I blame the kid…He kept pulling my attention the whole time trying to get off that tableIt seemed like the crowd jumped into the conversation and the rep was making light in order to defuse growing ire. On the other hand talk about a weak response to the poor girl. If you tell your rep you are not covered and their first response is that you are, only to be corrected by the audience, things are not exactly starting on an informed level. I think what angers me most though is the lack of coverage all of these real meetings are getting with those who really want health care and those who don’t. While TV reporters continue to make reference to the hyped up meetings that occurred through Early august denouncing health care. But I heard a lady in the crowd say what I think the whole issue is about that haves are totally pissed because they thinks this is about a subsidy program for the have-nots. The truth is that if we don’t fix health care in a few years no one is going to have it.    

If I’m an adult constituent trying to get answers at a meetingand I see someone who has brought a prop in the form of a squirmy, child who is waving his arms, talking pretty loudly while adults are talking and then running around, I might laugh, too. Or at least snort twice, which is what the representative is being pilloried for doing.
I don’t have to care for this representative’s politics or position on health care reform to think that she wasn’t doing a horrible job running that meeting from what I see in the clip.
She claims the woman with the child would be covered under the proposed reform. That’s what we should be debating.

So this is what’s called “moderate” in Kansas?Laughing at families with no health care? Calling for a “great white hope”? Jeez, this almost makes me long for the days of Jim Ryun. He was a rabid fundie wingnut, but at least he never hid it and pretended to be “moderate”.

The wingnut response“Well, if you would have only kept your legs closed, you dirty slut, you could have had a decent husband with a good job that provided you health insurance by now. Stop your whining, you got you deserved.”
We all know she was thinking it.
“Compassionate conservatism” really means, “Screw you, I got mine.”

Jenkinsis obviously not very well informed on the issue and out of touch with her constituents.  At least out of touch with some of her constitutents – listen to a woman at about the 2:08 minute mark who proclaims “it’s not our job to pay for your health care”.  

One thing no one talks about

I believe people should be given the opportunity to take care of themselves with an advancebale tax credit to go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance.

Let’s say you are a 55-year-old grandparent.
Your 24-year-old daughter isn’t being a “grown-up” and doesn’t have health insurance for both herself and your three-year-old grandchild.
Your irresponsible daughter gets in a car accident and both she and your grandchild are horribly injured. They rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. They have to move in with you after they get out of the hospital. The child requires plastic surgery for facial scars.
What are you going to do? Tell your adult child that she should have been a “grown up” and that her healthcare problems and those of her child aren’t your problem? Are you going to let your grandchild grow up disfigured?
No. That’s not very likely. What will probably happen is that you’ll cash in your 401(k) and mortgage your home in order to pay for your grandchild’s plastic surgery and get your daughter the in-home nursing care she needs.
In other words, you are fucked.
This kind of thing happens every day in the United States.
I used to work for a hospital and at least once a month I spoke to a parent who was looking for sponsored care for an adult child. These people could never believe that there aren’t charity programs to take care of people who need medical care.
Millions of young adults and their children have no medical insurance. Their families are the ones who suffer when they get sick or are injured.
It is naive to simply say that everyone should buy insurance. Many who could even afford by squeezing their wallets a little do not.
This one reason why we need a public option. Those who do not have insurance would be covered. Their families would not lose everything in the event of a medical catastrophe.

I’m not entirely sure why this is shocking…Republicans have been laughing in the face of poor people for as long as I can remember.

Children are…Props?

Yep, when you bring them to an adult setting, bring them up to a microphone and use them to illustrate your point…that’s called a prop.
What if even a quarter of people there brought kids who acted like most kids his age do in a place they don’t want to be? Chaos.
Instead of bringing a prop, why wouldn’t the adult say, “I have a child who….” to illustrate her point?  Will you at least admit, Geek, that the kid actually distracts from what the mother is trying to say because of his behavior?
If the woman truly takes her two-year-old out any night she does adult-type activities, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial for getting her point across if she had asked some motherly-looking sort in her row to watch the kid for two minutes while she got up to speak?
This is just the trickle down effect of modern-day political speechifying. If you’ve ever snorted when the President giving the State of the Union address has some prop in the gallery stand up to represent why he’s against one of your favorite projects, you’ll recognize what this woman is doing. Everybody does it now. But their props are not always so well-behaved.

Spineless Dems and the White House  The country voted overwhelmingly Democratic for a reason.  It was clear during the debates when Obama said,’Health care should be a right to every citizen.’
 OH, silly me, Obama also claimed to be a fierce advocate for the LGBT community.
 I be a good little Democrat and sit on the sidelines while they might grow a spine,,,,NOT
 President Obama has lost my vote and my family’s vote.  Same goes for the spineless Democratic Senators and Representatives.
 NO SPINE and you will lose the democratic base which includes me.

What have we come to?Why is it always “them” v.s. “us”?  What happened to “we”?

