From Jon Stewart to Sarah Palin there is the lingering question… What does President Obama really think about the mislabelled “Ground Zero Mosque”.
On Friday, the President said Muslims…
“have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country … That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”
That’s easy enough for even the simplest mind to understand, and she did, but the next day when the President said
My intention was to simply let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally, in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.
I was commenting very specificly on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country’s about. And I think its very important that as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about
Simple minds like Palin’s imploded. If it was just hers and Fox Nation who all of a sudden had the look of a hog reading a wristwatch, I wouldn’t have said a word. I don’t expect them to understand any multi-syllabic response that doesn’t include waving some kind of pitch-fork at a new minority group they hate. But, it wasn’t just those of a simpler intellect that somehow got confused with the two comments, David Morey vice chairman of the Core Strategy Group, who provided communications advice to Obama’s 2008 campaign, said “The danger here is an incoherent presidency,”. The Daily Show ran a skit on it. Politico had an article titled “Obama, the one-term president” that said
Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it. He might be forced to pull a Palin and resign before his first term is over. He could go off and write his memoirs and build his presidential library. (Both would be half-size, of course.)
Really? This is his ‘Palin sees Russia from her house’ moment?
WTF?
To borrow a line from Aliens… Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?
President Obama looked around all last week and saw the country he is the leader of having apoplectic fits over a misnamed “Mosque” being built near ‘Ground Zero’. He looked around and saw GOP right wingers calling for an end of building permits, not just around New York city, but around the entire country. The President looked around and saw other states weighing in on banning mosques from being built, and my own states ‘burn the koran’ day and he said ENOUGH ALREADY!
Thank God he did, because the week leading up to his comment the narrative was ‘let’s ban a religion from being able to build their house of worship’. The right-wing-uber-fucks were chanting and spewing how this extremist can’t build his terrorist recruiting center mosque, and a candidate is even running on a promise to stop this mosque from being built if he gets elected. Their narrative was simple, we are strict constitutionalists only when it suits us, when it comes to brown people we want them to have separate rights and laws. Repeal the 14th amendment and only allow ‘our’ churches and ban ‘theirs’. That’s the road this country was headed down until President Obama weighed in on the matter.
There is no ‘message problem’ like it’s been implied here. The message is simple and easy. It’s not anyone this high in government’s place to say whether a church should or should not be built. It could be seen as influencing an outcome. Harry Reid was wrong to offer his opinion on the matter the way he did. The only answer to expect from this President or anyone else in government is simply this. Our constitution allows it’s citizens the freedom of religion, the freedom to pray to the God of their choosing. It allows houses of worship to be built without interference from the government. If you want to build a church worshiping space aliens, our constitution allows that. If you want to build a mosque to worship Allah, our constitution allows that. Unless we are going to stop allowing catholic churches to be built next to schools, then we really have no right to stop a mosque from being built in the same zip code as the 9/11 attacks. The President’s message was crystal clear, it’s not up to him to say whether or not it should be built, it’s only his job to say that it can be built, and until he made that distinction the narrative out there was demanding that the 1st amendment be nullified when it comes to Muslims and their rights. If you don’t get what the President was saying and why? Then maybe you should look at the idiocy in yourself instead of blaming him for your confusion. For him to weigh in on the ’should/shouldn’t’ question, puts him on a ‘false’ side. Just ask Harry Reid, now that he weighed in and said it’s lawful to build but they shouldn’t, he’s considered in the crowd that opposes the mosque. Nice work Harry, you’ve joined the ranks of the political opportunist Newt Gingrichwho considers all Muslims the same like all Nazi’s are the same. Who equates the building of a mosque to the holocaust! Yes, brilliant move on your part.
and to Sister Sarah, who said
“Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade. If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive “cross-cultural engagement”
Darling, it’s not his job to say whether or not he thinks a house of worship should be built, it’s only his job to remind those who wish to impede on the religious freedom of this country. The opinions of whether it should be built or not, are left to the idiots commentators who couldn’t make it in politics. See, when you become President, you can’t just ‘tweet’ your responses and opinions on every subject and you can’t just claim the media twisted your words when the curtain of your idiocy is pulled back to reveal an empty mini-skirt.When you become President, every utterance from your lips is chewed and re-chewed down to a microscopic level, so you learn to give generalized answers on most non-essential issues. Because if you were to weigh in and give a personal answer like, I don’t know, you thought the police acted stupidly on some random matter, then the same people screaming at you now for giving a generalized and non-partsian answer will have seizures because you gave a direct personal opinion on an issue.
The failure here isn’t Obama’s ability to communicate, it’s your ability to understand.
BREITBART: The reason why Shirley Sherrod is the story right now, not the NAACP, is because the White House which stands by the firing or the forced resignation — harassment as she said — they made the story about Shirley. They threw her under the bus.
I have not asked that she get fired. I’ve not asked for an investigation into her. The whole point was to show that the — for the NAACP to spend five days on national TV saying that the Tea Party is racist without any evidence when we can prove that the central argument didn’t happen and the mainstream media won’t play it — for them to talk about racism they should not be throwing stones in glass houses.
That’s right! He didn’t ask that she be investigated…
Umm, ok… Well see. Yeah .. he did, but he didn’t mean it.
When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn’t suspect that it’s fake — you should presume that it’s fake, until further evidence becomes available.
Mr. Krugman, even with evidence.. you still can’t believe them. Because now, Fox is denying even doing the story..
The family has spoken out today about that. Fox News didn’t even do this story. We have didn’t do it on “Special Report.” We posted it online. It’s an amazing turn of events here.
Well, yes.. it is an amazing turn of events.
JUAN WILLIAMS, NEWS ANALYST, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO…The NAACP, I will give them credit,they were snookered, and they acted rationally and –
BAIER: Not by Fox News.
No, the NAACP weren’t snookered at all by Fox news because Fox news didn’t even do the story, they just posted in online that’s all.
~”Wow!” O’Reilly said after the clip aired. “That is simply unacceptable, and Ms. Sherrod must resign. The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance.”
~Fox’s Sean Hannity aired the same short snippet of Sherrod’s speech shortly afterward.
“This was at an NAACP dinner, and this was racist,” Hannity said.
~By Tuesday morning, “Fox & Friends” headlined the story “Racism Caught on Tape.”
Commentator Laura Ingraham talked about “people who have burrowed their way into the Obama administration with radical outlooks, a radical agenda and, in this case, a racist sentiment. How many more like Ms. Sherrod exist in the Obama administration who weren’t so stupid as she was to actually explicitly state her views on the issue of race?”
Wow is right Mr. O’reilly! Wow, I can’t believe someone on your network is actually trying to pretend you guys never talked about this story.
Of course before everything came out the mega-hit Right-Wing Media was patting themselves and Breitbart on the back .. For breaking this story on the racist movement going on in the Obama administration. But once it started to crumble upon itself, Fox made sure to ignore the past few hours they had spent calling this woman everything they could call her and their morning show came out with this gem
“They may have acted without knowing the whole story,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said
That takes pretty big balls to admit that! Bravo Brian Kilmeade for standing up and admitting it!
Oh wait, I’m sorry I didn’t use the entire comment in context did I?.. I guess I should since like Brietbart’s claimed on his Sharrod blog “Context is everything”
So the Kilmeade statement was…
“They may have acted without knowing the whole story,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said of the administration.
The liberal media are deliberately spiking the shocking video that reveals an NAACP banquet speaker admitting her racist views and actions. We’ve waited a full 24 hours to see if any coverage of this exposé would surface. So far, nothing but crickets. The ABC, CBS and NBC evening and morning ‘news’ shows have all failed to even mention the damning video admission that is dripping with disdain for white people and that caused the official to tender her resignation.
Worse yet, it comes from the NAACP, the same organization that has feverishly accused the Tea Parties of racism. The thoroughly untrue accusation against the Tea Parties has been propped up and propelled by the incessant reporting of these same networks. Yet they decide to thwart this story about the NAACP.
The only thing more newsworthy than the charges of racism are the hypocritical charges of racism. The media must report this scandal.
That’s right, the Liberal Media has waited all of 24 hours to comment on this story, it must be that they are hiding it. It’s just more proof of the ‘other media’s’ effort to hide the racism in this government! It doesn’t matter that just a mere hours after this demand from the President of Media Research Center the entire story started to crumble and change because the Liberal media, that ‘other media’, actually did what it’s supposed to do and confirm the story!
SANCHEZ: We, by the way, chose not to do the story yesterday, even though we had the story, reason being we thought it was important to try and contact her first, double-down on sources, and try and get a complete perspective for the sake of context
Damnit! They should have been covering it like the Right-Wing Media had covered it, without any confirmation,investigation, or statements from those they were accusing!
Today of course the story is President Obama jumped to a conclusion without investigating, not that the President foolishly believed there was some semblance of journalistic integrity in the Right-wing media so that when they force a story upon the public, it resembles the truth in some small way and is not just the fabrication of unstable blogger and race-baiting network. You see, it’s really the Presidents fault and the NAACP’s fault for believing Fox and Breitbart!
Did you catch that? It’s the President and NAACP fault for believing Breitbart and Fox News and being in such a hurry, and the Liberal MSM is too slow in reporting on Fox and Breitbart’s scoop so they must be hiding it. It’s like watching Sibyl.
After all of this, it’s hard to pick out one thing that is the most shocking, but I think I have found it. To me, the most striking about all of this is the admission made by Laura Ingraham on Fox and Friends. While parts of her comment can be found all over the ‘tubes’ (and even in this blog), it’s the 1st part that stuns me and surprises me that not a single journalist as picked it up and run with it to nail down exactly what it is she meant.
..”Now this [Sharrod video] emerges and pretty much confirming what many of us thought about people who’ve burrowed their way in the Obama administration with radical outlooks, a radical agenda, and in this case, a racist sentiment expressed clearly by her.”
…. it confirmed what many of them thought anyway. Many of who? Whites? Republicans? Tea-party members? Who is this ‘many’? The significance of that statement has been over-looked in all the hoopla, but it is the very essence of every single problem we face today. Ingraham, Fox news,Breitbart, the Tea party… many of them think President Obama and/or people in his administration are racists and they don’t need confirmation of this because they think it anyway but they’d like video proof just so they can stand up and say “see, we knew it. I never liked this guy because I just knew it and now.. I’m vindicated”
The problem is, the longer they go without that proof to make them feel at ease with their hate, the more they twitch and are apt to do the irrational. The Shirley Sharrod video wasn’t the end, just like the Acorn edits and the Van Jones smear there will be more things to come, more false accusations, made up and heavily edited video. After each incident, there might be an apology, like Breitbart did with part of his Acorn fabrication and like many have done with this new issue, but each and every time there will be hundreds, if not thousands of viewers and listeners out there that after hearing the erroneous accusation and then the pull-backs and apologies, just know there is racism in this administration anyway… they just haven’t gotten the right proof yet. It will never dawn on these people that there isn’t any proof because there isn’t anything there, to them it’s just hidden by the ‘other media’. Many of them already know it’s there.. now they just need to find it, and if the Republican’s get elected they promise to investigate Shirley Sharrod to find it.. Look out Shirley, the wrath of those who have egg on their face is coming for you!
