Articles Tagged ‘Town hall’

Are you getting the whole story on health care reform?

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Town hall meetings have become the battleground for health care reform, with the grossest allegations flying about who is gaming the system to invent a groundswell of public “grassroots” hysteria.

While many liberals have taken to accusing the Right of Brooks Brothers style seeding of meetings with organized and trained disruptors, one videographer in Skokie, Il., captured the backstory.

First, the local news coverage:

The media loves a fight. In this case, a WGN cameraman or more caught more than an earful of shoutdowns, one victim so rattled she could hardly speak into a mike.

But who is the organized disruptor?

Now for our back-door video of a Health Care for America Now organizer training participants how to own the meeting “It’s your meeting. Hold onto your meeting.”

The telling video has bloggers on the right calling foul.

Senseofevents blog calls “This man is un-American,” writer Donald Sensing taking a page from the Democrats’ playbook.

No less authorities than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said so. Remember when they wrote in USA Today, “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American”?

Well, we gots yer un-American guy rightcheer. This fellow is a Health Care for America Now (HCAN) organizer instructing supporters on how to shout down opponents who get up to ask a question or who try to speak at a town hall meeting with Rep. Jan Schakowski.

RedState’s Moe Lane says ” Why you need to start bringing cameras *everywhere.* “

Disrupting the disruptor - NH Cong. cannot take her own medicine

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Cong. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) had an anti-reform protester arrested at her town hall meeting for challenging the presence of uniformed SEIU representatives in the audience, leading many to suggest she has lost touch with the public that elected her.

Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey says, “I’ve watched this video a couple of times, and I still can’t figure out why the police took this man out of the room.”

Now Hampshire has a telling description of Porter’s own roots as a “rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist.”

In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.

In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions. She can also be heard taunting the man on his way out by saying, “I do hope the movie theater can be a little quieter for you.”

Now Hampshire reports that Porter is becoming “unhinged” by the protests in her district, to the point where her lack of town hall meetings has become a topic of discussion on NH Political Report.

“The irony is, of course, that Shea-Porter used to be a ‘tea-bagger’ on the left,” writes Nashua Telegraph columnist Kevin Landrigan. “She stalked then-congressman Jeb Bradley at town hall-style meetings the 1st District Republican incumbent held throughout his district.”

“Everybody standing here is a patriot,” Shea-Porter said at a Real ID protest that featured people in Nazi uniforms goose stepping at a “checkpoint” in 2006.

Shea-Porter’s debut in the above video appears at 3:35, but there’s colorful footage before that.

“But that was when she was one of the hoi polloi,” Morrissey concludes. “Now, she’s in power, and Shea-Porter doesn’t deign to take questions without preselecting who can speak in her presence.  And that’s a re-election strategy that is both all too familiar and increasing unlikely to succeed in 2010.”

‘I am a (proud right-wing terrorist) mob’

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Healthcare town hall meetings continue to simmer across the United States, with some erupting into violence.

A Tucson TEA Party event at Tuscon’s Rincon High School drew one pro-reform protester who apparently turned violent, according to this and other clips (watch carefully, the elbow is thrown in the first few seconds):

The apparent victim then helps walk away other attendees who rush to his defense before the crowd lets the police “do the job that police do.”

Tucson’s KGUN9 ABC affiliate caught another view of the assault and interviewed the man outside, who identified himself as Don Alvarez, said he was threatened before throwing the elbow, and dismissed the TEA Party group as an “angry white mob.” That despite the fact that the meeting was apparently peaceful before his entry.

“Yes we do need health care reform. But let’s not break the backs of the American People,” one attendee tells a KGUN9 TV reporter.

Blogger GatewayPundit has a collection of links related to the incident and a selection of Barack Obama campaign quotes implying that the president approves this kind of behavior.

Meanwhile the Tea Party Express convoy is heading across the nation, planning to conclude in Washington, D.C. Sept. 12. NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday produced an unbiased look at the protesters and their motivations.

Who’s a terrorist?
A California town hall meeting featuring a right-wing protester has gotten liberals outraged by calling himself a “proud right wing terrorist.” Apparently the irony of his appropriating the term liberals have used against protesters is lost on some.

“It’s the White House that accused us of saying “fishy” things,” commenter Txbertie posted on the YouTube video’s comments page. “It’s the left that called us, among many other things, “terrorists” so how does the left miss the joke when we make fun of the outrageous things they say?”

