UN-AMERICAN
Aug 10th, 2009 by MariaEvans
According to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, healthcare opponents are “un-American”.
These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.
Comments?
I guess she must mean all of those Democrats with misgivings.
I guess this means that Pelosi has been a paid, professional, un-America for years now.
The quote was about how drowning out debate was un-American. Do you disagree?
Where is the part where they said health care opponents are un-American?
noman because it says “OPPONENTS” right in the quote.
Politicians get shouted down and interrupted by protesters, it happens, it’s certainly not new. That doesn’t make the protesters “un-American”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLMuvp2gnZ8
Sun Tsu: Know your enemy.
(from delaware liberal)
Briefing on the Progress of Health Insurance Legislation Tonite
August 10th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Health Care Reform
By cassandra_m
There is an event tonite in Newark to providing up-to-date information and some training on the current state of the health insurance reform effort:
WHEN: Monday, August 10, 2009 at 6:30pm
WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Newark, 420 Willa Road, Newark, DE 19711
WHAT:
Our request for a knowledgeable briefing on the state of the Health Reform legislation in Congress has been answered. Join us for this training and briefing meeting at the UUFN in Mackinnon Hall on
August 10, 2009.
This meeting is open to the public.
We invite especially folks from other Delaware groups also working on Federal Health Care reform. Organizing for America, Health Care for America Now, SEIU Change that Works, Delaware, MoveOn, and ACORN are among the groups who have been working together on this for the past several months. Join us this night.
Kathleen Stoll – Deputy Executive Director AND Director of Health Policy of Families USA will be at the UUFN at 6:30 PM on 10 August 2009 to provide a training/briefing on the state of the national Health Care Reform Legislation. The date of this meeting is such that the legislation developed by the US House of Representatives should have been completed. Kathleen D. Stoll is the Director of Health Policy at Families USA, a national nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. In this position, she oversees the organization’s formulation of health policy positions and the analysis of specific health care proposals. Ms. Stoll also oversees the delivery of technical assistance to state advocates and state legislators on health policy and programs.
I just saw this from a Paul Baumbach comment, so I apologize for how late this notice is, although I suspect our readers are already planning to go.
I accept that you agree that drowning out opposing views is acceptable and is not un-American.
And I will stipulate that it says “OPPONENTS” right in the quote.
But what did they SAY about the opponents? Where’s the part that supports your claim “According to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, healthcare opponents are “un-American”.?
noman this part:
“These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”
This isn’t a news article that I quote, it’s a column written by Hoyer and Pelosi.
Well there you have it. It is the “drowning out,” not the “opponents,” that is un-American. It says so right there in the quote. Opposition to health care reform is not criticized at all.
In other words, your characterization “According to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, healthcare opponents are “un-American” is wrong.
Before I speculate on why you might have gotten it so spectactularly wrong, I thought I’d ask – why did you get it so wrong?
Maria, please be accurate. Noman is correct. Your link-quote misrepresents the Dem objection. I don’t care which party does/did it, it is simply wrong to “drown out” the free speech of another!
Noman, your interpretation of the words is really taking parsing to the point of ridiculousness
“Drowning out” is un-American
Protestors “drown out”
Therefore, protestors are un-American
It is Logic 101.
So Perry and noman, should people at events be deemed “un-American” because they shout out their “opposition” too loudly or if they commit the apparent sin of…gasp…interrupting a politician whilst they speak?
I didn’t see this behavior as “un-American” when it happened to Bush & Co., and I don’t see it as “un-American” now.
Shirley, let’s not put words in Maria’s mouth. Maria was clearly talking about “healthcare opponents” and not just protestors.
Pelosi and Hoyer did NOT say it was un-American to be politically opposed to their health care bill. I wonder if Maria can at least agree to that, and then agree that in that light her characterization was misleading.
What is the opposite of parsing? Wild-a** generalization and flights of fancy? I’m speaking of the current wingnut practice that picks a single word out, and then uses it to construct an entire smear without the slightest shred of truth. Things like:
Advance directives = euthanasia and “death panels”
Auto-enroll = “no choice”
casual conversation = “report your neighbors”
You know Maria, just because you spotted the word “un-American” doesn’t mean you get to invent your own story about it. There are other words around it too.
Maybe nothing is un-American, maybe The Tea Party folks are just taking a tip from Howard Stern. Obnoxious is the new Patriotic.
noman, were Pelosi and Hoyer talking about some “opponents” other than “health care opponents”? No, they were talking specifically about health care opponents.
