Well, isn’t this special?
POCAHONTAS – President Barack Obama is a fascist.
This and other assertions flew through an emotionally-charged town hall meeting conducted by Sen. Chuck Grassley Monday in Pocahontas.
“The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about. Because he’s acting like a little Hitler,” said Tom Eisenhower, a World War II veteran. “I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”
Did Grassley correct this man? Did he dissuade him?
Dwayne Hornor, of Varina, said he still was not satisfied that his concerns had been addressed, but that he was, however, satisfied with Sen. Grassley.
“Grassley is pretty much, how would you say, one of us,” he said. “If it had been Harkin this might have been a bit more vocal.”
Of course, Tom Harkin is probably conspiring with Obama to steal all their penis-tips, so…
Representative Jim Moran and Howard Dean are doing a town hall meeting on health care.
I feel like I’m in a locker room for 12 year old boys.
ooh we get to say penis.
I’m taking you off my RSS feed until this passes. Tell somebody to let me know when the adults take over the site again.
Bye.
Exactly what body parts are adults allowed to mention? Are we talking about adults in general, or just prudish spinsters teaching Sunday school? Do we get some bonus taboos to go with the whole genital shame thing, like maybe never mention the names of dead people or discussing their pancreases?
What’s your problem? He’s lampooning the idiot right-wing nutjobs. He can’t help it if Rush has penis envy.
With all due respect to veterans, I really wish the media — and a big chunk of the public — would stop acting as if being a veteran gave you any special insight into anything beyond army life and combat.
There’s a certain minority of veterans who seem to think that being a veteran ought to grant them some kind of elevated status above their fellow citizens. (I say it’s a minority because most of the veterans I know, thankfully, don’t think this way.) To those veterans, I can only offer my condolences for their having fought for the wrong fucking country. That bullshit ended in 1776.
So to Tom Eisenhower, WWII veteran and present-day wannabe traitor, if you get enough of your fellow travelers to arm up and head for Washington, rest assured that the majority of your fellow citizens will be there to stop you.
You’ve seen the movie about the guy from Iowa that set out to see his family in another state on his lawn mower? I think you’ve hit upon the right’s next attack. Give this guy a muzzle loader, put him on a lawn mower, and slowly mow his ass to the WH lawn.
There will be plenty of time for interviews on the way.
Here are some proposed talking points for the Republicans:
This guy fought the real Hitler so he must be an expert at identifying Hitler. Who would you rather believe? A young whippersnapper from Kenya or a Hitler fighter? We respect his service so we will patiently listen to whatever right-wing message he has to say (with the caveat if he says anything remotely lefty, like John Kerry did criticizing the Vietnam war, he’s a traitor, not a real soldier, and must be shouted down). Whatchyou talkin bout Willis? Socialist!!!!!!!
I expect this to be the next big thing. Hitler fighters against health care. Brilliant. The Dems don’t stand a chance and look for them to fall all over themselves trying to ingratiate themselves to this guy that will slander them.
And Obama and the Centrist Dems will rush in to assure Grassely and the old guy that, while their concerns are valid, he will do everything he can to win their vote.
After a while the Dems have to start taking responsibility for letting these lying goofballs run the show. They haven’t even been making real arguments–it’s just demagoguery (and I’m not throwing that around lightly–it’s a fair description).
I mean, jeez. These paranoid rantings would get no attention if the Dems simply piled ridicule on these dimwits and made deals with the grown ups (how about Obama sit down with progressives and hammer out a deal–they at least have adult discussions). Why hand the megaphone to the GOP and hope to have an argument in good faith with them?
I can’t believe I voted for Grassely at one point.
That’s back when I thought bipartisan compromise was the way to go (at the start of Clinton’s first term). I have learned my lesson.
And who would be the audience for this piling on? The Gentleman’s Club of the Senate? The Sunday talk show viewers? The teabaggers at their town halls? Well, Barney Frank did unload on one.
How exactly do Democrats get this message through?
Well, it’s an attitude adjustment that the entire party has to go through. The party has slowly adopted a tone of capitulation and frankly, as a party, act like a battered wife. It’s in everything they do. It’s why Obama and the Dem instinctively compromise after gaining power (in a way their enemies never acted) and handed the legislation on the party’s biggest issue over to Republicans and industry insiders.
And frankly, it’s the most important political task the Democrats have. Heaping scorn on ridiculous arguments coming from the enemy. The right has made a habit of not having good faith policy discussions. They have become impossible and beyond reproach. That is the sensible and rational conclusion after observing republican argument the last few decades.
We’ve gotten ourselves into a familiar pattern: the right pushes some lie (or half-truth) and instead of crying foul the Democrats try to outclass the opposition by showing what gentlemen they are by suffering the fools without objection and not defending themselves with commensurate vigor.
