Day: August 1, 2009

House GOPs Vote Unanimously Against Killing Government Health Care

Jon Ponder

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee exposed their hypocrisy on the government option when they voted against a Democratic congressman’s amendment that would have killed a government health care program — Medicare:

Yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) decided that it was “put-up or shut-up time for the phonies who deride the so-called ‘public option.’” He offered an amendment that would eliminate government-run Medicare… Not a single member of Congress voted for the amendment…

Republicans are refusing to acknowledge the hypocrisy in their statements warning about “socialized” medicine and their support for Medicare. Of course, conservatives also opposed the creation of Medicare in the 1960s and made many of the same claims that their counterparts are doing today. Forty-four years later, Medicare has helped America’s senior citizens live longer, healthier lives. By not voting for Weiner’s amendment, conservatives are acknowledging that their supposedly substantive claims about health care reform are nothing more than crass political fear-mongering.

The “government option” in the health-care debate would simply make available to all Americans the same sort of medical benefits provided by Medicare and to the military, veterans, members of Congress and federal workers.

Many of the people who would benefit most from a government insurance safety net are the same low-income conservatives who support the GOP pols whom the health-insurance industry are paying to kill the government option. These Fox News watchers and Dittoheads are being duped into acting against their own self-interests again.

Poll: Key Birther and Neo-Confederate Demographics Align

Jon Ponder

There was speculation earlier this year that the true dynamic behind the tea-bagging movement was not opposition to taxes but rather racist anger over the election of an African-American president. After all, taxes had been lowered, not raised at that point, and the only tax hikes on the table targeted people making over $250,000 per year, which was probably about five or six times the income of an average tea-bagger family of four.

Facts don’t matter to bigots. And this this stubborn refusal to accept documentary evidence is the most convincing argument yet for the proposition that the Birther movement is a racist phenomenon at its core

The tea-bagging movement appears to have ended on July 4, when attendance at rallies was down across the country, in part because Fox News failed to promote the events 24/7 as they had for events in April.

Birthers were out in force at tea-bagger rallies from the beginning, carrying signs demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth certificate — which, of course, his campaign had done in June 2008. (To see how the connection lives on in the Intertubes, just plug keywords like “tea party,” “obama” and “birth certificate” into the Google and stand back.)

As tea bagging sputters to an end, Birtherism appears to be moving up. For example, there are a dozen or so proud Birthers in the U.S. House, including one marquee brand name, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and one in the Senate, Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Now a new poll has found that Birthers are predominantly Republicans — no surprise there — and that the South leads all other regions by far as a hotbed of Birtherism.

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