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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
UPDATE (Lurleen): I've added a transcript below the video.
I have to put this late post in because I want to give kudos to U.S. Representative Barney Frank for doing what many should have done at these town hall meetings:
Transcript
Wingnut: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy, why are you supporting it?
The Honorable Barney Frank: When you ask me that question, I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage, and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?…You want me to answer the question? As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is as I said before, it is a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table – I have no interest in doing it.
Some folks may not agree with his tone but he was right on. How can you have a coherent conversation with someone who so determined to paint President Obama as a Nazi?
Now watch how soon before Hannity and company attack Frank. How long will it be before One News Now and the rest of the religious right links his words to his lgbt sexual orientation?
While you're at it, count how many columns will be written at Town Hall attacking Frank for telling it like it is.
And lastly, if these things come to pass, note the strange dynamic of how some folks think it is alright to carry a loaded gun to an event where the President is speaking but somehow think that it's wrong to rightfully call someone out for being an idiot.
61 Comments
THANK YOU!!Barney Frank has FINALLY earned some respect from me! LOL
OMG – a democrat indirectly calling one of these “birthers/deathers” a nutjob, AND finishing her off!! Is this a first????
Is Barney the only democrat with balls at this point?
oh God!Thank you Barney, now if you could just give lessons to Obama.
The woman didn’t ask a legit question, she asked a leading question.
YES! YES! YES! OH YES!Oh, God, Barney, I LOVE YOU!!!
**fans self**
Damn, I was proud to have been born in Massachusetts when it became the first state to find that excluding LGBT people from marriage equality was unconstitutional. And I just got a little prouder.
I can’t stop laughing. I’ve posted this on my Facebook and it’s about to go up on livejournal. What a fucking GEM.
I almost forgot . . .I meant to say it in the post:
Mr Frank gets two snaps up!
FinallyI am so glad that someone has FINALLY told these people that having a conversation with them is all but impossible. I cannot understand why most proponents of this bill are not doing the same. Unreasonable and uncompromising people are incapable of debate because they have already made up their minds and will not be dissuaded from their view.
?“…his lgbt sexual orientation”
Sadly, I think this will start a flame war. So, I’m going to do nothing other than highlight this interesting wording.
Three or four of them!What I find funny in the ironic sense is that these people are so dumb that they don’t seem to realize that the Nazis were religiously zealous right wing extremists who started invading other countries for no real reason and were full of hate and anger against minorities. Isn’t that them and the last guy in the job?
I know, they are stupid enough to think that Canada and England have the same health care system so I shouldn’t be surprised…
What a wonderfullycantankerous reply!!!! I love it!!!!
She was dealt out…
Barney Frank……More balls than a Jeff Stryker movie!
“Is Barney the only democrat with balls at this point?“
I applaud Barney Frank – he was concise and to the point. I’m glad the first democrat to show some balls in these town meetings is a gay man.
… and the dining room table you rode in on, madamNow this is a mensch! Goddamn, but we could use more congresspeople like this.
I love himIt’s almost as thought Frank is channeling Lewis Black. TI’s fantastic. I have to keep playing it over and over again. It makes me laugh, especially the dining room table part.
And to make matters worse, here in little liberal Providence, RI I saw my first picture of Obama with the legend “FASCIST” below it.
Where the fuck were the people who produce such despicable things for the past eight years while Bush & Co. took away our rights. Protest zones, unwarranted wiretaps, outing CIA agents, and a whole litany of abuses of the Constitution. Not to mention the monstrous cluster fuck that Iraq has become.
During these past eight years we lived under a despotic, fascist government. What we have now is people who don’t understand the definition of either word.
With a Democrat finally saying what every sane person has been thinking all along …… why spend 9/10ths of your post speculating about the reactions of idiots? Who the hell cares?
The other commenters have it right: the point is that we have something to celebrate. Frank spoke truth to stupidity. It’s about damn time and that’s all I care about. I won’t waste a single second wondering how the stupid and/or insane may or may not react to that.
ABOUT F*CKING TIME!Wow – I think I almost had a glimmer of hope for America just now.
