Civil Liberties • Free Speech • Health Care

Mob Rule & Health Care Reform

August 7, 2009
by Celeste Fremon
80 Comments

healthcare_protest-2

I’ll be blogging more later today about local news.

But until then, here are a few snips from Paul Krugman’s column about the screaming protesters who have been showing up at the town hall meetings held across the country to talk about health care. (Like this meeting in Tampa.)

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right….

You can read the rest here..

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So how about all of you out there? Do you have good health coverage? Is it reasonably priced or too expensive? What does it pay for? Are you confident the insurance will cover you and/or your family in the event of serious illness. What has your experience been? What about your family and friends? And what do you want—or not want—out of the package before Congress?

80 Comments

  • Obviously the “astro-turfers” and the insurance lobby are betting the depth of the Democrats commitment to health care reform is much shallower than the breadth of their majority. And if unleashing the zombies will make the Dems crack…that appears to be the game plan.

    http://freep.com/article/20090805/BLOG24/90804067/No-to-Obamacare

    My private coverage through work is ok. Although it’s annoying to have to take so many tests and lab b.s. when I see the doc. Seems suspiciously like a lot of bill-padding.

  • Karl Rove was touting this hard-Right, organized mob shit on cable as “democracy” – but remember (quoting Political Animal’s Steve Benen): when his old boss was the president, there were plenty of public town-hall meetings, each of which were carefully pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted events. Public audiences were screened to make sure attendees agreed with the party line, and if White House officials didn’t like a ticket-holder’s bumper sticker or lapel pin, he/she was denied entry.

    For that matter, ticket distribution was limited to local Republican Parties, and in some instances, Americans who wanted to participate in the town-hall meetings were required to sign “loyalty oaths.” In some instances, a White House advance team would literally rehearse events in advance to make sure attendees said the right things to the president.

    Sure, Karl, lecture us some more about town halls and the appropriate expressions of American democracy. It’s hard to beat this kind of expertise. (end quotes)

    Rove’s idea of a “town meeting” is a Nuremberg rally of the faithful, not an honest Q&A. The fact is that the activist core of the GOP, and their corporate funders, are scum. Un-American scum. I’ve been called so many names by these crypto-fascist morons for so long, I think it’s time to just hit them back with a dose of reality about who believes in our system of government and who really just hates it. These clowns hate democracy, they’re profoundly racist (witness the “racist” slur thrown at Sotomayor by the pitiful unreconstructed Confederacy crowd and the unwillingness of key GOPers – like Roy Blunt, among others – to dissociate themselves from the racist “Birther” hysteria), and they’re willful liars (look at the crazy crap being propogated about health care reform that’s simply made up – a kind of “Woody’s comments” strategy of distortion and disruption. (Woody really is an authentic representative of the mindlessness of this wingnut fringe. If you love his running commentary here, I guess the contemporary GOP is your bag of tea. To most rational, normal people, being bombarded with such insistent drivel feels like some combination of an alien invasion and entry into Bizarro World. It’s incumbent on progressives to show up in full force at these meetings and guarantee the right of full, honest discussion of reform – including critical questions – without GOP intimidation, shouting down speakers and mob rule.

    (Cue a barrage of wingnut anecdotes about Ann Coulter being rudely interrupted by some student activist group on some Ivy League campus in order to evade discussion of corporate funded, organized mob assaults against elected representatives and citizens attempting to get answers to honest questions. I’ll guarantee this is the tack some of our favorite morons will take.)

    I’m out of here for the rest of the day…so Woody is welcome to run rampant. He can say any damn fool thing he wants and someone else (Mavis has been doing a good job) is going to have to slap him down – if anybody actually gives a shit. I’m busy.

  • Well, this escalation of right wing propaganda is right out of the book of Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirt demagoguery.
    The fear tactics of creeping Communism, ohhhhhhhhhh my!
    *Obama’s actually an African born Muslim!
    *The first step is taking away our guns!
    *They’re gonna make old people commit suicide or they’ll be murdered in their rest home beds to save money!
    *Don’t drink the water it’s a Govt plot!
    *The United Nations has plans to turn us into a one world Govt!
    *They’re gonna make us plant computer chips in our kids brains!
    *The Mexicans have a plan for the reconquest of the USA! Quick call Sheriff Joe!
    *The first step was the appointment to the Supreme Court of Sotomayor, she’s gonna take away white peoples rights and give them to the Mexicans!
    *Universal Health Care for all is just the first step in forcing us Americans to accept Communism, look at what happened to Canada or Sweden!
    *The real power in the world is in the hands of the Illuminati, the Jews, the council on foreign relations, and the Reptilians who live in secret underground dwellings and who change into human form at will.

