This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Health Care debate

  • Townhall protests take their toll

    Financial Times reports that some of the newly elected Democrats are beginning to waver on the health care proposal in Congress;

    Mr Kratovil, who was hanged in effigy by a healthcare protester at a town hall meeting in his state of Maryland, said he would have voted against legislation if it had come to a vote last month.

    Tom Perriello, another new representative from neighbouring Virginia, also says he is not yet ready to support the current proposals in the House of Representatives, partly because he is “still getting feedback from?.?.?.?constituents”.

    Neither man has ruled out voting for a revised package.

    The Hill says Harry Reid coined a new adjective for the town hall protesters. Yes, we’re all “evil-mongers”.

    Reid coined the term in a speech to an energy conference in Las Vegas this week and repeated it in an interview with Politics Daily.

    Such “evil-mongers” are using “lies, innuendo and rumor,” to drown out rational debate, Reid said.

    “It was an original with me,” Reid said of the term. “I maybe could have been less descriptive,” he said, adding that “I doubt you’ll hear it from me again.”

    Our buddy, DanNY, confronted some SEIU thugs up in Long Island today.

    In Los Angeles, cops cornered a guy suspected of threatening the White House.

    A man suspected of making threats against the White House led police on a chase Thursday then holed up for hours in a car outside the Federal Building in West Los Angeles.

    The building had been locked down since noon, and employees were told to stay inside, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

    The unidentified suspect made a threat against the White House, but details were not being released, U.S. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said.

    I guess SPLC will be adding him their domestic terrorist list. Fox News reports that Democrats are erecting “roadblocks” to protesters;

    Americans who want to express their opinions on health care reform at town halls across the country are encountering a host of roadblocks, ranging from fake schedules to a demand that they show their driver’s licenses or photo identification.

    Supporters of President Obama’s plan say they are pushing back against opposition that is disruptive and designed to shut down debate. But opponents say the supporters’ tactics are underhanded and designed to undermine democracy in action.

    So I guess every one we see that oppose the health care plan are legit now. You sure you guys want to do that? Wasn’t it easier to just say they were outsiders than it will be from now on? A new Fox News poll says that 52% of the outrage is real – wanna make it 100%?

  • Think Congress isn’t listening?

    Sheila Jackson Lee told the Houston Chronicle on Monday that she’s not avoiding her constitutents’ concerns;

    Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee assured a sometimes raucous crowd at a town hall forum Tuesday that she is listening to their concerns about health care reform legislation. At the same time, the Houston Democrat denied she had attempted to dodge opponents by giving short notice and not widely publicizing her town hall meeting after other Democrats in Congress confronted angry crowds at similar gatherings with constituents across the country.

    And to prove it, here she is yesterday seriously listening to the folks that vote for her;

    Even though I see the denizens of DC use that little ploy everyday to avoid confrontations over their ill behavior, I’m pretty sure that Representative Lee has more respect than that for the folks she serves. I’m sure it was an important call. Probably her hair dresser telling her that her new hair will be ready for pick up at four.

    Ace of Spades and Gateway Pundit point to Patterico who discovered an astroturfing “doctor” who supported the healthcare plan – but it turns out the “doctor” is nothing but a grad student of Lee’s husband and an Obama donor. But there are no plants at these events, are there?

  • Scott’s office vandalized

    I linked to this video Sunday wherein Congressman David Scott melted down because he didn’t believe there were any white doctors in his district;

    The local news reports this morning that someone spray painted a swastika on a sign in front of his office;

    Employees discovered a Swastika allegedly spray-painted on a sign by vandals at Rep. Scott’s office in Smyrna.

    The motivation of the vandals is still under investigation.

    He claims there’s some hate mail involved, too;

    Scott held up a sheet of paper to Watson that had a picture of President Obama on it, his face made to look like the joker in Batman, a swastika on his forehead. Then he read what it said.

    “They address it to n—– David Scott, ‘You were, you are, and you shall forever be, a n—–‘,” Scott said, reading from the letter. “I got this in the mail today. Somewhere underneath this, bubbling up, is the ugly viscissitudes of racism.

    Yeah, so we’re all racists because ONE racist sent him some mail and possible ONE OTHER person painted a swastika on his sign. That’s the simple answer.

    David Scott was on Fox News this morning. He claims that the video from channel 11 was re-edited somehow. “Judge me right”. Since the video wasn’t a news camera, it isn’t true;Because the news isn’t coming from the media, somehow we can’t trust our lyin’ eyes.

    Photo of the sign below the fold thanks to CRaisi;
    (more…)

  • Specter’s townhall meeting

    In Lebanon, PA Arlen Specter is holding a standing-room-only townhall meeting that’s being broadcast on Fox News live. He’s an idiot.

    The first question from the audience was in reference to the abortion clause in the health care plan. Her question was whether the tax payers would be forced to to pay for abortions. Specter told her that there were two plans available – that you could choose whether you wanted to have abortions included in your plan or not. But that wasn’t the question, was it? So the answer, I guess, is “yes” – taxpayers will be forced to pay for other people’s abortions.

    The next question was about the single-payer option. The voter asked Specter if he’d vote for the single-payer option – Specter said that “no” he wouldn’t vote for the health care bill if the single payer option was part of the plan. Then he turned around and said he’d work hard to keep the single payer option “on the table”.

