Health Care Reform Passes!

[CoeburnCane]

1) The whole Olbermann shot at not being there was low, given his father's condition at the time of this rally and his subsequent passing.

2) I'm what some would call a "liberal" even though I'm more centrist, and I love being an American and love this country. I resent him saying that I don't love my country because of a label he puts on me b/c of my opinions politically.

3) I've never met more people who mumble & grumble more about things going on in this country than the Tea Baggers and even those to the left of them but still on the right--yet centrists & liberals are the ones who are cynics?

4) Wonder if those cats like Warren Buffett pay attention to the "In God We Trust" on money, or if they're just more worried about the bottom line in his bank account at the end of each day? That's a delusion if this guy and those Tea Baggers think the former.

5) Olbermann meant "black faces", not "blackface" as in old racist theatrical "blackface", but as African-Americans. He talks about not being prejudicial, then plays to the prejudice that these people probably hold true to their hearts to begin with.

6) He's acting like these folks are sympathetic to African-Americans. They're only being sympathetic to his face. I'd wager a large sum of money that some of those older white men/women come away from his speech saying "that guy wasn't that bad for a negro".

7) He's calling all black people "slaves" and not giving them enough credit for being able to think for themselves. Isn't that being prejudicial on his part? Isn't that him being racist against African-Americans? I don't care if he's black or not, sounds like he's got a lot of self-loathing going on that he needs to deal with.

8) So, to him, it's racist to call people "Blank-Americans". Wow. So, what do we do? People want to embrace their historic culture even if they are Americans for the most part--do we tell them that if they do then they're racist? Do we tell them that if they don't call themselves Americans only that they're anti-American? This dude is nuckin futs.

9) I wish he would have let that crowd qualify their answers to his "am I welcome" question. If they told the truth, he'd likely be shocked. YES!!!! (because you're up there saying things we agree with!) Also--love the one white dude in green shirt/khakis after he asks the 2nd time standing in front with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face. Note the guys to his left & right not clapping/yelling either.

10) No, this dude basically calling Obama an Uncle Tom in his speech wouldn't go over well to an anti-Obama crowd at all. No, never. Another example of his self-loathing as a black man.

11) All teachers are left-wing nutjobs. Got it. How disrespectful can you get to an entire profession.

12) All music is liberal? This cat is whacked out. I'm sure Pelosi writes all of Jay-Z's lyrics. R13--Ain't Lil Wayne doing a concept album about the life and death of Ted Kennedy? I knew Bill Clinton shouldn't have played that saxaphone on Arsenio Hall's show back in the day--they found him out!!! LMAO...

13) Plus, this guy trying to push Christian music as a conservative tool. He wants them as an "ally" to push a conservative agenda--nevermind that they simply want to sing about their faith and experiences with God as a Christian. They have to use them to push their agenda whether they want to get involved in politics or not. "You'll have our support...but you've got to slander the liberals on your next record". Yeah...that'll work.

14) So, I've been brainwashed by liberal media and entertainment into seeing evil in things that conservatives do? *whew*...that's a load off. I thought I had free will and was thinking for myself there for a minute. Guess I'm too dumb to do that though according to this guy, because I don't think as he does. Thanks 'Zo!!!

15) LOL...this guy is trying to tell the people with the stupid Birther inspired signs to explore their creative side? What are they gonna create? MORE signs that look like the one in R13's signature? Yep, that seems about right.

16) From 9:33 in the 2nd video to the end is something I can most assuredly agree with. If you believe in God, do all things through him and anything is possible. The problem is, most of these people in that crowd and in any Tea Bagger crowd are using God as an excuse & ways to get to their own self-righteous means. Its a bastardization of their faith and it undermines and abuses those who truly believe.

17) PJTV, who shows all of this cat's videos along with other ultra-conservative fare, is one helluva source to find the truth. At least, their Tea Bagger slant on what they believe the truth to be. But it's OK b/c God said that's the truth. Did they talk to him? Ummmm...sure they did. As far as you know...c'mon! God said it! I said so! You can't disagree with it!

Do they really think people are this stupid?

18) Last but not least--I find those 2 videos HILARIOUS and extremely ironic given the pic that's in your sig line Tommy. No racism there at all. Care to explain that one?

[Biggin]

wow

instead of posting what is wrong with the bill that gave millions of Americans a way to keep from dying, we get rhetoric and the dumbest, most ignorant video ive ever seen, not to mention flat out wrong and full of lies and bias.

Do you guys really and truly believe all that man said?

Honestly, can you say that you agree with what the man in that video said?

[TheBeast]

wow

instead of posting what is wrong with the bill that gave millions of Americans a way to keep from dying, we get rhetoric and the dumbest, most ignorant video ive ever seen, not to mention flat out wrong and full of lies and bias.

Do you guys really and truly believe all that man said?

Honestly, can you say that you agree with what the man in that video said?

The video was in response to the tea party being a bunch of racists. All of y'all seem to forget that the democratic party was the party of slavery and the party that promoted segregation and against civil rights.


