Pounding The Podium

Harry Reid apparently needs a history lesson.  The Leader of the Senate apparently suffers from the mistaken belief that the GOP supported slavery.

This absurd statement made me realize that maybe all liberals attended grade schools that taught a flawed version of history.  Or maybe Ivy League colleges are at fault, no that can’t be it, Bush went to an Ivy League School and even he knew who was who in regards to the issue of slavery.

But, for those who have forgotten, here is a brief political history of the civil war and the era immediately following

The source for the following information is the PBS series “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow” it is intended for Junior and Senior High School students.    No one would consider PBS to have a right wing slant, although they have often been accused of leaning the other way.

From PBS’s  “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”  -  The Democrats

The Democratic Party was formed in 1792, when supporters of Thomas Jefferson began using the name Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans, to emphasize its anti-aristocratic policies. It adopted its present name during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. In the 1840s and ’50s, the party was in conflict over extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats insisted on protecting slavery in all the territories while many Northern Democrats resisted. The party split over the slavery issue in 1860 at its Presidential convention in Charleston, South Carolina.

The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.

One of the consequences of the Democratic victories in the South was that many Southern Congressmen and Senators were almost automatically re-elected every election. Due to the importance of seniority in the U.S. Congress, Southerners were able to control most of the committees in both houses of Congress and kill any civil rights legislation. Even though Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Democrat, and a relatively liberal president during the 1930s and ’40s, he rarely challenged the powerfully entrenched Southern bloc. When the House passed a federal anti-lynching bill several times in the 1930s, Southern senators filibustered it to death

The Republicans

The Republican Party was officially formed in July 1854 in Jackson, Michigan when a group of men who belonged to various splinter parties met and adopted the name Republican. The name appealed to those who recalled Jeffersonian “republicanism” and generally placed the national interest above sectional interest and above states’ rights. The party’s founders totally opposed slavery. The platform adopted at the party’s first national convention in 1856 rejected the Southern position that Congress had the right to recognize slavery in a territory. The Party maintained that Congress could abolish slavery in the territories and ought to do so.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency as a Republican candidate. The prolonged agony of the Civil War, however, weakened Lincoln’s prospects for re-election in 1864. To broaden his appeal he took pro-war Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson as his vice presidential candidate and went on to victory. After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson and the Republican Congress were at loggerheads over who would control Reconstruction. Johnson wanted to re-admit the Southern states back into the Union and allow them to define the status of blacks. Congress wanted the federal government to insure black rights. The Republicans won the battle for control of Reconstruction and passed the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, seeking to guarantee blacks the right to due process of law and the vote.

The Republicans established military rule over the South until they met the terms and conditions that Congress set down for their re-admittance. Republican domination of the South seemed assured as nearly all blacks voted for the party. These votes were combined with those of some Southerners (called “scalawags” by white Democrats, a term that implied traitorous behavior) and transplanted Northerners (called “carpetbaggers” because of the kind of traveling bag they carried). The Republicans established a bi-racial coalition, with whites dominating. Blacks won hundreds of elected positions and were appointed to many administrative positions.

But white Southerners began to rally under the banner of white supremacy. They won some states peacefully by a large majority of votes, but in Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina Democrats used violence, fraud, intimidation and murder to win. Meanwhile, Northern Republicans were rapidly losing interest in the South; they had become the party of business interests. In the Compromise of 1877, Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes formally ended Reconstruction and left the race issue in the hands of the Southern Democrats. The reign of the Republican Party in the South, while alive in a few areas, was basically finished.”

Liberals will throw the term “Dixiecrats” around a lot in a dishonest attempt to imply that this group (which was in favor of segregation forever) was basically made up of Republicans – nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, the Dixiecrat movement did not begin until 1945 (a long time after the civil war) and is explained in depth by U.S. History.com as follows:

President Franklin Roosevelt’s electoral body in 1945 had included a diverse, in fact contradictory, set of elements — both conservatives and liberals, northern and southern Democrats and Republicans. By 1948, however, the civil rights issue revealed the real philosophical differences between northern and southern Democrats as never before. The move of Southern states from solidly Democrat to solidly Republican began to take place. In that environment, the Dixiecrats and the “Southern Strategy” was born.

