If you haven’t already heard the news about Obama’s townhall yesterday and his assertion that he doesn’t want anyone thinking he has a bunch of plants in the audience:
But then cute little Julia stands up…..awwww, how cute. Ain’t she darling?
She asked a question about those big meanies who say mean things about ObamaCare and how do kids know what to believe which of course allowed Obama to seguewa to the fearmongering.
But:
Julia’s mother was an early Obama supporter in Massachusetts during the presidential election, so she had previously met First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obama daughters Sasha and Malia, and Vice President Joe Biden.
“This was my first time meeting Barack Obama, and he’s a very nice man,” Julia said. “I’m glad I voted for him.”
She said Obama won a mock presidential election at the Cheverus School in 2008. And on Tuesday, he approached her after the town meeting.
“He said ‘great question,’” Julia said. “I shook his hand and got his picture.”
And the mom’s facebook was found:
Kathleen Manning Hall, the kids mom, has donated thousands of dollars to Obama ALONG with her law firm. Check out her facebook friends: (h/t AR15.com)
- Martha Coakley, (Democrat) Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- Adam Parkhomenko, former aide to Hillary Clinton, Democrat running for VA House of Delegates (who has the support of the Brady Campaign, President Clinton and Wes Clark)
- Addisu Demissie, National Political Director of Organizing for America and former Ohio Get out The Vote director of Obama for America
- Adrienne Elrod, Chief of Staff to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)
- Alan Rosenblatt, Associate Director for Online Advocacy at the Center for American Progress (and HuffPost blogger)
- Alayna Van Tassel, Budget and Policy Director for MA Senator Pat Jehlen
Check out this ad for a speech:
Aug 12 (Tues)
Boston Roof Deck Reception with David Cutler and Carol Fulp
Dorothy Keville and Kathleen Manning Hall invite you to join them on Dorothy’s roof deck overlooking Boston Harbor, to meet and hear from:David Cutler, Harvard professor and key advisor to the Obama campaign on health care policy matters; and Carol Fulp, Chair, MA Women for Obama.
Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Suggested Contribution: $100/$150
For more information or to RSVP contact nefinance @ barackobama.com
Hmmmmm, no plant there eh?
The fact of the matter is the daughter of a Democrat insider who has met and been pictured with Obama asked a question from a pre-written note.
Pure baloney.
Then there is the first person to ask a question, Mr. Peter Schmidt, or better known as:
Representative Peter B. Schmidt (NH), Democrat.
So first question is from a State Democrat Representative. Second from the child of a Democrat insider. A few more pro ObamaCare questions and bam….he has a easy cakewalk of a townhall meeting.
Or as Michelle Malkin calls it, Kabuki theater:
Here’s your illustrated guide to Obamacare human props.
In July, Obama hosted a White House citizen town hall that featured three face-to-face questions. The lucky three?
*Debby Smith. You remember her. She choked back tears as she talked of her battle with kidney cancer, her joblessness, and her lack of insurance. Obama hugged the trembling woman and dubbed her “Exhibit A” for his massive entitlement program.
Debby Smith, however, is no ordinary patient. While she may be “unemployed,” she has been rather busy working for the Obama campaign – as a volunteer for the DNC’s Organizing for America. Smith also identified herself as a worker for the Virginia Organizing Project, which has been coordinating lobbying trips and health care forums with HCAN. Yes, that same HCAN. In December, Smith moderated a “a community discussion on health care issues” in Appalachia, Virginia and told her local paper that the meeting “would be reported back to former Sen. Tom Daschle, who has been directed by President Elect Barack Obama to form a committee to report on health care issues.”
*Jason Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum works for the Washington, D.C.-based Health Care for America Now (HCAN). That’s the K Street Astroturf outfit with a $40 million budget to lobby for government-run health care linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros. And yes, the same HCAN directing its mob to “drown out” opponents at town hall meetings.
*SEIU member. Yes, wonder of wonders, this randomly chosen questioner just happened to be a member of the Purple Shirt Army that poured $80 million in independent expenditures into Democrat coffers, made 4.4 million phone calls for Obama, sent out more than 2.5 million Obama mailings during the 2008 campaign, and dispatched thugs to drown out town hall protesters.
Here’s how the tough exchange went down:
Q Hi, Mr. President. I’m a member of SEIU and I’m down here in Fairfax County working on Change That Works. What can I do, as a member of the union, to help you with your reform bill?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate the question..
Of course he did.
She has much more at her post.
Oh, and that standing ovation at the end of the townhall meeting?
Priceless!
He must of been sweating hard from all those “non-plants.”
Sigh…..
