Memo to Democrats: ‘Chill’ the [bleep] out, people

By Jonathan Capehart/The Washington Post

All the howling from worry-wart Democrats led Greg Sargent at The Plum Line to say this morning, “Chill, Obama supporters, chill.” Thank God he said it. Because I was just about to pen a piece motivated by a more salty thought, one along the lines of Samuel L. Jackson’s new franchise: Chill the f--- out, people!

Reading Sargent’s excellent post was almost cathartic. He does a great job laying out why supporters of President Obama need to step away from the ledge. The race between Obama and Mitt Romney has been and always will be close. “This race began as a toss up. It is now a toss up,” my colleague calmly writes. “Barring some unforeseen event, it will remain a toss up until the end. Which it was always going to be from the start.”

Yet, after weeks of missteps by Romney and his campaign and coming off a fantastic convention in Charlotte, Democrats seemed to think the election was over. I warned them last month that the debates could be a Romney reset. And thanks to a listless (okay, fine: disastrous) performance by the president, Romney got the reset he, his campaign and his supporters were praying for.

Romney was on the ropes for months. And, yet, one 90-minute debate has some Democrats racing for the exits. Andrew Sullivan wondered if Obama threw “the entire election away.” To quote my mother: “Chil’, please.”

All the hand-wringing and bed-wetting make me wonder if these hypervocal Dems had any faith in Obama at all. Jim Jordan put it all in perspective in Politico this morning. “That’s my party: Irrational overconfidence followed by irrational despair,” he said.

Robert Gibbs had the best response to all this today on “Morning Joe” when he was asked what nervous Democrats should do: Take all that energy and go to the local Obama office and put it to use calling up voters or going door-to-door. If they want their worst fears to come true, Democrats need only keep suppressing turnout with their incessant hair-on-fire pronouncements.

Purported doctor on Texas A&M message board claims he ‘laid off my first Obama voting employee.’

By Faiz Shakir

Posting on a message board for Texas A&M students and alumni, a user named “dermdoc” wrote last week that he “laid off my first Obama voting employee today.” “Our reimbursement rates are spiraling downward, taxes are projected to go up with Obamacare, so I did it,” the poster wrote, adding: “I made this decision because I can.” CBSNews.com’s Brian Montopoli reports that he tried to contact “the person who we believe to have been responsible for the posting, but our requests for comment went unanswered.” “It is kind of interesting watching their face as you explain to them the economic consequences of the policies of the guy they voted for,” wrote dermdoc. “That is the way business works,” he added. “If that makes me an ahole, so be it.” Here’s a screenshot of one of dermdoc’s messages:

These purported concerns over burdensome costs on physicians is pure fear-mongering. The new health law actually “includes an increase in Medicaid payment rates,” which is “expected to be pretty helpful” for most doctors. That is one of the reasons why the American Medical Association endorsed the Affordable Care Act. The American College of Physicians called the law “an extraordinary achievement" M.C.L Comment: And conservatives wonder why I hate them it's crap like this, if someone did that to Bush supporters or conservative activist Rush, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly and their clones would be screaming bloody murder for weeks. Since it's President Obama and people that have the nerve to express their constitutional right to vote for him it's ok to be small and petty. Republicans have shown if they win they like to tell liberals and Democrats to get over it, when they lose they want to undo the whole process until the outcome is in their favor.

Florida Doctor Warning Away Obama Voters Admits He Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About On Health Care

By Amanda Terkel Last week, the Orlando Sentinel reported that a Republican urologist in Florida, Dr. Jack Cassell, posted a sign on his business door reading: “If you voted for Obama…seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.” On Friday evening, Alan Colmes interviewed Cassell, who basically admitted that he didn’t know the facts of the new health care reform law:

COLMES: Do you really think the government wants people dead?

CASSELL: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services –

COLMES: What do you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?

CASSELL: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements.

COLMES: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.

CASSELL: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.

COLMES: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?

CASSELL: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.

COLMES: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?

CASSELL: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.

COLMES: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media.

Listen here:

A local TV station in Florida spoke to one of Cassell’s patients, who said that while the doctor’s care has been “wonderful,” he’s never going back after this political stunt. “Keep politics out,” said patient Steve Berger. “I mean, he can have his opinion, but what’s the next sign saying? If you’re Catholic, you can’t come? Or you’re an Arab, you can’t come in, or you’re a Jew? It has to stop somewhere.”

It’s not surprising that Cassell doesn’t have the full facts on the health care law. While he wasn’t even aware that the Affordable Care Act could be accessed online, he “keeps Republican materials in the waiting room” for his patients to read. As Colmes pointed out, the National Association of Home Care and Hospice actually praised the new law.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has said that he is helping a constituent who was affected by Cassell’s sign file a complaint. In response to this news, Cassell said, “I think he [Grayson] really seriously needs to see a psychiatrist, number one, because he needs to be on some kind of medicine.”

Cassell insists that he’s not actually turning patients away, but as of this morning, he told Fox and Friends that his sign is still up.

GOP congressional candidates say Obama and his voters are the biggest threats to national security.

By Zaid Jilani One of the right’s biggest electoral targets for 2010 is Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), who recently condemned the Senate as “spineless” for being too hesitant in passing clean energy legislation and has been threatened with being burned in effigy by the local tea party movement. This weekend, seven Republicans vying for the GOP congressional nomination to run against Perriello debated a variety of issues at a forum sponsored by the Lynchburg Tea Party. At one point, the candidates were all asked what they viewed as the primary national security threat to the United States. One candidate, Jim McKelvey, said it was the Obama administration; another candidate, Laurence Verga, said it was the voters who elected Obama, who he described as motivated by “political correctness run awry“:

Earlier, in response to a question about the No. 1 threat to national security, McKelvey got a round of cheers by saying, “The present administration is the biggest threat.”

Verga said the biggest threat is the Americans who voted the Obama administration into office. “That was political correctness gone awry,” Verga said. “There is a global jihad against the United States,” Verga said, “and we need to stand up to Iran with our allies and stop what they are doing.”

Reflecting on the debate, blogger Waldo Jaquith, who lives in Perriello’s district, writes, “Let’s just take a moment to consider that Verga meant by that. ‘Political correctness’ is conservative-speak for ’supporting minorities.’ There are many types of minorities, of course, but President Obama is only one kind: black. So what Laurence Verga is saying is that Obama is only president because he’s black. 69,456,897 Americans—52.9% of us—tossed national security aside because we supported President Obama over Sen. John McCain merely because Obama is a black man and, therefore, not a real American, so he can be known to be secretly undermining national security. Obama lacks other qualifications, but 48.29% of Fifth District voters are such morons that we voted for the man because we are, at heart, racists. Verga is not a racist, of course, he’s just keeping it real.”