What these guys have confirmed to many of us is that even if they never find it on their own in a legitimate manner, they’ll just make it up. Because there are people in the Tea-Party and Ring-Wing Media who’ve burrowed their way in and they have radical outlooks, a radical agenda, and in many cases are simply un-hooded racist spreading their hatred one news story at a time. But hey, it’s not their fault, it’s President Obama’s.
Unemployment benefits were not extended because the political elite does not depend on the well-being of masses any longer; political donations by the economic elite are sufficient to secure re-election and the well-being of those donors. This latest stunt out of Washington should be a wake-up call to demand campaign reform.
The Krugman piece was on unemployment and the heartless,clueless and confused who simply do not, or will not give understanding to the people on it. In an era where there is 10%+ unemployment across the board some have actually decided that there really are jobs, it’s just that those lazy unemployment people don’t want them. I think this ‘blame the unemployed’ is just their coping mechanism because as long as they can ignore the poverty of their neighbors,friends,church mates they can sleep a night with never having to address just how badly the new version of the American Motto, coined by Gordon Gecko “Greed is Good”, really isn’t working out for 95% of this country. But hey, they may one day be in that 5%, so they don’t want anything changing before they get there.
I know what it’s like to try and live off of Florida unemployment for months at a a time. I’ve read where some states give $500+ a week compensation, here we get $275.. unless you chose to have taxes removed which most don’t for obvious reasons, but we did so they average compensation my husband received was about $212 a week. Sure, a man who has worked every day in the Florida sun since he was 14 would rather lounge around the house for a mighty $212 a week because everyone knows that when you lose your job the utility companies, stop asking for payment, mortgage companies give you automatic stays,gas and food are delivered each night by fairies on unicorns and clothes and shoes are made by those cute little cobbling leprechauns.
What people like Krugmans ‘clueless’ forget is that unemployment benefits aren’t going to uneducated, welfare mom’s and immigrants… ya know ‘those’ people. It’s going to people who were employed! Who, through no fault of their own went to work one day and were told they didn’t have a job any longer. It’s not going to people who were fired for being incompetent or lazy, it’s going to roofers,painters,CPA’s, teachers,electricians,plumbers, people who worked their asses off every day of their life. These are the people we want in society, the job-doers. These are not the shiftless and lazy and fuck you to those making them out to be!
Clueless is a good word for them and Krugman is correct to name them such. Just as he is correct that Republicans are heartless for their part in this never ending story. Republicans know that if they can just get the economy to sink a little more, if they can just hamper any recovery then maybe they can regain power. That is their goal right now, not to govern in cooperation with the majority who was elected by a country based on the idea of majority wins, but to obstruct everything that might just enhance recovery and hopefully this stalemate will turn the average Joe against the current majority. They hope the people will forget it was the Republicans and their deficit spending wars,tax cuts, de-regulation and social programs that got us here in the 1st place. Most of all they hope they can get back in power because those unpaid for tax-breaks for the richest of the rich expire soon and they want to re-up them. You can understand atleast the heartless, just remove your soul and care for nothing but yourself and you get them perfectly. But it’s the clueless that keep me going back to them. They are the ones I can’t understand even when I try. They are the ones on unemployment and using medicaid who rail against.. yep, Obama socialists agenda in paying people to stay out of work and giving them all health care at tax-payers expense. In them are the tea-party members who chant “Say No to Socialism” in one breath and “Don’t touch my medicare” in the other. I actually saw a crowd of signs the other day that made me laugh out, one woman was holding a sign that said “Stay out of our bedrooms” and the man she was holding hands with had a sign that read “Stop Abortion”, those kinds of ‘clueless’ are too far gone to even try and educate. They are mad and just can’t quit put a finger on the reason. (Well, personally I think they can put a finger on the reason but are too afraid to be called ‘racists’ for saying exactly what their problem with this administration is.)
While Krugman writes a great article it was the comment above that struck a chord in me because I don’t think a recent ruling of the supreme court has sunk in yet.
But it will.
When the supreme court ruled that corporations are really people and as people are entitled to donate to the official they’d like elected, that forever ended the ‘voice of the people’. Until that time candidates had to at least pretend to be on the side of the little guy in order to be able to fundraiser off him, but now? There isn’t a little guy around who can match donation funds with corporation giants. You only have to look at recent events to see just exactly how shitty things will get for the working, soon-to-be-serf class.
After the supreme court ruling, GOP leaders made a bee-line to wall street. They wanted the big bankers who crumbled the world’s economy to know that the Democrats were planning ‘reform’ and if they’d just come over to the GOP way, well that reform would die where is started..Last week’s Financial Reform Bill vote pretty much tells you how that offer was received.
Do you see where this is going yet? I’m sure some of you do, but unfortunately.. some (well a lot) don’t. For those that don’t here goes what you seem to be advocating with extreme vigor. By saying the President had the audacity to charge Goldman for fraud after he used their donations, is akin to saying he should have taken the money and said nothing about their crime. You’ve decided that the leader you want will take money from anyone, any corporation and if that donor breaks the law… he’ll ignore it and protect their right to break the law by dissolving any investigation into their misdeeds. If it is true that it is untrustworthy and unbecoming of an elected official to prosecute his own corporate donors when they break the law, then it must also be true that the politician you value is the one who is bought and paid for by the corporations who donate to them.The politician you want isn’t the one who can take a donation from a corporation in good faith and still not be beholden to them, but instead you want the one who takes the bribes and hides the crimes.
Well, fear not heartless,clueless, and confused.. you might just get the government of you chose. One that looks at 14% unemployment and blames the laziness of the workers. The kind of government who will destroy what is left of the country for their own political gain. The government who will advocate for more power being taken from the citizens of the country and given to the corporations who elect them and finally the government who takes the donations from the massive corporations, and sit back, allowing them free-reign without fear of prosecution. In other words, the country you wish to live in is not one where the worker is cared for but where the corporation is deemed the more valuable entity, where the megacorporation is the more valuable voice and the one who no law should bind. To you I say, welcome to public servitude, welcome to corporatocracy, welcome to Soylent Green.
Like I said in the blog, ‘When does 2+2=4 become debatable? When it’s politics, stupid!” , Fox News adds 2+2 and comes up with 7. As if that wasn’t bad enough they get people to believe them instead truth and facts. They even pull the ‘Hey, we’ve researched’ it card to back up whatever claim they are making. Obviously if they’ve researched it and they are this adamant that their information is correct, then they should be believed… right?
After Senator Coburn told a town hall meeting not to believe what they hear on Fox News, Bill-O decided he was going to take it upon himself to research his station and find out just when it was that anyone on Fox News said that under “ObamaCare” you would go to jail if you didn’t get health insurance.
O’Reilly: Well, tell me, what — because it doesn’t happen here.
And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News
had ever said you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance.
Nobody’s ever said it.
Well there you go, that solves it. This rumor was nothing more than another attempt of the “Lame stream media” to attack the honest hardworking fact checkers at Fox News, they researched this problem and found it to be an utterly false accusation.
except..
Beck: But if you don’t play by their new rules on health care, oooh, here’s a new little twist. Have you heard this? You’re going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail.
and
… But if you don’t play ball with them now, if you don’t get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was
Glenn Beck told his audience on Nov. 12, 2009 that they would go to jail. The next day on O’reilly’s own show, Beck was a a guest and repeated the same claim.
BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.
This doesn’t include the Hannity shows and guests he’s had on who echoed same statements.
If you just happen to be walking by the TV and the sound was off, you still got the news from Fox when they said at the bottom of the screen “Comply or go to jail.”
In a strange twist, a member of the Fox News team admits this was a falsehood spread by Fox News. Neil Cavuto has owned up to the myth Sen. Coburn was talking about.
“I’ve
researched this, and a
number of Fox
personalities had made that comment.”
Cavuto mentioned this fact the day after the O’reilly/Coburn interview, and even then O’reilly again went on his and insisted that Sen. Coburn “didn’t really have his facts in line,” when it came to saying Fox News perpetuated the jail time myth.
2+2=7
If you are a viewer of Fox News of course you see that this is all just Lame Stream Media attack and spin, how in the hell could you see anything else? To you, Fox is just trying to keep the record straight and they are really having a hard time being the only name in news to give the “fair” and the “balanced”. The problem is, Fox news operates in another reality where they make up the facts and the research to back them up. This is not the same as MSNBC spending night after night attacking Sarah Palin for using RNC donations for her clothes, her not returning the money for the ‘bridge to no where’ but spending it instead, or her pimping for the Tea-Party Express which turns out not to be a grass-roots movement but a Republican Political Action Committee movement made up to fool real tea-partymembers into donating more money. All of that is real, researched truth, which is the opposite of what you get when you turn to Fox News.
Look, if people want to believe in leprechauns and unicorns they can, there is nothing wrong with that. Thought and fantasy are still free in this world even if saying them out loud isn’t in some places. But for a “News” network to be considered ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’ or ‘trusted’ or hell, ‘news’ they have to follow the same rules as the others. If they want to only report on the other sides scandals and misdeeds to make them out to be the party not to be trusted, so be it! If they want to only report on their sides altruistic ideals and actions to make them seem like better party ok. They can’t claim ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’ but ok, have at it. But they cannot just make stuff up and repeatedly get away with it. Not if their goal is News. If their goal is money, your money..as much of it as they can get, then hell Bat Boy journalism for everyone ! But stop labeling the product incorrectly.
This network has pretty much reduced themselves to, “Bat boy journalism” yet they demand to be treated like real journalism and will cry like scorned little girls the minute they aren’t taken as seriously as a Walter Cronkite-like news organization. Unfortunately for those of us who chose not to believe in unicorns and Bat Boy, we are forced to defend that which is slanted, but true because that slanted journalism is the excuse for the fake or made up journalism. The problem then becomes that we inspire more slant instead of more neutral.
