Health Care Reform

I was going to comment on this earlier but some things came up which will be discussed in an upcoming post.

I was pleased that it was passed. I thought it was interesting that on one of the commentary programs I watch, Inside Washington, on Friday they talked like it was a done deal. They talked about when it passed and what the Republicans next step would be.

I was still skeptical. Then over the weekend the Tea Party people showed up. (It was a very busy weekend in Washington. Saturday was the DC Marathon, an anti-war march and of course the Tea Party. Sunday Tea Party again and the immigration reform march.) I guess I should not be surprised at the action of the Tea Party people when they went after members of Congress. Art and I discussed this on our most recent 2Politcal Podcast.

Several observations. They incredible hatred and bile by these people directed at the Democrats. The name calling: Nigger and Faggot. I wonder what the next step will be. But I wasn’t surprised at the reaction of some of the Republicans. I will say most said there was no place for this type of behavior. But not all of them felt that way.

This from Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa):

“I just don’t think it’s anything,” King said. “There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn’t walk through. I wouldn’t live to get to the other end of it.” He added that health-care supporters were “embellishing” the story to undermine the opposition.

First off the racist undertone of this comment is incredible. More to the point this is the grounds of the Capitol of the United States. There shouldn’t be any fear what so ever to walk across the street. And the “embellishing point” well that’s a load of crap.

The second comes from Devin Nunes (R-Calif.):

“When you use a totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy,” Nunes said on CSPAN. “I think that people have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it.” He said the epithets were “not appropriate” but that the whole crowd shouldn’t be characterized by the behavior of a few members.

What totalitarian tactics are you talking about? And the best he can say about using faggot and nigger is they “aren’t appropriate.”

You have to wonder what it will take for all the Republicans to tone down their rhetoric. Like the lovely Governor Quitter who put on her site that people should reload.

I wonder what it will take for the Republicans to stop pandering to these people. Does property have to be vandalized? No wait that’s already happened. Calls by right wing bloggers for getting their guns ready to fight people? No wait that’s happened already too.

No guess someone is going to have to get seriously hurt or killed before that happens. But I’m sure there will be some way for the Republicans to blame the victim for bringing it on themselves.