Last April, Americans for Limited Government filed a Freedom of Information request asking for all documents related to the “right-wing extremism” memo. A PDF of the DHS report, here. This memo, which sent shockwaves throughout the conservative blogosphere, was described at the time as an embarrassingly shoddy piece if propaganda”.
It really was:
“Our worst fears about what went into this memo have been confirmed. The government department that was supposed to be tasked with identifying domestic terrorist threats is apparently using news stories, kooky websites, and conjecture instead of actual hard intelligence reporting and analysis,” said Wilson.
“This is a disgrace, and calls into question what it is that the so-called ‘Extremism and Radicalizaton Branch of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division’ actually does,” Wilson added.
Okay, that was in the past tense. He not even saying that he’s not currently supporting single payer. He is saying he has never supported single payer.
WTF?!
Why doesn’t he just admit the obvious? Seriously? I can tell you one reason so many people are showing up at these town hall meetings, and protesting ObamaCare. They know they are being lied to, and they don’t appreciate it.
And here, via Hot Air is Obama comparing the public option to the post office:
“it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”
Also, Karl in the Greenroom at Hot Air has a useful list of 6 Obama lies (misinformations) about ObamaCare.It’s hard to keep up with them all, so it’s nice to have a few of them all in one place.
UPDATE:
Oh lookie.
Michael Moore is super impressed with Obama’s “rope-a-dope strategy” to advance his side’s causes, and said so in an interview:
I take all of the things that make me nervous about the decisions that Obama has made, and I look and them through that lens – that it’s some kind of master plan. It’s like his continued support of a government-run option for health care. If a true public option is enacted – and Obama knows this – it will eventually bring about a single-payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won’t be able to compete with a government plan and make the profits they want to make. At some point most of them will probably have to bow out of the business.
Moore’s frankness even earns praise from the far more temperate David Gergen:
I’m glad to have someone of Michael Moore’s honesty say that the public option on health care is, in fact, designed to be a pathway to a single-payer system. Because the Democrats have essentially, “That’s not true.”
The same guy who demanded a “truth commission… a serious criminal investigation” intothe Bush administration’s supposed lies, says:
Look, this guy [Barack Obama] is a very good basketball player – he fakes right and goes left. He says he’s going to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq. But I would be shocked if, three years from now, there are 50,000 troops in Iraq. He says these things to keep the wolves away from the door, and it works. The other side seems to buy it. That’s why I admire his craftiness here.
Guess what, dumbass. The wolves are at the door, and they’re not amused:
Carville sums up the popular uprising against ObamaCare as a bunch of angry people who are politically frustrated because they lost two elections, nothing more, nothing less:
*(Click on the video to see it, since embedding has been disabled).
We’re just sore losers….So that’s the Dem strategy to combat the valid concerns of ObamaCare opponents?
Wow…okay.
And every economist in the world says the stimulus is working beautifully.
Stagnant unemployment, shrinking tax revenue and a struggling economy threaten to quadruple the size of last year’s federal budget deficit, raising more questions about the timing of costly proposals to overhaul health care.
As the White House and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepare to release new deficit estimates this month, several economists say the news is likely to be as bad as or worse than forecasts.
“This is going to be a very depressing outlook,” predicts former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, top adviser to Republican John McCain in last year’s presidential election. “They have just a nightmare in terms of these health care bills, which do nothing but make things worse.”
It’s like these people are living in a unicorn populated, enchanted land of make believe. And all they have to do is slay the dragons, (who refuse to shut up and get out of the way), and we’ll all live happily ever after.
RELATED:
Todays poll from Rassmussen shows support for ObamaCare has fallen to a new low, just 42%, while 53% oppose. That’s a whole lotta sore losers.
The event was dubbed, “a kitchen table talk”, which seemed odd since it was held in a library, but it was basically a town hall. 400-500 people showed up to talk to the Senator, only to find out that she was actually in another part of the state, and a staffer, (Kimberly Jolley?) was taking her place.