If we didn’t have to live through the consequences of Bat Boy journalism and the voting populists I’d say let them have their sensational stories because like any Jerry Springer episode, they can be good for a laugh. It’s when we would have to suffer through the choices of the ‘believers’ that we get not just Jerry Springer on TV, but Jerry Springer in the White House that it becomes a detriment to all.
I’m not knocking Springer, but I don’t want this country governed by those who believe his show is on the same level of journalism as a slanted, but accurate, Rachael Maddow.
There was another interesting conversation on muchedumbre.com the other day. It started when a poster accidentally slipped into the politikal section, a section usually avoided by most because it’s a cesspool of insults,misinformation and retardation (which I say with love in my heart since I am swimming around in that cesspool with the rest of them). Upon realizing his error, he looked around and said..
“Yeah, I don’t understand how to play here yet.”
This was met with the humorous , yet essential, advice of…
You have to throw in the occassional [sic] Fuck Off! and then I think you’ll have it..
Anyone who is part of a community like ours, may find the words crude, but they know the advice is integral. It doesn’t matter how civil a debate starts, when two opposing figures meet, if one is bound by political party doctrine to ‘deny at all cost’, to live the motto of‘just say Hell No!’ it doesn’t matter if the other figure is is bound by the same codes as Tibetan Monks, there’s going to eventually be a ‘fuck you’ thrown into the debate.
It was this ‘field guide’ that brought about an insightful reply from Chuck, and I put it here because of the debate it produced. It is probably the most childish,ridiculous and asinine debate ever held by adults, but once again.. when the party of ‘Hell NO!” meets anyone saying “uh, yes” intelligence, logic, and reason is soon lost as you will soon see.
Maybe I can explain it a little bit with some other happenings around the U.S. Though they may seem very direct and to the point and not as “left to interpretation”…well…let’s start.
Item One.
Recently Scott Brown, newly elected Senator from Mass, has said and suggested that MSNBC host Rachael Maddow is going to run against him during reelections. Through sources on his end, he’s said that she’s “secretly” gathering up steam and will file and run. Maddow has stated on her show she is not running, has no intention of it.
End of story right? Nopey.
Scott Brown was asked on a radio show, following Maddow’s statement, what he thought of her statement that she wasn’t going to run. He replied, without ever saying, “well, I guess that changes things, har har”, and instead replied, “mumble mumble….bring it on.” Implying that he still believed she was indeed going to run and that he was ready for her.
Next Maddow, with her own money, took out a front page ad (in the area of interests) newspaper calling Scott Brown a liar and that she was definitely, emphatically, not running. She had/has no desire to run and that this was getting silly and to quit saying or implying she was running and using her name to collect campaign donations from individuals, with a lie.
His reply? He said her front page newspaper statement looked like it came straight from one of the writers at the DNC and that he thought Maddow would make an interesting candidate. Thus never admitting that he (Mr. Brown) was in error and making sure to twice “imply” through his choice of words, that Ms. Maddow was and STILL IS a candidate.
Item two.
Nine members of a Michigan Militia group were arrested and charged with plotting to kill a law enforcement officer and then many others with homemade bombs, in hopes of starting an uprising against the Government…oh and to battle with the anti-christ.
You would think across the Blogosphere and forums alike, we’d see the individuals involved being denounced…but not so fast mister fancy pants…they’re being defended. Not by seemingly other milita groups or like minded individuals…but rather…by individuals who are making sure to note that anything this current Government/Administration does is to be suspect and dubious.
You’d think something like this would be pretty cut and dry. Wanna kill law enforcement officers, check. Wanna kill many more people with homemade bombs, check. Wanna be prepared and kill the anti-christ, check. What is our governments REAL agenda here, che…what?
What you will find, in your journey here, will be two sides to the same coin, almost constantly at odds. Oft times from political stances. Oft times from personal interpretations…or both.
It’s the only place in the universe where 2+2 is debatable.
Welcome aboard, you poor fucker.
More than just being explanatory of today’s political world and how truth is ignored for rhetoric and whatever can incite the masses against any opposition, one part of that sticks out as so true it’s scary.
It’s the only place in the universe where 2+2 is debatable.
You would think adults all across the political spectrum could agree on that elementary concept, but they don’t. Because one side of the political spectrum has made it their goal for at least 4 years, to oppose anything coming from the current administration, 2+2 does not equal 4 if this administration or anyone speaking in favor of this administration is the one saying it. The Maddow/Brown debate is a perfect instances in a long, long list of other equally amazing 2+2 does not equal 4 examples. The fact that Ms. Maddow has said on her show, said in interviews, taken out a full page add to alert the world of the simple fact that unequivocally and emphatically she is not running against Scott Brown doesn’t matter to the party of “Hell NO!” because to them, 2+2 is not 4 and it is Scott Brown’s 2+2=3 equation that is the fundamental truth here.
The argument that this ‘2+2=4′ statement caused, ended up twisting logic until it no longer resembled its former self. Some where along the way ‘fact’ became, and is now, interchangeable with opinion,rumor and gossip.
Here’s an example
Keith Olbermann is biased and does slant opinions against the Right. But that does not mean he is making the news up and reporting his ‘rumor’ as fact. He may not focus on an issue like when a Democrat is caught having an affair with his mistress but he will spend 1/2 his show telling you about a Republican getting caught having an affair with his chief of staffs wife. Slanted, yes! but it is still based on the fact that the Republican did sleep with his chief of staffs wife. That nugget is truthful and not an opinion to be batted around until it becomes a truth in the eyes of the viewers[insert Obama not of US birth] . Keith Olbermann, no matter how biased he is, is still telling you the truth when he’s telling you the Republican slept with his COS wife.
2+2=4
This goes unnoticed because those who want to de-legitimize everything even remotely ‘Left’, stick to their guns with the idea that since Olbermann is truthful in his bias , then so is Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck who made the opinionated allegation, without a basis in fact, that this President was an white-hating racist, is telling the truth and is delivering a fact because Olbermann reported more on the Republican than he did the Democrat. What’s worse, Beck has spent so much time repeating this concept that it’s believed by 31% of those polled. They can’t differentiate the difference in a “liberal news show’ talking more about a factual Republican scandal is not on the same untruthful level as another show presenting their opinions as facts until they become believed as the almighty truth. It is a ‘tit for tat’ that they just don’t get. Sure the Liberals and Democrats opposed George Bush, but when you look at why it’s not like they were wrong for opposing him. The US just does not torture or we just don’t preemptively invade countries.. These are real,honest,valid and acceptable differences to have. Not liking the amount of time President Obama uses a teleprompter is just as valid of a complaint, saying he is therefore unable to run the country, is not!
And yet, like everything else, that statement is somehow debatable…
So, back to my fundamental question, what is the arguement [sic] to believe 1 biased source but not another?
Fox news,most of the GOP,Sarah Palin and followers,Tea-party members along with the most if not all of the rest of the people trying to de-legitimize the other side of the aisle, have decided that their opinions and allegations are just as reliable as being truthful as actual facts given by an ‘enemy source’ whether that be MSNBC,Jon Stewart,President Obama,any Democrat leader or any left-leaning person out there.
When anyone tries to point this inaccuracy out, either they really can’t understand the concept that opinion is not fact and fact is not fiction if it’s told by liberal, or they just don’t care because their hate knows no bounds. Either way they revert back to the concept of
You deem you are the ultimate say so on who is saying 1+1 = 2. And, incidentally enough, all the people you like get it right, and all the people you don’t like don’t get it right.
You are trying to process all this inside your own bias.
Your main problem, is you refuse to believe the bias of the broadcasters
Only when you understand that can you even begin to answer my question: How can we believe the truth when it comes from a biased source?
In order for me to understand, I need to believe Glenn Becks opinion that Obama is a white-hating racist.. when I accept this as truth, then I can see that fact given by a biased reporter and opinion given by Fox News are the same thing.
2+2 =4 is now debatable and depending on where you ‘lean’ is what your answer is. Keith Olbermann, because he is biased and gives more time to Republican scandals, is not factually correct when he tells you the answer is 4 unless you also recognize that Glenn Beck telling you the answer is 3 is also correct because they are both biased. So either both are to be believed or neither are.
I told you this was going to be childish,ridiculous and asinine.
This argument of ’slant and bias’ not affecting the actual truth is a fair point though. You can have a conservative explain a factual event and a liberal explain the same event and while the reasoning behind the event may be slanted and bias, that doesn’t change the facts of the event. 2 maybe a sissy-boy who liked to play with dolls growing up to the conservatives or 2 might have been a devoted pet-lover with a deep seeded love for parrots, but when added together 2 +2 is still going to equal 4.
It’s not that I am deeming only those I agree with as being ‘factual’ or that I disbelieve the other broadcasters, say Fox News, because of their bias. It’s just that I deem those reporting actual truths as being better than those reporting opinion as truth and that is the slight, but albeit glaring difference here.
Fox News is in the habit of reporting an opinion in a way that by the end of the day you can barely distinguish where opinion stops and fact starts and thus the opinion they started off with becomes as commonly accepted as the factual concept of gravity. For example, remember the ‘Czars’ Fox News went apoplectic on?
Obama’s Czars Spark Concerns Among Some Lawmakers
Although former U.S. attorney Alan Bersin and the late Russian ruler Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov appear to have nothing in common, thanks to President Obama, they now share a title.
The slant of the headline and first paragraph, makes it seem like the 1st time a head of a department was ever called ‘Czar’ was under President Obama. Then there is the slant of the story itself
Czardom does not sit well with Sen. Robert Byrd. Though slowed by age, the West Virginia Democrat remains vigorous in his defense of the powers ceded to the Congress by the Constitution. He said he believes czars are a slick way of governing without having to answer to Congress.
There is no constitutional requirement that czars undergo those pesky Senate confirmation hearings.
If you had listened to Fox and Friends during the run up to the election, you would have heard how then Senator Obama had tired of being asked whether or not he was Muslim and had said “Enough already. There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, but I have been a Christian for two decades now. Enough!”
“Will You Keep Your Kids Home the Day Obama Speaks to Schools?”
That was answered with a “yes, yes we will”. But why wouldn’t they, here is a former Muslim, who is turning this country communist, all you have to do is look at his ‘Czar’ list to see that… This “Unprecedented’… ‘First time ever’ talk to school children is something all parents should fear.
Missile Defense Agency's Web site features a new red,white and blue logo-described as 'scarily' similar to Obama's campaign logo, as well as the symbol of Islam
At 2200 words I realize that I could spend ten times that amount just on examples of this idea that Fox News takes rumor and allegation and reports them like they are fact until they become unquestionable fact, but those who would read it all already agree and those who don’t agree wouldn’t care if I spent 1 million words and 10 times a many examples.
