Finally. A member of congress tries to talk some sense into one of these lunatics.
"ms., trying to have a conversation with you would be like having an argument with a dining room table."
Truth to idiocy.
Congratulations to congressman Frank.
I wish others would take your lead.
Oh my, this is SOOOO impolite of Sen Frank!
Dr. amike, do you concur?
ripper, are you harassing Dr. Amike? (I honestly can't tell, maybe you have some inside joke with him going on.)
yes. he thinks I've been rude.
so what. Why take what he may or may not think with you to other posts? I mean, why be that distracted?
I think he misunderstood...I mean, I think you were saying that I (among others) are otherwise good folks, just misguided on this issue, or at least that's how I read it. Not offensive at all...
Thanks, stilli. That's how I intended it.
emmm. Ripper. Massachusetts has two Senators, One is named Kerry. One is named Kennedy...I suspect you've heard of both of them.
For the record. I think Frank was spot on. He's brilliant. He always has been brilliant. He was brilliant when he was in state government. His wit, his speed of reaction, and his honesty are models for everyone, in congress and out.
There's a difference between calling a woman holding a picture of Obama photoshopped to look like Hitler and calling him a nazi someone from "another planet" or saying that arguing with her is like talking to the dining room table (what Frank did) and saying that moderate democrats supporting the president's approach are...well I'll let you go over and and see what he called them.
Maybe that difference is only a difference to me. I don't much care if anyone else takes umbrage or not. But I stand behind everything I said there...and that's that.
Quite right. Should have been Congressman Frank.
Classic!!!! Everyone should send this link to their representatives in Congress. That is how it should be handled...
yez, indeedy.
Yay Barney!
I like.
mi laiki 2
He said exactly what I've been thinking! And Barney Frank doesn't often do that!
Barney has a quick and clever wit, he often says things I wish I'd said. He can make a point with five words when it would take me five minutes.
I think that it was very good. I don't think Barney Frank was rude to that woman. I am beginning to think these fringe people are beneath contempt (and I emphasis the BENEATH part because they are lower than snakes). If they have a rational argument against any of the health care issue policies I say bring it on. If they have a different solution - bring it on. I am waiting to hear it.
My friend had a heated email exchange with her brother about the number of staff Michelle Obama has. When she pointed out the number of staff of other first ladies her brother emailed back "F##k you you facsist". How crazy are these people? I am so glad Barney Frank said what he did.
F**K YOU, YOU FASCIST!
Barney Frank is a statesman. What a shame there are so few left. Of course it is his civic responsibility to engage his constitutents, whether they agree, disagree, seek information, or want to express outrage. His handling of them all was professional and courageous. His response to the woman with the Hitler/Obama meme was spot on. You have to engage. You have to respond. You do it with truth with a small t--which is exactly what he did. Hey all you senators and congresspeople--learn from Barney Frank, please! Let's grow a little backbone and develop some professional competancy! It ain't hard. You just gotta buck up! And step up!
SECOND
Other pols need to grow a pair. Perhaps, Frank can show them how. Good for him. Speaking truth to inanity.
I am so proud to have Rep. Frank as one of my elected representatives.
I think the town hall thug mentality has a giant weakness. It is only one talking point deep.
When any one of these people are challenged, they are absolutely dumb-founded.
They can only retort with "DUH."
Or just repeat themselves with no additional relevance or clarity.
Speak truth to idiocy.
I wish I had the know-how to assemble a multitude of video clips into one video. I would gather the many incidents like this one where, as you say, the aggrieved citizen is given a chance to express a second talking point (something beyond "NAZI!").
Channeling Jon Stewart's production team....
If you're on a PC you can probably do this using windows moviemaker--if you can download them to your machine.
If you're on a Mac.. dunno: son't want to start platform wars.
I'd love to see that collection of logic collapses:
Yes sir, what's your question?
"YOU'RE A GODDAMN NAZI"
Could you be more specific?
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY PRIVATE FREE ENTERPRISE MEDICARE!!
But Medicare is not private--it's a public plan--government run, did you know that?
"UMM. YOU'RE A GODDAMN NAZI!! That's all I got, sorry..."
