I’m so old I remember when reporters looked at you as a questionable source if you blogged, but apparently having over one hundred thousand thousand Twitter followers makes you a trustworthy source.
Where would she get the time to set up for a town hall at her house?
AND– As someone points out to me, how the hell is it a town hall if the GOP official gets to do the invites, even if she did promise to invite “all sides?” Geebus. That’s not a town hall, it’s a garden party.
Adding, for overly obvious emphasis, that to have message discipline you need to have a message in the first place.
We’re getting our butts kicked out here, and the people who get paid to do this stuff need to get out the belt. I’m looking at you, Barack Obama.
Is the Yelling Marine, David Hedrick, going to run for Congress against incumbent Democratic Brian Baird in WA-03?
There appears to be a place-holder web site up for Hedrick.
Wonder if he’ll show up in Olympia tonight?
Meanwhile, 3rd District Rep. Brian Baird has moved tonight’s town hall to a new location: Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE in Olympia. It will run from 7 to 9 p.m.
Personally I hope Hedrick does run for Congress, and appears at forums and debates. Hard to say what the reaction might be from the two announced Republican candidates, David Castillo and Jon Russell. What’s also not known is what party Hedrick might ultimately decide to list, as his place-holder site doesn’t specify.
If Hedrick has the right stuff, he’ll do well. If not, he’ll quickly find out it’s not quite as easy as yelling into a microphone for three minutes and having someone put up a YouTube video so the right wing noise machine can fluff it.
People will want to know all sorts of stuff about the views a candidate holds. Fifteen minutes only lasts, well, about fifteen minutes.
UPDATE 8:48 PM– A friend of mine at the town hall tonight in Olympia reports that Hedrick did indeed show up, and apparently asked Baird to read the 10th Amendment from the Constitution. Hedrick wanted to know where in the Constitution it says Congress can oversee health care reform, or words to that effect.
Baird’s response, according to my friend, was to read the amendment for the crowd and point out different people (ed note-like perhaps the Supreme Court?) interpret it differently, and pointed out to Hedrick the Constitution also says nothing about veteran’s health care.
My friend reports Hedrick’s face “went dead” and he had nothing else to say, and that Hedrick left a short while later.
My friend is not a reporter, nor a blogger, so I’ll be interested to see how the traditional media reports this exchange.
Still no word, official or otherwise, if Hedrick really intends to run for Congress.
UPDATE TWO–9:21 PM–Brad Shannon of The Olympian has this initial nugget in a breaking news post.
One man who said he is a U.S. Marine from Camas insisted that reforms such as House Resolution 3200 are unconstitutional. He said, when quizzed by Baird, that he also believes Medicare is unconstitutional.
Well, okay. As one commenter at The Olympian put it, you’d think that if Medicare is actually unconstitutional, someone would have proven it in a court of law by now.
UPDATE THREE–9:57 PM– A fuller account comes from Brad Shannon of The Olympian, via the News-Tribune:
Baird took a more conciliatory approach in his evening event, and although a few critics got heated in their remarks, Baird urged the audience not to interrupt and to let speakers have their say – including David William Hedrick, who questioned the legality of the reforms.
Hedrick, who said he was a U.S. Marine from Camas, said members of Congress “have no right” to mandate coverage, and he challenged Baird to pull out his pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution, then read from Article 10, which Baird did.
“I presume you are saying Medicare is not constitutional,” Baird said. “Correct,” Hedrick replied.
Baird said there is much debate but many scholars believe Medicare and similar programs are within the scope of the Congress’ powers. “You are not the only person who gets to interpret the Constitution, sir,’’ Baird added.
Wonder if Baird’s rejoinder will be on Fox Noise? Yeah, right.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USYJyayJTew[/youtube]
This is video of St. Francis, Minn. city council member LeRoy Schaffer addressing the town hall held by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.-06. It’s kind of not surprising that reporters might have had trouble understanding what he was saying.
After carefully listening on headphones, I think he’s a performance artist. I think he might actually want reform, or maybe a role in a remake of “Blazing Saddles.”
Maybe we can start a new movement, the “Top Hatters.” Well, maybe not. But we could all dress as Monopoly pieces, that would be fun. I get to be the car.
