0 comment Tuesday, August 12, 2014 | admin
It might have been worth watching this fake townhall event if only to see this foot-in-mouth moment -- or was it a Freudian slip? See the video.
However, I missed it -- well, OK, I avoided watching it. I figured it would be staged and scripted and the attendees would all be plants and cult followers.
Yet Obama encountered a friendly, cheering crowd, as if at a campaign stop. While there were crowds of protesters outside, few seemed to make it inside.
He spoke for almost 20 minutes before questions. After several friendly questions, he urged people with tougher ones to step up.
"I don't want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants" in the audience, Obama said. After two more mildly skeptical questions, Obama ended the town hall. He took nine questions in total.
A little girl who asked him a rather precocious-sounding question, may have been a plant, reportedly.
According to the IBD article, the Resident implicitly reiterated the new talking point: that those with concerns about euthanasia or 'death panels' are crazy.
Obama ridiculed the notion that this plan would create "death panels" to decide end-of-life care.
He said the bill provides for panels of experts "who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations. . . . These aren't going to be forced on people but they will help guide how the delivery system works so you get better quality care."
My opinion of New Hampshire went down a little after seeing some clips of the audience there; is this the 'Live Free or Die' State?
And is this president the one with the off-the-chart IQ? Why is it that Democrat presidents are always said to be geniuses? Bill Clinton was another mediocrity who was touted as a high-IQ prodigy. Where's the evidence?
I notice that with the president's faux pas or whatever you would call it, the IBD op-ed reports it with a straight face, either missing the irony or intentionally spinning his statement as an 'I meant to say that' moment.
I was talking to a nurse friend yesterday and she is very much opposed to this proposal (which the Democrats say does not exist: ''There is no health bill!" they insist), though the Democrat talking points say that the AMA and the American Nurses' Association are on board with this. My nurse friend says that many of the people she is hearing from are very upset about the prospect of government-run health care. I don't hear much favorable comment about it myself -- in fact, I've heard none, in real life. Only the shills on TV speak in favor of it.
I've read some internet comment from right-wing bloggers criticizing the townhall protesters, on the grounds that it makes us look bad, or that it amounts to using the left's rabble-rousing tactics and crudeness. I don't think there is any kind of 'astroturfing' on a wide scale going on. I don't know any sheeplike Republicans who would attend a protest and shout at their representatives just because the RNC or anyone else told them to. I believe the anger is genuine and spontaneous; it certainly is on my part.
And by the way, the RNC periodically begs me for donations, but they have not contacted me in any way to try to get me to protest or to demonstrate.
Somebody on a blog discussion said that it was ridiculous for people on the far-right to get worked up about health care when we have our dispossession to worry about. I don't see how that person could fail to notice that this thing is a not-so-veiled attack on us, a way to reduce our numbers even further and more quickly. This is a survival issue, and as such it's not trivial or irrelevant, not in the least.
However, I missed it -- well, OK, I avoided watching it. I figured it would be staged and scripted and the attendees would all be plants and cult followers.
Yet Obama encountered a friendly, cheering crowd, as if at a campaign stop. While there were crowds of protesters outside, few seemed to make it inside.
He spoke for almost 20 minutes before questions. After several friendly questions, he urged people with tougher ones to step up.
"I don't want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants" in the audience, Obama said. After two more mildly skeptical questions, Obama ended the town hall. He took nine questions in total.
A little girl who asked him a rather precocious-sounding question, may have been a plant, reportedly.
According to the IBD article, the Resident implicitly reiterated the new talking point: that those with concerns about euthanasia or 'death panels' are crazy.
Obama ridiculed the notion that this plan would create "death panels" to decide end-of-life care.
He said the bill provides for panels of experts "who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations. . . . These aren't going to be forced on people but they will help guide how the delivery system works so you get better quality care."
My opinion of New Hampshire went down a little after seeing some clips of the audience there; is this the 'Live Free or Die' State?
And is this president the one with the off-the-chart IQ? Why is it that Democrat presidents are always said to be geniuses? Bill Clinton was another mediocrity who was touted as a high-IQ prodigy. Where's the evidence?
I notice that with the president's faux pas or whatever you would call it, the IBD op-ed reports it with a straight face, either missing the irony or intentionally spinning his statement as an 'I meant to say that' moment.
I was talking to a nurse friend yesterday and she is very much opposed to this proposal (which the Democrats say does not exist: ''There is no health bill!" they insist), though the Democrat talking points say that the AMA and the American Nurses' Association are on board with this. My nurse friend says that many of the people she is hearing from are very upset about the prospect of government-run health care. I don't hear much favorable comment about it myself -- in fact, I've heard none, in real life. Only the shills on TV speak in favor of it.
I've read some internet comment from right-wing bloggers criticizing the townhall protesters, on the grounds that it makes us look bad, or that it amounts to using the left's rabble-rousing tactics and crudeness. I don't think there is any kind of 'astroturfing' on a wide scale going on. I don't know any sheeplike Republicans who would attend a protest and shout at their representatives just because the RNC or anyone else told them to. I believe the anger is genuine and spontaneous; it certainly is on my part.
And by the way, the RNC periodically begs me for donations, but they have not contacted me in any way to try to get me to protest or to demonstrate.
Somebody on a blog discussion said that it was ridiculous for people on the far-right to get worked up about health care when we have our dispossession to worry about. I don't see how that person could fail to notice that this thing is a not-so-veiled attack on us, a way to reduce our numbers even further and more quickly. This is a survival issue, and as such it's not trivial or irrelevant, not in the least.
Labels: Health Care, Media Manipulation, Public Health, Socialism, Socialized Medicine