Look at the campaign last year: Obama is a far leftist that hangs with Black Power people that hate America and want to attack America. Obama legitimized these ridiculous slanders by running away from these associations–thereby justifying the attack. Same thing with national security. The Democrats always suffer the low blows and never blow the whistle. It’s like they think they’re Jesse Owens and if they jump a foot before the foul line the opposition will not be able to cry foul because they would never get away with it. And guess what? The Dems aint’ Jesse Owens. They jump a foot before the foul line and get a horrible result because they are not gifted athletes and the crowd and the officials don’t care anyway and will call a foul even if it’s clearly not because they are filled with right-wing stooges anyway and unlike the German public in the stands when Jesse Owens jumped these fools have no limits and probably wouldn’t bat an eye if the ref called a foul on Dems even though they jumped two feet before the foul line.
Another tried and true lie the GOP tried during last year’s campaign: the elitist thing but that was not nearly as effective as it was with Kerry and Gore (I mean Obama was born to a single unwed white woman during Jim Crow, with a black Muslim man, and she was on welfare, but he’s supposedly the elitist against a guy with 7 mansions, a jet plane, etc.–the entire right-wing pretended this was a valid argument).
The Dems have to change their outlook on everything. And it starts by treating the GOP as their enemy–as any rational, self-respecting person would do when faced with the objective truth of right-wing behavior.
I like the way Anthony Weiner has been handling it. He did not back down from his position. He eloquently, and RESPECTFULLY, fought for what he believed in. I believe he made a difference.
The Dems should do that. I’m not saying they should get in a shouting match. They should be emulating Weiner (and not in a locker room type of way). But he does not suffer fools. He called the right wingers on their bluff and introduced the bill to kill Medicare on it’s 40th birthday. He is not retreating from the socialist argument and is fighting.
I want people like him to lead the party. But my comrades still want to give the third way compromise with reasonable republicans a chance . . . .
The Democrats get the message through by taking off the gloves and hitting these bastards with the simple and unvarnished truth. Like being a citizen means using ones head and looking as the basic facts, like exercising restraint and showing basic respect to the Congress people conducting the various meetings as well as their fellow citizens who are in attendance; like not displaying fits of anger at people who do not agree with them; like not threatening various federal officials.
If they can not conduct themselves like normal human beings, they should be escorted out the door with the same grace and courtesy the Bush people employed when facing the a similar situation.
And they shouldn’t enable the smears by appearing on the same cable shows and hobnobbing with the same media figures that continue spreading the bile.
Like going on Fox News to discuss the VA’s death pamphlets. Or giving Fox any sort of respect at all. When Fox is lecturing us about media ethics and how they will not simply repeat both side of the story but will report the truth on the death panel why go on their network and smile and meekly take the slander and lies?
If someone approaches you on the street and starts slandering you do you try to win them over? Or fight fire with fire?
I get your point, but you might want to rethink this analogy. There are more options.
Yeah. I wish there were edit functions here sometimes. Not a great analogy. But you get my drift . . . . they need a better way of fighting the mojo against them . . . laying down and getting rollover isn’t the way to go (pick your analogy)
And I like to think I would fight fire like this guy:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/25/BASE19DFN6.DTL
He did it without packing heat.
There are two million highly-connected viewers of Fox News; if you want to kill some misinformation at the source, you have to go there. BUT, when you go there you don’t have to let them walk all over you with their agenda. And you have to be prepared enough to anticipate where they will try to get their licks in. And don’t let them get away with filibustering, shifting the topic when they are nailed, or assert lies just by repeating them.
You would think politicians would know this stuff already.
And after Grassley’s death panels, Senators should not hold back just because of the “comity of the Senate”.
And when a Democrat is on a talk show, they should make a point of mentioning that the show could do with some new faces from the Democratic Party instead of the tired old predictable Broderites.
Hey, I revise my earlier suggestion and think your idea is better. You’re right. The Dems should send their A-list debaters there to take them on. Treat them as the Republican party. Arms length and as an adversary. And that’s it. If the party wants to impose some strategy and discipline they wouldn’t allow the political naifs (like the Secretary of the VA) to go to the slaughter like that. And they would punish these bootlickers, like the Blue Dogs, that go on Fox to undermine the party or those on the left in the party.
In fact, Kucinich should be the go-to Democrat to appear on Fox. He is a good debater, he’s respectful but tough, and he toes the liberal line. Plus, it will drive the wingnuts bonkers if Kucinich is the only scrap the Democrats give them. Or Weiner. That’s exactly how the GOP would do it. Fine. We’ll go on your crappy show to reach your audience but we won’t treat you with respect and we will send our hippy and debater legislators to argue with you.
You voted for Grassley, even once? I take it that was when you were young and naive.
Oooh, you got some penance to do there, lol.
Glad to see you came around to your senses. At 58, I bet I’m a lot older than you and have had a lot longer stretch of life to realize the errors of my youth.
Hey, I confess–as a real young kid, I campaigned for Barry Goldwater!
I supported him too as a freshman college student, but dropped him when Strom Thurmond and the segregation forever bunch glommed on to him.
Have you read Perlstein’s book on Goldwater?
Yeah. I was 18. I went through a short phase where I tried conservatism (like a month) in high school and was a good centrist for a while and voted for Grassley and Leach once. That’s back when Iowans truly thought of themselves as moderate and Grassely sure seemed a lot more moderate and the state didn’t have the Steve kings 🙂 Came to my senses and voted against them later though. And then I went to the dark side . . . the left of the left . . .