Alan Grayson a New Potential Party Leader for Dems?

u cannot b serios

 

sounds PC now

 

I think "holocaust" was a poor choice of words if his intent was to rally Democrats or even the American people. As someone mentioned, it's a loaded word that is a distraction from his message.

Having said that, good for him!! It's about freaking time. We've all been waiting for a Dem to step up and give us the sort of smash-mouth honesty and frankness that the party has been sorely lacking. Dems, your passive, "let's work together" approach isn't working. If you're going to go down on this issue and drag the President with you then go down swinging.

 

He's a breath of fresh air now, but it's gonna smell like a stale and heavy fart fast if he doesn't practice retuning his speeches with less explosively loaded words.

 

Yes, holocaust is a loaded word. But one of the definitions is a mass slaughter of people. Add to that the obstruction of Repubs, corporations, and Quisling Dems, and you have a government-sanctioned tone to the deaths, so I can see where he got it.

At any rate, this once again shows that Repubs are classic bullies. They'll hit and kick you and call you names when the teacher is not looking, but as soon as you retaliate they run to the teacher screaming "The mean Democrat said bad things!"

Grayson doesn't understand that only Repubs can use words like death panel, grannykiller, and such. He just stole their rhetoric and turned it back on them with some real and significant facts to back him up... as opposed to the made-up stuff the Repubs have been spewing. They will hate him forever.

In answer to the OP's question, I saw Grayson on TV last night and no, I don't think he will become a leader in the party. He will obviously become famous and his speeches have served a good purpose, but I don't think he'll be anything other than a backbench kind of guy. Of course, that's what they said about Newt.

 

Where does the 44,000 figured come from?

 

I believe it's from a Harvard study.

 

It refers to the violent deaths of a mass number of people. I'm sorry, but people dying from disease simply doesn't qualify. Genocide is a holocaust. People dying because they got emergency health care instead of preventive care is not.

And Dems consistently criticize the GOP for that garbage. If the Dems use it as their own, then that's simple hypocrisy. The Dems should take the high road and aggressively point out the GOP's stupidity. That's the beauty of what this guy did in the quotes in the first article. That's how you win the argument. You make the other side look small, and in the process, you piss them off and make them act even smaller.

 

Hyperbole is great at shouting things down or stopping things or bringing down poll numbers / popularity of things - whether it be health care or a politician or the Iraq war.

It's not remotely effective at creating new positive things though. And that's what the goal is with health care.

 

It annoys me that people are obsessing over one word, but I just want to clear one thing up. According to Webster:

ho·lo·caust
Function: noun
1 : a sacrifice consumed by fire
2 : a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire <a nuclear holocaust>
3 a often capitalized : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II —usually used with the b : a mass slaughter of people; especially : genocide

Sorry, I don't think calling it a holocaust is innaccurate. It's not The Holocaust (note the capital letter) but it is a holocaust. These deaths are preventable. By not acting, Congress is indirectly sending these people to their graves. Just think: since Obama took office, approximately 30,000+ people have died because of lack of health care. Since he was elected, almost 44,000. Those are deaths that Congress could have prevented had they acted with true bipartisanship and not played the same old games. Don't get me wrong: Democrats share some of the blame for this. But I put the majority of blame on the Republicans, with their coordinated efforts to spread fear, and to shout down anyone who dares to disagree with them.

Health care reform has been argued ever since 1932, when the AMA tried to subvert the Wilbur Commission by calling the spread of group practices "socialist" (sound familiar?). That's 77 years, folks. At 44,000 a year, that's 3,388,000 preventable deaths. Sounds like "mass slaughter" to me. Ask a parent who has lost their child or a man/woman who has lost their spouse to injury or disease (while the government dickers and argues over whether or not to help them) if they think the govt. has a certain amount of blood on their hands. I would wager they would say "Yes".

EDITED TO ADD: Hey, I can finally edit! Thanks, Clutch.

 

well then, Phillip Morris and Anheuser Busch are responsible for the largest holocaust in the history of the world.

yea, except that they aren't.

Healthcare holocaust. lol. I don't care if Grayson is a liberal, a democrat, a whatev so please save the knee-jerk auto-retort about Bush, Palin, Cheney blah, blah blah...

grayson is a lunatic nutjob.

 

Calling the entirety of your political opponents nothing but liars and accusing them of perpetrating a holocaust will do nothing but to cause them to really dig in and ensure that nothing gets done...not just on health care, but on anything.

It is wrong when Republicans do it and it is wrong when Democrats do it.

You can disagree and state that the other side is not acting in the best interests of the country without name calling and poo flinging.

We really need people in charge that are going to act in a productive manner, especially on the GOP side.

 

That's death - that's not slaughter. Take a millionaire. He could feed hundreds of thousands of Africans for a year if he used all his money - it would probably prevent far more than 44,000 from dying. Is that millionaire responsible for a holocaust if he doesn't do so? Are you responsible for thousands of people dying because you haven't donated all of your money to feeding the hungry? Is that a holocaust?

 

But thats a private individual against something natural - hunger and poverty.

Not exactly the same elected congressman against for-profit health insurance/pharmacy companies.

 

Glynch... his looks and his mannerisms. Maybe it's me though... he reminds me somewhat of my stepbrother. Still, he just seems a little hot for TV and while he made some good points, he wasted a few opportunities as well. Maybe he just needs some seasoning.

Anyway, holocaust wasn't the only thing thing he got wrong. As Chris Mathews pointed out, calling Republicans Neanderthals is wrong because they don't believe in evolution.

 

His tongue and cheek rhetoric may have been extreme but it was far less crazy than the lunatic GOP congresswoman who claimed that the Democrats' health care bill would be a death sentence for seniors.

Both Grayson and that lady used extreme language. The difference is that Grayson spoke tongue and cheek, and the GOP congresswoman was attempting to be serious. The one being serious is the lunatic.

You may not like Grayson, and disagree with his tactics, but those tactics weren't those of a nutjob.-