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Correspondent Amalaur sends in some new commentary this afternoon to address criticism that the health care town hall meetings were purposefully disrespectful and disruptive. That appears, at least in the case of the Steve Driehaus town hall, not to be the case.I saw Rick Moran's column today where he said that "screaming in impotent rage at your congressmen is not the way to go".
As I described, the meeting was respectful and quiet to begin with. That was even the case after the moderator called any anti-Government Health Care folks "teabaggers"... after Driehaus filibustered for about 15 minutes with a prepared statement... and so on. It was only after a series of deflections and a refusal to run a real town hall meeting, like letting people line up and ask questions, that the folks started getting angry. The average age was probably 60. This wasn't a bunch of activists, these were seniors genuinely worried about losing insurance they have, they'd paid for, losing their relationship with their doctors, even getting denied care, which frequently happens to seniors in Canada and Britain. Everyone knows that state-run care will mean rationing as you can't add tens of millions of people without adding doctors!Watch this video for an example. She asks a good question about state portability of insurance, which I mentioned in my first email. Driehaus would not answer any of these questions directly.
No one was getting shouted down here, they were cheering a question that Driehaus continued to evade and never answered. No one in the meeting hall that I saw came in to be rude or disrespectful, they were genuinely worried about losing health care.
The 'Public Option' Deception: WizbangApologies for the poor quality of photographs, these were taken using my phone. We got there early (about 6:10pm) for Steve Driehaus' town hall meeting that was scheduled for 7pm.By 6:20, hundreds of people were in line. Once the doors opened, a tiny assembly room filled in moments. The organizers decided to move the meeting to the church's small (and very steamy) sanctuary. This allowed several hundred people to witness the debacle.
Not sure which group sponsored it, but NOW played a part and the organizers were very liberal. At first, they didn't even allow people to ask questions. You had to write questions down and submit them. The moderator began with a threat that "Teabaggers" who disrupted the proceedings would not be tolerated! Of course, the written question approach was a disaster, since there were hundreds of questions submitted (we had two, which weren't asked, of course).
Driehaus began with a canned statement of the typical Obama talking points and the crowd grew increasingly angry. A guy behind me yelled "Stop filibustering!" at about 7:15, at which point Driehaus gave in. He then started answering the written questions, mostly softball, that were picked out for him. The crowd started to get really rambunctious. One guy kept yelling out, "That was lie number (whatever)" when Driehaus repeated some nonsensical talking point like that there are 47 million uninsured.
You could hear a bunch of Tea Partiers outside yelling. Finally, enough attendees were sufficiently disruptive that Driehaus began taking real questions. There were a lot of good ones, about illegal immigrants covered under the bill... how the government couldn't run cash-for-clunkers, how could it run health care... etc.I would say the ratio of those opposed to ObamaCare and single-payer ran about 8-to-1 (maybe more). In fact, when the "public option" was raised and people yelled that would destroy competition, one of the Obamatons screamed, "the public option is competition!". The guy next to me erupted, "No, it's MARXISM!"
The good news is that people are educated about what the public option is, which basically is a disaster for private insurance. One questioner noted that you could go on the Internet and get access to about 14,000 different health insurance quotes with reviews and so on. She wanted state portability. Driehaus, of course, ignored that part.
As the meeting progressed, folks got more and more fired up, openly laughing at Driehaus' talking points, mocking some of his more ridiculous answers ("I haven't made up my mind yet") and -- in general -- combating the patent falsehoods that he tried to market.
I felt bad for his daughter, who I think is about 12-years old. She didn't seem too happy to be there.After an hour of questions, Driehaus called a halt to the proceedings. As the meeting broke up, chants of 'Vote for Chabot!' and 'Just say no!' rang out. Driehaus is a phony, through and through. He's no more a fiscal conservative than Nancy Pelosi.







Obama adviser Pete Rouse, whose office sits between those of Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, is an Alaska native.



Read (and watch) the whole thing.
Why would Democrats obstruct discovery of these records?
Consider what we know so far. Among the recipients of sweetheart loans were then-Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, former Fannie CEO James Johnson (an advisor to President Obama, according to CBS) and Minyon Moore, a former COO of the Democrat National Committee. All served in the Clinton administration.
Moreover, a secretive "Countrywide program" gave special loans to connected individuals including the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Christopher Dodd, and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Democrat Kent Conrad.
For example: in 2003, the Bush administration tried to rein in Fannie's top managers, all of whom were ex-Clinton staffers.The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago... Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry...
...The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the ...Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” ...Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
In February 2004, Alan Greenspan warned that, unless reined in, Fannie and Fredde could cost taxpayers dearly. At the time, Greenspan stated that Fannie and Freddie "have grown so rapidly and accumulated so much debt that they cannot adequately hedge against the risks of financial crises." The Fed chairman said both entities, which then held about $2 trillion worth of obligations tied to home mortgages, had grown much faster than their competitors because investors believed the federal government would simply bail them out in a crisis.
Long, Hot August Recess Begins: MalkinSubject: 4 free tickets...
I have four extra tickets to the Robbie Knievel event in the Cow Palace in San Francisco for next weekend.
He is going to attempt to jump over 1,000 Obama supporters with a D10 Caterpillar Bulldozer.
It should be a good time.Let me know.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the large public sector union, appears to be one such group. Aside from being a major supporter of the far left Democrat agenda, it is tied to ACORN, the troubled group of community agitators. So the act of skirting ethical, legal and moral roadblocks isn't exactly virgin territory for this crew.
But that is not the case -- at least for rank-and-file union members. ATR reports that:
The problem exists not only in the SEIU's national plans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed that 13 SEIU local pension plans were less than 80% funded. Six were less than 65% funded.
To regain some semblance of fiscal stability, the SEIU has wagered heavily on forcing other employees to help fund its drying pension reserves. That was the motivation behind the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a major Democrat initiative for 2009, and one on which the SEIU spent tens of millions of its members' money.
The EFCA-slash-Card Check bill is a Democrat payoff to union bosses, who fear what will happen when the massive pension disparity between workers and bosses becomes widely known.