The sky isn't falling!

All of this hyperbolic hyperventilating on the part of conservatives would be hilarious if they weren't so heavily armed.  And STUPID.

The sky isn’t falling

By Gene Lyons


LITTLE ROCK — I love the sound of Republicans whining in the morning. Boo hoo hoo.

The GOP lost the presidency and a big congressional election back in 2008. With the passage of President Obama’s health care bill, they’ve now lost the most significant domestic political battle since the 1960s, so naturally the light of freedom has been extinguished, the U.S. Constitution voided, capitalism doomed and the nation fallen into a dark totalitarian nightmare.

Party leaders are increasingly solemn, diminishingly serious. The GOP’s entertainment wing, its crack team of right-wing radio/TV melodramatists, has been thrown into a competitive frenzy.

For sheer entertainment value, this stuff is hard to top. Surely some dark beast shuffles toward Washington to be born. Rush Limbaugh predicts that the nation’s private insurance industry will be bankrupted. Oddly, insurance company stocks continue to rise.

A couple of weeks ago, Limbaugh even vowed to leave the U.S. and move to Costa Rica if health care reform passed. Evidently, nobody had told him that Costa Rica has a government-funded, single-payer health care system. He’s since recanted.

Neither Limbaugh nor Chicken Little had anything on FOX News’s Glenn Beck, who actually compared the bill’s passage to Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor! Not to be outdone, Mark Steyn, writing in the formerly respectable National Review, envisions “fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana and global Armageddon.”

According to Steyn, America’s “global military capacity” will need to be sacrificed to the ruinous expense of paying for Grandpa’s health insurance. Nuclear holocaust can only follow.

Conservative blogger Matthew Vadum tweets a different outcome: “Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America. It will not be quick or painless.”

So which is it, boys? Fire or ice? Make up your minds.

But wait, there’s hope. After the Republicans sweep into power in the November 2010 congressional elections, they’ll repeal this hateful law, restoring what the old Superman TV show called “truth, justice and the American way.”

Again, fellows, please decide. Which is it, the dark night of totalitarian rule or free elections? World War III or the 2012 Iowa caucuses?

Several things need saying. First, this latter-day GOP enthusiasm for governing by CNN poll stands the Constitution on its head. We determine who holds power in this country through biennial elections, not telephone surveys. Besides, where was all this solicitude for the randomly selected will of the people back when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton although polls showed that two-thirds of Americans opposed it?

Second, GOP paranoia over Democratic improvements to the nation’s social contract is nothing new. In 1935, Republican congressmen greeted Social Security by invoking the “lash of the dictator,” the “enslavement of workers” and similar nonsense.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan warned that unless Medicare was defeated, “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.” Instead, he spent his sunset years as president making people forget he’d said anything so silly.

Third, Republicans won’t repeal “Obamacare,” either. They’ll get nowhere near the two-thirds Senate vote needed to override a presidential veto, and by 2012, imaginary horrors such as death panels, rationing and global Armageddon having failed to materialize, the presidential campaign willbe contested over different issues.

In time, suitably housebroken conservatives will imitate their brethren elsewhere in the civilized world in arguing that they can more efficiently manage the nation’s health insurance system.

Fourth, this column doesn’t predict elections, but there are many reasons to doubt that the enactment of Obamacare will lead to the triumphs that Republicans dream of come November.

Did you know that 13 percent of the 59 percent who opposed the Democrats’ bill in that famous CNN poll did so because it wasn’t liberal enough? Asked whom they trusted more to fix health care, Obama or congressional Republicans, respondents chose the White House 51-39.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers trend in the wake of a Democratic victory. Gallup daily tracking polls show Obama’s job approval up five points over the past week.

Finally, conservative thinkers such as David Frum and Bruce Bartlett have begun warning that Republicans are foolish to make themselves captive to the “hysterical accusations and pseudo information” of the party’s entertainment and tea-party wing.

“Talk radio,” Frum, a former George W. Bush speech writer, argues on his blog, “thrives on confrontation and recrimination” rather than governing.

Bartlett cites a survey of tea partiers at a recent Washington demonstration that shows most know nothing about the policies they so noisily abhor. Almost none realize, for example, that Obama’s jobs stimulus plan gave “90% of all taxpayers . . . a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range.”

When people resort to racial epithets and sexual insults, it’s normally a sign that they’ve got nothing else to say.

You can find the original here.

Gardening Update

Aha!

I figured out how to upload pictures again, so that, when you click on the pictures in a post,  they will open in a new window, and you get a bigger picture too.  This will work, most times, with pictures that I have taken with my digital camera.  Other pics grabbed from the net should still open in a new window, but usually won't be as large.

Just bought a new camera, BTW, a Canon SD780IS.  It's very cool, and easy to use, especially considering it is another Canon, similar to, but better than, the most-previous camera I had.  That older camera recently vanished in the haze, e.g. I lost it.  Or it was stolen.  Perhaps some day I'll find it.  Good thing I had recently deleted most of the pictures!! 

