Worcester County Freedom Trail

I know it’s still early, but these number are appalling for Governor Patrick. Christy Mihos is trouncing Patrick in the polls, and Charlie Baker, even though fairly unknown at this level, is running neck and neck with Patrick.

From the Boston Herald:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos, who held a 41-40 lead over Gov. Deval Patrick in June poll, leads Patrick 40-35 in the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of Bay State voters.

The poll showed Patrick leading Republican candidate Charlie Baker 40-39. Rasmussen later today will release new numbers on what Massachusetts voters think of their state health care reform plan.

According to Rasmussen, “the fact that the numbers are similar regardless of which Republican is mentioned suggests that the race for now is a referendum on the incumbent rather than a choice between competing alternatives.”

The phone survey of 500 likely voters was taken on Thursday, Aug. 20.

The Washington Post isn’t really known for dissing Democrat presidents (except for their very small number of conservative columnists). So when columnist Richard Cohen starts dissing President Obama, you know there’s trouble brewing. Heck, even WSJ columnist Peggie Noonan, who was practically kissing Obama’s feet during the election, is calling to pull the plug on Obamacare.

But I find Cohen’s article about Obama missing important teaching moments quite interesting. The President is good at making public speeches when he’s working off prepared text. He’s not so good at off the cuff remarks…or educating.

Thanks to Michael for pointing out this piece in the Washington Post:

Let’s go back to that “teachable moment.” It was proclaimed by Barack Obama after he said that police in Cambridge, Mass., had acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. for essentially being black in his own house. It has been a month now, and the one sure thing we have learned in this extended teachable moment is about Obama himself. He can’t teach.

This is clear when it comes to two of the major challenges confronting his administration: health-care reform and the war in Afghanistan. Both are losing popular support. Increasingly, Americans are becoming convinced that Afghanistan will cost lots of lives and that health-care reform will cost lots of money — and both will have paltry payoffs or none at all. Teacher, please explain.

Obama cannot — or, to be both fair and precise, he has not been able to. This is because of an insufficiency I have noted previously — his distinct coolness, an above-the-fray mien that does not communicate empathy.

More and more Obama is being likened to Lyndon Johnson, with Afghanistan becoming his Vietnam. Maybe. But the better analogy is to Jimmy Carter, particularly the president analyzed by James Fallows in a 1979 Atlantic magazine article, “The Passionless Presidency.” “The central idea of the Carter administration is Jimmy Carter himself,” Fallows wrote. And what is the central idea of the Obama presidency? It is change. And what is that? It is Obama himself.

Unlike Carter, Obama brims with energy and charm. His brilliance is not brittle but supple. Yet, another teachable moment is upon him and he seems lost. The country needs health-care reform and success in Afghanistan, and both efforts are going in the wrong direction. The message needs to be fixed, and so, with some tough introspection, does the man.

About 20 companies have pulled their advertising from the Glenn Beck TV show in the last few days, apparently because he postulated that President Obama a racist based on his inappropriate remarks about police action in the Robert Gates arrest last month.

What you might not know is why this is happening. The news media would have you think it’s all about Beck’s remark. In fact, what is happening is that the advertisers are caving due to pressure from a political action group called ColorofChange.org. From their site:

ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice. Our goal is to empower our members—Black Americans and our allies—to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone.

Using the Internet, we will enable our members to speak in unison, with an amplified political voice. We will keep them informed about the most pressing issues for Black people in America and give them ways to act. We will lobby elected representatives using email, the telephone, and face-to-face meetings. We’ll bring attention to the needs and concerns of Black folks by holding coordinated events in different parts of the country, running TV and print advertisements, and demanding that the news media cover our issues. We will also work with other groups—online efforts and other organizations that are doing related work—to magnify our impact.

What confuses me is that many public figures have postulated about Obama and his racial attitudes after years of listening to wild man Rev Jeremiah Wright. Why pick on Beck? Well, it’s a perfect storm for ColorofChange.org, which has been fairly invisible til now. Beck has the 3rd most popular show on Fox News, with over 2 million viewers. And Beck not only made the racism comment, but also picked on ColorofChange.org’s founder, Van Jones. This is an important tidbit because Jones is Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation. So ColorofChange.org couldn’t let that one slide. Thus the push to undermine support for Beck’s show.