I don’t envy her for having to face 400+ very skeptical, very displeased tax payers with very few answers to their questions. We were told that the questions were being taken down, and that Senator would post answers on her website in the coming days. We’ll see.
I got there late, (of course), and found a place in the back to snap some pictures:
This woman, from the McCaskill group led the proceedings with a very ….charismatic prayer that went so long, that a few people in the crowd randomly shouted out, “Amen”! before she was finished. People weren’t there for a revival meeting.
I forgot what this woman asked, but she started by asking people to stay calm.
This woman is a refuge from the Canadian health care system. She moved to the US in 2005, and said it was the best thing she ever did.
This man said that Senator McCaskill didn’t need to bother reading any of the various health care bills floating through congress…
The only thing she needs to read, he exclaimed, is the Constitution.
The staffer was respectful, and poised, but didn’t have many answers to our questions.
I asked a question, myself. (Man, was I nervous!) I asked if Senator McCaskill would support tort reform in the Senate bill, and she said she didn’t know. I did get her to confirm that the Senator supported the public option. I then faced the audience and said, “I think we all know, because Obama has said so himself on several occasions that the public option would necessarily lead to a single payer, universal health care system”. I said that many Democrats had admitted this, including Jacob Hacker, the Berkeley professor who designed the plan. He said, ‘this isn’t a Trojan horse…it’s right in there!’ I went on, “Now, nevermind that the White House has been…*thinking feverishly for a more delicate term, and failing*…lying profusely about what he has said, the bottom line is, the American people do not support a universal health care plan” (Applause). I turned to her and asked, “Does Senator McCaskill support universal health care? She shook her head no.
This woman is a retired teacher, if I remember right.
One person, when it was his time to ask a question asked the crowd if a bus had taken them down there, or if they were on anybody’s payroll. “NOOOOOO!” they bellowed.
I almost brought some signs in, myself, but I thought it would be kind of weird in the library…
On my way out, the kiddo I was with was hungry for din-din.
Well, the experience was not terribly edifying, but at least I can now say that I am officially part of “the mob”.
Not deterred by the threat of being reported for spreading “fishy” information, our heroine, Pam Key has put out yet another damning video, this one showing clip after clip of Obama promising to televise health care negotiations on CSPAN, which I posted about, last week.
With as Linda Douglass would say, “cobbled together, out of context quotes” from the past. It’s really a retread of what you’ve already seen at Naked Emperor News, but still good because the dishonesty of Obama and the Dems can not be stressed enough:
About that breathless DNC ad accusing ObamaCare opponents, who are showing up at town hall events all across the country, of being “astroturfers”:
These mobs are bussed in by well funded, highly organized groups run by Republican operatives and funded by the special interests who are desperately trying to stop the agenda for change the President was elected to bring to Washington.
This has become an oft repeated meme. Scary right wing mobs (?!), the story goes, are being bused into these town halls to disrupt and shut down dialogue.
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. These are self motivated people, who are paying attention, on the web, cable news, or talk radio to what’s been happening to the country since Obama was elected, and feel compelled to act. These are people who will tell you that they worry that their children or grandchildren will grow up to live in a country less free, and less …exceptional, and they’ve been provoked out of their comfort zones to fight back against the leftist tide. They are going to these town halls to get answers to their questions, and things can get tense when people feel like they’re being lied to.
So the question I have for the DNC, Obama, Reid, and Pelosi is: Where are the buses? If insurance companies are busing people to these events I’d like to know about it. Do any of the Dems making these claims have any evidence to prove their allegations?Like in the way of pictures?
Oh. BTW, Americans For Prosperity’s“Hands off my health care” bus tour, and the Tea Party Express don’t count. Those are bus tours zig zagging across the country hosting rallies, which like minded conservatives find out about via the radio, web, or word of mouth. Nobody is paid to go to the rallies, and nobody is bused to them, (except of course the organizers).