    The only thing surprising about this old right wing fear campaign is how many people want to believe it.

  • This escalation of right wing propaganda is right out of the book of Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirt demagoguery

    The Mexicans have a plan for the reconquest of the USA! Quick call Sheriff Joe!

    ****************
    Speaking of reactionary fools on the blogosphere.

    You can always rely on Don Culo to mention the gavachos oppresion of the poor Mexican no matter what the topic.

    I wonder if the illegal immigrants in L.A. were receiving better free health care when they were back in Mexico. If the U.S. is so bad why are so many Mexicans coming to the U.S.

    Don Culo should take a trip to USC Medical Center in East L.A. and ask the illegal aliens why they don’t go back to Mexico to receive better health care in Mexico.

  • Good points all, Santiago. Can we really expect these international migrants to reverse their destinations? Probably not, but possibly an arrangement can be established where potential illegals are waylayed at the border and given cards that will avail them of full med coverage in Mexico proper, and even a small stipend to cover their needs in their home country until it stabilizes. Philipe Calderon promises an end to the drug violence soon. I’m sure we can print enough new money to finance my idea. Whachoo theenk?

  • I can just hear Rush saying on his radio talk …

    A foreigner, will not hesitate to use a chair, or a beer bottle, or a knife, or anything that comes handy, and if no weapon is available the chances are he would employ what we should consider are underhanded means!

  • “Should Americans pick crops?
    George says no;
    ‘Cuz no one but a Mexican would stoop so low.
    And after all, even in Egypt, the Pharaohs
    Had to import—Hebrew braceros.”

    Senator George Murphy
    Political party Republican

  • “You can always rely on Don Culo to mention the gavachos oppresion of the poor Mexican no matter what the topic.”

    It always amazes me how right wing reactionaries just can’t seem to grasp the concepts of satire and irony not to mention the inability to spell correctly.

    Courtesy of Sister Mary Torquemada;
    “Hey Sheriff Joe! There’s a place on your computer that displays “spell check” or something similar, try and use it once in a while this isn’t Mayor Sams place, bunch of Lutherans there!”

    I don’t get the connection between what I wrote and Sheriff Joe’s paranoia about so called “gavacho’s” and “oppresion” (sic).
    There’s a real possibility this reactionary is suffering from “oppression of the brain stem”

  • He is a shade vulger DQ, he suffers from acute dementia, or perhaps its family inter-breeding?

  • Thanks Reg, what can I say? I guess I’ve got a strange desire to bang my head on the wall as well.

    On topic, I actually am going to dissent from Krugman on this one. I have no problem at all with Republicans organizing into a groups and disrupting meetings. If it was okay when code pink did it (and I certainly thought it was okay if not productive) then why can’t the right wing do their version? What they are saying is still nutty and malicious, but I don’t think their tactic is any way nefarious or anti-democratic.

    The real test here is for the media. The media’s job is to recognize this is, as TPM put it, a media strategy, and to cover it as a media strategy. These guys are trying to disrupt town halls to get their message out. Nothing wrong with it, but it should be treated as an organized group with a media strategy. We’ll have to wait and see who covers it well.

  • I’ll also chime in to share Reg’s faux surprise that Woody has yet to angrily condemn these incidents like he did when anti-war or other liberal protesters interrupted conservative speakers. I look forward to his enhanced interrogated logic.

  • Well, this escalation of right wing propaganda is right out of the book of Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirt demagoguery

    The only Brown Shirt behavior seems to be the union thugs sent in to attack the protesters. The tactics (to the small extent that there really are tactics rather than true grass-turf effects) would seem to come from the mildest part of the lefty playbook. After all, it’s the left that has perfected, and uses frequently, the tactic of packing a venue and then shouting down the speaker they don’t like.