So would I... it would make a nice ad on the teevee or perhaps an entertainining aside on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
If you are making a list you would have to add the lady from PA that talked about how she didn't want our country to become socialist like Russia. She was interviewed later in the day by Lawrence O'Donnell (I think he was substituting on the Ed Show) and she couldn't even begin to explain why she believed what she believed.
Loved the woman who was on Fox News because she had stood up to President Obama and then admitted she hadn't listened to his answer.
Barney Frank is my hero!
The more I watch this, the better I like it.
I'm sending an email to Barney giving him KUDOS!
Hope others do the same, as I'm sure he'll get many negative ones.
While I agree with Frank's sentiment, I am not sure that the personalization of his response was useful to move towards information rather than rhetoric. Otherwise, it was an emotionally refreshing human response.
Now I wish he had the same venom for Wall Street, unfortunately he seems much more circumspect when talking to power than responding to hecklers.
I'm inclined to disagree here, rowan. I think the comment about debating with a dining room table is perfectly appropo. We would be a whole lot farther along now if these people were compelled to confront the sheer lunacy of their paranoid statements and their inappropriate fear/hatred by the media and others in positions of leadership in this society.
"What? Are you nuts?" is often all the response you can offer someone who comes at you with such an assault on decency and common sense. I just wish someone would have had the courage to call out Grassley and a few of the others for the absolutely irresponsible statements they have made. Silence lends credibility to the whack-jobs, and it's so much more satisfying to make them step right into the piles of crap they otherwise hope to leave behind unchallenged.
SJ, wasn't sayin to ignore - just might have been addressed a in a way to move these people forward - not harden them further into a "persecuted" fringe.
I'm with Sleepin' and Frank on this one. If you listen to the MSM and even NPR, the word is that the only ones who really care are those who are standing up and screaming, which is insulting to everyone who is trying to be sensible and HEARD.
I haven't heard one single Democrat show the exasperation that Frank showed with this woman who was ignorantly using the term "NAZI" as though she deserves respect for her "opinion."
As a Jew, he had standing to take umbrage at this absurd crap. His simple statement about equating someone wanting to help people get insurance with those who sent 6 million people to gas chambers is way overdue in this "conversation."
His final statement about the dining-room table showed major self-discipline in my opinion. Someone who shows up with a sign showing our president with a Hitler moustache -- do you really think that he could "move her forward?" People like her are already hardened, or they would show up and ask a question without using terms like "Nazi" and not hold up defaced pictures of our President. They need to be called out. Ridicule, in this case, was appropriate.
Agree CVille, although always erudite ,Rowan at times has a surfeit of over cogitating wimpoid tissue.
Rowan, you could live with the woman for crying out loud for 20 years and she wouldn't change.
This lady is a Lyndon Larouche Democrat. She's a fringe radical and a wacko. The group she belongs to are the ones waving the signs of Obama with the Hitler 'stache and calling him a Nazi.
Let's be honest and realize that there are nut-balls on both sides of the fence. Just out of curiosity, were you upset at the people who drew pics of Bush as Hitler?
I agree that it's all outrageous but we have to be consistent lest we make ourselves out to be hypocrites.
There was justification for comparing George W. to Hitler, in that a former prosecutor of the post-WWII Nuremberg trials, who convicted 22 Nazi's of crimes against humanity, stated in 2006:
"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Benjamin Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York.... George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein.
The key is that there is no equivalence between reforming health care and starting wars of choice.
First of all, she is no "lady," because ladies do not go around spreading falsehoods about people, and second of all, she is no Democrat -- where do you get off with that ridiculous assessment?
The only thing she has in common with LaRouche is the practice of spreading libelous statements; if that is enough to satisfy your comparisons (and BTW, it isn't enough for me), then the entire wing-nut wing of the republican party, including Sarah Palin would be "LaRouche Democrats."
I wonder though, Rowan. Logic doesn't penetrate all. It can be nicely put. It can be pounded. With some people, it will not sink in. I believe that some of these people threaten the well-being of others by dislocating the essential dialogue required to achieve health care reform. Congressman Frank, I believe, chose to call a spade a spade, in this case. Not for the heck of it. But to move the meeting forward for the people who want to learn and participate in a productive debate.
