The day’s top political news:
Obama caves on his insult of police officers
In an attempt to tamp down the escalating controversy over his comments on the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department, President Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room and placed calls to both Gates and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley, who arrested the Harvard professor.
Taking the briefing-room podium just hours after Cambridge police union officials called on Obama to apologize for saying the officers involved in the incident with Gates behaved "stupidly," Obama conceded that he erred in his "choice of words."
Obama said he spoke to James Crowley, the sergeant who arrested Gates, "and I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of him is that he was an outstanding police officer...and that was confirmed in the phone conversation."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25381.html#ixzz0MHaalnTy
House healthcare talks break down in anger
House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their own Democratic leaders.
In advance of a subsequent press conference called by House leadership, Blue Dog liaison Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) said the healthcare bill should be staying in committee.
The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-healthcare-talks-break-down-in-anger-2009-07-24.html
Perry raises possibility of states' rights showdown with White House over healthcare
Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggests he will consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas.
Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "Obama Care." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate.
Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, has made defiance of Washington a hallmark of his state administration as well as his emerging re-election campaign against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary. Earlier this year, Perry refused $555 million in federal unemployment stimulus money, saying it would subject Texas to long-term costs after the federal dollars ended.
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1504240.html
Opinion:
When the healthcare debate becomes very personal
Liberals pushing Obama’s scheme to bring Americans under European-styled healthcare schemes, are avoiding the approach’s cold hearted positions for elders. Obama’s proposal would impose a government assessment for everyone as they reach an age of about 60. The are calling it “end of life” planning. More word play by liberal politicians – euphemism as a strategy for glossing over reality.
No wonder Democrats are hiding it … “end of life” planning is hardly a very salable suggestion – it is certainly not as a political concept.
Democrats and other liberals are fascinated with bureaucratic approaches to issues and problems. They sort people by a “fits all” standard. They just stand individuality. They deal with faceless “masses”. Until Communism collapsed, the world saw this sort of mindset in the Soviet Union and those Communists held captive in Eastern Europe.
Today this anti-individual process is promoted in fewer dictatorships – N Korea and Cuba as examples. Left wing politicians cant stand honest analysis or tests of truth or fact.
Thus, all Senior citizens are threatened by liberals seeing Senior citizens as juat unimportant minor portions of a greater mass. “Faceless” describes how liberal Democrats actually see people.
The “End of Life” planning of Democrats and Obama includes a chilling core thought: “elderly people have an obligation to just go ahead and die and get out of the way”. That view has been voiced by Obama and his initial Healthcare Secretary, former Senator Tom Daschle. Earlier, another liberal Democrat politician, former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm, voiced the same idea.
Some Eskimos have the same approach to aging. At some point, they deem an elderly person to no longer have value. The Eskimos “put them out on the ice”. Thus their seniors drift off to oblivion on an ice floe. We have to consider whether this is a metaphor for Obama’s Healthcare planning for our “end of life” issues.
We need to challenge this liberal idea. We need to ask: “where’s the floe”?
Everyone dies, of course. But not many people enjoy focusing on that inevitable event, and certainly few Americans now alive would embrace government’a being given a voice in determining the when, where, and how.
Liberals fail to reveal how they propose Senior citizens “just die and get out of the way”. Does AARP – a very partisan and staunch Democrat cabal – have secret plans for introdicing monthly Kool Aid sipping? Is dying an element of AARP membership – an implied agreement by those who join to share support for the Obama mandate for death?
Liberals have an obligation to spell out just how they expect elderly people to fulfill their demands of planned deaths. Do we proceed by age? Maybe by Red state versus Blue state sorting?
Government planners somewhere within the inner ranks of Democrat political appointees considering my own “end of life” planning, doesn’t generate any comfort. Quite the contrary. But there’s an awful lot in Obama’s (still undefined) socialized medicine plot that I don’t like and cannot support.
Obama would obviously deny us the quality of health care we now take for granted. He cant hide the fact “government quality” is an oxymoron per se. He dares not allow the discussion and debate to focus on the Democrat “end of life” planning and preparation.
Contemplating Ohama’s demand I die and make room for a younger generation, I cite the mantra of the 60s -- “Hell No! I wont go”… at least not on a scheduled planned, plotted, and designed by Democrats.
I much prefer Frank Sinatra’s approach to life – when it’s all over, I want to say “I did it my way”.
