Well, in spite of “You Lie” Joe Wilson, and the tea parties, and the raucous town hall meetings, the Gang of Six in the Senate seems to be finally getting down to business on health care reform.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says:

As senators on and off the committee, [including] Republicans, begin to know more about all of this, their comfort level is starting to come up a bit. I do believe that in the end we will have some significant bipartisan support.”

The group of three Democratic and three Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee — are realizing “there’s much to agree on,” Baucus said.

Now that’s a far cry from “You Lie”, now isn’t it. Even Iowa GOP Sen. Charles Grassley, one of the gang of “Pull the plug on Grandma”, said he wanted to see the overall price lowered in light of skyrocketing federal budget deficits (reasonable argument), and indicated that there were “five to six unresolved issues” but expressed some optimism that they could be overcome.

Last week, President Obama delivered a speech to Congress outlining a proposal similar to the measure being negotiated by the Gang of Six. Sounds like the President got his point across to them. Of course, he didn’t convince “You Lie” Wilson, but then again, he is a gang of one right now.

Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said that The Finance Committee bill as currently drafted would cost roughly $880 billion over 10 years and be fully funded and also said it would not add to the federal deficit.

He  also said he was “confident we’re bending the cost curve in the right way.”

Now that’s negotiating. William Shatner would be proud.

Mulligan!

Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana, called for restarting the health care debate instead of proceeding with policies he claimed were opposed by the majority of the country.

What? Opposed by a majority of what country? Spain? Read the polls Mr. Boustany.

Most Americans wanted to hear the president tell Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the rest of Congress that it’s time to start over on a common-sense, bipartisan plan focused on lowering the cost of health care while improving quality.”

OK, define common sense. Kill the death panel provision? Take out providing  health care to all the illegal Canadians living here? But, why stop there? Why not just make health insurance available only to those who have donated to a FudPublican political campaign and call it a day. The rest of us could just go die on the hospital floor while they try to figure out where they can send us. Oh, wait, that’s already happening.

Common sense would dictate having thoughtful, intense yet respectful debate of the issues at hand.

Yelling “You Lie” in the middle of a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress is not my idea of common sense.

Keeping the “birther” movement alive at every chance you get is not my idea of common sense.

Sending out mailers that the Obama health reform plan will pay for sex change operations is not my idea of common sense.

It’s all FUD, plain and simple. FudPublicans have made an art of spewing FUD, and they wont stop anytime soon.

So, Mr. President, stay the course. Don’t let them wear you down. That’s all they have. They lost the last election…badly.

And when you call them out for distorting the facts, as they will most certainly continue to do, give them the map of the Appalachian Trail. We wouldn’t want to see anyone getting lost and ending up in, oh I don’t know, Argentina?

Update – Oh, and President Obama has accepted Joe Wilson’s apology…

Rudy Ruiz writes today on CNN.com a reasoned commentary regarding the whack jobs out there trying to make the President’s speech to school children today a message of fear and indoctrination.

He makes 3 solid points:

• That we should listen respectfully to others. Doing so, we might realize that we can appreciate certain aspects of a person while disagreeing with others, and that partial differences of opinion needn’t always spur absolute rejection.

• That we should respect the president because, even if we didn’t vote for him, we’re still one nation.

• That we should give our president an opportunity to lead by example.

The FUDPublican’s who are going to DEFCON 1 and trying to make this speech about something it’s not should learn to pick their battles. That kind of rhetoric continues to marginalize the republican party. In a time when we need strong leadership and calm, thoughtful debate on the critical issues we face today, this crap being thrown around, calling a speech to stay in school and learn political indoctrination (just to provide a distraction) is what could be called Un-American.

Remember Joe McCarthy? Using wild eyed pistol waving tactics to ruin people’s lives by calling them out as Communists? He died at 48, from hepatitis (most likely fueled by alcoholism), censured by the Senate.

I couldn’t agree with Mr. Ruiz more. A little respect goes a long way. And for those FUDPublican’s out there making this crap up, be careful of the stones you throw. Glass houses are fragile.

And as far as Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty saying the speech could cause first-day “disruption”, no Governor…you are the disruption.

And what did he say in his speech?

Well, well. Isn’t it interesting to see how the good and honorable Senator McCain reacted to unruly town hall folks. I have to hand it to him, when that woman in Minnesota made the “Arab” comment about then Candidate Obama, he politely yet firmly told her it wasn’t so.

And, in this town hall setting, trying to get out amongst the voters to have a reasonable debate, he again stands up for what is right, and evicts those who just want to be disruptive.

I very much respect that in Senator McCain. I may not agree with all of his policies and statements, but he certainly handles these off the wall extremely uninformed/malcontents/disruptive people with an even hand of “not here, thank you”.  I commend the good Senator for that.

All we ask for is a forum for reasonable debate. we may ultimately agree to disagree, but let’s go have a beer afterward.

See Rush, this is how it’s done.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern.They have developed a database to track statements by administration officials about the war in Iraq.

False Pretenses
“Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews. ”

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See the New York Times article about this site here.

Way to go! Our 1st FUDBuster post!