Showing posts with label U.S. House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. House. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

If Lee Terry could run against himself. . . .


A crazed gunman walked into an Omaha hospital today, hours after leading police on a high-speed chase when lawmen foiled his mad scheme to gun down his in-laws.

And death roamed the corridors.

In the dark Nebraska predawn,
the gunman assaulted his terrified wife at a hunt club they owned near a small northeastern Nebraska town. Who did she want to die first? Cold blue steel was pressed to her head.

Who did she want to die first, her mother or her sister?

It's midday in Omaha. The scene: a busy medical center near downtown. Two police officers find the man -- gun in hand -- standing at a pay phone near the hospital cafeteria.


THEY CONFRONT him. He answered with a fusillade of hot lead. The officers are hit, but fate has spared them grievous wounds.

They return fire, mortally wounding Jeffrey Layten.

Jeffrey Layten: Hospital shooter. Wife beater. Foiled murder plotter.

He could have been al Qaida in a pickup, if not for the bravery displayed by American police officers in the line of fire. And Lee Terry -- CONGRESSMAN Lee Terry -- thinks he was a great guy:

"I have known Jeff for years and hunted on his property many times. Jeff has always been an easy-going person," Terry whined to the Omaha press corps, "and today’s episode is very out of character for him."

WHAT IS the "character" of a crazed would-be killer, Congressman? And what is the character of a gun-happy Republican politician who "hunts" with domestic terrorists?

Call Lee Terry's office at (202) 225-4155 and tell the congressman you're sick of his tolerance for domestic terrorism. Tell Lee Terry he's too extreme for law-abiding Nebraskans, and that his criminal-coddling ways will come to an abrupt end this November.

Stop Lee Terry before more of his "easy-going" friends put their blue-steel barrels of terror to
your head.

* * *

This message is paid for by the One Good Turn Foundation, and Lee Terry should approve of our methods.
We're just taking a page out of his playbook, after all.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Lies, damn lies and Lee Terry's mailers


So this is what Rep. Lee Terry was cooking up in our nation's capital when the pretty lady lobbyist got him "so drunk."

Latch on to that excuse, Congressman. The New York Post -- no friend to your political opposition -- will vouch for you.

The other explanation for this one is that Terry is a contemptible liar --
even by Republican-politician standards -- and has no honor at all. When one speaks of "no honor at all," it's usually referencing something like blatantly slandering the opposition in November's U.S. House race in Nebraska's 2nd District.

IN A FLIER aimed at pro-life Democrats, Terry alleges that state Sen. Tom White "supports taxpayer abortion on demand." In the strange, strange world of Lee Terry, this is what constitutes supporting using "your tax dollars to pay for abortions on demand":

White on Monday described the health care reform package approved by the House as "far from perfect, but better than continuing with the status quo."

That, he said, matches the assessment of Omaha investment icon Warren Buffett as well as his own experiences as a cancer survivor and small business owner.

"Now it's time for Congress to turn to fixing the economy, getting our fiscal house in order, and restoring the economic and job growth the country so desperately needs," White said.

(Lincoln Journal-Star)


I SUPPOSE there's room for Terry to go even lower in this election battle, but I don't know whether he could stay out of jail in the process.

The "abortion on demand" slur about health-care reform goes back to the epic battle over the legislation passed in March. And, frankly, the only people who buy it are GOP pols (for obvious, and cynical, reasons), their wholly-owned subsidiaries within the politicized "pro-life" movement and the nation's Catholic bishops.

To get there, the bishops and the "pro-life" groups had to make some pretty paranoid and wild assumptions about what the legislation would do. That ground has been well covered, including on this blog.

In brief, academics who specialize in health-care law have said the Republican pols, the professional pro-lifers and the bishops are nuts if they think what Terry and his ilk slur as "ObamaCare" provides taxpayer subsidies for "abortion on demand."

