September 2009 Archives

Part of the argument against the public option is that the private insurance companies won't be able to compete and will be driven out of business. My response to that is "GOOD." And CIGNA should be the first to go:If for just 5 minutes we could get the Republicans to stop saying "No," and the Blue Dog Democrats to stop counting campaign contributions from their insurance company masters, they might be able see what this...

Billionaires for Wealthcare took their private jets to Washington this weekend to thank the teabaggers and show support of the status quo to protect their profits by not reforming the healthcare system.   They just issued their latest video of the celebration:<br />You can be a billionaire, too....

We reported last week that the Arlington Texas Independent School District was planning on busing 500-600 of its kids to an event where former President George W. Bush was speaking after denying those same kids the right to listen to President Obama in a nationwide back to school speech.  You'll recall that the district's reasoning was tortured and illogical, primarily because the real reason they didn't allow the speech was that the President is an...

As a sideline to Scott's earlier blog, it turns out some of those aerial photos of the protesters that descended upon Washington, D.C. this weekend might be fake.  At least one is.  The photograph shown here was touted by Say Anything, a conservative blog, as reasonable justification for the claim of 1,000,000 attendees.    A sharp reader on the site posted the following photograph, proving that the above picture was taken before the National Museum of the American...

One of the hallmarks of all debates is the use of facts. Certainly, a wise man once said that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, but even when he said that he knew that almost all statistics are grounded in some facts. So, the game of playing footloose and fancy free with the facts has been in politics since King John signed some piece of paper called the Magna Carta. However, it seems that...

The anti-Obama event in Washington DC has been well documented over the last couple of days.  While billed as a "non-partisan" event by its organizers, it was nothing of the kind, of course, with vicious rhetoric dominating every speaker's words and hateful racist signs everywhere.  It was yet another sign of the sad state of our country when open xenophobia, racism, and falsehood are not only accepted, but glorified and encouraged.Just by chance, I watched...

While the debate on health care reform is receiving the lion's share of attention, something else is looming on the horizon for President Obama and the Congress, something which the president will address today when he goes to New York--the financial institutions that were considered too big to fail are even bigger, and Wall Street is up to it's old tricks again. "The failure of Lehman, the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and the panicky...

You've seen the photos on The Hurricane and reports on television about the protesters who are furious at President Obama for "wrecking the economy" all "wanting their country back," blah, blah.  After looking over Ron Brownstein's analysis on the latest US Census Bureau report out Thursday, I really wonder why the teabaggers aren't picketing GWB's house in tony Preston Hollow.  Brownstein compares Clinton's performance against GWB's and since they were both in office 2 terms,...

Republican Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina (where else?) seems to be emerging as the leading spokesman for the Angry White Mob assembled in Washington, D.C. yesterday. DeMint said on Good Morning America about the rally, "it's not about Obama, it's not about the Democrats," it's just a group of people who are "here to take back their country."Not about the Democrats? Take a look at the roster of past and present elected officials who...

UPDATE 09/12/09 08:30: Gross Exaggeration Further Discredits Teabaggers' CaseIt didn't take long.  Astroturf protest organizer FreedomWorks spent six months organizing the anti-Obama, anti-tax, anti-healthcare, anti-nonwhite people, anti-intelligence protest in DC today.  Indeed tens of thousands of white people did attend, most brought in from around the country on 450 buses.It was the normal assortment of right wingers and screwballs (with a few white supremacists sprinkled in) protesting everything from health care for all Americans to...