The real test will be when the lie-filled, hate-filled, illogical, criminally-uneducated start spouting their anti-gay nonsense and a politican reacts as REP. FRANK just did – WHACK them on the head with some reality.
“I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage”I thought he was going to bury this ignoramus with talk about bringing the holocaust to the Jews and others vs. providing health care for Americans. Oh well. Answering a question with a question is funny, too.
This kind of pwning is right up Barney’s alley. I don’t understand why others don’t do it when confronted with the nutcases, at least the ones in totally secure districts.
Barney Frank and the whack-jobI actually don’t think Barney Frank responded to this question that well. I mean, here was someone comparing an African-American President to Hitler and we was saying this to a Jewish Congressman. And all Barney Frank could do was dismiss her as a whack-job and then deny that he was putting her down. A better answer would be to slice and dice her with the truth.
Barney you represented your other tribe well tooFIERCE!
I don’t knowThese people won’t recognize truth anymore, or even have open enough minds to listen to it. Rep. Frank had a point when he said it would be like having an argument with a dining room table.
What do you do when someone shows up at your house and continually says stupid, asinine, offensive things unceasingly, and for the whole purpose of being shocking? You laugh at them, and kick them out.
Though I would have enjoyed hearing Rep. Frank tell her, “As a Jew, and as a gay man, I am personally offended by your remarks. Jews and gays were rounded up and exterminated as a matter of official policy by the Nazis. For you to compare a proposal which will assist in providing life-saving health care to more Americans to the Nazi ideology of the mass murder of disenfranchised minorities is vile, dishonest, and a symptom of a sick mind.”
Seriously?The man delivers it hot and fresh and does it with flourish and panache in the midst of every other democrat in the country playing starring rock roles in “The avalanche of the idiots” and you think he could have done better?
Sigh….
She’s rightHas history completely forgotten the fact that the Nazis valiantly tried to provide healthcare for all German citizens? I mean, wasn’t that pretty much the reason the Nazi party came together in the first place?
he might just have more than the others…Barney, baby, you just got some sexy political mojo…
truth…???People who run around spouting off “Nazi” “fascist” and “Hitler” are doing so out of absolute ignorance. They have no idea what fascism is, if they did they would recognize it as an extreme right ideology. They are simply full of ignorance and fear exhibited by hate. These terms are the most hateful they can bandy about and they are the most inflammatory. The “regular folks” who are upset about these bogus issues got all of their information from the nebulous rumor mill of lies seeded by the right and the allied industries that don’t want reform.
you’re right???The gross defeat in WWI and the Treaty of Versailles and blaming German Jews were the basis for the party being founded…try reading some history.
Nope, I think Tommy summed it upIt was pretty much just the attempt at the healthcare thing, and then BAM, holocaust.
First, keep in mind just exactly who Barney Franks is. He’s not a defender of GLBT equality. Quite the contrary.
He’s the jackass from the jackass party who gutted ENDA in 2007 to the delight of internalized homophobes, bigoted employers, christian rightists and homohaters everywhere. On behalf of bigoted employers Barney Frank accepted every amendment offered by right wing christer Democrats and Republicans. He even embraced a Republican amendment stipulating that ENDA could not be used to undercut Bill Clinton’s DOMA.
A new ENDA will have to be written to erase that slimy history of sellouts to bigots in a Congress largely composed of right centrist Democrats and Republicans all to ready to pander to christian rightists.
He’s the jackass from the Democratic (sic) party who defended the vile bigotry of Obama’s DoJ when they filed briefs in support of Bill Clinton’s DOMA.
He’s the jackass from the sellout party who opposed granting same sex marriages in San Francisco.
Barney Frank is ‘ours’ to about the same extent that Vikdun Quisling was Norwegian.
Clintoncare, Obamacare and McCaincare are all flawed in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons. They’re sellout measures meant to enrich the owners and managers of HMOs, insurance companies like AIG and Big Pharma. Why should activists for LGBT rights give a damn who wins this sham debate or who loses it.
We don’t have a dog in this race. It’s simply not important whether or not Obama’s fake health care plan passes or not except to Democrats and their party is driving the Obus this season.
