Tag: Teabaggers

This is original to docudharma.

Obama’s on our side, right?

Well, let’s consider.

One thing needs emphasizing about the battles raging during the August recess as Congresscritters return home to visit their constituents and face whipped-up wingnuts: The trade union movement has done a very creditable job in stepping up to the front line and helping thwart efforts to destroy those meetings.

A good example is the the town meeting in Rep. Niki Tsongas’s MA district, which was diaried at Daily Kos by Mike08 a couple of days back. Mike mentions the signs being distributed SEIU members. The AFL-CIO website has a brief report from Rosa Blumenfeld, a young organizer who also attended the meeting.

She says that there were a dozen activists from IUE Local 201 and other union locals in the North Shore Labor Council and another dozen from the Service Employees:

What worked were simple signs with large print slogans like “Real Health Insurance Reform Now,” and “Stop Insurance Company Greed.” During Tsongas’ opening remarks, we applauded forcefully and many in the room cheered. We even had folks countering the extremist amongst the crowd waiting outside.

One of the most effective points during the Q&A happened when one union woman stood up and said:

I think that everyone in this room can agree that we need to stop unnecessary death. My grandmother got sick and died from breast cancer because her insurance company refused to pay for her treatment. The system isn’t working. People are dying. We need this health insurance reform.

She goes on to describe the incredible tension and stress that exhausted the union folks by the end, and offer some insight about how her central labor council is tackling the problem. It’s worth reading.

And then take a moment to reflect on just how important unions are in this country.

I live in the NC-11 district, which succeeded in finally replacing slumlord Charles Taylor [a.k.a. “Chainsaw Charlie”] with ex-football heartthrob and semi-Democrat Heath Shuler in the ’06 election. I say semi-Democrat because he’s a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, though less of a hypocritical opportunist than most of the others. Thus he does a pretty good job of actually representing his constituency, which in this corner of southern Appalachia is quite conservative. He’s a local boy made good and a source of some pride for all, thus was the perfect candidate to field against Chainsaw Charlie. Largest source of income in this way-back corner of the state is tourism, so our beautiful forests and mountains are worth way more to us intact than as wood chips or parking lots for Charlie’s puppeteers.

Heath easily carried all 15 counties in the district in ’08, including Henderson, a county primarily populated by native apple farmers, wealthy lawyers and retirees from Florida, and New Jersey ex-pats with Italian surnames and bodyguards. Having met Heath several times during his original campaign, he’s a nice kid with a good heart and honest as the day is long, so I like him. He’s frustrating sometimes, but I’m enough of a realist to know most folks here aren’t nearly as leftist as me, and I’m not the only person he was elected to serve. We’re watching closely, and will take him down at primary as soon as he shows signs of selling out the real ag/tourism base as Charlie did.

The demographics are slowly but surely changing by attrition as the old folks die and lots of DFHs [Dirty F’king Hippies] move in to homestead the countryside and participate in A-ville’s growing reputation as “New Age Mecca.” I’ve got my issues with the DFHs too, but when they can be motivated to vote they are strongly progressive. We’ve a number of great colleges and Universities in the district as well, and students are also a reliable bloc for Dems. There is no doubt that one of these days it will be time to move farther toward the progressive end of the spectrum, so Heath may end up in the Senate if we can arrange for him to run against Burr while we replace him here.

Anyway, Heath is surprisingly bright for a jock, so you might be interested in how he’s handling the ugly Teabagger contingent mobilized to disrupt, harrass and incite violence at the town halls congressmembers are holding during this summer recess. There is a rather large and loud Teabagger contingent in this district, as terminally stupid as anyone else’s and nearly as spaced-out as the hard-core guru branches of the DFHs. Shuler has scheduled not one but two town hall meetings this recess, and if he didn’t play it smart things would no doubt get extremely ugly (most of the Teabaggers in this neck of the woods may always be assumed armed and dangerous).

I love the smell of People Power in the morning!  The overwhelmin’ tide of grassroots anger came to a climax yesterday with the Teabaggin’ protests all over this great country of ours.  Millions and millions of patriots were out there makin’ their voices heard and scarin’ the socialists silly with their message of “Stop Governing!” and by the way “Stop the Gays From Gettin’ Married!”  And don’t think this is just talk — we’re forcin’ action to be taken at the very highest levels of the liberal governing elite.

For example, you may remember the total sham from a few weeks ago when Docudharma took away my trusted user status under the laughable excuse of performin’ “software enhancements.”  Well, I am happy to report that the Teabaggin’ protests have so frightened our liberal Docudharma overlords that they have restored my trusted user status!  We DO have the power to stand up to oppression!

And there is an even bigger victory as a result of the Teabaggin’ protests.  Ron Paul is takin’ advantage of this populist anger and wants to heavily arm it.  Paul’s idea is to hire ordinary citizens and send ’em into international waters to fight pirates:

Given what we are seeing with the little Teabaggers the Dog thought that today would be a good day to talk about effective protest and persuasion. There are many tools which we as activist can use. The critical thing is recognizing what works, when it works, why it works and choosing the ones which will achieve our goals most effectively. Today we have seen a failure of epic proportions which will do more damage to the Teabaggers causes (whatever the hell they are) than it will to advance them.

Cross Posted at Square State

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