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, a group led by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota proposed some controversial new civil rights planks of racial integration and the reversal of Jim Crow laws to be included in the party platform. Southern Democrats were dismayed. President Harry S. Truman was caught in the middle for his recent executive order to racially integrate the armed forces. As a compromise, he proposed the adoption of only those planks that had been in the 1944 platform. That was not enough for the liberals. Truman’s own civil rights initiatives had made the civil rights debate unavoidable.

The planks were adopted and 35 southern Democrats walked out in protest. They formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party, which became popularly known as the Dixiecrats. Their campaign slogan was “Segregation Forever!” Their platform also included “states’ rights” to freedom from governmental interference in an individual’s or organization’s prerogative to do business with whomever they wanted”

To imply that the Republicans of the Civil War era are now the Democrats of the modern era and vice a versa is laughable and supported no where in history.

It’s not so surprising that Harry Reid could make the comments he did, it is just surprising that he could make them with a relatively straight face.  Not counting the perpetual smirk that the House Leader seems to have whether slandering the opposition or cozying up to a reluctant Nancy Pelosi.

By Patrick Michael  Origionally posted on Pounding the Podium (podium.foablogs.com)

I think that if our  friends on the other side of the aisle were honest, they could easily understand what makes everyone on the right and middle so nervous about this health care bill.  To me a large part of it is the Voodoo Math.

As a young boy I struggled with math in school, and that was dealing with numbers that stayed relatively constant.  Even in algebra my teachers did not say “if x = y then, oh wait it’s z, if z = y, no forget about y I never said y, if z=q”  Just thinking about that makes my head hurt.  But if you have been following this health care debate, scary voodoo math is everywhere!

It started with the number of people without insurance was it 40 Million, 20 Million, 25 Million, 45 Million, 50 Million, 30 Million or what!!  Apparently that depended on whether or not you counted illegal aliens, and if you got caught doing that the numbers changed but not in any proportion to how many illegal aliens that our government told us that there was supposed to be.

For example, some Left Wing Strategist would come on and say that there were 38 Million uninsured but if we took out illegal aliens then there was 20 Million uninsured which (where I went to school) would mean that there were 18 Million illegal aliens, right?  But that same strategist would talk about the 50 Million aliens, is that legal, illegal and space?   Again, the head is hurting and blood has started to come out of my ears and don’t even get me started about the President’s plan to legalize the 50 Million which would mean that 88 Million covered (I think).

It only gets worse.  Now we are told that despite this bill which is 2,086 pages (or something like that) 25 Million people who are not illegal aliens will remain uninsured.  What????  Does that mean that we are going through all this for less than 25 Million people and it costs 2.5 Trillion Dollars?   Wouldn’t it be cheaper to provide these people with free health care for life with a bill of about 50 pages?  I don’t know I am entirely confused by now.

So at this point I am thinking screw how many it covers, we will never know how many it covers and if we push the point the Administration will start saying things like “87 Million people were insured or saved by the health care bill” and my head really will explode.

If we give up (in the interest of preventing our heads for exploding) on arguing the actual number covered, the voodoo math does not go away.  Let’s look at the number of people dying through lack of insurance.  Now I am not meaning to sound like a total ass, but I have never driven by or gone to a hospital with a large group of dispirited individuals hanging around outside waiting to die because the hospital would not see them, but if we listen to the horror stories that have been told during this debate then we have to assume that it happens. The voodoo math part of it is that the number of those dying does not maintain any type of consistency.   I know that it started out this year (when the  health care debate began) at 18,000 per year but due to voodoo math the number has grown astronomically to 45,000 a year, at least that is the number that was thrown around in yesterday’s Senate debate.

Well okay then, 45,000 is a lot of people.  That number might pale in comparison to the 1.3 Million Abortions that are performed in the US each year, but I digress.  Even a mean old conservative like me doesn’t want to be responsible for the death of 45,000 uninsured people.   And as Debbie Stebenow and her pals kept reminding me yesterday that is THIS year.  Well, at least when this monster of a bill is past those 45,000 will be safe right?

