You may recall the above town hall video of Kansas Republican Lynn Jenkins laughing at a young, uninsured mother and telling her to grow up and get health insurance. Jenkins may be best known for her stunning gaffe in which she talked of the GOP searching for their "great white hope."

Seeing a major opportunity for victory in 2010, Democratic State Senator Laura Kelly has decided to throw her hat in the ring and has announced she will take on Lynn Jenkins:

Kansas State Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, said Friday she'll run to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins next year.

Democrats like their chances. It's a district that's gone both ways in the past few election cycles, and Jenkins, in her first-term, has had a gaffe or two. (Remember Jenkins' "great white hope" comment from two months ago?)

"Kansas families in the 2nd district deserve a representative who will energetically stand up for their most important concerns - their pocketbooks, their jobs, and their health care - not sit back and block progress in Washington," Kelly said in her campaign announcement.

"In the last few months people from all across the district have been urging me to run for Congress. They are tired of leaders tied to a do-or-die narrow partisan agenda that has failed our country for the last eight years. Saying NO is not enough in these challenging times. People deserve common sense answers and real solutions," she said. Read on...

Lynn Jenkins has been nothing short of an embarrassment to her state and our country and is extremely vulnerable. Click here to visit Laura Kelly's website, and if you like what you see and want to show her some love, donate if you can. Jenkins ranks near the top of the right wing nutjob heap -- let's send her packing.

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Peggy Noonan with a double dose of her typical snobbery on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Noonan first calls the President "boorish" for doing his "Full Ginsburg" on the Sunday shows and for all the town hall meetings he's had. Then she goes on to excuse the racism at the tea bag parties and town hall protests.

Stephanopoulos: Peggy one of the arguments the White House makes is they're dealing with a very different media environment than any other President in the past has ever had to deal with. There's such a fracture in media environment that even someone like Ronald Reagan, who you worked for would have to do more of what you're seeing the President do in this environment.

Noonan: Oh I don't know. I think the President is doing what he's doing now, being all over today and the past few weeks--he's doing it because... he can, because people do what they know how to do.

Stephanopoulos: Because no one is going to turn him down.

Noonan: This is his way. Because everybody will say yes. I don't think it's about the media environment but I do think the media environment allows a modern leader to be something subtly damaging and that is boorish. They get their face in your face every day all the time. It's boorish and it makes people not lean towards you, but lean away from you, no matter what the merits of the issue and the merits of this issue are not such great merits.

[.....]

You know what I think. When I look at this I step back a little bit and I think there is a lot of anger now. Mrs. Pelosi had a point. Things get high. It's always good to cool things down, but essentially what we have here is a very new president. He's only been here for ten months. He is a young man. He didn't have deep, long, profound experience. He is attempting right now to change, what it is, seventeen, eighteen percent of the GNP of the United States of America, changing how it works, health care.

This is problematic on the face of it. People will argue about that, but on top of that people are thinking about, in America the economy, unemployment, war and peace, two wars that are going. This president who is new and young comes along and says "Oh, that's not the issue. The issue is health care". It seems not like a program but a non sequitur and it angers people.

Inland at DailyKOS reminds of us what the definition of a boor is and tries to figure out what Noonan may have been implying by using the term.

boor definition boor (bo̵or)

noun

1. Archaic a peasant or farm worker

2. a rude, awkward, or ill-mannered person

Inland also points to this post at Firedoglake by Blue Texan with more of Noonan's hackery on the town hall protesters. Peggy Noonan: Health Care Protests Haven’t “Gotten Out of Hand”, Just “Plenty of Booing”:

Nooners surveys the mob scenes, the hangings in effigy, the assaults, the unhinged rhetoric -- and blames it all on Obama.

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They [the White House and Democrats] are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

Shorter Noonan: if the Democrats would stop dressing like slutty socialists, they wouldn't get raped.

h/t to Bob Cesca who also noted..

Adding... Peggy Noonan was at the top of her passive aggressive condescending game. Bravo. Referring to the president as "boorish" in her trademark insufferable hushed tone doesn't make her "graceful" or "civil" -- it just makes her look ridiculous, since she clearly doesn't know what "boorish" means.