Here’s what a bused in rent-a-mob looks like, just so we know what to look for. This pic is froma frat boy’s website:
Often college kids, or homeless people are recruited by lefty groups, (in this case, *quelle surprise!* The SEIU) and bused down to an event, not to engage in debate, but specifically to disrupt:
OK, no more drinking pictures (for this one at least). Back in early October the Republican Governers Association (of which Connecticut Governor John Rowland is head) held their annual convention and SEIU/CCAG were there to disrupt Rowland’s event. Here you can see (clockwise from upper left) the SEIU bus we went down on, some of our signs during the speech part of the event, CCAG Director Tom Swan yelling, and our group during the protest.
Here’s a more typical rent-a-mob. Note the pre-printed signs:
Shoot, if we tea partiers have all these “well funded” interest groups backing us, the least they could do is make us some snazzy signs like the cool ACORN/SEIU crowd gets. What are we? Chopped liver?
You want to talk astroturf? The truth is, conservatives are pikers at that. Our anger is real, not manufactured, we drive ourselves to these events, thank you very much, and we get no compensation for our efforts .
Liberals on the other hand, are masters at astroturfing, and are as always, busy busy busy recruiting anyone willing to make an easy buck in the manufactured anger industry.
Newsbusters’ Rich Noyes was astounded that CNN would use a Communist propagandist in a report about Cuban health care:
There’s something deeply wrong with journalism that scrutinizes and criticizes the institutions of free and successful nations, but produces puff pieces on the supposed achievements of totalitarian dictatorships. On Thursday, CNN aired a piece of Communist Party propaganda about how Cuba could serve as “a model for health care reform” in the United States, complete with an authoritative sound bite from an American medical expert, identified only as someone “who’s lived and worked in Cuba for decades.”
But the expert, Gail Reed, is a longtime admirer of the Cuban revolution, married to the Cuban official who served as ambassador to Grenada in the early 1980s when U.S. troops liberated the island from hardline communists who had executed the leftist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. She’s also worked at Granma, Cuba’s official communist party newspaper.
Here are some excerpts from the report:
How does health care work in Cuba? It’s not an easy question to answer, but there are some impressive statistics. According to the World Health Organization, Cuba’s life expectancy is 78 years. The same as Chile and Costa Rica and the highest in Latin America. And its infant mortality rates are the lowest in the hemisphere, in line with those of Canada.This clinic in Managua, a community outside Havana, is one of the country’s newest and best equipped. It serves a population of some 15,000 people. The director tells us under one roof she has dentists, general practitioners, physical therapy, homeopathic medicine and a laboratory that makes vaccines.
[NEILL IN CUBAN CLINIC]: Built just five years ago, this clinic is really a symbol of what Cuba wants to do with health care all over the country. You can see the machinery is new. The walls, freshly painted. It’s an idea of where the country wants to go, the future of its health care, all of it free of charge.
How does Cuba do it? First of all, the government dictates salaries. Doctors earn less than $30 per month. Very little compared to doctors elsewhere. And priority is given to avoiding expensive procedures, says Gail Reed, who’s lived and worked in Cuba for decades.
GAIL REED (IDENTIFIED ON SCREEN AS: ‘CO-PRODUCER, SALUD’): They concentrate on prevention. They concentrate on bringing services closer to people’s homes so that the big-ticket items don’t really take up, don’t sponge up all that small budget they have.
NEILL: But Cuba’s system certainly has its problems. Many hospitals and emergency rooms are decrepit and even unsanitary. Equipment is frequently old. And patients often supply their own sheets and food while in the hospital. Health officials admit the system isn’t perfect, but, they say, no one falls through the cracks. Morgan Neill, CNN, Havana.
Yes, “falling through the cracks” is the least of their problems.
Here, via The Real Cuba, is another description of …health care in Cuba:
THIS IS THE FAMOUS ‘GREAT AND FREE HEALTHCARE’ THAT REGULAR CUBANS RECEIVE
One of the greatest fallacies about the so called ‘Cuban Revolution’ has to do with healthcare.
Foreigners who visit Cuba, are fed the official line from Castro’s propaganda machine: “All Cubans are now able to receive excellent healthcare, which is also free.” But the truth is very different. Castro has built excellent health facilities for the use of foreigners, who pay with hard currency for those services.
