The sign said it all. It was not some last-minute message some meth addict scrawled in crayon on a scrap of cardboard. No, this sign was professionally printed. White block letters on a blue background, the four-word message was in all caps. Someone had to have thought this through. Someone wrote it, edited it, planned it, designed it, ordered it, paid for it. Someone approved it, printed it, distributed it. And then someone thought this was a message he or she wanted to convey to the world. Thank goodness someone had the courage to take a photo of it, and then Huffington Post had the guts to post it on its home page.
The sign made me nauseous, made me embarrassed, made me wonder if at long last there is no decency on the far right. The sign said:
"BURY OBAMACARE WITH KENNEDY"
Oh, I get it. Sen. Kennedy is dead, and these slugs want health care reform to be dead too. That is so clever.
Fourteen days after Edward Kennedy was laid to rest in the company of his fellow American heroes in Arlington, right-wing hate-mongers decided to use his burial to make a cheap point about their opposition to health care reform.
What would they have done if liberals had printed signs that equated Ronald Reagan's burial with the hoped-for death of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security? Or Bill Buckley's painful passing with the GOP's loss of the White House in 2008? Or the demise of my right-wing former colleague Bob Novak with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? You can't imagine that, can you? Because, while we progressives have our moments of frustration and our occasional lack of couth, there is nothing I can think of that compares to the sick, savage sign that the teabaggers were waving in Washington.
The inmates have taken over the asylum. The ever-sunny Reagan is dead. The congenial Buckley is dead. The old-school conservative Novak is dead as well. In their place is the party of Joe the Shouter and Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Death Panel Screecher.
They hate Pres. Obama - even though he has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. They hate tax increases - even though the Democrats have cut taxes for 95% of Americans. They hate health care reform - even though Ted Kennedy fought his whole life to get them the same health care millionaires like him already had.
There was not, to my knowledge, a sign that said, "Let's Bury Medicare," even though Medicare is precisely the sort of single-payer, government-run, socialized health insurance the whack-jobs say they hate. Nor did I hear about a sign that said, "Let's Bury Tricare," although the military health system is as socialized as Britain's, its beneficiaries (including, according to Newsweek, Congressclown Joe Wilson of South Carolina) are very happy with their socialized health care. Nary a sign, so far as I know, decried the Bush prescription drug entitlement, even though it ballooned the deficit, enriched the pharmaceutical companies and furthered the supposed slide toward socialism. Nor, I'm told, were there any signs criticizing the $2 trillion Mr. Bush's unjust, unwarranted, unwise war in Iraq will cost our children and grandchildren. Nor ever a single sign about the Bush tax cuts, which helped squander the Clinton surplus. If this were about fiscal policy, the protests would have happened long ago.
These tea parties are, at least for some, more about hate than high-minded debate. Anyone who needed proof need look no further than the sign captured in the photo on the front page of the Huffington Post.
Obama has proven he knows how to reach goals, time and time again. It drives me nuts when a certain CNN's republican strategist claims that we need to be honest with the American people about health care reform because we are going to end up paying more and getting less. Clearly the concept of buying Economy Sized is past comprehension. You know, Economy Sized, where you buy more and pay less. Like coverage for preexisting conditions. When everyone pools their money together in a public option, or a Netherlands like private insurance low cost 'non- profit basic coverage' option (where private insurance in put under some real restrictions and reforms), when 100 million people combine their money, they can buy Economy Sized when the health care is non-profit based and the "profit" goes to those that can't afford anything and get medicaid. Paul Begala would you please explain that to Ed Rollins? Because Ed keeps repeating his tired line and his so called "common sense". It is not "common sense" at all. It just sounds dumb. I'm sorry. It does. Economy Sized shopping makes some common sense shopping, these days. More for less. Pass out the extra for the people who can't afford it. It's easy to understand
Republican Party is owned by Big Business
5 Companies own 95 percent of media and 90 percent of talk radio is Propaganda by the Right
Status quo is good for business, not for us.
Talking heads like Beck, Hannity, Savage, O'Reilly, Ingram, Coulter, Scarborough, etc are owned and operated by big business.
