The National Disgrace Of The Whole "Mob" Thing

like President Obama's quite decision to deal away
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Um quiet? And if you read Swampland it's been anything but.
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That you and Halperin play this all for laughs a) says so much about you and b) may come back to haunt you.
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KT told me 3 days ago she is "working on" a story on this topic. I trust she didn't lay it off on you and this.

Good lord! it took Halperin three tries to reach phony equivalency! He must be having an off-day.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
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Republican Vice Presidential in 2008 today.
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Keep playing this for a joke MS.
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“I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights,” the caller says. “That, or you all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment.”
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Caller to SEIU
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http://twitter.com/ScottEO
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Ha Ha Ha

All sides are equally bad.
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Think of the children!
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Democrats are reacting to mobs not allowing people to discuss anything. That makes them just as guilty. Let's get Joe Lieberman and John McCain on the tube to get both perspectives on this issue.
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Just shoot me.

Oh Sarah Palin just said on her Facebook page that Obama's "Death Panel" was going to decide to execute her baby Trig for having Down Syndrome.
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Hurry Michael, find a milquetoast thing a democrat said, and call it evenly bad!

MS: Halperin is a lost cause. Try not to be as willfully obtuse as he is.
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Case in point, Halperin's #8: "The abject weaknesses of the Republican Party and the conservative movement (in general and on health care) are on display in the reaction of their "leaders" to the mobs."
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The leaders of the GOP are not "reacting" to the mobs. They are inciting them. If you have any question about this, do us all a favor and pick up the phone and call Dick Armey. Time obviously cared enough about Armey's political views to use him as a Swampland contributor. Why don't you ASK him why he is paying for and organizing a movement that Halperin considers to be a display of the "abject weakness of the Republican Party and the conservative movement."

"10. We have met the Freak Show, and it is us."

Wow. Halperin has his blind squirrel moment.

Another empty headed post from you ,actuallly bordering on irresponsiblilty ,, it is the right -wingers who are burning people in effigy and much worse. I am not aware of any similar acts by the other side.
As for Smiirking Marky , as far as he is concerned everything Obama does is wrong. I remember during the campaign that during one of McCain's biggest gaffe weeks , he awarded the week to Mc Cain

Your false equivalence is just appalling, Scherer. You are dangerously out of touch with reality. These rightwing extremists are getting dangerous, they are being urged to arm themselves for these Town Hall meetings and whipped up into frenzies with this kind of talk:

Palin: Obama's "Death Panel" Could Kill My Down Syndrome Baby

"Adolf Hitler issued six million end of life orders--he called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours," a spokesman for the Patients First bus tour, fighting healthcare reform.

How, in any stretch of the imagination, is that equivalent to SEIU members attending the same town hall meetings. Have you seen ANY videos of them disrupting, screaming, pushing and shouting down speakers by any union people? No? I thought not. So stop with the false equivalence.

Michael, thanks for your frustrated honesty. Are other readers here winning you over to the Dark Side (or wearing you down)? Whether it's noise / distraction or quite / quiet, TV “media” coverage is getting worse. With your #11 point to Halperin's list, I'd add #12: “To those who pay for faux-outraged protesters to disrupt events, buy an ad (or a room). Instead, corporate TV is giving them free advertising.” I challenge H's point #6 (debating mobs as real grass or Astroturf) because there is no debate…http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/04/how-come-cbs-journalists-cant-recognize-paid-lobbyists-when-they-see-them/ …(only one example, lots of others)

My town hall is at the end of the month.
Things will either escalate or deescalate over the next couple of weeks.
I honestly have no idea which way it will go.
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Either way it should be good for some giggles at TIME.

Let me just say I'm blessedly free of such ambient distraction.

But is it irrelevant MS? After Rush Limbaugh, the GOP's moral conscience, compared Obama to Hitler and Pelosi to a nazi leader.

But I agree that it's a major element in a perfect storm of distraction and ... triangulation. The GOP is mad-dog crazy, progressives are, as always, irrelevant to our media discourse, and meanwhile the estab. center is winning the day. Color me shocked. Of course, superior print media has no responsibility for this state of affairs. Rest easy, have a cocktail.

You who have written about such trivialities as Hillary can dance, want to be the one who decides what is a distraction? He who is without judgement should STFU.
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No doubt, this is exactly what I would expect from MS, acting as if he isn't also suffering from the summer no news slide. In his pretentious I am above it all style, when we all know all he did this for was to provoke our anger and hopefully drive up his numbers. Hillary can't dance did do so well.

The Rage of the Right - By Andrew Sullivan - plus a video

What's fascinating to me is not just the blind fury of the people - it is much more than anger, it is close to explosive - but the bizarre points they are making. One man insists that when the new proposals come into force, his son with cerebral palsy will be denied all care. He is close to murderously adamant about this. But under what interpretation of any of the bills would that be true? ....

Look: if these people were yelling: "End the employer tax break!" or "More Cost-Controls!" or "Malpractice Reform!" I'd be more sympathetic. But this is blind panic and rage.

While SEIU and the pro-health reform side are all "Public option! Public option!"