Obama be damned,
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Specifics, Please
Health Care: From the president we now know that cops are stupid, doctors are greedy, Republicans don't play nice, people are dying and we're all going broke if we don't embrace socialized medicine in a week or so.
IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
Everything, in other words, but what Wednesday's press conference was supposed to be about: the health care reforms the president and his party want voted on by the time Congress breaks for another vacation.
Sure, we heard a lot of wonkish rhetoric — this president seems to think all he has to do is talk, and everyone will bend to his will — but there were few specifics.
And a few specifics would be nice before we place our health care system — 17% of the economy — under government control.
We didn't even hear the president explain how he could demand immediate action on bills that he himself hasn't read. (But then, to be fair, the somnambulant journalists in attendance didn't bother to ask.)
This became obvious Monday, when he was asked about a point we brought up in an editorial last week on whether the House bill in effect outlaws new private individual health care insurance the year it becomes law.
"You know," Obama told a group of hand-selected, sympathetic bloggers, "I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about."
Obama isn't the only one who isn't familiar with the "reform" he wants so badly. Tens of millions of other Americans are also trying to make heads or tails out of it — because it's something that will affect each and every one of them.
(NOTE: “Hurry up and wait” as a legislative ploy has become consistent within the Obama administration. Their “stimulus” scam is one example. Their “Cap and Trade” tax scam is another. Had anyone been able to read and analyze such legislation, debate would still be going on and more and more pitfalls detected. The “power only” Chicago politicians attempt to impose rather than legislate.)
Fortunately, some people are sorting through the particulars. For example, the Lewin Group, a consulting firm respected for its nonpartisan analysis of health care issues, put out another report this week that found, among other things, that:
• More than 88 million Americans could lose their employer-based health coverage as businesses switch to the new taxpayer-subsidized public option that will compete with private insurers for enrollment. Doesn't this refute the claim that we can keep our current coverage?
• Yearly premiums for Americans with private coverage could rise as much as $460 per person as a result of the cost-shifting that would result from the public option. How does this jibe with the claim that costs will be lower?
• Physicians' net income would fall by 6.3%, or an average of $18,900 per doctor, as a result of lower reimbursements under the public option and higher practice expenses associated with providing services to the newly insured.
If this results in fewer doctors, what does it mean for the promise of better care, especially when 47 million more people are gaining access to the system?
These questions and many others demand answers from the president — in or out of press conferences — as well as Congress before this legislation gets any further. Because all we're being told now is that if we cede control to Washington, we'll get better care for more people at lower costs, and these claims just don't add up.
One, care will be poorer as fewer doctors become overworked by the rush of newly insured patients. Two, more than 103 million Americans, the Lewin Group says, will be herded against their wishes into the government-run public option. Third, costs will keep rising because incentives to self-ration will be further weakened by a system that encourages patients to overuse it.
Until we hear some specifics that refute our reading of the legislation, we remain unconvinced that government-run health care will live up to its promise.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=333240344694377
2.
Sensitivity Training NowMedal Of Honor
A Teaching Moment
It’s starting to look like Harvard professors Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. and Charles Ogletree, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and President Barack Obama picked the wrong white cop to mess with, to paraphase Skip.
It’s not just that Sgt. James Crowley has a backbone.
Boston Herald: Crowley teaches the racial profiling class at a local police academy, in partnership with a black officer. That’s on top of his tortured history as the cop who lost Celtics star Reggie Lewis, something that haunts him 16 years later, after he tried desperately to keep that prominent black man alive in an intense mouth-to-mouth resuscitation session. Boston Herald again.
It’s getting a little awkward. It turns out Crowley might not be some lunkheaded Irish bigot cop after all. It’s looking like he might be the kind of white cop … if it is actually permissible for white men to be cops in post-racial America … that Gates, Obama, etal, might consider a paragon, an example for all.
(NOTE: This incident is a regrettable incident demonstrating racism remains alive and well within Black America. Obama was right about one thing: this was a “teaching moment” – it should teach Obama to remain silent and focus on his own concerns before jumping into a controversy while still totally ignorant of the facts. I cant resist noting “facts” seldom get proper attention from liberals such as Obama. In this specific case, Obama demonstrates in innate prejudice and bigotry Blacks hold regarding the police. Blacks such as this Professor and President are spring loaded to assuming the Police are in the wrong. Obama has refused to apologize. Who expected otherwise?)
I hate to moralize, but this is the kind of thing that happens when you make snap judgments and start busting heads and taking names based on nothing more that racial prejudice. Turns out that when you judge people by the color of their skin, great injustices can result.