What’s awesome is that the crowd is cheering him when he says “socialism” because they haven’t figured out what he’s actually getting at yet. Or so it seemed to me.
(Props to Firedog Lake for the video find and the Gabby Johnson reference.)
Correction: Think Progress has issued an update:
The Minneapolis Star Tribune quoted more of Schaffer’s words and it turns out he was defending Social Security. “I’m on Social Security and I’ve got Medicare,” said Schaffer, 70, before entering the auditorium. “I have socialized medicine. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.”
UPDATE–Here is the fuller passage from the Star-Tribune:
Among more than 100 people who waited in line for over an hour to get into the event was St. Francis City Council Member LeRoy Schaffer, who was decked out in a tuxedo with a black top hat. Schaffer, who has become controversial for comments that led his fellow council members to censure him, dismissed the claim of some Republicans that the Democratic plans amount to socialized medicine.
“I’m on Social Security and I’ve got Medicare,” said Schaffer, 70, before entering the auditorium. “I have socialized medicine. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.”
UPDATE 2–The original Roll Call article that Think Progress linked to does not appear to have been updated as of about 3:15 PM PDT. It’s a very different quote (see my original post below.)
Here is the original post I wrote:
Roll Call reports on a town hall meeting held in the district of Michelle Bachmann, R-MN-06.
LeRoy Schaffer, a St. Francis city council member, dressed in a tuxedo and top hat for the occasion. Shaffer got visibly emotional asking Bachmann about the future of health care and the role of special interests in Washington.
“I’ll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism,” Schaffer said, before being booed by the crowd.
As the saying goes, it burns, it really burns.
This isWe all know what the insurance industry wanted: a debate so off the rails that you can’t even begin to reason with ignorant fools, so widespread and hysterical are the lies streaming down the right wing puke funnel. I suppose we can forgive the ignorant, who are luckily just a vocal minority, but we can’t forgive nor back down from the cynical corporate royalists who pay for the noise machine.
Now that August is nearly over, and what an August it has been, it would be entirely appropriate for the left to stage a series of peaceful political actions this fall and winter aimed directly at certain for-profit insurance companies and their astro-turfing operations that are known to be bad actors in all this. I’m not arguing for any specific tactic, and I’m not sure that the old “hey hey, ho ho” thing works any more, so some thought and creativity would have to go into it.
One lesson from this month, though, is that obnoxious, uncouth behavior combined with unprincipled distortions seems to work, at least in the short term. It’s actually an old lesson the right has demonstrated time and again in the last decade, from the Brooks Brothers riots in Florida through the lie-up to war and now the Guns of August health care “debate.”
Lesson duly noted, although we can make our case without the unprincipled distortions. But I’m all for uncouth, and I say we go into insurance executive’s offices and eat with our mouths open and blow our noses into our sleeves, it’s an appropriate and fitting response to this month. It would also be at the same intellectual level as the health baggers, so it seems appropriate. (And you know they would then start complaining that we’re not addressing the issues!)
The left has more than a few assets in Hollywood and elsewhere who could be quite effective at shaming the health care robber barons. Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken should go on a nationwide tour. Hell, there should be an army of Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chickens.
And maybe I’m dreaming here, but that big personality whose name also start with “O” might want to think about helping out again. That would pretty much pass the public option right there, because nobody can stop her, Rosie is awesome.
Yeah, I’m just one little blogger at a state blog, so we’ll see, it’s just an idea. I don’t exactly have a direct line to well, much of anyone.
As always the right wants a bare-knuckle fight, so if people actually want health care reform they’re going to need to be willing to wrestle with pigs. Who have human knuckles. You know what I mean.
Get the chicken suits dry-cleaned.
The Spokesman-Review reports that prosecutors allege a Spokane man threatened a Colorado doctor’s family not long after the murder of Dr. George Tiller.
A man said people from Utah were going to travel to Colorado to kill the family of William Hern, founder of the clinic and one of the few doctors in the country known to perform late-term abortions.
Authorities traced the June 23 phone call to Spokane.
Two days earlier, The Spokesman-Review had published a front-page story detailing Hern’s practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic, and the increase in business he’d seen since Tiller’s murder.
Prosecutors say Donald Hertz, 70, made the threat after he read that story, said Hertz’s lawyer in Spokane, Russell Van Camp.
