Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
29%, how much is that? Like half?
I have it from reliable sources that five out of four people can’t handle fractions.
Gaius
29% huh? How would they know?
Yeah, really funny. Too bad I’m going to pay for it…
I will admit to Lex readers only that I am one of the “right wing extremists” that the head of the HSA hates in addition to the “angry mob” that is gathering…
I was there at the Bishop Town Hall meeting. Right there qualifies me as some kind of nut as I protested his Pelosie/hack stance on national issues…
I think the most prescient quote I have seen was “the days of your holding a town hall and having 15-25 of your friends show up is over.” I sure hope so.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bishop has suspended his public appearances because the “little people” are causing a disturbance…
Babs,
yeah, that whole “democracy” thing can be a real drag, huh?
These idjit Congress Critters would never make it in the entertainment world. if they can’t take THIS level of criticism, imagine how they’d do against professional critics…..
These folks are the folks with heavy credit card debt and who bought homes more expensive than they could afford. Surprising to me is how low this number is. I thought the number would have been far higher than 29%…
Those 29% think the deficit is rising due to a recession.
Which is also true, but not comprehensively so.
The Dems are going to pull the plug on town hall meetings.
My Congressman will never again allow himself to be brought in front of such an unsupportive crowd.
It is not about listening to his constituents, it is all about controlling the people in his district.
He will do this with massive campaign funds and a one sided message..
I’ve heard more than enough just today about “unruly organized mobs”. In the videos, any fool can see that these are just ordinary, hard-working Americans who are highly ticked off! I’m pretty sure the Dems and their media allies are running scared and the Repubs are right behind them. They can’t all pretend to be that dumb for very long – well, maybe they can – but the message is finally getting through, I hope. What they all do with that message is another thing entirely.
Of course the better question is, how much worse would it have been if the spending had not been done?
Canada, which like unlike us, launched a more aggressive and front loaded stimulus plan will come out of the recession this fall. It is on track to be the first G-8 country to do so. Its GDP is also set to grow this fall too.
Babs, let me ask you a question. I’ve watched the videos too-what I’ve seen are people who are impolite at best, stupid fools at worst. What bothers me is people going to town hall meetings with their Representatives, and other people coming in to purposefully disrupt the meeting. I have no problem with attendees being passionate about their positions, but I want to hear and evaluate their positions, not have to listen to shouting for the sake of shouting. If their positions are so great and so logical and so damn patriotic, then let’s hear the damn positions. And then let’s talk about them. Just don’t try to intimidate or silence other people in the meeting.
They find the health care bill offensive. Fine. I find 5000 Americans getting killed for worthless Arabs offensive too. That still does not give me the right to walk into an open public forum and behave like a jack-ass. There is a right way and a wrong way to do these kind of things and what is happening at the town halls is just wrong.
It will get out of control and over time something really bad is going to happen-especially when some of those passionate people are also carrying concealed weapons. That is why the GOP needs to repudiate this kind of behavior.
Skippy? Roughly one in seven in my state is carrying concealed. I dare you to find an incident in South Dakota where a CCW holder let his or her passions in argument draw iron in a public forum.
I expected better than a strawman based solely upon speculation from you.
As for the passionate folks at the town hall meetings, are the members of Congress working for us? Aren’t these their orchestrated events to hear our concerns and vote based upon our preferences?
I didn’t elect these folks to lead me. I elected them to represent me. Kind of the difference between being a citizen and a subject. If they’re uncomfortable justifying their position in face of their constituents, they’d best change their position or we can surely find them a replacement.
– Max
Max,
You elect Representatives for two years, Senators for six. You elect them because you trust their judgment to act for your best interests-however, you do not get to dictate exactly what they will do. If you really think they are not representing you-start a recall. Let me know how that works out.
Ezra Klein summs it up well: What we’re seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It’s distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not require an explicit detailing of the “institutional checks” that will prevent one partner from beating or killing the other. In a healthy relationship, such madness is simply unthinkable. If it was not unthinkable, then no number of institutional checks could repair that relationship. Similarly, the relationship between the protesters and the government is not healthy. The protesters believe the government capable of madness. There is no evidence for that claim, which means that there is no answer for it, either. That claim is not about what is in this bill, or what government has done in Medicare and Medicaid and the VA. It is about what a certain slice of Americans think their government — and by extension, their fellow citizens — capable of.
Welcome to the future, that boneheads like Glenn Beck et all have created. Its not health care-its the over all ability of the American people to discern what’s fact from fiction that is suffering from an acute illness.
Skippy, if you could travel back in time to the taverns of Boston in 1775, you would have found the exact same atmosphere…and back then, no one had to have a license to carry a weapon.