Gates wanted a teaching moment to come out of this, and if he’s open to it, he might even get one. As the Boston Herald’s Peter Gelzinis suggests:
Here’s one way Harvard University celebrity academic Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley can begin to bridge the ugly gap between them:
Sgt. Crowley could take up Skip’s offer of private tutoring sessions on the history of racism in America.
And Professor Gates can attend a few of the seasoned Cambridge cop’s classes on racial profiling at the Lowell Police Academy.
Good one, Peter. But I don’t know, I’m not convinced Gates has that much to teach Crowley about racism that he hasn’t already taught him. Crowley may have something to teach Gates, though. It could be the lesson here is about reverse bigotry. It’s a lesson for all of us. Because if we are to evolve into a post-racial society, it can’t just be about putting the white man down all the time, as gratifying as that may be. If we are going to move past racism, we probably will need to move past the kneejerk race-baiting as well.
To be truly post-racial, we probably should also try to move past the ugly stain of racial hiring preferences, under which it is the overt policy of our government, universities and even private corporations to favor some races over another, based not on the content of men’s characters or their qualifications, but on nothing more than the color of their skin.
Because if you are a white male of a certain age in America, you may well have felt the sting of racial or gender discrimination. I don’t mean the belittling stereotypes, the presumption of inherited racism, the insistence that you maintain a deferential attitude, or even little things like men who refuse to look at you or mutually make way as you politely step aside on a narrow sidewalk, as any gentleman would. Those are just irritations. I mean when calling about a job, you’re asked questions like, “Are you black?” and when you have to admit that no, you aren’t, it becomes clear they have nothing for you. Or when you’re told that you’ve been bypassed for promotion by someone junior in experience, your supervisor explains, ”We needed a woman.” How humiliating for all parties involved. Managers usually are smart enough to not say those things, though those are actual utterances. And when you’re on the receiving end, you take it like a man. You keep plugging away, because you have your pride.
You aren’t interested in making a federal case out of it, and you know that historically, it’s your time. You have other people’s sins to pay for. Anyway, you don’t want what happens to people who speak up to happen to you. Being accused of being a racist isn’t quite as bad as being accused of being a child molester, but it runs a close second. It is a charge that sticks to you and is almost impossible to defend against.
Unless, like Sgt. Crowley, when you show up to protect a man’s property and he starts yelling at you that you are a racist white cop, you happen to have a history that starts to make the race baiter look a little silly.
Racism is an ugly thing, and there is no doubt that racial minorities in this country have suffered far greater injuries than those incidental slights and injuries targeting white males that I mentioned above, and still do. Our nation has struggled mightily with this issue, from a bloody war that killed more than half a million of our young men, to decades of lynchings, legal wrangling and finally official efforts to create some kind of balance and raise people from poverty and disadvantage. The rest of the world, while it likes to sneer at us, isn’t even in the game with us when it comes to the advancement of minorities and rising above race. But racism is a highly complex thing, more so than some parties may care to admit, and it is not a simple one-way street. We may have reached a point where, if we want to move past racism, it’s time to move past the instinctive, presumptive accusations of racism.
It might even take a lawsuit, though I don’t know whether Sgt. Crowley is inclined to seek to restore his public reputation in court. Given his handling of the matter so far, I’m not convinced he needs a court to reaffirm what he appears to have managed by standing on his own two feet.
About that other matter, racial preferences as official policy, those policies are currently so entrenched that despite encouraging signs such as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Ricci, I suspect it will be a long time before men are in fact judged solely on the content of their character and by their qualifications in this country.
At the beginning of this week’s summer doldrums news potboiler, I noted that the divergent accounts of Gates and Crowley indicate that someone is lying, and wondered out loud which is worse for society.
If a racist white cop or a race-baiting Harvard professor turns out to be the liar. Given that the cop serves in the multicultural sensitivity bastion of Cambridge, I’d suggest rank racism among law-enforcement authorities there would be a much worse thing, indicating no progress in race relations have been made at all in this country.
It’s looking like that is not the case, however. Independent witness accounts and a photograph suggest Gates was less than truthful when he insisted he never raised his voice … the public shouting and accusations being the cause of the disorderly charge, that kind of arrest being relatively routine when people of any race start yelling at cops who are trying to do their jobs.
While it may be difficult for Gates to admit he has not been entirely truthful, or that he leapt to erroneous and defamatory conclusions, this may be a perfect opportunity to make some progress in the peculiar aspect of race relations that is reverese racism. A perfect opportunity for a teaching moment.
