President Obama has something like a 73% approval rating in Maryland. We are among the bluest states in the nation. Our legislature enacted health care legislation targeting big business long before it was a national cause.
And yet the teabaggers were loud at Sen. Ben Cardin’s recent town hall meeting. Look, its one thing for these people to gather organically in places like Alabama and the like. But Maryland? Puh-lease.
Maybe they are just migrating, like flocks of birds? Pink Faced Teabaggers, returning to their ancestral migratory paths before they return to their ancestral southern home.
People have every right to organize protests, but it’s the shouting down and preventing discours that’s really disturbing.
Preventing others from speaking isn’t free speech.
Speaking of fake:
http://bit.ly/UjxEq
Preventing others from speaking isn’t free speech.
Are there any examples from History of this kind of behavior?
‘Are there any examples from History of this kind of behavior?’
How about corralling Bush protesters and keeping them a mile from his speaking venues, in the long forgotten days of the last 8 years?
How about corralling Bush protesters and keeping them a mile from his speaking venues, in the long forgotten days of the last 8 years?
Any others? Further back in Time?
Oliver, I’m sure there are some pretty Republican parts of Maryland. How else could Roscoe Bartlett, that state’s own Jesse Helms, get elected?
Right, so the 960,000 people in Maryland that voted for John McCain don’t exist. They’re fake.
960,000 ghosts voted for John McCain in Maryland.
Preventing others from speaking isn’t free speech.
Once again Jaim seems to be proud to show off his ignorance. Why don’t you read the article? According to what I read, there was spirited debate. Many questions were asked and Cardin was given a round of applause by a mostly hostile crowd for staying there and answering questions.
“960,000
ghostsidiots voted for John McCain in Maryland.”ftfy
deathpanelssocialismabortionillegalaliensrationing
Oliver, I’m sure there are some pretty Republican parts of Maryland. How else could Roscoe Bartlett, that state’s own Jesse Helms, get elected?
Poorly informed West Wing fans?
960,000 ghosts voted for John McCain in Maryland.
To be fair, McCain, being half-dead himself, got huge support from the undead community.
No, but they’re almost outnumbered 2-1 by the 1.6 million who voted for Obama here. The townhall with almost all con voices in attendance is not a reflection of Maryland.
Since when are townhall meetings supposed to be a “reflection” of a the particular political demographics of a state? And how does it prove they’re “fake”? More people opposed to the Democrats health care plan showed up than those that support it. What’s the big deal?
It’s time to invoke GOP rules and relegate the teabaggers to areas a mile away from the town halls. In fact, just name them George W Bush Free Speech Zones.
The bigger point is, what is the purpose of a town hall? I mean in reality, not in some goofball civics textbook.
The point, both for supporters and critics of the health care reform proposals, is political theater, not to “represent” anything. It’s not to get new ideas expressed; that could be done far more efficiently in other ways. It’s to provide political theater, period.
That said, Oliver’s basic point is valid. The pool of people opposed to these proposals and presumably to Obama and Cardin generally was disproportionately present compared to the demographics of either Maryland as a whole or of a 15-mile radius extending from the venue. Relatively few people hate Cardin; people hate Mikulski, O’Malley and other Dem pols, but Cardin is known as such a nice guy that, legend has it, when he considered running for the presidency of his synagogue, he was warned that he was too nice a guy for “shul politics.”
Oliver, admit it, Maryland is not a monolithically Democratic state.
I think that evidence like this may suggest that they are not representative of an area, or at least that they may be traveling anywhere from short to long distances within a state, but I think you’d look at other types of evidence if you wanted to prove that they were ‘fake’.
I’m sure there were anti-war protests held in areas / states which were overwhelmingly (by many measures) ‘conservative’, and this might mean that the protestors were not typical of an area, but maybe there had been a particularly intense and maybe even well-organized outreach by some group or movement to get turnouts of anti-war protests.