Meanwhile the USA Today had a few problems with some of the answers Obama gave. Ed Morrissey picks it apart:
They leave out the biggest whopper, which is Obama’s claim that he has never favored single-payer health-care systems, but they do catch a couple of other big fibs, including Obama’s snow job on AARP endorsement. One of the best catches from USA Today concerns Medicare Advantage, about which Obama has lied for over two years:
“Insurance companies basically get $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that Medicare already provides.”
About 10.2 million Medicare recipients are in Medicare Advantage. Under that program, the government pays insurers a set amount per Medicare beneficiary. Obama ridiculed it as costly and redundant, but the plan provides additional benefits, such as vision, dental and hearing, to seniors and helps coordinate health care for those with chronic conditions, says Robert Zirkelbach at the trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans.
In fact, Medicare Advantage is a Godsend for those trapped within the Medicare system. Recipients pay substantial monthly premiums, but the plan allows for better provider payments, which keep providers from locking patients out of their clinics. The extended insurance provides coverage for services which Medicare ignores, and some create a co-payment system rather than the 60/40 system Medicare gives seniors and the disabled in practice.
How do I know this? The First Mate has Medicare Advantage, and we saw what Medicare did before we got the supplemental coverage. It’s a disaster for anyone needing anything more than just maintenance care.
Next:
“Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
Not necessarily. In an analysis of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million workers could lose employer-provided benefits and would have to find other insurance.
Some analyses put that number much higher — as high as 83 million. Obama insists on making this argument despite all evidence to the contrary, especially since businesses control insurance options for most people in the US. If Obama makes it attractive for businesses to dump their employees into a public plan, then most people won’t be able to keep their existing plans. And thanks to ObamaCare, they won’t have many options to find private insurance, either.
“The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels’ that will basically pull the plug on Grandma. … (T)he intention. .. was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. … (O)ne of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican … (Sen.) Johnny Isakson from Georgia.”
Isakson issued a press release saying Obama misused his name. A provision he attached to a Senate health care bill would allow seniors to obtain help in formulating a living will something Isakson said is different from House language. The House bill would require Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling sessions, but it would not mandate that anyone use the benefit.
The media had a field day with this yesterday, using Isakson as a bat with which beat conservative critics, but it never occurred to the layers of fact-checkers and editors that a Senator would have had nothing to do with a clause in a House bill. In fact, Isakson does support making end-of-life planning available, but doesn’t support the mandate for it that exists in Section 1233 of the House bill.
Lies? Let me count the ways. Seems to me there were many more lies:
No plants in my “town hall” meeting…..check
AARP endorsement….check
I’ve never said I’m for single payer…..check
You can keep your doctor…..check
The evil insurance companies get taxpayer money for services already rendered by Medicare….check
This will cut costs and save the economy…..check
And he wonders why people are upset.
See author page
LOL, potted plants one and all.
You would think his political advisors would know he couldn’t get away with this stacked deck.
But of course he got away with it. The Perception Management template is firmly in place. People who get their “nooze” only from the lamestream media will get only what the “Editorial Staff” allows them to see and hear. However, blogs such as this do inform people who do care, are not under the spell of the media manipulations, and in turn provides ammunition for “Water Cooler” debates to disarm Obamacare® supporters.
These items of PR/Perception Management are effective to the degree that too many people still trust what they see on the “telly” and read in the “Noozepapers”. Neither of which is in the business of news or of telling the full truth and nothing but the truth. Of course that some people are catching on is evidenced by their declining viewership and circulation.
The spin continues 24/7 and there are some very well heeled supporters of Obamacare®, such as the large pharmaceutical concerns, because they stand to make a “killing” off of Obamacare®. Big Pharma luvs Obamacare® because it would institutionalize the use of their products and exclude any lower cost natural alternatives.
When you have to try to convince people that your crowd isn’t fake,you’ve lost the battle.In the age of the infomercial people have become very adept at spotting a staged event that tries to pass itself off as spontaneous.
How about some video of ObamaCare supporters being brought in by bus.
Another clue at the Town Hall Meetings that the left and SEIU are busing shills to these meetings is the signs they carry. We unwashed masses of the MOB make our own signs and most are quite inventive and some are quite funny. The SEIU and ACORN crowd mostly carry professionally printed signs. Some are illegal aliens who’ve been paid to demonstrate, such as in Denver, when Pelosi visited and they don’t even understand what’s in the signs (no hablo ingles)
GOE NY – SEIU hires Illegal Aliens to do the Astroturfing Real Americans Won’t
The left and the State Sponsored Media have been claiming that the big turnouts at the Town Hall Meeting of opponents of Obamacare is an astroturf job of the Republicans, but anybody who’s been to one can tell you it’s the left and the SEIU that are guilty of astroturfing, it’s so obvious.
In my paper they have a photo of a crowd, all wearing pro-health care buttons and badges, carrying identical Reform Now signs.
