neighbors Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Obama supports marriage equality

It is kind of sad that the President announces his support for marriage equality after the North Carolina election. I’m not sure that his support would have changed anything, but it might have. I think that many Blacks who opposed same sex marriage would have thought about the issue a little more deeply. Marriage equality is important. It is another step in the long road toward equality for everyone in this great nation of ours.

Here’s what the President said:

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

By ecthompsonmd|2012-05-10T23:51:24-04:00May 10th, 2012|Civil Rights|Comments Off

Beck jumps on the “let da’ house burn” bandwagon

In my previous post, I was accused of painting the firefighters as conservatives (I don’t know who they were and it doesn’t matter). I did nothing of the sort. Instead, my point was that a conservative mindset has been poisoning this country for years. The mindset is simply – I’m out for myself. I don’t want to help anybody else. I don’t want to pay for anybody else. I want to keep all my money for myself. It is from this mindset that you can get a subscription service for fire protection. Those who don’t have the money simply don’t get protection. I mentioned in my previous post that many conservatives were jumping on this bandwagon. Glenn Beck did not miss the opportunity.

From TP:

Now, yet another major conservative has joined the defense. On his radio show this afternoon, leading right-wing talker Glenn Beck and his producer Pat Gray openly mocked the Cranick family. After playing a news clip explaining the situation, Gray adopted a southern drawl and began to mock Gene Cranick’s explanation of how the county’s firefighters refused to help his family.

Beck then went on to complain that “those who are just on raw feeling are not going to understand” that the county’s actions in refusing to assist the Cranicks were justified. He explained that America will be having the “argument” about the case of the Cranicks and that it will go “nowhere if you go onto ‘compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion’ or well, ‘they should’ve put it out, what is the fire department for?’” Beck then went on to say that the Cranicks would be “spongeing off their neighbors” if the fire department had helped them put out their fire. The radio host concluded his rant by saying “this is the kind of stuff that’s going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things”:

GRAY: (mocking Cranick’s accent) Even tho’ I hadn’t paid mah seventy five dollahs I thought dey’d put it out. […] I wanted ‘em to put it out, but dey didn’t put it out.

BECK: Here’s the thing. Those that are just on raw feeling are not going to understand. […]

GRAY: But I thought they was gonna put the fire out anyway, but it burned down. Dat ain’t right! […] What’s the Fire Department for if you don’t put out the fire?! […] I thought they’d put out mah fire even if I didn’t pay seventy five dollars.

BECK: This is the sort of argument that Americans are going to have.

GRAY: It is.

BECK: And it goes nowhere if you go onto “compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion” or well, “they should’ve put it out, what is the fire department for?” […] If you don’t pay the 75 dollars then that hurts the fire department. They can’t use those resources, and you’d be spongeing off your neighbor’s resources. […] It’s important for America to have this debate. This is the kind of stuff that’s going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2010-10-06T21:23:15-04:00October 6th, 2010|Domestic Issues, Party Politics|7 Comments

Senator Coburn – Ask your neighbors and not your government for help

The heartlessness of Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is bad enough, but look at the reaction of the crowd. It is rather heart-wrenching to watch. Coburn basically tells a woman whose husband has a brain injury to go and panhandle his neighbors. If I get a break at work, I’ll have more to say on this terrible scene.

From Slate:

Writing in the New Republic‘s health care blog, the Treatment, Harold Pollock, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, said that when he saw this clip neither he nor his wife, a clinical nurse specialist, “could … believe what we were watching.”

Neither could I. Here’s a transcript:

Q: Sen. Coburn, we need help. My husband has traumatic brain injury. His health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. And what I need to know is: Are you going to help him? Where he can eat and drink? We left the nursing home, and they told us we are on our own. He left with a feeding tube. I have been working with him, but I’m not a speech pathologist, a professional that takes six years for a masters’, and I’m trying to get him to eat and drink again [inaud].

A: Well, I think—first of all, yeah. We’ll help. The first thing we will do is to see what we can do, individually, to help you, through our office. But the other thing that is missing in this debate is us as neighbors, helping people that need our help. [Applause.] You know we tend to … [Applause.] The idea that the government is a solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

Pollock, his wife, and Philip Pizzo, dean of Stanford Medical School, found Coburn’s answer to be deeply disturbing. I did, too, of course. But what truly shocked and depressed me was not Coburn’s let-’em-eat-cake response but the fact that it wasn’t met in the room with a collective sharp intake of breath. Instead, Coburn received two quite robust bursts of applause. I have no idea how Congress and the White House can possibly sell health care reform to people like that. (more… )

Thanks to Political Animal for pointing this video out to me.

By ecthompsonmd|2009-08-29T05:38:26-04:00August 29th, 2009|Healthcare, Senate|Comments Off