LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

The "Newshour" program on PBS had a segment on race in the debate about Pres. Obama's "health care reform" ( link to transcript ). It's worth a look, but one comment by the moderator, Gwen Ifill, prompted me to send them the following response: IFILL: "So whether it's Jeremiah Wright or Henry Louis Gates, Jr., or what Jimmy Carter said about this, the Tea Baggers or whoever, it's always going to be with us?" I found myself outraged at Ms. Ifill, during the round table about race in the health care debate, when she used the words "tea baggers" to describe the "tea party" movement. In what was otherwise a reasoned debate about the language used, and it's effect on people of African heritage, she chose to use a derogatory term for another group of Americans. "Tea Party" protesters come in all colors and political stripes, but from what I've seen, they're mostly Caucasian conservatives. After I stopped ...

I don't know how long I've been saying this, but it's been a while. Pres. Obama is not really fighting with the GOP over the health care bill, he's fighting with the "Blue Dog" Democrats, and using the GOP as a "straw man." His true problem is that he's energized a whole new bunch of opposition "community organizers," and he doesn't know how to deal with it. He seems passive-agressive, claiming to want to listen to "other ideas," then attacking those with other ideas. This is what political infighting looks like, in the Obama Administration. If it were just the conservative GOP he was fighting with, there would be no "reaching out." It would be like one big party, as the MSM cheered on, and laughed at the "partisan" opposition, who had no power. If this was is a "mainstream" Democrat bill, most liberal Republicans would support it, as well. The fact that even Sen. Snowe is reserving judgement ...