And before anyone excuses this as just the rash bluster of some old coot, let’s remember that the asshole who walked into the Holocaust Museum with guns blazing was 88 years old.
What we are witnessing in this country is the sad end result of decades of right-wing lunacy. Here’s a little factoid from the S-R story that leaves you shaking your head. (emphasis mine)
A retired real estate developer and insurance salesman with no criminal record, Hertz was taken into federal custody Wednesday morning and appeared in U.S. District Court in Spokane that afternoon.
He’s not in custody now but is scheduled to appear in federal court in Denver next month. Van Camp said he’ll try to move the case to Spokane.
Good thing he wasn’t wearing a pro-Constitution t-shirt at a Republican rally, they might have locked him up while he awaits further legal proceedings. I mean, did this guy even have to post bail? Wouldn’t want to trouble the old gent too much.
From The Plum Line:
In case you missed it, the RNC sent a mailing, obtained by a local paper in Washington State and now rocketing around the political world, that contained the following loaded question:
“It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?”
RNC spokesperson Katie Wright concedes to me that the question was a foul-up, though she says there are still legit reasons for Americans to worry about privacy.
And they sent the mailer to Washington state, where we don’t have political parties voter registration by party.
UPDATE (Goldy):
The Washington Independent has obtained a copy of the survey from 64-year-old Raymond Denny of La Center.
You can view the whole survey here.
You start imagining warning stickers at certain dark corners of the Internets and the YouTubes that read like this:
warning: the national Communo-Fascist Government wishes to inform You that reading this Web Site may have Unintended side affects upon your Ability to capitolize, punctuate and other righting skills.
A right wing blogger named Pamela Geller, who is known for her extreme anti-Muslim views, has claimed that “Yelling Marine” David Hedrick is a frequent reader of her blog, Atlas Shrugs. Hedrick has drawn national attention, including appearances on Fox Noise, for his condemnation of Baird.
Geller also claimed that Hedrick recently sent her a box of assorted military-type swag. From Atlas Shrugs on Aug. 22, the same day that a YouTube video surfaced of Hedrick berating Baird at a town hall earlier that week:
That great American is a regular Atlas reader, David Hedrick, who recently sent me such a great box with CFSOCC-A (Combined Forces, Special Operations Component Command – Afghanistan) stuff: tee shirt, baseball cap, patches and Don’t Tread on Me stuff.
There’s some interesting comments in the thread, including some that appear to come from Hedrick’s father, which would tend to support Geller’s claim that the younger Hedrick is a reader/swag sender. If, of course, it’s true, which on the Internets you can never know for sure.
The entire breadth and scope of Geller’s um, anti-jihadism or whatever it is cannot be detailed here. But just before last year’s presidential election she did publish an incredibly lengthy screed, apparently written by another author, that bears the rather unwieldy all-caps title “HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH?.”
And today, in a column at NewsMax objecting to Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to investigate abuse of detainees, Geller makes the wild claim that the Obama administration is creating a “stateside army” disguised as a community service corps. What’s interesting to me about that is that a similar accusation was made by an audience member at Baird’s town hall, although not by Hedrick.
If it is true that Hedrick is actually a devotee of Geller, it could throw some immediate cold water on the rash of enthusiasm that has been generated by his outburst against Baird. Today The Columbian profiled Hedrick in an above-the-fold front page story. It’s only natural that flattering attention might cause someone to think about running for office, so I think this bit is understandable.
What will Hedrick do with his newfound notoriety?
“If I can spread this message, I’ll do it as long as I can,” he said.
After thinking over that question, he called back to say, “If Brian Baird votes for this bill, and if we don’t have a true constitutional conservative libertarian candidate that runs against Baird in the next election, I am considering running against him myself.”
It would be interesting for The Columbian, and other outlets, to ask this potential candidate and sudden national spokesman for the anti-health-care-reform movement about his views on a variety of subjects, perhaps starting with the basic question of what he thinks of Atlas Shrugs and Pamela Geller.
If Geller isn’t telling the truth about Hedrick being a fan who sent her military swag, or if she is fabricating comments from Hedrick’s parents, she needs to be stopped.
