First Door on the Left

Via Talking Points Memo…

Conservative Activist Forwards Racist Pic Showing Obama As Witch Doctor

The election of our first black president has brought with it a strange proliferation of online racism among conservatives.

And we’ve got the latest example.

On Sunday night, Dr. David McKalip forwarded to fellow members of a Google listserv affiliated with the Tea Party movement the image below. Above it, he wrote: “Funny stuff.”

[Click on the image to view it full-size.]

Now, Tea Party activists trafficking in racist imagery are pretty much dog bites man. But McKalip isn’t just some random winger. He’s a Florida neurosurgeon, who serves as a member of the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates.

He’s also an energetic conservative opponent of health-care reform. McKalip founded the anti-reform group Doctors For Patient Freedom, as well as what seems to be a now defunct group called Cut Taxes Now. Last month he joined GOP congressmen Tom Price and Phil Gingrey, among others, for a virtual town hall to warn about the coming “government takeover of medicine.” And in a recent anti-reform op-ed published in the St. Petersburg Times, McKalip wrote that “Congress wants to create larger, government-funded programs for health care and more bureaucracy that ration care and impose cookbook medicine.”

Unfortunately, as the quoted article indicates, this is by no means an isolated incident. This goes on all the time. In fact, something along the same lines is occurring right now here locally…

Grand Prairie NAACP official gets harassing letter after addressing e-mail investigation

GRAND PRAIRIE – While Grand Prairie police continue their internal inquiry of three officers and a civilian employee over a racist e-mail referencing President Barack Obama, the head of the city’s NAACP chapter now wants them to investigate a harassing letter she found on her doorstep Wednesday.

Angela Luckey said that the “disturbing” handwritten letter, which does not threaten her outright, has her “very concerned” because it came just hours after she appeared on WFAA-TV to talk about the pending e-mail investigation.

The letter reads, “WARNING, GO BACK TO AFRICA AND TAKE YOUR FAMILY WITH YOU. TELL OBAMA THAT HA HA HA AND TAKE HIM WITH YOU [N-word].”

Luckey turned the letter over to investigators Wednesday afternoon, moments after a news conference on the steps of the police department in which she discussed both the letter and e-mail investigation.

Grand Prairie police have placed the three officers and the civilian dispatcher on administrative leave pending the outcome of that inquiry. Officials have said a fourth officer may also be included in the inquiry, pending that officer’s return from vacation.

The e-mail, which appears to be a racist joke forwarded from outside the department, refers to Air Force One as “(N-word) One” and says that Obama will not be in office long because it’s well known that black men can’t keep a job for four years.

(Grand Prairie is a suburb of Dallas.)

I have a directory on my hard drive that contains the anti-Obama images I have found online since he took office. Most are from right-wing blogs and most are very racist in nature. I may publish them someday, but not today.

I remember being accused of having “Bush Derangement Syndrome” whenever I would disagree with George W. Bush while he was in office. I don’t know whether I did or not. I don’t think so. I didn’t hate George W. Bush. I just disagreed with nearly everything he said and did. Whatever I may have had, though, was a very minor scratch compared to the hatred, bitterness and vitriol now emanating from the right wing of the Republican party toward our current President.

And it’s only going to get worse.
 

President Obama hosted a nationally televised (except for FOX) press conference this evening. His topic was health care reform and all except two of the questions from the press corps addressed that issue. My personal opinion is that the President did an excellent job of addressing the critics of health care reform and answering the objections they have raised throughout this long and drawn-out process.

A full transcript of the press conference is available following the break.

Continue Reading »

Here is something to keep in mind as you prepare to watch President Obama’s nationally televised press conference tonight (set to begin in less than 30 minutes)…

About One in Six U.S. Adults Are Without Health Insurance

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As congressional lawmakers debate healthcare reform legislation, partly aimed at expanding coverage to the uninsured, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data for June reveal that 16.0% of American adults are currently without health insurance.

The June 2009 data encompass more than 29,000 daily tracking interviews of Americans aged 18 and older. Trend data show a small but measurable uptick in the percentage of uninsured adults over the last year and a half. The percentage uninsured averaged 14.8% among the approximately 350,000 adults interviewed in 2008, and rose to 16.2% among the 178,000 adults interviewed in the first six months of this year.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Chances are good that you are just one pink slip away from joining that 16% (if you haven’t already).
 

The National Rifle Association fell just a few dollars votes of winning a big one today…

Measure to Expand Gun Rights Falls Short in Senate

John Thune, NRA tool

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday turned aside the latest attempt by gun advocates to expand the rights of gun owners, narrowly voting down a provision that would have allowed gun owners with valid permits from one state to carry concealed weapons in other states.

A group comprising mostly Republicans, along with some influential Democrats, had tried to attach the gun amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, a must-pass piece of legislation. But the provision got only 58 votes, two short of the 6o votes needed for passage under Senate rules.

