Posted on 08/13/2009 8:28:46 PM PDT by 2nd amendment mama
Now officially part of the mob, I attended the town hall meeting yesterday of Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in Hagerstown. (Included below are two brand new videos.)
Maryland is as “blue” a state as you can find. (Barack Obama got almost 700,000 more votes than John McCain in 2008). But anger at Obamacare -- and the senators and congressman pushing it -- appears to have turned a lot of blue voters red-faced.
Obama won the State of Maryland in the Presidential general election last year by over 26 points -- Obama-Biden receiving 61.9 percent of the vote to 35.5 percent for McCain-Palin. The representative town hall turnout does not bode well for those who support government plans to takeover health care.
At the Cardin town hall, there were loud, sustained boos at the senator’s mention of Obama administration health care efforts. When Cardin said how hard the president was working on it, the boos sounded like a convoy of 18-wheelers. Democrat leaders inside the beltway appear for the moment to be deaf to the cries of the majority of their constituents. That may cost them dearly.
The Kepler Theater at Hagerstown Community College seats 440 and there were at least twice that many people trying to get in. A long line stretched around the building. This was a first come, first in the door type of attendance. Cardin staffers said they requested RSVP emails from constituents to give them an idea of how many were attending, not any sort of system that would assign tickets or guarantee admission.
With the exception of a couple dozen local Democrat politicians and teachers from the college, the admission appeared to be based purely on order of arrival on site.
The first thing that hit when walking the line outside that was waiting to get in was the sense of purpose people had in being there. They were determined, fired up, passionate, speaking animatedly and really upset about the Democrats’ bills, especially the 1,017-page House Resolution 3200.
I saw no one wearing a swastika, but there was a great deal of red, white & blue.
There were not many supporters of the government takeover of health care at this town hall. None of the purple-shirt union thugs we’ve all come to know in Fox News reports (did anyone else show them?) and YouTube.com from their physical assaults on attendees. Leaving aside the Democrat politicians and teachers there as guests of the senator, I saw less than a dozen people there supporting Obamacare with buttons or stickers or anything obvious. There was observable opposition everywhere including t-shirts identifying folks as members of the “mob.”
Many of those attending have read H.R. 3200, the 1000 + page monster Democrat bill that has now been reported out of three separate House committees of jurisdiction, which left Sen. Cardin at an obvious disadvantage.
The people were quoting page number and verse of the horrors contained in the massive House bill to their representative who hasn’t read the bills. So they got platitudes in return.
What these Democrat politicians have not yet grasped is that this type of response is what’s causing the deep distrust and angst on display at their town hall meetings. These folks want a debate, not spin. Not talking points. Not lectures. Not arrogance. They want to ask a question then a follow up question when all they hear in response is what some staffer formulated that has nothing to do with what is actually in the bill. These folks expect their representatives to read the bills and they want to talk to them after they’ve read them.
When discussing an issue as important as health care, which often means the difference between life and death, voters want to be able to have their representative explain, point by point, how what they are reading in these bills with their own eyes is not what they are reading in these bills with their own eyes. Because that’s what Democrats are haughtily telling their constituents without having read the bills and without explanation.
The microphones are cut off and questioners cannot ask a follow up question. So they shout. At least this was the case at the Cardin town hall in Hagerstown. There were hand signals between the moderator on stage and the booth in the back of the theater when she wanted the microphone cut. It was so obvious that many times folks in the audience would shout at the senator to turn the microphone back on.
About halfway through the event, a woman made an impassioned plea to the senator to explain how he could win back the trust of the American people over the health care issue when the government is completely out of control.
Cardin made the mistake of saying the Obama administration has made advances in restoring the trust of the American people on the heath care issue. The intensity of the sudden booing sounded like a freight train in the auditorium.
You can see in the below footage of Cardin in the exchange, to the upper right side of the screen, the hand signal from the moderator on stage to cut the woman’s microphone during her question. When the crowd starts shouting to turn the microphone back on, the moderator asks the senator on camera, “Do you want to hear her?”
It would be interesting to hear what a body language expert has to say about Cardin’s hand movements at the podium during the sustained boos when he mentions Obama. He does, at one point, manage to force a smile.
