Health care heroes and villians
Rep. Cao demonstrated a certain chutzpah last month reestablishing that a representative ought to actually reflect the desires of the people of a district. Having survived a vituperative recall attempt by the locked-out Jefferson faction within the first month of his election. As well as a tsunami of hate from the neu-republican tea-styled party after being the sole republican to vote for the the House version of the health care bill back in November
'No Regrets' for Cao - Prescriptions Blog - NYTimes.com. All while being hailed from some quarters as the future of the republican party
Where lies the GOP future? | MetaFilter. Which he may yet be. For all the heft the party is able to throw behind their current tactics of obstruction and obfuscation. This republican party is not a party with real leadership, or a future.
Both when he got elected and with this vote Joseph Cao has struck people as an enigma Who Is Joseph Cao? | TPMDC. Which he isn't. He actually seems close to the appiritian that comes to mind when I invoke the talisemic phrase compassionate conservative. This comes from his background of Catholic charity work early in his career when he was a Jesuit seminarian and as a community service lawyer more recently. As a refugee from Vietnam before any of that.
My friend Trân is also a Vietnamese immigrant. Having lived under the Stalinist-Maoist post war regime (now tuned to the Beijing consensus future world-regime) that she didn't get out from under until her family emigrated when she was 23 or so. Trying to be a good practicing catholic in such conditions steeled her in her convictions as much I suspect as Rep. Cao's Jesuit training. She has some very definite ideas about what she finds acceptable in a political figure, a shorter Stations of the Cross. A politician she will vote for must of necessity be anti-communist, against gay marriage, against abortion. Nominally she is content to let simply being Republican answer for all these: without any further concern for whatever xenophophia, pudding-head, know-nothingisms republicans carry around, as though it was all the cross itself. However recognizing this is politics defined negatively she is willing to entertain whatever bleeding heart liberalism, wha' hae ye, that doesn't in any way interfere with the initial set of precepts. Rep. Cao and Huyen-Trân Nguyen would see mutual political reference points in each other I'm sre. It would be nice If Rep. Cao could come up to the Univ. Maryland for some speaker series or other before the 2010 elections, I'd go to that. Possibly as a result of being a democrat I find soft-breezed vesper joys in subtle ironies, such as the U S Navy sending a destroyer, the USS Lawson, on a port call to Da Nang with a Vietnamese-American Skipper Commander Hung Ba Le
For U.S. Navy Commander In Vietnam, A Return Home : NPR.
In the health care debate the republican caucus is left without a lot to say. Due to the unanimity and extremity of their opposition. Cut off from the cameras.... having made it too clear they have no news to make on this issue. They are stuck with only a negative message, and just so many poses of indignation to perform. Unable to dispel the sense pulled in along side their strident opposition that they are in no small way afraid of this health care bill Tea party protesters' last-ditch effort to derail health care reform. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine. Afraid that it may be welcome, timely, successful, and well received. Their rhetoric additionally must be crafted to shroud the fact that they have no plan of their own. Not currently, not in any point of the last 16 years when they controlled either congress, the presidency or both. They are left denying there is a problem. Sanctioning with campaign fund rewards, the absolute sense of entitlement possessed by the private insurance industry to own it all.
The democratic caucus (those on board keeping their heads down) is reduced to a public face of fatuous showboats and prima donnas, Nelson and Lieberman come to mind. All jockeying for the prime position of centrally positioned and oh-so-televised deal maker or deal breaker to history. I understand the attraction of distraction; sports and movies, television. Following congress and politics is like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
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