Those of us who do agree don’t just ‘deem worthy’ those who are speaking for our political side, we deem worthy those who speak the truth instead of made up rumors. That is the difference, we chose to believe the ones who tell us 2+2=4, because they’re telling us fact. We chose them over those telling us 2+2=7 because they don’t like the ‘lame stream media’, liberals and this President saying otherwise.
You don’t have to take my opinion that Fox news has a problem with facts. (R) James Coburn echoed the same sentiment the other day. At a town hall meeting he said..
Sen. Coburn: “I want to tell you, I do a lot or reading every say and I”m disturbed that we get things like what this lady said [a women had questioned him on people being jailed for not having healthcare, which he flatly denied and said it made good TV on Fox to say this, but it just wasn't true] and others have said on other issues that are so disconnected from what I know to the facts. And that comes from somebody who has an agenda that’s other than the best interest of our country. And so please balance and be careful
He implored people to not to be biased by Fox news.
And what we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make the determination yourself. So, don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody’s no good.
David Frum, he’s a pretty big deal in the land of conservatives, said a few weeks ago,
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.
“Fox, like [Rush] Limbaugh has been pushing the Republicans to the margins, making people angry,…”
The agenda for Fox News is not the agenda of the United States, but the viewers have been lead by Fox news and others like them to believe that it is. Fox News is the business to get ratings which equals money, to do this they must stand out above all the other news programs, to do that they have to have a ’shtick’ and they do. They ask a question or comment a rumor, they revert back to that ‘rumor’ throughout the day until the opposition is asked about said rumor, and their denial of the rumor is aired, and that’s when the rumor turns into fact.
Example
“I heard the Seth Nobody liked to play with dolls when he was a little boy” a commentator on the early morning says.
“Is that so?” says the co-host? “Well Bob, drop that doll and tell us what the weather’s like outside”
Later in the day, on another gossip labeled “News” show on the same network this rumor pops up again,
“I don’t know where I heard this, but you know Seth Nobody played with barbies as a boy”
to which the co-host replies
“Well that would explain why he dresses so good.”
Before 24 hour news, that might go on for a day or so.. but now, it only takes hours until you will get a “journalist” from the same network asking someone in charge, or even another reporter on his show.. “People are saying Seth played with girls dolls as a child, do you think he should really be in charge of the more manly dolls like GI Joe?”
Now that this ‘rumor’ is gaining interest, because we all like the salacious more than the mundane.. other, more reputable news outlet being to report,
“Today Seth Nobody denied he liked to play with dolls as a child”
and viola.. Seth, who supported single payer insurance, started off his morning as a normal guy with just a different political view; but by the end of the day he became a ratings horse for a money and political power-hungry gossip labeled “News” network. Poor Seth is now a freak who played with dolls. This is planted and replanted throughout the cycle until it spreads through the viewers and becomes a known fact to them.Normal, upstanding liberal political leader Seth is just a queer-bait who cross-dresses at night when he’s home alone. You don’t want to vote with him do you?
You can see this process in action here..
Ignoring all the other examples in this interview, when the interviewer gets to the question about VP Biden’s comment of how the US will be tested under OBama, look at the bias that brings an utter falsehood into the world of facts as we know them today…
“..are you forewarning Americans that nothing will be done and that America’s days as the world’s leading power are over?”
Well, no.. no he isn’t. That’s just your biased making things up and unfortunately getting too many people to believe you.
Of course we go back to the other ‘fear’ rumor which has made into a ‘fact’ that too many in this country believe as God’s honest truth.. Socialism
“What do you say to the people who say Barack Obama will want to turn America into a socialist country much like Sweden?”
The only people who were saying that was that interviewer, Fox News who wants rating and candidates who want power. It started as a fear technique to scare people out of voting for him, then it was passed around by the gossiping hens on Fox News, then their ‘journalists’ reported that all important “People are asking….” it became not just news, but fact. William Randolph Hearst did this and it worked to make him rich just like it’s making Murdoch,Beck,Palin, Hannity and many others filthy stinking rich. Don’t believe me? Do you know what Rush Limbaugh gets for telling you these things?$400 million dollars!
Nah, he has no motive to make his show more interesting and keep his numbers up.
How about if they tell you themselves it’s all about the money, and controversy means cash.. would that change anyone’s perspective that they aren’t hearing truths, but what will make the person speaking more money?
With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: “I could give a flying crap about the political process.” Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. “We’re an entertainment company,” Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth.
They are an ‘entertainment company’, and yet they’ve been able to convince most of the viewing population that they are the most trusted name in news. How is that even possible? Their goal is new entertainment and ratings.
As I said a few hundred words ago, I could go on and on, I could provide 1000’s of examples.. but those who would read it all already agree and those who don’t agree wouldn’t care if I spent 1 million words and 10 times a many examples, but in my quest.. I found an interesting ‘beginning’. Yes, the seeds were already there.. one only had to follow the 2008 campaign trail to see it, but something about this struck me like an “AHA! Here is where it really started to become true!” Because I think that up until that point, even with those at the town-meetings believing the rhetoric, it was still mainly a rumor. Until this broadcast sealed the rumor as truth forever. I found it on a blog called JOTMAN.COM. On this is site ‘Jotman’ has 3 videos shot the night of President Obama’s election win. One video is actually from Fox news the following morning showing a crowd of people at the gates of the White House, the broadcaster comments that they are probably drunk, her opinion of course, and then she draws your attention to the flag someone in the crowd raises, it is the Russian Communist flag. The Broadcaster is of course curious and wants this watched because ‘what does it mean?”, is it a sign?, do we need to fear this newly elected President or something just as ridiculous.
The second video is reportedly shot from inside the White House that same night, it’s the same crowd cheering at the gates, the man in the video sees the cheering and the flag and he is scared. As he says these are people coming out for Obama and cheering the fact that this country is going to change.. he just can’t believe what he is seeing. There is pushing and shoving, look there is the communist flag again, and torches! they’re all over the place it’s so ominous … it’s chaos!
Until you watch the video from the street.
The third video shows the crowd laughing,cheering,smiling and yes.. Chanting.
For the land of the free….. and the home of the… Braaaaavvveeee!!!
Not to mention USA!USA!USA!USA!USA!
The horror!
Yes, there is the commie flag.. but instead of asking what the flag meant Fox News decided it meant communism was here and they must fight it every step of the way. Fox news knew that morning, like the mornings after every election there was bound to be some pretty pissed off people and they were going to stir up that emotion and bank it. That story was the perfect one to drop the ‘Hearst’ seed and watch it grow. It was visual proof and with just the right question put to it, maybe another mention of it later, until finally reporting on as a fact in the later broadcasts, President Obama becomes an elected Communist .There was no need for anyone to hear the crowd, the silent view of it with the added speculation would serve quit nicely. Those watching Fox that segment wouldn’t hear the glee and love for their country coming from that crowd, instead they would see a possibly drunken presence cheering the fact that communism has now come to America when she elected an Communist, Marxist, Socialist the night before. Before long Glen Beck would confirm their other fear, the fear that this new president also hated white people.
We’ll never know what the flag meant one way or the other, we have video of the overwhelming happiness and pride in the country though, so to me it reinforces the rules of any political debate and that is …It doesn’t matter how civil a debate starts, when two opposing figures meet no matter if the figures are bound by the same codes as Tibetan Monks there is going to eventually be a ‘fuck you’ thrown into the debate and to me, this was just a big Fuck you along with a cheerful goodbye to the despotic way the country was run for 8 very long years!
Of course this all just my opinion, not a fact and it’s because I know the difference that I deem others who also know the difference to be more worthy of my trust that those who don’t.
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced today that the Pentagon will make it more difficult to discharge openly gay or lesbian members of the military.
I know this isn’t complete repeal, but it’s close… really close.
Unfortunately “Don’t ask Don’t Tell’ is a law and not just a policy. Being an actual law means to repeal it you need Congress and after the battle we just saw for allowing sick children a chance to see a doctor, could you imagine the viscous and vileness of a fight to fully repeal DADT ? So, to save us a massive influx of spontaneous combustion victims,apoplectic seizures, and generally a Heaven’s Gate Cult-like reaction that would be sure to swap our health care facilities thus causing the rationing Republican’s feary-tales warned us about, President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates did everything they could do to repeal the arcane law without having to involved Congressional leaders who have vowed to sit on their hands and no longer work for the American people who elected them. Of course, those Congressmen will still take the pay-check the American people pay them, they will just refuse to work for it now.
McCain: Don’t expect GOP cooperation
on legislation for the rest of this year
…warning of little work between parties the rest of this year.
For those who yell at sick people and tell them “You want something in this country, you work for it!” and “There are no free-ride or free hand-outs here!” tell me, what do you call it when you pay someone to do a job and they refuse but still take your payment for that job? Is that theft or welfare? I really don’t know but I love how you support it when it’s your leaders getting the free ride. Who by the way, could afford not to work AND not take their paycheck, as opposed to a man in a wheelchair with Parkinson. Oh and they get free health-care to boot on your dollar. So, not only are you paying a man who has so many houses that he can’t count them to do a job that he has vowed not to do any longer, but you’re paying for his healthcare also.
yippeeeeeeee…. and here’s your sign.
Back to the homos.
I know this isn’t the total victory that they wanted but I hope they see this is as good as a repeal as they can get in this political climate.The new rules make it almost, not totally but almost impossible for someone who is gay to be kicked out of the military. Of course they can’t be as open as they would like to be but lets face it, hetero’s aren’t allowed to be as open as some of them would want to be either. No matter who you are attracted to, there just aren’t couples holding hands and cooing in each others ear all over this or that base. Open displays of affection are just not allowed in the military. Before the new standards though, just the hint and rumor of ones sexual proclivity would get them booted from the military. The sad part was that many of those who worked with person in question , lived with them, fought and bled with them knew of their sexual orientation but said nothing because it never effected that persons ability to do their job and serve their country. But when they made an enemy of someone, whether valid or not, the scorned person could pretty much say what they wanted and end the career of those who had nothing but serve their country with honor, but were born being attracted to the same sex.
While many of us agree that this is a stupid law, I can only hope the new standards are enough for right now to soothe some of the anger of those who are or have been unjustly affected. Under the new guidelines hearsay and rumor will not be allowed, those who are making the accusation must swear so under oath, and anonymous accusations will no longer be accepted (not that ever should have been).
