mentality

During Netroots Nation, a conservative blogger was arrested for harrassing a couple of women because they were wearing Muslim hijabs (headscarves). From Minnesota Public Radio:

A St. Paul blogger faces misdemeanor charges after he allegedly harassed two Muslim women last week in downtown Minneapolis.

Minneapolis police say John Hugh Gilmore, 52, who writes a blog called Minnesota Conservatives, caused a scene Thursday night on Nicollet Mall. Sgt. Bill Palmer, a police spokesman, said Gilmore appeared to be drunk when he confronted the two women wearing the Muslim headscarf known as the hijab.

"Mr. Gilmore made some comments that he didn't believe the women should be in the United States, and that he thought that they were ruining America," Palmer said.

One of the women, University of Minnesota student Jamila Boudlali, said she's lived in Minnesota her entire life and has never been hassled about her religion.

John Aravosis, who was at the convention, has a great rundown, including this response from the prominent right-wing PJ TV:

Suddenly, a man from "PJ TV" stuck a microphone in front of the lead woman and started to question her. He got increasingly upset, and basically charged her, and me, with lying about the incident with the GOP blogger the other night, simply beacuse the woman couldn't recall the name of the GOP blogger who had been arrested. You can watch the beginning of the woman's statement, and the GOP "reporter" getting more and more upset with the woman, and with me.

I thought one of the driving forces behind the Tea Party was a fight against the “business as usual” mentality that plagues our leaders. Rand Paul has done a great job of stereotyping himself as one of those type of leaders and this doesn’t help with that:

Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul wrote in a newspaper four years ago that he would have pardoned himself if he had been the state's scandal-plagued governor at the time.

Paul's opinion piece in the now-defunct Kentucky Post appeared shortly before a judge dismissed accusations that then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, had violated state hiring laws. The same judge had previously ruled that Fletcher could not be tried while in office.

Yeah – he is really different….NOT!

Right along party lines as expected, with Jim Bunning not voting. What’s interesting is that since the GOP started praying for Democratic members of the Senate to not show up, a Republican has missed every vote. Irony or sweet revenge?

This ends the 2009 legislative year and now we are on to reconciliation to fix the health care bill. I actually have a little bit of hope of some good coming out of there, given statements some House members are starting to make. This bill is far from perfect, but we now have a real chance to make it better. It’s a much more real chance than the “fix it later” mentality. We won’t get things like a public option out of conference, but if a few things could happen like dropping/greatly reducing the mandate for lower income people, then it’s a bill I could stomach. I’ve said all along that the mandates was the deal breaker for me because of the adverse affect they actually will have on lower income people, namely those who make just enough to not get Medicaid.

I will admit that the bill does a lot to reduce costs for families, but most are focusing on the more median income families. In our uncertain economic times with a very weak job market, forcing people below 175% of the federal poverty level to buy insurance is adding to an already disastrous situation. It also shows the disconnect between Washington and the lower income people. They don’t know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. They are operating on the assumption that people in this situation don’t get insurance out of greed. For most it is out of a very, very tough decision on what expenses can be cut in order to survive. Health insurance means nothing if you are homeless or can’t afford to eat, and the extra $1,100-$5,000 a year these people will now be forced to pay is going to be felt hard.

To keep it in context, here is the chart from the CBO that many have been using to calculate health care costs under the new legislation:

(Updated below the fold)

The Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for it’s visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else happened with this action that is very odd. They recipient of the subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by the Justice Department – an essential gag order.

Of course news like this would send the right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence the media, even a left leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:

Did the White House try to open up a two-front war on the media?   Before the Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, the Department of Justice demanded the records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day.  No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into the records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if the DoJ presses hard enough:

But there’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. The original source of the article is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is what they say about the subpoena:

I never heard of “April’s Mom”, but apparently she was someone the pro-life right wing was getting behind. A young, expectant mother who was told her baby was mentality ill yet decided to give birth. She blogged about the decisions and raising the child.

Only one problem.

It was a lie. 26 year old Beccah Beushausen who became entangled in her web of lies:

She had expected only a handful of friends to read it, but when her first post got 50 comments, she was hooked.
"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.
"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

Apparently Beushausen actually did lose a son in 2005 and is a pro-lifer, but her latest story was just that – a story.

And sorry wingnuts, but this isn’t a crime. If we wanted to prosecute bloggers for lying then the entire right wing blogosphere would be non-existent.

Again, I am writing this as a life long Democrat, but a Democrat who cherishes our need for opposing ideas in order to provide the best for our nation.

Part of the Republicans biggest problem is their ego, which I mentioned in my previous post.

I think another example of this can be seen in Bobby Jindal. So much attention has been given to him for the response Tuesday night that we seem to have forgotten the simple fact that it is the Republican response, not the Bobby Jindal response. He was just the messenger. Now we see Republicans and conservatives throwing Bobby under the bus for delivering the message of the RNC.

Perhaps that should send up the warning flags. You take away the big crowds and enthusiastic speaker, you are pretty much left with nothing. That’s what the voters have seen for the past four years and why the Republicans have been getting slammed at the polls.

I too have been lost in the “laugh at Bobby” mentality engulfing our country, but then I realized that it isn’t just Bobby, but the GOP as a whole. Perhaps that’s why Rush Limbaugh went on a rampage yesterday against any Republican criticizing Jindal.

So what should the Republicans do now? Well first off they need to declare war – a war on people like Limbaugh. It doesn’t have to be nasty, but these people need to realize that if the Republican Party is to survive that they need to entertain a wider range of ideas and philosophies. Destroying their own party because some people don’t agree with them isn’t the answer to regaining majority status, but rather the prescription for denying it. If they don’t do this then the GOP is no longer a party, but rather a special interest group.

We have just endured eight years of "cowboy diplomacy" by George Bush. This has given us such zingers as "bring it on" and "we are going to conduct a crusade". Bush's mentality has further alienated this country from the rest of the world and extinguished our status as the shining city on the hill.

One thing you do have to admit though is that Bush can pull off these stunts and still maintain some appearance of likability. Disagree with him 100% on policy, but he is still the guy you would want to have a beer with.

Now enter John McCain. Josh reminded me this morning of a very testy exchange between Obama and McCain back in 2006. McCain was upset that Obama wouldn't support his plan for a bipartisan commission to come up with lobbying/ethics reform, instead choosing for such reform to go through normal committee. This led to McCain firing of a very nasty letter to Obama for not supporting him.

While refreshing my memory on this little exchange, I noticed something that sounds very familiar:

"That's why I am not going to win Miss Congeniality again this year in the Senate."

As you can guess, John McCain said that. It's something he repeats on the campaign trail still and even brought up in the first debate.

There are a couple of issues here that should be taken up by the media and pundits. First off is John McCain's admission that he isn't congenial. We need someone who can lead our country by understanding and working together, not someone who wants to strong arm any objections into submissions. No matter how you slice it, the Democrats will retain control of Congress this year and probably end up with a more solid majority. Having a President McCain, who admits to not being congenial, is a perfect recipe to have a Congress less effective as we do now.

This is the absolute proof that McCain picked Sarah Palin for only one reason - to get Hillary supporters.

This might not be the best way to reach out to those disillusioned Hillary Clinton supporters.

In just her second appearance on the campaign trail with John McCain, newly-minted GOP running mate Sarah Palin was showered with boos on Saturday for attempting to praise Clinton’s trail-blazing bid to become the first female president.

I guess Sarah Palin prescribes to the same sexist mentality as John McCain - women will vote not on the issues, but on the sex of the candidate. I sure hope they keep this up. It will be very easy to expose the sexist nature of their campaign and the best one to do that is Hillary.