Again the bill Mao signed yesterday was never actually voted on in the Senate. Per the Constitution a bill can only go to the president after [BLINK]identical[/BLINK] versions are voted on by both the House and Senate. The version voted on Saturday was not identical to the one voted on in the Senate. So Constitutionally the one voted on by the House would have to go back to the Senate to be voted on before it can go to the president.


I don't know why I even opened this thread the first time, I said I was done with all this horseshit last week.

[sup-rbeast]

The video was in response to the tea party being a bunch of racists. All of y'all seem to forget that the democratic party was the party of slavery and the party that promoted segregation and against civil rights.


Again the bill Mao signed yesterday was never actually voted on in the Senate. Per the Constitution a bill can only go to the president after [BLINK]identical[/BLINK] versions are voted on by both the House and Senate. The version voted on Saturday was not identical to the one voted on in the Senate. So Constitutionally the one voted on by the House would have to go back to the Senate to be voted on before it can go to the president.


I don't know why I even opened this thread the first time, I said I was done with all this horseshit last week.

The House passed THE SENATE BILL..so they were identical...thus, the need for the reconciliation bill. The deals are in the reconciliation bill and the executive orders. Don't believe all the misinformation folks like to feed you because they aim to spout their ignorance to those willing to listen and believe...and you are definitely misinformed. Unless you are extremely rich, Sunday's vote did nothing but help you. As far a having one black man in a tea party video proving they aren't racist..how does that prove anything? Actions speak louder than words...there are blacks racist against their own race too.

[simple man]

"The video was in response to the tea party being a bunch of racists. All of y'all seem to forget that the democratic party was the party of slavery and the party that promoted segregation and against civil rights. "

Bush started a worthless war, so did his dad (anybody really care who runs Kuwait?). Saddam is looking pretty good, next to Iran, now. By your logic the GOP should be killed off, along with the Dems and we should start anew- I'll vote for that. Hey, but just think- IF Obama were re-elected like Bush the horse-shit dose would be about equal.

[pvfan]

I may be backing R13 here for a while. I'm so sick of the republicans on this board and this area posting what I find to be complete and utter non sense. Why don't we call it what it is, republican slant, that is all you post. You guys realize we have some pretty educated people on here, right? In response I'm posting an article thats from a clearly left magazine, maybe I'll win some people over like you are attempting to do. haha
Obama's Moderate Health Care Plan | The New Republic

Is President Obama's health care reform a moderate bill, as Democrats claim, or an something more extreme, like Republicans say? William Bennett offers up the Republican case:

On Saturday, the president said “this is a middle of the road bill.” It is not. The National Journal aggregation of polls has a 7 percent national opposition deficit (50 percent oppose, 43 percent support). Not one Republican — not Olympia Snowe, not Sue Collins, not Tom Coburn, and not Jim Inhofe — is supporting this. ... Last night’s vote still had 34 Democrats voting against it, which means that more Democrats joined Republican opposition than did Republicans join Democrats in support. By definition, this is not middle of the road.

This is a fair summation of the Republican position. The two measures of whether the law is moderate are its status in opinion polls and the presence or absence of support from the opposing party. I consider both these measures flawed.

First, it's true that more polls show the public opposed to health care reform than in support. On the other hand, significant chunks of opposition comes from the left. In the latest CNN poll, 39% favor the health care bill in Congress, 43% oppose it as too liberal, and 13% oppose it as not liberal enough. (Polls about health care like this one that don't identify the bill as supported by Obama or the Democrats seem to have lower support, perhaps because they don't cue low-information Democratic partisans to support it.)

Likewise, a December ABC poll found that 42% of Americans thought Congress's health care plan entailed too much government involvement in the health care system, 34% the right amount, and 21% not enough government involvement. Several other polls have produced similar findings. In December Nate Silver analyzed yet another poll showing a similar result, and mapped out the electorate like so:

All of this is to say that Obama's position commands the center of the political spectrum.

The Republicans' second measure is the lack of Republican support. It's true, no Republican supports Obama's plan. Republicans like Bennett site this fact as ipso facto proof that the plan is extreme. This definition inherently rules out the possibility that Republicans are opposing a moderate plan out of some combination of partisanship and ideological extremism. Suppose Obama decided to embrace the Republcian proposal as his own, and then every Republican subsequently abandoned the proposal, making it a Democrats-only plan. (This may sound ludicrous, but it happened in 1994.) By the Republican definition, the lack of GOP support would prove that Obama was supporting an extreme proposal.

Moreover, public opinion and Republican Congressional support are also problematic measures of a bill's moderation because the two can interact. As Mitch McConnell has explained, the fact of united Republican opposition has helped turn the public against the bill:

“It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview

So I'd propose that the ideological character of the plan can only be determined by referring to its policy content. If Obama's claim about his plan's moderation were correct, would would we see? We'd see that Obama had modeled his plan after other proposals that had gained the support of Republicans. The lack of Republican support in Congress would not refute the claim of moderation -- we would explain this as evidence that the GOP had moved to the right and/or embraced a partisan strategy of opposition.