To be even briefer, what we have in this electoral silly season are lies, damned lies, and whatever Lee Terry is mailing out to pro-life Democrats. Actually, we knew it was coming. It was on the Politics Daily website just the other day:
With a state unemployment rate in August of 4.6 percent (the third lowest in the nation, thanks to a booming agricultural economy) and Omaha itself at just 4.9 percent, the 2nd District has been spared much of the I'll-never-work-again despair that shapes politics in most of America.

As Lee Terry knows all too well, he represents the most hotly contested individual congressional district in the 2008 presidential election. Because Nebraska awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, the Obama campaign mounted a successful crusade to pluck off a surprise pickup in a state that has been stoutly Republican in presidential politics since 1964. Terry, whose victory margin was held to 52 percent amid the Obama upset, acknowledged with blunt honesty that the Democrats "had one heck of a ground game that got people registered and practically eliminated the Republican advantage in the district."

Comparatively inexpensive ad rates (about $75,000 a week for 1,000 gross rating points) allow White (who had $532,000 cash on hand at the June) to be competitive with the incumbent (who had $787,000 in the bank) on Omaha television. Both candidates, who went on the air late last month, have each committed to buying at least $400,000 in additional TV time before November. Terry plans to press his financial advantage through radio advertising and sending out about 300,000 mailings. For example, even though both candidates are anti-abortion in this roughly 40-percent Catholic district, the Terry campaign is readying a special direct-mail piece aimed at pro-life Democrats.

Two elements make the TV narrative here in the Omaha area slightly different than the cookie-cutter national norms. Because of the comparatively low local unemployment rate, the economic crisis that both candidates decry is the national debt rather than lost jobs. A Terry spot slammed his opponent for supporting the economic stimulus and the overall goals of the Obama health-care bill and claimed, as a result, that the difference between the two candidates was "2 trillion dollars" and that White intended to pay for it "with higher taxes and more debt." White's first ad began with the candidate starring directly into the camera and declaring, "When you look at the debt that both parties in Washington keep piling on our kids, it's just wrong."

White never identifies himself as a Democrat. Instead, in his ads he is vaguely identified as "a different kind of leader for Nebraska" and "Nebraska independence for Congress." Asked about a lack of a party label in his ads, White said candidly, "This is not a year where that's effective. Nor is it ever. You have to understand in my whole career, I have never run as a Democrat. The legislature is entirely non-partisan."

A national Republican strategist calls the 2008 bank bailout vote "the one symbol of anti-incumbency that has a chance of working against incumbent Republicans." Small wonder that Tom White has gone after his rival for his vote in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in an ad that claims "Washington politicians like Lee Terry . . . voted for wasteful spending like the Wall Street bailout." Asked about the TARP vote, Terry said, "I really thought it would cost me the [2008] election."
AND I GUESS we all knew Terry would go as low as he did in slurring White as a radical pro-abort. All we had to do was remember what the Republicans threw at Jim Esch in the fall of '08.

White certainly figured Terry's GOP slime machine was warming up. Just after the Terry mailer hit this pro-life Catholic Democrat's mailbox this afternoon, this robocall from White hit my answering machine:


I SECOND that emotion.

And I grieve for the truth, murdered yet again by a "pro-life" politician who will do -- and say -- any damnable thing to keep sucking at the taxpayer teat on Capitol Hill.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Loving abortion to death

How can we Democrats of the non-whack persuasion make this any clearer?

OK, how about this? You can kill the Stupak Amendment, or you can have health-care reform. You can't do both.

Or, perhaps this: You can double-cross pro-life Democratic congressmen and reintroduce what amounts to federal subsidies for killing babies, or you can pass a health-care bill. But both won't happen, because you don't have the votes.


WHAT ARE Americans to make of people for whom the "right" to abortion now means the "right" to government subsidies for abortion? How quickly a "private" matter that must be safe from governmental meddling -- one that's "between a woman, her doctor and her God" -- turns into a non-negotiable demand that the public subsidize something at least half of it finds reprehensible.