Last time something un-American happened was Operation Chaos, the conservative GOP movement led by Rush Limbaugh telling people to sabotage the Democratic primary. Now we have this new conservative GOP movement where groups go into Democratic public meetings and gross everybody out. Barf.
Maria, are you putting us on? Or are you really this confused about the meaning?
Pelosi and Hoyer said the opponents were afraid of the facts.
They said “drowning out” was un-American.
In fact, it reads like they went out of their way not to say that the opponents were un-American.
Check out this link to Shirley’s site:
http://delawarecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/08/oh-for-good-old-days-when-protestors.html
and someone explain to me if the protesters in that post are more or less “un-American” than the health care opponents that Pelosi and Hoyer are writing about.
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but IMO you have to do way the heck more than yell over some politician or disrupt an event or show up at a hearing with fake blood on your hands, to be deemed “un-American”.
MarieEvans, it’s the tactic of breaking up an opposition meeting that is in question. Nobody is questioning being an “opponent” of something.
Being an opponent is as American as Apple Pie. Breaking up public meetings is un-American.
It is a road to nowhere. Anti-democracy. Anti-free speech. You don’t yell fire in a movie theatre, you don’t ruin a public meeting for everybody.
How does one retaliate for this kind of behavior? Attend GOP town halls , bring them down with chaos? Crash the website. Steal the pamphlets. Let the air out of the tires. Bring a boom box/ Without some degree of mutual respect things fall apart fast. That’s why it’s not a stretch to call this un-American.
Often people do try to go out of their way to not say something precisely because it is what they really mean. Yet say it she did. The implications of the statement from Speaker Pelosi are clear, and hypocritical. Civility is only important when they are the ones in office.
Now Timothy you are playing the straw man game again. You have no evidence for the hypothetical that you stated and then attacked.
Maria, you are not guilty of a major sin. You are guilty of writing, in effect, a misleading headline, because it does not accurately reflect the words of the authors of the article. Only those who bothered to follow your link and read the article would pick up on your error. If you had not provided the link, then your error becomes a major sin.
Forget the anti-American label. If you obstruct a meeting such that you, Dem or Repub or other, interfere with anothers’ right to free speech, that is wrong in our American context. I think we can all agree with that!
Perry, Pelosi and Hoyer didn’t say it was “wrong”, they said it was “UN-AMERICAN.” If they said it was “wrong” I probably wouldn’t have bothered to write about it.
anti-American means opposed or hostile to the government, official policies, or people of the United States.
un-American is a pejorative term when used in the United States. The term can go as far as claiming that the individual has been committing treason against the United States.
Maybe anti-American is a more appropriate for what is happening.
anti-American means opposed or hostile to the government, official policies, or people of the United States.
Except that the anti health care protesters aren’t opposing any policy or proposed policy of the United States. They are doing battle with strawmen and their own inner demons.
You forgot to mention that they’re racists too, no-man.
Maria, et. al. — give up. no-man has already said that all of you are racists merely for the fact that you believe in states’ rights, the 10th Amendment, etc. When a “person” like that makes such asinine and outrageous claims, you just know you’ll get the idiotic semantic parsing you’ve witnessed here.
As for Perry — well, he proved himself long-gone a long time ago.
~ “Except that the anti health care protesters aren’t opposing any policy or proposed policy of the United States.” ~
Isn’t the new health care bill “proposed policy”?
Yes, but death panels and such aren’t part of the new health care bill.
noman so all of the healthcare opponents are in opposition because of “death panels”?
MarieEvans, you say “Isn’t the new health care bill “proposed policy”? Proposed in the sense it has been introduced in the House as HR320 “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009″. A Senate version called “Affordable Health Choices Act I think is SRII available at this link:
http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf
No plan came for the White House. The strategy is to put the ball in Congress’ court. President Obama told Congress to come with a Healthcare Bill. That’s where we are at now.
The President offered broad guidelines. He wants all Americans covered, wants pre-existing conditions covered, a public insurance option to put some price pressure on private insurers. He says current inflation rates are not sustainable. Almost everybody agrees with the premise of reform. Working something out is the hard part, eh?
think, I was responding to this statement by noman:
~ “Except that the anti health care protesters aren’t opposing any policy or proposed policy of the United States.” ~
And I didn’t mention the White House.
