Saintless

I believe that those who so firmly oppose health care reform are driven by prejudice. Prejudiced against the idea that, by helping their fellow man, they could save some money on their own costs. These people are not willing to entertain, even for a moment, that they might benefit from reform that includes a public option. The idea of free market principles, when it comes to health care, has failed. They refuse to admit that they could be wrong, that perhaps their ideology isn’t perfect for this case.

These people cannot stand the idea that they might spend $50 to help save some stranger’s life, and in doing so, save $100 on their own health care.

While there are a lot of ideals that founded our country, one of them was the ideal that by banding together, we could make things better for ourselves.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And there are some out there who are so afraid of this, that they make up lies about “death panels” or say that illegal immigrants would be covered. They know these things are blatant lies, yet they spread them, and inspire fear in their constituents or viewers, in order to not face the fact that they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Any Senator or Representative worthy of their office should at least consider the idea that health reform has to happen, because the people of our country need it to. They might fight against parts that they don’t agree with, but they damn sure should be fighting for the things they do agree with. But, yet, we have people like Jason Chaffetz, who sends out this message, minutes after Obama addressed the Joint Sessions of Congress this evening:

That’s right. My representative just sent out a message saying “I have made two big decisions tonight. We are killing the health care bill and we we are killing the mouse in the office.” This, after his Town Hall, which I swear I will blog very soon, where he said that he wasn’t an obstructionist, and he wanted health care reform to happen the right way. This, after Obama invited every one of them, including Chaffetz, to talk to him about their ideas. Chaffetz has never had any intention of considering health care reform.

None.

Those who are against health care reform, while simultaneously refusing to add ideas to the conversation, make me sick. We need health care reform. This conversation is supposed to be about what that reform means. And, as Rep. barney Frank told Rachel Maddow this evening:

The weakness of their argument is a testimony to the strength of ours.

Tags: Health Care Reform, Representative Jason Chaffetz

I don’t have time to write out all of my thoughts on this, nor do I have all of the detail in either case. Regardless, my overall opinion will remain the same.

It takes acts like rioting at the G20 and Tim DeChristopher bidding on auctions for our society to get our heads out of our collective asses.

U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said that, while he recognized people (i.e. DeChristopher) may have deeply held views on government behavior, they should express them lawfully.

Well, see, there’s a problem with that. People like me go to protests and stand around on street corners with signs, and no one gives a shit. We write, or we tell our friends, or we donate to causes, and nothing gets done. And if you look back at the history of the US, it takes people willing to do things that are “wrong” to make things change. And in retrospect, they’re called heroes. So, while breaking windows in Europe isn’t something I can actually condone, I’m glad someone is doing it. And now the press is paying attention, and the world is reacting.

Sadly, it took way too long this morning for me to decide whether the G20 riots and the news of DeChristopher’s indictment were real, or some sad April Fools Day joke. Society needs to wake up, and these people are the only ones who seem to be getting our collective attention.

Tags: G20, Tim DeChristopher

I could run out into the street and jump for joy over this!

Remember how the (Un)Patriot Act placed a gag order on recipients of the National Security Letters (NSL)? This meant, as an example, that if an ISP received an NSL regarding one of their customers, they had to turn over tons of private data, but could not tell the customer, nor could they challenge it in court. It was illegal for them to ever acknowledge receiving an NSL.

Well, a federal court sided with the ACLU and has ruled this unconstitutional!

Because of the ruling, the government will now be forced to justify individual gag orders before a court, instead of casually wielding the power of a blanket gag as the Bush administration has done since the blindingly fast passage of the Patriot Act in Oct. 2001.

Now if only I could get my allergy pills without being labeled a terrorist…

Sarah Palin’s comment about Pro-America wasn’t some off-hand comment that was taken wrong, as she tries to convince us of in this video:

We believe, we believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.

She’s feeding part of a message intended to “inspire” the right wing of the Republican Party. Here’s the other part of the message, from a different mouthpiece:

Well, I would say that people who hold anti- American views. I don’t think it’s geography. I think it’s people who don’t like America, who detest America. And on college campuses, a Ward Churchill, another college campus, a Bill Ayers, you find people who hate America. And unfortunately, some of these people have positions teaching in institutions of higher learning. But you’ll find them in all walks of life all throughout America.
[...]
I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large, the people who are radical leftists. That’s the real question about Barack Obama — Saul Alinsky, one of his teachers, you might say, out of the Chicago area; Tony Rezko, who is an associate also.

It disgusts me to think that they are getting away with trying to divide our country in this fashion, not by pitting political ideas against political ideas, but by pitting ordinary Americans against ordinary Americans. And it disgusts me that it seems to be working, and that somehow that message is more attractive to some people than this message:

(Check it out about 4:50 in)

“There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this country. We all love this country, no matter where we live, where we come from.”

This idea that Barack Obama wants a united country is not a new one. His 2004 DNC speech is an easy example. “There is not a red America and a blue America…There is a United States of America”, and if you look, those examples go back through all of his public life.