What is extra-cool about the new camera is that, a month or so after I bought it, I noticed it selected as a "Product of the Year" in the digital camera category by MacWorld magazine.  That was very gratifying, considering that I had spent a fair amount of time researching the market and deciding upon that one.  

New cameras are really cheap these days, one of the few products that continues to drop in price.  Instead of looking and looking and looking for the old camera, I just bought a new one.  But suddenly, I could not upload pictures to the blog properly.  They wouldn't open into a new window.

Until I figured it out.   Now, it works again.  Go ahead and try it, with these recent pics from the garden.  (Yeah, yeah, I'll have to fix - and remove - the time stamp)

The blackberry bush is already flowering...

We recently planted two tomato plant seedlings  ... an unknown cherry tomato and a Valley Girl.  We just planted it, and we already don't know what it is!!

 

The red sails lettuce is going nuts, but it'd better hurry up, because the weather is getting warmer.  I wonder how it would do inside the house?

And, oh my goodness, the lemon tree is flowering already.  Can you just smell this incredible smell?  I guess "Smell-O-Vision" was just too much of a scientific hurdle.  So far....

...and that's enough for now.  We're still a long ways from producing all the food we need, but we're learning all the time.  (The real test: can we remember anything?)

Where's Jesus?

A Sunday school teacher is concerned that his students might be a little confused about Jesus, so he asks his class, "Where is Jesus today?"


Steven raises his hand and says, "He's in Heaven."

Mary answers, "He's in my heart."

Little Johnny waves his hand furiously and blurts out, "He's in our bathroom!"

The surprised teacher asks Little Johnny how he knows this.

"Well," Little Johnny says, "every morning, my father gets up, bangs on the bathroom door and yells 'Jesus Christ, are you still in there?!'"

Little Punk Staffers

I have to wonder how Boehner's staffers feel about the Boner's comment...Those staffers are taking advantage of those poor banking lobbyists! 

The Republican Party continues to sink into the muck. 

Rep. Barney Frank distributes ‘Little Punk Staffer’ buttons to Capitol Hill aides.

At an American Bankers Association summit last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urged the bankers to fight financial reform. To make his point, he bashed people who work in Congress and called them “little punk staffers“:

“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner said. “All of us are hearing from our friends and constituents on lack of credit, you can’t get a loan, the more your government takes and taxes, the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have there and less amount you are going to have available to loan to customers.”

White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers fired back at Boehner, pointing out that the biggest problem in the financial system certainly isn’t that bankers do not have enough of a voice in the policy process. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) wrote Boehner a letter and called on him to apologize: “I am appalled that a Leader of the House, who must know what good work is done by our staffs, would take such an inaccurate cheap-shot at these people, for the purpose of ingratiating himself with bankers.” A House staffer told ThinkProgress today that Frank is now distributing “Little Punk Staffer” buttons to Hill aides, in a clear shot at Boehner’s insult.

Found this one here, and thanks to David.

Armageddon!

Herbert: No Class

If I had witty and pithy things to say about the issues of the day, I'd be in Bob Herbert's place.  And not here.  

It's safe to assume that I agree with the people's opinions that I re-print here, even if I don't make any comments before or after.  Thank goodness for people like Paul Krugman, Will Pitt, Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins (no, not the guy on Hogan's Heroes) and many more, who can consistently put into words what I may be thinking but can't quite vocalize.  I don't agree with everything they have to say, of course.  I don't agree with everything my wife has to say.  Most of it, though.

I hope it becomes obvious to many Republicans sooner than later (but better late than never) that this healthcare bill is actually a good thing (although it could be much, much better), and that their "leaders" have been lying to them and manipulating them with fear, and worse.  Lying over and over about so much.  They are really poisoning the waters.

And when you get past the lying, you're left with the obvious: todays Republicans are always in the corner of Big Business, and really don't give a shit about the little guy at all.  They laugh at the little guy that still supports them.  

Democrats, while far from perfect, still have at least a shred of caring for the less-powerful.    

An Absence of Class

by Bob Herbert

Some of the images from the run-up to Sunday’s landmark health care vote in the House of Representatives should be seared into the nation’s consciousness. We are so far, in so many ways, from being a class act.

 

Bob Herbert

 A group of lowlifes at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week taunted and humiliated a man who was sitting on the ground with a sign that said he had Parkinson’s disease. The disgusting behavior was captured on a widely circulated videotape. One of the Tea Party protesters leaned over the man and sneered: “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town.”

Another threw money at the man, first one bill and then another, and said contemptuously, “I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot.”

In Washington on Saturday, opponents of the health care legislation spit on a black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was taunted because he is gay.

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here. 

It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship. 

The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.

With a freer hand, the Republicans would have done more damage. George W. Bush tried to undermine Social Security. John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and thought Phil Gramm would have made a crackerjack Treasury secretary. (For those who may not remember, Mr. Gramm was a deregulation zealot who told us during the presidential campaign that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”)

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country. Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.

Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought. 

Find the original here.