Freedom Of Screech
"...I never thought I'd see the day when America didn't have enough crazies to go around. We've got oodles of them. So many that members of Congress, home on recess to press the flesh, are afraid to appear at public forums for fear they will be asked their position on Bigfoot sightings and alien abductions. One of Minnesota's most levelheaded congressmen, Democrat Collin Peterson, had to apologize for saying that 25 percent of his constituents believe in conspiracy theories. He didn't back down completely, though, explaining he was tired of public meetings being "hijacked" by people "outside the mainstream..."
"...The summer of 2009 is making the Summer of Sam (1977) and the summer of Helter Skelter (1969) look sane by comparison. In the old days, a handful of psychopaths could ruin our sense of security. This summer, the lunacy has gone viral and is making us look like a country of snake handlers and sleight-of-hand "healers" who make us feel better by "removing" chicken parts from our innards.
Our civic religion preaches the virtue of conversation and compromise, the belief that we can, as the Lord advised, "come and reason together." But reasoning together has gone out the window this summer of our discontent, along with the baby, the bath water and grandma's Do Not Resuscitate order..."
Nick Coleman
Read more at the Star Tribune
5 comments:
Great post, Sunny. You just can't beat Nick Coleman for objective and insightful analysis.
Frankly, I can’t understand why at least 95% of Americans don’t fill the Town Halls with pro-Obama-care enthusiasm and pro-universal health-care passion. Let’s face it; it’s a great deal for most all of us.
Look at it this way: somebody else is going to pay for virtually all of our health care. In fact, somebody else is going to pay for virtually of our insurance premiums for that health care. The President and his party have concluded that the costs of health care and health insurance are too high, and they are going to get other people to pay those costs for us. What’s not to like?
And even if you or I have a pre-existing condition – no problem. Unlike, say, car insurance which you cannot get after an accident to help defray expenses, or life insurance, which you cannot get after you die (or at least have someone else take out a policy on your life after you are dead), under Obama-care, it doesn’t matter. You can have all sorts of medical or mental problems and still get full Obama-care coverage, and like the rest of us, have somebody else pay for it.
This Obama care stuff is absolutely fantastic, and I just can’t fathom why some rednecks think it’s a bad idea. Obviously, they have not done the in-depth analysis to understand that it would be a good thing for them. There is no longer a need for independent or self reliant citizens - Uncle Sam will now take care of you. OTHER PEOPLE ARE PAYING THE COSTS. RICH PEOPLE, PROBABLY, BUT WHO CARES JSUT SO WE DON"T HAVE TO PAY THE COSTS. Us little people (i.e. those making under $250K per year) don’t have anything to worry about; the president has assured us that our taxes are not going up to pay for all this great stuff.
I just can’t wait for the next good Obama-deal. Food is a basic requirement for life - not to mention health - so we really need some big-gov help with that big expense. And the president may well conclude that shelter is just as important a basic right and help us out there as well. But there are so many other possibilities for hope and change!
Will the president declare that car insurance is too expensive and help me out with that expense? How about life insurance - surely there are greedy CEO’s in that industry that are ripping us all off big-time. And if not, who cares? We’ll just get the rich guys ($250+ income) to help us out with those costs.
Obama understands that there is a hell of a lot of wealth out there in this country, and more importantly, he understands that its his job to take a lot of that wealth from those who own it an spread it around a bit. Great stuff.
So I agree with Nick Coleman – these protesters are crazy. They obviously do not have the basic common sense to understand that if they just shut the F**k up, Uncle Sam is going to take care of them.
They just need to stop worrying and learn to love Obama-care.
It's amazing how you can prove Coleman right with one post loaded with typical corporate-loving- poor-me-I-make-more-money-than-some-people-so-I-must-be-better-and more-deserving-than-them-fallacies.
There is a reason Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple and I have no doubt that he would do the same to insurance company executives as well.
Oh yeah--there is no such thing as 'Obama care'. All of the plans put forth have been generated in the House and Senate and that's the problem. If the President would commit to a plan publicly, there would be more substance to discuss. As it is, vague generalities have only lead to more opportunities for the corporate media to spread lies put forward by well-funded groups who are only interesed in scaring the public with disinformation in order to maintain the staus quo.
But, if you only listen to cable prophets and hacks on the radio, being accurately informed clearly isn't on your agenda.
RK: I think you are finally coming around to understanding the power of "democracy." It's in the votes and won't it be nice to see the tables turned! The rich can finally donate some of the sweat of their brow to help the serfs of this country.
...actually, I don't think we will quite get the picture you painted above. I think we will get something between the Month Python Bring-Out-Your-Dead version the conservative extremists want and the Mother Theresa/Jesus Loafs And Fishes version the liberal extremists want.
