Posted on 12/25/2009 1:01:29 AM PST by seanmerc
WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country.
Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill?
In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost.
And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too.
Once again we are engulfed by a climate of malice, much fostered -- sorry to say -- by Republicans, who have made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail. One line of attack is their stand against universal health care, a position that appeases a handful of insurance companies. The Obama administration didn’t help by making a deal with the drug industry to block the purchase of inexpensive medicine from Canada. Are the politicians in hock to these firms and lobbyists for campaign funds?
Millions of dollars have been poured into television commercials designed to scare Americans about health care reform. "Big government" interference in health care is the bogeyman, ironically even to some who receive government-provided health care through Medicare or Medicaid or the Veterans Administration. There is a disconnect here when they would deny such benefits to others.
Despite the hard times the nation is suffering, there is little magnanimity on the part of the privileged lawmakers, who don’t have to worry about their own government-financed health coverage.
Meanwhile, the president’s decline in public opinion polls clashes with his own self estimate.
In a year-end interview with The Washington Post, Obama gave himself high marks for putting the country on the road to economic recovery with the $797 billion stimulus package. Wall Street financial houses were not allowed to fail, but thousands of workers elsewhere lost their jobs and are still struggling to get back on their feet.
In the Post interview, the president said "the most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.’’
But on health care reform -- the jewel in the crown -- the president has made too many compromises that ended up weakening the proposals. Perhaps the president’s biggest mistake was to let Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, carry the ball on health reform. Baucus and his committee produced wimpy legislation that can hardly be called a "reform" bill.
Obama let the liberals down in his own party by never fighting for the public option or a single payer system, the heart of real reform that works like Medicare. Anyone who thought the president would support a government-run health insurance system to compete with high cost private insurance companies was whistling in the dark.
Obama is so eager for any health legislation that he’s willing to compromise it to nothingness. It was left to former Democratic chairman Howard Dean to take a tough line. Dean, a physician, sharply criticized the Senate bill because it lacked a government-run insurance option that would compete with private insurers. The House version of the health legislation does contain such an option.
Obama defends his role. "Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health care bill," the president lamented. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in the bill.’’
In reality, the legislation is a bonanza for the fat cat insurers.
The disappointment is great among those who thought the president was another Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson. Both overcame Republican opposition in pushing liberal social legislation to help the underprivileged in American society. Hopefully, when voters elect a new Congress next year, the country will remember which political party led us into economic free fall and two unwinnable wars.
Merry Christmas, Helen Thomas ping list members! FReepmail me if you'd like to be added to the list.
Yuck.
...made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail”
How is that different from what the Dems did for years...even politicizing the war for the plain and simple purpose of increasing Republican negatives?
Yes, of course, because Obama's decades of crafting legislation would have gone into this if he'd done the job himself, right?
Yes, of course, because Obama's decades of crafting legislation would have gone into this if he'd done the job himself, right?
Mean spirited and conniving are the democrat way. Not to mention corrupt and dishonest.
More revisionist history crap out of Helen Thomas. At least she admits to being biased, now if she’d only admit to being a habitual liar.
Which is funnier, the idea that it's the REPUBLICANS responsible for the mean spiritedness and political conniving (Ben Nelson? mary Landreu???), or that she's sorry to say it's "Republicans"?
Off to the death panel with you, old man!
I knew that I was going to have to look at that picture to pay for the benefits of reading the thread, but does the photo have to be so LARGE?
I read her entire column, and it was the most disjointed piece of Old Leftist whimsy that I’ve ever bothered with. I would feel some pity for her and attribute it to her age, but all elitist leftists think like that.
All Americans have a duty to fight for our way of life and that means fighting Socialism.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/11/flashback-carville-wanted-bush-fail/
“I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed”.
— James Carville, 2001
Real nice, I had to go and wash my eyes out with soap after looking at that. The soap helped the burning to slow down but now a headache has come on. It feels like radiation poison...
Correct, Brytani!
Early on she mentions that Southern legislators opposed LBJ on the Civil Rights thing. She purposely didn’t bother to mention that they were DEMOCRATS and that it was the Republican legislators who actually pressured LBJ to sign the bill. LBJ was a huge racist and anti-black, but as a politician he realized that CR bill could be his “legacy”.
Correct, Brytani!
Early on she mentions that Southern legislators opposed LBJ on the Civil Rights thing. She purposely didn’t bother to mention that they were DEMOCRATS and that it was the Republican legislators who actually pressured LBJ to sign the bill. LBJ was a huge racist and anti-black, but as a politician he realized that CR bill could be his “legacy”.
She repeats that lie in the last paragraph when she implied that Republicans opposed LBJ on his liberal social issues.
It's different because Helen Thomas is a Democratic operative and most of the public has the attention span of a hyperactive Labrador Retriever puppy. Remember, Oceania has always been at war with...
Helen Thomas is one of the endless communist/socialist malicious liars and historical revisionists that hold power in the USA.
She lies boldly and aggressively because she has what Thomas Sowell calls The Vision of the Annointed.
