Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

This is NOT my America

Bear witness to compassionate conservatism in action, Teabagger style:

…the clip shows a man holding a sign, explaining that he has Parkinson’s and needs health care reform to pass. When he sat on the pavement near the reform opponents, a conservative activist proceeded to lecture the man: “You’re looking for a hand-out, you’re in the wrong end of town. Nothing for free over here, you have to work for everything you get.”

This is not the country that I love:

Another far-right protestor mocked the man, dropping a dollar bill on him, saying, “I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot.” Throwing another wadded bill, the protestor added, “I’ll decide when to give you money. Here’s another one, here you go.” A moment later, he shouted at the man sitting on the street: “No more hand-outs.”

Someone in the crowd is also heard saying, “You love a communist.”

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people?


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/ 75 Comments

75 comments

  1. fogiv

    …today of all days, I’m relatively certain my Oirish temper would have gotten the better of me.  A few teabagging assholes would have need to review their own healthcare plans, if you catch my drift.

  2. proudmama

    My Grandmother passed away last summer and she had Parkinson’s. She had medical insurance and still could not afford the medications required to manage this disease. Different members of my family would actually go to Mexico to purchase her medicine because it was so much cheaper.

    I guess it just makes me angry and sad that those people just jumped to conclusions that this man was looking for a handout. For all we know he could be a laid off auto worker whose job has been shipped over-seas and now has a medical condition that the insurance company deemed to expensive to treat and took away his benefits, or jacked the rates up so high he could not afford the premium and the cost of prescriptions.

  3. HappyinVT

    These people make me sick.  Upper Arlington, while it has its “problem” areas, is (or used to be when I lived in the area) a wealthy suburb of Columbus.  A lot of the natives have never had to worry about their medical bills, or much else for that matter.  That’s assuming, and I have no reason to doubt, that they were native to the area.

    I’m with fog and John ~ I’d have gone to jail after they pealed me off that gigantic asshole.  I hope someone like Rush (the same guy who mocked Michael J. Fox) tries to make a “hero” out of this guy and gets his name.  He deserves to be mocked by name loudly and often.

  4. Shaun Appleby

    ‘Cuz I admire your dash but frankly these people are their own worst enemies.  What this clip shows is an ugly side of the anti-reform movement which is all about entitlement, selfishness and derision of the weak and unfortunate.  In this case the pro-reform protester even had the élan to come out and confront the anti-reform crowd and what did he get?  Disrespect and undignified bullying.  Pretty much sums up the whole issue for me.

    If I was there I would tackle those idiots with words, “How dare you?,” not violence, it is our challenge to confront this kind of behaviour with moral authority, not the beating for which it is apparently begging.  They are doing their cause more greivous harm than we could wish on them, it seems to me.

    It is a short trip from this kind of display to little gangs of skinheads beating up whomever they encounter in their neighbourhood wanderings.  Before this kind of adolescent behaviour becomes normative we must act like responsible parents, with a little ‘intervention’ from time-to-time.  Sooner or later these displays will rebound on the perpetrators with considerable discredit.

  5. canadian gal

    where i heard this, but it was something along the lines of:

    “how do we sleep at night knowing that we view caring of the sick as a profit-making enterprise?”

    indeed.

  6. HappyinVT

    Chris Matthews interviewed a guy from Americans for Prosperity and ripped him a new one over what one of their guys did to the guy in the video.

    I’ll see if I can verify this.

  8. HappyinVT

    “I feel I embody the controversy that was being fought out,” Bob Letcher, 60, tells us. “No one was engaging, everyone was screaming. I thought, I don’t have to scream, I just have to be there. I walked over and sat down … I sort of presented myself as an argument by myself.”

    snip

    Letcher made his way over to the anti-health care crowd bearing a homemade sign asking, “Got Parkinson’s?” I Do and You Might. Thanks for helping! That’s community!”

    snip

    Letcher says he has been on disability since 2005. His last job was teaching science and technology policy at Ohio State. He had brain surgery in 2006, paid for by Medicare and by a charitable contribution from the Cleveland Clinic, he says.  TPM

    But, don’t despair ~ the day wasn’t all bad.

    But Letcher’s spirits were lifted by one moment that wasn’t captured on camera.

    A “teabag kind of guy” holding a “don’t tread on me” flag at one point came over to Letcher in the street and whispered “hey buddy, you better move, that car almost hit you.”

    “That was the only hopeful thing that came out of that day. Otherwise it was terribly discouraging,” says Letcher.

    I guess that’s something.

  9. DTOzone

    Things seem to be getting pretty heated in the Capitol with crowds of anti-Reform/Tea Party activists going through the halls shouting slogans and epithets at Democratic members of Congress.

    As our Brian Beutler reports, a few moments ago in Longworth office building, a group swarmed a very calm looking Henry Waxman, as he got on the elevator, with shouts of “Kill the bill!” “You liar! You crook!”

    Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you faggot.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.

    A Capitol police officer threatened to throw them out but that only seemed to inflame them more.

    Note that this was in the Longworth building, not the Capitol building proper. But I’m a bit surprised that this is being allowed to occur anywhere in the Capitol complex. From Brian’s description it sounds like menacing.

    I just can’t believe I share the same nationality with these people, embarassing.  

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