I don't understand where the Left thinks health insurance should be freed. If it is, than why don't 48 million have it. Conversely, I don't see were the Right can justify the obscene profit taking that has been exampled in the health insurance business.
I would say the conservative have done an excellent job of mis-educating their followers on the free market system. They've made them forget that the free market is suppose to help consumers via the competition of businesses. The public option scares Big Insurance because it knows it will be able to compete like the American automakers have competed against the competition from Japan.
Certainly AGC is aware that being informed and accurate information really don't have anything to do with the power play that is behind the health care debate. It's party power politics at its finest. It's not about fixing or tweaking something that is broken. It's about wining elections. The 2010 elections are just 14 months away.
Sunny,
I sometimes wonder what planet you liberals live on. How can you say something as ludicrous as “The rich can finally donate some of the sweat of their brow to help the surfs of this country?”
The fact is, the federal income tax burden is shoul¬dered by a small group of the very richest Americans. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population – while earning 19 per¬cent of the income -- pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent—those below the median income level—now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the taxes.
Democracy you call this? More like mob rule, where the majority can loot the wealth of the few. This is the very scenario that our founders feared, and why they constructed a complicated federal system with three branches of government and numerous check and balances to stave it off.
Obscene profits in the health insurance industry? I checked it out: the rates vary but most seem to be in the 2 – 5% range; I saw one outlier at just over 10%. Perhaps you think this is too high, but many investors would not risk their money in such low-profit enterprises. Frankly, the idea that these companies are any more rapacious than JC Penny or Kohls Department stores is nonsense. They are just convenient whipping boys for lefties who are convinced that all for-profit companies are inherently evil.
The very idea that a publicly run insurance company is going to introduce efficiencies into the market is abject nonsense as well. Please point to the efficient government programs that would justify such a view. Is it Medicare (nope, it broke), Medicaid (nope again, its broke too). The USPS (even the president makes fun of it). Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? The DoD? Amtrac? Come on, Sunny, wake up. And I haven’t even talked about the intractable problems with National Health Care in Canada and the UK. Did you know the standard of care for Emergency Room visits in England? Treat the patient within 4 hours of his/her arrival. Boy, sounds great to me. A great dystopia, that is.
This argument is all about control, and the Federal Government wants all of it. As the Constitutional limits on the Federal Government have been systematically dismantled over the past 75 years, Washington’s acquisitive and manipulative tentacles have reached ever deeper into our lives and into our wallets. That trend is what Conservatives object to, and that is what tens of thousands of regular citizens were objecting to at all those town hall meetings this summer.
The American Revolution was an exercise in throwing off a tyrannical, controlling government, and Americans still recoil at the prospect of too much centralized control. They know, instinctively, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mostly they know that of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive of all.
RK, liberals live on the Main Land and conservative long to return to their Fantasy Island of days gone by. True democracy is a lynch mob that is why the plantation owners, i.e. conservative greed heads, have called out the redneck wing of the Republican Party to earn their GEDs and shout down those serfs of hope and change. Change might be good for the serfs, but folding cash is the providence of the power mongers of Republicanism.
Those poor one-percenters paying all that federal income tax... What is the effective rate they pay? The more you make, the more you have access to hide your income in tax reduction options. If you are complaining about a "progressive" tax system, I say it is not progressive enough. Who pays most of the social security tax? What is the breakdown of state taxes?
Maybe obscene distribution of profits would be a better phrase. What CEO is worth a $1 billion? Stuff like that makes the serfs and sharecroppers get out the torches and pitchfork. Maybe a little tact might have been in order.
I am not all about "efficiencies" in the market. I do not expect government programs to be run 100 percent efficient...just as businesses are not run 100 percent efficient.
When is the last time you personally accessed health care at a Canadian or UK clinic? What about France? Denmark? Sweden? Do not give me the Shaun Hannity/Rush Limbaugh talking points. Obviously, you have not watched Mike Moore's Sicko documentary. I own a copy, if you want to borrow it. You just might change your mind on this issue.
Gee, if the Constitutional limits have been dismantled over the last 75 years, who is to blame? The Democrats and liberals I suppose. By my count, for 40 of the last 80 years, Republicans have controlled the Presidency and that leaves 40 for the Democrats. I am guessing there is a similar split in the Congress. Fortunately, Republican Presidents were wise enough to nominate Earl Warren and Warren Berger to the Supreme Court. I suppose this is where you play the "I'm a conservative not a Republican" card.
The American Revolution was a power grab. Mother England was in a weakened condition, a minority of businesses was able to whip up enough of the ignorant masses, and the fight was on. There was little if any tyranny being pushed on the colonies. Of course, you have to roll out the Tom Paine clichés. All he was good for was whipping up the masses and providing quotes for today's liberals and conservative to justify their positions on 18 million blogs in the USA.
Did I mention my ancestors were Tories?
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