If it’s not socialized medicine it’s not going to work.
Support the March on Washington!
Bravo Barney!A thing of beauty.
Oh snap!Someone got told.
Oh, yesTwo snaps in a circle, Miss Barney. Finally, a Dem with some guts to take these crazy people on and to call them out.
AhemKelehe, you forgot to turn on your sarcasm meter this morning. Turn it on and read it again.
so let me get this right…you’re on HER side?
No, he was right on both countsI myself have wondered from what time-space continuum they come to these townhalls, someplace where Medicare isn’t a gov’t program, where the U.S. has the greatest healthcare system in the world with no rationing and no adjusters second-guessing doctors, where Britain and Canada are horrible socialist dictatorships. At some point it’s a disconnect, and Barney picked up on it.
While Barney slights dining-room tables as a class, he does touch on this: there’s no sense in arguing with someone when they open their mouth and Rush or Sean or Glenn or Michael Wiener falls out. That person has become a zombie. Maybe a quick jolt like Barney gave might wake such a person up.
Now if we had more on Capitol Hill realizing that the GOP opposition also inhabits this dimension, where compromise is surrender and courtesy is taken as weakness, we’re getting somewhere. The GOP needs a good slap to break its trance. It wouldn’t be the first time.
– FDR, Madison Square Garden, Oct. 31, 1936
Nazis were elected because of fears of communistsIt used the most hateful scapegoating of Jews, Gays, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies to sell their garbage. Their Brown Shirts would beat anyone they didn’t like in the streets, as examples to others.
Yeah Sparky, it was all about motherf*cking healthcare.
“Did you fall down and smack your little head?”
http://www.insidesocal.com/out…
Y’know, just because Barney hasn’t always been on our side……doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve credit when he does the right thing.
I mean, come on! His response to that woman was not only brilliant, but it’ll be a staple of the next news cycle and that has got to be a good thing.
I’m hoping (and expecting) that the response to this will be overwhelmingly positive and inspires other Democrats to follow his example.
Hypocrisy’s on the rise.They paint Obama as a “Nazi”, but the town hall crashers are the ones who want to exterminate the GLBT community and enforce the “white culture”.
He is great confronting nutjobsSen. Arlen Specter could take lessons from him when the nut said “God will judge you”. Specter just stood there looking blank. Would love to have heard Barney’s reply to that one.
Dumb Protester should have known…If you bitch slap a queen, she’s going to bitch slap you right back – can I get an Amen?!
I LOOOVE this clip, and it is running every 15 minutes on CNN Headline News. What I love even more is the applause that greet every one of Frank’s bon mots – there wasn’t a boo or a hiss in that crowd.
Gosh ish, I thought you could read.In any case thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear things up for you. Unlike apologists for Obama I’m on the side of GLBT rights and for real health care reform – socialized medicine.
I’m jsut one of many in the GLBT communites who have the same low opinion of Franks credentials and his support of Obama’s fake health care plan as they do for Obama’s claim that he’s a ‘fierce defender” of LGBT rights. You might not remember but there are lots of us who will never forgive Franks cowardly pandering to bigots when he trashed ENDA in 2007, opposed same sex marriage in SF and supported the rancid bigotry of the DoJ defense of Clintons DOMA.
But I get it that some people admire Frank for precisely the same reasons that many of us oppose him. It’s kind of an uphill battle for those apologists because Frank always puts his career, his need for “campaign contributions” and his partisan loyalties before the needs of the movement. Obama, for his part is simply another in a long string of bigots like Clinton and Bush. After a while there are no excuses left.
However, be my guest. Bang the drum for Obama and Frank all you want. That’s your problem, not mine.
With Democrats like this who needs Republicans?
Support the March on Washington!
Amen!!Dena
Got it.You’re on the side of the fairy princesses, the unicorns, and the ponies. All of which, like true socialized medicine, are great things, and none of which is happening.
The left stands on the sidelines again.