Skippy,
It strikes me that all the thieves have left Washington and returned to their districts for the sake of campaigning and ‘listening’ to their constituents, you know, the pond scum that they represent in Congress but they only arrange one one hour appointment/week with the pond scum which makes it somewhat difficult for the scum to communicate their legitimate concerns to the shite they elected to represent them in Congress.
They and you have no legitimate basis to complain if they have made it utterly impossible for the pissed off citizens they represent to share their thoughts with the nazi or commie that they elected to office who refuses to hear them.
If these f&cksticks were doing their jobs properly we’d be reading about 500 to 1000 disruptive assemblies a day as they actively sought out the “sense” of their constituents. They behave more and more like the French aristocracy before 14 July 1789 and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them start to feel the effects of such idiotic and senseless behavior.
I knew an Army Colonel who worked for a BGEN in the Pentagon decades ago who, upon being informed that some Congressman had called the office and demanded an immediate explanation for some fact said, “let me handle this one general. That little turd works for me” and went off to the Congressman’s office and ripped him to pieces since that particular turd was “his” congressman.
Those morons work for us not the other way around. If they can’t face the heat and approbation earned from their own stupidity and venality I say screw them. side note, very long screws, power drills, extension cords. bring them to the next meeting with your rep.
Max-well said.
Skippy – did the Canucks spend 400K investigating gay sex? Did they spend 4.2 mil of stimulus for honey research? of the 787 billion less than 1/3 has been spent or budgeted to be spent. People are passionate and vocal about seeing their dreams go poof. And guess where they learned their tactics? Ugh, let’s re-wind to some Bush years and some of the “polite” liberal disagreements. We may be dumb but we ain’t stoop-pid and come 2012 you will see ACORN style tactics on the right. I’m thinking there will be several hundred A. Lincolns registered here alone. Who, incidentally, was recently voted as “my favorite Democratic president” by a SC school system that is over 90% minority. And they grow up to vote as well.
But I will have to swallow a bit of pride and say I have to agree with the 5000 for “worthless Arabs” comment. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade does it?
If folks who think like Skippy would have displayed the same passion in the fall of 2002, you think we would have invaded? Folks on this side are fed up with sweeping legislation, rushed through, with no deliberation. They don’t want to get stuck with an egg you can’t un-fry.
Could be the difference in responses, between administrations, has driven the quality of the debate. One one side you have mature treatment of legitimate dissent. On the other, the thin skinned temper tantrums of an only child, who has been fawned over since birth. I think AxelRove was pretty prescient.
lol…”mature treatment of legitimate dissent” — would that be like the “free speech” zones set up at various Rep events — so far away, out of sight, etc. as to be laughable, if they weren’t so sad?
Maybe you were thinking about this “free speech zone”?
Second, only blind partisans, searching for the faintest glimmer of moral equivalency, would equate crowd control at party conventions to the statements of elected officials, or their representatives, in the performance of their jobs.
Welcome aboard, FNG.
Skippy,
The last “town hall meeting” I was at had metal detectors at the door. My weapon stayed locked in the trunk of my car. I take severe offense at your remark, the same offense I take at being called an insurance company shill and a member of an angry mob by my government. If anybody pulls out a gun and starts shooting at one of these “meetings”, it will probably be some tree hugging vegitarian left-wing nut job.
Skippy, the subject of the main thread was that there are still almost a third of the population who don’t realize our deficit has been driven up-ward. That’s a major share of any country, the U.S. or Canada.
Oh, yes… what brought Canada into the discussion anyway… and you say their stimulus was “front-end-loaded”. Seems to me I’ve heard the complaint that ours was a “rear-ended”. I wonder where we’d be if we hadn’t been forced to wait until 2010 to receive 75% of our stimulus impact. Of course, we’re all quite sure it wasn’t scheduled to coincide with the mid-term elections, right?
Impolite, you say the people are? Hmmm… seems to me that the Patriots of 1776 would have been called at least “impolite”. Oh, yes… what would you call the likes of Code Pink and their demonstrations? You know, closing down enlistment offices, shouting their epithets everywhere including the halls of Congress. How ’bout the likes of the antics of Ms. Sheehan? Would they perhaps have been “impolite”?
Inasmuch as you’re claiming the rights of the Seargant At Arms, hall monitor, etc., where were your objections for the past eight years? After all the abuse Bush absorbed, I don’t recall any protests about ill behavior back then… even once.
But that is just the point-the same misconduct you criticize then, you accept as OK now.
Five minutes on Google will net you poll results showing that Americans of all political leanings and every race and age can be idiots.