    The difference is the left organizes this – the people doing the shouting know damned well the plan up front. Check out any time a conservative tries to speak at a university. Here, the people demonstrating are just plain angry – not pre-planned – but genuine.

    One way to tell – ,a href=”http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/08/know-your-town-hall-mob-agitators.html”>look at the signs. They are hand made, while at organized rallies, signs are usually printed.

    Geez… I know its shocking to lefties to see your opponents actually use some of your own tactics, but get some perspective, eh?

    As for this being organized, astro-turf, etc… it’s 95% BS.

    These actions are a result of real anger and fear – reasonable anger and fear – on the part of ordinary americans. Not members of right wing organizations. Not whipped up by labor unions. Just folks who are hearing about the bad stuff (not from the main stream media, of course, which plays it down or hides it) and are freaking out.

    Furthermore, most of these folks would be out for any town hall these days, not just one on health care.

    This inchoate grass roots swell of anger is growing, and who knows where it will go.

    Check out the pictures of these “brown shirts.”

  • “This inchoate grass roots swell of anger is growing, and who knows where it will go.”

    If you give me three guess’ all three would guess they’ll go first to the Golden Corral tonight for the all you can eat fish fry for $7.95, then to American Legion for the cheap 50 cent beer and polka fest, and then to the bathroom cabinet for some Metamucil before bedtime.

    A white people’s riot! Scary!

  • Gardiner something or other said:
    “He is a shade vulger DQ,”
    What was that said earlier about spell check? Sheesh!
    Granted dq’s antics and name changes are entertaining, but when will he improve the subject matter?

  • #16 was the usual dose of hate and bile from our resident chameleon, the old cholo ninja gladhander. Big smiles with an underlying need to villify, probably from earlier mistreatment. Ask him, I’m sure he’ll explain ad nauseum.

  • The old fool has so many new names Gardiner L. Porcupile,
    Aurelian N. Schexnayder, Sanfer, Mrs. Salazar and etc. but the message is always the same. jejeje No seas tan pendejo.

    The Robber Barons, Gavachos, MinuteMen, Walter Moore, Mary Cummins, xenophobes are others are dancing through his
    paranoia. Don Culo have some menudo and a Tecate, the white oman and nazis are not knocking on your door.

  • Hiroshi have you seen the “Cholo Ninja’s” blog?

    http://donculo-rants.blogspot.com/

    Don Quackers is ever vilgilant in his battle against the Republicans, Walter Moore, Lou Dobbs, Robber Barons, Gavachos, Mary Cummins, and anyone who would use the old divide and conquer tactic against the oppressed masses.

  • Oh, stop it, the two of you. Last warning with this BS. It has taken over the thread. You both know better—and are capable of better. To say this is boring, gives boring a bad name.

    My delete finger has put on its racing helmet and is revving its engines.

  • Why Celeste, you have your own “Astro-Turfers” on your blog.

    And speaking of these Astro-Turfers (90% of who seem to be Senior Citizens), and them shouting down anyone who would dare support Universal Health Care”, I wonder how many of them are on Medicare or go to the VA Hospitals.
    Good God! It reeks of Socialism!

  • Mavis: I think I mostly agree with you on Obama’s opponents having the right to shout and disrupt, etal and even that Krugman overstated any sinisterness. You’re also right about keeping an eye on the media and how it disseminates all this stuff.
    I would add, this is going to be a fairly tough test of whether the rickety old Democratic Party can buck itself up and effectively push back against all the noise. On the surface of it, the Dems should be blowing away this opposition as the noisy empty barrels that this opposition is. The Dems should welcome all the mob-head shouters. If the Dems can’t beat this pathetic, idealess, rump GOP and send it into the same dust bin status as the Whigs, well then the Dems, as currently constructed, just might not have it in them to manage a national health care system in the first place. I dunno. Perhaps this coming battle will wound the Democrats just enough that they’ll soon go into an early glide mode toward saving their majority status through 2010. It’d be a shame.

  • Mavis – check this account out from TaNehisi Coates’ blog. The thing about your “tentative defense” of the protestors is that I don’t generally approve of Code Pink’s tactics – certainly not in the context of local legislators’ holding open meetings with constituent participation and questions on pending legislation:

    http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/the_tough_thing_about_racism.php

    These are mobs, infected with anti-Obama racism among other things.