Thus far, major companies like CVS, GEICO, and Wal-Mart have pulled their advertising from the Beck show and moved it to other time slots on Fox News.

Maybe we should organize a boycott of companies who overreact to community organizers?!?!?

Here’s a universal health care situation summary from State Committeewoman Cynthia Stead from the Cape. She’s nailed several key issues. Why don’t protestors from the Tea Party get the same free speech rights as Obamacare supporters from the unions? And why aren’t the people who are pitching this plan addressing crucial and fundamental issues like tort reform?

From the Cape Cod Times:

The Sunday “talking heads” had ceased talking and were nodding sagely. Evil Rush Limbaugh was having a sound bite played on Meet the Press, saying that Speaker Pelosi had a lot more in common with Hitler than people protesting at town hall health care rallies.

Obviously, he and his storm troops had gone around the bend and could be disregarded. Of course, they omitted the sound bite of Madam Speaker saying that the town hall protesters were brown-shirt Nazis carrying swastikas to the meetings — which is what prompted his remarks in the first place.

Last August, Speaker Pelosi was chiding the Chinese for not allowing sufficient dissent and free speech at the Olympic Games. This August, Speaker Pelosi is referring to domestic dissent and free speech as “un-American,” as she is “sure that our health plan can stand up to any questions,” just as long as they come from the Service Employees International Union. These Tea Party people aren’t real community, like ACORN or Democracy for America, who send out e-mails to attend town halls to support the president. These people cannot be genuine, or they’d agree with us.

The debate about national health insurance (we have health care, this is determining the insurance mechanism) has gotten ugly quick, as congressional Democrats seem unable to believe that the nation isn’t dying to have a European-style national health plan, or at least a government single-payer option.

The popularity of single payer has been liberal-received wisdom for so long that the idea that they might have to sell the unread 1,000-page bill is disconcerting to them. Many Massachusetts congressional representatives are holding “town hall” meetings, although there doesn’t seem to be any plans by U.S. Rep. William Delahunt to hold one. Doubtless he is still trying to recover from the trauma of the protests at his office by Cape Codders for Peace & Justice and Peter White, a local activist.

Congressional Democrats at these town hall meetings have been very top-down. For instance, in Georgia, Rep. David Scott had a meeting on a road project, and after the presentation opened the floor to general questions. A doctor stood up and asked questions about the health care bill. Scott blew up, ranting about his real constituents and these imported hijackers interrupting his meeting. The doctor was a constituent, who had been unable to get the congressman’s staff to respond to the questions he had, and so came to the meeting to ask. No apology was offered.

If we did have a town hall here, I’d ask two questions: First, much of the expense of medical care comes from “belt and suspenders” testing by doctors, who fear malpractice suits and awards, and practice defensive medicine. Every television commercial for sleazy lawyers offering cash incentives for people who have taken a medication or been exposed to a danger underscores how real the problem is.

But I haven’t heard anything about tort reform. Will lawyers be able to sue those on a government plan? Or will they only be able to sue those remaining on a plan with a commercial insurer? And hundreds of thousands of people work in the health insurance industry — mostly women, mostly moderate clerical salaries. They log claims, make disbursements, and so on. We moved heaven and earth to save the jobs of the United Auto Workers in Detroit — why are these health insurance workers of no concern? Or will they all just get government jobs?

It’s all too easy for humans to lie. We want to look good in front of our family and friends, or we don’t want to pass along bad news, or we like to tell stories. But we all know that lying is wrong. Yet there are some in this world who insist on lying in a very public forum. So we can add “stupid” on top of “liar.”

This is the case of an Obama campaign volunteer attending a recent universal health care town hall and pretending to be a doctor. Was it to raise her credibility or the town hall’s? Was she an Obama plant (because the town halls have definitely NOT been going the way he had hoped) or is she just stupid?

