UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who bore with us through our tech issues today for the live stream. We finally got it done.
The video stream of the taping is after the jump:
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There is new video (a CNN feed from 10 Connects) from last week’s shoving and shouting match at the door to a town hall on health care reform featuring Congresswoman Kathy Castor in Ybor City. (h/t to Pushing Rope)
By Tom Bortnyk
PoHo correspondent
“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” - Nancy Pelosi
Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights as American citizens. So, too, is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. These rights are the foundation for Western Civilization as we know it.
Why then, Madam Speaker, do these rights only apply to citizens who share your ideological views? It seems to be the very definition of irony and a text book example of hypocrisy. The political Left in the US has been working diligently to silence opposition, not only with the current health care debate, but in numerous instances in the past.
Pro-reform AARP has planned a town hall meeting for Wednesday afternoon in Lakeland, and the big question is: Will it feature the same kind of testiness, shouting, shoving and calamity that has befell other town halls, including one last week in Tampa’s Ybor City?
Organizers don’t think so. A Florida AARP spokesman told March on Politics that the organization has already held some of these town halls (part of a grassroots-TV ad blitz to support the president’s initiative) and while some got heated none reached the level of the Ybor event. UPDATE: Florida AARP spokesman Dave Bruns tells me this afternoon that while the AARP events have seen some “very pointed exchanges” (and, in Leesburg, one woman who came forward and dumped her cut-up AARP card in front of the speaker) that they have not seen the kind of disruptions that have plagued other town halls. “There’s been some backlash about what happened in Tampa,” Bruns said.
The town hall is on the radar screen of the Lakeland 9-12 Project, an offshoot of Fox host Glenn Beck’s right-wing fomenting. But RedCounty — a conservative blog that chronicles various counties across the nation, including Hillsborough — is urging civility:
From Kansascity.com comes the tale you just knew would happen — an injured anti-Obama Town Hall protester is taking up collections to pay for his medical care because he lost his job and has no insurance:
Backers of Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis, gathered Saturday at the offices of the Service Employees International Union for an event organized by the pro-limited government Tea Party coalition.
The group claims union members attacked the politically conservative Gladney at the event two days earlier. But members of the union, which supports the president’s health care plan, say Gladney initiated the fight.
The melee, which ended in six arrests, was one of several at town hall meetings around the country as Democratic lawmakers returning home faced resistance to proposals to reform the nation’s costly health care system. U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Missouri Democrat, organized the event in Mehlville.
Gladney’s attorney, David Brown, received cheers from the crowd of about 200 people when he read a statement written by his client.
“A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”
Brown told the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was laid off recently and has no health insurance.
You can watch video of the attorney speaking for Gladney at the rally after the jump:
The summer recess of Congress has sent politicians back home into their districts and straight into the guerilla theater that has overcome reasonable discussion about how to reform the nation’s broken health care system.
Witness: Hundreds of angry conservatives and anti-Obamacare people (a few violent) turned up at a town hall organized by state Rep. Betty Reed in Ybor City last night with one mission in mind — some with one mission in mind: disrupt the forum and get headlines.
They succeeded.
Driven by right-wing media nutz such as Rush Limbaugh (who mentioned Kathy Castor’ appearance at the forum during his Thursday radio show, bemoaning that she would be surrounded by “union goons”), the state and local GOP and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 movement, the anti-Obama crowd banged on windows and doors in an attempt to get into the overcrowded Children’s Board meeting room.
10 Connects reported:
As people were asked to leave, several screaming matches erupted between participants. One man’s shirt was even ripped open.
Mrs. Former Fort Myers Beach Town Manager
This week’s HoCast marks a revamp of my format. While I will continue to do long-form interviews with political figures as podcasts, the PoHo brand will feature a fairly regular cast and a quick, funny format that looks at the top political and media issues, the Quotable soundbite and the Political Whore of the Week.
Joining me are Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Creative Loafing Film & Television editor Joe Bardi.
Our topics this week:
1. The shameful Today Show coverage of the Obama health care newser
2. The firing of the town manager of Fort Myers Beach for marrying a porn actress (shown above)
3. The Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail flap
4. ESPN’s multi-problems with censorship (the Ben Rothlisberger story)
5. Mary Mulhern uses tax dollars to go to Cuba
This week’s PoHo Award nominees are:
New York stripper Christy Yamanaka, who was involved in the Judge Thomas Stringer scandal. He pleaded guilty this week to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a house the two bought in Hawaii.
And, via txt message from an anonymous politician, this nomination:
“The Jersey 44, that’s lookin’ like a real political gangbang! Even by Jersey’s standards.”
Listen to the HoCast after the jump to find out who won:
From St. Pete’s best known anti-tax neurosurgeon, Dr. David McKalip, comes this e-mail apology this morning for the Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail I chronicled late yesterday afternoon:
I have had a very hard day. When you stand up and fight effectively for freedom and to protect the rights of patients from control by the government and insurance companies – you develop powerful enemies. They have used the opportunity of a lapse in judgment to try to discredit me since they can’t discredit my arguments. I am proud of my accomplishments in this fight. I am more proud of the hundreds of thousands of Americans I have come to know who feel as I do and are willing to stand up for freedom. The next few days will be difficult, and I ask for your support.
DR. DAVID MCKALIP SENDS APOLOGY DIRECTLY TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
FRIDAY AM UPDATE: He’s apologized. And he then resigned as president-elect of the Pinellas Medical Association.
Talking Points Memo is breaking the story that well known local brain surgeon and anti-tax crusader David McKalip forwarded this photoshopped illustration of President Barack Obama to a Tea Party e-mail group:
TPMuckraker calls it the latest example of online anti-Obama racism on behalf of conservatives. And McKalip told TPMuckraker:
A few weeks ago I announced to my wife that I would not be watching The Today Show in the mornings any more. I just got fed up with its growing tabloid style and insistence on flogging non-stories to death. Like this week’s “exclusive” multi-day interview with Susan Boyle. Or the dude trying to get his kid back from Brazil who is interviewed at least twice a week. Or the latest family with a loved one attacked by a critter/rescued from a certain death/dying from a disease/etc.
But this morning, I broke my rule and paid the price for it. Meredith, Matt, Al and the rest of the formerly great NBC morning news show led the broadcast with this top story: Barack Obama had ruined his newser on health care last night by criticizing the wrongful arrest of prominent Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week.
ABC’s Good Morning America apparently did the same thing.
St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans noticed, too, writing this AM:
…[W]hy did the Today show — by far TV’s most-watched morning show — spend its first segment this morning discussing what the president said about the arrest of a black scholar in Cambridge, Mass.?
Here is how the “journalists” left at NBC played the president’s desperate attempt to pull out his health care victory on the website this AM:
Stuart Mellish Thinks the Republicans should get out of the way and let Obama fix this Country. You had your 8 years and you screwed it up. STEP ASIDE!
My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).
He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.
And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.
Check me out as I talk about the politics of health care reform today at 12:30 on Your Turn with Kathy Fountain on Fox 13.
Further reading from the .PDF Library:
white_house_forum_on_health_reform_report