This is equivalent how, Michael?

oh hey what a surprise Scherer is unable to detect any qualititative difference between astroturf wingnuts and union members

Michael, any chance of TIME saving its biz model by adding a cable channel? If we can survive MSNBC / CNBC and Lifetime / Lifetime Movie Network, CNN can survive TIME TV. Think of the face time for you, Karen, Joe, Jay…and Amy! …and a fresh chance to directly combat the MSNBC / Fox Noise. Please do NOT subscribe to the Tweety / CNBC “if you can't beat ‘em shout over ‘em ‘till they go away” approach. However, we'd need a better slogan than TIME TV: We Don't Suck As Bad As Fox[tm]. As for me, I watch Spike.

Riiiiight. Those angry mobs don't really exist. Nobody is disrupting any town halls or hanging anyone in effigy.

The only people comparing Obama to Hitler are total fringe cases like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Shame on MSNBC for giving these people a media platform!

If it wasn't for MSNBC, we'd all be like, Sarah who? Rush who?

Dee, to respond to your your last comment on KT's PhRMA post. I know it must be a burden, explaining the facts of life to those you deem naive purity trolls. Your veteran, cold-eyed realism, bred of your proximity to the hallowed walls of power, your "working in this town long enough" sctick, trust that it's a jolt to us armchair pundits.

Other than uni, I lived in the DC area until I was 24, I spent 3 years working on the hill (3 members of congress, both sides of the aisle). What I discerned long before I opted out of that career track is that they're nearly all parasites, feeding on American suffering and the myriad impasses plaguing our "exceptional" nation.

Of course, Obama is not a progressive. We didn't vote for him b/c he's Dennis Kucinich, we voted for him b/c he was the only means of ending GOP misrule. But the notion that those of us who are left of the Obama center should STFU or roll over while he sells out American interests is absurd.

Violent mobs being used to represent the entire opposition in 3...2....1....

The thing Scherer evidently forgot to leave out is that when he turned to FoxNews they were by in large making sh*t up, when he turned to MSNBC they were at least relying on the facts. And what makes it worse is that FoxNews is homogenous all day and all night. MSNBC has a right winger on for 3 hrs in the morning, A free markerter for 2 more hours right after, a guy who claims to be a liberal but also brags about voting for Republicans like Michael Steele, and CNBC right wing hacks guest hosting during the day several times a week.

But you and Halperin keep giving each other reach arounds Scherer, I am sure somebody out there is buying it. And when you lose this gig you can always write for National Review.

"Fair and Balanced".

Yep, everyone's equally at fault here. Because calling out corporate organizers busing people in across state lines for these 'grassroots' protests is equal to people calling for GUNS at the protests and insisting that the gov't will KILL YOUR GRANDPARENTS over the misinterpretation of an amendment a REPUBLICAN OFFERED.

Sorry, MS...this is just worthless and the fact that you cite Halperin praisingly is even worse.

Dicks aside, fair enough Dee. It's simply too exhausting to wage the same center-left battles ad infinitum. You know where folks like me stand and vice versa. At the end of the day, and I can be no more genuine here, I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I'll be the first to admit it. Where we agree is the obvious: MSM and the rightists are significant obstacles to change. Where we differ is how accountable dems are, and not merely the blue dogs or clearly bought and paid for (e.g. Baucus). You have more faith in the party and our leaders--I feel that they need to re-earn that faith and trust the day after they take office.

That said, Michael Scherer, when you say this:

"Meanwhile, the substance of any policy discussion--like President Obama's quiet decision to deal away Medicare bargaining power for prescription drugs--is lost."

But it's not lost in your John Hughes (love him, posted the same link yesterday before you), dancing Hillary, poll # b-s, scary piggy flu post-a-thon today?

Nah, not a wee bit? And the nutters at the town halls are to be ignored? Are they even marginally distinct from the aforementioned Limburger, or what KT just illustrated re: the former VP candidate from the grand ol' party (i.e. the least articulate governor in US history). Karen seems to feel that is it relevent--how would you respond to her?

The larger debate is getting beyond a center-left thing.
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It's getting into a "Katrina of health care reform" competence thing.
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It's getting closer and closer to the point where Obama will either have to veto the worst health insurance reform legislation this side of what the Republicans could come up with by themselves, or sign this abortion into law, and own it three years from now when tens and tens of millions of Americans hate him worse than they hated Jimmy Carter in 1979...while Max Baucus gets re-elected for another term in the great state of Montana (population 900,000 and change).

Wow. I thought we'd have to wait for Broder's Sunday column to get the "both sides are equally to blame" crap.

This is really pathetic, Mr. Scherer.

I'm all for the crazy games of politics and understand most of the insults flying between the two ideological teams mean nothing, but the stuff blowing up over health care is scaring me. REALLY scaring me.

Wonder when the right-wing fringe will feel like they can stop. When Obama is dead?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

What amazes me is the length of time it took this blog to even acknowledge the mobs. AS much as I despise the talking heads they have been all over this. Its almost if Swampland was waiting for something. It does not take much guts to be behind cycle here. some times it pays to be a head of it.