Argentinean soccer star Maradona, for example, has traveled several times to Cuba to receive treatment to combat his drug addiction. But Cubans are not even allowed to visit those facilities. Cubans who require medical attention must go to other hospitals, that lack the most minimum requirements needed to take care of their patients.
In addition, most of these facilities are filthy and patients have to bring their own towels, bed sheets, pillows, or they would have to lay down on dirty bare mattresses stained with blood and other body fluids.
An e-mail and a photo from a reader who just returned from his first visit to Castroland: “My God, I have just returned from my first visit to Cuba. I am SO sorry for what Fidel Castro has done to this beautiful country and people. I visited a hospital in his home town of Santiago and could not believe my eyes, it was disgusting. I could never imagine my parents or family having to endure a night in that shithole with cockroaches. What has this man done to this beautiful country and people? I thought S. Africa was bad enough but the real poverty and what I saw defies description, I was truly angered , frustrated and really saddened. F.C should be ashamed of himself. I cannot sleep without thinking of all those poor people left to their own devices, hardly any food, vegetables, fruit. I saw the REAL Cuba as I have a Cuban friend but I am sure most tourists do not even have a clue what is happening there. 20 Oct 2008.T.T”
An American reporter writes about the medical apartheid that she witnessed in Cuba
Those of you who saw Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” would remember the scene where Moore and his guests walked into a Cuban pharmacy and asked for an asthma medication, Salbutemol, and immediately the clerk opens a drawer and gives it to one of the guests, a woman from New York, who then begins to cry when she learns that in Cuba that medicine costs only a fraction of what it costs in New York. According to Moore, his guests received the “the same care” that any regular Cuban would receive, “no more, no less.”
But the scene at the Cuban pharmacy, as the whole portion of Sicko filmed in Cuba, was a fallacy conceived, scripted, staged and rehearsed by the Cuban regime with Moore’s acting the part of the useful idiot.
In an article titled “Catching a cold in Cuba,” Sally Melcher Jarvis, a correspondent for a Pennsylvanian newspaper who went to Cuba in November of 2007 accompanying a humanitarian mission organized by a local museum, found out about the apartheid that regular Cubans are suffering since Castro turned them into second class citizens in their own country.
Here is part of what she wrote: “It wasn’t much of a cold; just the kind that would get better by itself in a week. In the meantime it was a nuisance with a cough and stuffy nose. A little over-the-counter remedy would help…..There were no over-the-counter remedies to be had. I asked the guide what Cubans did if they had a cold. The guide said that a Cuban would go to the doctor — a visit free of charge — who would write a prescription for aspirin. However, there would be no way to fill the prescription. We visited a pharmacy later in the trip. Behind the counter five well-dressed Cuban women waited to serve, but the shelves were empty. The only items in sight were the monthly ration of sanitary napkins, 10 permitted per Cuban woman per month.
It was like being in a dream where two different things can happen at the same time. We were in a two-tier system: one for the privileged (tourists, for example) and the other for those who lived and worked in socialist Cuba. Our luxurious state-owned hotel was closed to Cubans, except for those who worked there. A Cuban could not even come in for a meal.
It was depressing to see attractive and intelligent people restricted and denied opportunity in such an appealing land only 90 miles away from our country. The accident of birth has put me in a free country and I have never been so grateful.” Click here to read the entire article.
There’s much, much more at the link, but in the meantime, enjoy these pictures from our “model for health care reform”:
A patient’s bed at that same facility
Emergency Room at Quinta Covadonga, now known as Salvador Allende, Havana
Bathroom fromEmergency Room at Quinta Covadonga
This photo is not from Auschwitz, it was taken in one of those famous “free health care facilities” in Castro’s Cuba
Floors full of excrements, bare mattresses, terrible and even worse medical attention
I apologize if this report doesn’t meet with the approval of the Communist government of Cuba.
Wow, just caught this video at Hot Air, and I’m still shaking my head…
The first part of the video I figured was from a year ago, when the Messiah was “receding the oceans”, and riding skittle-shitting unicorns. But no. It’s from the very same speech as the second part, which you’ve all heard by now:
What more will it take to convince people that Obama is full of shite?
