The Respect Scale

So, I just watched the video in the last post for the first time since I posted it. It's a hell of a lot more relevant now than it was two years ago. Let's go ahead and check out a couple of things.

Respect:
I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll go into more detail with this later. Everybody remembers the Dixie Chicks, right? I mean, they haven't already completely disappeared, have they? Well, they went overseas and their lead singer said that she was ashamed that the President of the United States was from Texas. They had a HUGE backlash from their OWN FAN BASE. This was something that was not pushed by the republican party. Yeah, you had some people who call themselves republicans who talked about how horrible they were for doing such a thing, but it was mainly their customers who were disgusted at what was said.

Here was President Bush's actual response in an interview with Tom Brokaw on April 24, 2003:

“The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ... I don't really care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is right for the American people, and if some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America. It stands in stark contrast to Iraq ..."

Now, we have a different controversy. Seems A LOT OF PEOPLE, not just three country music singers along with every non-funny comedian and Hollywood wash-out, have been complaining about Obamacare.

Here is our Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, with no class attacking private citizens because they disagree with her:



"However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion."

"I think they're astroturf....you be the judge."
(ALL HAIL DAVID AXELROD!)
"They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on healthcare."

Now, she knew these people weren't carrying swastikas as a party affiliation thing, they were saying Obamacare seems very similar to Nazi care.

Which it is.

Also, the "Oh it's so horrible we can't have a civil debate," thing is now very old and tired. If they wanted to have a civil debate on this issue, they would have presented the bill and said, "OK, let's debate it and figure out what we're going to do." Instead, we have a bill over twelve thousand pages that they wanted to vote on in forty eight hours without any discussion or EVEN GIVING PEOPLE A CHANCE TO READ THE BILL!

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said this:

“If we fail to do it now,” he said, “we’ll lose some of the steam that we have and the sense of urgency.”

President Obama said this:

"I’m rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs and they ask me, “Can you help?” So I’ve got a middle-aged couple that will write me, and they say, “Our daughter just found out she’s got leukemia, and if I don’t, uh, do something soon, we just… Either going to go bankrupt or, we’re not going to be able to get our daughter the care."

He also said this:

"We did give them a deadline, and sort of we missed that deadline. But that's OK," Obama said. "We don't want to just do it quickly, we want to do it right."

And this:

“I don’t want a delay just because of politics,’’ he told a crowd on July 23rd.

Henry Waxman said this:

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has threatened to bypass his own committee and move a sweeping health care bill to the House floor if conservative Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition don't agree to back the package.
Read more:

Oh yeah, and in November of 2004, Obama said this when talking about the whole process of legislation:

"-When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody’s read ‘em....-Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate, then these kinds of things happen, and I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean, you remember there was no real debate about that, it was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced — that people felt very intimidated by the administration."

I feel much more intimidated by this than I ever was by the Patriot Act. Anyone else?