I joined Facebook a while ago, largely to reconnect with friends from high school (for which it’s been great).<\/p>\n
But for whatever reason, I’ve been “Friended” by a lot of people with some outspoken political beliefs.\u00a0 Most of them are regular, workadaddy hugamommy conservatives like me.\u00a0 A few – very few – are left of center.<\/p>\n
And there are a couple from, let’s be polite, a paranoid fringe that spans and ignores party boundaries.<\/p>\n
And in the immediate aftermath of the Stealthcare vote on Friday, they were out in force.<\/p>\n
Some were just…out there?\u00a0 “It’s time to talk secession!\u00a0 Democracy’s dead!”<\/p>\n
Well, no.\u00a0 This bill has to get through the Senate yet – and when you consider that the Dems had a 75 vote majority in the House, and it only passed by five votes, you can see where the Senate, with a two vote <\/em>lead, is going to be a problem.<\/p>\n The majority were just…depressed?\u00a0 I can’t say as I blame them; it is <\/em>depressing to think that Congress is controlled by such profligate wastrels, and even worse to know that so many of our fellow subjects<\/span> citizens voted for these hamsters.<\/p>\n But I had to respond; “don’t you guys read the blogs?\u00a0 Or listen to the NARN?\u00a0 Or member ninth-grade civics? This is not the end of the debate.\u00a0 This is the end of the beginning of the debate. ”<\/p>\n And Saturday, while not exactly “good news” in the classic sense, wasn’t bad; 39 Dems flipped – most of them <\/em>because they feared MoveOn and Nancy Pelosi less than they fear…<\/p>\n …you.\u00a0 The workadaddy, hugamommy conservative who turned out at the Tea Party rallies, and who showed up at their Town Hall meetings, and weathered the ignorance and mockery and occasional seat-stacking and even more-occasional violence to get your points of view across to these idiots.\u00a0 And so Nancy Pelosi had to rush the vote into a weekend in November, so her minions can’t get home to hear more <\/em>from you, and in order to try to ram this thing through before the 2010 campaign gets into swing – because the Tea Parties, the Town Halls, and last Tuesday’s elections show that she’s not gonna get an infinite series of chances.<\/p>\n The Senate?\u00a0 Well, they worry about re-election too.\u00a0 And while Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins may well join the Dems, there are a lot more blue-dog Senators, especially a few that would not have otherwise won in 2006 and 2008, who are going to be watching their phone logs and mailboxes closely.<\/p>\n So relax…er, no.\u00a0 Don’t relax.\u00a0 Call your Senators; let ’em know where you’re at.<\/p>\n And call your Representatives.\u00a0 If they voted against the bill, thank them (and by the way, thank you John Kline, Erik Paulsen, Collin Peterson\u00a0and Michele Bachmann).\u00a0 If they voted for it, politely let them know you’re not amused (presuming the likes of McCollum and Ellison have bothered to clean out their voice mail).<\/p>\n To quote the sage – this isn’t over until we <\/em>say it’s over.<\/p>\n CORRECTION:\u00a0 Added Collin Peterson, who is the unusual combination of utterly safe (he won his last race by 45 points), Democrat, Blue Dog and sane on healthcare.\u00a0 He voted against as well.\u00a0 I’ve updated the post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I joined Facebook a while ago, largely to reconnect with friends from high school (for which it’s been great). But for whatever reason, I’ve been “Friended” by a lot of people with some outspoken political beliefs.\u00a0 Most of them are regular, workadaddy hugamommy conservatives like me.\u00a0 A few – very few – are left of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,66],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-6136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-health-care","tag-mn-cd7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6136"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23858,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6136\/revisions\/23858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}