Lack of internet access prevented last week’s webcast from…uh…existing. Hopefully today that all changes. Watch this space between 3:00 and 4:00 CST.
Update: Hey, it mostly worked. Here’s the video:
And here’s the audio.
Shocker — Republicans plan to exploit fear
By now you’ve probably heard about the Republican National Committee campaign strategy document that made its way into the hands of Politico’s Ben Smith. To sum up: In the 2010 election, Republicans will manipulate conservative and independent voters by exploiting their fears, call the President a socialist, and pry dough out of contributors by giving them trinkets.
Yawn. That’s what Republicans do. Remember 2004? Gays were destroying traditional marriage, so conservatives — especially religious conservatives — had to rush to the polls to amend eleven state constitutions to prevent activist judges from turning the entire nation into a pack of raging fairies. Fear of gays drove conservative voting through the roof.
As Republicans know, fear isn’t just good for elections, it’s useful in governing too. Here’s Houston’s own Congressman John Culberson demonstrating how:
Over the past year, Americans have said in every possible way – through letters, phone calls, town hall meetings, and elections – that they do not want a government takeover of health care. Today, the president will once again deny the American people the right to a clean start with health care reform, instead opting to push through his own agenda.
Culberson knows the health care reform being debated in Washington isn’t anything like a “government takeover,” it’s insurance reform. But why should that get in the way of a good talking point? People who didn’t vote for the President, never wanted to reform health care, and always opposed his entire agenda, many of whom were actually on the insurance industry’s payroll, wrote “letters, [made] phone calls, [attended] town hall meetings, and [participated in] elections?” Wow, that’s some evidence of public dissatisfaction.
The Congressman is obviously not overly burdened with things like “facts.” Here’s an interesting one he might have looked up: polls show that people are still overwhelmingly in favor of the public option, which he opposes. By his logic, shouldn’t he have jumped on the public option bandwagon months ago — you know, because he represents the people and not the insurance and other industry lobbyists from whom he has taken tens of thousands of dollars?
Culberson also thinks the President ought to pay attention to election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts where Republicans have recently won. From those three races, Culberson says the President ought to conclude that people don’t want the change he’s pushing. That’s odd advice coming from a man who, in the wake of President Obama’s landslide nationwide victory in 2008, opposed the new administration’s entire agenda.
But John Culberson is just a poorly functioning cog in the entirely unoriginal Republican talking point machine. Political philosopher Rick Perry says President Obama is “hell bent on taking America towards a socialist country.” (Forget for a moment that the literal meaning of Perry’s remarks is that the President wants to throw all 300 million of us into a station wagon and drive us in the general direction of Montreal.) Perry was at the time pandering to teabaggers, who have already concluded that Obama is a socialist, communist, and a Nazi because of his socialist, communist, Nazi health care plan.
You see, as conservatives have pointed out, Obama and Congressional Democrats’ health care reform plan represents a
step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.
Oh, wait — that’s not a teabagger talking about health care, it’s the conservative National Organization of Manufacturers in 1938, opposing a national minimum wage and overtime pay. Clearly conservatives were right about that one. I assume Congressman Culberson and fellow conservatives will get right on legislation repealing the minimum wage.
Anyway, my mistake. As so many Republicans have pointed out, our communist president’s plan to provide universal health care is
socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.
Oops. That was actually Republican Senator Carl Curtis in 1965, explaining why the creeping socialism of Medicare needed to be fought. Senator Curtis wasn’t alone either. Here’s the one man Republicans are okay being gay about making the same point — Medicare is socialism and will ruin health care and tear apart the fabric of our society:
Of course, it’s not just Medicare. Republican Senator Daniel O. Hastings of Delaware could have been any modern Republican talking about health care reform when he said in 1935 that if Congress enacted Social Security, it would
end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.
With all of this hindsight, is there really any question that Senators Curtis, Hastings, and the Gipper were right? Republicans in Congress will surely soon introduce the Geezer Anti-Socialist Initiative and Fending for One’s Own Wrinkled Self Act of 2010 in order to repeal Medicare and Social Security.
And while we’re at it, here’s another good conservative point: health care reform is a socialist plot which will kill jobs by
multiplying governmental mandates and delivering [businesses] to the mercies of multiplying and hampering Federal bureaucracy
Gosh this is confusing. That quote sounds just like today’s Republicans opposing health care reform. But it’s not. No, that was actually the position taken by conservative opponents of child labor laws in 1938. They fought heroically for the rights of nine year olds to a seventy hour work week. To do otherwise would cause “the child [to] become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.” Just another milestone in the conservative defense of the nation from socialist tyranny.
As with Medicare and Social Security, it’s pretty much beyond dispute that conservatives were right about child labor in 1938. The GOP will therefore soon be introducing the Get Your Lazy Nine Year Old Back to Work Act.
