Has America gone Mad?

[Lzcutter]

As much as I wish this was a thread about Mad Men, one of my favorite shows, I'm sorry it's not.

CNN is reporting that over a dozen people carrying guns or with guns holstered on their hips were outside of the pro-health care reform rally in Arizona that was being held next door the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention where PRESIDENT Barack Obama was speaking.

I don't care if you are for the health care reform, against the health care reform, or where you stand on the Second Amendment.

Unless you are with the Secret Service or the local LEOs, you shouldn't be allowed to carry a weapon anywhere near where the President of the United States is speaking, hanging out or whatever.

Has this country forgotten how tragic it is to have a President (of either party) assassinated? We lost JFK almost 46 years ago and for four days this country was in a state of mourning and disbelief.

We lost Martin Luther King and RFK 41 years ago and the shock and mourning were devastating.

I was alive in 1963 and I remember the tears, the sadness, the mourning. It took this country a long time to heal and in some ways we never did.

To lose President Obama to an assassin's bullet over the health care reform issue is beyond crazy.

Yes, I know that Arizona has gun laws that allow its citizens to carry firearms as long as they aren't concealed. But near where the President is speaking?

That's a recipe for disaster just waiting to happen.

Where are the politicans from either party decrying this madness? Why is this okay?

Because from where I sit, it's not. Maybe you have to have lived through a presidential assassination to fully grasp why you never, ever want to live through another.

But we shouldn't have to. Any one with a lick of common sense knows that gun-toting people (aside from the Secret Service and the local LEOs) should not be anywhere near the President.

I'm starting to think we have all gone mad.

[silentscreen]

I completely agree. It happened in N.H. too. I don't know what's up with this. Actually I just read that they're exercising their rights because they think we're in the midst of losing them?

[Lzcutter]

This is beyond belief to me. This is only making the Secret Service's job harder (and it is likely hard enough already). We don't allow the air-space over the White House to be intruded on, we can't take guns on a plane (in fact we have to be searched to be sure we aren't - including our shoes), but we allow people to carry guns in proximity of the President. Of. The. United. States. WTF?

While the gun-toters may not be the problem. The message they are sending is one of violence and it only takes one Lee Harvey Oswald-type listening and watching to change the course of history. (And no, I don't want to debate the lone gunman theory here, this issue has riled up enough already).

Both parties need to step up to the plate and deal with this. Now. Not after someone has taken a shot at Obama. As do we as citizens. We can't allow the politicians to think that we as a nation are okay with this behavior.

[ken123]

America has always had a sizeable minority who believe in myths and act irrationally. Today the airwaves are filled with idiots spewing nonsense.

[mrsl]

Either yesterday or Saturday I asked this same question. Mine was in the form of that idiot being interviewed after the President had finished, yet he was still wearing his gun saying it was his right according to the Constitution. When are these fools going to understand that the Constitution does NOT give the right to carry arms for any reason other than for defense of hearth and home, and that means in war time.

If I walked into the local K-Mart with a six shooter holstered to my hip, I would quickly be escorted to the security office, and held until the local police came for me. As you say: How do these morons get off carrying guns in any sort of proximity of the President? If this is going to be the case then cancel the secret service contingents for Bubba Bush, Bill Clinton, Papa Bush, Carter, Ford, and anyone else who is still alive. I know some of them have passed on but I can't recall which. Why bother? What makes them more important than the President?

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[jdb1]

It's as I said on the other thread: it's a wrongheaded attempt to exercise what is perceived as a Constitutional right. (By which I mean brandishing weapons anywhere, any time.) Apparently, the gun-toters believe that having affordable, universal, and humane health care which will benefit them as well as the rest of us is a violation of their rights.

And if Prohibition were still on the books, they'd probably all be waving bottles of Canadian whiskey around as well as sidearms.

What's with this new cry "They're trying to put the insurance companies out of business!" Since when is any insurance companies our cuddly friend who need to be protected by the average citizen? I'd like to know who put those particular protestors up to it. It's like those people who wave signs at the ballpark that welcome the TV network that's broadcasting the game. Nobody thinks those people actually made those signs and brought them all the way to the park of their own volition, do they?

[movieman1957]

It's as I said on the other thread: it's a wrongheaded attempt to exercise what is perceived as a Constitutional right. (By which I mean brandishing weapons anywhere, any time.) Apparently, the gun-toters believe that having affordable, universal, and humane health care which will benefit them as well as the rest of us is a violation of their rights.

Has it really been shown to be all those things? The CBO says it will cost more than Obama claims. I think people see that any government plan to take away what they have and make them enroll in something they don't have or want is a worry. Are they going to make people give up a good insurance plan to make them go on a government plan? That is part of what they are worried about.

The Democrats have shot themselves in the foot on this issue. They were unprepared not only to really talk about it but underestimated the reaction of the public. If they are really worried about those people who are uninsured then set up a plan for those people and for those who may want that type of plan.

No sympathy for gun-toters here. They can easily leave them at home.

[ken123]

Medicare for all. In the past 6 years my wife, mother,and father have died, there were all on medicare. The bills, in their last year total almost $2 million ( combined ) the cost to the family - nothing. Medicare for all - good bye bloodsuckers - the insurance companies.

[ken123]

How does anyone know if they have good insurance until they make a claim ?


