"Keep the guvmint out of my medicare!": Insurance Lobby Organizes Elderly Hecklers

Which just goes to show what "debate" these people have in mind: if you dare to disagree, I'll threaten to kill you. With my gun. Very democratic.

And what's with all the AR-15's? It seems like men (because they're always men) with small-penis-syndrome trying to pathetically assert themselves with a gun because they cannot string a sentence together, let alone a reasoned argument. I cannot help but getting flashbacks to news images of all those dirt-poor illiterate Middle Eastern jihadists waving their AK-47's in the air, feeding their starving sense of self-importance on a bitter diet of semi-religious outrage. It's exactly the same thing. Except that AK-47's are, at least, a proper gun.

All the comparisons of obama with Nazi's is just out of frustration that they can't use the other "N"-word. In the end, it all comes down to that: when the most destructive idiot in history was in charge it was OK, because he was not too bright, plenty White and talked down to the local jokels in his incoherent folksy Southern drawl, making their simple minds believe he was One Of Us. But Obama is too educated, too well-spoke, too middle-class, too, well, not-white and uppety to be in charge of the country.

 

I don't understand why Conservatives don't like the idea, I consider myself to be "right-wing", not far right, but right none the less. I know it goes against the whole less Gov. controll and less taxes and what not, but sometimes you need to look at what the greater good is.

Rather than setting up a NHS couldn't the the US just set up a state insurance company, for those bellow the poverty line. Whould mean less infastructure, and still incourage state of the art medicine?

 

Doesn't look like he's waving it in the air to me and he has never been quoted to be saying anything about God.



And if he doesn't want government-run healthcare because Obama is black then he has some real self-loathing issues.

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/PHXBeat/60504

but look how carefully, msnbc packaged it. Look how much of him they show of him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI

I'd rather hang out with him over these guys. (charges were dismissed by the black guy) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/

 

Welcome to America, where both sides of the aisle have reduced the discussion to lies, bickering, and misinformation.

It's no wonder people are falling back on the old reliable methods of revolt; they have no idea what the heck is going on.

I think part of the problem is that the current versions of the bill being debated in Congress have become a mash of quid pro quos in an effort to satisfy everyone (but in the end, truly help no one). If we're going to reform health care, we might as well do it right. In a (now failed) effort to curb the inevitable conservative outrage at an NHS, the White House was almost required to fall short of offering a full-on social health care system. As a result of the right-wing scaremongering and left-wing counter-insults, the general populace has ended up square in the middle with no clue what is going on.

For the record, I've only seen reports of a single guy with a gun. I saw his interview with Chris Matthews on YouTube, and it was interesting to see him remain totally calm as Chris Mathews made every attempt to paint him as a right-wing nut-job assassin.

At this point I can't honestly say that I agree with either side's proposal. Maybe Prestidigitweeze had the right idea after all - I need to move to Europe, where people aren't afraid of an evil-pinko-commie-leftist-socialist-bolshevik National Health System.

 

You can argue it anyway you want; the fact is, he showed up to a political debate with a gun clipped to his belt and an semi-automatic rifle slung over his back. To have a free and open debate. Hmmmokay.

He may have argued that he was simply exercising his civic freedom, but I argue that anyone who feels the need to pack two guns to have a free and open debate about health care policy has some health issues of his own. In what is supposed to be the shining example of a civilised, democratic society is this rational behaviour? Since when are guns required to have an open discussion in a civilised democracy?

What is even more scary than the guy with the gun is the people in the blog approving of his "exercising his freedom". The fact that nobody sees anything wrong with this picture is deeply worrying. People may have a right to bear arms, but there is no reason to carry one in an arena of peaceful public debate: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

At least the jihadists have some excuse: they tend to live in primitive feudal shitholes with no civil rights or democracy whatsoever. But I'd expect US society to have moved on just a bit from the days of the Wild West.

 

Another fan of the NHS here

Saved my wife's life twice, given her free medicine for life (literally a carrier bag a month), sent us to the best IVF clinic in the UK and giving us a child (Hopefully!), all for the sum of £0

http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care_uk/

 

WIN!

 

Except for that fact that, like most of the others, he doesn't even know what he's making a point of. He showed up there as a publicity stunt. He works for a radio show and not to mention he was going on about his 2nd Amendment right at a Townhall to discuss HEALTHCARE. What in blazes does the 2nd Amendment have to do with a healthcare discussion? To me it is nothing more than an attempt to try and intimidate their opponent. And a veiled attempt to threaten Obama. They don't realize that they would have been tossed in the slammer under President Bush for such acts as that.

 

*sigh* - I'm not saying it's not some stunt or that it's not related. My point was it's not racially motivated.

I still you are on thin ground that it is intimidation but I will concede it very well could be. But, the fact that I haven't seen a single sentence of discussion on these boards (that I could find) about the actual attempt to keep people from voting during an actual election (as opposed to a town hall meeting) and those offenders let off the hook by the man who benefited from it tells me that you aren't all that concerned about the topic as a whole.

