sectarian divide in the state), and, generally, of the language you use. The word “heritage” in a the context of north vs. south (even if just northern vs. southern virginia) and federal legislation has some historical associations with segregation, just the way something equally innocuous and neutral-sounding like “states’ rights”.

Meanwhile, it’s hyperbole and insult to say I am courting “national suicide” because I want the government to intervene in the very flawed (and not very competitive) health insurance system we have.

And some insults are crossing the line. Saying that same desire to enact legislation to change that flawed system is equivalent to Nazism is worse than just flippant historical illiteracy, it’s a malicious trivialization of what Nazi Germany did. That literally five demonstrators found that malicious trivialization commendable really bothered me — especially, as I said, in potential neighbors. That particular falsification of history is not something I will have a civil “debate” about, especially with someone out of the district in which I live at an event for members of the district.

Mr. Skirts in Virginia – Certainly I would be quite stunned if Conservatives manage to do anything but continue to lose Republican voters to the Democratic or at least the Indy side, as y’all seem intent on driving out every rational citizen currently in your party. It didn’t seem to me at all that Conservatives sat out the last election. The voting turnout was large. Conservatives were fed up with the divisive R’s, went Independent in the primaries and voted Dem in the general, quite obviously. The world is a math problem and the math is not in favor of your party, long-term, b/c many of you look like a collection of nuts and extremists. This starves your party of new voters. Not that this bothers me at all, but perhaps it should bother you.

Ok. Fair enough. I can see how you’d interpret some of what I said as name-calling.

Please understand that I do not want the status-quo with regard to health care. The charge that those who oppose the current health reform bill desire things to stay the same is a red herring. Heck, everyone that I know who opposes this current bill thinks the same thing with regard to the need for changes.

I think that our approaches to the problem differ. I certainly cannot speak to what you believe, but I believe that the solution to the way things currently exist lies in a system that has served us well for over 220 years: free enterprise. We need LESS government, not more.

Health reform advocates use the word ‘competition’ as if they advocate a free enterprise system when they describe the Public Option, but I don’t believe that is true competition.

I think there are better ways that have been proven over time: let the market (consumers) decide, let insurance companies compete across state lines, provide meaningful tort reform. Why are we in such a rush to ram something down the throats of Americans that is this important? Most importantly – keep government out of my medical decisions and bank account.

As far as Nazis and Germany go, I’ve not even mentioned them and we probably think alike about the use of the word Nazi for the purposes of hyperbole. The only Nazi stuff I saw last night was being handed out by the Lyndon Larouche people. (and PS: They aren’t ‘righties’.)

I was there last night. I wanted to learn what my representative was for and what was in the bills being proposed. Unfortunately, it seems that the Senate Finance Committee is the one that matters and it probably won’t be as progressive as the three House bills that Rep. Moran was talking about. It’s amazing the amount of misinformation that is out there. I looked up George Washington’s 110 Guidelines of Civility today. I wish that enough of the copies had been made for all of those in attendance because a lot of the people there would have learned something.

I fully support healthcare reform (and would prefer single-payer, so you know which side I’m coming from), yet I have to say I agree with most of Skiritae’s assessment of your behavior, brendanx. What the hell were you thinking? What did you hope to accomplish by threatening to punch some kid in the face?

If I had been there and heard you make that threat, I’d have “converged on you” as well!

And if you “weren’t interested in changing anyone’s mind,” then why did you engage them in debate? Why did you continue opening your yap when it became apparent that your aggressive comments were provoking the mob even more ? You, sir, are just as shrill, overly-aggressive and antagonistic as the people you oppose. If you cannot keep your temper under control at these events, then stay the hell home. You make the rest of us look bad.

Free enterprise has been utterly bastardized by the insurance companies who operate with a level of collusion and manipulation that would shame the mafia. Why do you prefer insurance bureaucracy in your medical decisions? Did you also argue that Bush/Cheney were moving too fast when they ran through their tax cuts and energy policies in 2001? Again my question, do Republicans still believe in majority rule and all that encompasses?

It’s hard to have competition when there are one or two dominant health insurance carriers in most states.

Allowing insurers to “sell across state lines” leads to the insurers going to the least restrictive state to set the baseline. Rather like banks do now. Go to the state with the most wide open, anything goes laws, and that becomes the national standard.

Tort reform is a red-herring. Even in states where it has been done, insurace premiums for individuals outpace inflation. And Texas, which has lead the way in this, has about the highest per cent of uninsured.

So working for over 60 years (over 90 if you go back to Teddy Roosevelt’s proposals for universal health care) is just moving too fast, huh?