If President Obama was white would these " gun nuts " appear at his rallies armed ?


If President Obama were white would the Secret Service act differently ?


I am just asking question.

[jdb1]

I don't think that anyone who already has insurance coverage would be required to give it up in favor of something else. I haven't seen anything like that in what I've been reading on the government's informational websites describing the reforms. The idea is to end the harmful and deceptive practices now being perpetrated on the insureds: e.g., refusing coverage for those pesky pre-existing conditions, or placing a coverage cap on your treatments, or denying you coverage if you get a disease, or need a specific medicine, the insurers don't like.

I can indeed understand that some people would be uncomfortable with the idea of compulsory health coverage (which is part of the proposal). However, this particular aspect doesn't bother me much: if it were a question of the govt. requiring me to wear my underwear on the outside and speak only Swedish I might balk. But in the case of health care, I'm going to do it anyway, and it's essential to my well-being. In fact, the good health of everyone around me is essential to my well-being, too.

But that's just me -- I simply don't see concern for my good health and general welfare as a suborning of my rights. This is not a picture that can be painted in only black and white -- there are many too many shades of gray to consider, and people all around us are dying while these histrionics are being played out.

[ken123]

I have just finished watching an interview with one of " gun toting protesters " at President Obama's health care rally in Phoenix yesterday. It sent chills up and down my spine. The interview was conducted by a right wing group based in Phoenix. I could not watch the entire interview it was so sickening.

[Lzcutter]

Are they going to make people give up a good insurance plan to make them go on a government plan?

No, you would get to keep your good insurance plan. You would also be able to enroll in the government plan and have your good insurance plan as supplemental insurance, much like some people do with Medicare.

Medicare truly works. After the six month ordeal with my father's health issues in 2007, I was afraid the hospital and doctor bills would sink my mother's finances. Medicare took care of most of it.

The idea is to insure the 46 million Americans who are currently without health care insurance. Emergency rooms and hospitals are closing around the country at a fast rate because the hospitals can no longer afford to treat the uninsured.

When a hospital closes, and we've had it happen all over southern California, it's just not the uninsured who suffer. We all suffer.

Rachel Maddow had a Secret Service agent on her show last night and he talked about the violent message that is being sent and the over-the-top hot political rhetoric that needs to be cooled down before we are again a nation in mourning.

[mrsl]

Medicare pays 70% of most doctor and hospital bills, the problem lies in paying your insurance premiums all year long up to $200.00 per month, yet when you get a 30% bill for a treatment and send it in to the insurance company, they refuse to pay because of some hidden agenda they have that doesn't approve the bill. So in addition to your normal $200.00, this month, you have to figure out where to get the money to pay the 30% as well. Poor little insurance companies.

I believe (at least HOPE) the government learned that compulsory insurance doesn't necessarily work. In 2004 I signed up for that stupid Part D plan. At first it was good, I paid $56.00 per month for my meds, but with Part D, I paid $20.50 for the premium, and $12.00 at the druggist for my particular meds saving $14.00 per month. But in the first year, my premium was raised 3 times to finally $48.00 per month. So I was paying $60.00 per month for $56.00 worth of meds, which had not changed by either dosage or price. The shame of it was, I was locked until October which was the ONLY time of the year the insurance could be changed. Although I never liked Bush, that experience quickly turned my dislike to mistrust, and near hate because it was the beginning of the plan to make seniors pay again through the nose for what they had been paying for all their lives.

People who hadn't had kids in school for 40 years were suddenly paying new school taxes, yet art and music was being taken away from the curriculum. School yards looked like garbage dumps - nobody to cut the grass, or trim the trees, Lord knows what inside the schools were like. What were the taxes for? Yet nothing has changed. The first lady took it upon herself to show kids how to plant vegetables, yet the media tried to claim danger due to sewage so close to the White House.

In answer to your question, YES American has gone crazy, but it seems only we 'elders' are worried about it.
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[mrsl]

Certainly not a fan of Tom Delay, I have to credit him with one amazingly truthful statement, which should have been uttered at those town meetings with President Obama, in the states where carrying guns is legal. Asked if it was legal for those people to appear with the handguns, and the automatic rifles, his response was: According to the states involved it was legal, BUT, in reference to the Secret Service and Security actions, it was not legal. The Secret Service should never have allowed those guns within such close range to the President no matter who he is. The Secret Service clearly fell down on their jobs by allowing such demonstrations.

I get so angry when I read or see these things. I read an article on how Michelle Obama was inappropriately dressed in shorts for a trip to the Grand Canyon, and was compared to Jackie O who always wore a skirt or decent culots, or pedal pushers. I couldn't ignore that one. The comments were all from the Southeast section and I fumed as I typed. Those idiots either are too young to remember, or too racially twisted to admit that we all dressed in skirts or culots because shorts were not yet in style. They started as Bermuda shorts (to the knee) and got shorter each year until a rock song made short shorts popular. Jackie O had knobby knees and didn't want anyone to see them, that's why she wore pedal pushers. This is all so stupid and ignorant. Who cares what a person wears to the point that you bring it to the media attention?
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[silentscreen]

I agree with you Anne about Michelle Obama's attire. It was entirely appropriate for the situation. You're also right, why does the media obsess on these things? Surely they have better things to address?