And indeed, this is exactly the case. Obama's plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within their party's mainstream: The first is the 1993 Senate Republican health plan, which is compared with Obama's plan here, with the similarity endorsed by former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger here. The second is the Bipartisan Policy Center plan, endorsed by Bob Dole, Howard baker, George Mitchell and Tom Daschle, which is compared to Obama's plan here. And the third, of course, is Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan, which was crafted by the same economist who helped create Obama's plan, and which is rhetorically indistinguishable from Obama's. (The main difference are that Obama's plan cuts Medicare and imposes numerous other cost-saving measures -- which is to say, attempting to craft a national version of Romney's plan would result in something substantially more liberal than Obama's proposal.)

The odd thing about Romney's status as current Republican presidential contender is that he'd have no chance at all if he had not run in 2008. If Romney were arriving on the national scene now, his health care plan would utterly disqualify him. In fact, as I've written, I think it will. But the conservative view of Romney's plan from 2008 provides an instructive glimpse into how even very conservative elements of the GOP were willing to regard a plan that resembled Obama's ideologically. In its 2007 editorial endorsing Romney for President, National Review made just one glancing reference to his universal coverage scheme:

[Romney] knows that not every feature of the health-care plan he enacted in Massachusetts should be replicated nationally, but he can also speak with more authority than any of the other Republican candidates about this pressing issue.

Right-wing talk show host Hugh Hewitt wrote an entire book endorsing Romney. In it he praised his health care plan effusively, specifically singling out elements like universal coverage and the individual mandate:

This brilliant bit of legislating was born from a partnering between Romney and his policy team with the conservative Heritage Foundation. Put simply, the problem of the uninsured is a problem for everyone, as the uninsured still consume health care and the costs of that care must be covered from somewhere, usually general fund tax revenues and in the form of higher premiums assessing the covered population.

Of the approximately half-million uninsured in the Commonwealth as 2006 opened, however, about 200,000 were healthy ‘risk takers’ who preferred spending dollars on Red Sox tickets or good and services other than premiums for health care insurance that they figured they probably wouldn’t need until pregnancy or their middle years arrived.

What Romney and Heritage discovered is that in fact thousands of these risk-takers end up needing health care, and of the expensive sort. They don’t have insurance, so the state and the medical care providers eat the costs, which means the taxpayers and/or premium payers eventually get the bills.

To this group of people who are able to insure themselves but unwilling to do so, the Romney plan gives no choice but lost of encouragement: beginning in January of 2008, they must either insure themselves or be subject to a costly fine. There are provisions the assist in making insurance plans widely known and some common purchasing power deployed as well, but it is primarily a stick that is wielded in their direction.

Today, of course, Republicans deem the individual mandate unconstitutional. Every Senate Republicans voted for a resolution calling the mandate unconstitutional, even though several of them had negotiated over plans containing such a mandate without objecting to it, and one of them Olympia Snowe, voted out of committee a plan with an individual mandate.

Obama is signing what was, until recently, a moderate Republican health care plan by every substantive comparison or definition. The unanimity of Republican opposition says more about Republicans than it does about the plan itself.

[CoeburnCane]

You guys realize we have some pretty educated people on here, right?

You do realize that's Tea Party Code for "left wing nutjob cynic", right?

[sup-rbeast]

"The video was in response to the tea party being a bunch of racists. All of y'all seem to forget that the democratic party was the party of slavery and the party that promoted segregation and against civil rights.

If Abe Lincoln was a politician today, he'd be a Democrat too....the Democrats and Republicans has essentially traded identities they held in 1860. I realize that was something you quoted and I couldn't find the original quote...but every time I hear someone remind me Abe Lincoln was a Republican in an effort to promote the "virtues" of the GOP, I laugh in their face.

[Gotch]

If Abe Lincoln was a politician today, he'd be a Democrat too....the Democrats and Republicans has essentially traded identities they held in 1860. I realize that was something you quoted and I couldn't find the original quote...but every time I hear someone remind me Abe Lincoln was a Republican in an effort to promote the "virtues" of the GOP, I laugh in their face.

FYI Abe was a raving racist who introduced numerous bills to force blacks out of Illinois and even the country as a whole. He proposed to pay for the deportation of all blacks from the country even after becoming president.

One well known and often written about story is how several Union Generals left an important meeting with Lincoln furious that all he did the entire time was to tell racist jokes and never did get around to the dire issues of pressing war matters.

Honest Abe - "I have no disposition to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together on terms of respect, social and political equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there should be a superiority somewhere, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position;"

The Great Emancipator - "I will say then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor have I ever been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people...there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man."

[1inStripes]

If Abe Lincoln was a politician today, he'd be a Democrat too....the Democrats and Republicans has essentially traded identities they held in 1860. I realize that was something you quoted and I couldn't find the original quote...but every time I hear someone remind me Abe Lincoln was a Republican in an effort to promote the "virtues" of the GOP, I laugh in their face.

Very true. Most findings show the shift around WW2 to 1960 as being that shift in political ideaology.

Lincoln truly is misunderstood IMO, and that helps the impression left of his legacy.