She is a single mom Polly – Perhaps she had nobody else to watch her (very well behaved) child?
America is the only nation in the world where children and the elderly are not included in every aspect of society.
A young mother who has her child with her?  Gasp and swoon!  She MUST have some ulterior motive?  Bullshit…

For Jenkins plan to work in Maine…The tax allowance needs to be $57,000 for a family of 4 – (the  cost of THE ONLY PRIVATE HMO available in the state).
What market?
What availability?
What reform?
NO PUBLIC OPTION = NO REFORM !

This is evangelical conservatismdisdain for wewomen, even from women
racism
elitism
superficiality of beliefs

“Prop”, indeed!This is an unbelieveably cruel statement.
I am a mom who pretty much has to take our 11 year old autistic child EVERYWHERE with her. The only respite I get is when my husband’s schedule allows him to take over or if my mom, who’s getting on in years and has health issues, is able to drive the 100 miles’ one way to get here.
At the age of 2, Jean was terrified to be with anyone other than the 3 of us.
“Pass the child off to a motherly looking person”… BAH. Now it’s becoming a presumptuous statement and dismissive; why are you faulting a single mother who is trying her best?
I bet you give kids and their parents dirty looks in stores, too.
Please try to imagine the other person’s circumstances and use some compassion…  

Watch the tape w/o soundIt takes a full minute before he starts to squirm (at age 2!) and his mom is right there and taking good care of him.
Again, BAH! My sympathies to her and my disgust at anyone lacking the compassion gene.

Well i don’t know about thatI mean her “very well behaved” child didn’t seem to have a problem once he got off the table to scurry away from mom and into to the obviously waiting arms of another he trusts. So while I don’t fault her for bringing the kid and showing him off (parents should be able to do this especially at government meetings because we still need the visual), I can’t say it wasn’t kind of prop like.

I was waiting for this…I don’t care how much I agree with what she’s saying, part of the responsibility of having children is knowing where it is appropriate to bring them and where not.  I can’t count the number of community meeting’s I’ve sat through with babies crying and children running around. Sorry. Fail.

Perhaps she had nobody else to watch her (very well behaved) child?

Already addressed. Let somebody in the audience keep him off the tabletop and away from the microphone for two minutes. How effing hard is that to arrange? Unless you need him for a prop.

America is the only nation in the world where children and the elderly are not included in every aspect of society.

Now I’m against the elderly at community meetings? Jeepers!

She MUST have some ulterior motive?

Your words, not mine. I said she was using him as a prop. And it just distracted from her message. But I guarantee when the opposition trots out their offspring to prove a point, we’re all over them like white on rice.
These supposedly grown-up meetings are nothing but theatre. We need to own our part in it.

I didn’t listen without soundand I wouldn’t have been at the meeting with my hands over my ears. The child is heard crying/protesting while being carried up to the table, and is talking throughout. It is distracting when trying to participate in an important adult discussion.

You got a mouse in your pocket?To liberals, “we” means everyone because “we” are all in this together.
To conservatives like Lynn Jenkins, “we” means “straight white christians with money,” which makes everyone else “them.” And “they” are to be despised and shunned for not being like “us.”
The has been another edition of “simple answers.”

perty muchI get so sick of all these people who are like, “GO GET A JOB!!” when there are more job seekers and jobs and many companies plan on scaling back their health coverage benefits and making their employees pay more for less coverage.

Louise, hold up a minute.

why are you faulting a single mother who is trying her best?

When you’re trying to run something which involves lots of different people with differing beliefs, it usually works best to deal with behaviors and not how someone thinks someone feels or is trying.
Half the audience may be sitting there thinking things like, “damn, my mom had to rearrange her schedule to be able to look after Jimmy tonight,” or “wow, this is so unfair. I paid for a babysitter and I could barely afford it,” or “jeeze, I don’t want to be here, but my wife made be come in her place because she knew Johnny couldn’t tolerate a meeting like this.
Or you could get on the representative for not providing child care.

Excellent pointJenkins said, “we can do an alternative proposal, as I’m suggesting, give you the money to go buy it in a reformed marketplace…”  Really? “give”???
How much will that cost and where is that money going to come from? Oh, and it wouldn’t be anything like saddling the nation with a new burden, would it?
At this point in the video, is sounds like Jenkins is just making things up, and she probably really was making it up.

Wait, what?!?

Let somebody in the audience keep him off the tabletop and away from the microphone for two minutes. How effing hard is that to arrange? Unless you need him for a prop.

There’s always the very strong possibility that there wasn’t anyone there she trusted enough to do that. Most mothers know how very little time it takes for something to happen. When I was that age, the only people Mom would have trusted to keep me for even two seconds were the grandmothers, my parents’ siblings, or her best friend. Most mothers simply do not trust functional strangers with their children for any length of time.

Sarcasm…“She MUST have some ulterior motive?”
Sheesh…My point was that she probably DID NOT have one…
Sheesh again.

“Most mothers know how very little time it takes for something to happen”Like when the toddler slithers down from the tabletop by himself and goes running off? Yes.
Now, multiply this by some factor to represent everyone, no matter how justified they feel, duplicating the same behavior at a community meeting for adults.
What some people here are advocating, essentially, is, “Oh, but I’m special. My particular needs take precedence over those of everyone else in the group.”