Diplomacy: In a quiet victory for a tiny democracy, U.S. buttinskies have stopped trying to restore a dictator to power in South America. Tiny Honduras is winning its fight for freedom.
In a welcome about-face, the State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in a letter Tuesday that the U.S. would no longer threaten sanctions on Honduras for ousting its president, Mel Zelaya, last June 28.
That letter was undoubtedly in response to Senator Lugar’s letter to SOS Clinton about a week and a half ago:
…he also appealed to the State Department to provide a detailed clarification of U.S. policy to “interested Members” – an apparent reference to several of his fellow Republicans, who charge Washington is trying to reinstate a left-wing government in Honduras.
Because of U.S. support for Zelaya, conservative Republican Senator Jim DeMint has threatened to delay a Senate vote on the nomination of Arturo Valenzuela to be assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, the senior diplomat in charge of Latin America at the State Department.
“I request that the Department provide interested Members a detailed clarification of the steps that it has taken, and intends to take, in response to the events that transpired in the run-up to and period after the forced removal of President Manuel Zelaya from Honduras,” Lugar wrote to Clinton.
The State Dept will no longer insist that Zelaya be returned to power:
As it turns out, the U.S. Senate can’t find any legal reason why the Honduran Supreme Court’s refusal to let Zelaya stay in office beyond the time allowed by Honduran law constitutes a “military coup.”
Yeah, what do you know, according to Polifact, Obama said this at a Town hall meeting on Aug. 21, 2008, in Chester, Va:
To achieve health care reform, “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”
Well, when did that happen? Did I miss it? Where’s the transparency?
Of course, in case you missed the broad innuendo, Obama was trying to demonize the Insurance companies and drug companies (They won’t be able to buy a chair at the table), and the televised negotiations would perhaps expose them as the greedy, self interested money grubbers that they are.
“We don’t trust the private insurance companies left to their own devices and neither do the American people.”
Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), says the health care industry is being demonized by the Democrats:
“A campaign has been launched to demonize health plans and the men and women who work hard every day in their communities to provide health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans,” she said on a conference call with reporters.
“Health insurance reform” has all but replaced “healthcare reform” in Obama’s lexicon as the White House touts its plans to enact strict new requirements on whom insurers must cover and how much they may charge.
“We have a system today that works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn’t always work well for you,” Obama said last week. “What we need, and what we will have when we pass these reforms, are health insurance consumer protections to make sure that those who have insurance are treated fairly and insurance companies are held accountable.”
Anyhoo, another Obama whopper for the records: no televised negotiations, and no wonder. Another group that has been missing from the table: Republicans have been all but left out of negotiations.
Alexander and Gregg said the GOP has submitted several proposals, although they conceded the party has not brought forward a concrete draft as an alternative to the bill being marked up by the HELP Committee. Alexander said the Democratic bill contains too much debt and regulation, and Gregg said it wouldn’t even accomplish President Obama’s stated goal of insuring all Americans.
“The Republican caucus has a whole handful of lollipops, and we keep offering them to the Democrats, saying, ‘Here’s the red one, here’s the blue one, here’s the green one, why don’t you take one and let’s go to work on it,’ ” Alexander said. “Most of them are being rejected out of hand.”
Earlier Wednesday, Reid met with GOP Sens. Mike Enzi (Wyo.), who is the ranking HELP Committee member, Olympia Snowe (Maine), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) to ask for GOP help to pass the bill. Emerging from the meeting, the Republicans said Reid downplayed any deadline to pass the bill in an effort to allow bipartisan talks more time to bear fruit.
When asked if more time would lead to more bipartisan success, Gregg said he disagreed.
“It appears that more time is making less of a difference on bipartisanship,” he said. “They’ve got 60 votes. They won the election. It appears they’ve decided maybe to go this alone.”
When asked about “poison pills” in the bill, such as a single-payer or public-option component, Gregg said such components are a “non-starter” to Republicans because they would only lead to rationing and price controls.