Another change is who can approve the discharge. In all cases the discharge must be approved by a one-star general or higher.
the reliability of the informant and whether that person
might have an ulterior motive in making a report.
Opponents are of course against any change, some high ranking (very high ranking) individuals have said it was because of the Dutch allowing gays to serve that the Bosnia genocide happened. The gays were just unable to stop fornicating long enough to fight, not that all that high-pitch screaming and slapping is a danger to the ‘real men’ they were fighting anyway, but you know it looked bad..What with all those sweaty,writhing bodies fornicating out in the open like the gays are prone to do while a section of the popular was slaughtered.
I wonder if the people who believe this also believe that most of the world was gay in the 1940’s since Hitler’s genocide wasn’t stopped before millions were murdered either. I’d love to point out to them that with all the genocide going on in Africa today, by their argument, the whole world must be protected by homos.
Genocide, it’s the gays fault!
Ha! It would be funny if 1/2 the population wasn’t stupid enough to believe it.
These ‘feary-tale’ are on par with Palin’s ‘death panel’. There is no basis in reality for the fear or the people who promote it, but the ones who believe it are who President Obama is fighting to change. Like the idiots who believe whatever Palins vomits out on twitter, they will believe that allowing gays to fight will cause the next genocide to go unchecked. They are adamant and unchanging in their beliefs, to them gays should be housed separately from ‘normal’ soldiers because it’s the only way to keep unit cohesion tight and moral high. Maybe we should issue them a pink triangle to wear on their uniform like another military leader did. I guess it’s never occurred to these generals who think this way, that gays are and have been sleeping next to their ‘normal’ boys for a long long time now without uncontrollably humping them in their sleep and ruining moral.
The Spartans or Alexander the Great are just two examples just how non-unified and ’sissy-like’ the homos can make an army. What general would want people like that fight for them? I mean.. duh!
We can’t save these people from their beliefs and we shouldn’t try because it’s a losing battle. Unfortunately there is enough of them in power to fail in an attempt to completely repeal DADT at this time. PresidentObama and Defense Secretary Gates know this so they’ve done as much as they can to change things anyway.
Even with these new guidelines, will there still be those who are outed and banned from service because of fear,jealousy and spite? Yes, but just like the new health reform is not perfect but a step in the right direction, these new regulations are also a major step forward in the right direction. It may take another generation before we see universal acceptance and/or universal health insurance, but one thing cannot be denied. President Obama ran on a platform of Change, a platform to bring us all, even those who will fight every dirty and nasty way they know how, into a future we can all be a part of and proud of and he’s doing everything he can to live up to his promises.
Interesting post, EKG. It’s nice to see the left has found a new target for its vitriol now that George W. Bush is out of the picture.
“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”
-Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER (1951)
I’m sure Palin-bashing is a pleasant distraction from President Obama’s serial failures. At the very least, hatred for her has provided the faithful with a rallying point.
I ignored his glossing over of President Obama being a target of vitriol himself and asked him to enumerate Obama’s ’serial failures’. His reply was
Failure to get his health care bill and Waxman/Markey passed, even with total Democratic control of Congress; extraordinarily high unemployment rates; a rapidly rising deficit (over and above what was “inherited”); failure to close Guantanamo; take your pick. You can throw in failure to secure the Olympics for Chicago and declining poll numbers too.
as I started to answer him, I realized that these questions and answers deserve more space than the comments section of another blog-post. So I decided to answer them here….
First off, John.. I don’t know you. I don’t know if you are an extreme right winger, I don’t know if you are unbend-able in your opinions, I don’t know if you tow the party line no matter where it takes you. I know you are a friend of Mike’s, but I don’t know if you are as obstinately against looking at things from another perspective as he is or not. Because of this… uncertainty, I am answering with the assumption that you can see a different way of viewing things if shown, or explained.. I’m assuming that you are moderate and not hard-extreme like Mike.
No one likes to be blamed and no one likes their party to be blamed… but no one likes the other party to actually be at fault and share none of the blame and instead pile it all on one side. Of course I am going to place blame with the GOP on many issues, what I will wait to see from your reply to this is if you can see why I would blame them.. maybe not that you agree that they are to blame for alot of it, but maybe..hopefully.. you will admit that they do share, alot, in what is going on today. This is not a ‘well he did it first’ kind of blame. I believe I am laying out a valid argument. I hope to get more than “well you did it first” or the condescending “LOL” and “eyerolls” from you in your reply.
Now, on with the blog.
I agree with you John, it is Obama’s failure that Health reform has stagnated. He took it on faith that when Grassley, Snowe and other (R) said they were willing to work on a bi-partisan solution,they meant it. The rest of us were hearing Grassley call it a ‘death panel’ and how people should fear Obama’s health reform and how he’d never vote for it when he was home on the weekends, but the ‘bubble’ Obama lives in, the same that all Presidents live in, prevented him from hearing that “weekend, rally the base” talk.
I don’t think it was until Lieberman’s extreme, blatant and almost joyful bragging of this ‘partisan ‘obstruction’ that Obama finally wised up. When Lieberman, who just a few years ago ran on his “medcare for 55″ policy and was saying everywhere he could that this was the only solution he would support…immediately turned against it because, as he said, ‘well since liberals like my plan, I’m against it now’, I think the President started seeing what he was up against, and what he was up against was illogical and unreasonable opposition. Do you atleast agree that Lieberman’s flip on his own idea and the reason he gave, prove this illogical and unreasonable position?
Even if you don’t think it was illogical or unreasonable, how can you fault President Obama for not getting things done in that kind of atmosphere? We aren’t talking about anything rational that can be explained or even expected. Republicans and that includes Lieberman(I), were turning on their own plans, things they had campaigned on, the second after President Obama said “Hey, you know what.. your way does sound better so let’s include it”
At least you gave blame to Bush for the 1.2 trillion of it..
The CBO – which provides the official estimates of the budgetary impact of legislation and events such as wars and recessions – cites the housing market collapse and the financial market turmoil as the main culprits for the shortfall. The federal government has tried to combat the crisis by so far committing $7.2 trillion in investments and loans primarily to financial institutions.
The current recession “will probably be the longest and the deepest since World War II,” the CBO said. The economic deterioration since September, which was the last time CBO made deficit projections, is the biggest contributor to a sharp decline in tax revenue projections. The CBO expects tax revenue in 2009 to fall by $166 billion, or 6.6%, from the previous year’s collection.
That revenue decline, in turn, is the biggest reason for the worsening outlook over the next decade, said Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist at the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group. “The revenue effect is huge.”
and Obama does own his own share.. But we know that he does not ‘own’ the entire problem. Why is it then that he is saddled with it? Where was this outcry of ‘budget deficits’ going back 3 years and more? How is this President Obama’s doing? He added to what was there yes, but what was the alternative when he stepped into the Oval on day one? You and I along with McCain and so so many others, know that had he won, McCain would have had to do the same exact things Obama did and would have had the same exact deficit today.. This really isn’t an Obama issue.. we all know this but since it’s going on under his watch-he gets the blame..Ok fine, but then we do have to put blame on the person who did create it. No, this isn’t a “he did it so I can to” this is a ‘I really had nothing to do with all of it, so stop blaming it all on me argument and that is based in reality, not GOP partisan amnesia and fantasy.
When Obama stepped into office he had to deal with 2 unpaid wars, unpaid tax cuts, a wall street collapse, a housing market collapse, an infrastructure that had been neglected for 10 years. The Bush budget deficit projections never included the war price, when Obama put it into his, like it should have been done in the 1st place.. it didn’t help his numbers at all, but atleast it was honest. Unlike those who are supposed to give us ‘fair and balanced’ news..
During the April 3 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, on-screen text repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama’s $3.6 trillion fiscal year 2010 budget is “4x bigger than Bush’s costliest plan.” However, President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for FY 2009. For FY 2008, Bush submitted a $2.9 trillion budget.
But Obama deserves the blame for all this hiding, collapse and the unpaid bills that all came due just a few short days before he came into office? Which turned out to be more than anyone.. anyone ever expected as more came to light in the coming days after his inauguration? If you truly feel this blames lays on President Obama’s lap, can you explain how you came to that decision?
High unemployment
Yes.. there is.. but you can’t look at 700,000 jobs lost per month when he got there to 11,000 in December 2009 and call that a failure.. and you can’t look at the numbers we were at, are still at now and expect it to change the next day.. or even the next year, not if you’re also not going to allow a larger stimulus bill/recovery act. So Obama was wrong on his optimism those 1st days that the unemployment numbers wouldn’t rise past a certain level, fine. But is he to blame that the numbers rose to that level or just to blame for not realizing just how bad things were a split second after he got there?
Is it the loss of jobs you blame him for or the bad prediction on jobs lost?
Like it, love it, hate it… when no one else is spending any money… the government has to. For the Government to also stop spending money is a catastrophe on a scale that we’ve never seen before. When no one, banks, businesses,people on the street are spending anything.. the government has to. It has to beg,borrow and yes, steal to spend money in order to get people spending money spending again. McCain,Romney,Huckabee.. Reagan.. all would have had no choice, given the exact same circumstance, but to do the same. Or they would have watched while the country crumbled into oblivion the way Nero did. The ones like Mike, who argue that no, the government shouldn’t have spent a penny, can’t prove that their way would have been the right way or that we’d be any better off. They can’t prove it because there isn’t a time machine to take us back. So to me this argument is one of pure partisan fantasy. It cannot be proven and yet the GOP swears their way was the correct way. What’s worse is, they make 1/2 the country believe in this unprovable feary-tale. This is where the ‘faith’ and almost ‘religious like’ belief comes into play and it is the cornerstone of a lot of the GOP’s argument..
You can’t prove God doesn’t exist therefore he must be real.
They can’t prove no stimulus or Tarp would have worked better, therefore it must be true.
I call bullshit on both accounts… You want me to believe we shouldn’t have spent the money on the banks and on the recovery act, then prove it to me. Prove to me that not spending it would have worked better, that we would be in a better place, telling me you are right only because you say so doesn’t work, I am not a believer in your religion I need more proof than that.
By the way, John.. Most of the “YOU” I use are not directed at YOU.. it is a general term used when speaking. I hope you understand that.
Forty-three percent (43%) of Americans say it’s a bad idea for President Obama to go overseas at this time to help Chicago make its final presentation to the International Olympic Committee
“Listen I think it’s a great idea to promote Chicago but he’s the president of the United States, not the mayor of Chicago,” Boehner said. “And the problems we have here at home affect all Americans and that’s where his attention ought to be.”
and every night they were rewarded with their opinions by the likes of the GOP and Fox news telling them how bad it would crush us, how much money it would take, how horrible it would be. How dangerous Chicago is
Yes, Fox news is a factor when they have the massive viewer ratings they have, add them into Rush’s 20 million people a week rating and all of them chiming in on the evil that is the Olympics and why would we get it over a country literally begging to have to it because they want it?
