USA Today, by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer
[HT:LDot: "Authors Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer declare free speech
un-American. Yes, they actually put this in writing..."]
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The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts in near-unison on Friday night disparaged the anti-ObamaCare protests at town meetings held by Members of Congress as “unruly,” “nasty” and “getting ugly,” while CBS and NBC targeted Rush Limbaugh -
- NBC's Kelly O'Donnell charged “some anger...gets stoked by the provocative megaphone of Rush Limbaugh, who went so far as accusing Democrats of wanting the socialized medicine of Nazi Germany” -
- without bothering to acknowledge Limbaugh was reacting to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who first put Nazi comparisons into play by accusing the opponents of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”
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Are you opposed to ObamaCare? Willing to attend a town hall to express your disapproval? Odds are good you're a racist. Just ask Cynthia Tucker...
As Clay Waters has noted, Paul Krugman alleges that racist motives are at the heart of the town hall protests against ObamaCare. On this evening's Hardball, Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was willing to get specific, estimating that "45 to 65%" of the protesters are motivated by racism.
View video here.
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As so-called journalists negatively depict town hall meeting protesters as an organized angry mob (or worse!), they seem to forget how throughout most of this decade while George W. Bush was president dissent was quite encouraged.
As an example, try to guess who said this in 2003?
"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration."
Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. voters have a favorable opinion of the people opposing health care reform at town hall meetings now being conducted by members of Congress, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
But 35% view the protesters unfavorably. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure what they think of them.
Given the partisan anger prompted by the town hall meetings, it’s not surprising to see a similar divide in the survey. Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats have an unfavorable view of those opposing the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the leaders of their party. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Republicans and the plurality (48%) of voters not affiliated with either party view the protesters favorably.
Senior Democrats charge that many of the protests at the town hall meetings are orchestrated by special interests, but 49% of voters believe, generally speaking, that the protesting citizens are reflecting the concerns of their neighbors.
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"When I watch the news people stand here and tell me that I am a member of a hired mob, that I've been called up by the Republican Party, they only wish they could have done something like this. I've never been contacted by any organized group."
So stated a caller during Saturday's "Washington Journal" on C-SPAN in a monologue that is likely to go viral throughout the Internet and possibly make the speaker America's next Joe the Plumber.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg, for Leah from New Hampshire's declaration about what's really going on in the country, Congress, the media, and at these town hall meetings perfectly encapsulated what most so-called journalists are either ignorantly missing or dishonestly ignoring (video and transcript below the fold, h/t Ed Morrissey via Bob Hicks):
[Recommended > ]
On Friday’s Your World program, Fox News Channel’s interviewed Kenneth Gladney, the victim of an assault outside a health care town hall meeting in St. Louis on August 6, along with his lawyer David Brown. A video of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed some of the suspects wearing t-shirts bearing the logo of the SEIU union, which is a member organization of Health Care for America Now!, a left-wing coalition pushing for the passage of ObamaCare [video clips from the segment are available here; audio clips are found here].
Mr. Gladney stated that he arrived outside the building where the town hall meeting was taking place, and started distributing and/or selling flags which bear the famous slogan “Don’t Tread on Me.” He continued that
“this guy...walked up to me and said...who in the blank is selling this blank here. And I said, sir, this is my merchandise, and....he was like, what kind of ‘N’ are you to be giving out this kind of stuff here? And he snatched the- the button board. And when he snatched the button board, I snatched it back from him, and that’s when he proceeded to hit me in my face.”
Bill Hennessey of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition reports (snip)the man who beat up Mr Gladney is an SEIU official (snip) Elston K. McCowan is a former organizer - now the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000 - (snip) has been a community organizer for more than 23 years, and now, he is running for Mayor of the City of St. Louis under the Green Party.
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The New York Times suddenly isn't so fond of community organizing, now that the right has gotten into the game, attacking Obama's health-care proposals in clamorous town halls held by Democratic congressmen over the August recess. In fact, the Times agrees with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that such meetings have become "hostile" and "extreme."
The past week’s debate about health care has shown that in Washington the only things more stubborn than facts are politicians who evade them. In spite of a torrent of independent analyses showing that the so-called health-care “reform” bills moving through Congress will dramatically increase the deficit and cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, the politicians leading the effort have steadfastly refused to consider that their ideas and policies, rather than the character of their critics, may be flawed. At the same time, the politicians writing the bill still refuse to answer basic questions about how it will be paid for and how it will affect patients
According to independent sources, the health-care bills under consideration will dramatically increase the deficit, take away patient choice, and set the stage for a total government takeover of health care — the single-payer model many Democrats have long dreamed of. As the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, recently said, the bills moving through Congress did not contain“the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs.”