But at last check, the cat has finally got Professor Gates’ tongue. He had plenty to say before, from the Boston Globe’s front page to CNN’s soundstage in the middle of Times Square, railing against the indignities he’s suffered, demanding an apology plus a teaching moment with the cop. But I’m looking around now, can’t find Gates on these latest revelations about Crowley … who by the way finally got the public support of his police commissioner, announcing yesterday that Crowley not only followed procedure in making his arrest, but there is no indication that race played a role in his actions. Boston Herald again.
Unfortunately, the president of the United States, who jumped in on this despite admitting he didn’t know the facts, also is standing by his remarks. ABC News. That really doesn’t bode well our evolution into a post-racial society, if the first black president of the United States is going to insist on taking sides based on nothing more than racial bias and his friendship with another privileged member of the Ivy league elite.
While Obama’s campaign and its coverage was marked by a great deal of race-baiting, which made it hard to criticism him without being accused of racism, his election put the lie to many of the political and media presumptions of American racism. His presidency, thankfully, has been allowed to proceed on its merits, such as they are, with the issue of race taking a back seat to actual performance, much as Gov. Deval Patrick’s tenure has following his historic election in Massachusetts. Which is as it should be.
It would be tragic if the president whose election has done so much to help this nation advance beyond its racial divides showed he was unable to rise above them. That would be a waste of a teaching moment. Either that, or it would be a very educational one.
3.
Who's Out of Touch?
Christopher Chantrill
In the Canadian Ottawa Citizen David Warren reckons that US liberals are out of touch. He says it all got started long ago when the afternoon newspapers started to fail and their predictably conservative views no longer balanced the liberal morning newspapers. The result?
[Liberals] have been freed, for more than a generation, from anything resembling serious public debate, and have thus got in the habit of proceeding with an infinitely extendible agenda (through the courts if there are legislative delays). The right has meanwhile got in the habit of feeling disenfranchised.
That explains the outrage "at the very existence of Sarah Palin, not only by “progressive” Democrats (a corrupted term) but by urbane ‘establishment' Republicans[.]"
But in the London Times Daniel Finkelstein thinks it's the US conservatives that are out of touch. For him, the resignation of Gov. Palin shows that Republicans don't get it.
There is no more eloquent statement of modern Republicanism than resigning office with time still on the clock. Mrs Palin has chosen to talk about power, rather than exercise it. She would rather write a book and give lectures about being a governor than actually be a governor. And her party has made the same choice.
Both Palin and the GOP, he writes, would rather be "angry outsiders" than struggle with the responsibilities of power.
Notice, however, that these two commentators are not that far apart on their view of the facts. Warren writes that conservatives feel "disenfranchised;" Finkelstein says they are "angry outsiders."
Finkelstein thinks that conservatives are being self-indulgent. He advises conservatives to get serious and learn to win friends and influence people in the liberal media.
The Republicans have to win round the liberal media. They have to build friends in it. They have to use it to win. Now that really would be an end to politics as usual.
But Warren has a different view. He concludes that Palin's resignation decision and her recent "cap and trade" article in the Washington Post means one thing. It means war.
We are going to have a war, next door in the U.S.A. -- a war between two world views that have become very nearly mutually incomprehensible.
You see the difference. Finkelstein thinks that conservatives should forget their dreams, get with the program, and learn to live with the liberal hegemony. Warren thinks that conservatives are getting ready to start a revolution.
When you want to have a revolution, the real revolution takes in peoples' minds. You are not just trying to win elections and wield political power. You want to change minds, and get people to believe in your vision of a glorious future, your city on a hill.
A century ago the great-grandparents of our liberal friends had a vision. They would build a society where everyone had access to a decent job, decent housing, and free education. In due course, the American people said to them: OK, you sold us. Go ahead and build it.
When you get to implement a political vision, and you don't listen as well as you should, and you don't learn from your mistakes as you should, there is a consequence.
You end up with the squalor of trying to keep those decent jobs going at Government Motors with taxpayers' money, refusing to admit that your mortgage meltdown has utterly betrayed the marginal homeowner, and trying not to admit that your free education system has utterly betrayed the poor.
That's when the American people start to say: enough of getting with the liberal program. It's broken! Get it liberals? B-R-O-K-E-N!
That's when impractical visionaries return to painting glorious visions of a conservative city on a hill. Cunning politicians start persuading people to believe in the vision. They urge their followers to follow them out of liberal Egypt towards the conservative Promised Land. And that's when observers like David Warren start to write about a culture war.