But ok, Obama didn’t get the Olympics… that’s a failure on his part. But is that really something to hold against him? out of everything… is that an issue that truly pisses you off and just sticks in your craw?
Gitmo.
I’ve thought about this. Was Obama the naive one to think he could wave his ‘magic negro’ wand and close Gitmo? Or were we the naive ones to think he could wave his ‘magic negro’ wand and close Gitmo? I think it was both. I think a lot of us listened to his speeches and felt the inspiration and hope in that new era he talked about bringing. I think those of us who didn’t roll our eyes and didn’t decide that election night to do everything we possibly could to make his life hell and oppose everything.. everything he tried, actually believed this was the guy to change Rome back into the days of it’s purity,prosperity,glory and power. We (wrongly) assumed that Washington was also sick on the status quo, that Washington wanted to move on to a better place. That the country didn’t care if it was a Republican or Democrat, man or woman, black or white in office, we just wanted hope and change and not more of the same thing we had had for so long. We were all naive.
President Obama owns the failure to close Gitmo, but he doesn’t have sole ownership. Jesus, trust me I know it’s like a broken record to say the GOP also owns this since they stood in the way and did everything in the power to make sure 1/2 the country was against closing Gitmo and bringing the detainees here..but it is the truth. Through fear mongering and out right lies, GOP congressmen,governors,speakers,pundits went out to their communities , viewers, listeners and said “No way! Not in my yard, these guys are dangerous,these guys can’t be held in our prisons, these guys are super-powers that can only be controlled in Cuba” and we both know, hell we all know this is factually untrue. We are holding terrorists right now on our soil, we are holding terrorist right now in our prisons, we have been holding them for years. We are holding people who are worse! We, as Americans, have some of the most dangerous criminals in the world in our prisons right now. We have brain-eaters,baby-rapers,kidnappers,tortures,sex-slave traffickers ,abusers,bombers,pyromaniacs,serial killers, mass murders.. and we have extremely smart and devious criminals like Madoff, Abramoff and hunderds of others. But somehow we’re ill equip to incarcerate men who have probably never had running water until they got to our prision camp?
That’s the most bogus of all feary-tales ever told. This idea that America is too weak, too incompetent and unable to imprison anyone is incredulous. If this is your belief, that we are just unable to rise to meet this ‘danger’ can you explain your reasoning to me, explain it without “Because they should be in a military tribunal”
All of this leads to a drop in polls. You’ve seen the link to the numbers of Fox and just Rush, that doesn’t include Beck and all the other conservative radio. When they are all, from top to bottom on the same line in the play book, all condemning,ridiculing, mocking, lying,inflating.. all giving out the worst of the wosrt bias,slanted partsian spin.. add that in with an entire section of Congress that doesn’t just stand in the way, but also makes up feary-tales and they believe it, polls are going to decline. How could they not?
And what about that anyway. Isn’t it normal for Presidential numbers to come back down to a reasonable level?
The other day I was reading the comments on a reputable news sources story about this Baradar capture, 75% of them were things like “Well, now that we can’t waterboard the guy the CIA will never get anything out him, Thanks Obama for ruining this country once again!” If the only tool in the CIA arsenal is waterboarding… then we really are fucked. Because it’s the opinion that begs the conclusion that the CIA has always and only water-boarded prisoners to get information and it was just the 2-3 years that they were legally allowed to that the were able to function at full capacity in the light of day. The point I’m making is, somehow people think that CIA doesn’t know how to get information from anyone without waterboarding them? Is this not the most insane thing you’ve ever seen? Why is this?Where did they get the idea that this was the only tool the CIA had? If you can truthfully answer that, they you should be able to understand most, if not all of what it is I’m trying to show you.
Who is to blame for this? Not Obama.. but it is what he must fight against. The problem is you cannot argue with someone with that mindset. Their belief is again, religous like.. and cannot be changed,altered or enlightened.
Finally, I saved the best for last… “even with the democrats in control of congress”.. This is the most used response that I see for pretty much everything. This idea that just because the Democrats had a filibuster proof margine and didn’t use and some how it’s their fault is ridiculous . Listen, I’m going to tell you a secret that could get my liberal-card revoked ( ) unlike the GOP, there are different levels of (D). We don’t all think with one brain, we don’t all follow the leader like a flock of birds, that is what makes us ‘liberal’ or the favorite slam of the GOP, ‘radical’ . We think for ourselves and decide accordingly and not according to party/leader doctrine. We are just not that ‘religious-like’ in our faith and the following of party ‘dogma’. There are Democrats who don’t believe in abortion, there are some like me who believe in the death penalty and guns rights. To condem anyone.. any party for not just towing the party-line is asinine and to blindly follow the party-line used to be a bad thing.. but today, with the entire GOP saying “You can’t even get your party to all vote the same way and use that fillibuster proof majority” is so exquisitely sad, but still not as sad wanting and forcing any one party to act that way. I just can’t believe anyone, anywhere would want and encourage people to just blindly vote all (D) or all (R) depending on their party and then ridcule and condem anyone when they didn’t.
Besides any of that, this isn’t a one party system, the other side is supposed to help govern also!
This excuse…“Hey, you guys control congress.. it’s not our fault” and those using it are right though, the problem is the next thing they say to their audience,readers,constituents… and the next thing is invariably
“The Democrats need to listen to the country and work bi-partisanly”
In one hand there is a dare to use the majority, in the other.. a crying to all who will listen that if we don’t do something…have rallies, write letters, send in campaign money.. the Democrats will use their majority. It’s insane! They are literally damned for not using it by the GOP and some of their own and damned if the think about using it.
So John, what would you have them do? Which ‘evil’ do the Democrats pick? Do they follow in the last administrations path and issue Executive Orders, recess appointements, signing statements and push through everything the President says to push through no matter the consequence and just hope that the GOP won’t cry about it too much? Do they forget their own values and beliefs and just vote (D) all the way down the ballot like the GOP does and is encouraging, or really, daring them to do? What is your solution to this? When one party refuses to even come to the table don’t they force the other party to act as a single mind? Force the other party to do it all on their own, with their own philosophies?
Maybe the GOP is comfortable using a single-mind, but this is not and has never been the “Democratic” (party or poltical system.) way..
The GOP has blanketed the world with this falsehood that they want bi-partsanship on every issue, and yet just last week when invited to a health care summit, an ‘exachange of ideas’.. quite a few high ranking GOP’ers said they might be willing to come to the table…. just come to the table now, not vote a certain way or concede a certain point, but they might show up to the President’s bipartisan effort for health reform meeting but only if the Democrats dropped their health reform idea and adopted the GOP version. Eric Cantor flat out said that the “only way to bipartisan cooperation is if the Democrats fully embrace the GOP plan!” What? How is that bipartisan? How is that anything other than a great big “Screw you, It’s my way or no way and that’s the only bipartisan I agree with.. do it yourself if you don’t like it! Just remember I will blame you for doing it yourself if you do”
You cannot, as the losing party give that kind of demand.. that kind of close-fist demand.. and then claim you are the bipartisan party, yet they do, and no one calls them on it. So I ask you once again, is this really an OBama failure and where is any ire at the party that is actually holding bipartsianship hostage?
To me President Obama failures are..
He has moved away from a public option. He promised me a public option and I believed him. He has let the message on this and so many other issues get away from him. He had the advantage and he expected to find ‘Statesmen’ and ‘Adults’ in congress who wouldn’t bastardize everything they could to score a political point and while he’s finally decided to come out swingng and get the truth out.. he’s wasted vaulable time and his ‘capitol’ in the interim.
I see it as a failure that he is still giving contracts to the likes of Blackwater and doing it even though we know they are the evil of all evil. Why do we need to privately fund any war with a bunch of mercenaries? Why do we need them for private security? Why can’t we use the money and build up our military and pay our troops more? Atleast they have rules,laws and codes they must follow. Blackwater and the likes do things with our money and in our names that I do not think the majoirty of us want done in our name. I do not agree at all with their continued government funding. Bring the military back to do the jobs in our name with the honor and integrity that they will bring with them.
I see President Obama’s lack of authority with Wall Street as another failure. He needs to force those CEO’s to either get their sweet-ass to the proverbial ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.. or risk immediate stripping of the ‘handout, even if that means selling off part of the company to get back the money given to them. I don’t know who these people think they are, but when the President of the United States tells you to come to a meeting.. your sorry ‘hand-out-taking’ ass better get there before the ink is dry on the invitations. I don’t care if it was ‘foggy’ or not, take the damn train.
I don’t care about GOP crying that “OBama hates capitalism .. Obama is an enemy to buisness” because it’s a load of crap, what we had leading up to this meltdown was not capitalism .. it was rape pure and simple. It’s time Obama starts acting like the President he is and do something about these guys.
And finally.. He has failed at installing a new way of doing it, he has failed at starting a new era of bi-partsianship. He hasn’t failed for the lack of trying, he’s failed for the lack of realism. He believed he could change the climate of hate that is the US congress. Not a single congressman from either house or either party can say or do anything without checking a poll 1st. They are not there to govern like Obama is, they are there for the power and the paycheck. It is President Obama’s failure to not see this that irks me the most. It is his failure to not see that, no matter which way he goes the entire Right side will be against him as proven time and time again, even by adopting their own policies.. they will go against him. They will and have cut off their noses to spite their face.
President Obama is already lambasted as a socialist even when he’s cut taxes and wasn’t the one to create the largest ’socialist program’ in a generation or more. Well, if they are going to call him one anyway, then why not use that and go more radical on his ideas. We just proved a lot of the country is pro-radical change, even our supreme court is. So it is a failure on Obama’s part not to use the gift he’s been given by the Right. He will be slaughtered and lied about by them no matter what he does.. so he might as well do as he wants.
John, thank you for your comments.. I hope I have addressed them in a way that maybe didn’t change your mind.. but atleast gave you a different point of view and a way to look at it
Washington (CNN) — Senior Obama administration officials revealed late Tuesday they’ve secretly gained the cooperation of family members of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to help get the Christmas Day airline bomb suspect talking.
The cooperation effort has led to actionable intelligence that could help prevent terror attempts on U.S. soil, the senior officials said.
No torture, no waterboard,no stress positions,no violation of human rights or our own laws… and he’s actually talking and without a military tribunal to boot!