Since Democrat members of Congress in Northern Virginia haven’t had the guts to have a town hall meeting, friends from Virginia Living TV hopped the border to Cardin’s town hall to film for their programs. In their footage, they caught the woman asking the question that elicited the sonic Obama boos. You get a really good look at the crowd from this angle in the middle of the floor action.
It also makes you wonder what a real Obama town hall meeting in even a very blue state would look like if the White House wasn’t screening who was allowed into the audience.
The moderator’s microphone control hand signals are even more apparent in this footage. I note this to reinforce the point: the frustrated shouting at the senator in this instance comes in the form of a reaction to being silenced in the face of agonizing sophistry. You watch and decide.
SHOCKER: Young Girl’s Question at Obama Town Hall was Staged
The very liberal Boston Globe newspaper yesterday reported that eleven-year-old Julia Hall, the young girl who read her question from a piece of paper about all the “mean” signs she saw when coming into the President’s town hall event in New Hampshire, was none other than the daughter of, you got it, an Obama campaign organizer and donor.
Confirmation of what we all knew the moment we saw her stand up and read her question at the town hall.
If there are so many people who supposedly support Obamacare, why not have a real town hall meeting, Mr. President? Why not pick a really Blue state such as Maryland to do it in?
They don't "run circles around us" they cheat. And they lie. And the suck up press is so biased that they buy and trumpet anything dems say.
How hard do you think it is for the "teacher's pet" to get their "dog ate my homework" story. Not hard at all.
The MSM is looking for someone like you to lose it so they can point and say, "see, see, we told you they were hateful"...
For the past few days the MSM and their shills been putting out lies about us - that we're out of control etc. But they have nothing to back it up with. No video - not "quotes". You want to give them that?
I'm not a pollyanna - and I will never live with a boot on my neck. Our most powerful voice is in our numbers. When we have 300 people show up for a meeting - and they have to hire street people and the unemployed to come up with 50 - and bus them from city to city - we win.
Eventually someone in the MSM will feel some shame. And report the truth - that one side is paid ringers ...liberal liars. And the other side are concerned citizens.
They don't "run circles around us" they cheat. And they lie. And the suck up press is so biased that they buy and trumpet anything dems say.
How hard do you think it is for the "teacher's pet" to get their "dog ate my homework" story by the teacher. Not hard at all.
The MSM is looking for someone like you to lose it so they can point and say, "see, see, we told you they were hateful"...
Call ABC and tell them you're a conservative who's going to lose it - they'll send a reporter to your home with camera people. They want you to justify their bias. The Southern Poverty Law Center will come too. They have to prove conservatives are hotheads. Janet Napolitano career rest on proving conservatives are potentially violent. She'll be there too.
For the past few days the MSM and their shills been putting out lies about us - that we're out of control etc. But they have nothing to back it up with. No video - not "quotes". You want to give them that?
I'm not a Pollyanna - and I will never live with a boot on my neck. Our most powerful voice is in our numbers. When we have 300 people show up for a meeting - and they have to hire street people and the unemployed to come up with 50 - and bus them from city to city - we win.
Eventually someone in the MSM will feel some shame. And report the truth - that one side is paid ringers ...liberal liars. And the other side are concerned citizens.
You know something? I have posted cautionary post after cautionary post to people talking about “protecting” themselves against verbal, non-physical threats on this forum off and on for weeks, so take your scolding school-teacher tone and stuff it.
Insisting on being heard IS NOWHERE NEAR THE SAME AS “GOING OFF”.
Meek and mild people like you who have allowed the media to cow you into silence or, at most, raising your hand only to never be called on to speak, are never heard by any meaningful number of people. Your meek, media-instilled, bed-wetting fear is exactly the problem. Now quit preaching to me and go bother someone else. Or go suck your thumb and read a romance novel while you wait for that certain journalistic someone, handsome and dashing astride a white horse, to experience that pang of conscience you have your heart set on and who will step forward to do the “right thing” you dream of.
You’re living with a boot on your neck already, your own boot.