Not so fast.  Even though the bill may pass this year, and we will start paying for it (and paying, and paying) this year, the actual benefit does not begin until four years from the date the bill is passed.  What?  Do you mean to tell me that 180,000 people are going to die before this bill takes effect?  That seems to be the case.  But surely there must be some good reason for that.    Not really.  The reason if you choose to believe it, and if you have believed everything up to now why stop?  Is that the Democrats want this bill to APPEAR budget neutral.  Really, that’s it.  They are despite the tears (real or imagined) shed by such tough old “Progressives with guts” as Alan Grayson the Left is so concerned about the budget that they are willing to let a number that is VERY close to a 1/4 of a Million people die in order to preserve it’s illusion of neutrality.

And WE are the mean, heartless and cruel party?  Something just doesn’t add up.

Years and Years and Years ago which is admittedly a lot of years, I was working on a degree in Psychology. One of my more ‘modern’ textbooks at the time was a very unique perspective of mental illness called “The Big Umbrella” by Dr. Jay Adams. Maybe ‘textbook’ is a bit too expansive a title for what was actually little more than a long essay. What has stuck with me all these years (since the early 70’s) was the premise of the book. The following brief except provides a good overview of the subject material:

“During the last generation a big umbrella was opened. Beneath its huge, over-arching expanse you now find people with the most diverse problems and difficulties. Under its shadow they have been gathered together according to the novel idea that nearly everybody who is having problems, regardless of what his difficulties may be, is sick. The name of this umbrella is Mental Illness. This umbrella was designed and opened by Charcot and Freud and others who worked with them. Until their time, “illness” meant physical illness. But they stretched the concept of illness until it pertained to nearly any and every sort of difficulty in life.”

One of the examples that Adams utilizes to demonstrate this is the Kennedy assassination, which many individuals at the time blamed on the city of Dallas rather than Lee Harvey Oswald. This expression “The Big Umbrella” was used in the 70’s to describe the expansion of the topic of mental illness to include all manner of problematic behavior. Today we don’t call people mentally ill (which by itself would be politically incorrect) we call them ‘victims’.

This line of thinking has again reared it’s head in today’s politically correct world, who is the victim of Fort Hood? Common sense would tell you the friends and family of the 13 individuals brutally gunned down by a madman, however some would have you believe that the victim is the madman himself Major Hasan. As absolutely ridiculous as this theory is, it has been utilized more and more today by the media in this mixed up message world in which we live.

Ann Coulter examines this overwhelming need to find a victim, and the many benefits of being a victim in her best selling book “Guilty” Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America”. A further example that proves Ann’s point is what is being referred to as “Climategate”.

On the MSNBC talk show Morning Joe, Jeffrey Sachs the author of “Common Wealth” offered his belief that the real victims in the Climategate scandal were the scientists. He actually dragged forth the term “Swiftboat” and explained to us lesser minds that the whole ClimateGate issue was “not a very big deal”.

Swiftboat?? For those who have spent the last few years trying to forget John Kerry and who hasn’t? Swiftboating is a term that became political jargon during the Kerry campaign. The gist of it is that John Kerry ran the campaign based upon his heroism in the Vietnam War, unfortunately his comrades in arms didn’t find him all that heroic and questioned Kerry’s recollection of events in Vietnam. As Kerry and his fellow veterans were deployed in Swift Boats during the war the term stuck.

Wikipedia the source for all knowledge contains a definition of the term “Swiftboating is American political jargon that is used as a strong pejorative description of some kind of attack that the speaker considers unfair or untrue—for example, an ad hominem attack or a smear campaign.

Although Wikipedia does not show it, you would do well to remember that the liberal dictionary defines ’smear campaign’ as telling the ugly truth about someone, such as the fact that they have been falsifying global warming. Most people who are not heavily vested in the global warming political machine just call it “telling a lie”.

For all the left’s vaulted ability to wrap themselves in the cloak of ‘victims’ which they do truly excel at, it would appear that the real victims of ClimateGate would be the rest of us.

The following is an excellent article that I wanted to share here.

On Sunday’s “Face The Nation” on CBS, Howard Dean, doctor, former Vermont Governor, former head of the DNC, stated that the Veterans Administration’s health care system is, in fact, a socialist system. Yes, he said that. And he praised it as the best, most effective health care provider in all the world.

The show’s host didn’t comment on this characterization of the VA as socialist, and Dean went on to point to Medicare as a single payer system, and praised it as well. This was his argument for the public option, and the certain path to government run health care as only option.

