Anti contributors seem to want to talk about the health care debates. Every news channel is filled with angry, often rude protestors hollering at an elected official about health care. Let’s consider the following questions:
1. Is this the most productive means of communicating?
2. Is this issue being discussed according to right or left ideology?
3. What about people who do not have health care? Are they being heard? How about those who are in jobs where it is not available or the 10% who are unemployed?
4. What is so great about our health care system?
5. If we exclude people from health care (illegal immigrants, food and beverage people, etc) have we really fixed health care? Won’t we still be paying for those who do not have insurance?
6. Do our congressmen and senators really ‘work for us’ or do we elect them to go represent us? Since ‘us’ have different political views, how can we say they ‘work for us?’
7. President Obama’s health care meeting would not have gone the way Senator Spectrum’s did. No one would have been allowed to get in the President’s face. Should congressmen have additional security during these times?
1. Is this the most productive means of communicating?
I personally hold our elitist representatives, and the way they run this country, in such contempt that I heartily support anyone standing and shouting at them. We need MORE not less of that in this country. it IS wrong to try to ram bills through without time for public debate – as these same buffoons tried to do with Amnesty 2006 and Amnesty 2007. And it IS wrong for them to hold town hall meetings and then limit questions and/or accuse anyone who has concerns of being some type of plant and/or talk on their cell phone while constituents try to communicate with them. I think that our government is so out of touch and our representatives so corrupt that I’ll go further and advocate physical contact – slapping, pushing.
2. Is this issue being discussed according to right or left ideology?
As usual its been politicized by extremists who don’t care about the issue, but about trying to win elections. A pox on both sides.
3. What about people who do not have health care? Are they being heard? How about those who are in jobs where it is not available or the 10% who are unemployed?
Seems to me they’re being overrepresented in the debate, actually.
4. What is so great about our health care system?
It’s flawed with room for improvement. I don’t think that what’s under discussion really addresses much of what’s wrong. At any rate, this needs to be discussed publicly and at some length.
5. If we exclude people from health care (illegal immigrants, food and beverage people, etc) have we really fixed health care? Won’t we still be paying for those who do not have insurance?
We need to sop paying for illegal immigrants’ health care. I’m sure that 80% of Americans agree with me on this. eventually we will shout loudly in the face of enough elitists, and make them put down their cell phones, and we will stop paying for criminals’ health care needs.
6. Do our congressmen and senators really ‘work for us’ or do we elect them to go represent us? Since ‘us’ have different political views, how can we say they ‘work for us?’
They are way far out of touch with the values that most of us hold and that they claim to represent or understand. Again, I submit to you that until something dramatic happens, like voting a lot of them out of office, this will not change and we will continue to have our laws written by corrupt lazy fools.
7. President Obama’s health care meeting would not have gone the way Senator Spectrum’s did. No one would have been allowed to get in the President’s face. Should congressmen have additional security during these times?
They’re worried more about PR spin and the way these clips play than any real security issue. They should have to speak to voters. As it is they are in a strange world of their own where everyone that disagrees is either badly informed or some type of plant trying to sabotage their good works. I see their good works all around me. I am coming to truly despise the whole group of them.
Bottom line this government has taught us one lesson very well – not to trust the people running it. If they claim that the sky is blue, get out and take a look for yourself.
It’s not the best climate for an ambitious reform of the health care industry, nor should it be with the track record of the buffoons who currently inhabit the government.
I can understand the anger and teh “rudeness”. I have emailed Rep. Connolly, Senator Webb and Senator Warner with health care suggestions and other matters. If I get an answer at all, it usually doesn’t even say what I emailed them about. So if they are going to ignore civil communication, then when the public has a chance to confront them, they do. Then you have what appears to be obvious attempts to limit the participation. The message–they don’t want to hear it. Well sometimes to be heard, one has to shout. They dug their own situation.
These guys are all local to us. They could have had a simple thing by meeting with constituents months ago and said, “This is going be an issue this year, how do you feel.” Instead it is “this is what we are going to do, live with it, we won” and we won’t alk to you about it. Not any way to either “work for” or “represent.”