Meanwhile, the independent Lewin Group estimates that 114 million Americans will be forced to give up their current health-care plans as the government-run plan puts everyone else out of business.
Congressional leaders and partisan operatives have responded to these policy indictments by inventing a bizarre conspiracy theory that involves right-wing extremists, the CBO, moderate Democrats, and insurance companies — all of whom are somehow dreaming up “scare tactics” while plotting to disrupt town-hall meetings. This line of attack is troubling because it goes far beyond traditional partisanship and instead indicts millions of hardworking taxpayers who have honest concerns... [snip]
Individual Americans should view the month of August as their best, and perhaps final, opportunity to alter the health-care bills before Congress reconvenes in September.
Citizens should ask hard questions without having their motives questioned. I expect such questions at my town-hall meetings. After all, the greater threat to freedom and liberty is not an informed citizenry but an irresponsible, elitist, and evasive political class that refuses to answer hard questions and make tough choices...
[Long - Highly Recommended {it's your money and your care}]
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[Then...]
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A petition opposing President Barack Obama’s plan for a government-led overhaul of the nation’s health care system [above] has garnered over 1 million signatures since it launched May 25, something its sponsors say is proof that public opposition to Obama’s plan is very real...
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[To those of you who signed last month {FLASHBACK}, well done. For those of you that haven't...]
Ramadi, Iraq - The top U.S. general in Iraq said Tuesday that he disagrees with a colonel's memo urging an early troop withdrawal even though the security situation is better than expected since American forces turned over security in urban centers to the Iraqis more than a month ago.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the first senior American official to comment on the memo, told The Associated Press the Americans need to stay the course in Iraq
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Georgia’s actions, including a troop buildup on the borders of two separatist Georgian regions, are cause for “serious concern” a year after a war between the two countries.
Russia routed Georgia’s U.S.-trained army in the five-day war over separatist South Ossetia that began one year ago today. Medvedev later recognized South Ossetia and a second breakaway region, Abkhazia, as sovereign countries in the face of Western condemnation. Russia has deployed thousands of troops in the regions, which Georgia regards as occupied territories, and agreed to 'defend' their borders.
Russia maintains that it sent troops into South Ossetia in response to Georgia’s “inhuman attack” on civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Georgia insists that Russia invaded late on Aug. 7, forcing it to launch a counter-offensive. Georgia denied Medvedev’s claim of a troop buildup.“Georgia has never attacked Abkhazia or South Ossetia and never will,” Gilauri said, calling last year’s war “Russian aggression.” “Why should we sign a non-aggression pact when we’re not the ones who attacked? We defended ourselves, that’s all.”
Medvedev also reiterated Russia’s call for all countries to impose a “lengthy” halt on arms shipments to Georgia. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said on Aug. 5 that the U.S. continues to deliver arms to Georgia, Interfax reported.
[The West's inaction taught Russia it can do whatever it wants in the region - and it will...]
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Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.
Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don't have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it's essentially worthless...
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Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
"Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate,"
Under a new city law, residents of Austin, Texas, must purchase costly energy audits before they will be allowed to sell their homes.
Prospective sellers must provide evidence they've had a professional analysis of items such as heating systems, cooling systems, draftiness and insulation. Austin joins San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., as the only cities requiring such energy audits, which typically cost $200 to $300 apiece.
Experts agree that this is a bad policy:
Here's a shocking new poll result from CNN that seems almost guaranteed to not get a lot of attention from the media: more people believe Barack Obama's presidency is a failure after six months in office than felt that way after George W. Bush's first half year.
Maybe even more shocking: the poll included an oversampling of African-Americans. [why?]
Impossible?
Well, the good folks at Real Clear Politics made this discovery on page two of CNN's PDF released at 6AM Thursday.
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Three of the top four books on the New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller list are by conservatives -- and none have been reviewed by the Times. The fourth is Malcolm Gladwell's ubiquitous "Outliers."
Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption," the nation's top-selling nonfiction hardcover book, debuted this week in the top spot, followed by "Liberty and Tyrranny" by Mark R. Levin. Gladwell's book is third, followed by "Catastrophe," a critical book about President Barack Obama's health care agenda by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.Meet Nick Vujicic, a man born with no legs or arms who I assure you will touch you in more ways than you can possibly imagine (h/t Bernard Kerik):