Nice Deb has a fitting tribute to the right wing protesters “you just can’t reach,” on her post LOL:CA Democrat Party Sends Out Urgent Fundraising Letter Over “Chilling” Town Hall Video.

She closes with left wing-nut Keith Olbermann accusing Cong. Wally Herger of being the “Worst person in the world” for applauding that “right wing terrorist.”

Town Hall Diaries Part 10: More Far-Left Race Baiting

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

teabaggerIt could just be me, but to anyone else does it seem as though far-left liberals are frozen in a state of perpetual immaturity? And doesn’t feel like it is second-nature for them to lash out at someone who happens to disagree with their specific point-of-view with cries of ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ or whatever ‘-ist’ you care to think of simply because they have no logical, let alone an adequate, response to it? And what is their obsession with identifying conservatives/libertarians with the Nazis and the KKK? Granted, some public schools are pretty bad, but they have to be teaching them some history, right? For full details, be sure to read Jonash Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. In the mean time, however, here’s a refresher course: Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and banned smoking while the KKK and the mass majority of those who opposed segregation in the south were southern Democrats. This is not to suggest that liberals themselves are Nazis or former/current members of the KKK, which the exception of Senator Robert Byrd, of course. It is simply to say one should not always take what another person says at face value.

The first item on today’s list of topics happens to touch upon each one of those three exact points. Individuals who left the rather heated town hall meeting last Tuesday in Reston, Virginia with Representative Jim ‘I need to see some I.D.’ Moran and Howard ‘RGHHHH’ Dean were greeted at their cars with a flyer that depicted “opponents of socialized medicine and the Obama agenda” as nothing more then “Ku Klux Klan members who want to lynch Barack Obama.” A far-left Washington D.C. cartoonist named Mike Flugennock created the image. It seems as though someone is paying a little too much to Janeane ‘No Talent’ Garofalo and not enough to the actual facts.

Outside that very same event held at South Lakes High school, an opponent of Obamacare carrying a sign depicting President Obama as the ‘Joker’ was accosted by a black school security officer named Wesley Cheeks, Jr. The protestor was told he had to get rid of the sign and when he refused the officer threatened him saying he could “charge [him] with whatever I want to.” When the protestor points out pro-Obamacare drones holding signs and asking why he is not threatening them with trespassing charges, the officer makes up the lame excuse that his has a picture on it, as if that had anything to do with it. The protestor exclaims, “This use to be America” to which the officer snobbishly responds, “It ain’t no mo’, okay?” UN-BE-LIEVABLE!

Next we have some more race baiting, this time from Representative for the 33rd Congressional District of California Diane Watson. As Michelle Malkin points out, it is no secret that Rep. Watson is well accustomed to this sort of political practice. That said, however, what she said at a recent town hall event – undoubtedly packed with ACORN/SEIU thugs, like the one held by fellow California Representative Maxine Waters – was certainly pushing it.

Audio of Rep. Watson’s comments comes courtesy of KABC’s The John Phillips Show:

Did everyone get that? She said, “They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails.” Did I hear that correctly, she said ‘the first president that looks like’ her? You mean someone who looks less like a woman then Tyler Perry when he’s in drag? Obviously I know she is referring to his race, but one wonders why in a forum packed with liberal drones and a past history of far more blunt racial comments than this she chose to beat around the bush rather then simply state it like everyone else interpreted it to mean.

Then, of course, there are her other comments. First off, Rush Limbaugh is a political pundit, not a leader of a political party or ideology. Secondly, once again the left is taking Limbaugh’s comments out of context. He never once said he hoped President Obama would fail. What he said was he hoped President Obama’s SOCIALIST POLICIES would fail. There is a huge difference between those two statements.

I love the part where she says, “Now, when a senator says that this will be his Waterloo, and we all know what happened at Waterloo …” Umm, if they all came from California public schools then I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

I’ll simply let her comments praising Fidel Castro, Che Guevera, and the Cuban Revolution speak for themselves.

Socialist Rep. Waters Calls Opposition Senators ‘Neanderthals’

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Self-proclaimed Congressional Socialist Maxine Waters, Representative for the 35th Congressional District of California, held a heavily pro-Obamacare rally … umm, ‘town hall’ meeting on Saturday, August 22nd, at Los Angeles Southwest College. Roughly four hundred individuals, many of whom had Obama bumper stickers on their cars, attended the two-hour plus raucous-free event.