What David Waldman says:
Maybe I’m just not sufficiently wonky on the health care subject, and after all, this isn’t likely to happen to me right away, because I have insurance through my wife that I’m pretty sure we’re keeping as long as we can. But I don’t get how you can possibly hand me a health care bill with an individual mandate and no public option. If I’m uninsured or poorly insured, and the answer coming out of Congress is that I now have to buy crappy insurance from some private company that has no plan to actually help me pay for my health care without raking me over the coals, then I’ve gone into this fight an ardent supporter of strong reform, and come out a teabagger.
You’re going to force me to pay an insurance company for shit insurance that as a free market actor I decided not to even try to buy?
And the insurance companies that paid for organizing the clown shows are just drooling.
From Media Matters:
Fox’s Carlson offers no criticism of guest’s suggestion Pelosi is a Nazi
Fox guest at town hall: “If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.” Fox & Friends hosted David Hedrick, who at a town hall for Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), stated:
HEDRICK: I also heard you say that you’re going to let us keep our health insurance. Well, thank you. It’s not your right to decide whether or not I keep my current plan or not. That’s my decision. Now, I’ve heard recently in the media you and some other people on the political stage call us brownshirts because we opposed —
BAIRD: No, I did not. No, I did not. What I said was — and I’ve apologized for it, sir.
HEDRICK: OK, well, thanks for apologizing. But let — I won’t speak to you, then. I’ll speak to others. But I’ll remind you — a little history lesson. The Nazis did not — the Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They were — they took over the finance. They took over the car industry. They took over health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.
Now, what I want to know is, you’ve done a lot of things that violate your constitutional oath, as you know. What I want to know is, as a Marine, as a disabled veteran that served this country, I have kept my oath. Do you ever intend to keep yours?
Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson aired a clip of Hedrick comparing Pelosi a Nazi, but did not condemn his remarks or criticize Hedrick for them. Indeed, at no point in the interview did Carlson address Hedrick’s comment. Instead, Carlson introduced Hedrick as “the Marine vet who took the congressman to task” and said only that his remarks got “quite the response.” [Fox & Friends, 8/24/09]
And just for the record, only a person completely ignorant of 20th Century history would make the ridiculous claim that because the Nazis had the term “socialist” in their name that they were “leftists.” For example:
The directive ordered that SA and SS men were to be employed in the planned .’ occupation of trade union properties and for the taking into protective custody of personalities who come into question.” At the conclusion of the action the official NSDAP press service reported that the National Socialist Factory Cells Organisation had “eliminated the old leadership of Free Trade Unions” and taken over the leadership them selves. Similarly, on the 3rd May, 1933, the NSDAP press service announced that the Christian trade unions ” have unconditionally subordinated themselves to the leadership of Adolf Hitler.” In place of the trade unions the Nazi Government set up a German Labour Front (DAF), controlled by the NSDAP, and which, in practice, all workers in Germany were compelled to join. The chairmen of the unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-treatment, ranging from assault and battery to murder.
So the Nazis were such “leftists” that they took over the trade unions and murdered their leaders. Yeah, um, okay.
But since we’re living in a post-fact, post-reality era, I guess history doesn’t really matter much either. It’s just a collection of invective to be hurled as the situation arises; one day it’s socialism, another day it’s Naziism, another day it’s Scientology, whatever. If they feel it, it’s true, because others in the tribe say it’s true. Feelings are true, facts are not true.
Pretty soon they’ll call us Vikings and accuse us of invading England. Well, they won’t do that, because that would involve actual knowledge of history, but you know what I mean.
There is no meaning, Winston thought, as he drained the last of the Victory Gin.*
*May not be an actual literary quote, it’s more of a feeling
It’s pretty much a distortion per day with these people.
Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, went on Fox News today to fan the flames of the latest fabricated “death panel” controversy.
Goldberg equated a Veterans Affairs pamphlet — one that’s reportedly no longer being used — with Nazi eugenics, saying “death panels may not be too far off the horizon.”
The pamphlet in question is one that, Fox reported this weekend, encourages disabled veterans to decide whether their lives are worth living. Tammy Duckworth, an assistant secretary of the VA, told Fox on Sunday that the department instructed VA doctors to stop using the pamphlet in 2007.
It never stops. Manna could fall to all hungry people, and the righties would all it socialism, unless, of course, they could somehow take credit for it during a Republican administration.
