The Crispus Attucks Blog: No Public Option?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

No Public Option?

It works again.

A bunch of loud, loony, anti-government crackpots make a lot of noise, and the Democratic leadership instinctively caves in.

Although polls showed over 70 percent of Americans desired a public option as part of health care reform, it now sounds like President Obama and the Democrats are willing to jettison that part of the bill in order to pass something. Thanks for the leadership guys.

Republicans kowtow only to their base. The Democrats piss all over theirs.

If the public option is truly dead, that's just one more item in the list of proofs that Barack Obama is more likely to be a Jimmy Carter, rather than an FDR or Harry Truman.

I'm hoping Congressman Anthony Weiner can back up his threat to snatch away 100 House votes if the public option gets dumped because without the PO, there is no true reform.

If Obama and the Democratic leaders are counting on progressives to have short memories, or to continue to do a bunch of nose holding, they're going to be in for a huge shock if they cave in on this. If the Dems are not willing to use their supermajority on issues like this, then they don't really need to have those numbers, which means we really don't need to put our time and resources into getting Democrats elected or re-elected.

Mr. Obama, it's time to cowboy up.

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Crispus Attucks?

According to PBS.org:

"In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a black man, became the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Although Attucks was credited as the leader and instigator of the event, debate raged for over as century as to whether he was a hero and a patriot, or a rabble-rousing villain".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p24.html

From its earliest days black people have fought and died for this country, in every war we've fought, as soldiers and patriots. The average person, if they were to judge from the media and their lifetime of misteaching, would believe all we've ever been were slaves, civil rights workers, athletes, entertainers, welfare recipients and criminals.

In the minds of many people, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or both, are the leaders of Black America. The utter ridiculousness of such thinking is apparent if its applied it in the inverse, say by considering Newt Ginrich or Sarah Palin to be the leaders of White America.

Black Americans are a complex mosiac within the expansive tapestry of this country and its history. Our sweat, blood, and toil helped create and maintain America, and we've paid a price higher than those paid by many others. This blog is a reflection of that point of view.

Why are you talking anyway?

Although we've seen many changes in our society, for me, there's still a lot of misunderstanding about Black Americans and our role in shaping this society...and not just by people who are not black.

Al Sharpton is not Black America. Jesse Jackson is not Black America. Neither was Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, or Cripus Attucks, but they all were Black Americans. And despite the rhetoric used against them during their lives and times, they all have proved their love for their country by challenging it to be true to its promise of justice and equality.

I feel the same way as they did. They used their voices. I want to use mine.

The Crispus Attucks Blog