Running Away From Obama: How'd That Work Out For Ya?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So what happened this past Tuesday? What was the cause of this so-called “Republican Wave”?

You can blame the gerrymandering, which marginalizes Democratic votes and concentrates Republican ones. That certainly didn’t hurt Renee “I need MY paycheck!” Ellmers in her race against Clay Aiken.

But that doesn’t explain Kay Hagan losing to Thom Tillis, nor does it explain Republican victories in other U.S. Senate and state governor’s races.

You can blame the pernicious influence of money in politics. But the fact is, both sides spent huge amounts of money, and in North Carolina, Hagan actually outspent Tillis.

So what was it? You might come to the conclusion that people just don’t like Democratic policies. But then you’d have to explain away what happened when certain measures were actually put on the ballots in various states:

— Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota passed bills to raise the minimum wage, even while electing politicians who opposed such an increase. Not only did these measures pass, but they passed by wide margins. (A similar bill passed in Illinois, but it’s only considered “advisory” and doesn’t have the force of law.)

— Washington state passed a referendum that mandates universal background checks for gun purchases. The bill passed with 60 percent of the popular vote, despite millions of dollars poured into the state by the NRA and other gun rights groups to fight it.

— Voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected so-called “personhood” laws, which define human life as beginning at fertilization of the egg. It’s clearly a back-door attempt to restrict reproductive freedom, and voters in those states soundly defeated both measures.

— Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. A solid majority of Floridians (57 percent) voted to legalize it for medical use, but that measure fell short of the 60 percent it would have needed to become law.

It seems that voters, when asked to choose, favor liberal policies on the minimum wage, gun control, reproductive choice, and even legal weed. Yet they don’t seem to like Democratic candidates. And I know why.

It’s because they act like such wimps.

One of the recurring themes of campaign coverage was how Democratic candidates were “running away” from President Obama. He’s “wildly unpopular,” the press assured us, despite the steadily decreasing jobless rate, a declining deficit, millions of Americans getting health insurance as a result of the much-reviled Affordable Care Act, and 63 months of economic expansion.

And boy, did they ever run away. Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes refused to even say whether or not she’d voted for the president. Clay Aiken told reporters he didn’t want the president to appear with him. Incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan spent all her time touting herself as the “most moderate” senator.

Republicans, on the other hand, constantly repeated, “Hagan voted with Obama 96 percent of the time."  They painted Hagan as “the deciding vote for Obamacare.” (Funny how every incumbent Democrat in every state was “the deciding vote for Obamacare.”) In the last days of the election, they even put it on the signs: HAGAN=OBAMACARE.

And not once did I hear her stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for Obamacare, and here’s why: No pre-existing condition exclusions, no lifetime caps on coverage, more people are getting insured, and you can keep your kids covered until they’re 26.” You know, all the things people tell pollsters they like — so long as you don’t call it Obamacare.

Here’s the thing about trying to run away from the president from your party: You’re also running away from the policies that you voted for. That doesn’t work. The Republicans aren’t going to let you do it, and trying to do it makes you look weak, craven, and wholly dependent on polls to determine your loyalty.

Not only does it not work, but as we’ve seen above, it’s so unnecessary. Remember, the president you’re so shy about being seen with got elected twice by large margins. People actually want a lot of the same things the Democrats claim to want. You want to motivate your base voters, the ones you really need in the midterms, then stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for that, and I’d do it again. I did it because it’ll help the people of my country and my state, and here’s why I say that …”

You want better turnout, Democrats. You need to move the polls, not chase them. You need to stop listening to overpaid Beltway consultants who tell you people won’t like you if you come out strong for the things that help people. You know, the ones Democrats are supposed to believe in.

A few noisy people may not like liberal policies, but everyone hates a two-faced coward.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: 

The comments in The Pilot since this column went live show that the Right's not even trying to hide the racism any more:

From commenter "PearlHarbor":  A couple of articles I read called the election white man's revenge.

Articles where? Stormfront.com? The KKK Journal? 

And of course, our old friend "Francis" spoke from beneath his concealing hood of anonymity: As much as it pains me to say this Obama may have been just what we needed, something had to wake White America up, we have been far to lenient and passive when it comes to allowing others dictate their demands, from illegal immigrants marching in our streets to the moral Monday crowd driven by the NAACP trying to use their numbers, it's always been about them, never us, time to think about what we want for a change.

Yes, Francis, let's never forget that it's the white man who is the truly oppressed minority in this country. Wake up, white men!

Jesus. 

Question Time

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Today’s column is a grab bag of questions which, for some strange reason, I can never seem to get a straight answer to:

If you think President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria is what led to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, what do you think we should have done in Syria? Should we have bombed them for using chemical weapons even after they agreed to give up their chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities? If so, do you also think police officers should be ordered to shoot criminals who’ve thrown down their weapons?

Do you think America should have intervened or should now intervene militarily in Syria? If so, which side should we come in on, the side backed by Hezbollah, or the one fighting alongside al-Qaida?

If you think our current response to the Russian annexation of Crimea is too weak, do you favor military intervention? If so, please locate Ukraine on a map and tell us where American troops should be based for such an intervention and where they’d be supplied from.

If you blame President Obama’s “weakness” for the Russian annexation of Crimea, do you also blame President George W. Bush for the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia? If not, why not?

If you think Obamacare needs to be repealed, are you also willing to repeal the popular parts of it, like the part protecting people with pre-existing conditions and the part allowing parents to insure their children to age 26? If not, how do you propose to keep the insurance system alive if everyone isn’t required to pay into it?

What do you propose to do with the millions of people already insured through the exchanges when the mandate goes away and insurance companies can go back to charging people exorbitant amounts or denying them insurance altogether if they have pre-existing conditions?

If you were one of the people who insisted in 2012 that the polls putting President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney were “skewed” and that Romney was going to win in a landslide, please tell us why we should believe you when you claim that the Obama administration is “cooking the books” on Affordable Care Act enrollment and that Obamacare is doomed to fail?

If you believe that a single-payer, taxpayer supported, medical insurance plan is “socialism” and that it will destroy America, do you plan to refuse a Medicare card when you become eligible or turn yours in if you have one now? If not, why not? If your reason is “I already paid into this,” isn’t that just an acknowledgement that it’s a taxpayer-funded system?

If you claim Obamacare is a “socialist takeover” of the American health care system, please explain how the terms “socialism” and “takeover” apply to a system of privately owned insurers paying privately employed doctors with support from privately paid premiums.

If you don’t think “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, being locked in small boxes and subjected to extended “stress positions” are not torture and therefore not legally actionable, would you say the same if those techniques were used by terrorist groups against American citizens?

Would you consider being strapped to a board, having a cloth put over your face, then having water poured on the cloth until you had the sensation of drowning to be torture if you had to undergo that yourself? If waterboarding isn’t torture, do we need to apologize and pay reparations to the families of the Japanese officers we prosecuted for war crimes for using similar techniques?

If you’re upset about government gathering of private data, were you as upset about it when the government’s ability to do so was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act? If not, why not? Do you support rolling back the Patriot Act? Do you think we should re-examine the principles set out in Smith vs. Maryland, the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that getting “metadata” about American citizens’ phone calls (i.e., information about who called who when and for how long) was not a “search,” since that information was not “private” at all? If not, why not, if you claim to be angry about government spying on us?

Normally, when I pose these sorts of questions to my fellow Americans, I get attempts to change the subject or angry denunciations of President Obama and/or “libs,” “leftists,” “statists” or “Obama-bots,” none of which have any connection to the question asked.

Can you do any better?

(Author's note: if you follow the link to the paper's website and check out the comments, you'll see that the answer to that last question is "no").

How to Speak Wingnut

Latest Newspaper Column

Talking or conversing online with a member of the Rabid Right can often be a frustrating experience. It often seems like the two of you are talking past each other.

This is because while wingnuts speak something that appears to be English, they're not really speaking the same language as you. They use a sort of argot or cant, made up of dog-whistles and code words whose full and deeper meaning is only understood by them or people like them.

So here's a helpful guide in understanding wingnut speech, or, as I call it, Wingspeak:

What they say: "Obama was never properly vetted. We don't know anything about him."

What they mean: "We've dug and dug but none of us has ever been able to turn up a shred of credible evidence for all of the ridiculous stuff we've made up about Barack Obama."

What they say: "The press is covering up this story."

What they mean: "The press won't report our half-truths, distortions and outright lies as if they were facts."

What they say: "The press has a liberal bias."

What they mean: "The press keeps finding out true but damaging things about us."

What they say: "We need to cut spending."

What they mean: "We need to stop giving money to black and poor people so the government can pay for my retirement and health care."

What they say: "We need entitlement reform."

What they mean: "For every entitlement but the ones I get."

What they say: "Government can't create jobs."

What they mean: "Government shouldn't spend money to create jobs except for ones resulting from defense, road or bridge projects in my district."

What they say: "I know it isn't politically correct to say this, but..."

What they mean: "I am about to say something incredibly racist, sexist or just pig-ignorant, and I want to look like I'm daring and edgy instead of a brain-dead boob."

What they say: "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a racist!"

What they mean: "I say racist stuff all the time, but maybe if I play the aggrieved, falsely accused victim, I can get away with it."

What they say: "You just call people names because you haven't got any real arguments!"

What they mean: "I'm going to hope people ignore the fact that you just used actual evidence to clean my clock in this argument by self-righteously feigning indignation over the way you said it."

What they say: "Barack Obama isn't a real American."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama doesn't love America."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama wasn't born here, he was born in Kenya."

What they mean: "Obama is black."

What they say: "Barack Obama should release his college transcripts."

What they mean: "He couldn't have legitimately gotten into college and done as well as he did without getting special treatment, because he's, you know, black."

What they say: "Mitt Romney should release his tax returns only when President Obama releases his school records."

What they mean: "We're positive there's something in those tax returns that will destroy Romney's candidacy, so we'll come up with any flimsy non sequitur to try and excuse why he shouldn't release them. Also, Obama should release his school records because he's, you know, black."

What they say: "Obamacare is socialism!"

What they mean: "We don't really have any idea what's actually the Affordable Care Act, but we know this: We don't like socialism, we don't like Obama, and we don't like this plan, even though it was originally proposed by Republicans, because this time it was backed by a guy who's a Democrat and, you know, black, so we're going to call it something that sounds impressive and ominous, even though it clearly shows we know as much about socialism as we know about quantum physics."

What they say: "President Obama is engaging in Chicago-style gutter politics."

What they mean: "Obama's using the same hardball tactics against us that we've used to win every election we've succeeded in, and doing it better, since the stuff he's saying is actually true."

What they say: "The Obama campaign is getting desperate."

What they mean: "We're getting hurt badly by the latest round of revelations."

As a general rule of thumb, when they say, "How dare those awful liberals (fill in supposed outrage here)," what they mean is "You can't do that! Only we can do that!"

Hope this helps.

Another Socialized Medicine Horror Story

From the News & Observer:

WASHINGTON - Former GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole remained hospitalized Friday following leg surgery performed after he initially sought medical treatment for heart problems.

The former Senate majority leader has been at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington since last week when he experienced a "sharply" elevated heart rate in the middle of the night, a statement from his law firm Alston and Bird said Friday.

Doctors determined the 85-year-old Dole's heart is fine, but surgeons performed several procedures on his left leg that had open sores. Dole's legs are healing properly and a skin graft is planned for Monday if Dole's progress continues at its current pace, according to the law firm's statement.

The medical attention "has been painful, but I think I will be fine," Dole said in the statement.

"I am recovering nicely thanks to the great doctors, nurses and staff at Walter Reed. I have been coming to Walter Reed for over 40 years and I hope to be out by my birthday, July 22," Dole said in a statement.

But, you know, government run health care doesn't work.

So Bob Dole, that poor deluded fool, is obviously doomed.

Poor bastard.

Good luck, sir. You're going to need it in the hellhole that is socialized medicine.

My Health Care Challenge to Congress

Latest Newspaper Column:

It looks like the next big debate to heat up in Congress is going to be over health-care reform.

Part of the proposed solution involves what's known as the "public option": a government health-care plan that would be open to anyone. People and employers would still be free to buy private health insurance if they want.

But for some, the very idea of giving people the option to buy public health insurance evokes dire prophecies of doom. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal fumed that "like Medicare and Medicaid, the Obama Public Option in time will become an impossible fog for patients to navigate."

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint assures us that the public option will drive private insurers out of business: "Government never competes in a private market; it takes the market over." Honorable John McCain agreed, telling CNN: "Look, if we have a government option, then sooner or later ... it will crowd out private health insurance."

So let me get this straight. Publicly funded health care, even as an option, is poorly run, inefficient and will lead to rationing of health care -- but private health insurers can't compete with it? Tells you something about the state of private insurers, doesn't it?

By the way, when it comes to rationing of health care, I've got news for you: We have that now. It's just that the rationing is now done by insurance companies who decide whether treatments are too expensive and how long you're allowed to stay in the hospital. And of course, if you're uninsured, your health care is rationed even more severely: You've got the ER for when you collapse, but other than that -- too bad, you're out of luck.

But, you say, everybody knows that a system purporting to provide universal health care doesn't work. Just ask Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, or Switzerland. Except ... wait, all of those countries have something that wingnuts would decry as "socialized medicine." It's amazing there's anyone still alive there.

On the other hand, I saw a commercial from some health insurance company that said the socialized medicine system in Great Britain has some problems, so it must not work anywhere. We should probably just give up.

It's also ironic that the people who are most insistent that government-sponsored and government-run health care won't work are lawmakers who are themselves on a health-care plan paid for by taxpayers and run by the government, through the Office of Personnel Management. Their attitude seems to be, "Government health care for me and not for thee."

So here's my challenge, senators: You think private-sector health insurance is so keen, go off your congressional health plan. Go out there, with your government salary, ring up Blue Cross/Blue shield or CIGNA or Kaiser Permanente or whichever one you decide is more competitive. Try to get a price quote. Pray that you don't have something they'd regard as a "pre-existing condition."

Be very careful in filling out your health history, because as one former CIGNA exec put it this week, before Congress, under oath: "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment."

In earlier testimony, executives from other health insurers refused to consider the idea that coverage should be dropped only for "willful and intentional" fraud and asserted their God-given right to drop coverage for the sickest Americans for even inadvertent or minor errors on their application.

So go ahead, senators. Buy your own "competitive" health-care plan for you, your families, and while we're at it, your staff. Then try to keep it if anyone gets sick.

I dare you.