Pam Gellar: Small-Minded Hatred

So, thanks to an e-mail discussion among some friends and family members I got to see an e-mail version of this article by Pam Gellar. The Blogspot version of the article doesn't convey the degree of fanatical shrieking as well as the e-mail did, which was full of underlining, font size changes and font color changes, not to mention the exclamation points in the title, used apparently without an appreciation of the irony.

By e-mail, I weighed in with my $0.02:

[I agree that] this is crazy person talk that isn't worth responding to. Except that I can't really let the Nazi comparison pass without comment, since it is so poisonous.

Pam Geller's recounting of Nazi Germany's history is seriously screwy. Hitler didn't accomplish what he did because the media liked him, or because he was charismatic, or because of his economic policies. These things helped him, but they could also be said of almost any politician. Hitler was able to whip his countrymen into a racist, jingoistic fury by portraying Germans as superior and other groups as inferior and evil. Comparisons between Hitler and Obama are particularly offensive considering that if Obama had lived in Hitler's Germany he would have likely been murdered or forcibly sterilized.

Comparing Obama to Hitler is hate speech. Before I take anything Pam Gellar says seriously she'll have to leave the racist rhetoric behind.

Also, how dare the right wing talk about stifling dissent? We're six years into a war that was waged on false pretenses. When people from any part of the political spectrum pointed out how thin or inconsistent the case for war was they were called a traitor and accused of giving aid and comfort to terrorists.

On a second point, Daschle didn't say, "Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/apr/03/chain-email/daschle-didnt-say-seniors-seniors-should-accept-ra/

I'd like to take a moment to respond to Gellar's article in even more detail here. Other than an accusation that the bank bailout was two trillion instead of 750 billion (without citation) and some vague scary talk about the economic stimulus and health care, Gellar make NO POLICY COMPLAINTS about the Obama administration. Seriously. She has "never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now" but she can't list any action taken by Obama that she disagrees with.

She is willing to toss in everything, including the kitchen sink.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke... (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

1929 x 10?!?! That's almost (*gasp*!) 19,290!!!!11oneone

Anyway, it all sounds so awful! Who's going to come along to change all this?

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word:? Change...radical change. Why?

What do you mean, why? You just spelled out why we need radical change! Sure, your criticisms of America were largely overblown and inaccurate, but you scared me enough to convince me that we need change!

Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same Nation of Freedom, again.

No, we don't want that kind of change!

But seriously, yes, change is coming. During all of Pam Gellar's lifetime, no matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats won the election, the one thing she could count on was a white guy in the White House. Change is coming, Pam. Get used to it. And lay off the Hitler comparisons, you're killing rational debate and the democracy that depends on it.

The Most Offensive Frakkin Thing I've Seen in a While

I've been having a flame war on my facebook status for a couple of days now. Just today the bloke I've been arguing with posts this over-the-top propaganda image as his profile picture. That's right, this douchebag is now representing himself with an image of Obama-as-Nazi.


A little bit of history: during the Third Reich Hitler regarded Africans and African-Germans as a threat to Aryan racial purity. He accused the Jews of bringing Africans to Germany intentionally in order to dilute white bloodlines. The Gestapo forcibly sterilized many of them. "Mulattoes" were particularly offensive to the Nazi party, a symbol of undesirable racial mixing.

How does somebody make this comparison with a straight face? Obama would likely have been murdered or sterilized if he lived in Hitler's Germany. I'd like to propose a new corollary to Godwin's Law: anybody who posts an image of Obama-as-Hitler, except to point out how ridiculous or offensive it is, is an asshole.

Public Option More Popular than Obama

The public option: 58 in favor 34 oppose 8 undecided
Obama: 52 favorable 43 unfavorable 5 unsure

Why is this? The public option helps sick people. Obama's just the president. (Turn it around Mr. President!)

By the way, all of Obama's slipping numbers lately are from Independents and Democrats. The Republicans already hated him as much as they could. Pundits who say that Obama's slipping numbers are a signal for him to move to the right are talking nonsense.

Obama Should Stop Chasing Republican Votes

Next week President Obama plans to give a speech to a joint session of Congress on health care reform. 538.com's Nate Silver expects that this may be the biggest moment of Obama's presidency, barring some unforeseen crisis in the future. He may be right. Obama's political future may very well depend on how well he is able to gather votes to pass a health care bill.