I’d like to add a few more questions.
1. Where in the Constitution does it state that health care is a right? Hint: the answer is not “general welfare”.
2. Why is it OK for Liberals to disrupt, be loud, rude, etc. but not Conservatives?
3. Where is tort reform?
4. Why don’t people bother to look behind the lies? America ranks 37th in the world for health care, right? Pull down the WHO report and see why. Why do people just swallow anything that is fed to them?
5. Do people really think the Government can run anything and “reduce costs”? Really?? Really?????
“They could have had a simple thing by meeting with constituents months ago”
Yeah – if this were really about ideas or plans. They’re just all about SELLING something to us, that they themselves only vanguely have awareness of. As they sold us on the things that led us to the bailouts of 2009, and as they tried to sell us on Amnesty packages that would have increased illegal immigration to new levels.
But there were no ideas to be debated – and now they want to rush something through. It’s unconscionable.
And, as that very angry man noted to Dingell was it, unless you’re a lobbyist they don’t really much care what you think. unless you can scream and shout at them and convince at least 60% of the American people that you’re right – then maybe you stand a chance of changing the minds of these empty headed, morally vacuous, contemptibly corrupt, intellectually bankrupt demonstrated failures that hold “high office” in the United Corporation of America, Inc.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
Where is tort reform? We’ll never get that, because probably half the politicians are lawyers. But that would go a long way in bringing down the cost of healthcare.
I think a big reason people are so angry about this – is once again there seems to be a big hurry to ram this legislation through Congress, and after seeing other legislation hurried through Congress, people are just getting tired of it.
The big lie is that it is urgent to pass it as it is going to help the economy. From what I’ve read, the legislation in its present form is going to be especially tough on small business owners, as well as their employees. Most small business owners will probably find it cheaper to just pay whatever penalty there is for not offering insurance, and their employees will be forced to buy the government plan. Several articles I’ve read say that – and that can’t be good for the economy – as a lot of it is driven by small businesses.
I don’t really agree that tort reform is anywhere near the core of the issue. I think that’s GOP spin to try to build a world where big corporations can be held liable even less for their behavior.
I’m short on time now but I cite as evidence for my position the excellent, underrated film “The Rainmaker”.
As to the way this intellectually bankrupt and phony health care reform jam-through-a-vote effort is going down, I have to believe that it’s hurting Obama politically because I myself have more or less supported him but am really resenting his and the Democrats’ way of doing business at this point.
And I resent the thugs out yelling and screaming and out of control. I would actually like to learn something about what is being proposed. That avenue is cut off because of the mob-rule.
It seems to me that it is all anti-Obama. If the Republicans knew all the answers, where were they the past 8 years? I didn’t see jack proposed about Health care reform. I guess everyone was all happy with the increasing prices and reduced services, people being dropped, people not having a job,, therefore no health care, and people being rejected because of pre-existing conditions? Bull crap!
There’s truth in that but at the same time, if the Democrats were serious about this they would have been talking about it in detail before now. Their legislative strategy was to jam this down America’s throats as quickly as possible. That’s not something that I can support.
I suspect Obama knows they can’t do it this year and he just wanted to “fulfill his campaign promise” by bringing it up and putting on a show – as he does also on the illegal immigration issue. Obama has done and is doing very little for the American people if you ask me. I was always cynical about his Presidency, but even at that I expected more than we’re getting.
They are playing this the same way they try to play immigration reform each year – “the votes aren’t there” i.e. the American people don’t want what they are selling, so they try to jam something through, screaming about its importance, before anyone can figure details out, and then shrink back when the will of the people manifests itself. They are dishonorable.
They honestly believe that they know more than us – despite having run this country into a major recession and had to borrow billions from the future to try to preserve what’s left of this country from the Chinese and Saudis. These people should not be allowed to write bills.
I’m actually for health care reform, but not with these jokers in the drivers seat.
@Moon-howler
“And I resent the thugs out yelling and screaming and out of control.”
As do I. This country is becoming dangerously uncivil.
I see what you two are talking about. But what I think is far more harmful is the out-of-touch elitism and corruption that passes for leadership these days.
