Health Wars (8/13/09)

From cluelessness to standard-issue Donk dishonesty, depending upon the perception of the coast being clear.

First question of the day: Did Roxana Mayer stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night?

Whether or not she did, she may as well accept a gig to do the next Holiday Inn Express ad to make a few bucks, as she not only is not a doctor, isn't in Sheila Jackson-Lee's district, but was in fact an Obama delegate and organizer at last year's Donk convention.

This isn't astroturfing, it's Field Turfing.

Here's another take on Democrat health care town hall defamatory performance art:

The devil, as they say, is in the details, if you consider the fact that the Rosa Parks sign-tearer-upper being a Claire McCaskill underling rather than an BarryCare citizen-opponent to be a detail.  Decide for yourself whether the no-signs rule was a setup for this little framejob stunt, but after a brief initial foray into her party's political self-immolation last week, McCaskill's been, by contrast, a paragon of fairness and decency ever since.  Guess she would prefer to be re-elected in 2012 than make kamikaze runs now.

Then there are those Donk pols who are in districts so safe they could perform sex acts with great danes on street corners and still get re-elected.  And maybe that'd be the case for Zoe Lofgren, too, had she realized that (1) this is the YouTube age, and (2) the mass public uprising against BarryCare and the Democrat Party's Louis XVI-and-Marie-Antoinette-in-1789-esque might just have bled into her heretofore impregnable Gollyfornia stronghold as well:

I gotta admit, if I were Lofgren, I probably would have felt safe being honest about BarryCare covering abortion - thus repealing the Hyde Amendment via the proverbial back door - in a district in which even John Finger Kerry carried by thirty-eight points in a big Republican year.  But you'll notice that the questioner wasn't objecting to abortion being covered per se, but pointing out that over ninety percent of abortions are "elective," and most, if not all, of elective health care services aren't covered by insurance - therefore, how is covering an "extra" compatible with "controlling costs"?  Or, put another way, isn't rationing abortion tantamount to effectively banning it to a very large extent?

I'd wager Zoe Lofgren hasn't generated that much skull sweat in her entire misbegotten political career, which is what happens when you're a back bencher in a gerrymandered district.  And that's why so many Democrats are either ducking or demonizing their constituents - "da peepul" know more about the Dems' own legislation than they do, and there's no longer any intimidating or bamboozling them - even in districts that lavished Red Barry with seventy percent of the vote.

That's what makes the House Majority Whip's joining the House Speaker and House Majority Leader in yet another vicious smear of the American people almost, well, snooze-worthy:

“I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before,” he said. “I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon.”

“This is all about activity trying to deny the establishment of a civil right. And I do believe that health care for all is — a civil right,” the House Majority Whip argued. “And I think that is why you see this kind of activity. This is an attempt on the part of some to deny the establishment of a civil right.”

Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement, said he was particularly appalled by the use of the Swastika symbol at some of these town hall events. Noting that one had been painted on the office of Representative David Scott (D-GA), an African-American, Clyburn insisted that was proof enough that some of the protests were racially motivated.

“There is no question in my mind,” he said.

What mind?  Never mind.  A mind that sees hatred of Barack Obama because he's black in a disinclination on the part of the vast majority of Americans to have the Democrat Party nationalize their bodies and lives is incapable of seeing anything else, let alone thinking at all.  Unless, perhaps, the idea is to go so subterranean, so subhuman, so far below the gutter that you reach the gutter that the gutter uses for its own gutter, that the targets of Clyburn's acidic bile lash back in kind, thus "proving" his "point."  For my money, a simple pair of extended middle fingers would have sufficed a lot more concisely.

I'll let AP take it home with his exit question:

At the end of the HuffPo piece, he’s quoted tsk-tsking at the House GOP for not formally denouncing the swastika aimed at David Scott — as if the Republican Party’s supposed to take collective responsibility for something done by one anonymous nut whose party affiliation we don’t even know. If the GOP’s supposed to do that, how come it’s not similarly incumbent upon our blessed savior, the avatar of Hopenchange, to say a discouraging word or two about the insane amount of demagoguery and demonization pouring out of his own party right now? And I don’t mean the stuff coming from nutroots blogs; I’m talking about the Senate majority leader mumbling about “evil-mongers” and the Speaker of the House wringing her hands about swastikas and other congressmen warning of “brown shirts” and “political terrorists” and now this from Clyburn. The rhetoric from the Democratic leadership has turned completely poisonous, yet The One won’t open his mouth to calm it down. How come, champ?

As Eddie Valiant once said to Roger Rabbit, "Does THIS answer your question?"