  • Also, Mavis, I’m fine with these twits acting like crazy people. It’ll help the legislation and firm up weak sisters among the Dems. Unfortunately, it will also obscure any legitimate questions that are out there…

  • Great points, Mavis. The analogue to Code Pink is a good one.

    Although, as you point out, it is the media coverage that fails to categorize these protests correctly as political theater. (And there is nothing wrong with political theater.)

    Plus the townhall organizers could be a LOT smarter.

    I noticed this very sensible comment over at the TPM link that reg provided:

    An ambush only works if it’s a surprise. The pols should make it clear at the town halls that the appropriate way to be involved in the process is to wait for the opportunity to ask a question into a microphone. Anyone shouting out comments will be ignored and asked to leave. And ask the cooperation of the people in the audience so that as many people get a chance to speak as possible.

    By laying out those ground rules from the beginning, the tea party plans of rattling the speaker and getting him off script will fail (ignore the block head and resume the statement when they are done). Also, it inspires sympathy from the crowd. If it’s clear that people shouting out opinions hurts everyone else’s ability to participate and receive information, then the tea baggers will look like the jerks they are.

    The most effective way to shut down the tea baggers attempts to disrupt is to not engage. If the only thing disruption accomplishes is burning through time, it won’t be long before the rest of the audience shouts down the baggers. Once it shifts from a group of people fighting “the man” to a disruptive minority fighting against a polite and interested majority – baggers lose. Game over. And it will be very difficult for the media to report that incorrectly (although they rarely fail to disappoint).

  • I can’t even be gone two days without this thread turning into total lunacy. This is dumber than the Democratic Underground. I see, your community organizers and activists are okay, but other community organizers are mobs. What a bunch of idiots.

    BTW, did you like your union thugs beating up on the “mobs?”

  • John Moore Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    “These actions are a result of real anger and fear – reasonable anger and fear – on the part of ordinary americans.”

    Ordinary Americans? What do you base this description on? Surely not the past couple of elections. Universal health care was on the table in last year’s election debate, and Obama won the election in a landslide. Your angry “ordinary” Americans are actually in the minority. The idea that rural, white conservatives are “ordinary” Americans, or represent the majority of Americans in any way, went out the window last November. A lot of southern and midwestern towns have grown into small cities, and the demographic shift has turned red states into blue states, or at least “purple” swing states. That is America. And frankly, that’s what these mobs of right wing lunatics are really fighting against, if you ask me. This demographic shift really took place a decade ago but the Democratic party just wasn’t smart enough to tap into it. Obama’s team was. Yes, ‘your America’ is gone. And to most Americans, that’s a good thing.

  • Ordinary Americans? What do you base this description on? Surely not the past couple of elections.

    He bases it on the fantasy world that exists between his ears.

    Ordinary Americans are civilized and capable of expressing themselves in a civil tone when given the opportunity.

  • Yeh, I was laughing at that “death panel” bit earlier. I guess she didn’t lose by enough last year using the GOP’s 2004 playbook. “death panel”. LOL.

  • I’m just trying to figure out if there’s an honest or intelligent bone in most of the GOPers’ bodies. I just watched Maher’s show and Darrell Issa, the SoCal GOPer was complaining because Obama’s health care proposal doesn’t bring our health costs down…like Canada and France, which obviously both spend much less. Maher, incredibly, didn’t call him on it and ask WHY Canada and France have lower costs and more effective care. It was just random demagogy with no connection to any rationial argument or proposal. Just throw shit out there as random data unhinged from any actual thought process, and then end it with some mantra about “the market” or “creating more competition.” I couldn’t believe, first that a Republican was using Canada and France to criticize Obama, and second that the guy was either too disingenuous or too stupid – or some combination of both – to draw any conclusion from the figures he was tossing about.

    And of course Issa and some half-baked clown from Georgia came out of the gate attacking health care reform beause it spends a trillion dollars over ten years – nearly all funded, incidentally, even under the “work-in-progress” proposal. (Bush launched a long-term three trillion dollar project that was totally crazy – and TOTALLY UNFUNDed, i.e. the Iraq war and both of these morons voted for it and haven’t blinked yet to my knowledge. But…hey…the war didn’t involve any “death panels” where old people and babies die needlessly because a bunch of government bureaucrats far removed from day-to-day reality and with no concern for human life make rash decisions. Or something…)

    Palin, stirring this “death panel” hysteria is one of the most reprehensible and irresponsible demagogues in recent American political history – at least among allegedly “serious” politicians. The people who voted for her should hang their heads in shame – but, of course, they’re shameless.