And the Culture of Death's caterwauling storm troopers
are marching for their "right" to have you fund their "right" to kill their offspring. One company comes from the AAUW, formerly known as Women So Open Minded Their Brains Fell Out the American Association of University Women:
AAUW is working nationwide to galvanize voters to protest the middle class abortion ban passed by the House as part of its health care reform bill. It's critical that the Senate not accept this intrusive provision.
ACCORDING to the outraged left, forcing me to violate my conscience by force of the tax code and the Justice Department would be a blow against the "intrusiveness" of women having to buy an abortion rider to their insurance policy:
AAUW has long advocated for choice in the determination of one's reproductive life and increased access to health care and family planning services. There's no doubt that health care reform is desperately needed, but it should not come on the backs of women. A fundamental principle of health care has always been to "do no harm." Make no mistake; the Stupak amendment does just that--leaving millions of women worse off than they were before. This is the biggest attempt to ban abortion services in years, and a similar amendment is already in the works in the Senate.
AH . . . I get it now, AAUW. You have the choice to kill your unborn -- or even your half-born -- child, and I have the choice to pay for it. Or else.

Gotcha. I'm so glad we could have this talk and clear some things up, AAUW.

What you're saying is you want me to help pay for your abortions so you can f*** with impunity, because it's your constitutional right. But my First Amendment rights do not include declining on moral and religious grounds to help pay for your abortions (thus killing your children so you can continue to f*** with impunity and not live in a trailer with seven kids by six fathers), because that would deny you your "privacy right" to kill your kids so you can f*** with impunity.

Is that what you're saying?

Please tell me where I'm wrong, because I'd hate to think educated women so upset about the "middle-class abortion ban" would be so bigoted as to only worry about a lack of "reproductive choice" when it's your "middle-class" abortion that's threatened. Or have I missed your going to the wall year after year for the past three decades in a bid to dispatch the
Hyde Amendment -- which denies federal funds for things like Medicaid abortions -- to the dustbin of history?

OR MAYBE you think it's OK for poor women to pay for their constitutional coitus with a lifestyle approximating the
Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, while the taxpayer subsidizes your "safe sex" -- contraception and abortion.

After all, there still would be Medicaid . . . and the Hyde Amendment still stands.

But the bottom line is this: Double-cross pro-life Democrats,
and health-care reform is dead . . . and so, probably, is the Obama presidency. The president only has, oh . . . everything riding on this.

And if health-care reform dies, pro-life Dems will say this:

"We voted on principle. We cannot subsidize evil so that good might come from it. We will not pay to kill some so that others might have insurance. This is a tragedy, but we take seriously the principle of 'Do no harm.'"
MEANWHILE, if pro-choicers kill health-care reform because it insufficiently subsidizes abortion (and no, you can't "segregate" private and public monies when it all goes into the same pot), they'll have to say this:
"We voted down health-care reform on principle. We firmly believe that the government should make it as cost-free as possible for women to procure elective abortions of their babies. We knew going to the wall for this would doom the bill, but we think the right to federally mandated abortion coverage is a lot more important than your piddly-ass chemotherapy."
THEY DON'T call it the Culture of Death for nothing.

Monday, November 09, 2009

A special kind of nuts



What kind of insanity would cause supporters of health-care reform to declare war on the only thing keeping health-care reform from legislative oblivion?

THIS KIND of insanity, is what. The Hill fills us in:
A House Democratic leader said Monday she's “confident” controversial language on abortion will be stripped from a final healthcare bill.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-abortion rights lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from subsidizing abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won't be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we're all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that's the case.”

The amendment, offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), won the support of Republicans and dozens of centrist Democrats in the House, but revealed a deep divide in the Democratic caucus over abortion.

Sixty-four Democrats voted for Stupak’s amendment, without which the House healthcare bill would not have won final passage in a 220-215 vote.
THE STUPAK AMENDMENT provided the thin margin by which health-care reform passed the House. Without it, you can bet it won't pass the Senate.

And if it's stripped in conference -- assuming Senate passage of a bill, which well might be a long shot -- the legislation will fail in the House. Really, what kind of insanity causes alleged supporters of health-care reform to intentionally doom what they say they're for?

I suppose the same kind of insanity that causes a society to execute its future in the womb and call it women's rights . . . even though at least half of the condemned are women.

And if you're OK with flat-out elimination of society's least powerful and least privileged members, what's the big whoop with telling those vastly more able to fend for themselves to "root, hog, or die," right?

Sunday, November 08, 2009

The House's prescription


For once, you have to give the U.S. House of Representatives credit. It pulled off the previously unthinkable.


And a good kind of unthinkable, at that.

After decades and decades, it finally passed something that's as close to universal health coverage as is likely to survive an American legislative chamber. Now if only the Senate would get on board. . . .

THE HEROES of the fight for health-care reform -- at least thus far -- are Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and his band of pro-life Democrats. They won a ban on federal subsidies for abortion in the House bill and, in the process, assured its final passage.

MSNBC has the story:
"It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it," said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

In the runup to a final vote, conservatives from the two political parties joined forces to impose tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be sold to many individuals and small groups. They prevailed on a roll call of 240-194.

The vote added to the Democratic bill an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and others, that prohibits individuals who receive insurance subsidies from purchasing any plan that pays for elective abortions.

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to allow a floor vote on the Stupak amendment to the bill in order to win the support of about three dozen Democrats who feared that the original bill would have subsidized abortions.

Ironically, the abortion vote only solidified support for the legislation, clearing the way for the conservative Democrats to vote for it.

A cheer went up from the Democratic side of the House when the bill gained 218 votes, a majority. Moments later, Democrats counted down the final seconds of the voting period in unison, and and let loose an even louder roar when Pelosi grabbed the gavel and declared, "the bill is passed.'

From the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a statement saying, "We realize the strong will for reform that exists, and we are energized that we stand closer than ever to reforming our broken health insurance system."


(snip)

The compromise brokered Friday night on the volatile issue of abortion finally secured the votes needed to pass the legislation.

As drafted, the measure denied the use of federal subsidies to purchase abortion coverage in policies sold by private insurers in the new insurance exchange, except in cases of incest, rape or when the life of the mother was in danger.

But abortion foes won far stronger restrictions that would rule out abortion coverage except in those three categories in any government-sold plan. It would also ban abortion coverage in any private plan purchased by consumers receiving federal subsidies.

Disappointed Democratic abortion rights supporters grumbled about the turn of events, but appeared to pull back quickly from any thought of opposing the health care bill in protest.
GOING TO THE WALL for abortion coverage, to state the painfully obvious, would not have been pragmatic. If you want to build a workable coalition around an already-controversial bill, you don't go around actively chasing off allies.

Like the Catholic Church, for one. Or pro-life Democrats, like Stupak and his confederates, for about 40 others.

It can't be emphasized too much that only by doing the "right thing" did Democrats save health-care reform from sudden legislative death.

It also can't be emphasized too much that the House has neutralized the biggest weapon in the anti-reformist arsenal. If one opposed health-care legislation on pro-life grounds, that's non-negotiable. That's something over which you "go to the wall."

Now, not so much.

Now, if pro-lifers are going to oppose health-care reform, they're going to have to explain how opposing coverage for millions and millions of the uninsured might be considered a "pro-life" move. They're going to have to explain how the perpetuation, by default, of a fundamentally unjust system responsible for the needless deaths of an estimated 44,789 Americans a year isn't a profound betrayal of the pro-life cause.

And you know what? They can't.


NO, IF "PRO-LIFERS" want to persist in railing about "socialized medicine" instead of getting behind an imperfect but as-good-as-we'll-get House-passed bill, they're going to have to admit that the pro-life movement -- or at least the K Street manifestation thereof -- really is nothing more than an anti-abortion movement.

I can think of no greater travesty . . . no greater affront to a God who, it has been rumored over 6,000 or so years of Judeo-Christian history, continues to care deeply about human beings once they emerge from the womb.

In today's deeply toxic and deeply stupid political culture, I am sure what I've just written will get me branded a "radical socialist" by more than a few. Well, if this be socialism, I will wear the "socialist" label with pride.