Dr. Dean overcomes his natural shyness to share his thoughts on the Baucus bill and lobbies for using reconciliation to pass it:

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's health-care proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30 years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for it in its current form.

"I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances," Dean added.

Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option. "It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust bill.

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Compassionate conservative Rep. Paul Broun makes Ed Schultz's Psycho Talk segment for this number- Rep. Broun walks away from man asking for plan to lower health care costs: ‘If you have a suggestion, send it.’:

Yesterday, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) held a town hall in Watkinsville, GA, where he fielded questions about health care legislation before Congress. At the conclusion of the town hall, Ryan Lewis, an Athens, GA, resident, approached the congressman and politely explained to him about how his health insurance company refuses to pay for his treatment. In response, Broun told Lewis, “We need to make insurance affordable.” Lewis then asked, “How do we do that?” Rather than offering a GOP solution to skyrocketing health care costs, Broun simply told him, “If you have a suggestion, send it to me” and quickly walked away.

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September 07, 2009 News Corp

BAIER: Now for another example of a legislator having some troubles at a health care town hall meeting, a video making the rounds on YouTube shows Indiana Democratic Congressman Baron Hill firing back after a woman who said she was a journalism student complained that Hill's staff would not allow her to videotape the event.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF TOWNHALL PARTICIPANT: I'm not disrupting. I'm keeping to myself, but now that I'm not getting to do this for a project, I was going to ask a question. Why can't I film this? Isn't this my right?

VOICE OF BARON HILL (D), INDIANA REPRESENTATIVE: Well, this is -- this is my town hall meeting, and I set the rules and I've had these rules.

Let me repeat that one more time. This is my town hall meeting for you. And you're not going to tell me how to run my congressional office.

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September 03, 2009 News Corp

(Nicole) KTLA:

A 65-year-old man's finger was bitten off at a health care rally Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks, California. KTLA reports that the man was part of an anti-reform crowd:

About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street.

A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.

The injured anti-reform man walked to Los Robles hospital to have the finger reattached.

He had Medicare. A blogger who witnessed the fight from the pro-reform side says that the finger-biter was provoked

The finger-biter fled the scene and is still at large. I don't know if I buy the whole "he punched me, so it's okay that I bit the guy's finger off" alibi, but isn't it nice to know that the guy protesting government's role in health care has Medicare to take care of his hospital bills?

Michael Steele goes to a black college and insults a woman whose mother died of cancer because she said that everyone should have good health care.

So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.

First, there's the insanity of the head of the RNC criticizing anyone for disrupting a town hall meeting. Second, you have a woman whose mother died, ostensibly because of a lack of insurance, basically being insulted for daring to try to call attention to herself.

And this is not the only example. I can think of a dozen instances of Republican officials dismissing people trying to explain how the current system is broken. There was Tom Coburn telling the crying woman whose insurance refused to cover her husband that she should go to her neighbors for help. There was "Great White Hope" Republican Lynn Jenkins telling an uninsured constituent to be a grown-up and get insurance. The callousness on display at these things is palpable. And it could easily be turned into a powerful force for change.

That is, if there was one Democratic strategist interested in making a moral case anymore instead of a bunch of functionaries squandering a progressive agenda in favor of pleasing elites and talking about "bending the cost curve."

(h/t Huffington Post - original video from NJ.com)

There's a special place in hell for people like this:

Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the man who recently "let it be known" that he'd step in should Gov. Corzine drop out of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, had his hands full at a town hall meeting in Red Bank last week.

A new low for these meetings may have been set when the crowd shouted down a wheelchair-bound woman with "two incurable auto-immune diseases" who had the gall to ask a question. Read on...

WTF is wrong with these people? I struggle to understand how their minds must work. It has gotten to the point where I can barely stomach these videos, but we must continue to put them out there and expose the ugly truth about the Republican Party and the fringe crazies who are out there doing their bidding.

Satirical group "Billionaires for Wealthcare" mingle with conservative protesters at a recent town hall rally.

Via Greg Sargent, the news that the right wing "wealthcare" group Americans for Prosperity is kicking into high gear to get Ben Nelson to stymie healthcare reform:

The calls, which were confirmed to me by AFP’s spokesperson, are being conducted by live operators reading from a script. But the effect is the same as a robocall; recipients receive the calls whether they want to or not.

