NO BROWN SHIRTS AT TOWN HALL MEETINGS!

Well, you've heard the slogan of the Bush Administration, haven't you? "We have nothing to offer but fear itself". Fear is what they offered to defeat the Clinton health plan of 1993. Rather then fear socializing fourteen percent of the economy, rather, you should fear the fourteen percent who are right wing whacko nuts out there, who attend these town meetings. Hitler's brown shirts used similar tacticts during the early 1930's to disrupt German society. These people are not there to ask any questions or to seek answers. They are there purely to disrupt and be insulting. I assume you've seen examples of how these Town Hall meetings go on You Tube. Often they will run the host of the meeting off and turn the entire thing into a far right pep rally. If you listened to these people you might end up despizing terms like "liberty" and "Constitution" and "take our country back". No, "taking our country back" was what the voters did last November when they rejected these far right policies of people like Sarah Palin.

Let's get into the specifics. Right now President Obama isn't even pitching any kind of single payer or publicly funded medical plan. Basically all the President wants to do at this point is to spread the risk around so that healthy people get their rates jacked up so that they pay for the coverage of the really sick people with pre existing conditions. This is Thom Hartman's pipe dream is to get a lot of healthy young people into the system who otherwise would never choose to be in it. Prior to Halloween of 1997 it had been easily twenty years since I had been to a doctor, other than dentists. The one time I did see a doctor I was referred there by Social Security, but that was purely a rubber stamp opperation with no intent to diagnose. I'll tell you where President Obama goofed. There are now five bills before congress. There are two bills in the house and three in the senate. As such there is no one "bill" that these right wingers even have any business attacking. Their complaints are premature. If they want to offer any constructive input, they should mention specific issues to their congressmen. But these people never think that far. They have as little taste for the nitty gritty details of every day government any more then their mentor, Sarah Palin does. All they like to do is whine. But the President should have done what Hillary Clinton did, and that is to pitch a complete bill that you can enthusiastically support. These are different times from 1993 and I can almost guarentee that had the President done this- - the health plan would have had a far more auspitious outcome than did Hillary in 1993. Because people are a lot more fed up with insurance companies now than they were then. The President needs to be more of a Victor Kiriacus partisan for his own issues, and you "Days" fans know what I mean. That means you are dedicated to a cause and you pitch it in a positive matter. But just "letting congress fight it out" was no solution. Because that way - congress does what they do best. They consume valuable time and end up with a bill only a tenth as potent as the original.

I myself have questions I'd like answered about all of the five bills. But I also know if I try hard enough I can research the bills on line. But nobody is talking about THEE bill yet. Personally I don't think I would support any bill that doesn't work to get insurance companies out of the loop entirely. They are obviously making tons of money, else they wouldn't be able to afford the massive propaganda effort they are putting out now. Why don't we pass laws like they have in Europe where it's illegal to make a profit on any insurance plan? Personally I wish Obama would get BEHIND a progressive bill, rather than IN FRONT of it. People who want a bill that actually makes sense have to now go around the President because he has become just another obstruction. Some have suggested that the progressives split off from the rest of the Democratic party. I'd rather have a smaller organization that's alive, rather than a larger one that is already DOA. The Republicans dare not do other than support the current two party system, because if for instance libertarians split off from them they will truely be a splinter party.

The church says that this is a "moral issue". I don't see it as any sort of Christian charity by proxy, but rather I see National Health Care as an idea that just "makes sense" now in this modern age. I think its eventual adoption is inevitable. But right now fear rules the day. They say the bill or bills encourage abortions and euthanasia, even though both things are already illegal under federal statute. Others fear that they will lose their Medi-Care. What is so farsical in the first place is that most of the people you see at these "brown shirt" rallies, are retirement age and on Medi-care. They will say things like they don't "experiment with socialized medicine" but in the same breath say "But don't you mess with my Medi-Care. Others are Vetterans, who really do have socialized medicine at the V A. Other people propound the myth that "people shouldn't be made to give up an insurance plan they are happy with. Although if they are happy with it, it's probably because they have never needed it. The whole thing smacks of a Joe the Plumber scam, and we now know that Joe wasn't a real plumber and never made over $250,000 - as he would lead you to believe. These people throw up non existant red harings. If they couldn't use fear and ignorance, the weapons of choice of demogogues everywhere - if they couldn't resort to scar tacticts, they would be out of ammunition. But suppose they win this year and nothing gets passed? These problems aren't going away and others will come out with new and perhaps more radical bills next year, and the odds of passage will only increased. This is because National Health Care is simply an idea whose time has come. People in years to come will look back on these protestors and obstructionists with disdain, and they will be memorialized in negative terms in out history books.