Rep. Carnahan and the Gladney Incident: the secret press conference.

There is a reason why the United States of America is a democratic republic, and not an aristocratic republic. The first generation of a particular family may be politically able; may, in fact, be very able. The second generation of that family may likewise be politically able. Sometimes – sometimes, and mostly if the family name is Adams – even the third generation is politically able. But it is unwise to bet on that.

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D, MO-03) is of the third generation of a political family.  His last name is obviously not Adams – and does it ever show.

Continue reading Rep. Carnahan and the Gladney Incident: the secret press conference.

Get in their faces: Name of arrested Carnahan staffer Javonne Spitz?

[UPDATE] Welcome, Ace of Spades readers. I think that it could be salmon.

Here’s the video (via AoSHQ) of a woman arrested at yesterday’s Carnahan meltdown who claimed to be a Carnahan staffer:

And here’s the text from an article about the arrest:

His friend, Javonne Spitz, 51, of O’Fallon, Mo, said she doesn’t think she was interfering with anything.

[snip]

She said she came to the forum Thursday because “I wanted to see what it was all about.”

[snip]

At the forum, Spitz admits she was tossed out because she had been taking photographers of angry protesters as they tried to drown out the speakers.

[snip]

(Spitz was the woman in the salmon-colored shirt whose arrest was featured Friday in a video on stltoday.com).

[snip]

“These tea baggers are dangerous,” she said. “I’m not going to any more town hall meetings until these people calm down.”

Note that in the article the woman never brought up the Carnahan connection. So, lying either way.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The CNN ‘Second 100 days’ report card.

Found here, in all its unscientific and meaningless glory.  Oh, yes: its findings are completely invalid, from the C+ given to Secretary State Clinton to the D given to Congress (or that the D given to Republican leadership is nonetheless a higher D than the one given to Congress as a whole).  There’s nothing random about the process by which they got 300K folks to take the test in the first place; if any of the answers are right, it’s completely by accident.  All very, very true.

On the other hand – and speaking as an old-school blogger who remembers how often these kinds of polls got gleefully taken over by Lefty script kiddies – if the purpose of the poll was to answer the question How motivated is the Online Left these days? then the results may be worth looking over, after all.  Because they suggest that the answer appears to be, Apparently not all that much.

A tragedy.  Manipulating online polls so that the results came out congruent with their comforting fantasy ideology was always one of the Left-sphere’s more charming traits.  Or less not-charming, at least.

Moe Lane

Rasmussen: Plurality of Americans support town hall protesters.

The Democrats had best hope that this is not party-line thinking.

The results are 41% support / 35% don’t / 23% not sure, but the interesting thing here is the partisan breakdown:

Given the partisan anger prompted by the town hall meetings, it’s not surprising to see a similar divide in the survey. Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats have an unfavorable view of those opposing the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the leaders of their party. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Republicans and the plurality (48%) of voters not affiliated with either party view the protesters favorably.

Not good news for the administration. Neither is the breakdown on the “Are they fake?” question (49% real, 37% fake, 14% not sure):

The partisan divide is even wider when the motivations of the protesters are at issue. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans and 58% of unaffiliated voters say the protesters reflect the concerns of their neighbors. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats say the protests are phony.

All in all: this poll is only good news for Congressmen sitting in safely liberal districts. Everybody else favoring health care rationing? Not so much.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Anti-health care rationing legislators getting packed town halls, too.

So much for the Democratic narrative.

Now this should be what worries proponents of health care rationing: citizens showing up in much larger-than-anticipated numbers to complain about an issue – to legislators who agree with them.

U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., learned constituents were more engaged than he may have thought.

Hundreds turned out in Waycross for a town hall meeting Wednesday on House Resolution 3200, the House bill on reform – a discussion Kingston’s staff thought would draw only 50 or 60.

Kingston heard worries over the effect of the bill on businesses, lack of health care choice, and the degraded quality of coverage. Kingston himself said there was too much big government and too much cost in a universal plan.

Via The Campaign Spot.  The aforementioned health care rationing supporters – which is to say, “Democrats” – should be worried for two reasons.  First off, it helps put the lie to the Democrats’ sad allegations that the other side is also faking up grassroots support.  Jack Kingston won his R+16 district by a comfortable margin last year; GA-01 is about the last place you’d choose for astroturfing GOP support for something.  Secondly – and more importantly – stories like this indicate that the Republican rank-and-file has gotten a taste for showing up for events like these.  Which is great… for the GOP, because we don’t have to spend many resources at the moment to get them there and keep them there.  Not so great news for the Democratic party, which will have to have its union contingent spend even more resources to match what we’re doing now.  Which means that anybody from a GOP district should go to their town hall meetings, too.  Not that you should forget your cameras.

Just in case.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Getting in their faces: St. Louis.

I didn’t put up anything on the Gladney Incident (allegedly, a conservative activist at Russ Carnahan’s town hall / aging event was sent to the emergency room last night because of an attack by SEIU people) last night because it was at the time single-source. We have gotten another report in, though – and more importantly, what looks to be video from the scene:

…which may be from the incident itself. It’s confused and chaotic, but it’s what we have right now.

Moe Lane

PS: Don’t expect it to get less confused and chaotic, by the way. This is real life, not the movies: you have to be very, very lucky to get footage of a spontaneous incident from beginning to end. Getting more than half of it – which is what happened here, more or less – is merely very lucky. You can help with that by making sure that everybody has a camera, of course… which is why I keep harping on people to get them.

PPS: On the other hand, there was a reporter on the scene – who apparently got arrested, too.  When he gets out of jail, there may be some clarification of what went down, after all.

Getting in their faces.

Title inspired by @TheAnchoress.

A scene from the town hall meltdown in Ybor City:

[CHRIS ZUPPA | Times]
Karen Miracle pushes Barry Osteen, right, who was debating her husband, Garry. “We have the best health care system in the world and I’m completely happy with what we have,” Osteen said.
Actually, it gets… more typical: Ms. Miracle is a local Democratic official.  You can see the whole sequence here (#09 to #16): as @mkhammer notes, the guy getting slapped never moves in.
I wish that I was surprised by any of this.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.