It wasn’t these “thugs” who are responsible for the mortgage crisis, the failure of the auto industry, the continual selling-out of our jobs to overseas nations (tax subsidized!), or the sick way that illegal aliens are encouraged to come here. It was the clowns who are touting a big plan on health care reform that they haven’t read and barely understand – though their lobbyist friends and donors ASSURE them it’s good stuff and we need to do it now.
I believe that anytime someone says they need a “comprehensive” approach rather than individual measures, they are selling us a bill of goods.
If they had any good ideas, they could sell them to us and enact them without having to fret about upsetting lobbyists and dealing with dreaded negative ads.
There are real reforms that can and should happen RIGHT NOW. No more free care for illegal immigrants without paying. Yes you can have health care – but you get deported straight from the hospital.
Allow importation of drugs from Canada – balance our prices with the rest of the world for prescription drugs – stop using Americans’ money to prop up the value of pharmaceutical stocks by charging us 5-10 times more than the rest of the world pays.
Force medical providers to charge a single rate, to HMOs as well as to Medicare as well as to the uninsured. That will stop the issues with the uninsured getting gouged, and will allow HMOs to shop for the cheaper providers, and will contain costs.
These things are all popular and doable. But they’re held hostage to the set of 1001 things we DON’T want or need, that the lobbyists are working into bills.
When I hear the word “comprehensive” I put my hand behind me and watch out for Congresspeople and Presidents bearing KY jelly.
Health care and the selling out of jobs overseas are very closely related.
I don’t agree with you about Obama, Rick. I think they were still tweaking it as the economy changed. There does need to be reform. I don’t have any answers either but I do know some of the changes that need to happen.
Immigration is not a Democrat problem. Last 8 years, who was in office? Who held the power during most of that time? There is a hell of a lot I don’t like that Democrats do but I would chop my hand off before I voted Republican the way I see so many of them acting.
Well I’m certainly not advocating voting for Republicans. I agree that it was Bush who, by design, created (intentionally) the illegal immigration quagmire. And now it’s Obama who exploits it politically.
Further proof that Bush is an idiot.
“Hey I see you have a car for sale for $1000. I’m interested.”
“Ah, great. But, I can’t sell it to you straight out. We need to craft a comprehensive approach to this. To start with, I’ve been spending $200 a month on fuel at Raceway. I’ll need you to sign an agreement that you’ll keep spending that much there, so as not to have a negative effect on them. However, I’ll subsidize 15% of that spending, but only if you agree to use the 93 Octane fuel. I picked that one because the owner of Raceway makes greater profit on that type of gas, and he promises to pay me a 1% commission on the amount that you spend. Also, I’ll need a new car – the sale is conditional based on that, plus I’ll need for you to pay 65% of my decal fee. However, if you consume more than $225 a month average in gasoline, at least 95% of which is 93 Octane, I’ll waive the decal fee as in that case the owner of Raceway has promised to reimburse me with free gas. There are a lot of other conditions – I’ve encapsulated them in this 1000 page document. Read it if you like, but I’d just go ahead and sign if I were you, it’s the only way we’re ever going to get this done.”
Slowpoke, it isn’t ok for liberals to be loud and obnoxious either. Why do you think I would think it was ok for them and not for the thugs?
I don’t think anyone sees it as a basic right to have free health care. Its pretty smart to have it and you can run into some serious financial hurt if you don’t have it.
People not having it is killing the economy and killing those of us who do have it. I pay for my own myself and I have a lot different attitude than I did when it was mostly paid for by my employer.
Case in thug point:
“FIGHT OBAMA CARE TODAY!
Become a part of the mob! Attend an Obama Care Townhall near you!”
http://www.hannity.com/Article.asp?id=1444006&spid=16420
I have reserved comment to this point as I had not finished reading the entirety of the bill. Having just finished reading it, I offer the following observation:
It is nothing more than a strawman being used to assess public opinion and which aspects are politically dangerous to those with a desire to remain in office perpetually.
