Once again, here is everyone’s favorite freshman Florida representative, Alan Grayson, Democrat from the 8th Congressional District, back to milk every last second of his fifteen minutes in the political spotlight for all it is worth. Notice how the man never once loses eye contact with the camera.
Politico has the video over at their website. There is no embedding, so just click the video below to go over to their site and watch the video:
So what is he riling against this time? Is he claiming that a former Republican governor in his state likes to eat live puppies? Not exactly, but he did take aim at Republican legislators, specifically Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, telling them, in the area of health care, to “just get out of the way.” Yep, the ol’ spirit of bi-partisan cooperation and understanding, just like President Obama said he’d usher into Congress during his presidency. Rep. Grayson added, “You can lead, you can follow or you can get out of the way, and I’m telling you to get out of the way.”
Of course, as he has done twice in the past, Representative Alan Grayson did his little soapbox rant after business hours, once every Republican legislator had gone home for the evening. The man is absolutely spineless. The man has the gaul to mock Joe Wilson who stood up and said right to the President of the United States that he was a liar. Meanwhile this guy insists he is the only truth-teller in both houses of Congress, yet chooses to make such speeches to a chamber full of empty chairs.
If you will recall, Healthcare Horserace posted a story early yesterday morning about how Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida’s 8th Congressional District, in an after hours speech on the floor of the United States House of Representatives stated that the Republican health care plan called for sick patients to die quickly. The article also stated that this was hardly the first time the Florida representative had made such brazen remarks. However, unlike his previous outbursts, the considerable backlash his ‘die quickly’ speech experienced as a result of a video of it being posted on YouTube forced him to return to the House floor and apologize.
Well, if you were expecting an actual apology from Rep. Grayson – fat chance! For the second night in a row, the House floor was yielded to the Democratic representative from the state of Florida. However, rather then apologize to his Republican colleagues for his remarks the other night, he chose to apologize instead to “the dead.” And, no, he did not mean the thousands, if not millions, who have died in this country as a result of the euthanasia and abortion procedures the Florida legislator supports. During the course of the rest of his speech that evening, he referred to the nation’s health care crisis as the “American Holocaust” and some how managed to invoked the dead from the Iraq war and the September 11th terrorist attacks.
As Eric Erickson at Red State said, if the Florida GOP was looking for a politician to use as a target in order to raise campaign funds for their own candidates, they found him!
Well, it appears it is about time to add one more to the list. Appearing on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on Tuesday, September 29th, Representative Grayson claimed that the Republican health care plan made it clear people were not to get sick. If people did get sick, he said, the plan called for them to die quickly.
As the video demonstrates, President Obama, speaking this past August, said, “Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed.” Hmm … it appears Rep. Grayson wasn’t listening.
Another possibility is that he is simply letting it all hang out at this point, knowing full well that he won’t be reelected to his seat in November 2010. Grayson’s district has a partisan voting index of R+2. And while it barely went to Obama in the last presidential election, it went strongly for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. There is a strong possibility that Alan Grayson, like so many of his Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress, know their time left in office is very, very short all of sudden.
In an article in today’s Politico, Josh Kraushaar offers an analysis of a political commentary and research resource, The Cook Report, to explain which states are the most active in the fight for or against Obamacare. The reasons for such vigorous debate in these areas, he argues, are the high populations of seniors and geographic political leanings.
Many of the hot spots are in states and districts with high concentrations of senior voters.
In its report to subscribers, The Cook Political Report argued that the 2010 midterm elections are shaping up to be an election for “angry white seniors” who are the least supportive of President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda and are poised to turn out in large numbers to the polls to express their displeasure next year.
Indeed, according to exit poll data, Obama is facing a stark generational gap. In last year’s presidential contest, he carried 66 percent of the vote among 18-29-year-old voters but won only 45 percent among seniors — a 21-point difference.
Health care has also become a contentious issue for Democrats in rural, conservative-minded states and districts — that are traditionally resistant to change and hesitant to support any Obama-backed initiatives.
“There’s a perception out there, fed by the cap-and-trade energy bill vote, that Democrats have continued a policy that prioritizes big institutions over small-town institutions,” said Cook Political Report House analyst David Wasserman.
And, if all that grumpiness is paired with a frustrated and apathetic liberal base still nursing its wounds from not getting what it wants, the Democrats’ prospects get even worse.