    Also where do all of these old grey heads in these forums get off attacking “socialized health insurance?” Are they all really just totally stupid ? IMHO anyone who shows up at these forums yammering about “I want my country back!” might as well be wearing a sheet. Because that’s what it’s really about for a significant segment of them who suddenly feel “alienated” from the system – some black guy is sitting in the “whites only” section of their bus, i.e. the driver’s seat and they’re in panic mode.

  • Swedes pay on average a 60% tax. For that they receive 16 mos. of paid paternity/maternity leave, free health care and education, and even free tansportation if a child is with an adult. That prospect could only cause fear inthe hearts of those who have no kids and earn in excess of anything they’ll ever need to survive.It’s no accident that American media are taking a closer look at socialism. Many thinkers on the left believe the economic meltdown is proof that capitalism as it exists is too flawed to work. In These Times, an influential left-leaning, workers-rights magazine that has counted the late Studs Terkel and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., among its regular contributors, just ran a provocative cover story, “The Meltdown Goes Global: It’s Time to Rethink Capitalism.” (“Markets are not the only mechanisms for delivering the goods and services people need,” the story concludes.) Many of us thought we’d never see the day when that idea would appear on a magazine cover, particularly so soon after a presidential campaign in which the word “socialist” was often used to attack the candidate who ultimately won.
    Maybe it’s time to give socialism a shot.

  • I don’t know what “socialism” means. If it’s a mixed-but-essentially-market economy of regulated (to keep the playing field level and all players honest) captalism as the productive mechanism and a wide range of social services and social insurance guaranteed by the government, I guess I’m in. To one degree or another, all civilized countries have chosen some variation on that. The question in the US is will ours work as well and be as effective as, say, the Canadians or Europeans.

    Has anyone noticed that the Canadian banking system didn’t fail and there was no need for a multi-trillion dollar bailout of their capitalists at taxpayers’ expense ? That was a dose of “socialism” that I could seriously do without. The regulatory environment in Canada is relatively simple and centralized and it holds banks strictly to higher capitalization and accounting standards. The banks themselves are large, profitable and modern in every way – except for the “mystery meat” extrapolations of completely opague “assets” that became all the rage among our bankers. Risks that could put the entire system at risk were discouraged by an effective regulatory framework that wasn’t gamed or captured. But Canada is “socialist”….ooohhh….scary !!!!!

  • It would seem that both Monopoly Capitalism and it’s twentieth century rival, the rigid Leninist/Stalinist example of USSR uber Socialism were on display for the world to chose from, the clash between these two systems of economics cost millions of lives and untold natural and man made resources.
    The world seems to have rejected both extremes now that it has witnessed the meltdowns of both systems in obscene scenarios of cruelty, greed, lust for power, and expansion. As Karl Marx so brilliantly predicted, Monopoly Capitalism, that on the positive side was responsible for the industrial age, the end of feudalism, and a more efficient modern means of providing credit and financing for working people to enter the middle class, finally destroyed itself due to it’s Darwinian compulsion to eliminate competition, monopolize capital, to hoard and manipulate capital resources, to insure it’s own survival by any means necessary including the wasteful inhumanity of constant, trumped up politically inspired wars and the use of neo-colonialism and international banking machinations to insure continued world hegemony.
    This Monopoly Capitalist system instituted racism, peonism, and slavery, and the pitting of it’s subjects (the working class’), against each other through hook or crook and propaganda, to keep them at each others throats while the truth was obfuscated, ensuring that the moneyed elite class of Capitalists survived and prospered unabated and unquestioned.
    The melt down of Monopoly Capitalism although not complete is in progress. All Monopoly’s destroy competition and become stale and self destructive in the end.

    The oppressive system of Leninist/Stalinist Socialism met the same fate for similar reasons, this by being ruled by a self serving elite who ended up squashing free thought and expression, free enterprise, and as with Monopoly Capitalism devised a system of government based on expansion, domination, neo colonialism, and false propaganda.

