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'On what planet do you spend most of your time?'

Barney Frank vs. the wingnuts in Dartmouth:

More from the Phoenix.


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Comments

Do you mean, for example, people at a rally holding a sign that says:
"Keep government out of my Medicare"

True story.

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I can watch this video all day, Barney Frank is just hilarious.

"Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table... I have no interest in doing it"

Having been called a Facist myself by the La'Rouche people, one two occasions, I was very happy to see someone put one (or more?) of them in their place.

I think these protests are going to backfire as the sane opponents of the proposals get drowned out by the anti-government crazy statement group.

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Finally someone has the guts to publicly call-out these nuts who insult the millions murdered at the hands of Nazis by likening a plan to improve access to healthcare to the Third Reich. There are a lot of legitimate concerns about health care reform that need to be addressed, and the president's plan isn't perfect, but this neo-Nazi nonsense is crowding out intelligent debate.

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Whether you love him, hate him, or don't care about him, and I do a bit of all three, you have to appreciate the fact that he gives it right back to these people who have it coming to them.

My favorite line was from a radio interview he did about a year ago, which went something like: I am too busy trying to protect people from interests far stronger than they are. I just don't have time to protect people from themselves.

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Very happy this guy is one of our state reps in congress, and this is yet another fine example as to why.

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...when the Mass legislature was debating the Commonwealth's health care bill? You know, the one that's at least as radical as what's likely to come out of Congress?

The absolute madness of this was captured sharply in the last graf of that blog post:

I knew that poor and working class Americans were surfacing in droves to rival their best interests, but it’s especially sad to see them up close. They’re clearly blinded by ignorance and fear; why else would they fight on behalf of greedy insurance companies? Why else would they oppose tax cuts for people making more than $325,000 a year? Judging by their clothes, jewelry, and cars, it’s unlikely that many people there have ever earned substantial six-figure salaries. Come to think of it, of course big bank jerkoffs who benefit from healthcare inaction didn’t show to battle Barney. After all, they have an army of white trash circus clowns, ideologues, and talk radio wannabes who are glad and willing to execute their dirty work.

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...where they live. The majority of the nutjobs are being bussed in by lobbyists, Paultards and Rouchies.

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"Why else would they oppose tax cuts for people making more than $325,000 a year? Judging by their clothes, jewelry, and cars, it’s unlikely that many people there have ever earned substantial six-figure salaries."

This bothers me.

The people who shout out "Nazi!" are beyond the pale, surely, but just because someone isn't rich (or doesn't look rich) it doesn't mean that they can't have a principled stand concerning what they feel to be too much governmental control over their lives.

Not everybody who doesn't make $325,000 a year wants to see the people who do get soaked. Some of us understand that a large number of folks who make a very good wage worked hard to attain their present status and just because we make less it doesn't entitle us to some of theirs.

I'm not arguing for or against the health care plan being debated at present, but just pointing out that there's more than one possible reason for people to oppose it.

By the way, to address another part of this thread? Calling the opposition names doesn't do anyone's cause much good, so those upset by "Nazi" and such might wish to rethink the "Paultard" and "Wingnut" labels. Although those pejoratives may not be as offensive, they're pretty much as ignorant.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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I didn't much like the Phoenix article, especially the part you quoted, mainly for the argument you make in your final paragraph. I'm glad you raised the issue.

That said, I don't think most of the town hall protesters are there because they oppose a tax on high wage earners. If taxation is part of their issue, they more likely oppose any and all income tax, or even believe it to be unconstitutional. A lot of the folks who buy into the Obama was born in Kenya foolishness probably got started with the notion that the 16th amendment was never ratified. It is very hard not to ridicule such arguments. But the Phoenix makes the mistake of instead ridiculing the person who voices it.

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in particular, the sadly deluded young lady who asked this question. She is a member of the Lyndon LaRouche cult, and needs to be deprogrammed before she can resume a useful life.