Some days you really wonder if the Democratic leadership understands that they are not facing a traditional opposition political party. We’re facing a senseless, radical authoritarianism that lost power and now wants it back.
This month proves that beyond all doubt, and Democrats and their allies forget that at their own peril. You don’t debate these people, you don’t compromise with these people, you either beat them or you lose. It’s really that simple.
(Props to TPM.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRE5UK6NQU[/youtube]
An angry right wing guy insists that Nazis were leftists because they were “National Socialists,” and he also demands that Baird “stay away from his kids.”
This was from the Brian Baird town hall last Tuesday.
Yeah, we’ll stay away from your kids, angry guy, and you and your kin, because you’re a crazy angry ignorant moron. No problem. My main goal in life is to avoid people like you.
I sure wouldn’t want to risk pulling in front of your grocery cart by accident, because that might be about the same as something Pol Pot would do. I hear old Pol was a real asshole when he was shopping, which would make me a Pol Pot shopper. Or something.
It’s hard to argue with stupid. But this is a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with. G-d bLess tHe UsA.
UPDATE [Lee]: Jon, I hope you don’t mind my piggy-backing on your post here, but the following passage is from the very beginning of Volume 2 of Mein Kampf, where Adolf Hitler lays out the general philosophy of the National Socialist movement:
Paul Krugman’s column about how President Barack Obama has lost the trust of progressives is justifiably being widely noted this morning. Definitely worth a read if you have a moment to click through.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.
As Krugman notes, the coddling of the financial industry and hanging progressives (and many members of Congress, it should be noted) out to dry this August have created a very bad situation. As always seems to happen, Democrats will take your money, your time and your energy, and then sit down and give everything away before any real bargaining has even taken place.
It seems to be some kind of congenital disease in the party. The only thing saving Obama right now is House progressives, who are refusing to be taken hostage by the petty clown shows around the country.
Now, there is a lot to be said for party unity and being team players. But the players need confidence that the coaches aren’t secretly making deals with the other team (cough Billy Tauzin cough,) or they won’t play hard, if at all.
You can’t negotiate with lying asshole scumbags whose only goal is to ratfuck you, this is pretty basic stuff. And all across this land, the lying scumbag Republicans are busy ratfucking. You have to admit, it’s a skill they learned long ago, and from Nixon’s time to ours, it’s the one consistent thing about them. If only ratfucking cured people, we’d be in Paradise.
And while I don’t usually begrudge politicians some well earned rest and relaxation, the president going on vacation now when millions of Americans are taking “staycations” is incredibly tone deaf. Sorry, but politics isn’t always fair, and the righties are going to do everything they can to exploit it. Send the wife and kids, and get back to the White House or go out to some districts and help some of these Congress-critters.
Facts don’t matter in America any more, so I’m not down with the counter- argument that Bush took 80 gazillion days of vacation, nobody cares. We’re in a post-reality twilight where it’s okay to bring guns to political events and spread lies about how health care reform would be just like Nazi euthanasia programs and otherwise behave like uncivilized fools. The traditional media tends to lap it up like dogs, never noticing that the ones actually holding the needle are eyeing them as well, with a gleam in their eye. If the lunatics take over the pound, the dogs will be the first to go.
And yes, please tell me how awful it would be if Republicans win big in 2010 or 2012, I know, I know. We might wind up with two quagmires abroad, a massive deficit, a hollowed out manufacturing sector, a financial system that amounts to a kleptocracy, no gains in civil rights for gays, or of all things, no meaningful health care reform.
That would be terrible.
As Bob Dylan (the real one) used to sing, “How does it feel?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gCUufJKAKE&feature=channel[/youtube]
Perhaps there are lessons from the 1960’s to be learned for today’s leftists: policy is nothing without passion and creativity, although in the case of the video above a laundry list of fantasy grievances set to canned guitar chords may not be the way to go.
While there are many aggravating things about today’s conservatives, none are as aggravating as their attempts at artistic expression.
If you’re going to make a policy issue about culture, you should make sure you have some.
(Stumbled upon at the site of Ethan Persoff, who also hosts a web version of the “Official Pogrom” for the 1969 Chicago Conspiracy Trial.)
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