I have lived in areas which were astoundingly conservative, yet I was there, and had any national organization really aimed at a protest / turnout for some local city hall, people there might have thought I was a trucked in space alien, but it would have just meant that up until then I didn’t feel like sharing my political views with my neighbors.
Unless of course I had claimed to be a farmer or doctor and I wasn’t, or had recited some inaccurate script of my experiences, or if I represented some particular material interest group and lied and said I wasn’t.
960,000 ghosts voted for John McCain in Maryland.
Wow Jay…finally admitting that you guys are having the dead vote for people? I thought only Demoncrats did that?
A majority of the public is opposed to the current bill, and 44% strongly oppose it in the latest polling. These protests should come as no surprise, anywhere. The suggestion that it must one must be fake simply because 73% of the people generally approve of the President indicates a strong case of denial.
Even in the “best” case, 27% of the people in Maryland could form a decent protest.
Maybe Sen. Ben Cardin needs to read this:
The Illustrated Guide to Obamacare Human Props
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Young girls used as plants to ask him why Republicans carry signs outside the hall that say ‘mean’ things is always a nice touch, too.
Hmmm. Try this “teabagger” on for size. Well-known investor and Liberal, Warren Buffett, has come out *against* Deadbeatonomics.
From Ed Morrisey’s blog:
It turns out that Warren Buffett had a lot more to say on Deadbeatonomics and how Barack Obama runs the White House yesterday than just criticizing Card Check. The notable Obama supporter also attacked the President’s overall handling of the economic crisis and the rhetoric about not “wasting a good crisis”.
Oops. Looks like another blow struck against Obama.
“Our legislature enacted health care legislation targeting big business long before it was a national cause”
Targeting big business? What does that mean, Oliver??
How does that work when 80% of workers don’t work for BIG BUSINESS.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you have very little business background and or business experience.
Are there any racists in Maryland, ya think? While the rest of us were feeling that adrenalin rush at Obama’s victory last November, others were sitting around quietly stunned, and their paranoia/alienation has increased with the passage of time. Obama has continued to look black; Sotomayor is the new justice; and they think they’re losing “their” country. As a white American I grew up with racists who never knew they were, so I know the patterns, the code words, the pathetic despair in the face of change. It was my foreign-born wife, political wonk who watches all the snippets of teabaggers and town-hall-meeting disrupters, who first insisted it’s xenophobic racism that Beck and O’Reilly and Limbaugh and Savage and Palin (!) and all the others are exploiting as they peddle their vicious lies. MSNBC just interviewed one of the disrupters at Arlen Specter’s meeting and it was a terrific “get”: the man stumbled through his bizarre talking points, incoherent except for saying that he didn’t trust anyone in government. The nut-job media give focus and direction to inchoate disaffection: a yell at a congressman doesn’t have to be a complete sentence, let alone a complete thought. The kind of racist motivation I’m alleging unfortunately can’t be proven, but look around and add up the signals.
Speaking of fake:
http://bit.ly/UjxEq
That’s great, suicidal. But what kind of counter tops does she have?
Inquiring minds wanna know what’s in her trash.
Malkkkin-powers, ACTIVATE!
Yes, Duros, speaking of fake….
BUSTED!: “Obama As Hitler” Poster Was A Democrat/Union Plant At John Dingell Townhall
This is who they are.
Funny how liberals love to claim they are losing this battle because of Republican misinformation.
Great Scott!!
The man holding the Obama-as-Hitler poster was black!! He must be a plant!!!
Once again, Dennis is passing off b.s. as fine shoe polish.
I call b.s. on you, Quaker in a Basement.
Whatever it is you are calling b.s. on, you don’t say.
After the wingnut blogosphere does their usual incestuous crosslinking frenzy, it will be interesting to see what happens when the verifiable truth comes out. I’d find the guy’s name and ask him what he was doing and what he represents.
My bad. He’s a Larouche-nut. Making him out to be a democratic plant is a little like making McVeigh out to be a conservative activist. Whose misinformed Dennis?
‘Whose misinformed Dennis?’
He’s not misinformed; misguided, mistaken and misanthropic is more like it.