Get His Back

The Republicans are in all-out hissy fit mode and it doesn't have to make sense. After months of their side talking about death panels, death books, scaring seniors and openly stating that Democratic health care bills "put seniors to death by their government" and "tells seniors to drop dead", they want to collect Alan Grayson's scalp for accurately stating that the Republican health care plan is to "not get sick, and if you do, die quickly."

Republicans have been bullies for so long that they cannot imagine being on the other side of an insult like this. Tough. What they do in this situation is rally around their own. Democrats typically do not, so we have to make sure Alan Grayson knows he has allies in the grassroots.

Here's an ActBlue page raising money for Grayson. It's early yet, but so far it's at around $1,200 bucks. Support the effort if you can.

...There is no chance Grayson will apologize.

Rep. Alan Grayson isn't backing down from his claim that Republicans "want you to die quickly."

"I stand by what I said," Grayson told reporters on Wednesday.

"I didn't violate any House rules. I didn't do anything inappropriate," he said. "I'm not under any pressure at all." [...]

Asked if he was worried about his re-election in an Orlando-based swing district, Grayson said his chances of winning are better.

"It improves them," he said. "People like elected officials with guts who say what they mean."

Damn straight.

...Alan Grayson is truly fantastic:

After speaking extensively to the press, Grayson came to the floor with an apology, but not for the Republican Party.

“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I would like to apologize to the dead.”

Citing a statistic that 44,789 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance, Grayson said, “That is more than ten times the number of Americans who died in the war in Iraq, it’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died on 9/11. …It happens every year.”

Grayson added in another apparent dig at the GOP, “We should care about people even after they are born.”

Grayson apologized one last time.

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner,” he said.

...Grayson has a diary up at Daily Kos. He's right in saying that Republicans aren't used to Democrats telling the truth about them.

The Republicans are serious about getting rid of me, because they are scared. They have already set up a site to attack me. And the reason is simple; they don't want my tough attitude to rub off on other Democrats. And the Democrats aren't sure what to think about this new, I don't know what you call it, truthtelling? But you can help make it clear that when I spoke the truth, I was speaking for you. And you can show them that I was speaking for you. Today is the end of the fundraising quarter, which means everyone is going to be watching fundraising totals.

Help me speak truth. You've already set up a bunch of fundraising pages and I can't thank you enough for getting my back. If you haven't already, I hope you'll go to one of these pages and help out today. I'm at $20,956 so far. Let's see where we can go from here.