And the name is “Maria”.
a report from the field:
from our pals at FreeRepublic.com
Nearly 2,000 Show Up to 500 seat Town Hall meeting in Maryland
Explore Baltimore/Inside Charm City | August 10, 2009 | Multiple links and eyewitness account
Posted on Monday, August 10, 2009 10:19:45 PM by icwhatudo
(Towson Maryland)-After the office of Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin admitted to receiving over 1,600 RSVP’s for its health care Town Hall, they must have been surprised at the more than 2,000 citizens that showed up according to witnesses and University Police.
An urgent request to the AFL-CIO for forces to “counter” those opposed to healthcare was able to result in the a large group of supporters in line hours before the doors opened but was not able to counter the voices of those locked out of the meeting.
Sign carrying protesters both for and against the health care bill took up positions on both sides of the road in front of the event with a core group of about 50 supporters being opposed by nearly 300.
The supporters were approximately 15 red shirt wearing “Progressives of Maryland” and another group of about 15 yellow shirt wearing union members. The remainder of the group was made up of aging hippie types and young college students.
For Maryland, an extremely liberal state, the turnout was amazing for the conservative movement. They countered the typical 2-4-6-8 cheers of the union members (read from script sheets) with “All we are saying, is pay your own bills” sung to the tune of the Beatles “All we are saying is give peace a chance” while the crowd swayed back and forth.
Other good repeated chants were:
Astroturfers! Astroturfers! (When pre-made signs were being handed out by the union members. They also handed out mini-American flags that were quickly abandoned which led to cheers of “What happen to the flags? Did they burn your hands?”
USA for Us! Canada for You!
Pay your bills!
Just say No!
Thats not a hybrid! (When one of the few supporters of the liberals honked from a huge SUV. Most people driving by were honking and waving to the conservatives)
Shave your legs! (You had to see the other side to understand-lol)
“Sha na na na-Sha na na na-Hey Hey Hey-Goodbye!” (When each group of supports left. Each group seemed to come together and leave together.
The union chant of “What do we want-HEALTHCARE! When do we want it-NOW!” was countered by yelling “Our Money” just after they chanted “What do we want?!”-LOL
Supporters dwindled down to about 5 at 9pm with at least 100 still on the opposition side. At one point the 100 cheered for the remaining 5 for showing such determination after their union friend left. (The Union members leaving brought chants of “No Overtime! No Overtime!”
A severe thunderstorm ended the fun.
noman so all of the healthcare opponents are in opposition because of “death panels”?
I was using death panels as an example of a strawman. There are plenty more.
For example, if you come to a town hall meeting bearing a sign that says “Hands Off My Health Care,” you have to explain where the bill says anything about your health care plan (it doesn’t). Or else you are protesting a straw man.
See how it works?
The strategy of President Obama and the Democrats supporting this government incursion into health care is plausible deniability. President Obama didn’t write the bill so he doesn’t have to defend any critizism of the bill. In the Senate one version is still in committee so you can’t critizise that. In the House things the committees have three different versions of HR 3200 due to the various amendments, so nothing we can critizise there. No one is responsible, no one has to answer for what is actually in the bill.
They can champion a set of principles for health care, but those principles may or may not have any bearing on what reality will be after the bill is enacted.
To be honest I dissagree with many of the principles that President Obama says he wants for health care. I have heard that the administration may have an actual bill in the works because leaving it in the hands of Congress has become such a boondoggle. I am not sure if the White House can to any better, but maybe we will find out. At least if a bill has its origins in the administration the President will have to defend the specific policies in it rather than slithering around them.
I don’t think the various versions of the health care bills are some kind of “strategy” of obfuscation – it is just the normal legislative process.
I know, I know, it’s not as clean and simple as the last Administration when the lobbyists would write the bills and the GOP would pass them. It is a more quintessentially Democratic way of developing legislation.
But you do raise an interesting point – when the protesters are chanting “Read The Bill” – which bill do they mean?
Do they even know which bill they mean?
To be honest I dissagree with many of the principles that President Obama says he wants for health care.
Now there is a very forthright and well-informed statement of opposition. Nothing un-American about that.
If you go to the town hall meeting, your sign can say “No Health Care For The Poor!” Or if you are short of space, just “I Got Mine.”
I would respect that way more than making up something like death panels.
Noman, the various versions of the bill are not anything new. It is the standard procedure for coming up with a final bill to be voted on. Yet, the way that politicians are using this process to maintain plausible deniability for many of the things in a version of the bill is exploiting the legislative process to an unprecendented degree in order to seek political cover.
