babbling blue

At a recent town hall meeting, Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from OK, spoke up in defense of Nancy Pelosi and cautioned people about getting their news strictly from Fox News.

Quoth Coburn:

“Come on now, [Nancy Pelosi] is a nice – how many of you all have met her? (Groans from the crowd.) She is a nice person. Let me give you a little lesson here, I hope you will listen to me. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they aren’t a good person.

This is worth repeating: “Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they aren’t a good person.” Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between should pay attention to that (I’m looking at you Tea Baggers! I mean, Tea Partiers…)

Coburn continued to show he has a brain:

What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make a determination yourself. So don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good.

In response to a town-hall participant who claimed the health care legislation aimed to jail people for not having insurance:

The intention is not to put any one in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX but that isn’t the intention. … Don’t just watch Fox News or CNN, watch them both. I read two papers a day – the New York times, the Washington Post, and in between the Wall Street Journal. I get a perspective.

I wish more people felt this way, and I wish more elected officials&emdash;on both sides of the aisle–had the guts to talk like this to their constituents. I just worry that he will now have a target painted on his chest in the next election, as he dared to speak up (sort of) against the mighty Fox News!

Good luck Tom, and keep on keepin’ it real!

Source: CNN Political Ticker.

Comcast + NBC = Bad Idea

http://www.freepress.net/comcast

Please take a moment to go here to send a note to President Obama and your representatives in Congress urging them to support the repealing of the unconstitutional and discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. It takes no time at all. Thank you!

And so it continues. I mentioned the craziness that the anti-healthcare reformers are using to stifle debate on the issue a few days ago. And it doesn’t show any signs of letting up.

The bullshit continues, and escalates.

Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) will not be hosting any town hall events this August — instead, he’s making himself available to constituents for one-on-one meetings about health care reform — and at least part of the reason is this: His offices have received threatening phone calls, including at least one direct threat against his life.

A fistfight broke out at a Tampa, FL town hall, prompting police to close off the meeting room.

Death threats and fistfights? This is a complex issue; it’s not black or white. There isn’t an obvious right or wrong answer. It’s something that needs to be discussed, and that’s not happening because of these people. One town hall attendee stated: “They think they’re exercising their right to free speech, but they’re only exercising their right to disrupt civil discourse.”

And finally, from another raucous town hall meeting comes this very sad tidbit:

During the town hall, one conservative activist turns to his fellow attendees and asks them to raise their hands if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Almost all the hands shot up. Rep Green quickly turned the question on the audience and asked, “How many of you have Medicare?” Nearly half the attendees raised their hands, failing to note the irony.

What do I think about Obama’s health care reforms? I don’t know, really. I haven’t had a chance to properly study the matter. I think that a public health insurance option–and getting uninsured people on insurance–is ultimately a good thing, but I can’t speak to the specific details of the Obama plan.

What I can speak to is the “impromptu” mobs that are cropping up at town hall meetings and similar settings around the country. As it turns out, these impromptu mobs aren’t impromptu, but are rallied by national conservative and industry groups.

It wouldn’t be as big of a deal if they were just sending people to contribute to the discussions and speak their piece. But they are encouraging people to be loud and disruptive. This prevents any real discussion from taking place. It’s OK to disagree. It’s not OK to stifle debate with pseudo-grassroots brute force.

Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.

(Politico)

The tactics are repugnant. At one rally a congressman was hung in effigy.

All this to try to give the impression that ordinary Americans are mad as hell, and not gonna take it anymore. This editorial claims it’s good that Rep. Tim Bishop was barely able to get a word in at his town hall meeting–and then goes on to lambaste single payer health insurance.

This irresponsible behavior is not only preventing useful discussion on the health care issue, but it may also prevent constituents from being heard on other issues as well:

In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.

“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to temporarily suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”

This after police were called in to escort him safely to his car after a town hall meeting ran amok.

Here are a few good editorials on the topic:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Kansas City Star
The Washington Post

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fractured her right elbow Wednesday during a fall, State Department officials said.

Clinton fell Wednesday afternoon on her way to the White House and was taken to George Washington University Hospital. She was treated and released, and will have surgery to repair her elbow in coming weeks.

From CNN.

Dear California Supreme Court, California Constitution and Prop 8 supporters:

Fuck You.

“We’ve done everything here. We’re leading the way with our inspector general, office of compliance, all the things we’ve done,” Daley said. “We’re more transparent than any other government. Look at it.”

“We’re doing a tremendous job here, we lead by example,” he said.

In a story last week, the Tribune documented how the Daley administration routinely cites exemptions in the state’s public records law to avoid releasing information and frequently drags out for weeks or even months efforts to get records.

Federal prosecutors convicted several top Daley aides for running an illegal hiring scheme, and a federal monitor has complained the city still is not complying with court requirements to keep politics out of hiring.

(Chicago Tribune blog)

Does he really believe the nonsense he spews, or is he just that deluded? I can’t tell.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. All hail King Richard II, King of Chicago!

In part 2 of my 1461 part series, I will address… nothing. There isn’t really a series. That was a joke, carried over from yesterday.

Speaking of jokes, here is a set of fake patch notes for the US Democracy Server, a play on World of Warcraft patch notes. Being the WoW geek that I am, I found this rather amusing.

The whole thing is worth a read, but here are a couple favorites:

President

• Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied.
• A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes.

Vice President

• The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
• The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
• A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.

Homeland Security

• Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.
• Item: Large Bottle of Water is incorrectly generating threat with TSA Agents when held in inventory. We are looking into the issue.

Welcome to my part 1 in my 1461 part series* on Barack Obama’s first term!

Some would argue that yesterday was Day 1 of the Obama presidency. That position has some merit, but a) it was only a half day and b) it’s kind of like the first day of school. . . you don’t really do anything of substance. So I’m calling today Day 1.

Has he fixed everything yet? It couldn’t be that hard, right? Let’s check in…

• The Dow regained most of what it lost yesterday. Well, that wasn’t really his doing…
• Hillary Clinton got confirmed as SecState by a vote of 94-2 (the nays were cast by Jim DeMint, R-SC and David Vitter, R-LA).
• Obama ordered a pay freeze for his senior staff
• and tightened rules on lobbyists
• “establish[ed] what he said was a new standard of greater government openness”
• ordered a halt to pending war crimes trials at Gitmo while he reviews the handling of terror suspects (he actually did that last night. . . not bad!)

Sounds like a decent start, I guess. If “fixing our problems” (I’m going to be deliberately vague on this) is a cross-country drive, then President Obama is packing his bags. Hey, that’s important. You need clean clothes and toothpaste for a trip like that. It’s hard to respect a President with dirty, rumpled clothes and bad breath and spinach in his teeth. Tomorrow he’ll probably check the tire pressure and the anti-freeze and blinker fluid. It’ll take awhile before he can actually get on the road, and who knows how bad traffic is going to be? He might even get lost, or go antiquing, or spend too much time at a Waffle House or. . . oh I’m on a tangent.

I like to think that I’m a realistic optimist, or an optimistic realist. My brain is not firing on all cylinders right now (bonus points to me for continuing the automotive metaphor!) for some reason, so I can’t think what the difference might be. But anyway, I have Hope that things are going to Change. I think they will, but it’s going to be a long, slow process (he doesn’t drive a very fast car) and there are going to be problems (it’s not that reliable either). I know that Obama is only human, and there are limits to what he can do. He’s not perfect; he’s going to do some things I disagree with. However, I feel things are going to get better. Really…how can they not?

*Just kidding.