The senior administration officials said that since AbdulMutallab began talking to investigation again last week, he has been cooperating on a daily basis. The officials added the information gained from the interrogations has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community.
One of the senior Obama officials, who bluntly said the Republican attacks have “frustrated the hell out of me,” asserted that gaining the trust of the family was the best way to handle the case and helped the administration gain valuable intelligence from the suspect, who is believed to have ties to an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
“It could be used to disrupt other attacks,” one of the senior Obama officials said of the intelligence gleaned from AbdulMutallab in the interrogations, who added the president has been getting regular updates on what the suspect has been revealing.
The Republican response so far is to complain that President Obama has wasted these 6 weeks, but let’s have some truth for once shall we…
The operations, approved by President Obama and begun six weeks ago, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. The American advisers do not take part in raids in Yemen, but help plan missions, develop tactics and provide weapons and munitions. Highly sensitive intelligence is being shared with the Yemeni forces, including electronic and video surveillance, as well as three-dimensional terrain maps and detailed analysis of the al-Qaeda network.
I know some were worried about AbdulMutallab being mirandized and like John McCain, were trying to attack for Eric Holder for his decision and I guess prosecute him for treason(ok, not the treason part-or are they) but it looks like they can put those feary-tales to bed.
“It is also my understanding that Mr. Abdulmutallab has provided valuable information. Is that correct?” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein asked.
Now this is something I also found to be of interest
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, politicians and the courts have wrangled with the thorny question of how to treat suspected terrorists. The Supreme Court has not weighed in on whether the government has the right to hold a civilian as a military prisoner, and both times it appeared the court would get the chance to decide, President George W. Bush opted instead to bring the cases in civilian criminal courts
George Bush was hard on terror; he, Dick Cheney and those like them are the only ones who can keep us safe. President Obama, following their plan makes us look weak to our enemies though and thus makes us more vulnerable to attacks. How does that work?
The fact is we have a 100% success rate in trying terrorists in civilian court and as far as I know the only ones walking around and back to their old tricks, are walking around because Dick Cheney releasedthem! We’ve killed or captured more terrorist leaders under Obama’s 1st year than we did in the last year of Bush. We’ve had more ‘drone-launched missile strikes’ in President Obama’s 1st year than in Bush’s last 3 years. We are spending more money to “expand secretive Special Operations units, deploy more unmanned aerial drones” , but somehow it’s not good enough because President OBama doesn’t torture, because he doesn’t throw everyone into a military tribunal, because he treats people as the laws this country was founded on tell him to treat people, so he is still weak on terrorism. If anything, the increased drones attacks,increased terrorist casualties, successful interrogation of a terrorist should prove that not only is he not weak on terrorism, but that he’s doing something pretty right.
Alas… like the elusive Osama Bin Laden tape that surfaces only after some major event has happened, I expect a carefully worded press release from the most elusive of all creatures, Dick Cheney. Fox news and the conservative blogosphere need something to come after Mr. Obama on since he ate them for lunch at the GOP retreat last week, coupled with this new information on the lack of torturing actually working and Cheney is probably being roused from his slumber now.
I don’t expect anyone from the right to commend the President for a job well done,that would be ridiculous and let’s face it, the halfhearted attempt would come out more condescending than anything else. The GOP for all it’s glory has painted themselves into a corner. In their quest to dismiss this President, they have painted him as a weak, incompetent, unintelligent, lying, dangerous,socialistic,Nazi-like, thief looking to steal your money to give it to the poor and your guns to give them to the Muslims. I’m sure there is something to nit-pick about and if not, they can take a page out of a GOP strategists memo and just lie, but I thought this was a pretty good job of getting the guy to talk without having to drown him 1st.
I know it’s ‘en vogue’ to wish the downfall of your country these days, but is there some reason why people want to rush it to such a catastrophic end?
ARAB STATES LAUNCH SECRET MOVES WITH CHINA, RUSSIA, FRANCE TO STOP USING DOLLAR FOR OIL TRADING-
Drudge report
which I admit, I fell for..can cause some serious damages to the people who live in this country. I am OK with putting this stuff out there if it’s true because I believe information is a good thing, but when it’s been proven if not completely false, then exquisitely tainted and still being used as news, news reporting is no longer the goal.
Ironically enough, the jump in gold prices was also a major Drudge headline “GOLD HIGH! *” just one day after his siren-waling headline ARAB PLOT TO DROP DOLLAR headline. I would hope ‘greed’ isn’t the only reason for what is going on here. I know there is money to be made in the failure of an empire but please don’t tell me that is what this is really about. At least tell me this is more ‘pure’( if there is such a thing) than just simple greed. The Politico story refers to man who wrote the original, unsourced claim as a British journalist who has lived in Beirut for over 30 years and is the one of a few people to have interviewed Osama Bin Laden, but it also saysthat he is “increasingly associated with more radical theories thus weakening the credibility of the story.” Please tell me good old fashion foreign hatred of America is behind this, not domestic greed.
I mentioned Glenn Beck. He did a scare-tactic.. I mean “show” a few days after the Drudge line on the sinking dollar and rising gold prices.. what exactly is his reason for this ‘dollar dropping- woe is me’ story?
Goldline is Glenn Beck’s Choice for Gold
"Before I started turning you on to Goldline, I wanted to look them in the eye. This is a top notch organization that's been in business since 1960." Glenn Beck
Do these others, like Beck , also have a stake in the gold market? Is that where this need comes from… Greed? I don’t know where all this will end up, where the country will be 20 years from now, but I do hope we can regain some of the pride in America that we seem have lost when a black man was elected President. I do hope that one day we will rejoice when an American President wins a Nobel Peace Prize, when Americans almost sweep all the other Nobel categories, and I hope that we will rejoice that we have won an Olympic venue instead of rejoicing our loss to another country.
We spent 8 years calling anyone who did not fall in goose-step with the Bush Administration either a terrorist, a terrorist sympathizer, or just plain unpatriotic. I don’t know what kind of patriotism is being shown these days, but it’ s not the kind I grew up with, the kind where even if you didn’t like the quarterback you still rooted for the home team if you were sitting in the home-team stands. I understand the greed in the healthcare debate because I can see it, I can point to who is paying for the bullshit, who is hocking the bullshit and who is benefiting from it. But I can’t see how any one in this country benefits from the destruction of it. Can you?
Maybe the FTC has the right idea in forcing blogs to inform readers if they have received compensation for their opinion and for advertisers to disclose studies by research institutes they help fund. That regulation sure would have made a difference in the use of the “Lewin Groups” data on healthcare reform had they been forced to disclose that they are owned by the largest health insurance company in the US. Is there a free speech issue here? I don’t know. What I do know is that we can’t continue allowing a recluse to dictate world events like he is the marionette puppet master, having faux newscaster crying the ‘dollar’ is falling when they have an investment in gold prices, a research group reporting the dangers of health reform owned by the insurance company fighting against all reform and an un-sourced suggestion from a slightly questionable journalist turn this country into their playground to ruin. We are in a precarious situation as it is, there is no need to hasten a pre-ordained ending just because it amuses you to do so.
Anecdotal evidence is never a game-changer unless the subject of the evidence is a great friend who has accomplished so many things in his life and has made the best out of a crappy hand life dealt him. Then, sometimes.. not always but sometimes.. that kind of evidence strikes the right cord in the right people and then change really does come.
I’ve tried to give you guys the examples of people I knew, in the hopes that you may have known people like them and/or could feel the desperation of their situation and maybe want to find a way to help them, but I failed in bringing the people I was targeting over to just the idea that change is needed, much less my idea of what that change should be. But maybe this time, with the example being someone we all know, we all respect and care for.. maybe this is the straw that breaks the camels back for some people and maybe some of those will go on to help fight for what is desperately needed in this country, instead of trying to kill any hope at all of a reprieve for those that are stuck in a situation they had no control over.
Even though he gave me permission, I still thought about changing the name in this piece and just sticking to the story. I knew that even with omitting the name most of us would know who I was talking about with just one or 2 words about him so there was no need for him to be anything other than anonymous to the rest, but I don’t want him to be just another blind example, I want you to say his name in your head when you are fighting against health care reform. When you look at the words of the President
But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.
I want the name Chuck Conners aka Uselesslegs in your thoughts when you blithely mock this very real problem in our very broken system. I want Chuck’s story in the forefront of your brain, when you argue that we have the best care anywhere, that there is no such thing as that silly concept of doctors charging for a surgery when you only need a pill.. I want you to tell Chuck’s story to a friend or family member, and then explain to them why President OBama and the Democrats are just trying to kill this country and kill our ‘wonderful’ healthcare.
Before I continue, after Chuck told me his story and I started writing it I realized that this is the story for not having a public option, this is the reason why the government shouldn’t be in the medical insurance field. I know that there are blind loyalists out there who will miss the point of this story and only latch on to the easy part of the problem, they’ll do this because they don’t have the intellect to see the big picture, they are the ‘death panelists’.. and ‘birthers’…the ideologue, to them I will just nod and say “Yes Dear”.. I was worried about writing this because the lack of brain mass some of these people have is more than made up by their vocal abilities and abhorrent behavior, but if I want to be true, if I want to be honest.. this type of story should never happen. It should not happen with private or government run care. We need reform and anyone not seeing that, or not seeing that this is also a problem in the private sector needs to just go build another sign and leave the serious matters to the adults to figure out.
First a little back story for those that don’t know. Chuck has muscular dystrophy and it has progressed so over the past few years that he is completely dependent on a wheelchair to get around and someone to help him in and out of it. At 42, he’s already lived well past anyone’s guess…and he’s done so with a kind of dignity,humility and humor that I never knew existed. Chuck understands that people are uncomfortable with the disabled, we don’t know how to act, where to look, what to say, so Chuck takes it upon himself to break that uncomfortable moment with a self deprecating joke or a well-rehearsed fart noise. My oldest daughter was one of the people he endeared himself to immediately with his ‘ice-breaking’. She knew of him and his disability, but she didn’t know of his humor..yet. When he called my house and she answered, she very innocently asked “How ya doing Chuck?”.. His reply was a simple scream “I”m in a wheelchair.. HOW DO YOU THINK I’M DOING!”. She immediately stared to cry because she thought she had done something to offend him, she was in the act of throwing the phone at me and spilling the story out when I couldn’t control my laughing any longer, I told her to listen to the phone, and there was Chuck laughing while at the same time trying to soothe her into knowing he was just kidding around with her. He hadn’t joked with her to be mean to her, but he knew, like all people in his or similar situations know, that us ‘normal’ people just don’t know how to react to them. He taught not only her, but my younger daughter, that it’s ok to look at someone in a wheelchair, or someone who is disabled, it’s ok to talk with them and be relaxed around them.. He taught them that it’s ok to treat them as normal and to laugh with and enjoy them just as they would anyone else. For that I say Thank you, because I didn’t learn this ease and comfort until I was much much older and Chuck was the one who taught it to me also.