    Maybe now the USA can develop a system of government and society based on the best attributes of both of these failed systems of economics, one that allows competion yet has rules and regulations that protect the public and the environment from abuses based on the maximizing of capital at any cost. Maybe a system of government that endorses and insures free speech and expression, supports the arts, and respects human and workers rights to a good education, health and happiness, and people living life to their fullest potential. This would benefit every person.
    It could get ugly for a while in this transition period but I would think that some form of democratic Socialism is probably in the future of the USA.

  • Gava Joe, since the New Deal, America has already been a socialist country. Also, have you forgotten about all of the money that’s gone to large companies? Since Reagan, we’ve basically been a socialist country for the rich. So where are you getting this idea that we’re about to “try socialism”?

  • DQ, exactly. It’s about finding a middle ground between socialism and capitalism, which is essentially what we have now, except that it’s unbalanced too heavily in the favor of the rich. Forming a government ran health care company to compete with the private sector is not going to break our economy nor ruin health care. In fact, it’s what we’ve been doing that will.

  • Rob, the US system (or non system), of health care is a disgrace and a prime example of Monopoly Capital and self serving, for profit entity’s, like the Insurance Industry, HMO’s, Pharmaceutical Company’s, and their powerful lobbyist’s, who usurp our best interests in regard to our so called political Representatives, Monopolizing health care for their own selfish profit motives, and the public be damned.

  • “But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy.” – Sarah Palin

  • Rob asks: “So where are you getting this idea that we’re about to “try socialism”?

    Why from the results of the last landslide election of course. Since the McCain/Palin opposition used it as some sort of pariah, and the country voted for it resoundingly, well maybe it’s about to bear fruit. I like the concept in the totalitarian sense rather than the Reagan inspired upper echelon socialism that you portray.

  • reg doesn’t argue points with information but just spreads hate — an admission that he has nothing to give but what’s wrong for America.

  • Celeste, you need to get a handle on the left-wing hysteria here and quit egging it on by referring to citizens attending townhall meetings as “mob rule.”

  • How does it go again, “iamthemob#”?
    Some one help me out.

    And some one introduce Woody to his comrades.

  • Woody has engaged in serial bigotry against gays and blacks here and at Cooper’s. Aside from the fact that he’s one of the most dishonest little weasels on the planet.
    He should be asking God for forgiveness.

  • Shorter Woody: “You’re looking lovely today, Mrs. Cleaver but aren’t you getting…uh…a little shrill?”

  • Woody, the mobs are not demonstrating free speech. We have something called “yelling fire in a crowded theater”. They are disturbing the peace, and trying to intimidate their opposition, and nothing more. Free speech is showing up with a sign, and waiting for your turn to speak. Mob behavior is crashing a meeting and not allowing the meeting to go on. These mobs are acting in an unlawful manner. And their ability to do so is proof that we still have a serious race problem in America, because if they were black, we all know that they would not be getting away with this. These mobs are nothing more than bitter thugs resorting to anarchism, but because most law enforcement in America still views them as “ordinary Americans” (something they’re obviously not anymore), like our friend John Moore here, they’re given some wiggle room.

  • Palin was calling Obama’s health plan “downright evil” on Friday. Sarah has never been correct on anything. She is, thank the Lord, not anywhere near the seat of power. The poorly worded scare tactic hyperbole she used is nearly word for word plagiarism of a false cliche. Sadly, Faux news and Rush ‘Pass Me The Salt’ Limburger can get the ditto-head crowd to repeat false information better than truths. Depopulation-death squads-I’m beginning to think some people have been doing LSD while watching the movie “soylent green”.

  • Why should we listen to what that idiot quitter Palin has to say. More republican garbage. Seems that the the repubs have forgotten who put us in this mess to begin with. The repubs have no plan for health care, no plan for the economy, no plan for anything except to complain about what Pres. Obama is doing to fix the mess that GWB and ‘Shotgun’ Dick left us in. If Sarah Palin doesn’t like what our President is offering in the way of a health plan, she should come up with a better plan. She won’t do that for several reasons: First – she has no other plan. Second, Sarah Palin is a complainer and a whiner. She is a part of the problem, and not a part of the solutiion.