Repressive governments disturb civic development in two major ways; First, they discourage spontaneous group activity, and second, they discourage trust. Even though totalitarian governments, such as communist regimes, mobilize civil society through party, and other governmental organizations, association is always state controlled, and not always voluntary. Generally, authoritarian, and totalitarian governments seem partially to build on their strength on the foundation of distrust among their citizens. A good example of this can be found in the activities of the German Democratic Republic’s state-secret police which pitted citizens against each other, and provoked tight social control of friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and even within families.
I found that by googling, “pitting citizens against each other”, not sure of what I’d find, but having a hunch, because for the first time in my life, and perhaps in our nation’s history, we have a President who is actively mobilizing certain groups of citizens (SEIU, ACORN, OFA) against certain other groups, and it’s absolutely staggering. He commanded his minions during the campaign to “get in their faces”, and now, even as President, he is still in campaign mode.
Obama sans teleprompter, obviously speaking off the cuff, because what speechwriter would write such words for a President to say?:
Here, the President of the United States is fomenting distrust amongst the citizenry. Some of us, he argues, are not worthy of being listening to. Some of us should just get out the way.
ObamaCare is opposed by a majority of Americans, now, because we know it’s not financially sustainable, it can’t be without draconian cuts in service. We know that Obama means for his plan to lead to a single payer, universal plan, which the vast majority of Americans oppose. So the Obama administration and the Dems fight the opposition deploying classic Alinsky tactics:
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Call your enemies “tea baggers”, rednecks, for instance).
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Union thugs love intimidating and busting heads…)
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Urge fellow citizens to report “fishy” emails and websites to WH ).
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (What might they do with those email and IP addresses? What will the union thugs do at the next town hall?)
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. ( Rush Limbaugh, “astroturfing teabaggers”).
And the unwritten rule that all good leftists follow: Accuse the enemy of what you yourself do.
Liberal Dems are accusing the rag tag, genuinely grassroots, and passionate conservative dissenters, the vast majority of whom have never protested anything in their lives, people who would much rather be at home with their families, of “astroturfing”. These are people who have been provoked out of their comfort zones because they see their freedom, Democracy, and the American way of life, slipping away, and they refuse to let it go without putting up a fight.
Liberal Democrats are of course, masters of astroturfing, or manufactured, fake grassroots. That’s why at their protests and rallies, you see pre-printed signs (who paid for those), and often paid for, bused in protesters/supporters, whatever the case may be.
That’s why you see Obama, the community organizer in chief sending out the bat signal via his website, Organizing for America. (Are all Presidents from now on going to have their own perpetual campaign websites? Because I’m against it, and I don’t care which party the President is from. I have a problem with a sitting President organizing American citizens to go out and fight with and get in the faces of other American citizens). There’s nothing “spontaneous” or “grassroots” about taking orders from the most powerful person in the free world.
As many of you know, David Axelrod, Obama’s senior advisor, is credited with inventing AstroTurfing. Which sets the irony meter to its highest level, I think.
A great example of astroturfing as it is typically practiced can be found via Michelle Malkin atLooking at the Left, by ElMarco, who was at the Nancy Pelosi event in Denver, Friday, and took pictures of the the 200 or so ObamaCare dissidents, and the handful of astroturfing supporters, some of whom didn’t speak a word of English and had no idea what their signs said. His photo essay is fantastic, and well worth a look.
A pro-ObamaCare group, Health Care For America Now (HCAN), has sent out marching orders to its members on how to counter the scary anti-ObamaCare mobs, according to the Washington Times:
HCAN — whose members include ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, the National Education Association and the National Council of La Raza — issued some instructions of their own. The memo, e-mailed Tuesday to HCAN’s 120 field staffers in 44 states, encourages activists to contact elected officials before public events to plan ways to pre-empt the opposition.
Of course, it’s not “astroturfing”, or “manufactured” when the left does this, even if it’s only to provide “cover” for Dem congresscritters:
Another one of Ms. Jorge’s tips is to “Address the [member of Congress] directly with a positive message: Remember, these Members need cover and they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots in these meetings.”