    He says that according to the Hyde Amendment, public money cannot be used for abortion, and that he’ll never vote for anything that raises the national deficit. So you tell me how he’ll vote. His defense is that there’s no bill in the Senate right now so he can’t tell us whether he’ll vote for the bill or not. So if he doesn’t read it, I guess he won’t for it.

    Here’s a link to the live video

    Added: The whole townhall meeting was pretty civil except at the end when one guy got upset because he didn’t get an opportunity to speak. So what part of the hour-long meeting got highlighted on RealClearPolitics and Drudge? The first few minutes of this video;

    The one guy who was upset gets the headline “Specter shouted down over health care”. Even though the rest of the questioners and the crowd was civil, the one loudmouth gets the news.

  • Falling poll numbers and corporate shills

    So the White House and the rubber stamp Congress are out this weekend trying to paint the whole tea party movement as some kind of insurance industry plot to undermine the post-racial presidency. But the Washington Times notes this morning that with falling poll numbers, that’s a harder case to make;

    For more than two weeks, polls have consistently shown growing resistance to President Obama’s reform proposals, largely because of concerns about the nation’s deficit and debt.

    “There are a number of statistically valid public opinion polls that show that there has been a dramatic increase in public concern about escalating deficits and debt levels and our nation’s increased reliance on foreign lenders,” said David Walker, the nation’s former comptroller general.

    Mr. Walker…said that the American people are “ahead of their elected officials” in understanding the need to rein in spending before expanding health care coverage.

    Yeah. it’s funny how the people who actually earn the money are more concerned about the way it’s spent than Congress seems.

    Andrew Breitbart describes how the Left is trying to marginalize the protesters using the traditional media;

    Stepping up the rhetoric from mockery to pure hatred, and absent any evidence, Mr. Olbermann has called the president’s public protesters “worse than racists.” Political activist and comedianJaneane Garofalo colored them “racist rednecks who hate blacks.” And at the somewhat higher end of the food chain, liberal economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times wrote last week that they were motivated by “cultural and racial fear.”

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is having a hard time these days explaining the president’s Israel policy to her Jewish constituents, blatantly lied and said that the protesters were wielding “swastikas and symbols like that.”

    See, making fun of the protesters and calling them racists would work on members of the Left they’d try to keep on the Democrat Plantation, so they figure that doing the same to people expressing their own opinions would work on the tea partiers, too. I think that will probably backfire.

    We’ve been called racists for so long about nearly everything we’ve done (including voting our minds), that it has the effect of water on a duck’s back now and it only encourages our side, these days. It’s almost a badge of honor to be called a racist for acts, words and deeds that have nothing to do with racism. The new American martyrs.

    Oh, and we have new call to arms, like the call from the Green Revolution in Iran who declared “I am Neda”, Brietbart declares “I am Kenneth Gladney”

  • McCaskill constituent event canceled for “safety concerns”

    1CavRVN11B sent me a link to St Louis Today in which they announced that a Claire McCaskill event was canceled there by the school which was to be the venue due to safety concerns;

    A day after a Russ Carnahan event led to the arrests of five participants and a reporter, University City High School — where U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill was set to hold a similar event on Tuesday– announced that the forum has been canceled.

    The school district sent a news release this afternoon stating that the “reasons for the cancellation by the school district are due to concerns for the safety and security of its staff, community members attending the event, and for the students who would be on campus during that time.”

    There is no word on whether McCaskill will find a new venue or keep a second town hall forum scheduled for later the same day in Jefferson County.

    Well, you know what’s funny, Gateway Pundit went to a rally today to protest the Service Employees International Union for beating a man who waqs peacefully handing out Gadsden flags. The SEIU didn’t show up and there was no violence.

    Imagine that. No thugs, no thuggery.

  • Looking at liars

    Kos has figured us all out. Those of us who don’t want to take any part in the Obama plan are a bunch of “insurance industry shills” so they made this commercial “Townhalls Gone Wild” in which they call us “cranks” and “nutjobs” because we have an opinion that’s not like theirs;

    I guess the folks at Kos think that if we feel bad about the way they portray us, we’ll throw away our health for appearances sake.

    Claymore sent us a link to a thread at Democratic Underground that’s a hoot. Some guy who calls himself “1776Forever” and uses a Thomas Jefferson portrait as an avatar, links to a story by a CANADIAN who happened to be in Las Vegas when his mother had a stroke.

    The hospital wanted to charge him $86,000 for a test on his mother. The DUmmy claims that the test would have cost him NOTHING in CANADA, ya know, where he’s a citizen. Apparently, I’m supposed to feel some sort of outrage because we’d charge people from other countries for the health care they get while they’re here. Because that’s what Thomas Jefferson would want?

    Of course, none of the commenters notice that we’re talking about a Canadian citizen trying to get health care in our country. “We suck” seems to be theme.

    In response to Barbara Boxer’s comment the other day that folks disrupting Town Hall meetings are too well-dressed to be regular folks (so we must be insurance industry shills), Michelle Malkin gives us tips on how we should dress and act to be seen as legitimate disgruntled Americans.

    So let me know when the Left decides to join the health care debate with some facts.