Something tells me the media will not pay as much heed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s mean-spirited swipe at Americans opposed to the President’s health care plan, including many Nevadans, as they did to then-Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott’s 2002 suggestion we’d all be better off had Strom Thurmond, running on a segregationist platform in 1948, won the White House.

At the time, the media made much of Lott’s insensitive comment.  And conservatives, doing the right thing, rose up demanding his ouster as Senate GOP Leader.  Lott acceded to their demands.

So, will media take Reid to task for calling townhall protesters “evil-mongers“?

(I grant the Lott comparison isn’t perfect, but it is closest comparison–a Senate Leader making a comment denigrating a class of Americans.)

Let’s watch the President’s celebrated comment on the success of private sector package delivery services as compared to the flailing public option so we can put his remarks in context:

He’s trying to tell us that a public option won’t crowd out the private providers already there.  But, that’s not what we learn by studying this example.  His comparison show much more effective the private options are and betrays a limited understanding of the industries he’s comparing.

Let me explain.  In the world of parcel delivery, FedEx and UPS were created long after the Postal Service, that is, the public “option” preceded the private ones.   According to the Post Office’s website, it was founded in 1775, with the appointment of Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General.  By contrast, the forerunners of the companies which would eventually be known as UPS and FedEx were founded in 1907 and 1913 respectively.

In the health care arena, however, the President is proposing the exact opposite, a new public option created long after the private ones.

And those two companies have grown in large part due to disatisfaction with the Postal Service.  And today, while the private companies are, in the president’s words, doing “just fine,” the public one is “having problems.”

That is, the very creation–and marketplace success–of these companies was due to resourceful individuals, on their own, meeting a need the government-backed industry could not fulfill.  Over the years, as the federal government has relaxed some (but not all) restrictions on the postal service’s monopoly on parcel delivery, these companies (and other package delivery services) have continued to find new markets, improving delivery across the country and earning profits for their shareholders.

Were Pesident Obama to apply the lesson of the success of FedEx and UPS to the health care industry, he would advocate the kinds of deregulation that facilitate the entry of new private companies into the market for health insurance.

In recent days, against my better judgment perhaps, I have spent a good deal of time perusing the comments section to our posts.  And I found that no matter how many facts you offer to counter the assumptions certain critics make about the GOP, Republicans in general and the people protesting the President’s proposed health care overalls at townhalls across the country, they still hold to their narrow view of the GOP.

It’s long since time to call these people what they are:  prejudiced.  According to Merriam-Webster’s, a prejudice is a

2 a (1) : preconceived judgment or opinion (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge b : an instance of such judgment or opinion c : an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics

All these apply to some of our critics.  We say that the protesters are a diverse lot, they define them by the most extreme membes and focus on a supposedly compromised organizer.  We say we have legitimate concerns about the president’s health care plan, they tell us we’re astroturfing tools of the insurance lobby.  We make arguments against health care, they call us racists, suggest we are Nazi sympathizers or call us “evil-mongers.“*

This is not to say all those who criticize Republican ideas are prejudiced.  Many, if not most, are not.  It’s not that they criticize us (and our ideas), it’s how they see us.  While my junior Senator is clearly prejudiced against Republicans, her senior colleague, with a similar voting record, is not.

If they make judgments about us based on their perceptions rather than the facts, then they are prejudiced.  If they manifest an”irrational hostilty” against us because of our affiliation with the GOP or our stand on certain issues, then they are prejudiced.

But, if they hold a different opinion than we do, but do not denigrate us for our difference, then they merely hold a different opinion.  Why, I wonder yet again, do so many assume the worst about those who hold a different opinion than they do?

* (more…)

It is all but impossible to attend a gay confab without the leaders touting their commitment to diversity, singing paeans to the ideal of diversity or apologizing for not being diverse enough.   And sure enough, at most such confabs, you’ll see that there are representatives from a great variety of gay interest groups, from transgender activists to spokespeople of associations of any number of ethnic groups.

One group which you almost never see represented is Republicans even as GOP candidates continue to win a greater share of the gay vote.

And given how Republicans have overwhelming opposed state recognition of same-sex marriage, you’d think that gay activists would want to target this demographic as a source of support for their initiatives.  After all, if it was the failure of their outreach efforts which caused voters to approve Prop 8 last fall, they failed most spectacularly among Republicans.

Indeed, the Golden State’s leading gay activist group, Equality California, routinely touts its commitment to diversity with its Executive Director Geoff Kors boasting yesterday that “18 [recently-hired] field organizers that reflect the diversity of California.”  Actually, they don’t.  In a state where 34.3% of registered voters identify as Republicans, representatives of the EqCA could not identify a single Republican among those new hires.  If they were truly committed to diversity, they would have made sure to include Republicans among their supposedly diverse cadre of field organizers,

In response to my query about the number of Republicans in this number, Jay Davis, EqCA “Online Community Director” wrote,

We don’t have an exact number of our field organizers who are Republicans. We don’t ask about political affiliation when we hire. I can say, having met all of our organizers, that they represent a number of different points of view.

While they say their field organizers reflect the diversity of the state, they also say they’re not interested in political diversity. (more…)

Awesome.

