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@ mob mentality.
Just curious - what were you thinking of asking him/talking about?
The White House has joined in on the paranoia
It's ing laughable. All you hear growing up is vote, talk to ur reps, let them know how you feel and when they do Obamas message to the people is they bragged about it so that is not fair. This asshole was elected president because he was a community organizer. Every news outlet I watch says the republican party is not organized. They still are not. I wish this guy would atleast try to live up to his billing. Quit ing crying. You are president of the USA for crying out loud. We are broke. We have no money to give away free healthcare to 50 million americans. We all are pissed off at the insurance companies. Fix that .To simple to make sense.
just froze over...
Another fruitcake jumps on the "fake opposition" bandwagon.
This, form the person who considers Code Pink and MoveOn her base.
New DNC ad tries to link "fake" anti-Obamacare "mob" to "birthers".
Healthcare - specifically the "public option"
I didn't read anywhere in the memo where it advocated anything other than being an informed citizen, and how to have your voice heard. Unless you consider asking pointed questions to rattle the congress member disruptive. If they believe in the agenda, they should have clear answers, right?
Decisions are made by those who are heard. Conservatives are usually lacking at town hall meetings vs. the unemployed liberal. They are either working, or looking for work. This is a good change to have conservative voices heard.
I hope you read this first and select some realgood questions and facts from HB 3200:
Healthcare overview
HB 3200
Please provide a link to statistics to back up this bull claim.Conservatives are usually lacking at town hall meetings vs. the unemployed liberal.
Just go to one yourself and see for yourself.
I swear, do you ever get out? Are you living in your mother's basement and only see life through the internet?
What a ing loser you must be to demand everything be validated by a source.
I was listening to a California doctor on the radio yesterday. He indicated that he voted for Obama, but is against H.R.3200.
I guess he is part of fake mob too.
In other words your just spouting your opinion as if it is fact with nothing to back it up.
I've seen it first hand myself, several times. How do you link such a thing.
Will you ever stop being an idiot?
http://www.globegazette.com/articles...c982362937.txtBush brings reform plan to Iowans
CEDAR RAPIDS (AP) ? President Bush held a town hall meeting in this eastern Iowa city on Wednesday to advance his campaign for Social Security reform, saying he would be stubborn in sticking to his plan.
Bush said changes are needed for younger workers to have a retirement system in place.
"Social Security has worked for a lot of people," the president said. "The problem is there's a hole in the safety net for the generation that is coming up."
Bush delivered his message to a carefully screened crowd of about 1,000 people at Kirkwood Community College. He also spoke live on two of the state's largest radio stations.
The president has made Social Security his top domestic priority and said his message is beginning to resonate.
"People are beginning to hear our message, that we have a problem," Bush said. "This issue is beginning to permeate."
According to Social Security trustees, the system will be paying out more than it takes in by 2017 and could go broke by 2041.
"You've got more people getting greater benefits and living longer, with fewer people paying into the system. That doesn't work," Bush said.
The president is calling on Congress to act now to resolve future funding problems. He told the crowd in Cedar Rapids that he was inviting all ideas to the table.
"The longer we wait, the harder it's going to be for younger workers to make up the difference," he said.
Bush was accompanied by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who heads the influential Senate Finance Committee.
"The president and I are like a builder and an architect," Grassley said. "We agree on a blueprint."
Grassley has said that the ability of Congress to approve revisions to the Social Security system depends on Bush's ability to persuade voters that changes are needed.
The veteran Iowa senator has said delaying action even for a year would cost $600 billion.
"We've got to turn up the heat on Washington, D.C., to see this as an issue," Grassley said. "Doing nothing is not an option."
Also attending the events were Reps. Jim Nussle and Jim Leach, both R-Iowa, who have yet to stake out positions on Social Security reform.
With that in mind, True Majority Action, a nonprofit group opposed to the president's plan, began running radio spots in Iowa on Wednesday.
"This makes it easy for Iowans to tell their Congress members not to risk privatizing Social Security," said Duane Peterson, a spokesman for the group.