Representative Waters is the quintessential example of the Chicago-style thug politics that has overtaken Capitol Hill since Barack Obama became president of the United States. Her comment, in referencing the notable absence of vocal oppositional opinions, “I sent them a message … don’t try that with Maxine Waters,” proves that point.

Ms. Waters took time during the event to bash former-Alaska governor and former-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the only time the California Congresswoman was met with loud boos from the audience, for her popularization of the ‘death panels’ myth, saying, Why would any member of Congress, especially those of us who are grandmothers, want to pull the plug on Grandma?” In response then, here is a question for Rep. Waters: if the ‘death panels’ Ms. Palin advocated against were simply a myth as you have claimed, how is that the Senate Finance Committee removed the provision from the president’s health care reform bill? How can one remove something that didn’t exist in the first place? But maybe she’s right. Obama isn’t going to pull the plug on grandma if she needs a pacemaker at 100 years of age; he’s just going to give her two painkillers, expecting her not to call him in the morning. That’s all!

If the president’s health care reform bill, as it stands now, were to come up for a vote when Congress reconvened after Labor Day, Ms. Waters said she would vote against it. Rep. Waters stated, bottom-line, that “she would refuse to vote for a healthcare reform package” unless it expressly included “a provision for creating a government-run medical insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.” One hopes, if this does happen, that it doesn’t turn out to be like the post office, as the president seemed to suggest at his own ‘town hall’ event in Colorado. “The healthcare system is broken,” she said to a cheering crowd, “and it’s got to be fixed.” Rep. Waters continued to spread the ’47 million uninsured’ myth that has continuously been perpetuated by filmmaker Michael Moore and the other far-left fear mongers who want to shove socialized medicine down the throats of Americans.

Rep. Waters, in spite of the serious nature of the health care debate in this country, kept things lively during her event, joking that President Barack Obama “has been trying to reach across the aisle.” Oh, wait … she was serious? As has been stated on this site before, so far in the health care debate this summer we have seen the White House tell supporters of the president’s health care proposal – in particular ACORN and SEIU – to ‘punch back twice as hard’ against tea party protestors, progressive Democrats threaten a leading moderate Democrat in the health care reform fight with losing his chairmanship if he didn’t stop talking to Congressional Republicans, and the Democratic leadership forcing moderate ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats to submit to their rule. Again, where’s the compromising and reaching across the aisle?

Ms. Waters then made an appeal to the president’s sense of vanity, saying, “The people of this country elected you and gave you a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate.” “Yes, we know that you are a nice man, that you want to work with the opposite side of the aisle. But there comes a time when you need to drop that and move forward,” Waters said. “We’re saying to you, Mr. President, ‘Be tough. Use everything that you’ve got. Do what you have to do. And we have your back…’ ” So much for the president’s campaign promise of bi-partisan congressional cooperation. But, then again, this really isn’t surprising considering all the other campaign promises he’s broken. Heck, even the far-left Air America Media has begun to make note of that fact.

Not only are we going to do everything we can to organize and put pressure on the senators — some of whom are Neanderthals – we’re going to say to the president, ‘We want you to use every weapon in your basket in order to get those senators to do what they should be doing,’ “ Waters said. Wow, name-calling. Real mature, Rep. Waters. Echoing a statement made by RNC Chairman Michael Steele, if you’ve had the votes, why then haven’t you passed it already? What is holding you back?

Leaked Memo Suggests Widespread Democratic Astroturfing in Washington

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Northwest Digest has brought to light a memo, leaked to them by a high-ranking member of the Washington State Democratic Central Committee and authenticated by several sources, which seems to suggest a widespread effort is in the works on behalf of the Washington State Democratic leadership and fellow liberal drone groups – ACORN, Organizing for America, SEIU, etc. – to pack town hall meetings with Obamacare supporters.

The memo, which originated from the office of Representative for the 1st Congressional District of Washington Jay Inslee, was first delivered to Dwight Pelz, Washington State Democratic Chairman, then forwarded onto labor union hit-men and upper level state Democrats including FUSE Executive Director Aaron Ostrom, State Director for Organizing for America (Obama’s personal civilian army) Dustin Lambro, and Washington State Labor Council Political Director Benjamin Lawver with a note instructing recipients to “keep turning people out for these!”

