{"id":8755,"date":"2011-09-15T08:35:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T15:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=8755"},"modified":"2011-09-16T13:12:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T20:12:59","slug":"tea-party-healthcare-plan-let-them-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8755","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Tea Party&#8217; Healthcare Plan &#8211; &#8216;Let Them Die!&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/GOPhealth1.jpg\"  hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">It&#8217;s bad enough that CNN surrendered what little credibility it had as a &#8220;news&#8221; organization by adopting the name and sponsorship of a mega-billionaire Koch Brothers&#8217; funded and controlled, pseudo-grass-roots organization to partner with on Monday&#8217;s GOP Presidential debate in California.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in the midst of this <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> front-page headline, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-poverty-census-20110914,0,6473161.story\">U.S. poverty totals hit a 50-year high<\/a><\/a>, comes the loud &#8220;yes&#8221;\u009d (several, actually) from the audience at the CNN &#8216;Tea Party&#8217; debate, applauding the prospect of simply letting those who can&#8217;t afford healthcare insurance die&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"400\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yva0VSN1_T4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll recall then Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)&#8217;s controversial charge during the 2010 health care debate was that the GOP&#8217;s plan was little more than &#8220;Don&#8217;t get sick&#8221;\u00a6And if you do, die quickly.&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&#038;v=-usmvYOPfco\">Video here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>He faced extraordinary heat from Republicans (and their friends in the media) on that point at the time, but, as he noted after Monday&#8217;s debate, his criticism of the GOP seems to have been on the mark.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What you saw tonight,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/09\/12\/alan-grayson-tea-party-debate-health-care_n_959383.html\">he told Huffington Post<\/a> who&#8217;d ask for his thoughts, &#8220;is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It&#8217;s sadism, pure and simple. It&#8217;s the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the &#8220;same impulse&#8221; to the ghoulish moment seen above during Paul&#8217;s response, follows on another similar celebration of death at <em>last week&#8217;s<\/em> GOP debate, this one on MSNBC, in which TX Gov. Rick Perry was applauded for having presided over 234 executions, &#8220;more than any other governor in modern times&#8221; &#8212; a number that will grow to 235 within a couple of days unless Perry stops the execution of an African American man whose death sentence was imposed after a TX prosecutor argued that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-texas-execution-20110914,0,3431030.story\">being Black &#8220;increases future dangerousness&#8221;<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"400\" height=\"330\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MZlDF9VCbrg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The incidents call to mind, in addition to &#8220;people in the Coliseum&#8230;cheer[ing] when the lions ate the Christians,&#8221; the moment in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0386032\/\"><em>Sicko!<\/em><\/a> when, after a confused elderly woman in a flimsy hospital gown is dumped curbside near a Skid Row rescue mission because she couldn&#8217;t pay her hospital bill, Michael Moore asked, &#8220;Who are we?  Is this what we have become?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Answer on the Republican Party primary voters side of the aisle, in any case, would seem to be &#8220;Yes! And we&#8217;re damned proud of it! Bring on more lions!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>UPDATE 09\/16\/11<\/em><\/strong> In the body of this article, I reported that the number of executions in TX would soon grow to 235 unless Perry stops the execution of an African American man whose death sentence was imposed after a TX prosecutor argued that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-texas-execution-20110914,0,3431030.story\">being Black &#8220;increases future dangerousness&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Although Perry refused to intervene, the inmate, Duane Edward Buck, was spared just hours before his scheduled execution when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a reprieve, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-texas-death-20110916,0,3367730.story\">according to <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first recent case in which the Supreme Court intervened to spare an inmate from what Perry touts as a rock solid TX system of justice.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Times<\/em> went on to report:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Last year, the court intervened at the last hour to stop the execution of an inmate [Hank Skinner] who said he was innocent and sought DNA testing of a bloody knife and other items found at the crime scene&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Texas prosecutors and judges had ruled he had no right to seek the DNA testing because his lawyer did not seek it during his trial.<\/p>\n<p>The high court ruled for Skinner this March, saying he had a right under federal law to have the DNA tested.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Of course, Perry boasted during the televised debate that he doesn&#8217;t lose sleep over the possibility the state may have executed an innocent inmate.  That&#8217;s the thing about the death penalty &#8212; you can bury your mistakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning It&#8217;s bad enough that CNN surrendered what little credibility it had as a &#8220;news&#8221; organization by adopting the name and sponsorship of a mega-billionaire Koch Brothers&#8217; funded and controlled, pseudo-grass-roots organization to partner with on Monday&#8217;s GOP Presidential debate in California. Now, in the midst of this Los Angeles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,288,490,188,179,300,491,126],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cnn","category-health-care","category-koch-industries","category-mainstream-media-failure","category-movies","category-republicans","category-rick-perry","category-rights-and-freedoms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8755"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=8755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}