The public option remains popular among the public. However, there has been some suggestions by David Axelrod and others that Obama's speech is likely to outline a plan for reform that does not necessarily include a public option. This would be a mistake, particularly if the final bill includes an individual mandate without a public option. This would be a terrible result, forcing people into private plans or co-ops that are unlikely to be large enough to have significant bargaining power with healthcare providers.

Obama's mistake from the beginning has been to seek a "bipartisan" solution to this legislative puzzle. Time and time again the Republicans have made it clear that they will not vote for any bill, no matter how many concessions it contains. We should be talking about compromise in the sense of getting together the progressive and the Blue Dog wings of the Democratic party. Progressives also have the option of running strong primary challengers against Blue Dogs in the next election, and that fact should not be left out of the negotiation process. Max Baucus has a 'gang of six' that includes three Democrats and three Republicans. The 'gang of six' should have included three liberals and three Blue Dogs, since these are the only two parties that matter right now.

The strength of the Blue Dog caucus because of triangulation. I blame Bill Clinton.

The best thing Obama could say at his speech next week is, "on the issue of health care reform, several Republicans and a few Democrats have not been negotiating in good faith. That's okay. We can get this thing done without them. And the voters can let them know what they think about that at the next election."

But it doesn't seem like Obama's ready to play hardball.

Disappointed and Disillusioned with Obama

Paul Krugman's op-ed from ten days ago describes my feelings about Obama fairly well. Obama seems to be stuck in a fantasy where some sort of post-partisan middle ground that he can stand on actually exists. For the past couple weeks now Obama's (and the Democrats in Congress's) popularity numbers have been taking a nose dive (although from a very high place so his numbers are still very high overall).
When Obama makes concessions to conservatives it gains him nothing - they aren't going to support him no matter what he does, and half of them think he wasn't born in the US anyway. These folks are too busy getting excited over the latest fake Kenyan birth certificate to care that Obama is sacrificing his principles in order to win their support.

Krugman also mentions the bank bailout. It seems like a lot of people are confused over the difference between the bank bailout and the stimulus package. Just so everyone's clear the bank bailout was $700B to rescue the financial industry while the economic stimulus package was $700B to help the rest of the economy. I think the bank bailout was too big, and the stimulus too small. The line we were given about the banks was that they were too big to fail, that their failure would have led to much worse problems in the rest of the economy.

Perhaps that was the case at the end of 2008. However even if it was true it should have represented a terrible outcome to everyone. Our entire economy is dependent on the health of a handful of banks? And these banks have to award their executives millions of dollars in bonuses, even when they fail miserably? Obama's unwillingness to take a harder line against bank executives receiving millions was disappointing to me. Also maybe some of those banks should have been broken up into smaller, non-too-big-to-fail companies.

On the bank bailout, on health care, on accountability for torture, and on the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Obama is going to have to start to walk the walk if he expects to hang on to the support of progressives like me. I know that it's not realistic to expect that we'll get everything done right away, but, as Krugman writes, "there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line." Aim big, Mr. President. Don't shy from the fights that need to be fought. Follow the example set by the late Senator Kennedy. That way if you only achieve half of what you wanted to, you'll still have accomplished a lot of positive change. That would be change I can believe in.

No Public Option: No Bill

The prospects for a strong public option being included in a final bill have been looking weaker lately, especially as the White House is backing off the necessity of a public option. If it is the case that President Obama is giving up on Candidate Obama's pledge to work for a public health care option, then the onus is upon progressive congresspeople to refuse to vote for any "compromise" which does not include a public option.

And as for Obama, he should respect his words of barely a month ago when he said any attempt at reform must include a public option. To my mind, that means that he vetoes any legislation on this topic that crosses his desk that does not at least reach that mark of good policy. Incremental and half-assed change is not the sort of change I can believe in and it's not what I voted for last November. If the Democrats with huge majorities in the House and Senate cannot accomplish even this, then there may be little to recommend them over a third-party protest vote.

Finally, readers, I know that a lot of the content of this blog has been about health care recently and you may be getting tired of the same topic all the time. I apologize if it's been getting boring, but bear with me as there may still be a little more news about this in the future.