As every American knows, many of the nation’s problems can be traced to the kinds of societal divisions with which we’ve struggled from the beginning. As with health care reform, conservatives had ingenious plans for dealing with inequality: Do nothing. Here’s Republican President Grover Cleveland in 1905:
Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.
Silly broads.
Ultra conservative Democrat, Dixiecrat, and finally Republican Senator Strom Thurmond and friends saw the issue a little differently in 1956. Women voters weren’t the problem in the south. No, there the issue instead was northern socialist agitators who, by insisting on equal rights for African-Americans were
destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.
See? Blacks were happy with the south’s pre-civil rights Jim Crow laws, segregation, separate and unequal public accommodations, housing discrimination, and, of course, lynching. Those were the good old days for everybody. Even former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) recognized in 2002 that if America had only listened to conservative civil rights opponents like Thurmond, “all these problems” could have been avoided.
So to sum up: Conservatives oppose President Obama and the Democrats’ plan to reform health care because it’s a socialist plot that costs too much, will destroy freedom, kill jobs, and is far more change than people want. Conservatives have previously opposed the following on exactly the same basis:
-Medicare and Medicaid
-Child Labor Laws
-The Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay
-Women’s Suffrage
-Social Security
-Civil Rights
With that kind of track record, why shouldn’t Americans trust conservatives’ judgment? Just as a matter of statistics, surely they’re due to get one right someday.
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.
Partisan Gridlock – live with video
Today’s show is from 3:00-4:00 CST and will be streamed live right here….
By the way — get out your wallet. Pledge drive continues and we’ll continue to explore what talk radio sounds like without progressives on the air. It ain’t pretty.
Unfortunately, internet problems at the station prevented live streaming, but today’s show is available here.
Republican leader: Whites shouldn’t have to pay for health care for blacks
Rush Limbaugh says that the health reform bills pending in Congress amount to nothing more than “civil rights” legislation and “reparations.”
Shorter Limbaugh: Honest, hardworking white people shouldn’t have to pay for health care for shiftless, lazy coloreds. To Limbaugh of course, it makes perfect sense: Obama (who is a Magic Negro) wants to redistribute the wealth to minorities because the nation’s first African-American president is an “uppity” “boy.” Besides, says Limbaugh, blacks are “twelve percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”
In other news, TPM today discovered an email that “Mark Williams, the conservative talk radio host who has become a prominent spokesman for the Tea Party Express, sent [] in September.” In it, Williams called Barack Obama “our half white, racist president.”
Anyway, now that they’ve put a rest to the country’s racial divisions, perhaps Limbaugh and Williams will address other problems plaguing the nation: Injun wagon train ambushes, the creeping socialism of child labor laws, women sassing their husbands, Chinamen refusing to work on the railroad, and the crisis in health care created by our ongoing leech shortage.
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.
CPAC question of the day: Is the conservative movement bigoted enough?
There was a debate today at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) about whether an organization of gay Republicans should have been permitted to be a CPAC co-sponsor. One speaker wanted to welcome politically conservative members of the LGBT community:
Another wasn’t pleased at the thought of gays and lesbians being anything other than second class citizens:
Democrats went through something similar at their 1948 convention:
When [] Harry Truman established a highly visible President’s Committee on Civil Rights and ordered an end to discrimination in the military in 1948 and the Democratic National Convention in 1948 adopted the plank proposed by Hubert Humphrey calling for civil rights, 35 southerners walked out.
Of course, that was sixty two years ago.
So there you have it. It’s 2010 and the nation’s premier conservative gathering is reduced to heckling, catcalls, and narcissistic grandstanding over whether a minority group should even be allowed in the door. Just the thing to make the rest of America think to itself, “hey, these are exactly the kinds of visionaries we need to lead us through the 21st century.”
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.
Today’s show…with webcast
Today’s pledge goal was exceeded. Thanks to everyone who gave…and to those who will give next week. Just one more pledge show, then it’s back to regular programming. We’ll probably keep the webcast for now and see how it goes.
Listen here.
Video simulcast
This may or may not work. We’re going to try and stream the show live in studio from now on. If it works, it’ll appear here every Friday between 3:00 and 4:00 CST:
Judge Leslie Brock Yates attacks challenger, likely to draw bar complaint
You don’t hear much about judicial races because, frankly, the Code of Judicial Conduct requires that they be pretty boring. Judges are prohibited from making politically-charged statements meant to single out lawyers or express opinions about certain types of cases. As a result, campaigns for the bench are generally filled with platitudes like “I have the experience and judgment to serve. I will always be fair and apply the law.” Zzzzz.
That changed last week in the race for the Republican nomination for a spot on the Houston-based 14th Court of Appeals. On February 11th, sixteen year Republican incumbent Judge Leslie Brock Yates sent a letter to GOP primary voters accusing her primary opponent, Republican trial Judge Sharon McCally, of being a liberal who is trying to buy Yates’ job.