Are you not aware that VA and Medicare, are in fact government programs? Do you think the government is telling GIs what the medical decisions must be? And do you think that insurance companies are NOT telling doctors what to do in treatment? Your naivete amuses and astounds.

Mr/Ms whynot,

Thank you for your concern about the future of the Republican Party.

Quick story: Back in the dark ages – maybe 1989 – I was setting up a reception at the Sheraton hotel in Reston. This was, of course, during the height of the Regan presidency and everything seemed to point to continued Republican dominance. I ran into some guys setting up the conference room next to ours and I asked them who they were. When they said the Democratic Party, I had to stifle a laugh. Seriously? Were there still Democrats around? And wow, they even *admitted* they were Democrats!

I was young and stupid then. Now I am older and more experienced, anyway. The worm turns.

Yeah, “The world is a math problem and the math is not in favor of your party”, but I’ll deal with it. It won’t cause me to be any less passionate or less active.

Thanks for the very gracious reply. The anonymous written forum of a comment log allows for sharper language than a face to face encounter would, so I hope you don’t have any hard feelings.

Your observation about competition over state lines, for example, is a good one — you recognize, unlike a lot of people willing to travel to a town hall with placards — that it is a false dichotomy to see this solely as a current “free market” versus government administration. I could entertain “tort reform” as more of a good faith argument if I didn’t feel Republicans weren’t always trying to extend it to all kinds of liability, but I’m inclined to believe it’s one of the explanations for “defensive medicine” (not the only one — I think culture and economics are other factors). One thing you forgot to mention in your market solutions to these problems is something Obama has advocated: an insurance exchange as a means of introducing price competition (the kind, I believe, federal workers can get).

There are actual points of agreement between us on what the problems are in this historical accident of employer-based health insurance we have, and we might actually agree on a couple of the less savory political dimensions of the bill crafting. Those points of agreement are easier to distinguish when they’re not wrapped up in epithets. I’ve actually got to run, so sorry to cut it short.

Truly no one should ever entertain trying to silence your voice. However some of the Republicans at health care meetings don’t want a meeting. They want noise and a scene and an opportunity to portray their reluctance to accept majority rule and Obama as President. Further, they wish not to accept (via the shop-worn slow it down meme) policies endorsed by the majority of voters. This is my concern for the Republican party more generally, that your leaders refuse to participate in government beyond a vision whereas obstruction of the majority serves as governance. You have been politically active since at least Reagan’s era. Again I ask you, did you complain the Republican agenda was rammed through too quickly in 20001 on taxes and energy? Or is it just Democratic first-year agendas with which you find fault?

Well, I confess to being naive about a lot of things, but military medicine is not one of them. I’ve been the fortunate beneficiary of some very good Army doctors back in the day. However, I don’t think very many people are making the argument that Obama’s plan would provide all Americans with the quality medical care that our soldiers rightly enjoy. Are you making that argument?

With regard to tort reform, I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer. In the opinion of people whom I respect, however, who ARE doctors, tort reform would provide for less “defensive medicine” and lower insurance premiums for doctors. In my naive way, I translate this to lower costs to consumers in a free-market environment.

And why must there always be some dark evil bogeyman? The current evil force-du-jour are insurance companies. I saw a large sign last night that said “Insurance Companies = Death Panels”. Other signs called them evil because they make a profit.

Of COURSE they make a profit. If my company didn’t make a profit, I would not have a job. Not long ago the evil people were Wall Street traders, then the Bankers, then the Big Three car company CEOs…. but now our government owns all of them, so they are the good guys. Where will government stop?

Skiritae

whynot, I’ve got to run, but no. I did not have a problem with the Republican actions that you apparently perceive as wrong in 2001. I thought they were the right thing to do.

I understand that many people think that healthcare for all is also the ‘right thing to do’. I think we just disagree on the ‘how’ of it.

By the way, I am not a big fan of “majority rule”. At the risk of exciting the lawyers in here, I think that our Founding Fathers deliberately established our form of Government as a constitutional republic in order to avoid the tyranny of the majority.

