Putting words in our mouths

If you are wary of politicians telling you how you should feel about Obamacare and the government shutdown, you are not alone. Republicans in Washington are losing the conversation, and their infighting may signal the death knell if they don’t show some solidarity and move past this most recent debacle toward a more tenable resolution, something more tenable than shutting down the government and defunding a law that’s already on the books.

Happily, as I never tire of pointing out, merely making an assertion doesn’t make said claim true:

In the first hours of the shutdown, the terrain looks very bad for Republicans. It’s amazing how consistent the polls have been about linking a confrontation over the Affordable Care Act to funding of the government. While polls show the public disapproves of the law, it has consistently told pollsters it is not in favor of tying government operations to defunding the health care plan. In addition to theQuinnipiac poll, the polls from CBSCNNCNBCNational Journal, and Kaiser show this. As GOP Sen. Jeff Flake said, Republicans have found the one gambit less popular than Obamacare.

Conservatives would interrupt the conversation here. They didn’t shut the government down over Obamacare—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shut the government down because he refused to negotiate. This is true; Reid refused to negotiate. But the American public would have to view this confrontation differently for that fact to give the Republicans any leverage. Right now, the public agrees with Democrats: Funding the government and taking apart Obamacare should not be part of the same conversation. How do Republicans change that dynamic? Asserting that Obamacare is not popular hasn’t made a whit of difference. — “Why the Shutdown Looks So Bad for the GOP,” Slate, Oct. 1, 2013

Boehner’s silver sharp tongue

No, this article does not come from The Onion, but from a report from Politico about the political infighting — and outfighting — that ensued on Capitol Hill leading up to the fiscal cliff aversion. John Boehner throws down the gauntlet:

House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

“Go fuck yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.

Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”

Boehner repeated: “Go fuck yourself.”

Politico also takes a look at the top political F-bombs in recent memory.

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Couple hours with talk radio on Friday night

Thank goodness for fringe talk radio to keep me angry enough late at night so I’m not attempted to fall asleep at the wheel while returning from a lengthy trip Lexington, Ga., to cover a football game.

I’m not sure what radio host, Mark Levin’s, obsession is with The Washington Post (Levin calls it The Washington Compost) writer, Dana Milbank, but Milbank is linked on Levin’s Web site, and Levin, in usual form, went into a 10-minute rant about this column, appearing Friday in The Post. In it, Milbank detailed some of the more unusual features of a protest held Thursday on Capitol Hill by House Republicans and Tea Party supporters, who were rallying against the health care reform bill currently under consideration. To briefly point out some of what Milbank observed:

In the front of the protest, a sign showed President Obama in white coat, his face painted to look like the Joker. The sign, visible to the lawmakers as they looked into the cameras, carried a plea to “Stop Obamunism.” A few steps farther was the guy holding a sign announcing “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds” [sic], accusing Obama of being part of a Jewish plot to introduce the antichrist.

According to Milbank, also being displayed was a banner which read: “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945.”

Levin on the radio show claimed he saw none of this nonsense, and was quick to point to a 90-year-old veteran he saw in a wheel chair on the front row and the numerous American flags, etc, etc. Levin seemed to indicate that among 20,000 people (He must have had a different math teacher than Milbank, who only recorded about 5,000 in attendance), there were sure to be a few crackpot, zany signs and that you could pick out fringers anywhere, like Waffle House on any given day. But the tough news for Levin is that he is a fringer. In his long rant on the air tonight, Levin accused liberals of doing everything in their power to ridicule some of the strong, female leaders of the conservative movement, like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. He awkwardly threw in the word “attractive” in his description, but I have no idea what physical appearance has to do with anything.

But the point is this. He accused some of ridiculing the intelligence and the very being of people like Palin and others, but leveled a barrage of belittling names Milbank’s way in response to the column. In his vitriol, in which by the end, Levin was for all practical purposes, screaming into the microphone, used the following choice words to describe Milbank (I wrote some of them down as I was listening): “jerk” (three times); “moron”; “propagandis,” and a “pathetic” one at that; “liar”; “coward”; “punk”; “hack”; “ass”; and “backbencher”. The liar and coward accusations begin teetering into slander territory. Regardless, what sort of person do you have to be to, in one breath, accuse someone of belittling or mocking Palin, while not more than two minutes later, to begin such a barrage of insults I just listed against another person?

I want to address one more thing. The use of the word “patriots” to describe Tea Party attendees or Republicans or anti-Obama zealots is just plain offensive to the spirit on which this country was built. One person who called in to Levin’s show described the attendees of the aforesaid rally as “citizen patriots,” whatever that means. This type of nonsense basically throws feces over the venerable graves of John Adams, Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Hancock, George Washington and the thousands who fought from Massachusetts and the other colonies against the British to help us win independence. I’m not a patriot. Obama isn’t a patriot. Levin isn’t a patriot. Neither is Milbank. The New England Patriots aren’t even patriots. The dictionary definition of the word generally means anyone who loves her country, but look deeper, and the word originates from Greek root, patēr, meaning “father,” hence, as it relates to this country, Founding Fathers. Using that word so lightly after all that this country has been through in its 200-plus year history makes a mockery of what the above men worked to accomplish, and it’s personally offensive to me, and it should be to anyone else with a brain.

I’ll probably have more to say on Levin later when it’s not 2 a.m. after having worked 12 hours. …