Rebecca, supporting a failed heath care plan is not ‘being on our side’. Obama began his campaign caving to the right on GLBT rights, the war, health care, welfare for the rich and austerity for working people. This is more of the same – a giveaway to the owners and obscenely overpaid managers of insurance companies like AIG, HMOs and Big Pharma. He’s rewarding the profit gougers and cheating us of real heath care reform.
What’s the point of getting excited when Frank engages in political theatre defending a reactionary plan like Obama’s? It’s not our fight.It’s just the Republicans dogging a politician from a competing gang of hustlers and bigots. I’m sure the Democrats will respond in kind next time they lose, and if Obama keeps it up that could be in 2012. No big deal one way or the other.
However Rebecca, if you think that Obama’s plan is anything other than a betrayal and a carry-over of the health care disaster we’ve had for decades I’d be happy to discuss that. Lay out some details and ideas so we can have a good discussion about health care. That’s the real issue here, not Frank mouthing off to some hired Republican shill.
..oh…I guess it was a little more veiled to me at 4:30 PDT. Sadly I’ve grown accustomed to reading such things written in earnest.
Since there are virtually no real leftists in national politics,only Republicans, Democrats and Obababots (not unlike yourself), there isn’t much else we can do.
No ish. Wrong as usual. For me, for most of us, the fight for our equality comes before partisan loyalties to bigots like Obama and sell-outs like Frank.
If we don’t get socialized medicine make sure you don’t get ill. But if you do ask your uncle Barney to put you on his socialized medical plan. Since you make it your life’s work to excuse his betrayals and Obama’s bigotry maybe that might work for you. If not you can always fly to Toronto, London or Havana.
Good luck with that, and I mean that sincerely. No really, I do.
In the meantime we’ll keep on fighting for GLBT equality, against Obama’s genocide and for socialized medicine. And you can continue doing what you do.
With Democrats like this who needs Republicans?
Support the March on Washington! (Mainly because it’ll turn into to an anti-Obama, anti-bigotry rally and that’s why Democrats fear and oppose it.)
Just you waitThe right winger talkers will bash Frank for being “disrespectful” and “arrogant”.
As if this nut job wasn’t…
Dena
I can assure you….donal, you have no idea what my life’s work is. But nice try. And no, Barney Frank isn’t my uncle, to my knowledge, anyway. Perhaps you know something I don’t? As a New Yorker I’ve never met the guy.
And Qscribe, if you’re going to go around name-calling, maybe check your spelling first. Unless “Obababot” means something like “fag” in which case, eff you.
Come on, don’t be hating on poor donal.He’s been in a funk ever since Gus Hall died. But that still doesn’t keep him from writing his name in on the ballot for every presidential election.
I bet even old Gus didn’t talk about Bill Clinton as much as donal does.
Evidence of a broken education systemThe woman who asked Mr. Frank that completely inane, leading question is evidence our education system has failed us. In Al Gore’s excellent book “The Assault on Reason” he discusses the three pillars of our constitutional government and the fourth essential element, a “well-informed public.” That I would qualify as being a “well-informed and reasonable public” to acknowledge that the ability to use reason to apply information is vital to understanding an issue and drawing useful conclusions.
Tragically, people like Mrs. Kitchen Table are as well-informed as your average six-year-old addicted to TV cartoons, Ritalin and Captain Crunch, and their ability to reason is somewhere beneath that of a crack whore on her knees in an alley. They get their “information” from FOX in carefully-edited soundbites and then have that “information” interpreted for them by talking heads by college dropouts like Hannity and Limbaugh who make a living banging the neocon drum and may not even agree with half the crap they’re spouting.
Now I’ll go to my Inbox to wait for the arrival one the onenewsnow.com “news” item on this exchange: “Homosexual Socialist Lawmaker Attacks Christian Woman at Massachusetts town hall meeting.”
Yeah, they will drag out that same old lieChristian persecution I tell you! Christian persecution!
o_O
Dena
Barney FrankHere’s a news flash for everyone.
Barney Frank can chew gum and walk at the same time.