If you believe that Rep. Dingell himself wrote the original H.R. 3200, you are kidding yourself. I am sure he had no less help from lobbyists than is given for other bills.
I do not support or endorse the use of the term “death pannels” no matter how fun it would be to agrivate Democrats in doing so. lol
Finally, as I have stated in another post I do not support the principle of forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. That is one of the President’s general health care policies I do not agree with.
I do not support the principle of forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.
That’s only if they wish to participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. I am pretty sure insurance companies remain free to offer non-qualified plans that do not cover pre-existing conditions, and you can buy them if you want. So “force” is not accurate.
Just as disgraceful when all of you hardcore-righty birthers called us anti-war liberals the same thing over the past six years. But where was your outrage then?
At least I’m consistent. It was wrong to label people “unAmerican” then and it’s wrong to do so now. That hag bag Pelosi should shut her goddamn trap.
~ Just as disgraceful when all of you hardcore-righty birthers called us anti-war liberals the same thing over the past six years. But where was your outrage then? ~
Same place it is now.
Maria, sorry about the mistake with your name. Hope you get my point about there really is no healthcare bill. We are trying to put one together.I hope you support the final version. This process is about as all American as it gets. Voters vote. Congress legislates. The President makes sure the law is faithfully carried out.
Here is an item about a demonstration outside United Health Group shareholders meeting. This is part of the reason we are putting together reform legislation. The
shareholders inside were quite happy with the huge profits being generated from our health insurance premium. Unlike many enterprises, investor capital adds little value to what consumers get. This company merely collects premium money and pays it out to medical service providers.
Outside were the victims of insurance company abuse. Like my brother in law who went suicidal after being denied treatment for severe back pain as preexisting.
Why you are so against righting these terrible wrongs is hard to understand.
The demonstration will start at 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 29, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 Second Ave. S., Minneapolis. The event will “decry the gap between need and greed as United Health Group CEO William McGuire, his replacement Stephen Helmsley, and other Minnesota HMO executives bilk billions in stock options derived from denying health insurance to half a million Minnesotans,” organizers said.
United Health Care is the largest HMO in the United States and McGuire was the highest-paid CEO in Minnesota history, with stock options totaling $2 billion. Helmsley, who replaced McGuire, has stock options in excess of $750 million. In contrast, the chief of Medicare, a single-payer system with the largest enrollment in the United States, makes $150,000 a year.
The only service this company provides is collection insurance premiums, computing payments, sending checks out to medical providers. Can you imagine just one CEO sucking out $2 billion for himself? We are being gouged. This is not Apple or Microsoft or Intel. There is no innovation here. No patents. No proprietary products. Just collecting our insurance premiums. The business model is: the less they pay out for medical bills, the better it is for shareholders and executive pay. If somebody is denied service profits go up. If people with pre-existing conditions are excluded, profits go up. If fine print caps or eliminate expected benefits, profits go up. This is not the proper set up for us.
Our little commie president has started a website, where Socialist-Democrats can ‘report’ opponents of socialized medicine. AFL-CIO president Sweeney has ordered his minions to attend Town Hall meetings, in order to intimidate average, concerned citizens. Just like Lenin in the good ‘ol USSR.
The war is beginning. Stop the commie bastards.
annoni, 2000 people at a town hall meeting? Whoa.
did you see where 125,000,000 people showed up at the polls last november? The most ever in American history. Obama won with more votes a bigger margin in 2008 than in President Bush 2000 or 2004. Here is what the winner, candidate Obama was saying about health insurance:
Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race.
“The time has come for universal health care in America,” Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group.
“I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country,” the Illinois senator said.
The townhalls are informative, interesting. But the People have spoken.
The overall point is that the provision of health insurance should not be an insanely profit-making enterprise for either investors or executives. It amazes me that we have put up with this for so long.
To combat this healthcare waste, some Dems have proposed a public option to cover basic insurance needs, which will supply competition to the health insurance conspirators.
I have not yet seen a better proposal, or even one proposal, from the other side to counter this serious problem that impacts us all, all but the wealthy who consider it too miniscule to notice, compared to their investments in the for-profit health insurance industry.
This health insurance shortfall is an example of capitalism gone awry, where clearly the government has to step in!
What I see here is facts presented by proponents, being countered with lies and emotion from opponents.
The opponents have done nothing more than skim the bill to extract some buzzwords, which they then invent lies about.
After reviewing this thread, I am convinced Pelosi is correct to say “opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttTtjhlvmY&feature=player_embedded
out of control at a town hall meeting!