The photo they included for the anti reformer is one man with a 9mm pistol strapped to his leg holding a sign that said “Time to water the tree of liberty. Apparently he was the only anti there and he had a gun.
Headline in my paper: To Friendly Crowd, Obama assails health-care foes.
Friendly indeed, hand picked questions, bussed in participants.
Perception management it tis.
I have Medicare Advantage through Kaiser in No. Calif. I am extremely happy with this plan. I pay a monthly fee to Kaiser as well as copays that range from a low of $10 on general prescriptions to $30 for an office visit. I get the same first quality care that I received when a Kaiser member sub 65. I also get dental, vision and hearing benefits although I don’t take advantage of all of them for various reasons. Were I to have a major event, say a heart attack or the like, I would be fully covered with the same copays. My parents, who are in their 90’s, have regular Medicare with a supplemental drug benefit due to my father’s employment in the pharm industry as a chemist. When they go to the doctor, and they do often, they get a whole load of unnecessary tests and treatments that are often not related to their complaints. This reflects the perverse incentives that Medicare offers to load up the services so as to increase the ultimate billing. The level of reimbursement to the docs is often less than my copays.
Obama says that no American that is happy with their plan will lose it, yet millions of us who enjoy Medicare Advantage will do just that. I strongly object to this massive intrusion into a system that work very well. Kaiser has a satisfaction rating among seniors of over 97%. I would like to find any government program other than a flat out free money giveaway that enjoys anything like that rating. Rate the DMV in any state, for example or the post office.
In Mass. Maine and Oregon, all of which have Obamacare like programs, the systems are breaking down. They are unable to deliver the promised services, they are hugely over budget, and there is no quantifiable improvement over what they displaced. This is all smoke and mirrors folks. We can do far better. Yes we can!!
AW Gee – the way to get all those pesky people to come to his way of thinking is thowing a little girl to the wolves. Nice going Mr. President. The mother of that little girl needs to have social services pay a visit for planting her daughter amongst all those horrible people who do not bow to the messiah. Was that girl there on her own? If so, how did she get there? Drive? Take the bus? Let’s face it; her mom used her in a horrible way. To suck up to an Unamerican Pig!! That is totally shameful! The mother should be ashamed of herself.
Every time a liberal proposes a new socialist (code word) program we hear it is for the children or our children’s future. Not a word from them regarding the heavy tax and fee burden they are going to impose on those children if this obama fiasco goes through.
Plants? In the audience?
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w222/RidesAPaleHorse/Obamination/obamaplants.jpg
Obamas “townhall” in NH.
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w222/RidesAPaleHorse/Obamination/obamatownhall.jpg
I don’t know who Obama and his planners think they are fooling. It was so obvious that this was just another staged for TV propaganda event, that a guest on FOX said that even her child happened to comment on the unusual difference between the people “outside” and and those “inside.”
We need to start calling the MSM by what it really is. The Democrat Propaganda Ministry.
It is not that the lamestream media is “The Democrat Propaganda Ministry” it is the Establishment Propaganda Ministry. The same kind of manipulations went on with Bush the Lesser in orofice. The thousands who turned out to oppose the aggressive war on Iraq were airbrushed and selectively filmed to create the illusion that there were fewer than the number actually present at the protests. As well there was little coverage of the police abuses in “crowd control” such as spraying pepper spray in the face of a father and his baby here locally where I live, Portland, Oregon, etc., ….
People need to get beyond the curtain and notice that the two halves of the one party talk a different game but govern the same.
In selling Obamacare®, just as in selling the Iraq War, the same types of manipulations are in use. Selective coverage, and omission of key data. Just as the media could never get to saying that Bush lied, they provide the same sort of coverage for the Obamessiah. The same sorts of camera angles are used, framing his head in a glow to create the subconscious association with a halo etc., … The media manipulation is not in favor of either party – it is in the interests of the small group of psychotic Plutocrats/Kleptocrats who are looting the country via the so-called bail out which has been supported on both sides of the aisle. Notice the manipulation with the Hegelian Dialectic – the Demoncrats propose a ghastly controlling Hellthcare Plan while the RepubliCONS propose Obamacare® lite – while rarely, if ever, questioning whether this should be a legitimate constitutional activity by the Feral Government.
It is not just that they are, both sides, lying but that the real issues are never addressed. Milton Friedman, in “Free To Choose” analyzed the high cost of Hellthcare correctly over twenty years ago. The problem is Government Intervention and Price Supports via supporting one group, the AMA, over others. In no other field than medicine are the standards for schools controlled by the group regulated other than in health care.
Healthcare is not an overnight problem, but is one that has been created over the last 40 years (actually longer if you go back to the 30’s and the enshrinement of the AMA as the controlling body).
A dog has four legs. Suppose you call his tail a leg? How many legs does he have.
Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. ~ Abraham Lincoln