Thursday, March 25, 2010

We could have - Town Hall meetings!

Yeah, that'd fix it!
“I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Boehner said. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change. Call your congressman, go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, make your voice heard — but let's do it the right way."
Yeah. John? The ballot box gave us people like you, and all those poll-ignoring dems who voted for the bill. That worked well. Then there was the soap box, with which an awful lot of people expressed their disapproval of the bill last August. They got called a bunch of nasty names for their trouble, and otherwise generally ignored. Where were you while that was going on and...hey! What was that third kind of box again?

It seems that immediately following the "Health Care" vote there was a rash of local Democratic Party offices whose windows achieved a state of structural discontinuity through the introduction of crudely-fired ceramic objects. There were some death threats. Certain people seem just a bit impatient with the democratic process at the moment.
The vitriolic health care debate has become personal — too personal, say House Democrats who voted for the bill and now find not just themselves but their families in the cross hairs of opponents.

Slaughter, a Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee, said a caller to her office last week vowed to send snipers to “kill the children of the members who voted yes.” Her office reported the call to police, who were dispatched to provide protection for Slaughter’s grandchildren. She has also been in touch with the FBI and U.S. Postal Service inspectors, who intercepted a letter en route to her home in upstate New York.

Stupak, the Michigan Democrat whose last-minute compromise on abortion guaranteed passage of the bill Sunday, said callers have left messages for him saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.”

“My wife still can’t answer the phone,” Stupak told POLITICO on Tuesday. The messages are “full of obscenities if she leaves it plugged in. In my office, we can’t get a phone out. It’s just bombarded.”

A word here: Involving noncombatants in this is vile behavior. It's the best way I know to keep me off your side. Hands off the families.

Having said that: Politicians, if you leave your "constituents" with no further alternatives, you deserve to be afraid of them. From a certain book:
Winston’s personal favorite began with a formal and rather haughty portrait of an Executive Department director. A deep, calm voice said, “This is your ruler”. Then there was footage of that same director running from his limousine behind a screen of Capitol guards, while the voice said, “This is your ruler on adrenalin.” It ended with an exhortation to “Dose one up today!”


4 comments:

Uncle W. said...

Damn straight, Joel! Right on every point.

As to that "certain book" you quoted and linked to ... I very strongly urge everybody who hasn't yet read it to buy a copy. It's a sequel, so they really ought to buy Walt's Gulch, too. :-) But it's even better than the original -- one hell of a story.

jack said...

What Uncle said...

BTW Is there a chance for a sequel? I asked you this some years back and the answer was inconclusive... :)

Joel said...

That was the sequel. I killed off Michael Owens. (anyone who hasn't read the book, didn't see that.) I can't bring him back ala Obiwan Kenobi.

jack said...

Oh, come on... id doesn't have to be Owens story to be a sequel. You're just trying to weasel out... :)