Freedom of speech. If she has the right to call him a backer of a Nazi-policy (seriously? he's a gay jew), he has the right to call her a dining room table.
It's not pretty, I know.
But I wish more of our reps and Senators would disarm the tidal wave of absolute lunacy this way.
I'll take being called the table, at least it never started a war, tortured and murdered people, or ran a huge propaganda ministry to delude the public.
Laugh out loud:) (formal spelling worth it.)
Thank you, Barney! You had the courage to say what needed saying, there is no discussing healthcare with these people.
As they say, "Never argue with a crazy person. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!"
I think Barney Frank was being quite rude. I've known a number of very reasonable and well spoken dining room tables, as well as very well-informed home furnishings of various political stripes. I think Rep. Frank is letting his experience with a few, less open-minded dining room tables color his whole perception of all dining room tables as a whole. I'd expect better from a liberal, especially one who has had to face the challenges Rep. Frank has had to face.
That being said, his line "It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this sort of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated," was as awesome as it gets.
Thank You! I hadn't considered how dining-room tables had been slandered by his comment. You are so right! I take back everything I said, and I want to offer my apologies to dining-room tables everywhere. I also called Barney just a couple of minutes ago and he agrees with me. He, however, was unable to think of another object that he would not insult by using the same reference. So he had to make something up.
From Barney Frank 5 minutes ago, he would like to amend his comments to this: "ms., trying to have a conversation with you would be like having an argument with snail poo from the planet Mars." He was quoted 30 seconds ago saying that he feels pretty good about this comparison, but if any Martian snail feces are offended they can just sue him.
Finally. A member of congress tries to talk some sense into one of these lunatics.
"ms., trying to have a conversation with you would be like having an argument with a dining room table."
Truth to idiocy.
Congratulations to congressman Frank.
I wish others would take your lead.
August 18, 2009 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh my, this is SOOOO impolite of Sen Frank!
Dr. amike, do you concur?
August 18, 2009 11:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
ripper, are you harassing Dr. Amike? (I honestly can't tell, maybe you have some inside joke with him going on.)
August 18, 2009 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
yes. he thinks I've been rude.
August 19, 2009 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
so what. Why take what he may or may not think with you to other posts? I mean, why be that distracted?
August 19, 2009 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think he misunderstood...I mean, I think you were saying that I (among others) are otherwise good folks, just misguided on this issue, or at least that's how I read it. Not offensive at all...
August 19, 2009 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, stilli. That's how I intended it.
August 19, 2009 1:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
emmm. Ripper. Massachusetts has two Senators, One is named Kerry. One is named Kennedy...I suspect you've heard of both of them.
August 19, 2009 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
And I agree that it would be sensible to continue our disagreement over where it began, rather than assume that I equate what Congressman Frank says here to what Ripper said there. Here's the link those who haven't read it can go look. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/ripper_mccord/2009/08/the-soothing-opiate-of-patienc.php?ref=reccafe
For the record. I think Frank was spot on. He's brilliant. He always has been brilliant. He was brilliant when he was in state government. His wit, his speed of reaction, and his honesty are models for everyone, in congress and out.
There's a difference between calling a woman holding a picture of Obama photoshopped to look like Hitler and calling him a nazi someone from "another planet" or saying that arguing with her is like talking to the dining room table (what Frank did) and saying that moderate democrats supporting the president's approach are...well I'll let you go over and and see what he called them.
Maybe that difference is only a difference to me. I don't much care if anyone else takes umbrage or not. But I stand behind everything I said there...and that's that.
August 19, 2009 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quite right. Should have been Congressman Frank.
August 19, 2009 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Classic!!!! Everyone should send this link to their representatives in Congress. That is how it should be handled...
August 18, 2009 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
yez, indeedy.
Yay Barney!
August 19, 2009 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like.
August 19, 2009 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
mi laiki 2
August 19, 2009 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
He said exactly what I've been thinking! And Barney Frank doesn't often do that!
August 19, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barney has a quick and clever wit, he often says things I wish I'd said. He can make a point with five words when it would take me five minutes.