Two Republicans, Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and George V. Voinovich of Ohio, joined with 37 Democrats to reject the amendment, which was bitterly opposed by a number of big-city mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. “Lives have been saved with the defeat of this amendment,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a leading opponent of the amendment, said in a statement. “The passage of this amendment would have done more to threaten the safety of New Yorkers than anything since the repeal of the assault weapons ban.”

The provision was pushed by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, but was co-sponsored by several Democrats from states where gun rights are broadly supported, like Montana, where Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester both favored it. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, who is up for re-election in 2010, also supported the amendment.

Going into Wednesday’s vote, gun rights supporters seemed to have the momentum in the Senate, with a group of Democrats looking to block the amendment but acknowledging the vote would be close. Under a parliamentary agreement, proponents needed 60 votes for passage.

This was the latest attempt by gun advocates to push new firearms rights through Congress, where they hold increasing sway.

This legislation would have made no sense whatsoever. The states do not even have to recognize marriages performed within each others’ boundaries; why should they have to honor each others’ concealed weapon permits?

I do not like guns. I do not want to carry a gun. Guns kill people and I have absolutely no desire to kill anyone. It may be getting to the point, however, where I will have to carry a gun just so I will be able to shoot back when some yahoo starts shooting at me. I mean, I’m not just going to stand there and let him or her use me for target practice. Am I? Dang right I’m not. Let the killing begin!
 

A Presidential Press Conference has been scheduled for 7:00 PM Central (8:00 Eastern) tonight. It will be carried live by all the major broadcast networks. Well, almost all the major broadcast networks. Here’s our local TV listing for the 7:00 hour tonight:

KDFW = FOX
KXAS = NBC
WFAA = ABC
KTVT = CBS
KERA = PBS

So you think you can dance?

Once again, the FOX television network is the outlier. Once again, we see how patriotic the folks at the FOX television network really are. If it weren’t for The Simpsons (and maybe Family Guy), would anybody even watch the FOX television network?
 

In the Rose Garden today…

Time and again, we’ve heard excuses to delay and defeat reform. Time and again, the American people have suffered because people in Washington played the politics of the moment instead of putting the interests of the American people first. That’s how we ended up with premiums rising three times faster than wages. That’s how we ended up with businesses choosing between shedding benefits and shutting their doors. That’s how we’ve been burdened with runaway costs and huge gaps in coverage.

That’s the status quo. That’s what we have right now. And the American people understand that the status quo is unacceptable. They don’t care who’s up or who’s down politically in Washington. They care about what’s going on in their own lives. They don’t care about the latest line of political attack. They care about whether their families will be crushed by rising premiums; whether the businesses they work for will have to cut jobs; or whether their children are going to be saddled with debt.

So I understand that some will try to delay action until the special interests can kill it, while others will simply focus on scoring political points. We’ve done that before. And we can choose to follow that playbook again, and then we’ll never get over the goal line, and we’ll face an even greater crisis in the years to come. That’s one path we can travel.

Or, we can come together and insist that this time it will be different. We can choose action over inaction. We can choose progress over the politics of the moment. We can build on the extraordinary common ground that’s been forged, and we can do the hard work needed to finally pass the health insurance reform that the American people deserve.

The full transcript is available following the break.

Continue Reading »

This week’s This Modern World cartoon by Tom Tomorrow is particularly topical. I thought about attaching the humor tag to this post, since it is a cartoon, but… when you read it and think about it, it isn’t really all that funny. Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to read…

There are those who continue to insist that health care reform in the United States can be put off until another time. President Obama addressed those people when he spoke at Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. today…

Now, there are some in this town who are content to perpetuate the status quo, are in fact fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests. There are others who recognize the problem, but believe — or perhaps, hope — that we can put off the hard work of insurance reform for another day, another year, another decade.

Just the other day, one Republican senator said — and I’m quoting him now — “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy.

And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time. Not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake. There are too many families who will be crushed if insurance premiums continue to rise three times as fast as wages. There are too many businesses that will be forced to shed workers, scale back benefits, or drop coverage unless we get spiraling health care costs under control.

Here is video of President Obama’s remarks:

A complete transcript of the President’s remarks follows the break.

Continue Reading »

Health Care Reform Cannot Wait

“Now we know there are those who will oppose reform no matter what. We know the same special interests and their agents in Congress will make the same old arguments, and use the same scare tactics that have stopped reform before because they profit from this relentless escalation in health care costs. And I know that once you’ve seen enough ads and heard enough people yelling on TV, you might begin to wonder whether there’s a grain of truth to what they’re saying. So let me take a moment to answer a few of their arguments.”

Watch the video of the President’s address below or read the full text, as prepared for delivery, after the break.

Click below to listen to the audio only:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Continue Reading »

They’re back! The cartoons of Friday night have returned, following a two week hiatus. You should probably know the routine by now, but if not just click on the thumbnails to make them bigger or to start a manually controlled slide show using the icons that will appear at the bottom of your browser window. Enjoy and always remember… your mileage may vary.

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.

Bonus video: