Lift and Tote

"For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," the president said. "What it's saying is...that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore.

"Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance," Obama added. "Nobody considers that a tax increase.

"You just can't make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase," he added.

But a Democratic staff description of Sen. Max Baucus' bill calls the proposed fines an "excise tax." Initially, the Montana Democrat's plan called for penalties of up to $950 for individuals and $3,800 for families. But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Monday he expects the family penalty to be slashed in half to $1,900.

---------------- Read his lips - not a tax increase. You know Bubba, I won't be surprised if this mammoth in the living room healthcare reform passes, and I won't be surprised if it doesn't. Nothing the government does has surprised me since 1968. Besides, tax increases are on goods and products, i.e. cigarettes - pols have learned not to be obvious.

Take responsibility. Ooops wait a minute! Isn't "responsibility" what democrats and progressives (like Buzzflash, etc.) claim is the Republican "code" for "... institutional oppression, a "gimme" to their extremist base, which is primarily a large minority of Southern traditionalists, that when Republicans say "personal responsibility" they mean black, poor, disenfranchised, and otherwise less fortunate members of society who are left to fend for themselves."

Some people haven't a clue that not all Southern traditionalists are white - and what kind of doublespeak is "large minority"? Is there a lot of them, or a few of them? Or are there only some who think this way but there's a lot of them?

There's more to southern tradition than the stereotyped images of racists and rednecks. Tradition here includes people bound by diet, religion, habits, music and manners. It is ghost tales and old wives' tales passed down from generation to generation. It's gardening - okra and roses and honeysuckle vine. Hunting and fishing and picnics in the woods. It's taking cornmeal and lard and a cast iron skillet to the river to fry up catfish as you catch them. It's cooking large amounts of food to take to a neighbor who has lost a loved one, even if you barely knew them. It's a huge vocabulary of "old sayings" that finally make sense when you began to repeat them to your own children. And contrary to Michael Vick's dog fighting defense, dog fighting is not "just a part of the southern way of life." Maybe in his neighborhood, his generation.

I also found this Obama comment particularly interesting - "What it's saying is...that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore."

Ha! Sounds good but who does he think he's fooling. Half the voting public expects someone else to heft their bale, lift their barge, and we know who is stuck carrying the deadweight (disguised as compassion).

Heave ho.