The states that have proved to be the most contentious for the health care reform debate are:
Medicaid is, for some states, an even bigger expense than education. That’s just one reason to try new reforms. The James Madison Institute highlights a pilot program enacted in Florida.
JMI president Bob McClure says “Medicaid spending in Florida. It is absolutely unsustainable. … Continuing down this path, state government would not be able to fund core functions such as education and public safety without massive tax increases.”
There’s a better solution than a federal expansion of Medicaid: “Currently, Florida has two pilot projects in Broward and Duval counties that allow Medicaid patients to allocate their own dollars to fit their individual needs. In essence, this pilot project brings market discipline to an out-of-control entitlement program.”
Mr. Obama’s new count of 30 million uninsured people comes just as the Census Bureau released its latest count. The Bureau puts the number in 2008 at 46.3 million, up from 45.7 million in 2007. This is an extremely modest increase, especially since the number with insurance grew by 1.4 million. Some interesting items from the new report include:
The percentage of uninsured Hispanics decreased from 32.1 percent in 2007 to 30.7 percent in 2008.
The percentage of uninsured children also decreased, from 11.0 percent in 2007 to 9.9 percent in 2008.
Massachusetts is now the state with the lowest percentage, dropping from 9.8 percent in 2005-06 to 5.4 percent in 2007-08 (these are two-year averages).
The next lowest states are Minnesota at 8.5 percent and Wisconsin at 8.9 percent.
The states with the highest rates of uninsurance continue to be Texas at 25.1 percent, New Mexico at 23.1 percent, and Florida at 20.1 percent.
These numbers are supposed to capture all of 2008, but not 2009. The economy had slowed a lot in 2008, and it is surprising that not more people reported being without coverage. Continued growing unemployment in 2009 very likely has resulted in a surge of non-insurance this year.
A new article in Health Affairs raises new questions about the accuracy of these Census numbers. In particular, this study looks at the under-reporting of people on Medicaid. I won’t go into detail here, but the study says because the Census survey asks people to remember back to their situation a year or more ago, they get results that are not reliable, “some people answer the Current Population Survey as if it were asked ‘for all of the previous calendar year.’ Others answer the survey as the point-in-time conjecture would suggest–giving their insurance status as of the interview month.”
This is particularly true of people on Medicaid, but “there is little reason to believe that Medicaid responses are a special case. Instead, it seems likely that similar response problems apply to other types of health insurance recorded in the Current Population Survey.”
Tomorrow the Organizing for America Bus will be hitting Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow after its stop in Raliegh, North Carolina today. After Georgia, the bus will be going through Florida, making stops in Tallahassee, Orlando, and Tampa.
A refresher: Tampa was the location of one of the large fight break-outs at health care town halls. To view the articles:
Florida is also the location of Charlie Crist and Cover Florida. Charlie Crist has already said that with Cover Florida, that the health insurance “crisis” in Florida is taken care of and that they do not want or need Obamacare.
The next few weeks of the Organizing for America Bus Tour should be interesting!
A number of legislators have introduced bills to amend their states’ constitutions with the goal of preserving health freedom. The bills typically include language that does the following:
Prohibit laws that restrict a person’s choice of health care;
Prohibit private payment for health care;
Prohibit the state from requiring any resident from having health insurance;
The Arizona measure will be on the general election ballot in 2010; the Florida resolution has been prefiled in advance of the 2010 session; the Michigan resolution was filed just this week, and the Minnesota resolution was carried over from the 2009 to the 2010 session.
You would likely be hard-pressed to find a historian of the executive office who would claim that a single president in this nation’s history ever used the phrase ‘wee-weed up’ before. Well, add that to the list of firsts for President Barack Obama. In fact, judging by the amused and hamstrung looks around the web, he may have been the first person EVER to use the phrase. As far as conservatives are concerned, Ronald Reagan’s title as the ‘Great Communicator’ appears to be safe.
On Thursday afternoon, the president held a live online conference call with his personal civilian army, Organizing for America (OFA), and union hit-men, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), in which he laid out the liberal strategy and message within the health care reform debate going forward into September. He was joined by Virginia Governor and Chairman of the DNC Tim Kaine, Representative for the 20th Congressional District of Florida Debbie Wasserman Schultz, OFA Political Director Addisu Demissie, OFA Deputy Director Jeremy Bird, and OFA Director Mitch Stewart.