It is not at all revealing, let alone unexpected at this point in the health care debate, to see Democratic leadership in various states such as Washington now organizing their followers in a seemingly futile effort to mount a last-minute counter offensive against grassroots town hall protestors across the country. It does bare noting, however, simply for the fact that at the same time the White House and the higher Escalon of the Congressional Democratic leadership continue to paint tea party protestors as violent drones acting on the whim of the RNC and the insurance/pharmaceutical industries liberal interest groups are coordinating with the DNC and dressing-up Obamacare astroturfers as members of a true grassroots revolution, which it isn’t.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Dwight Pelz
Date: Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 12:54 PM
Subject: Inslee Town Halls
To: Misty Shock, Aaron Ostrom, Dustin Lambro, Benjamin Lawver, Susan Sheary, Carl Olson

Let’s keep turning people out for these!

From: Hutchins, Kiersten
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 12:44 PM
To: Dwight Pelz
Subject: Town Halls

Inslee health care town hall meetings

POULSBO, Wash. – U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee will hold two town-hall meetings in Washington’s 1stCongressional District this August.  He plans to host the hour and a half long public events to hear the views of his constituents and provide an update on the congressional response to the health care debate.

Inslee’s first public forum will take place in Poulsbo on Saturday, August 29, during the August district work period.  His other town hall will be held on Sunday, August 30 in Edmonds.   Attendees are asked to RSVP via email to inslee.rsvp@mail.house.gov or by phone at 206-361-0233.

Poulsbo town-hall meeting

11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

North Kitsap High School

The Gymnasium

1780 NE Hostmark St
Poulsbo

Directions from Silverdale:

Take SR 305 in the direction of Poulsbo/Bainbridge Island

Turn LEFT (East) onto NE Hostmark St

North Kitsap High School will be on your left about a half mile up Hostmark

Directions from Bainbridge:

Take SR 305 in the direction of Poulsbo/SR-3

Turn RIGHT (East) onto NE Hostmark St

North Kitsap High School will be on your left about a half mile up Hostmark

Edmonds town-hall meeting

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009

Edmonds-Woodway High School

The Gymnasium

7600 212th St SW

Edmonds

Directions from I-5N and I-5S:

Take Exit #179 220th Street SW

Head west (away from I-5) onto 220th Street SW

Continue west on 220th Street and cross Highway 99

Turn RIGHT onto 76th Avenue West

Continue north on 76th

School will be on the left

Kiersten Hutchins
District Scheduler
U.S. Representative Jay Inslee (WA-01)
18560 1st Ave NE, Suite E-800
Shoreline, WA 98155
PH: (206)-361-0233
FAX: (206)-361-3959
TOLL FREE: 800-226-7144

 

Town Hall Diaries Part 8: Another Day, Another Fake Doctor

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

sheila-leavittBarely a week ago, a town hall meeting in Houston sponsored by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) was marred in controversy. Of course there was the highly publicized incident in which the congresswoman was seen answering her cell phone as a constituent, a cancer survivor, was asking her question. But there was also the moment during the event when the representative called on a woman during the Q & A session named Roxana Mayer who claimed to be a primary care physician and spoke in support of Obamacare. Turns out that Ms. Mayer wasn’t a medical professional at all. She was however an Obama campaign volunteer and delegate.

The same controversy seems to have hit an already raucous town hall session sponsored by Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank that took place this past Tuesday evening. And who says lightening never strikes twice?

The individual at the center of the dispute is a woman named Sheila Leavitt. The Associated Press and other mainstream media outlets have identified her as a ‘physician from Newton, Massachusetts.’ As Mrs. Leavitt questioned Rep. Frank she said she “hoped for changes that would support primary care physicians who are not paid as much as specialists” and chastised “some of the rowdy critics” she claimed were “using the same ‘talking points’ as those who showed up at similar meetings around the country.”

Buck Right and AR15 have questioned her legitimacy as a medical professional. Buck Right found that no one named Sheila Leavitt is listed as a licensed physician on the website for the Massachusetts State Medical Board. Additionally, a poster at Free Republic searched American Medical Association’s site and failed to find a physician – either a member or non-member of AMA – named Sheila Leavitt in the Massachusetts area.

Then a commentator on Buck Right’s article identifying himself as Mrs. Leavitt’s sixteen-year-old son stated, She stopped actively practicing medicine 26 some odd years ago — when she began the full time job of lovingly raising four children.”