“Senator Ben Nelson is playing an important role in this debate,” the call says, according to a script provided to me by AFP after I was tipped off to the call. “Would you be willing to call Senator Ben Nelson and tell him to vote for the filibuster and kill the health care bill?”

If the caller responds affirmatively, the operator recites a number for one of Nelson’s district offices. “Please tell Senator Ben Nelson to vote for the Filibuster and kill the health care bill,” the call continues. “Can I confirm that you will make this call within the hour?”

Nelson has refused to rule out joining GOP filibusters on major legislation, though he’s also suggested he probably won’t filibuster on health care. The call is a sign that anti-reform forces still view Nelson, who has refused to back a public option, as a potential ally with Republicans in the quest to “kill” reform.

From BillionairesForWealthcare.com

Very original way to counter protest the tea baggers. The people in the video looked like they didn't understand that it was satire.

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In a segment complaining about how his remarks were taken out of context by Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly managed to take Ann Kornblut's comments about him...out of context. Jon Stewart pointed out how O'Reilly's views on protesters had changed since right wing protesters had begun appearing at health care town halls. O'Reilly is known for referring to liberal protesters as "loons" but now openly defends the right wing protesters causing distractions at town hall events. O'Reilly complained that Stewart had taken his comments out of context.

CNN's Howard Kurtz points out that O'Reilly is also guilty of the same "unfair editing" that he accused Stewart of doing. O'Reilly used a clip of Ann Kornblut explaining Stewart's criticism of O'Reilly to suggest that she agreed with Jon Stewart. Kornblut had actually provided a mild criticism of Stewart. O'Reilly had selectively edited the Kornblut the clip to fit his agenda.

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Anyone who is aware of all Internet traditions has by now seen the footage of Barney Frank taking down the Larouchie who asked him if he would support a "Nazi policy" by asking her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" But Rep. Frank was in rare form that night, standing up to the uninformed shrieking of the right and offering a real lesson in how to argue with conservatives. Rep. Frank's office provided C&L with the tapes of that town hall meeting in Dartmouth from last week, and I put together a sort of greatest hits reel.

Frank explains what deficit hawks should concern themselves with:

"I am struck by those who say, well, you don't care about the deficit. No, I do. I do care about the deficit. That's one of the reasons, not the only one, why I voted against the single most wasteful expenditure in the history of America. The Iraq war. If we hadn't gone to the war in Iraq, which I thought was a terrible mistake and voted against, we would have had more than enough money to pay for health care."

He argues with a "tenther" who thinks that Congress isn't authorized to provide health care for their citizens:

Frank: Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional, sir?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: Do you think it's unconstitutional? You said that the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do it, but Medicare was done. And, do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: But you won't tell me whether you think it's unconstitutional, which you said--

Teabagger: I am not a Constitutional scholar-

Frank: Then why did you start off arguing about the Constitution?

That's really a fantastic exchange, where Frank digs an inch below the surface and finds nothing. He insists on having this questioner back up the rhetoric he cribbed off of Free Republic or wherever he got it, and the guy just couldn't do it.

And this is my favorite part:

Teabagger: Can you pledge to all of us here tonight, that if a new government single-payer system is instituted, that you will opt out of your Cadillac insurance?

Frank: Yes I am in favor of single payer, and that's why I like Medicare. (yelling) You act as if you people have discovered it is August. I have been a co-sponsor of the single payer bill, I think it would be better...

Teabagger #2: But we watch tapes of Obama and everyone else secretly say they're in favor of an eventual single pay system.

Frank: I haven't... sir, it's been 21 years since I've had a secret. (Laughter) And I don't have one now! You have discovered that I'm for single payer! I've been a sponsor of single payer for years!

What you see here is several things: 1) Rep. Frank is always in control; 2) he concedes nothing; 3) he allows his opponents to hang themselves with the outlandish logic of their own claims; 4) he knows when to throw in a well-timed bon mot. At one point, Frank says, "When you say things that people can't refute, they try to drown you out. That's understandable." That's someone who is confident in their beliefs. Democrats could learn something from that.