Yes it has both its positives and negatives but it was probably written by a group of twenty something staffers who put more thought into what type of latte they’re going to buy at Starbucks than the mechanics and structure of the beast this particular bill would create.
The text is long on lofty ambitions and systems but damn short on details and deliverables, at the same time making compliance mandatory withing 12-18 months.
That would include the creation of an executive branch agency that would dwarf many existant agencies; staffing, housing and equipping said agency; designing an implementing the chain of command; developing the regulations, guidelines and reporting requirements necessary to fulfill the mission; designing, debugging and implementing an unknown number of IT systems to support the reporting and financial requirements, etc., etc., etc.
As none of those can be accomplished within the required timeframe and the failure of any one of those requirements to be realized in a timely manner will destroy the intent and effect, all you’re left with is a billion dollar clusterfuck.
Think about it, how long would it take just to find those qualified to fill the positions, convince them to undertake government employment, establish whom reports to whom, buy/lease/equip their offices and have them come up to a speed sufficient to do the as yet undefined job.
Moreover, I haven’t seen a Federal IT system yet that has come in either on-time, on-budget or capable of fulfilling its mission requirement at rollout, much less one that has accomplished all three.
Congratulations on having spent hours arguing/debating/posturing about a red herring.
Mom (The Jaded One)
Meanwhile, neither party proposes discrete steps that can make things better.
Want to know why people are getting mad… because they are treated like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L3FnWNkIzU
Worse, they throw out crap like this 1000 page bill so that everyone gets caught up arguing about hot button issues such as “death panels”, cuts in coverage or coverage for illegals, while missing some of the minutae such as the onerous increased taxes (penalties) paid exclusively by the upper end of the income brackets (for no other reason than their being successful) or the reporting/compliance costs that the bill forces on insurance carriers and healthcare providers, costs that will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher premiums and co-pays, resulting in just the opposite of the stated goal “reduce
the growth in health care spending”
Mom
Anyone been hearing about Roxana Mayer, who was an Obama delgate and campaign worker who went to a town hall meeting and clained she was a doctor. She apparently said that she doesn’t see what everyone is getting upset about in the health care debate.
According to the things I read, apparently she said that she thought it would lend credibility to claim she was a doctor.
Sure hope that story isn’t true.
Pinko, Hannity means all of that facetiously. He’s responding to the “angry mob” statements by having callers to his radio show identify themselves by “mob” names like Frankie “Five Fingers,” but he is rightfully angry that Americans who are passionately against this bill are being tagged as potentially violent racists.
Mom, I am impressed that you read the entire bill. Aren’t there 4 of them out there? I haven’t read any of it nor debated anyone over it.
My concern is that someone like Rush Limbaugh is stirring people up with his idiot rhetoric and that none of us will ever be able to discuss the reality of what is being debated over the din of the know-nothing loud-mouths.
@Moon-howler
It wasn’t directed at you, or anyone else for that matter.
I also think people are getting a little sick of Obama’s fake and staged town halls. It’s getting really old and I wonder just how many people honestly believe they are true ‘town hall’ meetings. They are nothing more that staged propaganda. And for crying out loud, if your going to stage something like that at least have the decency not to use children in your deceit.
A woman who works ‘Women for Obama’ was bused in and put her little girl up to being “chosen at random” by Obama to ask a question. That is how low it’s become, using little girls as props for a fake and staged town hall, yet again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZuvQ-3uvY
@Rick Bentley
All due respect, Rick, we are usually of a like mind, but the rainmaker is a movie…..as in hollywood, fantasy-land! Even if it does have my all-time favorite actor, Mickey Rourke…. It’s still a movie.
Hi Pinko… I think your taking that out of context, Emma explained it correctly. Also, what exactly do you mean by ‘case in THUG point’? I’ve worked in DC for the past 15 years and have seen how the left demonstrates, it makes these people at town halls look like a bunch of choir boys.
It’s funny how if there is violence and people are arrested when the left demonstrates nobody really says much at all. If people from the right so much as speak out they are thugs and part of an angry mob.
