Contributors

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Yeah, tell me again...

Perhaps it's naivete or perhaps he's just a nice guy trying to reach across the aisle. President Obama, in his first health care town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday, spoke highly of Senator Grassley of Iowa and Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia saying

I think there are my friends on Capital Hill who are sincerely trying to figure out a health care bill that works.

And how did they, in that spirit of bipartisanship, embrace him?

Grassley of Iowa:

In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life. You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.

And Johnny boy released this statement.

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., today denounced comments made by President Obama and his spokesman regarding Isakson’s alleged connection to language contained in the House health care bill on “end-of-life counseling.”


Isakson vehemently opposes the House and Senate health care bills and he played no role in drafting language added to the House bill by House Democrats calling for the government to incentivize doctors by offering them money to conduct “end-of-life counseling” with Medicare patients every five years. Isakson also strongly opposed the House bill language calling for doctors to follow a government-mandated list of topics to discuss with patients during the counseling sessions.

Odd considering that he had this to say just in an interview, about the end of life counseling, just moments before.

I have no idea. I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.

Even more odd considering Isakson PUSHED FOR THE SAME THING IN THE SENATE!!

And people are telling me that the Democrats have no interest in bipartisanship? If anything, they are being too nice and conciliatory while conservatives know (i.e. what I have been saying since I fucking started this blog) that they have to play to the nutters of their party because....THAT'S WHAT THEIR WHOLE PARTY IS!!!!

So, please, the next time someone tells you that the Democrats are stubborn, immovable, play to the crazies in their base, and don't want compromise, show them this post. And tell them to come back with something that isn't direct from their ass.


7 comments:

blk said...

Remember what DeMint said, Mark: the Republicans want health care to be Obama's Waterloo. And remember what Limbaugh said: he hopes Obama fails. And remember what Michael Scheuer said on Glenn Beck's show: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

These same people were telling us six years ago that anyone who doesn't support the president is a traitor. Even when the president is lying directly to our faces about Saddam Hussein having WMDs and being involved in 9/11? Yeah. But if he wants health care for all Americans, then the president is the traitor.

I don't require that Republicans accept everything that Obama wants. I just want them to sit down and have a reasonable discussion about what the problems are with our health care system and then do something to fix them.

Our health care system is seriously broken. There are obvious things that have to be done: we need portability of health care, insurance companies should not be able to turn down patients with pre-existing conditions and everyone should be covered. These things will save money and lives in the long run. You can bicker about a government option if you want, and clamor for more cost controls. If you don't want the system to pay for end of life counseling, fine. Those are legitimate concerns.

But sending out shock troops to scream about a government takeover of health care in town hall meetings smacks of cynicism and hypocrisy, especially since half of the protesters are on Social Security and Medicare.

Liberals protested with great venom when Bush started a trillion dollar war based on lies and incompetence, which killed and maimed tens of thousands of American and Iraqis. Conservatives are protesting with even greater venom because Obama proposes to help Americans lead longer and healthier lives.

Can the comparison be any more stark than this?

rld said...

Gee Markadelphia, you sure are in a bad mood. Could that be because the democrats are losing ground in the polls on this issue? You usually cuss and insult more when that is the case.

GrumpyOldFart said...

Even when the president is lying directly to our faces about Saddam Hussein having WMDs...

And there you have it, folks.

When you know in advance that those on the other side of the discussion bring this kind of thinking to the table, what's the point of talking to them at all?

It doesn't matter that the intelligence services of the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and Israel all agreed with Bush's assessment. It certainly doesn't matter that the majority of Democrats who demonized him for years afterward agreed with his assessment, in many cases even before Bush was ever elected (See Bill Clinton's speeches on Iraq from the late 90s). No, none of that matters, Bush and Cheney lied to us and got us into this war all by themselves.

When the facts and the usefulness of the result are obviously less important to you than finding new ways to accuse your opponents of every evil you can make stick, what would possibly make someone think you are capable of "a reasonable discussion"?

dick nixon said...

"t doesn't matter that the intelligence services of the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and Israel all agreed with Bush's assessment."

What are you talking about? Those same agencies said he didn't have WMDs. Where is your evidence that they said this?

GrumpyOldFart said...

Germany:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html

UK:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2003/09/11/1109isc.pdf

Israel:
I can find any number of links saying that Israeli intel agreed with ours at the time. Sadly, every single one of those links is dead. Hardly surprising, since I'm linking to articles seven years old.

Democrats:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/157wjmhn.asp

Okay, not Russia or France. But then, Russia and France were so busy profiteering from the oil for food scandal that their "intel" on the subject is just as likely to be "cooked" as anyone's, no?

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/WMD_Timeline_Events.html

http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_09/alia/a0092210.htm

And yes, the ISG report says there were no WMDs in Iraq. Of course, 500 tons of yellowcake uranium don't count. Thousands of tons of "pesticides" (the precursors to chemical agents) stored at military bases all over Iraq don't count.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/

It's amazing to me that the very things Bill Clinton was saying right up through 2000 were somehow 'the best possible assessment' up until the moment that G.W. Bush started saying them, when suddenly they became "lies".

sw said...

Cue the crickets. Typical.

GrumpyOldFart said...

And of course, since American media outlets pretty much declined to report on the 30+ combat aircraft (approximately a third of a carrier air wing's worth, roughly the volume of two dozen 18-wheelers) found buried west of Baghdad after troops had been practically walking on top of them for months, naturally it would never occur to the average American that "we haven't found them yet in an expanse of sand over half the size of California" might not necessarily equal "they never existed in the first place".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3116259.stm

Media bias? What media bias?