From Lone Star Times:

I was reading the Chron’s piece about Sheila Jackson Lee’s town hall, when something caught my eye:

“One supporter, Dr. Roxana Mayer, a physician who does not live in Jackson Lee’s district, praised the reform plan for overhauling a broken system.

“I don’t know what there is in the bill that creates such panic,” she said.

In this video, Mayer claims to be a general practitioner, eliciting applause and even a hug from Queen Sheila:

I’m not sure why, but something didn’t smell right. So my colleagues and I did a little digging, and wouldn’t you know it? Roxana Mayer is, like, totally not a doctor.

But she is an Obama campaign volunteer.

Our own David Jennings secured a phone interview, in which Mayer admitted to impersonating a physician, saying — get this — she thought it would help her credibility. (It didn’t.)

Apologies to my conservative Democratic friends, but I can’t resist. I have to post this, one of the greatest political lines in movie history. Thanks to Michael for the heads up.

From Bob Hope, in the movie “Ghost Breakers,” comes this classic…

Geoff: “When a person dies and is buried, it seems there’s certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life.”
Mary: “How horrible.”
Geoff: “It’s worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.”
Larry: “You mean like democrats?”

Congressman Niki Tsongas, 5th Congressional District Massachusetts, held her universal health care town hall yesterday. I’ll give her credit for that, given that many legislators are simply canceling because they don’t want to face their constituents. But it was painfully obvious that Tsongas wasn’t there to listen. She was there to deliver the party line and she flat out stated she had no intention of changing her mind.

Here’s a first-hand report from Dave Stephens, president of The Concord Forum:

Just returned from Niki Tsongas’ “Town Meeting” held in Chelmsford, MA, today, 8 August,  from 10 AM to !2 Noon.
 
The auditorium was packed, with people standing 2-3 deep around the walls.  A very rough estimate of attendance I would put at about 400-600 people. split about 20:80 Liberal:Conservative.  The median age of attendees would have been about 45-50 with both young and old fairly represented.
 
The format was an open, unmoderated meeting with Tsongas officiating.  Flyers and leaflets were in abundance and were being presented outside and inside the hall.  The Tsongas people had placed a slick package of pen and propaganda on each of the about 400 seats.  Tsongas opened with a 25 minute harangue and, under demand, opened the floor to questioners who were required to line up behind a central mike.  The center aisle was jammed almost instantly with, perhaps, 50-80 people of both persuasions.  For each minute of question, Tsongas took about equal time responding.  When time ran out, there were about 20 people still in line.  By 11:15AM the crowd had thinned significantly and by 12:00 about half remained.  Some left immediately when it became evident that the proceedings were intended to go one way, but were going quite another.
 
New England is the home of the genuine Town Meeting and this shindig was a pale shadow of the classic form.  The present form’s virtue was that there was no moderator gaveling down public expression of dissent or approval.  That strength had the flip side of allowing the audience to vocalize frequently and forcefully — mostly their dissent for Tsongas’ party line.  Commonly when “questioners” delivered themselves of public harangues (mostly those in favor of Obamacare) they tended to turn to the audience to declare themslves and were promptly chastened verbally by the crowd.  Most, however, directed their remarks toward Tsongas, who “listened” patiently (if sometimes flushed) before answering.  “Listening” is in quotation marks because, in response to one questioner, she made it clear that those opposed to her support of Obamacare were wasting their time talking to her, since she had no intention of changing her mind an iota.  She also strategically obfuscated when it served her purpose, as when she refused to answer a direct question of why she had voted to exempt herself, the Congress, the President and government employees from the provisions of the plan being foisted off on US citizens.  She frequently was booed for her half truths and overt lies, as well as her specious evasions and her empty assurances that all would be well with the Obamacare package.  Notably, the most voluble approvals, several accompanied with standing ovations, went to the critics of the plan and their direct challenges to her propaganda.  After the meeting, outside, there were observed some amicable by determined groups discussing the issues raised.  Contrary to some expectations, no union goons appeared on the scene, the police presence was clear and unobtrusive, and the supporters of Obamacare were on the defensive.
 
