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That's the editor of Salon praising the Massachusetts Congressman for being one of the precious few to figure out that these crazies at the town halls showing up and babbling nonsense about death panels, internment camps should be called on the carpet, not avoided, for being out of touch with reality. In Frank's case it was a woman declaring health care reform a product of a Nazi President Obama.
God bless Barney Frank. His outburst at a "town hell" protester who accused him and Obama of supporting "Nazi policy" spread virally around the Web early Wednesday and expressed a lot of liberals' head-splitting frustration. "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" he countered, to lots of applause. Frank called it "a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated," and closed by saying: "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."
On "Hardball" today, Politico's Ken Vogel suggested Frank's outburst might help the right, but I said I saw the opposite: That Frank's frank talk might embolden liberals to counter lies with truth: The idea that some delusional young woman in Massachussetts (reportedly a Lyndon LaRouche supporter) can accuse a gay Jewish congressman of supporting Nazi policies is reprehensible ignorance, and Frank responded with perfect pitch. Here's our Hardball discussion:
In related news: The dumbest statement of the day didn't come from Frank's town hall critic in Massachusetts; it came from the White House, where an unnamed "senior White House advisor" told the Washington Post that the administration just doesn't understand the passion for the public option among liberals. "I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said the clueless senior White House adviser. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."
I wasn't aware that supporting the public option was the sole obsession of "the left of the left." After all, Obama himself has been touting it as the best way to reduce costs and increase competition in the health care arena.
So it's abandon ship over at the "clueless White House" even though candidate Obama has know for way too long that public option is not some idea that the "left of the left" only favors. When described to the average person, a majority of Americans favor the concept. They know this. What they don't want to admit publicly is that the deal crafted behind closed doors with the entities with the most to lose – insurance companies, Big Pharma, etc. — is something we aren't privy to.
If he caves to the insurance industry and kills it in order to get something, anything passed – as clearly, many of his advisors think he ought to — taxpayers will be left holding the bag for a wildly wasteful expansion of private insurance coverage, and Democrats will ultimately pay.
Welcome, progressives, to the world of "wait" and "compromise". Unfortunately the LGBT community didn't receive a welcome wagon greeting either. We have an IOU.
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A bad feelingAnyone else getting a bad feeling about the Obama administration? First we get a huge financial bailout that was necessary, but it lacked any kind of controls or regulation to prevent the same people who caused the problem from raiding the treasury again. Then we get a lot of talk about GLBT rights that is contradicted not just by a lack of action regarding our rights, but by offensive Bush-era legal arguments in that first DOJ brief. Now we find out that it is more important to appease Republicans who have sworn not to vote for any meaningful health reform than it is to do the right thing (healthcare for all: everyone covered, better service, less aggregate costs). I never entirely trusted Obama’s post-partisan rhetoric during the campaign, but I really thought he would stand up for SOMETHING supported by the people who elected him.
more media cluelessnessI was watching the news on MSNBC this afternoon, and there was a reporter on the scene of a town hall meeting in Florida. He called public opinion polls “all over the map” as if it was confusing to him that although the majority supports a public health insurance option, there also is a big downward spike in Obama’s job approval rating concerning the health care crisis.
Duh.
People want a public option, not a collection of wobbly co-ops that won’t work to improve benefits OR cut costs. Obama appears to be bailing out on us, surrendering in the fight we elected him to wage. His supporters are mad. His haters were mad before, and they still are. He will never win over the haters, but his efforts to woo them have alienated his supporters in the meantime.
Yesterday, I saw Chuck Todd discussing poll numbers that show half of Americans believe the four main lies about healthcare reform: 1) “death panels,” 2) provision of healthcare to “illegal immigrants,” 3) federal tax-funded abortions, and 4) “government takeover” of healthcare. This information was presented as Obama “losing” the public opinion war.
In reality, as opposed to the world of Washington DC wherein everything is seen as a political game, it is malpractice of the mainstream media that has allowed those lies to flourish. The commentators make the obligatory 5-second “these things are not true” statment at the beginning of the segment and then spend 90% of the rest of the time talking about public opinion and its affect on the horse race — who “wins” and who “loses” — and expressing admiration for the successful gamesmanship of the lie-spreaders, i.e. the “winners.”
Why is it not obvious that if so many people are ill-informed, the news media is failing at its job, which is to inform the public?
oh, and another thing:If anybody has the right to the name “Frank,” it’s the congressman from Massachusetts. He’s a rare public wit and national treasure.
I had a bad feeling BEFORE the electionWhich is why I didn’t vote for him. I’m not surprised by any of this. One always have to be wary of those who talk too pretty during a time of desperation.