~ “Why you are so against righting these terrible wrongs is hard to understand.” ~
don-so far all you know about my health care opinion is that I think it’s wrong for Pelosi and Hoyer to call any opponents “un-American”.
think123-your point about Obama getting more votes doesn’t mean that those 60 million Americans who voted against them should lose their voice. The fact that the Administration and it’s supporters keep pulling the “we won” card pretty much proves that Obama, and his supporters, all lied when they said that they, unlike Bush, would “unite” America.
Your rhetoric is divisive, so is Pelosi’s, Hoyer’s and Obama’s.
What’s “un-American.”
Many politicians are arrogant. They have the tools to do so. Incumbency often creates a sense of great privilege that goes beyond mere franking.
They talk and we are supposed to listen. They often lead charmed lives and quite a few grow wealthy as they sup at the public trough. One would do well to look at the self-reported net worths of our elected officials and wonder how they did it on their government salaries. A few had money when they entered the world of politics. Some have done very well for themselves.
We have a breed of unnatural aristocrats that was never contemplated by our founding fathers. George Washington had run for office but as a citizen-legislator and not as a careerist.
Yet look at the money being pulled down down in Delaware by the likes of hacks such as Vince Meconi and Orlando George. Are they really worth the money?
“…did you see where 125,000,000 people showed up at the polls last november? The most ever in American history…”
As as percentage of eligible voters, the ’08 vote was down from 04, big-media bulls#!t notwithstanding.
Obama won for two main reasons; he is now and has always been a successful con-artist, and the Republicans ran an inept, ‘cross the aisle’ moderate (they never win). People like me sat the election out (which is why the vote was down).
The facade is crumbling, exposing the commie within; check the polls.
People like me sat the election out
LOL!
Yet look at the money being pulled down down in Delaware by the likes of hacks such as Vince Meconi and Orlando George.
It is amazing how much personal wealth one can acquire in a lifetime of public employment (see: Castle, Carper, Biden).
Art says: “We have a breed of unnatural aristocrats that was never contemplated by our founding fathers.”
I agree!
As any alert and honest observer is forced to conclude, regardless of party affiliation, that our government has been taken over in recent decades by both elected and unelected corporatists whose unbelievable wealth has bribed power from the people to their advantage, creating more wealth and power for them.
Even Obama has made a secret deal with big Pharma that the government will not negotiate drug prices in exchange for $80 billion lowering of prescription drug costs over the next ten years.
Worse, we have the Wall Street dominance over our government, bringing ours and the global economy to its collective knees, all while nobody in Washington was looking out for the interests of the people, only for their own.
And it continues. Where has our borrowed TARP money gone?
People like me sat the election out
LOL!….norman
LOL? It’s funny that I sat if out, or you think I’m lying?
I sat it out for good reason; just like when the Rockefeller wing tried to hijack the Republican Party, McCain and his pathetic ‘cross the aisle’ nonsense was an attempt to marginalize the conservative base. An egregious and unforgivable error. No way I’d vote for that bumbling fool.
Creation from the ashes of destruction. BO and his Marxist minions will open the eyes of the American people; see BO’s collapsing poll numbers. In ’10, the resurrection will begin; Americans are not Socialist, sissified Europeans, at least not yet.
This is, essentially, war. Stop the Marxist bastards.
It’s funny – hysterically funny – that you make up stuff about our President being anti-democratic, and you don’t even vote. HA HA HA!!!
Art, now we are finding some common ground. Aristocrats. Half my passion for public public citizen owned health insurance has to do with my family being denied coverage, but the new CEO of the health insurance company gets $744 million in stock. This is new to America. This business of CEO’s controlling vital services and skimming off huge amounts for personal wealth. The other part is the freedom part. Why does our health insurance belong to our boss, not us? Why is individual freedom in America so tied up with where we get health insurance? You want to leave Bank Of America and open a shop? You need $12,000 for rent and $12,000 for family health insurance. Frustrated corporate workers call it prison with a “golden ball and chain”.
The big surprise in all this is how people who I would think to be allies in the cause of freedom, conservatives, libertarians, have all lined up on the other side with the aristocrats and big corporations. Against the “public option”. I don’t get it. It’s all the little citizens, the individualists, artists and artisans, entrepreneurs, not yet caught up in the Corporate Matrix that are in trouble trying to afford health insurance. Public portable citizen heath insurance would be a tremendous shot in the arm for individual liberty.