(click here for full view of letter)

Dear President Obama:

I write you today simply to ask two questions about the new White House program to monitor information released about the proposed health care reform:

1 – How will the “fishy” information collected via flag@whitehouse.gov be used?

2 – Will the people who are flagged as “fishy” be made aware that they’ve been reported?

The debate about proposed health care reform has become heated over the past months.  I cannot see how this debate can be advanced in a productive manner if people can no longer speak freely without fear that they may be reported to the White House. The privacy of those who are reported could potentially be put in jeopardy, as email addresses, IP addresses and other identifying information will undoubtedly be forwarded along — perhaps without the author’s knowledge.

I look forward to your reply to my questions and hope that you will take to heart the concerns fo the American people over this program.

Sincerely,

Sue Myrick
Member of Congress

Barack Obama, on the other hand, gives the strong impression that his religion is strictly of the photo-op variety, assumed for political purposes, and that he worships not at an altar but at a mirror.

John Steele Gordon

The Fed/CNN/DC elite join with the archangels and proclaim loudly today “the worst is over!”

All Hail Obama! (on CNN’s FRONT homepage)

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it appears that the U.S. economy has halted the longest period of decline since the Great Depression, although it cautioned that economic activity is likely to remain weak in the near term.

Meanwhile, out in the real world… we know differently:

Retail sales disappointed in July and the number of newly laid-off Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week. The latest government reports reinforced concerns about how quickly consumers will be able to contribute to a broad economic recovery.

“There is really no positive spin to put on these numbers,” Jennifer Lee, an economist with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a research note. “The U.S. consumer remains very weak. The jobs situation, while slowly improving, is still dismal.”

And this item is buried wayyyyy back in the CNN Money section:

Two key reports Thursday showed one thing: happy days are not here again for American consumers.

Retail sales fell in July after two straight months of gains, the government reported Thursday, a drop that surprised economists. Without car sales from the “Cash for Clunkers,” the numbers would have been even worse.

And Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, reported an unexpected decline in its key measure of U.S. sales.

“From a consumer finance position, people are still struggling,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics for Moody’s Economy.com. “Wages have fallen from the previous year and consumers don’t [still] have alternative sources of cash.”

Yes, all hail.  You know, those Obama hailstones are really starting to hurt.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In the course of the debate on health care, we should bear in mind these three public comments made by the two Democrats holding two of the (three) highest constitutional offices in the United States of America.

First, the President:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Third Presidential Debate, October 15, 2008

UPS and FedEx are doing just fine . . . . it’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 11, 2009

Now, the Speaker of the House:

The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.

November 8, 2006

I have Yahoo! as my home page on my Safari browser, largely to make sure I always see a “mainstream” source of news, even on my busiest days.  More often than not, I discover a left-leaning article leading the news, with headlines almost always more favorable to the Democrats than Republicans.  But, oftentimes, they do link fascinating articles about astronomy or archeology.  And sometimes, they’ll surprise us by linking an article which paints conservatives in a favorable light.

As I was checking the news before bed Wednesday night, I was delighted to discover an article which painted an unbiased picture of some of the people in Pennsylvania protesting ObamacCare.  At first, I thought, the article, Just who are these health care protesters?, would make them out to be mind-numbed robots, mesmerized by talk radio or paid and bussed in by insurance companies, but instead well, they found a diverse crowd.

Reporter Erica Werner reported from State College, Pennsylvania where she reported on a crowd gathering at a town hall for Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter.  She did note that the central Pennsylvania crowd was “white, conservative and working class” which she did not note pretty much reflects the demographics of the region.  (Yes, I know PennState is in the area, but I’m referring to the broad demographic of the region.)

Yet, while pointing out that yes, indeed, some were drawn by talk radio, she also focuses on an actual couple:

Instead, the Snyders and many Americans like them are adding their voices to a populist backlash evident in the taunts, jeers and rants at lawmakers’ health care forums around the country in the past week and a half. The contentious sessions highlight the difficulty for President Barack Obama and the Democrats as they push for a comprehensive remaking of the nation’s health care system.

Many of those raising their voices and fists at the town halls have never been politically active. Their frustration was born earlier this year with government bailouts and big spending bills, then found an outlet in the anti-tax Tea Parties in April and has simmered in the punishing recession.

While she does seem to reduce the activism of those portrayed to “taunts, jeers and rants,” Werner does report the couple’s genuine concerns in a broadly favorable manner.  And when she points out that some of the opposition is organized, she notes that, well,  so is some of the support:

There is an element of organized opposition, just as on the other side unions and Obama’s political organization are trying to turn out supporters to town halls and other events.

Indeed, she compares the movement to that which fueled Obama’s election:

The emerging protest movement is almost the mirror image of the grass-roots campaign that helped sweep Obama into office by pulling in people who’d never been politically active. This time Obama is seeing the other side of what can happen when people are motivated, connect over the Internet and seemingly reach a tipping point that turns them from onlookers into activists.

Guess, then, if those protesting the President’s policies are astroturf, so too were the rallies for Obama.  As the activism increases, so too does opposition to the President’s policies increase in the polls–as did support for Obama.

Looks like some Democrats owe these protesters an apology. (more…)