Yet Another Thing That Senator Sessions Doesn't Know.

More about the town hall event later today. (4.00 / 2)

I got there this morning over an hour before the start time and there were already about 20 people in line.  They filled the main room to capacity by 8:30, sent people into an 120-seat overflow room with video, and a friend who couldn't get in at all said that when he arrived about 8:50 (the event started at 9), there were a "couple of hundred people standing out in the parking lot."

It was a well-behaved crowd with some good questions and other rather kooky ones like this particular one.  Then there was another woman who ranted for a while about living in a "fascist state" where government could control our lives.

I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and remind her: "honey, Bush isn't president anymore," but she was too far away.

I'm not short.  I'm fun size!!

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by: countrycat @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 12:32:48 PM CDT

Sessions probably got cheers with that line (4.00 / 3)

This is what health care reformers are up against -- grandstanding Republicans, who don't want anything good to happen on Obama's watch, and an uninformed public that will, apparently, believe anything they're told as long as it bolsters their existing prejudices.

The woman in the linked video is reasonably articulate and sounds like she had a decent education, but she's willfully ignorant, not only of the issue at hand but also about her own life.  She says her family has a health insurance policy with a $5,000 deductible that they're about to blow past with a second surgery for her son.  Then she goes on to say that the community should take care of uninsured people who need health care.  Is she really prepared to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to her uninsured neighbor who, say, gets a breast cancer diagnosis or has a premature baby who requires months of inpatient neonatal care?  I bet she'd change her tune PDQ under those scenarios.

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by: Kathy @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 12:42:02 PM CDT

Not to mention those "please help get junior a new kidney" donation bins (4.00 / 2)

set up in local stores, churches, etc.

Maybe that's her idea of neighbors "helping" the uninsured.  Takes a lot of quarters to raise $100k or more....

I'm not short.  I'm fun size!!

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by: countrycat @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 12:52:08 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The community taking care of uninsured people (4.00 / 1)

Is awfully like a public option with a subsidy, with the community being the entire nation.  That gets you enough resources to take care of people.
Keeping it local is a good idea for food, not so much for health care funding.

"The War in Iraq is not the disease. The War in Iraq is a symptom. Arrogance is the disease" - Bill Richardson

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by: herding old cats @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 22:37:01 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

What a weasel! (4.00 / 2)

Jeff Sessions couldn't bring himself to tell the truth -- which he ought to know if he's read any of the bills circulating!  Is he pretending ignorance for political gain?  Almost certainly, although it's hard to tell when our junior Senator is pretending to be ignorant vs. the real condition.

Work harder and work smarter!

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by: mooncat @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 13:29:29 PM CDT

Sessions & Shelby want to Repeal Medicare. (4.00 / 3)

.
 They also want to Repeal All V.A. Health Benefits.

 How do I know this?  Well, they hate "government insurance", so defeating a Public Option would be Step 1.  Next on the agenda:  dismantling Medicare and Veterans' benefits and turning all THAT over to the "private market".

 Stands to reason.

BenGoshi
_____________________________

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by: BenGoshi @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 15:43:06 PM CDT

Medicare (4.00 / 5)

As we waited to get in and then for the event to start, I noticed that it was - for the most part - an older crowd.  Definitely lots of gray hair.

It was all I could do to keep quiet as people milled about and chatted - with the epithets of "socialism" "government run health care" and "socialized medicine" bandied about frequently.

Several also lamented the lack of "younger people" at the event.  "Where are all the young people?" they asked each other.

"Well buddy," I wanted to interject, "they're probably at their jobs so they can make money and pay Medicare taxes for that dern "socialized medicine" program you want to keep sacrosanct." ---- even as you show up here today determined to deny those youngsters the opportunity to have affordable health insurance.


I'm not short.  I'm fun size!!

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by: countrycat @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 16:09:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Insuring the Un-insured is socialism/Marxit/Big Government (4.00 / 4)

Healthcare reform will raise your taxes and take away your freedom.

Congress hasn't read the bill.

The un-insured can go to the emergency room for treatment.

The government can't run the post office how are they going to run healthcare?  

The government is bad.

These are the arguments I heard in the parking lot from the *cough* protestors today.  There was a young pregnant white woman there today bragging because she didn't have access to healthcare.  She said she didn't want the government providing healthcare because it would raise her taxes.  I wonder who is going to foot the bill for the birth of her baby?

It's not about healthcare reform, it's about President Obama.

The purpose of the Townhall meetings was supposed to be to hear from taxpayers on both sides and try to come up with a solution that would benefit all Americans.  

The teabaggers, birthers, deathers and sore losers have hijacked the debate and the media provided the getaway car.


The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.~Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D. MA)

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by: Redeye @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 18:47:13 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Oh! That stupid would hurt. They'd stop that crap in a nanosecond. -nt- (4.00 / 1)

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by: BenGoshi @ Fri Aug 14, 2009 at 20:00:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The things that Senator Sessions Doesn't Know (4.00 / 1)

Would fill volumes, and in fact, does, both figuratively and literally.
But as Will Rogers said about Herbert Hoover:
"It ain't so much what he don't know, it's what he knows that just ain't so!"

"The War in Iraq is not the disease. The War in Iraq is a symptom. Arrogance is the disease" - Bill Richardson

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by: herding old cats @ Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 22:27:16 PM CDT