(NOTE: Such a “war” will/would indeed by a cultural one. Palin terrified Democrats. Measure the extremes to which Palin scared Democrats by noting the frenzy with which they conspired to attack her. The media rolled in with a passion seldom seen…they were inevitably joined by Republican pros from the McCain campaign still smarting from their lackluster performance. Have compassion – those pros were tasked with trying to sell a defective bar of soap. McCain was an awful candidate in many ways – but that’s’ for another day. The reality of this commentary is the tsunami of attack – much of it spurious, that descended on Palin.)
You can see why the get-with-the-program people don't like Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin means trouble for them and their comfortable status quo. But their disdain really doesn't matter. So Palin didn't punch her ticket correctly and finish her term as governor. So she muffed a couple of interviews in the fall of 2008. Palin's style of politics isn't about perfect resumes and flawless execution. You don't send Sarah Palin into the game to sit upon a lead. You send her in to get the team fired up and make things happen. You get ready for touchdowns -- and also fumbles and interceptions.
The awful truth about liberalism is its central delusion, the notion that life can be neatly organized into rational bureaucratic programs. It turns everything it touches into soulless clanking monster.
The glorious truth about conservatism is its love of life. Before princes, principalities and powers comes life and love, mothers and babies, children and families, struggle and sacrifice, a city on a hill.
Now, who in our public life most symbolizes this conservative truth?
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/whos_out_of_touch.html
At the NAACP, Obama Removes His Mask of the Great Unifier
Lloyd Marcus
It is truly a sad day in America when the president of the United States fans the flames of racial hatred. The man elected to be president of all the people, in his speech at the NAACP basically said, though America is racist, sexist and homophobic, you can make it in spite of those white SOB's attempts to stop you. Wonderful. How inspiring. The NAACP audience erupted in applause. Obama's condemnation was "red meat" to the liberal, protective of their victim status, organization.
"Make no mistake, the pain of discrimination is still felt in America (applause) by African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender; by La-tin-os made to feel unwelcome in their own country; by Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their god; by gay dead brothers and sisters still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."
(NOTE: Democrats have long held the franchise for victimization. They thrive on convincing people they have been badly used. The irony in this is the fact that racial discrimination has been practiced to a far greater degree by Democrats than by Republicans. It hasn’t been that long since denying Blacks the right to vote was a party position – an open party position – of Democrats. Georgia even elected its statewide officers in a “White Democrat Primary”.
Yet Black voters forget segregation and Jim Crow laws were ALL Democrat and their enforcement was ALL Democrat. The glib JFK somehow convinced Blacks otherwise. Liberals often sell information at odds with reality. Obama should note Muslims aren’t the only people who kneel to pray…but I guess there wasn’t that sort of piety in Obamas’ chosen church – the one run by a rabid racist, Jeremiah Wright. “Discrimination I still felt in America” -- true – and it was practiced in your own church of 20 years, Mr. President.)
Interestingly, Obama's list of victims did not include Christians and straight white males. This is because it is open season on bashing them. According to liberals, everything wrong in the world is the fault of Christians and straight white males. Case in point, Pulitzer Prize winner Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times in which she demonizes white men. Aren't Obama's statements in his speech eerily close to the teachings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright who said, "America is controlled by rich white people"?
Mr. President, as for the victims in your speech; one of those African American women you claim America has victimized used her money, power and influence to help get you elected. White guys did not blow up the Twin Towers, murdering three thousand Americans. Muslims did. So, excuse me if I give them a second glance in an airport. Only illegal Latinos are unwelcome -- just as with every other ethnic group. When an openly gay beauty pageant judge viciously trashes a contestant for humbly saying she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman and much of the media sides with him in ridiculing the woman, it is safe to say America is pretty tolerant of homosexuals. All of Obama's accusations against America are untrue, divisive and evil.
Does racism exist in America? Of course it does -- along with every other sin. But are we a racist country? Absolutely not! Why would our president want to reinforce such a divisive paradigm? And why did the NAACP so enjoy Obama's attack on white America?
If MLK were magically brought back to life, he would be heartbroken over what has become of this organization and the civil rights movement. He would ask,"Is Jesse still running to every photo op? And, tell me again how this Reverend Al guy became our spokesperson"?
