
Senate Democrats could be facing yet another obstacle this week in their efforts to pass health care -- in this case a purely physical obstacle in the form of Tea Partiers staging a "die-in" at the Capitol offices.
Tea Party organizer Mark Meckler writes on his site: "The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave."
The "die-in," set to take place tomorrow, could be yet another example of Tea Party groups appropriating protest tactics formerly associated with the activist left. The tactic has formerly been used by anti-war groups, or by groups demanding more government action on AIDS. In this case, it's being done by a group demanding less government action on health care.
"We know it's a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas," Meckler writes. "But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us."
sunnysteve
December 14, 2009 10:08 AM
"Inside the Senate offices....?" Sounds more like a mob.
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:16 PM in reply to sunnysteve
While I disagree w/ you politically, you are correct in this statement. What troubles me is that far too many progressives are happy just making snarky comments on blogs, etc, and not stepping away from their keyboards long enough to be actual "activists" like the teabaggers.
I even coined a term for all of the actionless online protestations from both sides -- bitchforks. Rather than pick up proverbial pitchforks in real activist protest, they'd rather type their complaints (bitchforks) from the comfort of their own homes and places of work.
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JohnW1141
December 15, 2009 1:32 PM in reply to mcjam
mcjam,
we used our pitchforks in the last national election.
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Silence
December 14, 2009 10:13 AM
Doh. The left has called them every name in the book and they still won't go away.
What now?
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dswx
December 14, 2009 10:22 AM in reply to Silence
Ignore their desperate attempts at attention from the media, that's what. Why give such ignorant people any attention?
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the true enduring majority
December 14, 2009 10:25 AM in reply to Silence
Lol wut? We don't want them to go away you fool!
Whom else would provide ourselves (and most of the country) with comic relief on the political front?
Because, like Silence said, "The tea parties are a real grassroots! Dick Armey, Koch Industries, "Freedom Works", etc. Don't mind them! They might be footing the bill for everything from lodging, to a tourbus (with dialysis of course! But keep your gubmint hands out mah medicare!) to food... Astroturf, pff. What a horrible thing to say, you lefties just hate old white people who don't know what their protesting and being paid to do so..."
Ok, that's not exactly what you said but it's close enough. The die in though is for once oddly appropriate. 90 percent of the idiots that show are over 65, have at least type 2 diabetes, a heart condition, or whatever comorbidity is in fashion with the blue hair crowd today, and haven't done anything remotely physical in at least 15 years. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of them actually croak while teabagging... sorry, "die-in" the Senate.
If anything, the die-in will be perfect for proving the merits of preventive medicine. And the HCR bill. In an ironic way of course.
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CityGuy
December 14, 2009 10:25 AM in reply to Silence
Yeah they're still the same, racist sore-losers from last summer! Congratulations Shooter, you got that one right!
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CityGuy
December 14, 2009 10:26 AM in reply to CityGuy
Um... Silence/Shooter, not much difference.
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Jaycal
December 14, 2009 12:04 PM in reply to Silence
I sincerely promise to miss them if they'll go away!
On the other hand, I hope they appreciate the irony (probably not) that they'll be performing a good enactment of the 75,000 people who ACTUALLY DIE each year because they DON'T HAVE HEALTH CARE! You just have to laugh since you would cry otherwise.
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:17 PM in reply to Silence
Oops, replied to the wrong post.... in 5, 4, 3....
While I disagree w/ you politically, you are correct in this statement. What troubles me is that far too many progressives are happy just making snarky comments on blogs, etc, and not stepping away from their keyboards long enough to be actual "activists" like the teabaggers.
I even coined a term for all of the actionless online protestations from both sides -- bitchforks. Rather than pick up proverbial pitchforks in real activist protest, they'd rather type their complaints (bitchforks) from the comfort of their own homes and places of work.
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Kuyleh
December 14, 2009 4:46 PM in reply to Silence
Go away? Fuck no! They NEED to keep making idiots of themselves...They are the minority, no matter what Glenn Beck tells them, and every stupid thing they do shows the rest of the country how demented they are. It just works against them.
As to us calling them names...They named themselves Teabaggers. That trumps anything else I could point out.
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inniss326
December 14, 2009 10:22 AM
What now? Sounds like the teabaggers are going to generate some end of year revenue for the district...bail...court fees...fines...maybe some OT for the police.