We might as well face reality. This is Oligarchy vs. Democracy. The $$$ is on Oligarchy= status quo
Sadly, the fools with the hateful signs at these rallies have been duped by the corporate talking heads that tell them they are "for the people". For 8 long yrs Bush incrementally destroyed this country and they were behind him. Obama is left with huge,complex disasters to fix and they hate his guts. Why? becuase Beck, Rush, Hannity and the overpaid right wing media outlets have convinced them to ignore reality and facts and to focus all their hate, anxiety and fears towards the New President that inherited 8 yrs of Republican mismanagement, lying and spending. Up is down, right is wrong. It is called propaganda to manipulate a society into a state of cognitive dissonance. Once people are in that frame of mind it is easy to break down logical thinking and confuse factoids with reality.(see Goebells)
They can't govern, but they sure have this down pat.
But for goodness sakes, move on! The rest of us truly need health care reform now. Bulldoze the Republican jerks and get it done. Enough with appeasing the wingnuts. They're a desease debilitating our country and their is no vaccine available. There never will be.
The spiritual challenge and understanding is you cannot really call these people your brethren because they are so far away in consciousness than you that no way are you a part of what they represent. This is a dying party, they represent 35% of America and it will get uglier every move Obama makes. Don’t give in to the hate, do like Bill Maher and laugh at them, like Beck all they are is pitiful entertainment.
Thanks as always for your clear headed dissection of right wing lunacy! It is really a sad day in America that the supposedly respectable Republicans like Dick Lugar, John McCain, and Olympia Snowe have failed to condemn/denounce these dangerous extremists intent on inflaming violent revolts against a dually elected President. Equally disappointing is the corporate media that has failed the American people miserably by acting as stenographers. People, especially those in the so called mainstream media, need to listen to you and President Carter because you both are not afraid to call a spade a spade.
Growing up and living in the Midwest, I think I must have lead a very sheltered life. Never before have I witnessed such vile and ugliness before. I often find myself utterly amazed at what has occurred in our country over the past few months. It makes the election seem like a cake walk!
I have almost given up trying to have any type of civil discourse with the opposition to the Healthcare Reform. It's extremely hard to discuss anything when you're put on the defensive from the get go. First comes the name calling, labeling, which is then usually followed with an arrogant dismissive attitude and then anger.
After the President Obama's address to congress, for the first time in a very long time, I felt so proud! The reference to Senator Kennedy's letter touched me. The phrase "The character of our country" still resinates through me.
I may be gulliable or naive, but I refuse to believe that the country that Senator Kennedy spoke of and the country that I love doesn't still exist. Although, I have to admit that after seeing some of the signs these people and their young children carried during this protest gives me great pause.
How do you like your status quo now?
I gotta say, the Republicans I knew growing up, were at least rational and civil. They were obviously less supportive of civil rights and social programs, but you could at least have a conversation with them. I don't think we've become more polarized at all. If anything the set point for the right has become so extreme that the widening gap is entirely a function of their movement away from the Eisenhower, Buckley, Reagan tradition. If you consider how far Reagan pushed the party to the right of Goldwater, and look at how he is now regarded as a moderate, you can kind of see how the Republicans have just become unhinged. Plain and simple.
Giordy
substitute insanity for policy. Berthers, deathers, successionists, teabaggers,
are just examples of a party, bereft of morality much less judgement, that is
self destructing. Having bankrupted the economy, started two wars without
end (nor funding), and having relentlessly broken the law they have
lectured Dems for years about upholding, there is not much left they can talk
about without a Democratic cross examination tearing them to pieces.
So they've slumped to kicking dead Kennedys who have only had one son
die in war in a top secret mission, another survive the war but not the fanatics
of Dallas, still another did not survive his presidential primary, & two more endured
plane crashes, one fatal, one not. And the surviving Kennedy was campaigning
with Paul Wellstone when Wellstone's plane went down and power shiftred in the
Senate.
I'm sure chicken hawk republicans have done more for their country, but right
now I can't remember any of them doing much of anything other than saying no to
Democrats.
Excepting the honorable war record of Senator McCain, are Republicans not total frauds?
But the republicans do need more than there talk radio base to win elections. Until they can expand that base, they are a minority party.
[crickets]
Suffice to say that teabaggers only get incensed about whatever the pundits tell them to get incensed about.