Democrats Are Scared

I'm against the President and Congress's new proposed nationalized healthcare system. I just wanted to be up front with that from the get-go in this blog post. The proposal is dangerous since it forces every person to either obtain health insurance privately or pay a $1,000.00 fine for not having it. It fails to adequately provide medical care and benefits. You would end up waiting 6 months or more to even be seen by a doctor for diagnosis, then even more time to have any type of procedure done. In effect, the government would get to decide who lives and who dies based on their relative contributions to the good of society. That's scary. And other people have taken notice of the socialized medicine plans. Rallies at town hall meetings are popping up all around the country. And they're not happy rallies. So far, I've watched videos of a dozen or so protests at places like Sen. Chuck Schumer's offices in New York, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Rep. Betty Sutton of Akron, Ohio, Sen. Jim Webb's office in Virginia, and others in California, Washington state, Colorado, Florida, and elsewhere. They're not pretty. Some have ended in fistfights, others have drowned out the Members of Congress so that they cannot speak and end up getting angry themselves. And here's the thing: instead of the Congressmen and Senators listening to their constituents, they are shrugging it off as the "manufactured mobs" created by special interests. They're saying people are being "hired" to come to these town meetings and yell for a couple hours. Well, I'm sorry Nancy Pelosi (who has insinuated that those protesting are "carrying swastikas" - her version of calling the protesters neo-Nazis) and Barack Obama, even if a group is organizing the protest, the people in the group still must all believe there's SOMETHING wrong with your plan. Now, the Democrats are running scared. They're canceling town hall meetings in their districts in favor of controlled-setting "tele-town halls" - which is a fancy way of saying "conference calls" which are monitored by the member's staff who can regulate the questions being asked of the member. As you recently read on this blog, I took part in a tele-town hall meeting with Congressman Jeff Flake (who incidently IS still holding live town hall meetings while he is in the district, and tele-town halls when he is not), and I noticed two things: it would be very easy to control the flow of questions so only softballs get tossed, and two, there is no system for giving the Congressmen feedback. Protests are a strong form of that feedback, and on the telephone under controlled conditions, the message does not get pushed across. The scariest part of all is that now we've actually reached Orwellian tyranny in this country (think "1984"). The President of the United States called for Americans (via the White House blog) to do something about it:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The White House is calling for Americans to TATTLE on other Americans who say something which may or may not be true about Obama's healthcare reform push. For those of you who've ever read "1984": doesn't this sound a little like the Thought Police? It was dangerous in fiction, it'll be worse in reality. I hope everyone will take a little time and write or call their Congressmen/Senators and tell them what you really think of healthcare reform. Or better, attend or help organize a political protest at your local leader's office. In Arizona, that includes Rep. Raul Grijalva (Yuma, Metro Phoenix), Rep. Harry Mitchell (Tempe, Scottsdale), Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick (Flagstaff, Navajo nation, Kingman, Bullhead City, Prescott, Casa Grande), and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (Tucson). If people don't write or call and let them know what a danger their party is putting this country on the path, we may yet see a world where "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."