Yates’ letter (complete with official-looking but phony State of Texas seal), accuses McCally of being a tool of the same “liberal Democrat plaintiffs’ personal injury trial lawyers” who “financed Obama and John Edwards.” Of McCally, Yates said:
Before she ran for judge in 2004, she worked as a plaintiffs’ personal injury trial lawyer. She was a good one. She sued small and large businesses, killing jobs and driving up the cost of doing business in Texas. She even sued non-profits like Theatre Under the Stars.
So, when she ran in 2004, it was a campaign of slick ads paid for by her friends — the liberal Democrat plaintiffs’ personal injury trial lawyers.
Canon of Judicial Conduct 5 is called “Refraining from Inappropriate Political Activity” and it applies to all judges in Texas:
(1) A judge or judicial candidate shall not:
(i) make pledges or promises of conduct in office regarding pending or impending cases, specific classes of cases, specific classes of litigants, or specific propositions of law that would suggest to a reasonable person that the judge is predisposed to a probable decision in cases within the scope of the pledge;
Condemning an entire area of practice from the bench obviously undermines public confidence in the impartiality of our courts. If you’re hurt in an accident and get a jury verdict against the business that hurt you, how comfortable would you be with Judge Yates reviewing your award?
Prominent lawyer Tommy Fibich is preparing a complaint against Yates to be filed with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. “In 36 years of practice,” said Fibich, “this is the most outrageous statement from a judicial candidate I’ve ever seen. Anybody who has a case in her court, assuming the public would reelect someone this unfair, should seek to recuse her.”
So outraged was a non-personal injury attorney that she took the time to email Judge Yates personally:
I am a board certified [] attorney. I am the past chair of the [] Section of the State Bar of Texas. I have a long history of financially supporting good judges, regardless of party affiliation. My financial support of good judges (who happen to be Republican) is probably why I received your mail out dated February 11, 2010. I am so appalled by your letter I had to write. It makes me think that you are not qualified to sit and hear any personal injury case. The idea that you, a sitting member of the judiciary would say “I’m a Republican- and I don’t appreciate liberal Democrats trying to interfere in our elections.” I’m sorry, have you failed to accept donations from corporations or PAC groups? What do you promise these people? Too bad you never mentioned “fair and open minded” in your literature. Your reference to our ELECTED president is also just unpatriotic and so disrespectful. I am shocked that you so boldly and proudly tell the world that you will not be fair to any personal injury case.If you are qualified, you might consider the idea that a good judge is a FAIR judge. A good judge would be proud to state that EVERYONE in their court is equal and gets a fair chance.
You should be ashamed. As a fellow female attorney, I am ashamed for you.
A court that decides cases before they’re filed is a travesty of a mockery of a sham. Don’t believe it? Go file a breach of contract claim against a member of the ruling Assad family in Syria or defend yourself from charges of dissent in Cuba. Countries with politicized, biased judiciaries are banana republics. And we can’t have the rest of the country thinking Texas is run by a bunch of clowns.
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.
Pledge, pledge, pledge….
It’s pledge drive around KPFT and we met our goal — thank you. Today’s show was filled with lots of right-wing bashing and progressive agenda pushing…and if you didn’t give this week, there’s always next week’s pitch. Give, give, give.
Listen here.
Republicans to dying five year old: We saved you from socialism. You’re welcome.
As Republicans (and a few conservative Democrats) continue to reject each and every proposal to reform the health care system because their big donors don’t want anything cutting in to their multi-million dollar salaries, keep Kyle Van Nocker in mind. He’s one of the people who would’ve benefited from the package of health care reforms proposed by the Democrats and killed by Republicans and their teabagger allies.
[He] has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.
Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”
Van Nocker’s parents are suing HealthAmerica, citing the fact that the company has apparently been dishonest about its criteria for the types of treatment it will cover and is denying payment for treatment in this case because of the high cost of the procedure — $110,000 pays for only two rounds of MIBG treatment. “These companies have to be brought to the courthouse to get them to do the right thing [not in Texas, where the all-Republican Supreme Court routinely rules in favor of the insurance industry and against its victims - ED],” says the VanNockers’s family attorney. “This child needs this treatment, or else.”
Kyle’s probably going to die. Had the Democrats’ health care proposals become law last year, Kyle wouldn’t have had to worry about an insurance company dumping him when he got sick. First, it would have been illegal; and second, regardless of what the private company did, Kyle’s parents could always have gotten coverage through a public option, which would have paid for his treatment.
But of course Barack Hussein Oabma is a Kenyan socialist who wants to kill your grandparents, ban the bible, and oppress white people. If you play the Lee Greenwood music loud enough, maybe it’ll drown out the guilt you ought to feel killing the reforms that might have saved Kyle’s life.
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.