I hope people like you and MSDCN keep that kind of talk up, it’s only going to be used in 2010… 🙂
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Oscar Wilde
Elena and I don’t agree on this issue either. However, I believe that sometimes movies and other art forms give us a common issue that we can all talk about. Most novels and films don’t have their central theme existing in isolation.
The more I see of some of these people shouting and screaming and carrying on, the more disgusted I become. They are acting out. It is like watching a child throw a temper tantrum.
Rick, if they did, no one would be able to hear it over the din.
We had 8 years to hear the Republicans? Was I not listening? This issue didn’t just fall upon us. Bill Clinton tried to fix the problem in 1992. No one listened then.
Moon, I can understand being ‘disgusted’ by the very few people who cross the line but I think that your disgust goes past just those few people. I think you could learn a very valuable lesson from Hillary Clinton, you to Pinko… calling people THUGS!
http://www.casttv.com/video/afgax9/hillary-clinton-i-am-sick-tired-right-to-protest-video
And, Moon, the Clintons tried to do it behind closed doors without input from the public. Sometimes it is not the what, it is the how.
that is what caused the problems. That and taking tort reform off the table then too–protecting their lawyer friends.
Hello, calling it as I see it. When I see people upsetting what should be a civilized meeting by acting out, shrieking, stomping and yelling, yea, I call them thugs. Actually, the protest should be outside the meeting if that is what people choose to do. It should not disrupt the meeting. I have seen more than a few. Most of the footage is about that. I have seen very few people conduct themselves in a cicilized manner.
The problem with the Hillary video is that it shows a picture, not a speech. I agree with Hillary although I wish she would turn the Billy Mays volume down. People do have the right to protest and debate. How you do it though is important. The interrupting and screaming over top of people is just low class.
The Chicago 7 were thugs too.
You might want to explain my disgust to me.
Joe, I don’t recall the Clintons trying to sneak behind closed doors. Funny, the Clintons tried to get a package together, they are criticized. Obama has a work in progress, he is criticized. Seems to me that anything any Democrat does is B-A-D.
I ask, where was the Republican health care plan during the 8 years they held the White House. Where was the leadership?
I saw no what or how.
I never said that anything they do is bad. They were sorely criticised for violating the government in sunshine stuff by holding meetings without public notice. They tried to say that Hilary was only the first Lady so there was no violation. It didn’t sell politically so it tanked the effort. I think someone once said that if you ignore the past, you are likely to make the same mistake. Well, they did and they are paying for it.
I happened to have liked the Clintons until they started being shrill about the “right wing conspiracy” and frankly lying to the public about certain indiscretions. Regardless of whether it may have been private, there is nothing the President does that is private. it comes with the territory.
I have to agree with earlier comments that it seems people are being called either liberals or thugs. And it is not pretty, accurate, or becoming to the writer.
You may want to keep criticizing the Republicans–go ahead. I ain’t one anyway. But I don’t think health care was a priority–terror may have been the priority.
And I forgot to mention that when a President lies, it undermines his position. Did Bush lie? I don’t know. Lying to me is if you know something is the truth and you tell a different story, you are lying. The question will always be if Bush was mislead by intelligence or people in his administration and therefore did not lie, or if he knew the truth and lied about it. History will tell us that.
I think Clinton knew what happened in the little corridor without having been given a report by staff.
I don’t plan on discussing Bill Clinton. He is a private citizen. There is a thread on male indiscretions.
I haven’t paid much attention to whether the thugs were liberal or conservatives and frankly, I don’t know how to tell. They were ill-mannered. If I am offensive by calling American citizens ‘thugs,’ sorry about that.
Do I think there are that many poorly behaved people who all decided to act obnoxious at the same time? Nahhh. Do I think there is a master mind? You betcha!
@hello
I actually don’t care who starts the violence. I’m against it.
Since I’m an independent and neither left nor right, I can easily blame extremists from any side when things start to get out of control. Then they can all beat me to a pulp because I refuse to take sides.
As far as Hannity, if he wasn’t being serious, then he wasn’t being very bright, IMHO, given what really IS happening in these meetings. People on both sides are being paid to intimidate (these would be the thugs) and act out (these would be the sycophants), and Hannity MUST know this. Please don’t feed the fire, media!