Oh my gawd; imagine this!a kid being a kid. With its only parent in attendance.
Can’t have that, when that same sole parent is discussing that same kid’s lack of health insurance with the parent’s representative in a public forum.
Notice to all parents: do NOT bring your children outside of the house with you, unless it is to something more directly related to the children. And NEVER to any space where an adult might be inconvenienced by your children’s presence.
I’m done with this thread; anything further will lead to threadjacking.

Maybe you’d like to do a diary on the subject.The discussion of where it is appropriate to bring children always provokes lively discussion. It’s a topic everyone has opinions on because it has affected everyone on earth at some time or other, unless they’ve never left their homes.

No, really, I got the sarcasm.There’s a lot of that going around.

well, now, really, its not quite *that* restricted.drop christian from the listing and it works equally well.

However…… the prop in question, as a citizen directly impacted by the discussion, had a right to be there.
And not be the subject of derision.
The representative was not laughing because the child was being cute and funny, they were mocking the individual.
And if, as you suggest, she was doing so on the basis of the prop’s presence as a prop, well…
That just makes it worse in the minds of anyone who’s a parent.

The mother was quite clearlykeeping the kid from slithering down the table and running off. Parents learn very quickly how to multitask.

Could you watch the video, please, before commenting on it?

The mother was quite clearly keeping the kid from slithering down the table and running off. Parents learn very quickly how to multitask.

I guess she got tired of multitasking.
1:15-1:28 Toddler slithers off of table top while mother is looking at Jenkins.
1:31 Toddler runs off down the aisle, disappearing from view, but can still be heard going “whoop, whoop.”
2:01 Toddler reappears in frame and runs around large table until at…
2:20 Mother picks up toddler when he comes within reach as he chatters happily away.

She knows her kid.If he could still be heard, then he obviously wasn’t in any danger. This is how kids act and it’s irrelevent to how Jenkins acted in respnonse to the mother’s perfectly valid point.

I see what you did there.Since this was not something open to evaluation, but an easily observed series of actions, how about a simple
oops, I was mistaken or
hey, you were right, I must have missed that or
I guess when I try to contradict someone I should have looked at the source material first or…..
whatever

Gee you’re so smartHave a cookie.
Professor Frink’s sarcasm detector explodes

Seems to me that the child was behaving better than many of the adults there.

Ummmmmm

Actually, PollyannaI’d like to apologize to you; you’re a friend and I piled on a bit more than I should have.
What I read was very upsetting, on top of viewing this video. It’s just that I can see this from a very concerned mom’s POV, because of my circumstances.
Certainly yours is a valid POV as well- the thing is, we really DON’T know which scenario is correct, ie, whether the mother was using her child to drive home a point or whether she really didn’t have a better option yet felt she had to participate to find out/ advocate for her family.

.

Thank you, girlfriend.We go through life talking past each other so much of the time.
I shot myself in the foot by using the word, “prop.”**  It was all downhill from there.
The whole issue of children and childcare affects everyone, but it is usually the women who bear the burden of dealing with the everyday hassles.
** how about, “visual aid?”

that’s the commentthat’s the comment from the audience I noticed too.  But,
the congress critter is suggesting we do pay for her health care by tax credit instead of by having a public option that the woman can choose to PAY FOR HER more affordable insurance.  The woman in question said herself she wants an ‘affordable” option that she can shoose and pay for.
the congress critter also suggested that the public option would somehow be subsidizing EVERYONE’s insurance.  Where she got that I have no idea.  There is no proposal like that.  The public option will be able to keep costs lower by not paying million dollar salaries to executives, by not spending all that $$$ on advertising and admin costs.  By not trying to maximize profits for stockholders.  It will not be subsidized by the tax payers.  Why can’t anyone explain this logically to the public?

she wasn’t making things upthat has been the repug plan for years.  Give tax credits to people to use to buy insurance on the open market.
But, they have NEVER said the tax credit would be large enough to actually pay for insurance.
That’s the whole problem with their PLAN.
They want to implement reforms like getting rid of pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps and then NOT have a public option.  The problem with this approach is that the insurance reforms without the public option will only RAISE the cost of insurance.
Then they claim that opening up insurance across state lines for competition will bring the costs down instead of the public option.  Now, think about that.  Don’t you suppose the reason they don’t operate across state lines is because each state has DIFFERENT insurance regulations?
Are the repugs seriously going to go along with instituting NATIONAL insurance regulations in order to have competition across state lines?  Wouldn’t taking that power away from the states be against everything republicans believe in?
The repugs just haven’t bothered to think things through to their logical ends.  Of course, that doesn’t bother them because their only goal here is to STOP any reform, not actually work to solve the problem.

In that caseshe was using herself and her own life as a prop, wasn’t she?
I think the word you’re looking for might be “example.”

Wellthey already trotted out their grandmas dying for obama… so I suppose they’ll bring out the kids in good time!
I still think it’s possible for one to bring one’s child to illustrate one’s point – a kid is a really effective visual addition.
I agree that it would be a distraction in an adult discussion, but this was obviously not that.