Cardin is an angry-looking man. Even his smile on his web page looks forced.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
bustinchops comments from an earlier thread: Megaphones and speakers - drown them out altogether. Get a couple of big honking JBL speakers and run some old Jimi Hendrix through those bad dudes, recite the Dec of Ind, Bill of Rights, etc., just keep it going.
That was a joke, obviously. Here are just a few cautionary posts I’ve recently written that I was able to locate quickly:
In reply to someone suggesting the NRA camp outside of some senator’s or congressman’s house, I said, “That would be a big mistake.”
Saturday, August 08, 2009 5:24:12 AM · 90 of 110
bustinchops to morkfork
“Don’t let them provoke you unless you have good cause to believe your lives are in danger. Just standing there outside your door isn’t enough. That’s a call to the cops unless and until they try to come in. They want to provoke us. See Alinsky’s rule #11 as to how and why. Do not brandish a weapon at them or respond. They are recording. They want the footage of a rightwing nut waving a gun around hollering about the second amendment. Don’t give it to them. If you don’t respond and just call the cops, then YOU have something to record. Eventually, the cops will get tired of the thugs’ BS and start cracking down. Let them do it for you. Don’t even let them get your face on camera.”
“Verbal provocation was exactly what Gates tried to do with the Cambridge police sergeant. He was yelling insults about the cop’s mother and insulting the cop, and so on, in an effort to get the cop to rough him up so he could be a local hero/victim and get a big payday from the city.
That’s the game.”
bustinchops to Macstone
“That’s excellent, and I believe an announced, full exposé of their little rule book is also in order.
I think it should be excerpted and quoted repeatedly, hourly if need be, in blogs, posts, interviews, talk radio, and every other possible venue.”
“RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)”
“I seriously doubt he really thinks that. It’s a tactic. You responded by thinking he is stupid instead of recognizing the tactic. They won that round with you.
Go read Alinsky’s rule #10. They are attempting to provoke violence.”
“We should use:
1). noise
2). lawyers
3). money
4). victimhood
As I see it, #1 is doable, and our elderly fulfill #4. But #2 & #3.......big problems.”
“Straight out of Alinsky - provoke the middle class to violence and then isolate, ridicule and prosecute them because it’s the only way to subjugate the middle class. Alinsky specifically states this.
Don’t allow them to provoke gun violence from us. That’s what they want. Trust me on this.”
“That’s right out of Alinsky. It says in there that the middle class has to be provoked to violence to look bad in the eyes of those who didn’t participate, and only the leadership has the capacity and authority to take the provocative actions and make the provocative statements. They then are isolated and prosecuted, lots of perp walks, kangaroo trials, etc., in targeted locales where the jury pool is mainly made up of their people. They have to be provoked to rise up so that they can be crushed and be widely seen as being crushed. This then strikes fear and docility into all others who object but did not act out or did not get caught/beaten/arrested/killed, etc..
Besides ostammer, there’s Durbin, Dingell, Boxer, other congressional whores and media personalities assisting.”
“I think the fax without the “Death to Marxists” would be fine, if that’s what you want to spend your time doing.”
Shall I go on?
How many people write under your screen name?
Meek and mild people like you who have allowed the media to cow you into silence or, at most, raising your hand only to never be called on to speak, are never heard by any meaningful number of people. Your meek, media-instilled, bed-wetting fear is exactly the problem. Now quit preaching to me and go bother someone else.
That wasn’t a joke, no. You’re so afraid of what the media will say that you are useless to any concerted effort to stop what’s happening to our country. The pubs in congress have been cowering in fear of the media saying something negative about them for so long that they largely have feet of clay. Your “don’t rock the boat, don’t make noise, don’t assert your will, be nice, be respectful, be calm, be dignified, turn the other cheek” stance has taken us right to the edge of the cliff where we now stand.
At any rate, you were dead wrong about what I’ve advocated in my posts. Now you want to change the subject. Not only do you not have the guts to fight against a Marxist takeover of our country, you don’t even have the guts to admit you were wrong on a message forum.
See ya’.
I’m afraid of being associated with a person so politically unaware that they would advocate using a megaphone in a meeting to shut down all discussion. It’s ineffective - and rude.
You’re afraid of everything, most of which you apparently create in your own head.
*SHRUG*
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