  • I used to say in the late ’90s that Republicans would never win the white house again, because the economy was go good. I’ll never mutter those words again. All they have to do is get an election close enough to steal it, and exploit a catastrophe, and they’re back in business. I’ll be honest, Sarah Palin still scares me. She’s stupid as sin, that’s for sure. But that didn’t stop Bush. My concern is status of the DNC and their “50 state plan”. This was a huge, huge success, and paved the way for Obama. ’06 was when the real revolution took place, and Howard Dean and his 50 state plan steered the Dems back into control of the house and senate. Howard Dean stepped down recently. So, is his successor as serious as he was about putting every state in play?

  • “First – she has no other plan. Second, Sarah Palin is a complainer and a whiner. She is a part of the problem, and not a part of the solutiion.”

    *************************

    Yes, Sarah is a complainer and a whiner, just like our multiple personality old fool and his side-kick SNS.

  • The biggest complainers and whiners are abusive cops who get caught, and then cry because nobody supports them. Then they go to their subtle threats about how society would be in trouble without them and their abusive ways, blah blah. Biggest whiners and complainers, right there. And that’s the truth.

  • Gingrich – Woody’s old congressman – was on This Week this morning pushing the BizarroWorld “death panel” line.

    The fish rots from the head…

  • The “mobs” are called “unruly” when they ask their representatives to actually read the health care bill before rushing off to approve it.

    They constitute mobs when they see their health care being rationed and the elderly with the most to suffer.

    They’re unruly when they see that this nation can’t afford “free” care.

    They’re mobs when they expect their representatives to answer their questions and to represent their best interests.

    What represents an unruly mob are the Leftists who will stop at nothing to destroy those who want answers – answers that will prove this health care matter as a folly and fraud.

    The left can’t understand why people don’t like Obamacare

    What’s actually happening represents a rare political development — the arousal of what Richard Nixon dubbed “The Silent Majority,” in this case by what they correctly believe to be a threat to their cherished right to choose their own doctors and exercise autonomy in matters relating to their medical well-being.

    I want to recommend a paper…titled “Health Care Mythology”…. He suggests one cannot judge the “cost” of something simply by what one spends, but also by what one gets. And when it comes to health care, what we get in 2009 dwarfs what we got in, say, 1950.

    The system could be better, but what’s being proposed in the various measures making their rounds in Congress isn’t going to make it better. And lacking any kind of tort reform proposals, the whole exercise is bound to fail as any means of controlling runaway costs.

    Here’s how my former (thank goodness) Congressman screamed at a “crazed lying radical mobster,” a local doctor, when asked for honest answers on healthcare: VIDEO

    Likewise, reg continues the typical leftist arguments of name-calling and smearing people rather than dealing with truths.

  • Obama’s biggest obstacle is the 68% of voters who rate their health coverage as good or excellent.

    – – –

    The Democrats and now union officials are up in arms over these organized corporate thugs who are ruining their precious town hall meetings. Take a look at this video of an AARP meeting about healthcare. The AARP crowd actually thought they were going to going to walk into a room full of people who wanted nothing more than for the government to take complete charge of their healthcare. That’s not the way it turned out.

    The AARP meeting organizer starts out by saying “I think we can all agree that our present health care system is not sustainable …. And I think we can all agree that … blah blah blah.” She starts out the meeting telling the audience what they think.

    As soon as the AARP lady hears the first dissenting word she starts to loose it. In short order she actually walks out and cancels her own meeting because the audience (with an average age of at least 65) insists on asking questions and voicing their opposing opinions to the Democrat healthcare plan.

    You can watch this snotty woman unplugging the microphone and taking it with her as she leaves. Watch the video… and then tell me …. are these organized corporate insurance thugs? Do these look like Brooks Brothers protestors? Or is there some slim chance that what you’re seeing here are Americans who are genuinely concerned about the future of their country and their healthcare?

  • You guys have no scruples and no shame. Go ahead and call decent citizens more bad names. You have nothing else except to instill fear and threats.

  • Did Woody just reference a Nixon quote where he refers to conservatives as the “silent majority”? Ha ha ha hah!!! Yeh. That majority really turned out to the polls last November, when universal health care was on the table, didn’t they? The types of conservatives that make up these mobs are not the silent majority. They’re the loud minority. Aint that right, Gava Joe?