That fails to adequately answer, however, the reason why she is not listed as a licensed physician. Don’t fret, though. A commentator named Granny over at Gateway Pundit notes, “Massachusetts licenses every last danged thing. If you want to fix your neighbors porch you need a $150 license to do so. If the medical licensing board website does not list her as having a medical license, then she is NOT practicing medicine in the state of Massachusetts.” Another commentator at Gateway Pundit named BullMooseGal adds further, “Whoever the lady is, she doesn’t and hasn’t published in any reputable journal in the last thirty years (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez). That wasn’t so unusual thirty or even fifteen years ago for doctors, but over the last fifteen years, medical professionals have increasingly been expected to contribute to research, so apparently raising her kids (honorable enough) and protesting (laughably) are her professions.”

As it turns out, she’s not the physician of the family. Her husband, Andrew H. Lichtman, M.D., is, according to Michelle Malkin. Let’s not all jump on her for this, though. She probably had a good reason for misrepresenting herself like she did. As with Ms. Mayer she likely did it to give herself more credibility, something her actual past activities were unlikely to do.

Kate at Small Dead Animals did a simple Google search and miraculously found a trail of far-left political activism. The Boston Herald wrote an article about her back in 2005. The story featured her plastering a town with ‘Impeach Bush’ posters and adorning her ‘88 Toyota Corolla with bumper stickers saying “War is barbaric” and “Support our troops . . . Draft Jenna & Barbara,” in addition to placing a cardboard Uncle Sam laying in state atop a black-and-white painted cardboard coffin with the words, “Fake Elections. Fake President. Real Lies. Real War.” Nope, can’t say there is anything nutty about that.

Here’s a suggestion: if the Democrats are going to have fake medical professionals hawk Obamacare, why not use ones that actually have some name recognition among Americans? 

Cash for Conversation: Illinois Congresswoman Charges Constituents to Attend Town Hall

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Political commentator Michelle Malkin recently exposed a meeting with Congresswoman Melissa Bean (D-IL) where constituents must pony up $25 to participate.

The event, which will be held Wednesday, September 2, 2009, requires an RSVP of more than a week in advance. According to the online invitation, the Democratic representative will discuss “health care, railroads, taxes and more” and the session will include a question-and-answer component.

Like many Chamber events, the function will include a “full breakfast,” likely warranting the $25 participation fee to cover the cost of food. While this might seem like a reasonable price for having a meal with a member of Congress, what is most alarming is that this is the only scheduled “town hall” style meeting that Congresswoman Bean has scheduled during August recess.

With so many Democratic lawmakers canceling their planned events with constituents due to unsympathetic public opinion towards liberal health care reform legislation, it is no surprise that the Illinois Democrat penciled in only one “town hall” event in her district. With a required pre-registration deadline so far in advance of the meeting and the exclusive nature of Chamber functions, the Congresswoman can better control the kinds of attendees present at her event, all the while touting her conversation with her constituents.

Too bad that conversation costs cash. There really is meaning to the phrase, “Freedom (of speech) isn’t free.”

Are You, Or Have You Ever Been, a Member of the Tea Party Coalition?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

This past Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC seemed just like a scene taken right out of the height of the McCarthy-era, only this time the Democrats were not targeting Communists – yes, the majority of the Congressional politicians gung-ho about hunting Communists throughout the United States were Democrats, Southern Democrats but Democrats nonetheless – but members of the Tea Party Patriots Coalition.

The video below, provided by Newsbusters, shows far-left wing-nut Rachel Maddow and moderator David Gregory hounding Dick Armey, head of Freedom Works, as to whether or not he and his organization belonged to the Tea Party Coalition, a group Maddow alleges promotes violence.

A transcript of the exchange is also included:

DAVID GREGORY: So you repudiate the Nazi imagery and all of that: you repudiate that?

DICK ARMEY: Absolutely.

GREGORY: That has no place in the debate?

ARMEY: As I said, I repudiated it when MoveOn.org did it to George Bush. Did anybody here at this table repudiate it?

RACHEL MADDOW: You’re a member of the –

ARMEY: We’ve just heard that it’s all right when MoveOn.org did it.

MADDOW: That’s not true.

ARMEY: But it’s not alright when anybody does it.