August 19, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that it was very good. I don't think Barney Frank was rude to that woman. I am beginning to think these fringe people are beneath contempt (and I emphasis the BENEATH part because they are lower than snakes). If they have a rational argument against any of the health care issue policies I say bring it on. If they have a different solution - bring it on. I am waiting to hear it.
My friend had a heated email exchange with her brother about the number of staff Michelle Obama has. When she pointed out the number of staff of other first ladies her brother emailed back "F##k you you facsist". How crazy are these people? I am so glad Barney Frank said what he did.
August 19, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
F**K YOU, YOU FASCIST!
August 19, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barney Frank is a statesman. What a shame there are so few left. Of course it is his civic responsibility to engage his constitutents, whether they agree, disagree, seek information, or want to express outrage. His handling of them all was professional and courageous. His response to the woman with the Hitler/Obama meme was spot on. You have to engage. You have to respond. You do it with truth with a small t--which is exactly what he did. Hey all you senators and congresspeople--learn from Barney Frank, please! Let's grow a little backbone and develop some professional competancy! It ain't hard. You just gotta buck up! And step up!
August 19, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
SECOND
August 19, 2009 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other pols need to grow a pair. Perhaps, Frank can show them how. Good for him. Speaking truth to inanity.
August 19, 2009 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so proud to have Rep. Frank as one of my elected representatives.
August 19, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the town hall thug mentality has a giant weakness. It is only one talking point deep.
When any one of these people are challenged, they are absolutely dumb-founded.
They can only retort with "DUH."
Or just repeat themselves with no additional relevance or clarity.
Speak truth to idiocy.
August 19, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish I had the know-how to assemble a multitude of video clips into one video. I would gather the many incidents like this one where, as you say, the aggrieved citizen is given a chance to express a second talking point (something beyond "NAZI!").
Channeling Jon Stewart's production team....
August 19, 2009 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're on a PC you can probably do this using windows moviemaker--if you can download them to your machine.
If you're on a Mac.. dunno: son't want to start platform wars.
August 19, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd love to see that collection of logic collapses:
Yes sir, what's your question?
"YOU'RE A GODDAMN NAZI"
Could you be more specific?
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY PRIVATE FREE ENTERPRISE MEDICARE!!
But Medicare is not private--it's a public plan--government run, did you know that?
"UMM. YOU'RE A GODDAMN NAZI!! That's all I got, sorry..."
August 19, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
So would I... it would make a nice ad on the teevee or perhaps an entertainining aside on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
August 19, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are making a list you would have to add the lady from PA that talked about how she didn't want our country to become socialist like Russia. She was interviewed later in the day by Lawrence O'Donnell (I think he was substituting on the Ed Show) and she couldn't even begin to explain why she believed what she believed.
August 19, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Loved the woman who was on Fox News because she had stood up to President Obama and then admitted she hadn't listened to his answer.
August 19, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barney Frank is my hero!
August 19, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The more I watch this, the better I like it.
I'm sending an email to Barney giving him KUDOS!
Hope others do the same, as I'm sure he'll get many negative ones.
August 19, 2009 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with Frank's sentiment, I am not sure that the personalization of his response was useful to move towards information rather than rhetoric. Otherwise, it was an emotionally refreshing human response.
Now I wish he had the same venom for Wall Street, unfortunately he seems much more circumspect when talking to power than responding to hecklers.
August 19, 2009 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm inclined to disagree here, rowan. I think the comment about debating with a dining room table is perfectly appropo. We would be a whole lot farther along now if these people were compelled to confront the sheer lunacy of their paranoid statements and their inappropriate fear/hatred by the media and others in positions of leadership in this society.
"What? Are you nuts?" is often all the response you can offer someone who comes at you with such an assault on decency and common sense. I just wish someone would have had the courage to call out Grassley and a few of the others for the absolutely irresponsible statements they have made. Silence lends credibility to the whack-jobs, and it's so much more satisfying to make them step right into the piles of crap they otherwise hope to leave behind unchallenged.
August 19, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
SJ, wasn't sayin to ignore - just might have been addressed a in a way to move these people forward - not harden them further into a "persecuted" fringe.
August 19, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with Sleepin' and Frank on this one. If you listen to the MSM and even NPR, the word is that the only ones who really care are those who are standing up and screaming, which is insulting to everyone who is trying to be sensible and HEARD.
