PrintAugust 7, 2009
Obama looses labor thugs on tea party town hall protestors
The pushback by Democrats against conservative activists who have been flooding health care town halls across the country is starting to get ugly. Organized labor has now entered the fray, promising to counter conservatives at the events.
Sure enough, labor thugs savagely beat a conservative activist after a town hall meeting put on by Missouri's Russ Carnahan. Leah Thorsen of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has the story:
St. Louis County police say six people were arrested. Two of those were arrested on suspicion of assault, one of resisting arrest and three on suspicion of committing peace disturbances. Carnahan was gone when the ruckus started.
Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with "Don't tread on me" printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John's Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.
"It just seems there's no freedom of speech without being attacked," he said.
And who might have beaten Gladney? Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit writes that hundreds of tea party protestors were kept out of the event but that members of the local SEIU were directed to a side door and gained immediate entrance:
In this video you see one Carnahan supporter allowed into the meeting at Bernard Middle School through a side door. There were 1,000 tea party taxpayers stranded outside the main door.These have been the tactics of organized labor for 100 years. And given that the White House has ordered Dems to hit back "twice as hard," it doesn't take much to connect the events in St, Louis (and Tampa where more violence broke out) with what is going on at these meetings:
When two SEIU members attempted to get in the same side door marked "handicapped" the crowd went nuts and blocked them at the door. Did you notice how nonchalant the SIEU members were about getting inside the door? Like they knew right where to go.
Inside the gym they roped off two sections. One was for the tea party taxpayers and quickly filled up when they opened the doors at 6:00 PM.
The other section was marked "reserved" and this section was saved for the union members.
The rest of the crowd was locked out!
They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.
And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.
"If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard," Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.
The administration couldn't make it any clearer if they drew a map.
Barack Obama is personally responsible for any violence that breaks out at these meetings. If he wasn't president and suggested that Democrats hit back "twice as hard," he would be held legally responsible for the violence that broke out in St, Louis and Tampa. But this is politics - the way the Democrats play it.
It couldn't be any clearer that the goal of the labor thugs is to intimidate people from coming to these town hall meetings unless they are supporters of the president. Obama's labor brown shirts will continue these tactics unless the president himself calls them off.
And given the perilous condition of his health care reform bill, there isn't much chance of that happening.