Dr. King required his marchers to be sober, neat, clean and even tempered. He never preached hate. Quite the opposite, Dr. King dreamed of a day when all God's children, black and white, would join hands as brothers and sisters. Dr. King fought, suffered, and died because he wanted the Negro (and that is a word he proudly used) to have an equal opportunity to strive and achieve excellence. And yet, I heard that a civil rights group called a test racist because it used the word "sofa" rather than "couch" and black kids would not know they are the same. Give me a break!
Dr King would beam with pride over former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, both hated by the NAACP. I can hear him saying, "Negroes, Secretary of State and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, praise God!"
Dr. King's once great organization has become a liberal partner with the Democratic Party in their exploitation of blacks. Keep telling them they are victims, America is against them and they need Democrats to defend and protect them. This will ensure that the NAACP will remain relevant and Democrats will continue getting 95% of the black vote. This is why the NAACP went wild with applause over Obama's speech trashing America.
If MLK were alive today, I believe he would be a proud member, not of the NAACP, but of the organization of which I am president, the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color.
The NAACPC's philosophy and goals are far more in keeping with Dr King's dream. Personal responsibility. Judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all people. Sadly, our president believes she is an evil place where successful white males victimize everyone.
Though far from perfect, I remember to put the seat down most of the time, my amazing wife still thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread. Is it unreasonable to expect the leader of the free world to have, at least, a similar affection and opinion of his country? Dr King would be appalled.
Lloyd Marcus, Singer/Songwriter of the "American Tea Party Anthem" is President, NAACPC (National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color)
62 Comments on "At the NAACP, Obama Removes His Mask of the Great Unifier"
LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. (Thomas Paine)
We have the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed world. Conservative estimates are that over 120,000 of you dies each year in America from treatable illness that people in other developed countries don’t die from. Rich, middle class, and poor a like. Insured and uninsured. Men, women, children, and babies. This is what being 37th in quality of healthcare means.
I know that many of you are angry and frustrated that REPUBLICANS! In congress are dragging their feet and trying to block TRUE healthcare reform. What republicans want is just a taxpayer bailout of the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry, and the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry. An insurance bailout is all you really get without a robust government-run public option available on day one.
These industries have been slaughtering you and your loved ones like cattle for decades for profit. Including members of congress and their families. These REPUBLICANS are FOOLS!
Republicans and their traitorous allies have been trying to make it look like it's President Obama's fault for the delays, and foot dragging. But I think you all know better than that. President Obama inherited one of the worst government catastrophes in American history from these REPUBLICANS! And President Obama has done a brilliant job of turning things around, and working his heart out for all of us.
But Republicans think you are just a bunch of stupid, idiot, cash cows with short memories. Just like they did under the Bush administration when they helped Bush and Cheney rape America and the rest of the World.
But you don't have to put up with that. And this is what you can do. The Republicans below will be up for reelection on November 2, 2010. Just a little over 13 months from now. And many of you will be able to vote early. So pick some names and tell their voters that their representatives (by name) are obstructing TRUE healthcare reform. And are sellouts to the insurance and medical lobbyist.
Ask them to contact their representatives and tell them that they are going to work to throw them out of office on November 2, 2010, if not before by impeachment, or recall elections. Doing this will give you something more to do to make things better in America. And it will help you feel better too.
There are many resources on the internet that can help you find people to call and contact. For example, many social networking sites can be searched by state, city, or University. Be inventive and creative. I can think of many ways to do this. But be nice. These are your neighbors. And most will want to help.
I know there are a few democrats that have been trying to obstruct TRUE healthcare reform too. But the main problem is the Bush Republicans. Removing them is the best thing tactically to do. On the other hand. If you can easily replace a democrat obstructionist with a supportive democrat, DO IT!
You have been AMAZING!!! my people. Don't loose heart. You knew it wasn't going to be easy saving the World. :-)
God Bless You
jacksmith — Working Class
Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010.
* Richard Shelby of Alabama
* Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
* John McCain of Arizona
* Mel Martinez of Florida
* Johnny Isakson of Georgia
* Mike Crapo of Idaho
* Chuck Grassley of Iowa
* Sam Brownback of Kansas
* Jim Bunning of Kentucky
* David Vitter of Louisiana
* Kit Bond of Missouri
* Judd Gregg of New Hampshire
* Richard Burr of North Carolina
* George Voinovich of Ohio
* Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
* Jim DeMint of South Carolina
* John Thune of South Dakota
* Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas
* Bob Bennett of Utah
Posted by: jacksmith | July 25, 2009 at 03:25 PM