MADDOW: The Tea Party Patriots is an organization that your organization is a member of a coalition with. It’s called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Freedom Coalition Partner. That’s what Freedom Works is, that’s what Americans For Prosperity is. Tea Party Patriots, what they’ve got on their front page of their web site, the top item, is a video showing the violence at the town hall in Ybor City, in Tampa, Florida. Essentially promoting that as if that was a good thing that happened, that showed what the Health Care Freedom Coalition wants to happen in that debate. Freedom Works is part of that coalition. You can say that you denounce it but the organization that you head is part of it.

ARMEY: One of the fascinating things about the Tea Party movement is that it is an enormously impressive grassroots uprising across the country, loosely affiliated people. And there’s probably 100, 200 websites by different people.

MADDOW: Are you a member of the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Freedom Coalition?

ARMEY: I’m a member of Freedom Works, and Freedom Works works with many people who fight for and argue on behalf of individual liberty.

Notice how Maddow pressured Armey to repudiate the use of Nazi-imagery at town hall events across the country. And then how he turns it on its head back toward her, only for her to dodge the claim entirely. It’s unfortunate though that Armey didn’t bring up the coincidental fact that Nazi-imagery health care town hall meetings only began to surface and be picked up by the mainstream media AFTER Nancy Pelosi made the outlandish claim that tea party protestors brandished “swastikas and symbols like that.” Not Armey’s fault; the man barely had time to breathe. But Maddow’s a Rhodes scholar, right? Either she can’t make the connections that a two-year-old probably could, or, more likely, she simply refuses to accept the fact that Democrats are behind this ‘sudden’ emergence of Nazi-propaganda at town hall events, as has been extensively covered here at Healthcare Horserace.

And what video taken from the Rep. Castor town hall event in Tampa Bay, Florida is Maddow watching? Did she simply make up on in her head to suit her liberal agenda? If anything, the videos that are available, in addition to interviews with individuals who were at the event, suggest that SEIU, not the tea party protestors, caused the violence.

At least if it ever comes down to hearings, tea party protestors will retain the dignity and not plead the fifth.

Town Hall Diaries Part 7: The Obama Plants Need Watering

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

untsdfitlsdfedPolitical opportunist Senator Arlen Specter held a town hall event in the rural western Pennsylvania town of Kittanning on Thursday, August 13th. This was the now-Democratic senator’s fourth town hall meeting in three days.

Griff Jenkins, a FOX News correspondent who was covering the health care forum for On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, said that about a thousand people filled the parking lot where the event was being held, but only two hundred were actually able to make it inside.

Still, passions on both sides of the debate clashed – not violently, but quite loudly – out in the parking lot before the meeting began. Flopping Aces pointed out a woman who was in favor of the president’s public-option health care proposal holding a sign that said, “Yelling is Counter Productive!” And yet, if you watch the video below, you will notice the woman shouting several times, including chants of “Health care now!” Hmm, hypocrites? Nah!

That woman was just one individual out of three busloads of ACORN/Union drones brought in from the inner city to intimidate local residents and create the faux appearance of support for President Obama’s health care legislation in rural America. Healthcare for America Now, a front organization for rich liberal like George Soros, organized and paid for the thugs to be bused in.

Thankfully, very few of them, if any at all, were able to actually make it into the location of the town hall meeting. A commenter named Judy over at Greta Wire had this to say:

“Acorn supplied 2 bus full of protestors but they arrived too late to be admitted into the meeting. Many of us here in Western PA were privy to the automated calls and emails telling supporters to arrive at 1pm (for a 3pm town hall!!) We all showed up at 11-noon and beat them to the punch. BTW the acorn buses pulled into the lot precisely at 1pm.”

And here is a video of the crowd in the parking lot shouting “Don’t Come Back!” as the buses full of the ACORN drones leave:

In St. Louis, the local Missouri ACORN organization held a ‘massive’ rally on Friday, August 14th, in the University City Loop, which is conveniently located near both Senator Claire McCaskill’s office and the St. Louis HQ for SEIU. But, despite the proximity to both Democratic-based locations, the turnout was (to say the least) underwhelming. Sharp Elbows StL has provided the video clip below as well as bit more extensive coverage of the event on their website.

President Obama’s own personal civilian army – volunteers for Organizing for America – were outside a town hall event in Ohio for Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. An interviewer asked these volunteers, mainly college students or recent graduates, direct questions about the president’s public option health care proposal. Their responses are vastly disappointing in that it demonstrates how little these paid volunteers (there’s an oxymoron if you ever heard one) know about the legislation they are advocating for.