March, 2010 archive

(Aside: I thought the days of recycling that headline were gone)

The Republicans are taking troops’ and troops’ families’ health care home with them and not playing any more because they don’t like how the last inning of the game turned out.

Remember, my son is a troop.

They are holding him and his compatriots hostage to their temper tantrum.

I shall shut up now. Because if I let loose, I will not be able to stop.

From Senator Webb’s press release:

Despite progress late in the week, Republican procedural delays have stalled a motion by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) to provide immediate fixes to two areas of the law that would clarify and protect coverage for millions of veterans and recipients of TRICARE.

Senator Webb’s legislation, the TRICARE Affirmation Act, has garnered 65 cosponsors, including every Democratic senator and six Republican senators. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) this week also sent out strong letters of endorsement, urging a vote on the bill this week.

See the bill here.

Via What Is Right for Virginia.

Brendan points out how the Teabaggers are behaving like abusers by claiming that, when confronted with threats and vandalism, “Well, you made me do it.”

As digby so concisely puts it, “It will be the Democrats complaining about their inflammatory rhetoric that made the teabaggers snap. If they’d just stayed quiet and not made daddy mad, he wouldn’t have had to hit them.”

He has a point. His post is worth a while.

I used to have a boss who was a retired bird colonel USA. He told us that the army had taught him that, when there was a decision being considered, to

“. . . fight like hell until the decision is made, then shut up and make it work.”

Dick Polman on Republican “contempt for democracy” (the title of his post):

These cancellations and disruptions (among others) were not precipitated by bad weather, or a power outage, or a busted water main, or a national emergency. They happened because the Republicans were behaving like toddlers.

Having failed to get their way on health reform, the losers threw a tantrum and refused to let the grownups get on with the everyday business of governing – actually for the second straight day, thus confirming the recent vow by John “Country First” McCain that there “will be no cooperation for the rest of the year.”

It’s worth the five minutes it takes to read.

Michael Tomasky, writing at the Guardian, compares the US political climate in the Sixties with the climate today. Some nuggets (I couldn’t narrow it down to just one):

It’s the Republicans’ posture that makes this violence different from violence on the political left in the 1960s. You didn’t find Democrats defending the Weather Underground or the Black Panthers or other violent radical tendencies. Those groups hated the Democratic party almost as much as they hated the Republicans.

. . .

Now we have a radical movement, a wing of which is directly threatening violence not just against members of Congress, but in general, with this talk of insurrection and civil war we hear emanating from some quarters. And the courageous response of the GOP has been to put a narrow amount of “space” between the insurrectionists and themselves, but only when pressed to do so by the media.

. . .

This is twisted. You have a group of people who, unhappy with a legislative outcome legitimately reached by duly elected people, think it’s somehow their “right” to call that oppression and threaten violence. They are people, let’s be blunt, who know nothing about history and political thought.

Helen reprises Lysistrata.

H/T Karen for the link.

I observed in an email to one of my two or three regular readers:

Boy the crazies are coming out of the woodwork like termites swarming in the old Orkin commercial.

(Thus betraying my age. “When termites start swarming/you have to take warning./Call Otto the Orkin man.” I tried to find it on YouTube but could not. It’s too old.)

She emailed back:

They really are. It wasn’t this bad in Dallas in the 60’s.

She grew up in Dallas in the Sixties.

I suggested that, if the actions of the KKK, the bombings of churches during the civil rights struggles, and stuff like that were taken into account, the violence of the Sixties might rank right up there.

Over at SLANTBlog, F. T. Rea also differs with my reader. He says in part

Terrorism flowing from the radical rightwing opposition to healthcare reform is not all that different from thuggery stemming from the bitter opposition of court-ordered desegregation in the ‘60s. It’s not so different from the terrorism/thuggery that’s taken place in the name of being anti-abortion. It’s not different enough from blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City to attack/threaten the government, or blowing up the World Trade Center towers to attack/threaten our society.

(snip)

I’m old, I’ve seen this kind of crap before.

But then I got thinking. There is something different today.

Back in the Sixties, when I was a young ‘un, the national leaders of both the Republican and the Democratic Parties neither excused nor encouraged the violence.

One cannot say that about the leadership of today’s Republican Party.

I have not before seen the leadership or those who are seen* to represent the leadership of a major United States political party excuse, embrace, and encourage violence without rebuke from their own party.

The Republican Party has shown itself to favor uncivil government.
_____________________

*If the Republican Party cared to disavow the Becks, the Hannitys, the Limbaughs, or any of the other haters, it could easily do so with a press release. It choses not to. By its silence, it endorses them.