As part of the revision, Bush wants to allow workers younger than 55 to divert part of their Social Security taxes, up to 4 percent, to private investment accounts, such as stocks, bonds or mutual funds.
At the forum, Bush brought along friendly backers from all generations to urge him on. They included a farmer from near Pella, a nurse from Cedar Rapids and a 20-year-old Kirkwood student from Marion.
Jeff Brown, 36, a University of Illinois economics professor, said he has been studying Social Security for 10 years.
"Social Security faces very severe financial problems and they start pretty soon," Brown said.
Dennis Bogart, 33, who began farming with his father near Pella in 1995, said he favors personal retirement accounts because he wants greater control over this own money.
"I want that money to be available to my son and daughter," he said.
He said he has little faith that Social Security in its current form will survive.
Forum attendees were carefully selected. Only those given tickets were allowed to attend and tickets were limited to Bush supporters known to organizers.
Critics were working to make their voices known as well. A small group of protesters was kept well away from Bush's event, but officials from AARP, the nation's largest group representing older Americans, held a news conference earlier in the day to announce results of a member survey.
Their poll showed 60 percent of AARP members oppose private accounts.
Bush, who will turn 62 when he leaves office in 2008, said those nearing retirement have a moral obligation to protect younger workers.
"People are beginning to understand that the promises made to my generation may not be kept for others," he said.
So much for the differences..
Do I need to find you 5 more? 10 more? How many to prove your an idiot?
Anywhere there is a crowd and the president, it is a screened audience. Town meetings with your congressman aren't so carefully screened.http://www.globegazette.com/articles...c982362937.txt
So much for the differences..
Do I need to find you 5 more? 10 more? How many to prove your an idiot?
You continue to show your ignorance. Do you ever think before posting?
Thanks, I will understand the subject matter; and also draw on personal experience and expertise with the subject, to, hopefully, make a relevant, reasonable point.
Quarantining dissent
How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech
James Bovard
Sunday, January 4, 2004
When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up "free speech zones" or "protest zones," where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.
When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."
The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.
The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.
Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a free-speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind."
At Neel's trial, police Detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free- speech area.
Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, 'Here's a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.' "
Pennsylvania District Judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida. A recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a Bush rally at Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators -- two of whom were grandmothers -- were arrested for holding up small handwritten protest signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters were arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They had refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from the entrance to the Dome."
One of the arrested protesters was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign, "War is good business. Invest your sons." The seven were charged with trespassing, "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct."
Police have repressed protesters during several Bush visits to the St. Louis area as well. When Bush visited on Jan. 22, 150 people carrying signs were shunted far away from the main action and effectively quarantined.
Denise Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri commented, "No one could see them from the street. In addition, the media were not allowed to talk to them. The police would not allow any media inside the protest area and wouldn't allow any of the protesters out of the protest zone to talk to the media."
When Bush stopped by a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains and her 5-year-old daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest area far from the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her crying daughter away in separate squad cars.
The Justice Department is now prosecuting Brett Bursey, who was arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign at a Bush visit to Columbia, S.C. Local police, acting under Secret Service orders, established a "free-speech zone" half a mile from where Bush would speak. Bursey was standing amid hundreds of people carrying signs praising the president. Police told Bursey to remove himself to the "free-speech zone."
Bursey refused and was arrested. Bursey said that he asked the police officer if "it was the content of my sign, and he said, 'Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign that's the problem.' " Bursey stated that he had already moved 200 yards from where Bush was supposed to speak. Bursey later complained, "The problem was, the restricted area kept moving. It was wherever I happened to be standing."
Bursey was charged with trespassing. Five months later, the charge was dropped because South Carolina law prohibits arresting people for trespassing on public property. But the Justice Department -- in the person of U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. -- quickly jumped in, charging Bursey with violating a rarely enforced federal law regarding "entering a restricted area around the president of the United States."
If convicted, Bursey faces a six-month trip up the river and a $5,000 fine. Federal Magistrate Bristow Marchant denied Bursey's request for a jury trial because his violation is categorized as a petty offense. Some observers believe that the feds are seeking to set a precedent in a conservative state such as South Carolina that could then be used against protesters nationwide.
