I have a couple of unemployed nephews that recently graduated from college. I’ll send them this list. The administration may not be fostering the creation of many private sector jobs, but there appears to be a very rosy future in astroturfing.

Cr…

Dems are the new Rebups, Obama is the new Bush and the party apologists never took off their partisan blinders.

Same as it ever was.

“Not sure what your point is MW…. It’s taken 30 years for the left to crawl down into the mud and learn from the conservatives and now you’re mad because they’ve wisened up?…This is what the right has been fostering for 30 years. You just don’t like it that the left has learned the lesson the right has been teaching.” – gerry

Just being responsive to the commentariat, gerry. I wouldn’t say I’m “mad” – more like – “amused”. If we agree that there is no difference in political tactics between Bush/Rove and Obama/Axelrod, that both bring an identical “end justifies the means” ethos to their political shenanigans, that both are willing to push every boundary of propriety in the service of their ideological agenda… that point is good enough.

I do think it is an open question of who is learning from whom in this “debate”:

* NW Progressive Institute, March 2005: “a boisterous crowd which frequently interrupted the discussion with shouts and hard nosed questions. … Democrats in the audience who were interrupting the panel…. the crowd erupted in anger… Democrats in the audience started shouting him down again.”

* Savannah Morning News, March 2005 : “By now, Jack Kingston is used to shouted questions, interruptions and boos. Republican congressmen expect such responses these days when they meet with constituents about President Bush’s proposal to overhaul Social Security.”

* USA Today, March 2005 : “Shaken by raucous protests at open “town hall”-style meetings last month … Santorum was among dozens of members of Congress who ran gantlets of demonstrators and shouted over hecklers at Social Security events last month. Many who showed up to protest were alerted by e-mails and bused in by anti-Bush organizations such as MoveOn.org and USAction, a liberal advocacy group. They came with prepared questions and instructions on how to confront lawmakers.”

H/T Henke

Rather than making any real arguments, the leadership on the right is shoveling disinformation at the base and counting on their ignorence to derail healthcare reform.

If that makes me a bad guy for thinking that people actually be informed before exercising their right to protest, than I guess I am a bad guy.

American is advanced citizenship, bub.

It’s taken 30 years for the left to crawl down into the mud and learn from the conservatives and now you’re mad because they’ve wisened up?

Healthcare reform is all about killing Death Panels ruling on the value of Sarah Palin’s baby? About killing senior citizens? About covering illegal aliens, but rationing healthcare for US citizens? About how inefficient government programs are so keep your hands of medicare? I could go on and on for hours about all the nonsense spewing from the conservative mouthpieces.

They have made every argument except the only real ones they have–that the current system generates a lot of money and benefits the wealthy the most. Gee, I wonder why they don’t make those arguments but prefer to get the base upset with nonsense instead?

I welcome any and all contributions to the healthcare debate, but so far the right isn’t making any contribution. This is a serious problem and it will require serious people to solve it.

I would prefer that the progressives not have to resort to anti-astroturfing. I would prefer that progressives not have to actually sully the argument by trying to tell a distraught father his son will be covered when he has been told over and over his son will not.

I am personally outraged the Obama administration is cutting backroom deals with Big Pharmaceuticals in order to drive a wedge between the special interest groups that support the worst aspects of the current healthcare system, but if that is the only way we are going to get something down, I guess I will have to live with it.

This is politics today. This is what the right has been fostering for 30 years. You just don’t like it that the left has learned the lesson the right has been teaching.

I had an ulterior motive for asking about this. On several of the healthcare threads people have wondered why us reformists are in such a hurry. Couldn’t we simply wait a little while to get a better deal?

IMO these incidents show that waiting won’t improve the program. There are a lot of people out there who will believe any misinformation they’re fed about health care reform, and a lot of very smart folks who are willing to feed them bad info.

Take that father n the clip mw linked to. He believes that us leftist, commie, give-everyone-stuff-for-free types would actually write a bill that gives his obviously disabled kid nothing. It’s entirely possible some idiot Congressman left that kid out of an initial proposal, but it’s virtually impossible to believe that kid wasn’t put back during mark-up. It is totally impossible to believe that that kid was left out of all six initial committee proposals, was not put back in any of the five proposals that have been passed, and would still be left out after conference committee.

Every day we wait is another day those dummies have to bitch and moan. Their bitching and moaning helps noone, because the problems they bitch about dob not exist. If they’d shut up long enough for their representatives to tell them what is actually happening that wouldn’t be a huge problem. But they don’t.

We just tried a modest (one-month) wait specifically so we could talk to people about the proposals. As a result it’s entirely possible that the proposal’ll die, and we’ll be stuck with the current system for another 15 years. Which means more costs and fewer covered.

In fact that one was pretty good from their point of view. Guy had a question, he asked it, and he got an answer. He was a bit of a dick when he asked (it wasn’t question time yet), and he bitched a lot when he didn’t like the answer (“It’s been amended. I don’t know the page off the top of my head, talk to my staff.”).

My preferred clip is this one:

Check out 4:30-5:00. The redhead really is that short, and she’s just trying to tell her story, but you can barely hear her for the booing. And a large man two feet from her insists on wagging his finger in her face.ediately if the Senate would vote for it.

I’ll have to agree that these folks aren’t astroturf. Misinformed, stubbornly refusing to become informed, and excessively rude yes. Astroturf? No.