A new low for Pelosi: calls opponents “un-American”
Okay, maybe it’s not a new low for Pelosi; there’ve been so many.
But this is pretty far down on the list [emphasis mine]:
Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at [health care reform] for decades.
Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.
Isn’t projection wonderful?
I’d counsel Pelosi and Hoyer to practice what they preach—but I know my advice would fall on deaf ears. In their opinion, populist dissent is just fine—as long as it emanates from the Left.
[HOTE: Here’s Boehner’s rejoinder.]
These people are outrageous. I have never heard a Speaker attack citizens like this.
And then of course there is the snitch thing the White House has going. Like I said, outrageous.
I remember Dems attending Michael Moore’s premiere, that same Michael Moore who told Berliners that Americans are the dumbest people on earth. I’ve read about the recent movies made by some of Hollywod’s biggies. How many Dems turned down their campaign contributions because they were un-American? And what about Code Pink? Jeremiah Wright?
Botox Brain needs a dose of the medicine she wants to give to non-contributing members of society.
Poking a dog with a stick doesn’t calm it down. Some of these lefties don’t have good sense.
Apart from the outrageous hypocrisy she displays astonishing cluelessness, for the position she’s in.
Healthcare doesn’t drive our economy. It by definition can NOT drive any economy: it’s a service, not an industry. A maintenance program, to those who Do drive the economy.
I heard that statement from ∅bama, and it struck me as ridiculous then, too. Now she’s repeating it w/o thinking. These people didn’t even study their Marxist polit-economy! Bad students, and worse statesmen.
The White House disagreed this afternoon with the contention by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, that the disruptions at town hall meetings are “un-American,” as the Democratic congressional leaders contended in a USA Today op-ed this morning.
“I think there’s actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments.
“The President thinks that if people want to come and have a spirited debate about health care, a real vigorous conversation about it, that’s a part of the American tradition and he encourages that, because people do have questions and concerns …And so if people want to come and have their concerns and their questions answered, the President thinks that’s important. Now, if you just want to come to a town hall so that you can disrupt and so that you can scream over another person, he doesn’t think that that’s productive. And as a country, we’ve been able to make progress when people actually talk out what our problems are, not try to shout each other down.”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/white-house-disputes-pelosi-contention-that-town-hall-protests-are-un-american.html
I just reported Nancy Pelosi as “fishy” to flag@whitehouse.gov for the numerous myths, rumors and false statements contained in that editorial. I recommend making such reports early and often. It’s fun!
However, if Obama and the Democratic leadership had had their way, there would have been no healthcare debate and the Senators and Reps would have already voted for the bill without reading it.
‘Tis hypocrisy indeed. They are not really concerned about the quality of the debate, but that debate is being forced upon them by uppity citizens.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/10/a-doctor-takes-issue-with-the-washington-post/
This is the left people. Lying, cheating bastards… They are the ones who hang people in effigies…
they are the ones who brought new lows to discourse – saying disgusting things about Bush/Palin/McCain
They are now the ones who will not let people voice their concerns.
logern,
you turn a blind eye to other statements of Obama’s. You select one that is nothing like Obama himself.
Also noting: disagree with neocon’s intetpretation of the whole President, don’t want to hear them talk as referring to people who made the mess and not the Joe Plumber citizen, (referring to in prior part of speech about a paragraph above)
this:
Quoth the President
“So now you’ve got folks on the other side of the aisle pointing at the federal budget and somehow trying to put that at our feet.”
The other side of the aisle is Republicans in Congress.
the whole transcript is at the Whitehouse.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-rally-for-State-Senator-Creigh-Deeds-8-6-09/
Not that you would ever distort someone’s message, neo.
Fuller statement
So now you’ve got folks on the other side of the aisle pointing at the federal budget and somehow trying to put that at our feet. Well, let’s look at the history. When I walked in, we had a $1.3 trillion deficit. That was gift-wrapped and waiting for me when I walked in the Oval Office. (Laughter.) Without my policies we’d have an even higher deficit going forward. The one exception is the recovery package that we had to do in order to get this economy moving again. (Applause.)
So you can’t go out there and charge up the credit card, go on an all kinds of things shopping spree that didn’t grow the economy, hand over the bill to us, and then say (logern says here, notice: still talking about above people who made mess in above paragraph), why haven’t you paid it off yet. (Applause.) I got that bill from you. (Laughter.) So we’ve got some work to do. I don’t mind, by the way, being responsible; I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I’m the President. (Applause.) But I don’t want the folks who created the mess — I don’t want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking…
It’s the classic Obama pattern that Neo and commenters here have noted before: first, detail your aides to tell Democrats to “punch back twice as hard” and “get in their faces” (immediately obeyed by the union thugs who beat up Kenneth Gladney) and then a day or two later, issue the bland anodyne that gives you deniability. Of course he’s distancing himself from Pelosi, who is, as usual, so far out there that everybody can see she’s an idiot. But nobody who’s been paying real attention to his words and conduct for the past few years believes that he disagrees with a word she said.
logern: yes, Obama loves to play good cop to Pelosi’s bad cop every now and then. Nice to have others do your dirty work.
