There's a lot of ugliness on the Rec list at the moment, with people pissed off about the NSA story, debating whether Pres. Obama deserves any credit/blame for the economy, bla bla bla.
Well, I'd like to take y'all back with me to March, 2010, right after the Affordable Care Act was actually passed.
As some of you may recall, I spearheaded an effort to thank Nancy Pelosi for her efforts in dragging the beat-up, partially-crippled but still breathing ACA bill ("I'm not dead yet!") across the finish line. I happened to notice that her 70th birthday just happened to be on March 26, 2010...just 3 days after the ACA was signed into law by President Obama.
So, remembering that on Valentine's Day 2005, someone had arranged to send a mountain of red roses to Barbara Boxer for standing up for election integrity in light of the ugly Ohio 2004 presidential election mess, I set up a campaign to do something similar for Nancy Pelosi's 70th birthday.
In the end, over 2,600 roses were delivered to the Speaker's office, who then donated half of them to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center to distribute to wounded veterans, and the other half to Democratic Congressional staffers, who had worked insane hours to help bring the ACA to fruition.
However, there was also an ugly side to the ACA battle--a VERY ugly side, in case some of you don't remember, which I also documented. To wit:
I've been posting under the name "Brainwrap" for 7 years now, and it's not difficult at all to connect it with my real identity. Obviously if I wanted media coverage, I couldn't very well pretend not to exist, when I'm the one who called the florist, have been posting diaries every day and was the one to alert Speaker Pelosi's office in the first place. I was trying to have it both ways--I wanted the publicity for the campaign while remaining out of the spotlight personally, and it just doesn't work that way.
On the other hand...
--What I didn't know on Monday was that as many as a dozen or more members of the United States Congress would be receiving death threats over their votes. (Admittedly, just as any President is bound to receive such threats on a regular basis, I'm sure that Representatives, Senators and Governors probably do over one issue or another as well, although I'm sure it's not with nearly this much frequency or intensity.)
--What I didn't know on Monday was that the brothers of U.S. Congressmen would not only be threatened, but would actually have their gas lines severed.
--What I didn't know on Monday was that some guy who, as far as I know, isn't even remotely connected to anything political would have his health and safety--as well as that of his 10-year old child--threatened because some asshole decided to deliberately ram his SUV into the back of his car because the other driver dared to...have an Obama sticker on his bumper.
So yes, I've been a bit jumpy the past day or so, which I tried to cope with in two ways: On the one hand, there's no way I'm gonna let these jagoffs intimidate me from this project, right?
I mean, sure, they attacked an 11-year old boy who's mother had died because she couldn't get health insurance, but certainly they'd never attack some guy somewhere for sending flowers to a grandmother on her birthday, would they??
Of course not. How silly of me.
...and so on.
Anyway, I'm just bringing this up to try and remind people that whatever Obama and the Congressional Dems' flaws may be (and they are many), and however imperfect and messy the ACA may be (and yes, it certainly is)...they risked an awful lot, far more than anyone would reasonably think...to get it passed. And even then, it just barely squeaked by.
So, the next time you bitch about what weak tea Obamacare is, read this diary by Blue Girl, and then read my diary from March 27, 2010, and consider that it really was a far more impressive accomplishment than most people thought.