I have a friend currently dealing with the VA. He finds Dean’s assertion that it is the best health care provider laughable – except to him personally at the moment, it’s not very funny. He has been told by his doctor he is in serious and urgent need of as yet uncertain heart disease treatment – perhaps catheterization, perhaps surgery, maybe a stent. And he is waiting two, maybe three weeks for the required stress test and possibly other tests. To be followed by at least a week waiting for results and follow-up appointment.

The VA facility he was sent to is clearly over-burdened, under-staffed, un-clean and S-L-O-W. He’ll arrive for a 9:00 A.M. appointment, but be parked there for 4 hours, waiting.

It’s a look at the future.

And I wonder: has Dean conveniently forgotten the scandal over the disgraceful condition of VA facilities right there in Washington D.C., exposed by the media?  Perhaps he hasn’t noticed that privately funded, charitable organizations are needed to provide care and rehabilitative therapy and equipment for wounded veterans. Or maybe he’s unaware of the too-many veterans who need advocates and attorneys to fight for them, to get the care they need, and most certainly have earned.

Dean may be right in calling it socialist, as surprising the admission may be. But praising it as the best? Well, I certainly think I’m getting better care from my private physicians, paid in part by my private insurance, than my friend is from the VA. Were I hosting “Face the Nation,” I think I’d have asked if Dean is getting his health care from the VA. Or if he’s ever even been in a VA facility.

What of Dean’s holding up Medicare as a poster-boy of single-payer systems? Has he missed President Obama’s assertion that Medicare is riddled with hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud, and that his gigantic new health care scheme will pay for itself by eliminating that waste and fraud?

Every time Obama drags that old chestnut out, the media should be in unanimous chorus, screaming about this disgrace, demanding investigations and prosecutions now – not later, after a bigger version of the same beast is birthed.

Maybe Dean has missed the CBO’s analysis of Medicare as functionally bankrupt, a financial corpse waiting for official time of death. Maybe he should carefully examine how the House or Senate health care reform bills promise to gut that corpse, cut benefits, impose new limitations on care imposed by new boards, bureaucracies and czars. If Dean means to suggest that the new health care reform will be Medicare magnified and multiplied, there can be only one result: bankruptcy of the United States.

Dr. Dean is ridiculous. Too bad he went unchallenged.

Nothing makes liberals more eager for blood than some clown catching them in the act.  Talk about righteous indignation!   Why Barbara Boxer was so angry about the release of emails critical of the ’science’ behind global warming that she was almost coherent for five whole minutes.  According to the Hill Barbara “Call Me Senator” Boxer said that  “Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter”.  Damn right Barbara!  (Ooops I mean Senator).  This is only keeping with your position on other simular issues such as the break in of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account during the election last year which you clearly stated was, was, ummm, I guess that you never did say anything about that. It is interesting however that left wing media outlet the New York Times refuses to publish any of the ‘climategate’ emails which they say were illegally obtained, while they had no such qualms in linking to the Sarah Palin emails, knowing full well how the emails were obtained.

You and your partner on Climate Change John Kerry did however take the time to rebuke Sarah Palin for all the mistakes that she has made on Energy in your open letter entitled “What Palin Got Wrong About Energy” and no, for those who are interested it was not that it was a made up science.

But in your defense Senator Boxer, you really got down on those low level government officials who illegally gave out all that personal information on Joe The Plumber, information that our President was not above using during the campaign by the way (despite how it was obtained).  Now there you put your foot down and said Ummm, well, hmmmm I guess you were unaccountably silent on this issue also.

So it seems Barbara that you are only outraged by crime when said crime shines a little light on your mis-deads such as pushing your climate change agenda full speed ahead despite growing evidence that casts  a giant shadow of suspicion on the whole shady operation.

“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,’” she (Boxer) said during a committee meeting. “Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I’m looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public.”  Again, like the Sarah Palin emails and like Joe the Plumber’s tax records, utility bills, voting records and high school transcripts.

Jon Stewart, who despite being a leftist is having a field day with this story (which despite being out in the open for two weeks has been consistently ‘missed’ by the main stream media) might want to be careful before Barbara calls the climate police out on him.

“We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not,” Boxer said. “Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.”

“This is a crime,” Boxer said – Yes Senator, we would have to agree – it is.