Of course, every now and then you have to do the dirty work yourself. And then you get to play both bad cop and good cop roles, in the very same speech. And you hope that listeners have so poor a memory that they won’t see the blatant hypocrisy.
It’s a stretch to try to defend that kind of behavior from Pelosi and Obama, isn’t it? One could even call their stance “un-American.” Hillary Clinton used to think so, back when she wasn’t an Obama tool.
I don’t at all like the nasty video on this one (I’ve never been a Hillary hater). But I include it for the audio of the Hillary quote to which I’m referring:
Funny, logern, how he didn’t mention, for one thing, the First Amendment, and for another, the mind-boggling drunken-sailor deficit spending he’s got planned for the next decade, dwarfing anything Bush spent and necessarily stunting the economy. When the next administration has to clean up the mess he’s in the middle of making, should it “let him talk”?
Huxley nails it:
“However, if Obama and the Democratic leadership had had their way, there would have been no healthcare debate and the Senators and Reps would have already voted for the bill without reading it.
‘Tis hypocrisy indeed. They are not really concerned about the quality of the debate, but that debate is being forced upon them by uppity citizens.”
They never wanted people to get the facts. They wanted to vote on it come hell or high water before the Congressional recess precisely so it would be a done deal before people got the facts. That was only avoided, thankfully, because some Democrats still have a bit of integrity (and perhaps a dollop of electoral fear) and did the right thing by blocking the rush.
Now that they’ve been forced to switch to Plan B they want to give the appearance of giving the facts without actually having the debate. I have read a number of accounts of town hall venues being stacked with supporters of ObamaCare before the doors are then opened to let as few as possible of the regular folks in. They wouldn’t be playing these games if they wanted the true facts to come out and not just the propaganda and spin. And just because they deny they’re doing what they’re doing, that doesn’t serve as proof. That is spin.
logern: And another thing—do you really think it matters so very much whether Obama is telling the opposition in Congress to shut up, Republicans in general to shut up, or Americans at town halls who are against his program to shut up? All of those things would be equally bad, in my opinon. And do you really think all the “astroturfing” quotes about the angry people at the town halls are offered without his approval?
And “folks on the other side of the aisle” is a fairly general comment that could also mean “Republicans.” That’s the beauty of Obama’s language, which is nothing if not “calibrated.” Of course, as I noted, even if he is just referring to Republican Congress members it’s a disgusting comment of his, and a very telling one at that. I cannot recall another President of any stripe or any party saying such a thing before—telling the opposition to be quiet. It actually is un-American to do so.
What’s more, of course, he’s doing the usual political lying when he says the problems were wholly created by the Republicans in the first place. I’ve written again and again about the Republican and the Democrat role in the matter. But President Uniter-Not-Divider can’t speak the truth about that, either—he’s a partisan politician above all else, and one of the nastiest ones we’ve ever had.
Obama promise, 2008: “. . . to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that’s been all about division and instead make it about addition — to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States.”
Obama reality, 2009: “Get out of the way! Don’t do a lot of talking!”
Hope and change . . .
So I’m guessing that dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism, and that that “speaking truth to power” thing is out too, right?
Off topic good news:
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=334537207260360
Her Majesty deigns that freeborn American citizens must be “allowed” to ascertain the facts.
There is only one recourse. We must shove this obnoxious healthcare legislation, along with Cap and Tax up her most generously government subsidized Botox enhanced–to paraphrase Auntie Em in the Wizard of Oz–if I wasn’t a Cnristian man I’d tell her what I truly thought.
neo-neocon — in that last vid, it looked like a giant Japanese hornet whistled up her arse! ZZZzZZZZzzzzip lol
The same group calling American citizens expressing their 1st Amendment right to redress of grievances are the ones who supported MoveOn.org’s right to call an American general who’d just come back from the front lines a traitor.
Excuse me, I’ve got to go and kick something.
Vieux Charles, do you take requests?
People must be allowed to learn the facts and exactly how does madame speaker propose to allow the learning of facts by rushing legislation to vote?
Someone should tell Madame Speaker that it takes one to know one!
Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana
Oh, that’s an easy one, Joe.