In all it was abundantly clear that, as well spoken as she is, Niki Tsongas was not there to serve the public or to listen to them.  Rather she was sold out to the Obamacare agenda and was putting on a show in a vain hope of getting converts.  People were encouraged to register at the door so they could be further put upon by her acolytes and campaign organizers.  Those who stayed to the bitter end, for the most part, just wanted to see how deeply she would dig herself into the Obama sandbox.  Their expectations were not disappointed.  It will be interesting to see how the covering press (TV, media reporters, photographers) will slant the event. 
 
Frankly, if I were Tsongas and were genuinely concerned about the opinion of my constituents, I wouldn’t sleep too well tonite.  It is one thing to keep people isolated from one another so that their interactions are minimized in favor of propagandizing them individually; but it is quite another when the dissidents find themselves in fine, educated and like company.  Five hundred glowing coals become five hundred firebrands when lied to and patronized as Tsongas indulged herself today.
 
There is a political wastebasket identified as “2010.”  It is time to start filling it with the likes of Niki Tsongas.

Don’t be surprised if your kindly Freedom Trail blogger gets snatched from her house in the middle of the night. I’ve now been reported to the White House heavies who are after anyone and everyone who disagrees with their spin on Obamacare. That’s right…they’ve issued a call for snitches.

The Fox News report on snitches is here.

This is from Political Byline (thanks for the heads up, Michael):

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Our post, Obamacare will provide government with easy access to company financials, has been reported! The words come directly from one of the bills. Let’s see how they spin this. Stay tuned…and watch your back!

UPDATE: Twitter has been down all morning. I wonder if someone reported the millions of people on there who are exposing the flaws in Obamacare. So maybe the FBI took the whole system down?!

It figures. We’re expected to manage our companies so that we can keep fueling Beacon Hill’s spendthrift ways. But the top dogs on Beacon Hill have no idea what’s going on financially. Apparently they only know how to spend. Beacon Hill Speaker DeLeo was dead wrong when it came to state revenue for July. The numbers are down and that’s before the tax hike took effect.

From The Capital View:

Speaker Bob DeLeo is backtracking today after making an incredibly inaccurate prediction on Fox 25’s Morning Show yesterday. DeLeo, discussing the repercussions of the sales tax increase said, “It’s my prediction that July may end up pretty good because of that, and we’ll see what happens in August.”

As if his overwhelming naiveté isn’t bad enough, later yesterday afternoon, the Department of Revenue announced that July’s revenue numbers weren’t only down but were even worse than predicted. In fact, according to DOR, July’s tax collections were $24 million below benchmark.

Congressmen Jim McGovern and Richard Neal held a town hall on Obamacare at UMass Medical School today. Try though they might, they could not get the crowd that overflowed two big rooms to buy in to the stuff they were shoveling about universal health care. What appalls me most is that they stood there in front of this crowd of as many as 200 and said with a straight face that the voters must be misinformed about their concerns. Excuse me? I’ve ben reading the bill as have many voters. Apparently they haven’t if they can’t answer simple questions from we the people.

The Worcester Telegram didn’t waste any time picking up the story. It was online within hours of the town hall:

U.S. Reps. James P. McGovern and Richard E. Neal were heckled and booed after trying to rally support today for President Barack Obama’s plan for a comprehensive national health insurance program.

The two Worcester-area Democratic lawmakers were shouted down several times by people attending a packed “town hall” meeting at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

UMass officials threatened several times to end the gathering because of the raucous behavior, which occurred despite a heavy police presence.

At one point, Mr. McGovern was likened by an attendee to Josef Mengele, the Nazi officer who performed experiments on concentration camp survivors.

Despite the generally hostile crowd, the two legislators insisted that a health care overhaul was desperately needed and that changes to the system would financially benefit all.

Most attending the meeting, however, disagreed — charging that the huge price tag for a new health care program would bankrupt the country.

They argued care options also would be limited and that life-sustaining support would be denied to senior citizens, points vehemently disputed by the two congressmen.

Mr. McGovern, who represents Worcester and other communities in the 3rd Congressional District, said after the meeting that health care reform opponents clearly managed to muster supporters to attend the meeting.

And in case you haven’t seen this, here’s President Obama supporting single payer, socialized medicine:

I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.