Rep. Barney Frank (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

For people who don’t have payday loans and installment loans to rub together, the concept of obtaining suitable health coverage is foreign. President Obama’s plan – should it maintain the single-payer element – will seek to level out that disparity.

In light of this, the raging debate over health care reform continues on at town halls across the nation. Supporters of change are now taking the fight back to belligerent protesters who seek to squash debate over affordable care for all. Not all Democratic politicians have been prepared for the vocal minority they’ve had to face, but if the Representative Barney Frank town hall is any indication, the fight is in good hands.

Working the room

One of the more colorful members of Congress, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts gave as well as he got at his recent town hall meeting on the health care topic. His responses were not only appropriately forceful, but entertaining. CNN reports that the two-hour meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts featured a rousing chorus of boos from the pre-coached (and in some cases pre-paid) protesters the moment that Rep. Frank took the podium, but Frank quickly proved that he could handle a tough crowd.

“You want me to talk about it or do you want to yell?” Frank asked numerous times as the uncivilized mob betrayed signs of their lack of intelligence or good breeding. Frank rebuked them when necessary, yet he was still able to address the important issues, no matter how much the dull, unwashed ghosts attempted to rattle their chains.

“Disruption never helps your cause.”

Mr. Frank called a spade a spade when he remarked that the heated rabble and their canned protests made it look “like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.” But perhaps the most offensive element that these protesters continued to try to bring to the debate was the inflammatory comparison between President Obama’s stance on health care and the tyrannical fascism of Nazi Germany. If you ask me, I’m sure the people who believe this (if they even make up their own minds) and brought it to the Barney Frank town hall did so because Frank is Jewish. “Ooooh, that’ll throw that Jew boy off,” they may have thought. But perhaps “thought” is too strong a term for the cranial activity of such protesters. They’re one coconut shy of being a doorstop.

And Frank knows this as well as you and I do. “When you ask me that question, I’m going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?” he asked. “You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis.”

“Contemptible” free speech

Yes, the protesters have the right to say such things, even if they have no educated understanding of what it is they’re truly revealing about themselves and their complete inability to grasp the importance of historical events. Rep. Frank knows there’s no reasoning with someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of reason’s acquaintance: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table,” he said to the Hitler invoker. “I have no interest in doing it.”

No free coverage for illegal immigrants

Despite the pathetic attempts of protesters to cloud the issues and silence those who would speak the truth about the president’s intended reform, Barney Frank forged ahead with his discussion of a range of topics that the reform bill would cover. One rumor he squelched is that illegal immigrants would have free care mandated by Obama’s program. Taxpayers can rest easy on that one. Furthermore, he addressed parts of the bill regarding non-discrimination based upon pre-existing health conditions.

Some cheered, others kept their minds closed

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I understand that the opposition believes that chaos tactics are the only way for them to fight back in this desperate hour for their corporate health insurance masters, but they make themselves look like fools when they shout maniacally – even when they are given the opportunity to speak. There is no rationality on display in such instances, and the Barney Frank town hall is yet another example of their mob mentality.

“What’s the matter with you all?” Frank asked them. “I don’t know if you get angrier when I answer the questions, or when you don’t think I do.”

In the end

Once their bankrollers spit them back out after the debates are over, will the “average Joe” protesters be in need of payday loans and installment loans to buy themselves some civility? If so, they are welcome to apply here… just click the button above. The Barney Frank town hall showed that there’s no reasoning with such people. Rep. Frank remained resolute and trudged on.

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(Photo: flickr.com)

Stop the presses. There is a connection between the racist, inflammatory Obama Joker socialism posters used to protest the president’s plans for the necessary overhaul of the health care system and the lost presidential candidacy of Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I rather liked the man and would have voted for him if he’d stuck around, but he’s wistful and thinks outside the box. Apparently that makes him an easy target for being labeled “crazy” or “unbalanced,” which is an unjust spin game in itself. As I see it, any politician who would propose the Baseball Fan Protection Act has interesting things to say. Unfortunately he supports squeezing legitimate lenders of payday loans and installment loans via “tightening up” the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), but nobody’s perfect.

First the Obama Joker poster

According to the Examiner, the poster was created by a 20-year-old college student from Chicago, Firas Alkhateeb. He is of Palestinian decent and – interestingly enough – is rather liberal in his politics. But here’s the Dennis Kucinich connection: Alkhateeb says he would have preferred him to Obama. As time goes on, I begin to agree.

“After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ,” he said. “From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Which is the same problem I have

The more Obama talks, the more it seems that he’s a promise maker with less drive to make those promises a reality. How can he let the single-payer option go, claiming it is “not the most important thing?” It’s ridiculous. Plus, his recent stance on the Defense of Marriage Act flies in the face of his support for gay and lesbian couples. And what about the wars in the Middle East? Shouldn’t we be close to withdrawing from that quagmire by now?

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Alkhateeb is frustrated with Obama, as are many others. That’s why he fired up Photoshop and made a Joker out of the president. Then he posted it to his Flickr page. At that point, someone else unrevealed stole the work and gave it the socialism tag. In Alkhateeb’s assessment (and mine), that’s an “immature” take on what Obama is trying to accomplish with health care reform. But it’s a convenient buzz word that the right can use to frighten the uninformed masses.

So who is Dennis Kucinich?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio’s 10^th District has been praised by Ralph Nader as being a “genuine progressive.” He firmly is in support of a single-payer health care system, one for which all Americans have a right to qualify for care. Like President Obama, he recognizes that the current system in place works for only a minority of consumers and a majority of large insurance corporations. As there are far too many who lack coverage altogether and costs continue to rise as corporate greed goes unchecked and Medicare fraud continues to run rampant, Dennis Kucinich is one of those who believe that Americans deserve something he likes to call “Medicare For All.”

Medicare for All

Kucinich, along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), introduced Medicare For All as HR 676. This bill would provide citizens necessary care at a high standard of quality, as well as free choice of provider. There would be no co-payments, premiums or deductibles.

Where would the money come from?

Because we know it doesn’t grow on trees. Customers of payday loans and installment loans know this all too well. Funds come from a variety of sources, according to Dennis Kucinich. From Congressman Kucinich’s Web site, they are as follows:

• Savings from a vast reduction of paperwork
• Existing government spending on healthcare
• Savings from rational bulk procurement of medications
• Tax on the top 5 percent of income earners
• A small tax on stock and bond transfers
• A phased-in payroll tax that is less than what employers currently pay on average for less complete employee health coverage

How has this bill been doing?

Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

HR 676 (aka the Conyers/Kucinich bill) “is the signature national health insurance bill currently before Congress,” according to Kucinich’s Web site. The number of political co-sponsors is growing, and there are at least 14,000 physicians and several thousand more nurses who support the measure. Its supporters include 14,000 physicians, several thousand nurses and many others. When Congress considered the most recent national budget resolution, Medicare For All was included among those bills that made up the Progressive Caucus’ “Alternative Budget” resolution. It is very real and could become the driving force behind real health care reform.

Unpopular decisions? He’d make them and make them work

That’s what I think. Check out Dennis Kucinich and see what you think. I have to hand it to him, however. After marrying someone like Elizabeth, surely he could become the President of the United States (see the video). Perhaps she has a soft spot for payday loans and installment loans on the legitimate side of the TILA blind.

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