Town Halls Today: An Arrest and More Anger

(AP Photo/Steve Pope)

Updated 5:27 p.m. ET

The past 24 hours have brought more town hall anger, the arrest of a protester calling for "Death to Obama," and an attempt by one congressman to keep cameras out of a raucous meeting. Here's your fix of the latest town hall activity around the country:

In New York, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's staffers tried to bar WCBS cameras from covering his town hall Wednesday night. Later, the congressman himself insisted that "this isn't for channel 2. This is for my constituents," even as the station noted that the event was a public forum.

Weiner eventually relented and let cameras into what turned out to be raucous affair. "Let's look at the whole picture. You guys are stealing from us," one attendee said, while others charged that they were being threatened. Things eventually calmed down and Weiner told attendees that he favored a single-payer system. He said "this is not going to be free" and said funding could come from the health insurance company profits and overhead.

At a Thursday event in White Plains, meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey went after insurance companies, as WCBS reports. People spoke of being denied coverage at the event; Lowey said, "Families are struggling to make ends meet, [while] profits at the largest publicly traded health insurance companies increased by 428 percent."

In Pennsylvania, Representative Joe Sestak, who is challenging Arlen Specter for the Democratic 2010 Pennsylvania Senate nomination, hosted 650 "overwhelmingly civil" people at his town hall Wednesday night, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Many of those who showed up were supporters of health care reform. "We just haven't been getting our story told" at the town halls, one said. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, mention of a public health care option at the meeting prompted "wild applause."

Not that there weren't dissenters, including a Lyndon LaRouche supporter outside the event offering handouts showing President Obama with a Hitler-style moustache. Inside, the Daily News reports, one of the critical questions came from a veteran who shouted: "How can you tell me the private option will stay in place when my employer with 29,000 employees can just turn around tomorrow and say 'We're writing that off the bottom line; you guys are all going to the public option?'"

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Sestak responded by noting that the bill "mandates that the employer has to keep the health-care plan he has with you."

Earlier this week at an Arlen Specter town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, a photographer was "pushed by an audience member once they realized she was working for The New York Times," according to photographer Damon Winter.

Specter's town hall in Kittanning Thursday was a sometimes-heated affair, though the senator remained calm throughout. WPXI reports that almost 2,000 people showed up, though only 200 were allowed inside.

Participants expressed a variety of opinions, with some pushing for the president's health care efforts and others insisting they will hurt the country. Specter reiterated his support for reform efforts and repeatedly said that those who like their coverage will be able to keep it.

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

In Maryland, authorities detained a 51-year-old man who showed up at a town hall Wednesday held by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin with a sign reading "Death to Obama," the Associated Press reports. The sign also said, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids."

In New Jersey, Democratic Congressman Steve Rothman said the health care overhaul should not mean emulating other countries, CNN reports.

"I, for one, don't want a system like Great Britain's," he said. "I don't want a system like Canada's. I don't want national health care, and I don't want socialized medicine."

In Alabama, hundreds of polite people packed into a town hall held Thursday morning by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, according to WHNT News. Sessions said he wished health insurance looked more like car insurance, where pre-existing conditions and the place one works don't come into the equation.

He also said people who have good health care now are scared by reform efforts. "They worry they may lose something they count on every day," he said.

(CBS)

In Oklahoma, another Republican senator, Tom Coburn, held a town hall in which many attendees worried that health care reform is "being rammed down my throat," as one uninsured rural Oklahoma woman put it, according to NewsOn6.com.

Coburn said the government is getting involved in areas it doesn't belong.

"Any bill that comes out of the Congress that spends more money is failure," he said. "What we need is a better value not to spend more. We ought to make sure we can cover everyone in this country for less money than we are spending now. Giving better quality and a better outcome though we can't do that with the government running it."

President Obama is hosting a town hall Friday in Montana, and it could be rowdier than his relatively restrained event in New Hampshire earlier this week. Politico reports that "tickets for the Montana event are being handed out on a first-come, first-served basis at two locations in the conservative Bozeman, Mont., area," which could mean a higher percentage of attendees who oppose the president's efforts.

