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on Sep 21st, 2012 and filed under
Today, we are constantly being told, the United States faces a health care crisis. Medical costs are too high, and health insurance is out of reach of the poor. The cause of this crisis is never made very clear, but the cure is obvious to nearly everybody: government must step in to solve the problem. Eighty years ago, Americans were also told that their nation was facing a health care crisis. Then, however, the complaint was that medical costs were too low, and that health insurance was too accessible. But in that era, too, government stepped forward to solve the problem. And boy, did it solve it! In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the primary sources of health care and health insurance for the working poor in Britain, Australia, and the United States was the fraternal society. Fraternal societies (called “friendly societies” in Britain and Australia) were voluntary mutual-aid associations. Their descendants survive among us today in the form of the Shriners, Elks, Masons, and similar organizations, but these no longer play the central role in American life they formerly did. As recently as 1920, over one-quarter of all adult Americans were members of fraternal societies. (The figure was still higher in Britain and Australia.) Fraternal societies were particularly popular among blacks and immigrants. (Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt’s famous attack on “hyphenated Americans” was motivated in part by hostility to the immigrants’ fraternal societies; he and other …
According to this video:
“The liberal blogger sphere lit up… I’ve definitely been troll-rated. … apparently I’m a Republican, I’m a right winger, I’m a sleeper cell, a spy, in fact I want to hurt Obama and the democrats and the progressives, and apparently I’m a tea bagger, ‘ha, why don’t you reach out to the tea baggers again? haha, get a load of this guy’ … another thing I’ve been called is a firebagger. Which is the first time I’ve heard this term. I believe it refers to firedoglake because Jane Hamsher and those guys, because they fight for progressive causes, so they’re crazy. ‘Firebaggers, yeah right. you want progressive causes…’ ”
Urban dictionary calls it:
A person nominally of the political left viewed as excessively critical of President Barack Obama, especially if the tendency is to reflexively or obsessively criticize him and seemingly not other political figures.
Etymology: Jane Hamsher’s popular, left-leaning FireDogLake blog was regarded by Democratic moderates as having gone around the bend in being hypercritical, such as when Hamsher appeared on Fox News to denounce Obama’s Health Care Bill, got involved with Neocon zealot Grover Norquist and even reportedly Tea Party activists. Thus, FireDogLake + Teabagger.
my.firedoglake.com calls it:
Firebagger is the new and exciting nickname for people who fail to clap hard enough for Obama.
- Cenk Uygur
More Pages:
- Health: I Need Help In Choosing A Health Insurance Provider. Can Someone Help Me Sift Through All The Possible Privat? (4/3/2011)
- Health: Has President Obama Betrayed The Middle Class? (6/1/2012)
- Health: How Much Does A Dentist Vist/Teeth Clean Cost? (7/12/2012)
- Q&A: health????????????????????
- Health: Should Michael Moore Be Prosecuted For Taking 9/11 Rescue Workers To Cuba For Medical Care? (7/2/2011)
Most of the firedoglake criticisms of Obama are reasonable but there certainly may be some PUMA-types (disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters who still can’t get over it) who just flat-out hate Obama. But it’s mostly good, their take on how Obama mishandled Gulf of Mexico drilling and the resulting explosion and spill by BP was spot on.
Cenk Uygur the replacement comedy act that took the place of the loud mouth Eddy Schultz
He is from the Young Turks site more radically left than moveon.org or the Puffington Post, fits right in with the loons on MSNBC
i hate anything with bagger on the end of it
including tea bagging firebaggers
u name it i hate it