You’ll learn the facts when they are presented to you as fait accompli at your medical cost-effectiveness evaluation, with your life in the hands of a nepotistically-selected bureaucrat and the combination of exactly “jack” and “poop” available to alter the situation. And yes, Jack left town.
Are the Dems trying to lose? Maybe we should just step back and let them commit suicide.
Trying to rush through another monstrous bill that nobody had read?
Snitch address?
Calling ordinary America protesters Nazi and UnAmerican when they were not happy to begin with?
Calling out the unions while claiming individual citizens are “organizing” shout downs?
And have you seen the new Obamacare logo? Disturbing. In the top right corner here.
Another one here.
I just noticed over at the Obama website you can click a button that says “LOGIN TO MyBO”
Hilarious.
Here’s a clip that deserves to go viral:
http://tinyurl.com/ncfytd
A caller to C-Span, an Independent from New Hampshire, lays down some serious firepower and decimates the liars in the news and on the Left. Concise and furious.
Pass it on! she says in
And didn’t Pelousy liken the protesters to Timothy McVeigh, the Okla. City bomber, just today? She’s really come unglued.
Or maybe we’re just seeing it now.
No, I see that it was Brian Baird, Dem. Rep.–Washington State.
“Baird said a “coordinated national effort” to disrupt public meetings with shouts and demonstrations, which he said Republican leaders were “egging on,” was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.”
Pelousy merely compared the protesters to Nazis, because one protester (yep, one) was carrying a poster with a swastika and a NO slash through it. So, by her logic, being anti-Nazi makes you a … Nazi.
“So, by her logic, being anti-Nazi makes you a … Nazi.”
Well, you do remember the guy who got in trouble at a a college for reading an acclaimed anti-Klan book because it was about the Klan, right? Reading it showed he was a racist, even though the book was anti-Klan.
Oh, and then there was the professor who criticized the term “wetback” in a class lecture who got in trouble for being racist, because “wetback” is a racist term. The fact that he was criticizing it and not supporting it was irrelevant.
So Ms. Pelosi and her fellow travelers aren’t exactly renowned for their feats of logic.
“was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.”
Mr Baird would do well to learn the facts of what he’s talking about before he shoots off his mouth. By his own admission, what drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Federal building in OKC was the actions of the Clinton administration in Waco, and other FBI and government raids around the country. In other words, the situation is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Baird contends. It was the actions of the government and the use of their great power that goaded Mr. McVeigh, not people opposing government policy. Granted, it was a leap of logic to go from that to blowing up innocent children, but the least we should do in talking about a horrific event like that is get our facts straight. Mr. McVeigh’s own words (at the link) tell the tale. Mr. Baird owes everyone who came out peacefully to exercise their free speech rights a complete and total apology.
“reminiscent of”? What kind of standard is that? Everything is reminiscent of something else, if you’re willing to work hard enough at it, and have zero intellectual integrity.
MikeLL,
I bet the link was trying to sell us clothespins for our noses.
MikeLL,
Honestly, after checking your links of the logo my first impression is this:
Are the ghostly, light colored, non-distinct figures behind the logo, scattered across a map of the nation, representative of all of the deceased victims this Obamacare plan will create?
Hey, they even have a lighter area immediately behind the center of the logo for them to “go into”!
Can you imagine the doctor’s advice now:
“Take two pills and go into the light….”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9A0P6F80&show_article=1
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter stood through a slew of challenges from frustrated voters at a meeting in Lebanon, Pa. At one point, a burly officer stood immediately behind a man who angrily questioned the former Republican turned Democrat.
You cannot engage the Left with Free Speech because they do not care about your Free Speech.
Because perpetual victims cannot be oppressors: they’ll do to us what they falsely claimed the Right did to them….
A new favorite blog has this post:
http://www.bookerrising.net/2009/08/whats-on-bookeristas-minds_10.html
a black conservative commenter writes about health care.
You cannot engage the Left with Free Speech because they do not care about your Free Speech.
Gray, Reds do care about free speech, but not as you and I understand it. Way back when, I once taxed Angela Davis with her proposal to restrict free speech. She responded that “we” (the Reds) had free speech; everyone was free to speak the truth, just not free to speak lies (as the Reds saw them).
So everyone is perfectly free to parrot the Party line. Can’t get freer than that.
Angela Davis! There’s another sixties radical for the Great March Through the Institutions topic.
According to Wiki, Davis is now “graduate studies professor emeritus of history of consciousness at the University of California and presidential chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz” whatever that all means.
Never mind that she was implicated in the murder of a judge, relocated to Cuba for a time, attended and supported Jim Jones’s People Temple, and ran for Vice-President on the Communist Party ticket.
Why, the Rolling Stones even wrote a song for her: Sweet Black Angel.
It’s all good.