Bursey's trial took place on Nov. 12 and 13. His lawyers sought the Secret Service do ents they believed would lay out the official policies on restricting critical speech at presidential visits. The Bush administration sought to block all access to the do ents, but Marchant ruled that the lawyers could have limited access.
Bursey sought to subpoena Attorney General John Ashcroft and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify. Bursey lawyer Lewis Pitts declared, "We intend to find out from Mr. Ashcroft why and how the decision to prosecute Mr. Bursey was reached." The magistrate refused, however, to enforce the subpoenas. Secret Service agent Holly Abel testified at the trial that Bursey was told to move to the "free-speech zone" but refused to cooperate.
The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters. Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio, "These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." Except for having their cons utional rights shredded.
The ACLU, along with several other organizations, is suing the Secret Service for what it charges is a pattern and practice of suppressing protesters at Bush events in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The ACLU's Witold Walczak said of the protesters, "The individuals we are talking about didn't pose a security threat; they posed a political threat."
The Secret Service is duty-bound to protect the president. But it is ludicrous to presume that would-be terrorists are lunkheaded enough to carry anti-Bush signs when carrying pro-Bush signs would give them much closer access. And even a policy of removing all people carrying signs -- as has happened in some demonstrations -- is pointless because potential attackers would simply avoid carrying signs. Assuming that terrorists are as unimaginative and predictable as the average federal bureaucrat is not a recipe for presidential longevity.
The Bush administration's anti-protester bias proved embarrassing for two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech, resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in free countries.
When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, "The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by George Bush and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can't be heard."
Demonstrators were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament building and prohibited from using any public address system in the area.
For Bush's recent visit to London, the White House demanded that British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of the city and impose a "virtual three-day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters," according to Britain's Evening Standard. But instead of a "free-speech zone," the Bush administration demanded an "exclusion zone" to protect Bush from protesters' messages.
Such unprecedented restrictions did not inhibit Bush from portraying himself as a champion of freedom during his visit. In a speech at Whitehall on Nov. 19, Bush hyped the "forward strategy of freedom" and declared, "We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings."
Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists. In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed dislike of at udes and decisions of the U.S. government." If police vigorously followed this advice, millions of Americans could be added to the official lists of suspected terrorists.
Protesters have claimed that police have assaulted them during demonstrations in New York, Washington and elsewhere.
One of the most violent government responses to an antiwar protest occurred when local police and the federally funded California Anti-Terrorism Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders at the Port of Oakland, injuring a number of people.
When the police attack sparked a geyser of media criticism, Mike van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center told the Oakland Tribune, "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."
Van Winkle justified classifying protesters as terrorists: "I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."
Such aggressive tactics become more ominous in the light of the Bush administration's advocacy, in its Patriot II draft legislation, of nullifying all judicial consent decrees restricting state and local police from spying on those groups who may oppose government policies.
On May 30, 2002, Ashcroft effectively abolished restrictions on FBI surveillance of Americans' everyday lives first imposed in 1976. One FBI internal newsletter encouraged FBI agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists "for plenty of reasons, chief of which it will enhance the paranoia endemic in such circles and will further service to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of the FBI's "belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of act which might be criminal," according to a Senate report.
On Nov. 23 news broke that the FBI is actively conducting surveillance of antiwar demonstrators, supposedly to "blunt potential violence by extremist elements," according to a Reuters interview with a federal law enforcement official.
Given the FBI's expansive definition of "potential violence" in the past, this is a net that could catch almost any group or individual who falls into official disfavor.
James Bovard is the author of "Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil." This article is adapted from one that appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of the American Conservative.
Your right Bush's WH handle protestors much differently..
And you can be sure the same thing happens with President Obama.Your right Bush's WH handle protestors much differently..
ah, so now the executive community organizer is objecting to people organizing. got it.
So, if I accept your premise that Obama = Bush - does that make it right?Your right Bush's WH handle protestors much differently..