Therefore it should be no surprise that he can water down ENDA, write a new version that is inclusive and put it up for a vote again and at the same time, get as tired of these brainless and clueless, teabag, nazi (no caps) calling, walking FOX-o-bots as most of us are at these town “inquiries” and lynch party meetings.
Heck, he is a Congressman of long standing and therefore it should be no surprise to anyone, that he can shift gears like a four wheeler. Any successful Congressperson has the ability to shift and jive with the best of them.
But just for once, it was great to hear him come out with his usual quick and two the point, poisoned wit, against this idiot that got up in front of the microphone and is stupid enough in public to commits an open act of sedition, instead of having his wit directed at the T in GLBT for once.
It gives me some hope back, that at least this time his dart has landed on the right target and that the point stuck. Now if only the other Congress people could use some of Barney’s wit to shut down these gun carrying right wing zealots, we might just make some headway on a decent healthcare reform bill.
Gus Hall was a Democrat. I’ve written in Che and Malcolm X and ‘none of the above’ since I moved but I’d never write in the name of a Democrat like Gus Hall. Gus was a big ‘ol Democrat. As the Communist Party USA moved to the right they adopted a ‘deep entry’ strategy and became Democrats during the 1960′s. They felt so at home in the party of genocidal killers like LBJ (and later Clinton) that they stuck with him for 4 more years as he orchestrated, good liberal that he was, the murder of roughly a million Vietnamese and 55,000 GI’s.
Just as Democrats today loyally stick with Obama who by now is a mass murderer in his own right even if he has yet to achieve the ‘killing field’ levels of LBJ, Nixon, the Bushes and Clinton.
By the 1990′s the USSR collapsed and the CP lost its financial backing. Without money to pay its large staff it rapidly fell apart. Within a year of two most of the CPs membership simply dissolved into the Democrat Party, disappearing without a trace. The only clue to their past are their large, carefully hidden caches of Pete Seeger records and their “Part of the way with LBJ” buttons.
Please don’t trouble yourself on my account. During the campaign I and more than a few others were part of a vocal minority warning that Obama was basically a bigot at heart who’d betray us at every turn. People got really pissed because we told the truth then and they’ll do the same from time to time as issues pop up that prove that the Democrat party is a rightwing party. The problem is not Obama – it’s the Democrats. Before our movement can grow and become powerful it’ll have to leave you Democrats in the dust.
Dearest Pollyanna, please don’t worry about people hating me, although I think that’s mostly wishful thinking on your part. Under the impact of dangerous and unwinnable wars, a recession on the verge of becoming a depression, Obama’s unrelenting attacks on unions and the GLBT movement people are tuning left.
All the red baiting in the world won’t stop that. In fact it helps. It gives the left a chance to match up the rancid right wing capitalist politics of the Democrats and Republicans with honest left wing socialist politics. We always come out smelling like a rose, a deep red rose.
And next time don’t blunder like you did mentioning Gus. That old Stalinist hack was a Democrat with a few side issues, just like you.
Good golly, you caught a typo!That proves you’re right. Of course.
Try to calm down. You are always going to lose these arguments on Obama. Always. You know perfectly well what QScribe meant. QScribe is determinedly gay and would never gay bait (or red bait). Like most here he tries to rely on facts, not personal attacks to win arguments.
For the record Obot, Obamabot, etc. are descriptive names for people who engage in the politics of the cult of personality and who have personal as opposed to political loyalties to a given ‘leader’.
Happily the number of Obots declined precipitously after people figured out that Obama is a fraud on health car, the war(s), LGBT rights, the needs of minority communities and a combination of welfare for the rich and austerity for workers.
Simple dumb people deserve simple answers!Boy did Barney “short circuited” that woman.
We need more politicians taking control of their town meetings like Frank has. I was really so surprised that no one had done it yet.
Hello! It’s not rocket science.
Not rocket science no…But it’s fear. We’ve got midterm elections coming up next year. Hence the average reaction of most politicians who work solely toward elections.
Obama himself is Hitler’s worst nightmareHe’s mixed race. Uh-oh! Teh puritiez haz been destroyed!
With every further accusation, the comparison of Obama to Hitler gets more and more ridiculous.