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Matt Jones
December 14, 2009 10:26 AM
Because apparently, in the Ayn Rand circle-jerk fantasy-land where the teabaggers live, nobody has ever died of an untreated illness due to either not having insurance, or having insurance that refuses to pay.
Maybe we can all just move to teabagger-land, because it's clearly got better health care than the real world!
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CityGuy
December 14, 2009 11:06 AM in reply to Matt Jones
Word!
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Rich in NJ
December 14, 2009 10:30 AM
Why does it have to be merely staged....?
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Shrubbit
December 14, 2009 10:31 AM
The wrath of Sarah, Tea Partiers, Joe Lieberman and yet another ANOTHER post about the stupid Michael Steele pictures.
I am deleting my bookmark to TPM that I've had since, oh, about 2004.
F__K YOU TPM. Bullshit rag. Peace.
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Shrubbit
December 14, 2009 10:45 AM in reply to Shrubbit
Sorry for cursing. That's the anger talking.
Here is the letter I just sent to Josh/TPM:
Chances are good that I will never comment again, at least, until or unless things change. I am not by any means giving up on the progressive/dem agenda, just this website. Good luck fellow progressive bloggers.
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boycottfaux
December 14, 2009 11:31 AM in reply to Shrubbit
I am going to make my feelings known to other bloggers on other sites as well
* * *
Duh, WHY . .
Sounds like 'you' don't like what Josh is doing and if he doesn't change, you're gonna retaliate. Your remarks are very insulting!!
Why don't you just GO? Let others think for themselves . .
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:41 PM in reply to Shrubbit
I can only ask, in all sincerity... where does your anger truly stem from?
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CranialRectalLoopback
December 14, 2009 10:32 AM
Why pretend? Why not go full retard and go ahead and die. I mean, look at all the dead old people walking around with their Medicare cards ... oh, right. Sorry, I'm just a stoopid Teabagger and the balls are getting in the way of me seeing reality.
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Xantar
December 14, 2009 10:35 AM in reply to CranialRectalLoopback
Michele Bachmann did call on them to slit their wrists to save health care or something like that...
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Silence
December 14, 2009 10:44 AM
The TEA party is certainly proving themselves to be A+ Salinsky students.
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CityGuy
December 14, 2009 11:09 AM in reply to Silence
Yeah where were they for 8 years of big government, big deficits, and big-time spying on private Americans? Again, racist sore losers.
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Stroszek
December 14, 2009 11:25 AM in reply to Silence
Salinsky! Bwahahaha!
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Chuck McCoy
December 14, 2009 10:52 AM
At the urging of Moveon, I've been trying to contact Senators Schumer and Gillibrand of NY at their DC offices. Can't get through. Can't even get through here in Rochester. Finally got through to Gillibrand's Bufalo office. As an explained to me(as best as I could understand): The numbers are jammed as corporate sponsored right wing group has live people calling seniors and scaring them about death panels and losing their medicare, etc. under health care reform. Then they ask if they'd like to talk to one of their Senators. When they say yes, they Robocall them to one of the Senators. This has been going on, at least, since I starting trying to call on Friday.
Anyone else having this problem in other states.
Aggghhhhh!!!!!
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Clavis
December 14, 2009 11:00 AM
Funny how, when actually sick people try to get into Congress, they are rebuffed and mocked by the same right-wingers who now demand the right to mob Capitol Hill in a stunt where they *pretend* to be sick... these people are tribalist psychopaths.
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:44 PM in reply to Clavis
.....tribalist psychopaths.
Another name for witch doctors, methinks?
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jebahoula
December 14, 2009 11:11 AM
Contrary to the media hype of a “new” financial order, the recent financial crisis created by the Federal Reserve keeps the “old” financial order in power that has governed since the reign of Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865).
In two years the “old” financial order has bankrupt, bought, or gained control of much of their banking competition, which they label by their media as “the shadow banking system”.
It should be no surprise that the largest monopoly banks left in power are Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
All, except Bank of America, are part of the “old” financial order and mushroomed into power about 150 years ago during and after Lincoln’s Tax War, which Lincoln said he started solely to collect his new 40% import tax from Southerners under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861. http://www.nationalcenter.org/LincolnFirstInaugural.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff
With the passage of his National Bank Act of 1863, Abraham Lincoln, a puppet of Northern banks and industries, re-established Alexander Hamilton’s centralist banking system in the United States, which set the foundation for the present day Federal Reserve System.
