by Hal Eaton » Wed Jan 19, 2011 7:46 pm
People for the American Way has a fact sheet entitled "The 10 Scariest Tea Party Republicans in Congress." I can only presume the "facts' included are true and provable; else PAW would be liable for legal suits.
With all the furor about the temper of political jargon being at least partly responsible for the violence in Tucson, a reading of this information becomes -- well, scary.
Continuing interviews of political wranglers convinces me that almost any loud-mouthed shyster can be elected to Congress when his/her tirades strike the proper chord with the disaffected voters.
Item: The commentators tell us that the Congressmen and women have not read the health-care bill (and routinely refer to it as "Obama-care," thus letting them get in digs against the President without being liable for the result.) Sarah Palin tells us tht she read it, and came across what she famously called "death panels," an obvious tainted reference to a genuinely worth-while addition. {I maintain that the phrase was parcelled out to Sarah by her handlers, those fellows who provide her with the bromides and phrases (lame-brain media, death panels, etc.) which pervade her speeches.} Promulgation of the term was widely used by the professional againsters in Congress to prove their wisdom in voting against the bill.
When Obama made an executive order out of the fiasco, he made it by allowing an addition to the long, long list of diagnoses (available on the internet) which doctors use to bill the government for their Medi-Care patients. His order stipulated, as I understand it, that such help for people who needed guidance for their "end-of-life" care and decisions could get it from their doctors, who could then bill the government for the time spent on the endeavor. Their was a limit of one such billing every 5 years, so that the counseling could not be abused. (You gotta problem widdat?)
Now we hear from our fellow Baptist preacher Huckaby as he appeals to us to sign a petition to let Congress know that we (the people) don't want the health-care bill. If the American public is averse to the health-care offered, it is not because they know all the elements included; it is because they have been bombarded with negative pronouncements by news reporters (read "commentators") on biased news programs.
Opinion has replaced truth as the foundation for TV broadcasting.
No single bill from Congress will meet the qualifications that all of us would like to see included. But continual fine-tuning, additions, and deductions. based on continual experiences, will solve most of the problems, actual and made-up, that result from most such Congressional exercises. Even the Constitution has undergone amendments to assure its aplicability, to all of us, at all times.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. -- Thomas Paine