Limbaugh took a shot at BarneySaid he spends most of his time around Uranus.
Careful Rush, you are WAY WAY out of your league starting a B*TCH FIGHT with Franks.
He will cut ya, you bloated drug addict who couldn’t satisfy any of his 3 wives.
I can’t post right now……I’m busy lighting candles at my Obama shrine.
Give me a break. “Obots” etc are despicable demeaning terms.
Anyway, the point here is that yes, a flawed politician brilliantly put a right-winger in her place and the entire left/progressive wing of the country is cheering and your contribution to the discussion is to criticize him. I believe that’s the boobie prize bell I hear going off.
Representative Frank’s responsewas a thing of beauty and a joy forever!
I agree with your points about healthcare etc.I disagree that it doesn’t matter one way or the other who wins. Who wins will IMO have an effect on shifting the political ground.
The left is always noting that US politics has shifted rightwards for some time, that politicians who were on the right in the past, would nowadays be considered centrists or even left of centrists. That the Republicans are far right wingers, while the Democrats are right of centrists. The left is always pointing out that Obama is a right winger.
IMO, if the far right wins, that will continue shifting the political ground ever more to the (far) right.
I believe the shrine part. I’ll bet it makes your log cabin feel ever so cozy. But I can’t help wondering why a rightwing apologist would worry about what leftists who support socialized medicine are doing? You’re a Democrat, part of a right centrist party. Democrats like you have nothing to do with the left and could just as easily be Republicans.
If Obot has come to mean someone who unthinkingly supports ‘gawd’s in the mix’, wars and stealing from the workers to give to the rich because the ‘leader’ told them to that’s nobody’s fault but the Obots. Live with it.
The solution is to learn to think, to question, and to make judgments instead of relying on Obama, Clinton, Bush or Palin.
In this entire discussion you’ve never presented one single reason for your uncritical support for Obama. I don’t blame you. It wouldn’t be easy. All you’ve done is disparage those who do have a problem with his bigotry, war and his Robin Hood in Reverse games for being ‘unpopular’. Most people gave up their frantic quest to be ‘popular’ at any price at some point in high school by learning to think on their own.
In this case a rightwing pol and a rightwing heckler played a little game. Some people fell for it. Just like they fell for Obama last fall. You can always fool some of the people some of the time. And some, I won’t name names, all of the time. Most get over it. They certainly got over the Clintons, the Bushes and Obama.
Get over it.
ONLY HINDENBURG CAN SAVE US FROM HITLER! Except he didn’t.
At the insistence of big business and the Army Hindenburg made Hitler chancellor which led to the armed services pledging personal allegiance to Hitler.
German eventually caught on the to the lesser evil scam but not before 50 millions died in Europe and German cites where rubble, the burial grounds of millions of civilians burned to death in terror raids by Allied air forces.
Electing Democrats, as you admit, is the same as electing the right. There are no lesser evils, no lesser rightists. A rightist is a rightist is a rightist.
The Democrats are in lockstep with the Republicans on the key issues of wars of imperial aggression, enriching the bloated rich and derailing the agendas of the GLBT communities, trade unions, immigrant and imported workers, African Americans and other minorities. That will never change. The Democrats can’t be reformed because they’re owned by the rich.
Here are some key tests and distinctions that define the right vs. the left.
Do they support wars to steal other people’s resources, like oil, even if it involves genocide, maintain open and secret concentration camps, kidnapping, torture and murder? Leftists never would. Palin, Obama, McCain, Bush, Cheney and the Clintons do.
Do they fight to implement the agendas of unions, LGBT groups, etc? Leftists certainly do. Palin, Obama, McCain, Bush, Cheney and the Clintons not only don’t support us they try to derail and sabotage our efforts.
Do they sign welfare checks for the looter rich and bust unions? Leftists wouldn’t dream of enriching those economic vampires but Palin, Obama, McCain, Bush, Cheney and the Clintons fall all over themselves to be first in line passing out checks.
The time for lesser evils is over. Society is polarizing between left and right while the traditional center fades. The center will be all but dead soon and we’ll all have to choose sides.