For more, see Keith Olbermann’s special comment last night:

As I was writing this, a friend sent me this link, to an article titled “Populism Without Pitchforks“:

Here again, Obama’s recent soft-populist language goes off in another direction entirely, not targeting much of anyone, but instead invoking a sense of natural order in which all of us live up to our responsibilities, in service of a sense of national purpose. It is an ethics based on a sense of mutual obligation and engagement, embodied in the ever-expanding circle of Obama’s own campaign. And in this sense, it is deeply reflective of the best in American populism, what the historian Lawrence Goodwyn called, “the movement culture” characterized by “collective self-confidence,” and the active engagement of millions in the practice of democracy.

I voted yesterday, and I feel even better about my vote today, knowing that in two short weeks, we’ll find that Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election, and that we can look forward to a United States of America, and not a Divided States of America. And when Obama wins, that means that Americans will have chosen to band together, and rejected the politics of hate and fear. God bless America.

(h/t Richard Warnick and Jason The)

It’s only 2 minutes long, and it’s eerie how on-target Obama was with what McCain would say and do.

(h/t Glenden Brown)

A long time ago, in a place far, far away, I wrote about Bush giving himself teh power. To remain King of America, and ignore the next president. I only found this blog with a quick search, and I must say that even bringing this up made me feel like some kind of conspiracy theorist. But, respected blogger JM Bell also covered it back then, and he recently covered it again. Just watch the video, will you?

Don’t let this be a close election. Make it overwhelming, and you’ll prevent yourself from being a subject of fear-mongering King George III.

(h/t Open Congress)

McCain has done some slimey things in his past, but this outweighs anything I know about.

McCain’s new ad (if you can stomach it):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLQhRiEXZs]

Do you see what they did there? They took a bill that was supposed to teach young children how to keep from being victims of child predators, and twisted it to make Obama look like some old pervert, and visually emphasized it with a truly funky picture of Obama, with his shirt disheveled, and a leer on his face. That bill wasn’t about giving condoms out to 5 year olds, it was about keeping them safe. But that didn’t matter to McCain. What mattered was winning.

Oh, and apparently, that same twisted lie was once before (unsuccessfully) used by Obama’s opponent in the Illinios State Legislature. McCain couldn’t even make their own lie up, they had to borrow one that hadn’t worked the first time.

Here’s what Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton had to say:

It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.

So, what McCain essentially did there was, for those not more aware of what’s really going on, use America’s children to lie to their parents, and make them afraid of Barack Obama. The Politics of Fear are alive and well.

Olbermann’s special comment tonight was regarding tomorrow’s sad anniversary of 9/11/2001.

First he went into the GOP “9/11™ Tribute” at their convention, and how horrifying it was. The video was not a tribute to the victims of 9/11, their families, or even Americans in general. It was a tribute to the horrific deeds done that day, an attempt to make Americans remember the fear, and their hope was that Americans would then look to Republicans to save them from it happening again.

Doesn’t that make them the Terrorists, because they are attempting to inspire terror in the hearts of Americans, to further their own agenda?

Then he went into how McCain is blackmailing the US electorate with his claim that he can, will and knows how to capture Osama bin Laden. If he knows, what is he holding out for?

Wow, Keith really outdid himself tonight. Way to go!

There’s still a chance to catch the comment again during the 9:00 PM (MDT) hour, or over at MSNBC.

Via DCist comes this story about making a police state out of our nation’s capital:

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

An executive order, huh? As of late, that seems to be some sort of code for “we know it’s not legal, but we’re doing it anyway”.

Jimmy Carter may be meeting with leaders of Hamas.

Carter is on the third day of a nine-day “study mission” to the Middle East, as part of his “ongoing effort to support peace, democracy, and human rights in the region,” according to the Carter Center Web site. 

During a visit to the West Bank on Tuesday, Carter placed a wreath at the Ramallah grave of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He also said he hoped to meet with exiled Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal when he visits Damascus, Syria, in the coming days.

“I’m going to try everything I can to get him (Meshaal) to agree to peaceful resolution of differences both with the Israelis through Gaza and also with Fatah,” Carter said.

The ever wise Condi Rice says that’s a bad idea.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she found it “hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace.” 

Seriously? She can’t understand what can be gained? Let me put this in simple terms, Condi.

I have two sons. They’re always fighting, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why they can’t just get along. So, when they’re in the middle of a fight, and I can clearly see which of them is being a stubborn little twit, I generally talk to that child, and try to get the issues resolved, so he’ll stop harassing his brother. Now, I don’t always play peacekeeper with them. But, sometimes it’s necessary. And if I were to talk to the child who was not being stubborn, while ignoring the stubborn child, all hell would break loose, and the stubborn child would definitely not stop.

If Condi Rice seriously can’t see what might be gained from talks with Hamas, she should consider stepping down and allowing someone with a true interest in the peace process to step up. I’m tired of the US being the world bully, and that’s what it’s come down to.

Tags: Condoleeza Rice, Hamas, Jimmy Carter, peace