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They can't be civil, no reason I should be.

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It won't help your cause. Isn't that obvious from observing those you denigrate?

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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I'm just mocking them. I'm not going out holding up signs with good ol' Lyn and Ron wearing Hitlerstaches.

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Look, we don't tolerate the behavior we're seeing from these shills from our 7th graders in a classroom. We shouldn't tolerate it from these disruptive morons acting like petulant little children at these town hall meetings either.

I'd love to see the next politician to hold one of these things begin by saying essentially what every middle school classroom teacher worth a damn says at the start of every school year:

"If you can't discuss this issue in a rational and polite manner, then you will be thrown out so that the adults in the room who would like to learn and discuss this issue can do so without your interruptions. If you are not at a microphone and you have not been called upon yet, then you are not allowed to speak. I will respect you as long as it is clear that you are respecting everyone else here. There will be no warnings because this is your one and only warning."

Children who stomp their feet and think that a tantrum of nonsense is going to accomplish their goal are those children who haven't been taught that its not an effective means of communication. They've been acquiesced towards far too often as soon as they begin to scream and turn red. The only answer is to cut off the behavior until they realize that it's ineffectual. Simple as that. If these people want to act like little children, then it's pretty clear they should be treated as such.

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Those same people are likely to counter with saying their free speech is being attacked. Which it isn't; it's perfectly constitutional to have rules about the time and place and manner in which one can speak, just like the rules you alluded to in government-run middle schools. Courtrooms are perhaps a more parallel example; many of them are open to anyone who wants to come witness a proceeding, but people can't just start yapping because they're imagining that there's an amendment giving them the right to disrupt anything they damn well please.

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

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And they also probably can't tell you how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights, how many justices are in the Supreme Court, nor how many branches of government we have. Just because they have no civility and zero understanding of what the First Amendment actually entails does not mean that we have to set the bar low enough for them to pass. Most of these people are just lucky that we allow citizenship by birth.

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Knowing how many amendments the Bill of Rights has does not mean they understand what they mean. Heck I study history and do not even know what some of them really mean. For instance what are your views on the 2nd amendment? Im sure if we took 100 people with some understanding of the Bill of Rights and placed them in a room you would get almost as many answers, most likely split into three or maybe four camps.

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No, the problem isn't whether they are constitutional scholars on every aspect and nuance of the current interpretations of the amended constitution.

The point is that if they can't even come up with a simple fact as to how many amendments constitute the Bill of Rights, then they're not even a nominally functional citizen and thus their views on the healthcare proposals and a topic like whether Obama has anything in common with Nazi Germany are more than likely to be less than informed. If you can't even engage your brain enough to know the rudimentary structure and definitions of our political system, then the house of cards that the rest of your argument consists of has no foundation.

If you know how to integrate to determine the area under a curve, then you're probably pretty keen on 5+5 equaling 10. These people are trying to decry offense at suggested public policy under the guise of "free speech" without even knowing which amendment contains that clause in some cases.

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I would be tend to agree with you. I would just be concerned that there would only be 15 of us left after all was said and done. God forbid there was an algebra portion to this test it would go down to 14 after I left the room.

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The correct answer is ....

11.

The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was originally submitted to the states in 1789, alongside the first ten.

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If you're going to be that pedantic, then you should say 12. The first of which, that you did not include, was about how to apportion the representatives among the states and was never ratified nor brought up again.

So, 12. But in today's usage, since the 27th amendment doesn't deal with a particular "right" and took over 2 centuries to be resolved, the term "The Bill of Rights" is used to describe the first 10 amendments ratified to the Constitution.

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Yeah, I've got to agree with this. Just because #27 was proposed at the same time as 1 to 10, doesn't make it thematically or chronologically part of the Bill of Rights or the meaning we give to it.

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Agreed!

Bill of Rights are the first ten agreed to, not the first X number proposed.

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