Skiritae

Sorry to jump in when you responded to someone else, such are the bad manners of the internet. Obama’s plan for a public option as part of an insurance exchange would indeed allow individuals and small business to participate, for a market price, in the same quality medical care available at present to seniors and vets. The difference would be both somewhat higher reimbursement rates and a change in payout encouraging better results rather than a higher number of procedures to garner extra payment for perhaps no other reason. No one would be forced to take this plan but it would be non-profit and presumably cheaper. Insurance companies, eager to retain their customers despite the fact that they have abused said customers, would likely lower their collusion-jacked prices and thus all employers would save money, including those that have private insurance for their workers. This is somewhat similar to removing the pay incentive of bankers to take enormous risks b/c they win if they win and taxpayers lose if they lose. The Wall Streeters and Big Auto have not become good guys b/c the government took them over to avert generalized global economic collapse. Please make sensible arguments.
Making a profit is one thing, making a profit based on defaulting on existing contracts, revoking insurance and engaging in price collusion and other non-competitive practices is wrong and has damaged the insurers with their own customers, possibly beyond repair. The government will stop in this case when all citizens have access to proper medical care and health insurance is available for purchase on a freely accessible and regulated exchange.

skiritae, jane and her friend weren’t lying. Also, you said:

There were so many sheep there last night bleating subservience to The Divine One that it made me feel sorry for Northern Virginia. I’ve always been proud to be a Virginian and proud of my heritage.

How sad that you are all in a rush to commit national suicide and hand over your lives to big government.

Well, I feel exactly the same way about you teabaggers. Totally irrational, complete tools of the insurance industry. I was really glad to see a trun out of Virginians who, in the great majority, were in favor of health care reform. As for handing our lives over to the Government is concerned, right now the lives of my children are controlled in significant measure by the health insurance companies and the consequences of how they do business. What I’m interested in is their freedom from these bloodsucking profiteers who are running nothing less than a legal con game. (I’m already free because I have Medicare.) Any person with a lick of common sense would prefer being insured (controlled) by the Government to being ensured by United Health Care, BCBS, or any of the other insurance companies who are killing and bankrupting Americans everyday.

Me too and it has been nice talking with you, although I think you have at last revealed yourself – you believe the 2001 legislative agenda was the right thing to do and were fine with the speed of putting that all in place (first year) but you don’t believe when the Democratic party has won majority across all legislative bodies in DC that they should enact their agenda just as quickly. If you think this country was not established as a majority rule system you have crossed into crazy. Your tyranny of the majority quote smacks of elitism and is facist.

Nope. They never did.

As was finally teased out in reply 60. Not a big fan of majority rule, can you imagine that from the mouth of an American? A Virginian, too boot. Amazingly sad.

brendanx, “Democracy is not a suicide pact.” We don’t have to be civil to those who won’t be civil to us. Calling the Health Care Reform legislation “Nazism” isn’t civil, and we don’t have to take it civilly.

Interesting that in the same comment that you use to praise the actions of the Republican majority in ‘01, you decry “the tyranny of the majority.”

whyknot,

While I am no constitutional scholar, I wanted to provide an explanation of my concern for “majority rule.” While it may work great on a playground, the concept of majority rule can lead to a tyranny of the majority when applied to a nation.

Simply put, in a nation where a majority of citizens can pass laws that apply, not just to themselves, but to all members of the group, judgment is required to distinguish potential laws which are reasonable and fair from those which are tyrannical because they are unnecessary, unfair, and justifiably intolerable to the minority that opposed them. (source: http://www.garlikov.com/philos…..tyrule.htm)

Our Founding Fathers were very aware of this danger, particularly James Madison, who addressed this concept in Federalist Paper 51: “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”

So what controls does our Government have to guard against this danger? Some quick examples are our bicameral Congress (Senate and House of Representatives) and the Electoral College.

I also read another interesting essay called “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill (http://www.constitution.org/jsm/liberty.htm), which helped me better understand this concept.

The bottom line is that no party has the “right” to impose its will simply because “we won.” This principle applies to the Republican Majority in 2001 (to which you referred) as well as to the Democratic Majority in 2009.

We are witnessing the complex, often frustrating process that our nation endures to impose the will of a particular party. Republicans were partially successful in 2001, and I expect Democrats will be partially successful in 2009.

You want it all (the Democrat agenda), and I want less. Ergo, the dance.

In any case, the opponents of either agenda are not necessarily evil, aligned with the rich, pawns of insurance companies, or socialists or communists.

PS: Note to dakine01 (#67): “Republican Majority”, “Democratic Majority”, and “Tyranny of the Majority” are all different things.

Skiritae

You want it all (the Democrat agenda), and I want less.

If you want less, you want us to have nothing, because we’re not getting anything now. (You probably have been too busy watching Faux to notice it.)

“Republican Majority”, “Democratic Majority”, and “Tyranny of the Majority” are all different things.

For the most part, Republicans are straight-up corporatists, Democrats are under-cover corporatists, and the ‘tyranny of the majority’ is what conservatives start bitching about when the majority party doesn’t agree with them on everything.