Screaming

Screaming and shouting at town hall meeting, ie silencing the voices of others, is not exercising free speech. It is an act designed to silence the speech of others. Is this going on? I'm sure. Any local PTA meeting is the same. This is how people are.

Should we have a vigorous healthcare debate? Of course. Are we? Of course not. This is a replay of the Iraq War debate. The front lines of the debate were lame - focusing on WMDs and what the UN Resolution said or didn't say. In Healtcare, it's the same thing, focusing on buzzwords and dumbed-down versions of the real issues. But in going through this process, it forces smart people on both sides focus on the issue and offer up ideas. Granted, most don't hear this ideas. They prefer not to. But I like it and have learned more about healthcare trying to weed through the noise than I knew previously. I don't have a firm position yet. I'm still thinking.

But what find interesting logic-wise, is Obama is using the same logic the Bush Administration used for Iraq. -

"For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing," Obama told a friendly town hall audience.

That was the argument Republicans used for invading Iraq. The scarier prospect was not-invading. So what would I do if I were an ambitious Republican State Senator right now? Oppose whatever healthcare proposal Obama puts through and in the inevitable messiness that results, criticize it on principled grounds and become the face for "hope" and "change." It would help if they are a good talker and President of Harvard Law Review.