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In town hall meetings billed as opportunities for Americans to ask health care questions of an "open" and "transparent" administration, the White House may be selecting President Obama's own supporters to ask non-compromising questions. The White House insists that attendees are selected at random, but a closer look reveals many questioners range from Obama campaign donors and Organizing for America volunteers to single-payer health care lobbyists and Service Employees International Union members. Medicare backer and a 6th grader The blogosphere is still on fire with stories about possible "plants" at an Aug. 11 Portsmouth, N.H., health care town hall. An...

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...

A new coalition on Thursday is launching $12 million in television ads to support President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall. The new group, funded largely by the pharmaceutical industry, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd bedfellows: the American Medical Association, FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals, PhRMA and SEIU, the service employees’ union. The ads start airing at about 11 a.m. ET Thursday. The group is likely to be the biggest spender in support of health reform. The campaign will serve as...

Facing a barrage of questions Wednesday over the friendliness of the audience at President Obama's New Hampshire town hall meeting, the White House insisted that all questions were selected at random -- including one from an 11-year-old girl whose mother worked as an Obama organizer. Julia Hall of Malden, Mass., grabbed the microphone Tuesday during Obama's town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., and told the president she saw signs "outside saying mean things about reforming health care" as she walked into the building.

Public Discourse: The candidate who told his supporters "to argue with them and get in their face" now finds the shoe on the other foot. So they're taking names and encouraging you to turn in your neighbors.So this is hope and change — telling American citizens who in a democracy disagree with you that they are mind-numbed robots participating in mob action and expressing "manufactured" outrage. Considering that upward of 80% of those hooligans like their doctors, like their insurance and like their care, anger over your government-run health care was not that hard to assemble. It was not that...

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure Discourse: At a town hall last week in Dallas, an elderly "mob" with "manufactured" outrage questioned AARP's support for nationalized health care, asking: "Do you work for us or do we work for you?"There were no swastika-wearing grannies at Tuesday's meeting, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might claim. Nor were they "taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor-mongers . . . and insurance rackets," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said. But they were mad as hell at the perception that AARP was selling them out in the...

The President's Town hall in New Hampshire turned out to be is a staged play (theater of the absurd), Tickets were given to a pre-screened audience As usual for such events, the White House controlled the distribution of the free tickets to get into the gym at Portsmouth High School. And, per usual, the Secret Service will take care of any unruliness. Any doubt about the event being staged was erased by this banter between the President and the crowd: THE PRESIDENT:That's what we need to do right now. And I need your help. If you want a health care...

Since at least May, this newspaper has received suspiciously uniform letters to the editor expressing support for Democratic health care reform plans. The letters come in the same format, use the same talking points and often contain the exact same language. We have found that they came (and are still coming) from Organizing for America. That's President Obama's own campaign organization. Its Web site is www.barackobama.com. That's interesting because last week White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed thousands of Americans who have protested against Democratic health care plans. He said these citizens displayed "manufactured anger," and he warned of...

Republican strategists and their media rabble-rousers cleverly thought they could dispatch their shock troops this month and kill health reform once and for all. Instead, they're on the verge of generating what they've been desperate to avoid -- an urgent, national, rational conversation on how to make the health-care system fairer and more affordable. To be sure, many details of health reform are still to be ironed out. But in the end, what is likely to emerge from this conversation is a health system that looks more like what President Obama has in mind than what Republicans have been peddling...

As we always like to point out: There are no coincidences in Obama world. Via the Boston Globe: Surprise! A girl from Malden asked President Obama a question at Tuesday’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire about the signs outside “saying mean things” about his health care proposal. Eleven-year-old Julia Hall asked: “How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can — that help more of us?” The question opened the door for the president to respond to what he called an “underlying fear” among the public “that people somehow won’t get...

<p>President Obama should be charged with false advertising for calling yesterday's Portsmouth, N.H., event a "town-hall meeting." It was a staged, partisan campaign rally.</p> <p>The Portsmouth rally was the first of three such events planned for this week. If nothing else, it was well-choreographed, if not completely scripted.</p>

President Obama to pitch health care reform plan during town hall-style forum in New Hampshire Hours before Obama was to arrive at Portsmouth High School Tuesday afternoon, the road leading to the event site was lined with people - about 100 supporters of Obama's health care overhaul on one side and about half as many opponents on the other. "I'm here because I'm an American, I believe in free speech and I'm scared to death," said Barbara Taylor, 65, of Exeter, N.H. She arrived at 7:30 a.m. and was soaking wet from a severe downpour earlier in the morning. The...

President Obama took the stage in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday in the hopes of turning around a health care debate that has spun out of Democrats' comfort zone.President Obama took the stage in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday in the hopes of turning around a health care debate that has spun out of Democrats' comfort zone. But inside the high school where the town hall-style event was held, questions sidestepped the sharpest criticisms of the president's health reform plans. Emotions were calm next to the heated exchanges at town hall sessions in other cities, or even outside the school, and Obama seemed to...

Thanks to the fine folks over at AR15.com! http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=911911

Obama Hopes for "Civilized" Town Hall Posted by Alex Sundby President Obama heads to Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday for a town-hall meeting on the health-care legislation still pending in Congress. Protesters plan to voice their opposition for the Democrats' plan outside the meeting and could possibly bring the kinds of disruptions found at similar meetings for members of Congress inside the gym at Portsmouth High School. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told CBS' "The Early Show" Anchor Harry Smith Tuesday how Mr. Obama would respond should anyone disrupt this afternoon's town hall. "I think what the president will do is...

Braced for a fight he never got, President Barack Obama went on the offensive in support of his health care plan Tuesday, urging a town hall audience not to listen to those who seek to "scare and mislead the American people." "For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing," Obama told a friendly crowd of about 1,800 in a high school auditorium and a nationwide audience watching on cable television. The White House had been ready for an unruly reception from opponents of overhauling health care. There was no sign of...

Obama to Critics: Health Reform Not About Government Takeover President Obama used a boisterous town hall in New Hampshire to address concerns and objections expressed by opponents of his health care plan August 11, 2009 Doctors and patients will be in charge of health care, not government or insurance companies, President Obama told a mostly friendly town hall meeting on Tuesday, his first since lawmakers ventured out across the country to get feedback on a trillion-dollar, 10-year health care proposal. Obama rallied support in Portsmouth, N.H as lawmakers confronted hostile audiences at forums across the country. In fact, the president's...

A comprehensive list of National, Regional, State Based, and Local Organizations promoting Obamacare at link http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/content/who_we_are/

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the White House have called opposition to Democratic health care plans "Astroturf," while organizing their own "authentic" pro-Obamacare rallies at the same time. But there's one important question I have, checking out these protest photos from Denver, taken by Looking at the Left (link via Holy Coast). If opponents of Obamacare are Astroturf, then how come all of their signs are homemade, with all sorts of different shapes and sizes and colors and stuff... And how come all of the pro-Obamacare demonstrators have official-looking and uniform, pre-printed, signs?

So I received an email/comment this morning about a craigslist ad soliciting health care activism for money. “Activism for money,” I thought!! Was this it at last? The missing link Democrats have been searching for? Obamacare opponents turning up at town halls really are a mob? We really are nothing but a slew of paid hacks drummed up by the promise of easy cash by cynical Obamacare opponents to create an artificial appearance of opposition?!? Ummmm, no.