It is interesting to see the different stories on all of the town hall protests and the fact that there are organizations and websites supporting some of them. George Soros does the same thing, using different companies and websites to support Democratic causes and politicians, yet none of the media outlets seem to care.
In all honesty it does not matter if organizations back either side, different causes require different funding.
Let’s focus on the facts of the different versions of the bill that are out there and worry less about the “noise”. And by that I mean not focusing on stories about possible militia movements motivated by racism in the U.S.
Update: It appears that some of the protesters that are bringing offensive signs to town halls are actually Soros plants.
Both the left and the right have their fair share of kooks. From my perspective (a liberal convert), the kooks on the right are getting far more attention than their numbers warrant. The simple fact is, screaming crazies are good for cable news ratings. I suspect the number of kooks on the right that we’re seeing at these town hall meetings with their crazy talk is close to that of the regular viewing/listening audiences of Glenn Beck, Rush and the other crazy right-wing media personalities. Their views (which are often incoherent) strike me as more nationalistic than conservative.
Can’t say I disagree with you Jeff. Watching the news, you’d think that it was only crazy people on the right who go to these town halls, when in fact, a lot of the people there are just left or right of center who have legitimate questions and concerns. Some would say the anti-war protesters were kooks but Bush never said their ideas were lies or stupid.
What the news doesn’t show is the kooks on the left who show up to counter the right’s kooks. An incident here last night is finally making the news about a woman who claimed to be a pediatrician in support of the health reform, turns out she’s not a doctor, but a social worker who was also a campaign volunteer.
All of this noise detracts from the actual debate and sharing of ideas. Rather than getting me interested in the issues, this junk has done more to make me want to avoid them.
I think we can both agree that there’s no shortage of kooks in the Kooks Store (as George Costanza might say), whether you’re talking about the left or the right. Although, the kooks in the party out of power tend to be the loudest and most obnoxious. Unfortunately, public events tend to attract a certain type of social agitator which often ends up devaluing the purpose of the meeting. Nevertheless, this is America and the kooks can speak (or yell) and organize just like everyone else. Although I’d prefer if they left their guns at home.
As a newly-minded Democrat, I tend to shake my head at the kooks on the right moreso than on the left, but I’ll be the first to acknowledge there’s nothing like a war protest to bring out the liberal fruitcakes. Even though I think Bush (a/k/a Cheney) was horrible (to say the least), the efforts to paint him as some kind of devil were just as bad as the delightful Obama is Hitler stuff.
At this point, if Obama wants to get a health care package through Congress, he should stop trying to get Republican support (pointless exercise) and just work with conservative Dems. If he can get them (without losing the liberal Dems), then he’ll probably also get one or two liberal Republicans to go along with it, which should be sufficient to move the bill through Congress.