Yesterday, in St. Louis, as Gateway Pundit reported, SEIU members were allowed entrance to a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting, while 1000 protesters were left outside:
Inside the gym they roped off two sections. One was for the tea party taxpayers and quickly filled up when they opened the doors at 6:00 PM.
The other section was marked “reserved” and this section was saved for the union members.
The rest of the crowd was locked out!
The event was conveniently held in a forum where only 250 people could fit. 1000 people showed up. SEIU members were given reserved seating that took up at least half of the 250 seats. As people came in who visibly oppose the Democrats healthcare plan, SEIU members barred access to the room.
Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said the department was told a couple hundred people would show up and sent a squad of 10 to 15 officers, two marked cars, two supervisors and some undercover officers.
As the crowd grew, more were brought in – mainly for traffic control, she said, but they also broke up some scuffles. She said no arrests were made.
One man who said he was injured and intended to file a police complaint, Randy Arthur of Oldsmar, was outside the meeting room with his wife, Kathy Arthur, when organizers tried to close the doors.
News Channel 8 photo by CHRIS COYNER
She said he was slammed against a wall. He later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest.
Among the crowd outside, opponents and a smaller number of proponents got into occasional shouting matches.
After trying to speak, Castor left at about 6:40 p.m., taking jeers as she left.
“They’re hiding from their constituents. She works for us and needs to listen,” said Karen Jaroch, a Tampa homemaker and organizer for the 9-12 Project.
I expect this scenario to play out again and again throughout the August recess, and now with the SEIU involved, the previously raucous, but non violent townhalls will be marked by physical aggression.
“The Persuasion of Power:” Vid of SEIU Bullyboys Attacking Actual Grassroots Citizens
Obama: I Don’t Want Repubicans “to Do a Lot of Talking; I Just Want Them to Get Out of the Way”
See Ace for video of SEIU thugs beating on anti-ObamaCare protesters. 7 6 were arrested.
And this is breathtaking…The malignant narcissist on “the people who created the mess: (you and me):
Does he not yet understand that he’s the President of the United States, and is no longer on the campaign trail? That’s not how a President talks!
It’s not astroturfing when it comes from the very top, I guess.
Did President Bush ever do anything that louche?
A little addendum (geoff): Nancy Pelosi was greeted by conservative protesters with homemade signs in Denver today. Look at what the stunningly attractive and classy Obama supporters brought==>
Who’s astroturfing?
(Deb): From the Denver Today link, (thanks, Geoff) more ObamaCare supporter thug tactics!
A supporter of health care reform, left, who did not want to give her name, pushes forward to rip a sign out of Kris McLay’s hands outside the Stout Street Clintic visited by Nancy Pelosi. (THE DENVER POST | RJ SANGOSTI)
A St Louis DJ, and blogger, Dana Loesch appeared on The Greta Van Susteren show, Thursday night, August 6, to react to being smeared as part of an “angry mob”. She did a great job countering the insulting lies being told by Dems in the highest echelons of power:
“It is absolutely insulting,” she says. “If I were in this for the money, I would have gone and worked for ACORN.”
Gateway Pundit has some great shots, and video from another town hall in St. Louis today. 1000 anti-ObamaCare citizens were locked outside the building while SEIU hacks were allowed in through a side door. The seating arrangement was 50/50 in terms of space alloted for each group, but obviously, there were many more ObamaCare protesters than supporters trying to get into the event.
MORE:
Americans For Prosperity’s President, Tim Phillips bravely appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show, to discuss his nefarious astroturfing activities. As she darkly accuses his organization of accepting money from ‘corporate interests’, including {{{{{{oil companies}}}}}}} you’ll enjoy his cheerful answer that although most of their funding comes from private citizens, and foundations, they would love to have more corporate funding:
Here is an example of the “artificial”, “manufactured” “angry mob” we’ve all heard tell of. And the Dems are right, these disruptive malcontents are members of a powerful lobbying group, the AARP:
