Pulling to the Left

Uh oh. At a press gaggle just now, President Obama said, “Merry Christmas.” The GOP will now excoriate him for promoting a religious holiday.

Here's the bad news, in the starkest of terms:

For the kind of health care reform progressives want,

we. do. not. have. the. votes. Not in the House, not in the Senate.

Some Democrats are blaming Barack Obama for that. Could he have come out stronger? Sure. Could he have tried to strong-arm some Democrats? Sure. Would it have made a difference? No, I don't think so. At least, not enough.

The Democratic and Republican Senators and Congresspeople absolutely, thoroughly against the idea of a public option, and certainly against single-payer, most likely would not have changed their minds just because Obama gave a rousing speech about it. (And he did. Several.)

So blaming Obama for the House bill, and for the proposals we're hearing from the Senate, is irrational and illogical.

Fighting for the first downs

The problem with health care reform, as I see it, is that most of the Democrats in DC were not committed to the full-on total reform we really need. What they, and Obama, are ready to be satisfied with is extending coverage to a few hundred thousands of uninsured people. It's a good thing that more people will get covered, and some of the reforms remaining in the bill are good reforms... even though I'm disappointed that the whole health-care-for-profit system is still in place. I'm disappointed that there will still be Americans who won't be covered.

But a step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. But hey, if the ultra lefties among us (myself included) keep turning on Obama, we'll eat all available Democrats, ensure that Republicans take back Congress and repeal ANY reforms that are made, and actually make the whole system even worse. That'll teach us! <s>

We've got to realize that PROGRESS is really about taking the steps to get there one at a time. We've got to fight for the first downs; we'll get the touchdown eventually. But we Democrats, we kill the quarterback because he doesn't make EVERY play a hail Mary pass.

Not only was she incapable of forming a coherent sentence, her opinions on gays are informed by a known hate group.

Miss California's church says pedophilia is central to the gay lifestyle

Wonder if this guy was a member of one of Delphi's white power/survivalist militia forums like Pals or The Great American Teabagging Party:

A number of us have been saying for a while now that the Republicans' extremist, anti-American rhetoric was going to push someone to violence. And it almost just did. From WIRED:

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city's version of the national "Tea Party" protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a tweet at 8:01 PM that day. "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!," he added five minutes later. Then: "Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the[m] on the State Capitol steps."

Hayden's MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the "New World Order," gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama's covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.

The right whiners are frantic over Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. Apparently, this is some kind of "proof" that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate who is aiming to force all of us into gay marriages and give up our guns to baby-eating Muslim socialists. Oh, and as one of the signs seen at a "teabagging" event said, it's "the end of white America."

Here are some examples of a few other Manchurian Candidates shaking hands with the enemy, thereby proving that they hated America too.

A little schadenfruede... Democrats were notorious for years for the ability to shoot themselves in the foot. Now, it's the Publicans' turn.

The teabagging parties, er, hurt them much more than helped.

It's been two days now since angry conservatives hosted a series of tea parties across the country, and the fallout has some Republicans nervous.

While the anti-tax sentiment of the protests may have been sincere, the images pulled from the events have often been offensive, embarrassing, or politically problematic.

It is a development that has tripped up the GOP before. The rallies outside McCain-Palin events included some of the same bile that was seen at the tea parties: charges of fascism, terrorism and other malicious criticisms leveled at Barack Obama. And it did the Republican ticket little good in its efforts to bring moderate voters to the cause. More...