But, the perfect example of Chuck and the way he looks at life is right there on the back of his car, his registration tag, which simply reads…. “Gimpy”. The humor in that one word sums up the man that’s sitting the wheelchair inside that van.
When you hear Chucks life story, you can’t help but wonder what it would have been had he been physically ‘normal’, personally I don’t think he would have been as colorful, as funny.. and unique, what God took, he gave back in other ways. The stories he can tell you about how his father scared him with a tarantula, how because of the ‘fear’ practical jokes his father would play on him, he ‘accidentally’ hit his father in the head with hammer to save his older brother, the teenage girl who peed on his couch when a stuffed squirrel was thrown at her, and my family’s favorite.. when his poncho got stuck in the wheels of his wheelchair and he was stuck going in circles until his companions could stop laughing long enough to extricate him.. These are the stories that make him who he is and had he not had a debilitating disease, I wonder if would he have had the same sense of humor?
At one time Chuck was THE Jerry’s Kid. His face graced many a magazine and poster. Not only was he part of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon’s we all used to sit around and watch all weekend, but he was also the youngest Jaycee and was an honorary member of the VFW. He’s made the best of what was given to him, but even with all of the support he was given by all of these great and selfless people and an amazing organization, if it wasn’t for the Medicaid/Medicare program, he wouldn’t have lived past his early teens. The Muscular Dystrophy Association helps with what they can, but they are not equipped to deal with it all.
For people like Chuck, the idea of a private insurance is laughable.. to them, the idea that a government run system would destroy what this country was built on, is an insanity. It’s because of medicaid/medicare that people like Chuck aren’t regulated to some orphanage or ditch out behind the woodshed. It’s Medicare/Medicaid that pays for his medicine, his doctors, his wheelchair. It was medicaid that came into his house recently and installed rails on his ceiling for a ‘body lift’ that can take him from his bed, to his toilet, to his bath. Until that day earlier this year when the rail was installed, Chuck hasn’t had an actual “bath” in years. Showers and sponge baths, sure, but a tub bath? No. He doesn’t measure life in grand increments, he’s never been able to, but to be able to finally sit down in a tub was a grand day for him.
It wasn’t until the other day that Chuck also found out just how horrible our system really is. Government run or not, he found himself in a pile of shit with no way out of it. The sad part is that I’m not exaggerating or hyper-ventilating hyperbole..
Chuck’s mother moved in with him some years ago when it became apparent that he was going to start needing more intensive around the clock care. He’s been able to do for himself for so many years, but his disease isn’t one that goes into remission or gets better over time, even the strongest or most lucky eventually fall victim to disappearing strength due the shrinking muscles. It’s because of his mother that he doesn’t need a daily visiting nurse, or God-forbid to live in an assisted living facility. It’s also in my opinion what has kept him going all these years, had she been like other parents who just couldn’t do it anymore and put him in a state run, or if by some stroke of luck, privately funded assisted living care, disease and disregard would have killed him years ago. It’s not that these places would have necessarily treated him poorly, but it’s just the nature of the beast that they zap your will to live in small increments over time and then there is the spread of colds,flu’s and other disease that affects someone like Chuck so detrimentally and are so rampant in the close confines of these homes. Yes, it’s my belief that his mothers sacrifice all these years has lead to his longevity, not just in the extended years of his life, but in the life he has lived over the years. A nursing home would have curb his spirit, his joy, his imagination.. it would have killed what makes Chuck, Chuck.
A couple of weeks ago Chuck’s mom was struck by an acute illness that required emergency surgery, which required an extended hospital stay and a long convalescence at home. In other words, now she needed to be cared for and not only was Chuck unable to do this in return for her sacrifice all these years for him, but his physical capabilities have deteriorated so much that he was left wondering who was going to care for him. He knew that his brother would come up and help him once, maybe twice a week, but he was also painfully aware that there were going to be times when he would be in need of assistance and no one would be there to help. I don’t mean in need of showers or baths, cooking food to eat, or help getting into bed. No, Chuck has learned to go without a bath or shower and use a washcloth, he’s learned to eat whatever is handy in his line of reach, and as for sleeping.. well he can just roll his chair up to the dining room table and rest his head on his arms and get a few winks that way. Things we all take for granted, things that are the extreme of simple to us.. well, he’s found his way to enjoy also. No, the help I am talking about is our own basic body functions.. urination and defecation. Chuck has found a way around those too, he just stops eating and drinking. But even this is not perfection.
Because he knew that he was going to need just a few minutes help each week until his mother had recovered, he called his medicaid office to ask for a visiting nurse or nursing assistant to come out 30 minutes a week to help him. Before I go any farther I want you to think about that. Try for a minute to think if you could limit yourself to a bathroom break at a predestined time, once or maybe twice during a 7 day period. Do you have that kind of control, do you think it would be easy on a Monday to just say to yourself “Ok, I can’t poop again until Thursday at 9am” . Welcome to Chuck’s world.
When he made his request to the insurance office, he didn’t ask for someone to come out every other day and bathe him, or every day to help him on the toilet. Like I said, those things he’s been able to curb by not eating or drinking. But even the best starvation doesn’t keep you from having to use the bathroom for an entire week and he knew that. So Chuck’s humble request was for someone to come out once a week and help him with that problem, the rest of the time he would ration his food and drink and ‘hold it’ until his brother could come up on the weekend. The medicaid representative was very helpful, she understood what he needed and told him she had just the thing for him.. a 90 day stay in an assisted living facility. Now, besides this being a death sentence for someone in Chucks condition, it was an absurdity to him because he didn’t need that kind of help, he just needed someone to come out and help him in and out of his chair for a couple minutes a week. He explained this again to the woman on the phone, but as sympathetic as she was, she couldn’t give him a visiting nurse or CNA.. she could only give him a 90 stay at his local old-folks home. Chuck, understandable upset, refused and then started the process of limiting his food,water and ‘holding it’…. and he almost made it.
It had only been a few days, he’d gone longer in the past, but whether it was something he ate that didn’t agree with him or whether nature just had to take it’s course, he failed in his attempted to not soil himself. It wasn’t much, just a little bit of a bowel movement, but it was enough that he knew he was sitting in his own shit and worse than that, there was nothing he could do about it anytime soon. Even if his brother came up right then, he was an hour away and Chuck would be sitting there in his own mess the whole time, and that is exactly what happened.
I’ve noticed that even the most ’shy’ of us reach a point where it doesn’t matter who sees or smells what, we just need help and we need it right then. That’s the place were Chuck was, sitting in his own shit, waiting for his brother to come up and help wash him up. Help wash the area on Chuck off, was his clothes off and wash his chair off. What a humbling experience this must have been, it had to have the most humbling hour of his life. But it eventually came to the point where he didn’t care who came in and saw or smelled what… he just wanted help. He found out those moments waiting for his brother to come up and clean him, just what it meant that he was disabled. I’m know that through the years there had to be many other moments that came up and made him realize this fact, but I’m not sure that any humiliated him the way this time did.
The next day he again called and begged the insurance company for 1-30 minute visit a week so he could avoid a repeat of the day before, he was again denied. They would of course be happy to spend tens of thousands of dollars for him to unnecessarily stay in a 24 hr facility for 90 days, but no. .. they would not under any circumstances pay $50-$75 a week for 5-6 weeks for a nurse to come to his home.
…and people say reform is not needed, that there is no waste in healthcare, that to cut any unnecessary procedures means a ‘rationing’ of care, that doctors don’t prescribe that which is unnecessary over that which is needed in the name of greed and the all mighty dollar?
Chuck’s story has ended well, he finally got a hold of a worker who would listened to his sense that he didn’t need a 90 day,thousands of dollars treatment… he just need a 30 minute weekly visit. She set him up with not one, but 2 visits a week.
Whether it’s medicare,medicaid or private insurance.. reform is needed. Had Chuck decided to take the medicaid office up on it’s offer, thousands of dollars would have been wasted when only a couple hundred were all that was needed. Those thousands could have gone to someone else care instead, someone who didn’t have insurance.. or 100 someone’s without insurance but in need of a flu shot this season. There are a million different ways that money could have been used properly, but because it is a Democrat asking for that reform, the psycho ‘right’ has an apoplectic fit about him wanting to pull the plug on grandma, him wanting to stop seniors from getting hip-replacements and heart surgery or him wanting to kill of the ‘damaged’ children of our society.
When a party says that the President who wants to talk to kids about the value of eduction and to stay in school is really trying to ‘indoctrinate’ them into a new version of ‘Hitler’s Youth’.. it’s time the adults stand up and tell these crazies to shut the fuck up already…the adults on both sides of the aisle. The sad part is the GOP’s lack of caring in all that is going on. Some know that the fringe they are courting and allowing into the debate field are as bat-shit crazy as they come, but they know that they are also so desperate for an answer that if the Liberals are distracted enough by the insanity, they themselves will have time to actually come up with that answer. The crazies will eventually be throw out of the party, the Conservatives aren’t that stupid, but until then the rest of will just sit in our chairs… not eating.. not drinking.. and praying that we don’t shit ourselves before our brother comes to rescue us from situation that we can’t just ‘pull our boot-straps up’ and get out of on our own.
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) unlike the GOP, there are different levels of (D). We don’t all think with one brain, we don’t all follow the leader like a flock of birds, that is what makes us ‘liberal’ or the favorite slam of the GOP, ‘radical’ . We think for ourselves and decide accordingly and not according to party/leader doctrine. We are just not that ‘religious-like’ in our faith and the following of party ‘dogma’. There are Democrats who don’t believe in abortion, there are some like me who believe in the death penalty and guns rights. To condem anyone.. any party for not just towing the party-line is asinine and to blindly follow the party-line used to be a bad thing.. but today, with the entire GOP saying “You can’t even get your party to all vote the same way and use that fillibuster proof majority” is so exquisitely sad, but still not as sad wanting and forcing any one party to act that way. I just can’t believe anyone, anywhere would want and encourage people to just blindly vote all (D) or all (R) depending on their party and then ridcule and condem anyone when they didn’t.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=32fca360-1281-432a-bf18-5ea905b72c75)
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