TOWN HELL: Crass Mob Heckles Rabbi, Shouts Down Dean at Health Care "Town Hall" in Reston, VA

Randall Terry Opens "Don't Kill Grandma Tour" to Raves; LaRouchies Push "Obama Is Hitler" Meme

Video edited by Mike Flugennock and photographed by The Town Hell Posse.
Still photography by Isis, via Flickr.




"Nick" writes at the DC Independent Media Center:

On the evening of August 25, 2009, thousands of Virginians attended a town hall meeting on federal health care reform in Reston, Virginia.

The event was held at South Lakes High School and featured Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.



While the majority of attendees at the facility were explicit supporters of health care reform, numerous right-wing individuals disrupted the event.

In one instance, a right-winger punched an Obama supporter in the face without provocation. The right-winger was subsequently pushed away from the area by several individuals and Fairfax County Police later evicted him from the property.

The man was wearing a CATO Institute t-shirt. The institution is a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In another incident, several conservative military veterans surrounded an elderly man and physically intimidated him in an attempt to censor the man who supported health care reform.



Countless conservatives held signs of President Obama that prominently featured the president's face with a mustache painted under his nose meant to resemble former German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Others held signs that portrayed President Obama as the cartoon character The Joker. The images of Obama as The Joker resembled old minstrel shows whereby actors of European descent applied facial makeup in a mocking attempt to resemble individuals of African descent.

Several conservative supporters of status quo health care flew "Don't Tread on Me" flags and attempted to silence anyone who "does not support freedom," has "socialist" tendencies or did not serve in the U.S. Military.

Before the town hall meeting began conservative pro-life activist Randall Terry mocked "baby-killing" by stabbing play dolls and pretended to assassinate a woman resembling a "grandma." Terry protested Obama's health care reform legislation and called it "baby killing and grandma killing."



Terry told a local reporter "there's no way to pay for [Obama's health care reform] without killing granny."

The prominent activist and his supporters later interrupted former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's speech only to be chased out by local Virginians.



Several right-wing activists held signs that read "Obama Lies, Grandma Dies." When questioned about the signs several right-wing activists replied by warning of "socialism" and "death panels."

Several local media outlets described the event as turning into "near chaos" as supporters and opponents clashed inside and outside the high school.

Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

We really love CounterPunch here -- especially Dave Lindorff. In his latest column at CounterPunch, he raises an important question that we've been asking ourselves, and which the Left should also be asking, instead of pissing and moaning about how the rightist nutcakes are taking over the healthcare "town hall" events:

Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms to disrupt the so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by Democratic members of Congress.

What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really "town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.

These "town meetings" are really nothing but propaganda sessions run by members of Congress who are trying to burnish their fraudulent credentials as public servants, and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud of a health care bill that purports to be a progressive "reform" of the US health care system, but that actually further entrenches the control of that system by the insurance industry, and to a lesser extent, the hospital and drug industry.

ObamaCare is to health reform what bank bailouts are to financial system reform, which is to say it is the opposite of what its name implies.

The right-wing nuts who cry that ObamaCare is introducing euthanasia for the elderly and infirm, or that it is socialism, are ignorant wackos, to be sure, but they are right about one thing: Americans are about to be royally screwed on health care reform by the president and the Democratic Congress, just as they've been screwed by them on financial system "reform."

The appropriate response to this screw-job is the one the right has adopted: shut these sham "town meetings" down, and run the sell-out politicians out of town on a rail, preferably coated in tar and feathers they way the snake-oil salesmen of old used to be handled!

Check out the rest of Dave's excellent article here.

Welcome, One and All!

Welcome, folks, to the Entirely Unofficial Blog dedicated to following the organizing of the upcoming September 12 Teabaggers' March On Washington. Here, for your downloading and wheatpasting pleasure, is the Entirely Unofficial Teabagger Welcome Poster created by famed Washington, DC Indymedia cartoonist Mike Flugennock:



The July 4th Teabaggers' Shindig on Capitol Hill covered at Lady Liberty's Lamp has certainly left us inspired, to say the least. Never did we hear a gang of astroturfers yell more loudly about not being astroturfers even as they were funded by PACs run by characters like Dick Armey, and never did we hear more yelling from a group about how they aren't about Left or Right, even while they never missed an opportunity to slag on the Left -- or even on ordinary Liberals, for that matter -- as the lot it was our fortune to cover this past Fourth Of July:



What got us even more was their total ignorance of the causes and effects of events that happened before January 20, 2009 -- forgetting, for instance, that the current corporate bailout fiasco was initiated by George W. Bush (foto by Isis, at Lady Liberty's Lamp).


Listening to the howls from the stage and checking out the composition of the crowd, it was as if the single reaction from the Teabagger Massmind boiled down to "OMFG, the President is a N1GG3R!" -- like the old-timer in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, hollering from the top of the church steeple, "Here comes the new sheriff, and he's a big..." ...and it sure as hell didn't help any as their event was organized and staged by members of a well-known White Power band, Pokerface (foto by Isis, at Lady Liberty's Lamp).




So, once again, welcome one and all, and here's hoping -- jeezus, there's that word "hope" again -- that some of you enterprising anarchists and antifascists out there will take this information and run with it, and organize a rousing welcoming committee for our "libertarian" (spit) friends heading for Washington, DC on September 12, 2009!

Yer pal, The Teabagger Watcher, and the gang here at The Teabaggers Are Coming!

(...and for the further lowdown, there's reports on the July 4th Capitol Hill Teabaggers' rally here, and on "Poison Ivy In The Astroturf" -- including video, here.)