Under his First Legal Tender Act of 1862, Lincoln printed worthless paper money displaying images of Alexander Hamilton and Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase (as in Chase Bank), which ultimately destroyed State banking.
Today, using their own created banking club, i.e. the Federal Reserve, these same monopoly banks, have so far crushed the likes of Lehman Brothers, Country Wide Financial, Bear Stearns, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, CIT and have even gained control of Bank of America, whose leadership was not part of the “old” financial order that governs the United States.
This “old” financial order is founded on the principles of Alexander Hamilton, designer of the first U.S. Central Bank, who advocated that the public should be governed by an intellectual aristocracy maintained by the enlightened self-interest of the wealthy, rather than a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Hamilton maintained, “That power that holds the purse-strings absolutely must rule.”
Today, most of the economic advisors to President Obama are Hamiltonians, such as, Robert Rubin, Paul Volker and Lawrence Summers, all previously employed by the “old” financial order and also members of the Hamilton Project think tank.
As these monopoly banks increase their control by eliminating competition, consumers and small businesses will have even more difficulty borrowing money at reasonable rates, because of less competition in lending. Witness their recent destruction of CIT, the largest lender to small businesses.
Consumers and small businesses will have to lick the boots of the few elitist banks of the “old” financial order to obtain a loan.
Right now these monopoly banks are borrowing from the Federal Reserve at 1% and lending to consumers, via credit cards, at up to 30%. Price gouging is always the result of establishing monopolies.
Reminds one of J.P. Morgan’s government contract with Abraham Lincoln, where Morgan bought Federal rifles from the U.S. government for $3.50 and then sold them back to the U.S. Army for $22. J.P. Morgan’s rifles were notorious for blowing off the thumbs of the soldiers.
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Publishermike
December 14, 2009 11:15 AM in reply to jebahoula
This is so off-topic. If you want to vent, just start your own thread and stop clogging up this one.
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:51 PM in reply to jebahoula
Is there an echo in here?
See comments
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/jebahoula
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Publishermike
December 14, 2009 11:13 AM
Um...where exactly are these 'government controlled health care facilities." this is the first time I've heard of the gov't actually staffing physical locations that provide health care. These loonies will stop at nothing to continue to line the pockets of the insurance companies who back them.
And while I am commenting, I just want to give a big F*CK YOU to Joe Leiberman....
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thomas1
December 14, 2009 11:30 AM in reply to Publishermike
They must be talking about the VA. Only gvt run health facilities that I know of.
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Roger
December 14, 2009 11:15 AM
Use a defibrillator to save their lives.
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Roger
December 14, 2009 11:17 AM in reply to Roger
My mistake! I forgot that they are heartless.
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Peter Principle
December 14, 2009 11:56 AM
A die in? Now that's one right-wing protest technique I can enthusiastically support.
Oh wait, you say they're only going to pretend to die?
Never mind.
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inokeah
December 14, 2009 12:26 PM
Back in the 60's the "Mob" at Kent State wanted some "Hope and Change" also.
That was a "Die In" most of you could believe in.... Right
Peaceful protest in what America is all about.
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mcjam
December 14, 2009 1:54 PM in reply to inokeah
Another tree falls in the forest....
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WaitWut?
December 14, 2009 1:33 PM
The Teabaggers where I live are all old, wealthy and extremely rude. They think nothing of anyone else and continuously prove to be nothing but a joke even among our local Conservatives.
I'm sure there are many, many uninsured who would love to protest by staging a "die-in" at Liebermann's, many of them children with cancelled coverage and terminal illnesses. Unfortunately, they're too sick to make it and wouldn't have to stage their death.
Doesn't matter. They won't get very far and then they'll use the subsequent "bullying" and arrests to further their cause.
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pl3bian
December 15, 2009 1:46 PM in reply to WaitWut?
I have never met a minarchist who had to overcome any real struggles.
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Hidden Oak
December 14, 2009 2:14 PM
As long as they really die, I applaud their effort.
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JohnW1141
December 15, 2009 1:36 PM
They have a right wing capitalist, head of Americans for prosperity, Tim Phillips, who will hang these underinformed, vacuous people when his ilk gets control.
Oh, don't let me forget that other leader, humanitarian man of the people Dick Armey.
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