In spite of falling poll numbers, including the latest from left-leaning Zogby who places the presidential approval rating at a dismal forty-five percent, the lowest found by any pollster, the president assured his followers that the media was ‘once again’ writing him off too early. “All Washington said ‘Oh, it’s over,’ hand-wringing angst,” he said referring to the first state to hold a 2008 Democratic nominating contest, which saw him capture a come-from-behind win. He later took a swipe at former-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, paralleling the media frenzy over her nomination as Republican opponent John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election to what is going on now. “The media was obsessed with it, cable was 24 hours a day,” said Obama, “’Obama’s lost his mojo,’ you remember all that?” The president said, “There’s something about August going into September where everyone in Washington gets all ‘wee-weed’ up.”
Sorry … umm, what? ‘All wee-weed up,’ you said? What does that even mean? Wow, Obama seriously needs to stick to his security blanket – his script or his beloved teleprompter – because as soon as he is off it, he comes off as a complete rube. Scratch that. There are rubes that make more sense then he did right there. And how naïve or perhaps just plain inane of Obama to compare August last year when he was a relative unknown to August now where everybody in the world knows who he is? McQ at Right Wing News correctly points out that for the first time since … well, ever President Obama can truthfully say that ‘this isn’t about me.’ Yes, Mr. President, you are right. It is far more then just you and the American people know it.
This past Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC seemed just like a scene taken right out of the height of the McCarthy-era, only this time the Democrats were not targeting Communists – yes, the majority of the Congressional politicians gung-ho about hunting Communists throughout the United States were Democrats, Southern Democrats but Democrats nonetheless – but members of the Tea Party Patriots Coalition.
The video below, provided by Newsbusters, shows far-left wing-nut Rachel Maddow and moderator David Gregory hounding Dick Armey, head of Freedom Works, as to whether or not he and his organization belonged to the Tea Party Coalition, a group Maddow alleges promotes violence.
A transcript of the exchange is also included:
DAVID GREGORY: So you repudiate the Nazi imagery and all of that: you repudiate that?
DICK ARMEY: Absolutely.
GREGORY: That has no place in the debate?
ARMEY: As I said, I repudiated it when MoveOn.org did it to George Bush. Did anybody here at this table repudiate it?
RACHEL MADDOW: You’re a member of the –
ARMEY: We’ve just heard that it’s all right when MoveOn.org did it.
MADDOW: That’s not true.
ARMEY: But it’s not alright when anybody does it.
MADDOW: The Tea Party Patriots is an organization that your organization is a member of a coalition with. It’s called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Freedom Coalition Partner. That’s what Freedom Works is, that’s what Americans For Prosperity is. Tea Party Patriots, what they’ve got on their front page of their web site, the top item, is a video showing the violence at the town hall in Ybor City, in Tampa, Florida. Essentially promoting that as if that was a good thing that happened, that showed what the Health Care Freedom Coalition wants to happen in that debate. Freedom Works is part of that coalition. You can say that you denounce it but the organization that you head is part of it.
ARMEY: One of the fascinating things about the Tea Party movement is that it is an enormously impressive grassroots uprising across the country, loosely affiliated people. And there’s probably 100, 200 websites by different people.
MADDOW: Are you a member of the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Freedom Coalition?
ARMEY: I’m a member of Freedom Works, and Freedom Works works with many people who fight for and argue on behalf of individual liberty.
Notice how Maddow pressured Armey to repudiate the use of Nazi-imagery at town hall events across the country. And then how he turns it on its head back toward her, only for her to dodge the claim entirely. It’s unfortunate though that Armey didn’t bring up the coincidental fact that Nazi-imagery health care town hall meetings only began to surface and be picked up by the mainstream media AFTER Nancy Pelosi made the outlandish claim that tea party protestors brandished “swastikas and symbols like that.” Not Armey’s fault; the man barely had time to breathe. But Maddow’s a Rhodes scholar, right? Either she can’t make the connections that a two-year-old probably could, or, more likely, she simply refuses to accept the fact that Democrats are behind this ‘sudden’ emergence of Nazi-propaganda at town hall events, as has been extensively covered here at Healthcare Horserace.
And what video taken from the Rep. Castor town hall event in Tampa Bay, Florida is Maddow watching? Did she simply make up on in her head to suit her liberal agenda? If anything, the videos that are available, in addition to interviews with individuals who were at the event, suggest that SEIU, not the tea party protestors, caused the violence.
At least if it ever comes down to hearings, tea party protestors will retain the dignity and not plead the fifth.