I'm not a Bush defender but can you show me the stories of Arizona citizens being locked up for protesting Bush? For crying out loud, protesters moved in across the road from his Texas ranch for years and nothing happened to any of those people except a few got famous. I'm just looking for some evidence of proportion here.

The fact that this is probably a cheap stunt only reinforces my initial argument that the people they are showing at these things are not the majority and that people don't have genuine problems with this legislation - all polls show that fact. Things are being carefully presented. The MSNBC report is probably the most irresponsible example. These meetings are going on for hours in some cases and the footage they show are one crackpot inside with an axe to grind (that you would probably find at ANY town hall meeting - try going to a city town council meeting and check out the weirdos there) or someone screaming outside. Listen to all these questions and look at all the people. A vast majority are regular people.

 

In America:

Socialism = Communism
Communism = Facism
Democrats = near facsists..

We are TERRIBLY confused. I'm neutral and I'm for a socialized healthcare, I mean our fire and police departments are already.

 

Well to be honest your right wing in America is so far right wing it's scary. Your democrats are closer to right wing over here, maybe centralist at a stretch.

So indeed you are terribly confused.

 

I think it's a straw man. By focusing attention on the Second Amendment, the argument changes from Healthcare Reform to State's Rights. If he can prove, via the Second Amendment, the issue of state sovereignty over the Federal Government, then he can use that argument against what he believes is a move toward National Socialism.

At least, that's my opinion based on the Chris Matthews interview with William Kostrick regarding the protest in New Hampshire.

-monkey.

 

Link to an interesting poll done on healthcare:

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=5ba17aa2-f1b9-4445-a6b8-62b9d1ba8693

 

Wow, so many people oppose something that in the long run reduces their spending on healthcare and may give them a better system then a third world.

All I can say for that is the amount who repsonded to the poll seem to be rather ignorant.

 

they are just scared of their country becoming naziland 2

 

There is no chance of that happening, and yet they are afraid that it will. That is ignorance in it's purest form.

 

Forum members in this thread are concerned that the democratic process itself is being sabotaged, and that the instigators of this openly admit that this is their purpose. They don't want a discussion; they want to prevent discussion. They don't want to challenge arguments; they want to prevent arguments being made in the first place.

You have to wonder: if people have to resort to sabotaging the discussion (and toting guns to make a point, whatever it is) , then how good are their counterarguments in the first place?

You have not been paying attention during the last 8 years then. One teenager got arrested for carrying a sign with a negative slogan about Bush. One got a visit by the FBI for posting "Kill Bush" on MySpace. Some other choice examples of paranoia here. There are plenty of accounts of people being arrested during demonstrations against Bush (Cincinnati, October 7 2002 for instance). Nothing new under the sun.

Actually I'm sure that we'd all love to. But Prestidigitweeze's point is that as long as Health Insurance lobbies like the CPPR and CPR keep sabotaging debate as is their self-proclaimed deliberate objective, these regular people's concerns will not get heard.

The objective is not to actually challenge Obama's health care reforms. It is not about debate; it is not about voicing concerns and asking questions. Because that would risk these concerns and questions actually being addressed, and regular people possibly being reassured and changing their minds. And the Health Insurance lobby can't have that; best to keep your sheep scared and nervous.

 

Alot of right now is due to the Right-Wing mounting a successfull misinformation campaign on the cons of a public option. From blatant lies about Steven Hawking's experiences with the NHS compared to our coverage in the U.S., to Palin's lies about death panels, and her child being killed off by the government if it was on such a public option. There is a huge amount of fear mongering going on about the quality of care as well. If the doctor is sponsored under a government funded plan he/she won't recieve the hundreds of thousands of dollars from an operation they would normally recieve under a private plan and therefore, the number of doctors available in the U.S. would dwindle. Nevermind the fact that over in Europe I have yet to see or hear of a mass exodus of doctors in the U.K. coming to America to open up practices since their NHS there should be driving them away according to the right.

 

My point was that I haven't see ANY discussion about this when the left does the same, my example is the intimidation by a paramilitary organization at polling places during an election and the president just letting it slide after winning. It seems that the outrage is only directed at one side of the argument which leads me to believe that it's agenda driven and not ethically driven.

Again, there are many, many examples of organizations on the other side of the argument trying to do the same thing by mobilizing organizations/unions to protest, fill these town halls and manipulate the system but it's not discussed here and direct encouragement by the President himself to call congressmen and hand them a pre-packaged flyer. Only the ones on one side.

 

guys who look at anything politically are just toolbags.. I'm looking at the long term effects of a nhs here in the us.. less r&d money put into issues that matter to myself is not something I'll support.. not to mention if you want to go to a certain hospital, you can't unless you get double shafted paying for a nhs and pick up private insurance.. these are facts it's not some guy toting a gun..

I supported obama as he was the best of what we had to pick from.. especially coming off that puppet bush who put us in over a trillion for what- a war that makes no sense to anyone but cheney.. the republicans have alot of things out in theory land- let's deal with reality, I mean death panels? really?