Hannity did what Hannity does best.
Most of us want our country to succeed. Hannity appears to put his ideology way above this desire. So do others.
Really, Pinko? I happen to think protest is quintessentially American. Yes, sometimes it gets loud, sometimes people dump large quantities of tea overboard or chant slogans. Or sometimes you can get run over by state-owned tanks, like the students in Tiananmen Square did. Were they thugs?
Frankly, I think we are blessed to be allowed to make some noise in this country, no matter from what political stripe. As long as there is no violence, let them yell. If Obama and co. can’t take the heat, they shouldn’t have applied for the job in the first place.
“We had 8 years to hear the Republicans?”
The GOP put blind allegiance in Bush and signed off on everything he wanted to do. I see the Democratic party behaving similarly with Obama. People who know less than nothing about health care are out stumping about it.
Emma, I don’t have a single problem with protests or chanting as long as it doesn’t disrupt the meetings. That kind of behavior needs to stay outside. There is also NO place for the pushing and shoving I have seen.
I am not arguing FOR the health care package. I am trying to find out more about it. I am real sick of obnoxious, rude behavior being excused under the guise of patriotism. That crap doesnt wash with me.
We have a civilized society with rules and regulations. These same people would be screaming RULE OF LAW if I could hear them over the rabble.
Yo, dittoheads who thought Iraq attacked us on 9/11 and therefore we needed to take their oil: what did you think of your fellow Americans who weren’t gullible enough to believe obvious lies to justify the invasion. Would you have endorsed a strategy of organized screaming frenzies in order to frighten Congress into undoing the war authorization vote? Would that strategy have stood a chance in hell?
People have a right to behave like idiots. What I can’t believe is that it’s come to this. Is the right wing really this bankrupt of ideas.?
The Party of No becomes the Party of No!!! No!!! Nooooo!!!!!!
Hilarious.
JustinT, speaking of rude and obnoxious….
And the protesters are not all “the right wing.”
You should do your homework before you start calling names.
Hit “submit” too soon. I am sick of the “either/or” nonsense that people like Justin spew. Is your thinking really that confined to “Democrat/Republican,” “right/left,” “dittoheads/JustinT”?
What exactly do you know about healthcare, anyway, Justin? Where does your expertise lie? Or Are you an Obama “dittohead”–he wants it so it must be good, right? Have you even bothered to read the bill? I have, and there are an awful lot of loose ends there, a lot not to like if you have even a shred of knowledge of how the system works. We need reform, but not this version of reform.
Rick is right that so many of the people pushing this version of “reform” down our throats don’t know a thing about healthcare themselves, and I suspect you are one of them. I work with many healthcare professionals with an entire spectrum of opinions about this bill, but the vast majority are against it. And some of them even voted for Obama. I know that in your little binomial world that should be impossible, but I’ll let you work out that little deviation for yourself.
Moon:
You may have stumbled into the actual point of the bill as the “din of the know-nothing loud-mouths” isn’t limited to Rush and the right. I suspect the bill as written is nothing more than a red herring as most controversial bills as introduced are. A likely scenario is an equally controversial bill being introduced in the senate (albeit with different controversial points) resulting in either a.) a bastardized “compromise” bill coming out of a conference committe or more likely b.) nothing happening this term. I suspect b. as the uproar the bill has created demonstrates that the public is more involved and “informed” than it has been in a long period of time and that disatisfaction with many/most incumbents has reached a level that makes many of them very uncomfortable. Given that the midterm election is just over a year away, I would suggest that it will be hard to find support for a bill this controversial (apart form idiots like our own representative, the windbag from Fairfax).
@Moon-howler
Yes, MH, my sentiments exactly. You can get loud. Go ahead. But when you start getting into people’s faces (literally) and intimidating others, then you’ve crossed the line, never mind you’ve shut off any route to dialogue. If everyone is screaming at the same time, then no one is listening. What good is that?
“Reform” should mean we all get healthcare at a reasonable price that doesn’t exclude the poor. How we get there is obviously the real point of contention.