  • To be honest, liberals are actually the silent majority now. Conservatives became anything but silent in the era of FoxNews. It’s everyday liberals holding their tongues when out in public these days, because they just don’t want to get into shouting matches with paranoid, childish right wingers, who will turn a conversation about baseball into a nauseating soap box diatribe on liberal elitism and socialism. Liberals are in control and going about their lives. Right wingers are the ones dancing in the streets. Perhaps the hippie movement of the ’60s didn’t end because it was defeated. Maybe it ended because in actuality, they won.

  • The “silent majority” isn’t part of the radical community organization formerly known as ACORN, which did turn out both legal and imaginary voters for Obama.

  • “To be honest, liberals are actually the silent majority now. Conservatives became anything but silent in the era of FoxNews. It’s everyday liberals holding their tongues when out in public these days, because they just don’t want to get into shouting matches with paranoid, childish right wingers, who will turn a conversation about baseball into a nauseating soap box diatribe on liberal elitism and socialism.”

    Contrast this to the Nixon years, and the irony is immense.

    I say again: the people demonstrating at the meetings are ordinary people. Contray to GJ, I did not say they are the majority of people, but they are a significant minority.

    As to their tactics, all we have to do is look at the left – which is now whining about these tactics – to see amazing hypocrisy. When the left organize a demonstration, have paid organizers handing out pre-printed signs, and then spend the whole time shouting slogans – often at events to which they weren’t invited – it is “patriotic dissent.”

    When people on the right, not nearly as well organized, do the same, they are being antidemocratic or worse.

    Listen to yourselfs, lefties… you aren’t the only ones who can demonstrate and make noise. The middle and right can too.

    As for the idea that these are not the people who voted for Obama, because “Obama ran on health care reform” – these folks are ticked because Obama is a serial liar. His “health care reform” was going to reduce costs while providing universal access without becoming a government-run bureaucracy. Instead, people are seeing enormous deficits (swamping Bush’s) pushed up by Democrat free-spending pork (the so-called stimulus bill), and a huge health-care bill that is loaded with bureaucratic details that send chills down their spine.

    Yeah, a lot of these folks voted for Obama. They were suckers and fell for the bait and switch. They’s why they’re so angry.

  • reg, assuming that you meant us, John and I never cared about what you had to say, which has been nothing of substance and was based on ad hominem attacks.

    I find it completely ironic that Nancy Pelosi, a leader of the “Hate America” crowd, says that ordinary citizens participating in public discussions are “un-American.”

  • Woody, I’m curious (God knows why): why do you think Nancy Pelosi hates America? Please include definitions of “hate” and “America” in your response, just so I’m clear on what the terms mean to you.

  • An self-proclaimed uninterested reg continues to show interest.

    Oakwood, no time right now. I have to have some tax returns and financial information completed for a divorce hearing tomorrow. Wish me good luck on helping my client to beat his money-grubbing, soon-to-be ex-wife who didn’t mind spending the money that he earned but wants no part of the taxes due on that.

  • reg continues to….ZZZZZZZZZZ….oops. Sorry. Since driveler snuck a tired comment between my two links, links that he’s not competent to engage with any depth or seriousness, (click the second for some excellent insights and info – the first was just for laughs) I guess it’s incumbent upon me to suggest that the misogyny reeking from Woody’s response might be the clue Oakwood was looking for.

  • By laying out those ground rules from the beginning, the tea party plans of rattling the speaker and getting him off script will fail (ignore the block head and resume the statement when they are done). Also, it inspires sympathy from the crowd. If it’s clear that people shouting out opinions hurts everyone else’s ability to participate and receive information, then the tea baggers will look like the jerks they are.

    Once again, the left projects its own tactics and goals onto its opponents – incorrectly.

    The goal of these protestors is to vent their anger, because they feel nobody in the power elite has been listening to them. It isn’t so much a political goal as an emotional one.

    They have nowhere else to turn, and they are angry and scared. They need to vent their anger at their “representatives” – they are not (and need not) be interested in what the representatives will “explain” about the health care bill – hell, it’s on the net for everyone to read. They want their representatives to know they are unhappy, so they are making their message clear.

    If this intrudes on the usual boring propaganda event known as a town hall, tough beans.

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