Reports here and here.
It was only a matter of time before demonstrations staged by town hall hooligans turned violent. Hours ago, a group of angry protestors clashed with healthcare reform supporters at the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County near Tampa, Florida. There were accounts of fistfights, minor injuries, and at least one handicapped woman knocked to the ground. It is time to investigate and indict those responsible for inciting mob violence … starting with Rick Scott, Dick Armey, Steve Forbes, and the other thugs at FreedomWorks.
Definitely long past time, but will it happen? These saboteurs are desperate, motivated and well funded. The rest of us aren't and the majority don't even know.
ReplyDeletePaul Krugman offers a good column on these mostly "angry white folk" showing up at the protests. (Friday Aug. 7th's HuffPo has the link. And here's a solid piece on Canadian and American health care.
ReplyDeleteBloggingdino, I just read the Paul Krugman column, and this statement caught my attention:
ReplyDelete"And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers."
... which is why I wrote the post immediately below (and re-wrote it again last night). In an earlier comment (can’t remember where at the moment), I stated:
“I think of how our culture pushes the boundaries of taste and decorum further into the wilderness, and wonder about the tipping point beyond which there is no return, like those who cross an abyss and sink forever into tyranny, the point where “the falcon can longer hear the falconer.”
Notice the allusion to Yeats’ The Second Coming in the Krugman article and in my comment above, suggesting we feel the same way about these acts of hooliganism. More than scary, democracy ended 9 years ago when the Florida recount got hijacked, and continues to get hijacked with every act of political terrorism.
I’m thinking of packing my bags …
I know what you mean. Reminds me a bit, at least in spirit, of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.
ReplyDeleteIt's so great that you guys see this for what it is. Why can't the media?
ReplyDeleteThey are hesitant to call out the thugs because they think that they will be acused of silencing them. They don't want to do the dirty work of calling these nuts out. They want the democats to do it so they can sit back and film the Xvs Y story.
Sure they are chickens but the key is to give them a story otherwise the right will give them the story.
The NYT this morning does an interesting job of pointing out the professional and outrageous nature of the protest, but one has to read pretty far down the page to get to it. I'm afraid that would exceed the attention span of the average reader.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile I'm still hearing the long since debunked story of how all those liberal reporters went up to Alaska in two planes to dig up dirt on Sarah the day she was selected.
No matter what it says in the Times, what's said on Fox is what matters and those people are traitors.
Palin is, alas, fueling the fires on all of this today . . .
ReplyDeleteI saw a "health care mobber" interviewed on CNN last night. She claimed that the reason she and others were acting as they were is because they weren't being heard.
Boggles the mind - don't it!? Campbell Brown - to her credit - leapt all over the woman's TOTAL lack of logic with respect to how the woman was going about getting the substance of her views heard and paid attention to.
Rachel Maddow has exposed many of the 750 people who were on the Republican payroll in 2000 when they physically stopped the Bush-Gore recount. Many have been in the "spontaneous" outbursts all over the country.
ReplyDelete(Say, isn't disturbing the peace something white people can get arrested for?)
I shouldn't have to mention that this is a Hitler tactic or that true to form, the more these Nazi bastards mimic their German forefathers, the more they accuse their victims of being Nazis.
This is only a hair's breadth from armed insurrection and close enough to treason to satisfy me.