98% of what Sen. Joe McCarthy said or predicted has turned out to be true.
This Hag cannot be as unknowledgable as this writing indicates, sh/it must be a LIAR!
“but thousands of workers elsewhere lost their jobs”
Thousands? Try millions, Helen.
There are so many koolaid moments in this article I don’t know where to go.
I’ll just use this one shining example of her stupidity.
and must not forget the beliefs of the John Birchers either.
yow, two hours into Christmas.
that picture is torture!!!! If he fails America win’s...
They seem to fail to understand the reason their readerships and viewerships are falling is because their former subscribers got sick of their propaganda. They’re now preaching to the choir and even the choir’s getting sick of the leftist propaganda.
The mainstream public realizes that we’ve been patronized by the MSM with their belief that we can’t tell the difference between wishing for President Ogabe’s leftist policies to fail and wishing for him to fail. We all want him to be a success in life, we just don’t want his success to come at the detriment of America. We want to see him happy, we just don’t want to see him happily pissing on the Constitution of the United States.
That old skank defines the term “coyote ugly”. If one cared to even look under those tents walking around in Baghdad or East Dearbornistan, that is what they would probably see except with the mustache unshaven.
**...made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail”**
We just don’t want to see BARKY Become another FDR... other than that, Barky should go away and live a long futile life in Obscurity... just like Jimmuh Cahta
The writer of this reflects well the colossal economic ignorance that characterizes the Democrats. She fails to note that universal health care will affect hundreds of millions of Americans, and effectively destroy our country.
Obama has already experienced being treated as a nobody in his Copenhagen visit; this is our future under socialism, a goal of the Obama Administration. Except they forgot that we will be treated as a third world nation by other countries, especially if we miss or are late in paying our UN dues and reparations.
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
The old bat is obviously having memory troubles. She remembered the political party for the misdeeds she attributes to the republicans, but she apparently can’t recall that the racist southerners were all democrats - like LBJ (who seems to have conveniently converted once he became president?).
A question about the pictures you posted: One's a really ugly turkey, but what is the one on the right?
Helen look at the Whitehouse's Rahm Emanuel and tell me which party is the one with malice:
Remember this Helen??
At a Clinton victory dinner in Little Rock in 1992, Emanuel celebrated by reciting a hoped-for necrology of Democrats who had "f$*#ed" the president-elect. After every name, he stabbed a steak knife into a table and screamed, "Dead man!"
Or how about this one Helen?
On Election Night, 10 minutes after CNN called the House for the Democrats, Emanuel climbed up on a table in DCCC headquarters and addressed his cheering, victory-starved staff, celebrating the party's biggest win since 1992. He wanted to wrap up the campaign with a message for the Republicans.
"Since my kids are gone, I can say it," he shouted. "They can go F*&@ themselves!"
Helen, keep repeating the DNC talking points, however the facts just don't line up with your story. The party of malice is the party in control of the WH, Senate and House!
Uhhh...helen baby, Joe McCarthy DID expose real life communists in our government. Clearly, you have a problem with that.
Actually, the real error is McCarthy did NOTHING to prosecute Hollywood, Acadademia, or government officials.
McCarthy was in charge of the department of the Army. It was HUAC that found the other commies.
And wasn’t the Democrats mission during 8 years of Bush to make sure that he failed?
I see Helen is using botox ,,,, WOW!!! what a difference .
Speak for yourself. I wish nothing good for Bozo, he deserves nothing good to happen to him for he is obviously trying to kill off large numbers of Americans, either by starving them or by with holding medical treatment from them. Want him to fail? He** yes, I wish he would resign tomorrow or be impeached(neither is likely to happen but a person can dream).
Ah, fair Helen. As intelligent as she is beautiful.
I guess it wasn’t bad when it was aimed at GWB. Oh no, THAT was GOOD !
I’m with you. For an occupant of the White House to go abroad and apologize for our country at every opportunity, means that he does not belong in that position.
GWB went too far in the opposite direction, believing the honor of the Presidency was to represent ALL Americans, so he refused to participate in a partisan way to defend his own party.
Obama is all party, all the time. Communist party, that is.
Stupid Thomas ~ Republicans don’t need to make it a mission to get Obama to fail ~ he’s doing that quite well on his own.
She’s injecting directly into her the front of her brain.
OH MAN, thank you for posting that photo, I was about to run to the doctor because of my four hour erection.
Damn...order up a boob belt for the hag.
Is this old bat senile or dishonest? Don’t bother to answer, she is a dim brained dimocrat, she is both.
“In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost.” Please pause for a moment and reflect on this sentence written by the senior member of the White House Press Corps.
It is completely incoherent. If someone were to try to translate it from English into another language, the translator would have no idea what it meant. Could it possibly mean that “fortunately they lost in their praise of democracy.” Go figure.
Helen baby. Your bias is showing-and your arrogance. One clearly identifiable problem with America is people in your profession who think like you. Your "superior" point of view is not up for debate-is it? You stopped reporting the news and started making it up as you go along. You report your opinion as fact. Go away.
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