Why, if anyone criticizes the President, do you feel that the criticism is unjustified if the previous President acted in the same way?
Whether or not the poster is a hypocrite is less important, IMO, than the actions of the POTUS - current OR past. You seem much more concerned with partisan oneupsmanship than actually debating what matters. You'd make a of a Congressman.
Obama’s Unscreened Town Hall Audience Is Clean Break From Bush’s Supporters-Only Public Events
Today, President Obama hosted a town hall meeting in Elkhart, IN — which faces the nation’s fastest-rising unemployment rate — to promote his recovery and reinvestment plan. As the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin notes, Obama traveled to relatively unfriendly territory: Obama lost the county to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 44 percent to 56 percent. Despite that fact, the White House did not screen its audience, who had the chance to ask the president questions:
In a dramatic contrast to former President Bush’s town-hall meetings — which were held almost exclusively in party strongholds, with tickets distributed primarily to supporters — it was first-come, first-served in Elkhart on Saturday [when tickets were distributed]. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained on Friday: “I’ve watched the President do town halls from 2004 through 2008, and the audience has never been hand-picked, and neither have the questions. And we’re not going to start any of that on Monday.”
What’s more, Obama invited two critics of his package along for the Air Force One ride to Indiana: Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who both voted against the bill.
The town hall is just the latest way Obama is signaling a clean break from George Bush, who aggressively screened his audience members, even requiring volunteer service or loyalty oaths before being allowed to attend his events. A few of the most notorious examples:
– In April 2005, Bush’s security detail threw out three people from an event in Colorado, citing a bumper sticker on their care that read “No More Blood For Oil.” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said that if there’s any evidence people might “disrupt the president,” they “have the right to exclude those people from those events.”
– In early 2005, North Dakota residents were refused entry to a Bush event after their names appeared on a “blacklist” of people banned from the event.
– In March 2005, people seeking tickets to a Social Security event were quizzed about their support of Bush and his Social Security plan ahead of time.
Bush even screened the assembled group of soldiers he would meet in Iraq during a 2003 Thanksgiving visit: Soldiers had to fill out a questionnaire asking whether they supported Bush.
Froomkin noted that Obama will travel to another lion’s den tomorrow, when he takes his road show to Fort Myers, FL, a county McCain won by an 11-point margin.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/09/...eak-from-bush/
Obama Addresses Economic Recovery During Stop in Indiana
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 1:43 PM
WAKARUSA, Ind., Aug. 5 -- President Obama arrived here Wednesday for a somewhat risky return trip to the RV capital of America, a struggling county where jobs are increasingly scarce and anger is rising.
Obama did not hold a town hall-style event here -- his format of choice -- but instead delivered a relatively short speech appraising the economic recovery and highlighting research grants that he believes will help begin changing the American auto industry.
There were no questions from the audience of manufacturing employees, which greeted the announcement of a $39 million federal stimulus grant for battery technology with applause.
"I believe our ability to . . . prosper as a nation depends on what happens to communities just like this one," Obama told the several hundred employees gathered inside the Elkhart County plant for the company Navistar, which will receive the grant.
"The battle for America's future will be fought and won in places like Elkhart," Obama said, listing more than half a dozen other industrial cities that he said were once "the backbone" of the American economy.
During his February visit to the area, Obama used a town hall forum to sell the public on what eventually became a $787 billion stimulus plan, which he said had worked to slow the nation's steep economic decline. A report released last week showed the gross domestic product shrinking 1 percent over the past quarter, less than some economists expected.
But as a bookend to that visit, this brief trip to the Navistar plant, which makes recreation vehicles, armored vehicles for the military and electric trucks, holds a measure of risk for the White House.
The unemployment rate in Elkhart County is roughly 16 percent, a sharp jump since Obama first visited it in May 2008. A year ago the unemployment rate was 6 percent.
Many here are angry and uncertain. Along the roads of the downtown here, people waved American flags and took pictures. Some held up signs, including ones saying, "Stop Socialism."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502374_pf.html
But he didn't take questions. Go figure.
No one needed to be questioned to yell like a dumbass.
Still no stats, WC? Go figure.
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