Last night Rachel Maddow made a marvelous point: It is idiotic for Democrats to continually legitimize Republican lies by caving to them...most recently, caving to Rep. Joe Wilson's lie by proposing to add ADDITIONAL anti-immigrant verbiage to a health bill that ALREADY denies them coverage.
I offer a creative alternative to caving. My email to Rachel below the fold. (And I'm dead serious. This is not just snark.)
Rachel:
Good point on caving. Here's my modest proposal ..."parenthesis amendments."
1. Joe Wilson's "Lie."
Rather than legitimizing Wilson's lie by adding redundant verbiage, amend the original prohibition in the bill, to add the words "(Attention Rep. Joe Wilson; PLEASE READ.)
2. Pallin's "death panels."
Rather than legitimize Pallin's death panel lie by banning non-death panels, amend the relevant parts of the bill with "(Attention Sarah Pallin. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.)
And so on.
Sound silly? It's far less silly than the self-defeating caving our gutless party is engaged in.
Respectfully
After I sent it, I thought of a better name for the idea: Gracie Amendments. With much of D.C. discourse reduced to the level of a Burns and Allen sketch, it seems an appropriate name.
Gracie Amendments point out the laughably obvious.
Another example, for Rep. Boehner--who claims global warming is not happening since we all exhale CO2--add the following to each and every climate change bill.
(Attention Rep. Boehner. No one is saying CO2 is a poison gas. It is a GREENHOUSE gas, which reflects the sun's heat back onto the planet, much as the glass of a greehouse traps the sun's heat inside, hence the name, "greenhouse gas." If you need further explanation, consult any second-grader.)
Would this embarrass Republicans? I hope so. But would it not be better than our gutless wonder Democratic leadership continually embarrassing us?
And to be fair, we can apply this to Democrats as well. Remember when Obama ordered the closing of Guantanamo, and Harry Reid said he was against it because that would mean "releasing" terrorists? Obama could have added this to the executive order.
Attention Rep. Harry Ried: Although in common parlance, one might say moving prisoners from one prison to another is "releasing" them from the first before placing them in the second, there is, in fact, no "releasing" going on. The prisoners, under constant and continual restraint and custody, will actually be MOVED from one prison to the other, and at no point would they be given bus tickets, a box lunch, and an English language phrase book with the words, "Please sir, can you direct me to the nearest maximum security federal prison" underlined in red.
Say goodnight, Gracie.