Thursday, March 4, 2010

I have a two and a half year old son and while he does happen to be the cutest, best behaved boy on the planet he's still two and a half so he has his moments of rebellion.  The other night he was procrastinating before bed-time and insisted that he wanted to read books on the living room couch rather than in bed, which is our normal routine.  We told him no so after a few minutes of trying to negotiate with us he started crying and yelling "on the couch" every 5 seconds or so.

He kept this up for over an hour without taking a break.

As we sat in the other room listening to his tantrum I couldn't quite put my finger on what it reminded me of.  The next day while listening to the news it became crystal clear: The GOP's stance on the current health care bill. President Obama and the Democrats have bent over backwards to earn the Republicans' support, including adding more and more Conservative ideas (which liberals find boneheaded and counterproductive) to the bill yet all the GOP can do is stand on their side of the isle and scream "scrap the bill".  The more I thought about it the more perfect the analogy became.  Hell, "scrap the bill" even has the same number of syllables as "on the couch".  The party of Lincoln has devolved (er, I mean been unintelligently created into) a bunch of whining two-year olds with nothing to add to the dialog but visceral anger, threats and fear.

No, I take that back - I went too far.  My son did calm down after an hour.  When we tucked him into bed a few minutes later he said he was sorry and told us he loved us.  Seriously.  (I told you he was the best kid on the planet). 

Two-year olds: I did not mean to insult you so harshly. Please accept my humble apology.

Today's GOP, finding absurd and then digging deeper

2 comments:

  1. The only thing I hear people want from our leaders is a valid/rational explanation as to how we are to PAY for this bill. That's all. I don't know of a single person who doesn't agree that reform is necessary to one degree or another. We just differ in terms of priorities I guess.

    You see, I voted for a president who promised sweeping change in how government would do business... gotta give him a D on this one, he started off well but has turned into exactly what I loathed about the previous administration (back door deals and ambiguity with respect to issues).

    I voted for a president who promised to work on the economy and jobs... gotta give him an F- on this one. He has, evidently, decided that this health care bill is far more important to the every day American than the economy and jobs. W-R-O-N-G!

    I voted for a president who I thought would look me in the eye and be honest. I've heard several times over the past month how he wants a "straight up and down" vote on this bill...and yet he won't put it up for a vote! Again...F- on this one.

    I'm sorry to say that this administration has proven me wrong enough times that I absolutely regret my decision. And people like you, who don't ask questions... who don't look at the numbers (the REAL numbers, not the ones touted by either side of the debate to serve their own needs) scare the hell out of me.

    Please believe me when I tell you that you have the correct analogy in saying your son and our politicians share characteristics...you simply chose to highlight them in terms of the wrong side. To me it is the Democrats who have stubbornly held onto the belief that they know better than we (the citizens) about what is best for us. Their arrogance is straight out of George W. Bush's manual on how to get things done in Washington! I say we start all over again...and by that I mean our political system and mentality.

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  2. Hello and thanks for reading. I sincerely appreciate it and hope you'll keep doing so.

    But there are a couple of things I think you should remember:

    Early in 2009 the President signed into law a $787 billion dollar stimulus package (which many liberal economists thought was too small) What should he do - sign another? Do you think Congress or the people would allow it? Right, of course not. For the record about $250 Billion of that bill was tax cuts to satisfy Republicans yet not a single one voted for it. Bipartisanship indeed.

    You've also forgotten that the health care bill passed *both* houses of Congress last year on "up or down" votes and then it happened again this week. Twice in each house. F-? Really?

    You say that I scare you because I don't look at "REAL numbers". What numbers? The CBO's? That's not "either side of the debate" - they're as nonpartisan as you get in Washington. They gave it a thumbs up and the strongest disagreement I saw with any shred of credibility at all was from Douglass Holtz-Eakin who, as John McCain's chief economic adviser, wouldn't have an axe to grind, now would he?

    What the Democrats have stubbornly held on to is the belief that they were elected to get things done, like health care reform and ending the war in Iraq. The more private citizens know about the health care bill the more they like it. So should Congress listen to them or the uninformed who get their news only from Fox and Limbaugh? Now there's a scary thought, indeed.

    Exactly 1 Republican voted for health care reform in 2009 despite all of the Republican provisions Democrats added to attract them to it. Single-payer (a genuine liberal idea) was never even on the table. The weak public option was ultimately negotiated away. At the end the thing came out more conservative than the bill Richard Nixon, a Republican remember, proposed in 1974. And yet this week exactly 0 Republicans voted for any of it. Why should the Democrats cede any ideas to them when they're just going to continue to obstruct, lie and vote no anyway?

    Speaking of which have you seen what's been going on the last two days? Republicans are blocking *all* committee activity in the Senate simply because they lost. That's infantile.

    And while I do appreciate your comments and I invite you to keep reading and posting, reality is strengthening my analogy daily.

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