Photo Essay: The Town Hall Protests

[TEVanisaur]

Wonder why there are no black people there? looks like a racism to me...

[6591Hou]

Just to show that the shenanigans over this bill aren't entirely one-sided:

At the Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) townhall meeting registered Obama delegate, and organizer for Organizing for America, Roxana Mayer, introduced herself as a doctor (a general practitioner for four years) and expressed her support for ObamaCare and Jackson-Lee. For her efforts, she got a big hug from the Congresswoman, an image which the Houston Chronicle featured prominently on their website coverage of the event.

The Houston Chronicle reporter, Cindy Horswell, has since admitted that she knew Mayer was an Obama delegate and that Mayer didn?t live in Jackson-Lee?s district when she wrote the Chronicle story. The Chronicle has since changed the photo caption and deleted reference to Mayer being a doctor.

[Oregon_State_OSU]

Whats AMAZING is that in 2005. George W. Bush cut his vacation short and flew from Texas to Washington D.C and got all involved and so did quite a few other Republicans in the Terri Schiavo case.

The issue in the Terri Schiavo case was between the Husband, The Family and the Doctor PERIOD. Nobody else had any right to get involved with this issue unless they were related to the family but it was all over the internet and 1000s of people were protesting. Epecially the IDIOTS who put RED TAPE over their mouths.

Now Sarah Palin and other Republicans are all up in arms about DEATH PANNELS all this KRAP. THERE ARE NO DEATH PANNELS they said last night on CNN. STOP GETTING YOUR NEWS from FoxNews.com and Sarah Palin and Rush and Ann Coulter. STOP OVER REACTING, Use your Brain and get out of the MOB Mentality that is infecting these freaked out Republicans.

[wyodutch]

Where the people fear the governemtn, you have tyranny...

Where the government fears the people, you have Liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

[johndevinejr]

In Maryland, authorities detained a 51-year-old man who showed up at a town hall Wednesday held by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin with a sign reading "Death to Obama," the Associated Press reports. The sign also said, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids


This is an example of the repulican thuggery that is just beginning. So far the entire opposition to Health Care reform is based on lies. That is standard operating procedure for repubs.
I particularly like the "ramming it down our throats" comments from these people. The problem is that they are in the minority. They don't like what the majority of Americans voted for. It is clear that they don't care very much for democracy. It appears that the republican version of democracy means if they don't get their way they threaten violence.
Who could have anticipated the stunning level of outright lies and the total dishonesty of republicans in continuing to spew this nonsense.
No one of normal intelligence believes these lies. These republicans ard dishonest, scaring the elderly with lies.
What a disgrace.

[jab232]

I don't think the Dems are losing August. In the long run, I think they benefit by the fist fights, carrying guns into raucous meetings and people carrying signs saying Obama is a Nazi. It is no accident sponsors are bailing out on Glenn Beck. People understand that, in the long run, calling Obama a racist and a Nazi makes Beck and the GOP into a small, dangerous minority.

You can get yourself on TV short term by shouting and carrying signs which say, "Obama, go back to where you were born--Kenya" or by carrying a pistol on your hip at a Presidential town hall. But in the long term, most Americans are more fair and tolerant than that.

[babooph]

Seems the silent majority is really a screaming minority .

[searingtruth]

My infant son suffered unconscionable cruelty, my mother insufferable death, and my father simple murder by Kaiser, clean and simple in all cases by our Health Destruction Industry.

I would much rather that someone compassionate from the government be assigned to oversee health care than someone assigned to oversee the maximization of corporate profit.
ST


"I could only hold her in my arms and exclaim my most desperate undying love, as her last breath was taken. All I had learned, all I had hoped, all I had known, meant nothing. I had failed in my one most fundamental responsibility to humankind, and the first and most dear price I was to pay was the life of my own beloved mother."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[searingtruth]

"Nothing is certain, except that humanity is good."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[underdogus09]

In a few years they will actually be the physical minority...........watch what happens then.....wait until they are surrounded by Black & brown people, lots of brown people everywhere in white places where brown people never were before..............last weekend george lopez had an hbo special where his closing comment was we will treat you with the same respect you have treated us....