As Ed Morrissey writes, “This is a curious re-election strategy, especially for a Representative who made her name by bird-dogging her former Congressman at his town-hall forums”:
Consistency isn’t Carol Shea-Porter’s strong suit, apparently, as she demonstrates in this clip from the meeting she finally held with constituents after dodging them for most of the month. When one of her constituents challenges the presence of union enforcers in the crowd, Shea-Porter asks for police intervention:
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube DirektI’ve watched this video a couple of times, and I still can’t figure out why the police took this man out of the room. He was actually less disruptive than the woman behind him. He challenged Shea-Porter on the appearance of SEIU protesters in the room, one of whom got up and disrupted his question. When the first man then challenged the residency of the SEIU rep, police swooped in and removed him.
According to Now Hampshire, they removed the man because he didn’t get a Golden Ticket to allow him to speak at the meeting:
In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.
In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions. She can also be heard taunting the man on his way out by saying, “I do hope the movie theater can be a little quieter for you.”
Now Hampshire also reports that the man they removed is Carl Tomanelli — a retired policeman.
Whoops. Now there’s a smart move by the congresswoman — if I was her opponent, I’d get Mr. Tomanelli in my commercials ASAP.
And speaking of TV, Smitty, Stacy McCain’s co-blogger writes:
I have seen the face of elitism on the right, and it is John Batchelor.
In the PJTV segment linked, John Batchelor has a point: the egalitarian mindset is at odds with the elitist mindset. The modern GOP elitist mindset is as wrong now as when the Founding Fathers rejected The British Parliament’s elitist mindset.
“I’m not going to pretend there is anything genuine about [the Tea Party Movement].
This is about people putting their faces on TV.”Anything, Mr. Batchelor? Anything? I’ve attended three Tea Parties in the greater DC area.
The media are sparse, except insofar as they’re cherry-picking shots for blatant propaganda pieces. Typically, when someone builds an arugment around an absolute assertion such as “there is nothing genuine about the Tea Party Movement” my first reaction is that this is not in fact a dialogue or anything resembling an attempt to discuss a point. It’s a rant.
This is about people putting their faces on TV? That would be news to this couple, whom I photographed as I was driving away from the San Jose Tea Party on July 5th:
They actually did wind up in a video — but only because I was out there shooting footage myself; I don’t recall seeing any trucks from ABC, NBC, CBS or their local affiliates in the neighborhood while I was there.
Press conferences and town halls are distractions, keeping us from discussing policy. They cannot support detailed discussions, and so express confusion and anger. Then, the participants are accused of only presenting confusion and anger. I like the town halls for that, but this doesn’t put enough pressure on the government to reveal the thinking behind its bills.
The United States Government is of, for, and by the People. The public cannot participate in a government that runs on policies that are hidden. The government should be proud to release its carefully researched and supported policies. We deserve this as a free people. The press and public should be able to review these documents.
I hope people of all parties and positions could agree that this is fundamental. It is non-partisan to demand that the President and all politicians show how they have carefully researched their proposals.
It is not our job to read tea leaves and pick apart 1000 page bills written in Old English to figure out what the bills are really saying. The whole idea of “legislative language” is to obscure what is going on. Whatever I extract or infer, I am drawing my own conclusions, and the government can say that I am misguided.
The government demands detailed, researched Environmental Impact Statements before starting a building. We should have Official Policy Impact Statements before our representatives change our society.
We need proposed results, expected evolution, methods, justifications, comparative studies, past successes of similar policy, funding sources, expected difficulties, the works.
The bills are not enough. They are implementation, not coherent policy. We have been directed to look at the bills as a tactic to make the press and public scratch for the underlying ideas. Then, the government can deny that we have interpreted the bill in the correct way.
Did Obama (or any politician) start with such a policy study, or not?
If so, then where is it? If not, then he is a fool.
Is Obama legislating from some scribbles on a cocktail napkin?
Does he want to pass anything, then rearrange it later to do what he wants?
Where is the policy paper?
If they don’t know: OK, so where is the cocktail napkin?
A Few Words About Policy
and so it goes in Weimar America.
Kevin,
Heh. Of course, back in 2007, Andrew Sullivan was calling President Bush “The Weimar President.” Which, curiously, would make the successor administration to Bush, in Andrew’s eyes at least, the equivalent of…?
I’m eagerly awaiting the viral “Don’t tase me, Bro” moment of the 2009 healthcare townhall protest movement.