I haven't heard one single Democrat show the exasperation that Frank showed with this woman who was ignorantly using the term "NAZI" as though she deserves respect for her "opinion."
As a Jew, he had standing to take umbrage at this absurd crap. His simple statement about equating someone wanting to help people get insurance with those who sent 6 million people to gas chambers is way overdue in this "conversation."
His final statement about the dining-room table showed major self-discipline in my opinion. Someone who shows up with a sign showing our president with a Hitler moustache -- do you really think that he could "move her forward?" People like her are already hardened, or they would show up and ask a question without using terms like "Nazi" and not hold up defaced pictures of our President. They need to be called out. Ridicule, in this case, was appropriate.
August 19, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree CVille, although always erudite ,Rowan at times has a surfeit of over cogitating wimpoid tissue.
Rowan, you could live with the woman for crying out loud for 20 years and she wouldn't change.
August 19, 2009 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
This lady is a Lyndon Larouche Democrat. She's a fringe radical and a wacko. The group she belongs to are the ones waving the signs of Obama with the Hitler 'stache and calling him a Nazi.
Let's be honest and realize that there are nut-balls on both sides of the fence. Just out of curiosity, were you upset at the people who drew pics of Bush as Hitler?
I agree that it's all outrageous but we have to be consistent lest we make ourselves out to be hypocrites.
August 19, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
There was justification for comparing George W. to Hitler, in that a former prosecutor of the post-WWII Nuremberg trials, who convicted 22 Nazi's of crimes against humanity, stated in 2006:
The key is that there is no equivalence between reforming health care and starting wars of choice.
August 19, 2009 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, she is no "lady," because ladies do not go around spreading falsehoods about people, and second of all, she is no Democrat -- where do you get off with that ridiculous assessment?
The only thing she has in common with LaRouche is the practice of spreading libelous statements; if that is enough to satisfy your comparisons (and BTW, it isn't enough for me), then the entire wing-nut wing of the republican party, including Sarah Palin would be "LaRouche Democrats."
August 20, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder though, Rowan. Logic doesn't penetrate all. It can be nicely put. It can be pounded. With some people, it will not sink in. I believe that some of these people threaten the well-being of others by dislocating the essential dialogue required to achieve health care reform. Congressman Frank, I believe, chose to call a spade a spade, in this case. Not for the heck of it. But to move the meeting forward for the people who want to learn and participate in a productive debate.
Freedom of speech. If she has the right to call him a backer of a Nazi-policy (seriously? he's a gay jew), he has the right to call her a dining room table.
It's not pretty, I know.
But I wish more of our reps and Senators would disarm the tidal wave of absolute lunacy this way.
August 19, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll take being called the table, at least it never started a war, tortured and murdered people, or ran a huge propaganda ministry to delude the public.
August 19, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Laugh out loud:) (formal spelling worth it.)
August 19, 2009 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Barney! You had the courage to say what needed saying, there is no discussing healthcare with these people.
As they say, "Never argue with a crazy person. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!"
August 19, 2009 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Barney Frank was being quite rude. I've known a number of very reasonable and well spoken dining room tables, as well as very well-informed home furnishings of various political stripes. I think Rep. Frank is letting his experience with a few, less open-minded dining room tables color his whole perception of all dining room tables as a whole. I'd expect better from a liberal, especially one who has had to face the challenges Rep. Frank has had to face.
That being said, his line "It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this sort of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated," was as awesome as it gets.
August 19, 2009 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank You! I hadn't considered how dining-room tables had been slandered by his comment. You are so right! I take back everything I said, and I want to offer my apologies to dining-room tables everywhere. I also called Barney just a couple of minutes ago and he agrees with me. He, however, was unable to think of another object that he would not insult by using the same reference. So he had to make something up.
From Barney Frank 5 minutes ago, he would like to amend his comments to this: "ms., trying to have a conversation with you would be like having an argument with snail poo from the planet Mars." He was quoted 30 seconds ago saying that he feels pretty good about this comparison, but if any Martian snail feces are offended they can just sue him.
August 19, 2009 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink