It’s not that they are insane Kev, that’s giving them an easy out. It’s misplaced anger, ignorance and allowing yourself to swayed by the words of the likes of Limbaugh and Beck. They’re irresponsible assholes, but it’s those who then act on those irresponsible statements, again in complete ignorance of what they’re actually protesting, that have removed an civil debate about the issue.

Don’t let them out on the insane tip, hold them accountable for what they are, willfully ignorant dupes angry that they have to take orders from a nigger.

I did it, I went to RedState (I know!) to see what their take on the whole “disrupt the townhalls” agenda is. It’s bad. They take footage from the ones who have been protesting across the country and they are also posting all of the upcoming Democratic meetings so the minions can go wreak havoc there as well.

I’d like to think this happy horseshit was not a big deal, but I feel uneasy about it. I think it’s gone way beyond speaking their minds (what little there are) and has inched over to vindictive racist anger.

I love and respect Digby but I have issues with this characterization:

Sausage making is one thing, but the enthusiasm gap is unsurprising when we are expected to get excited about a heaping pile of fetid, decomposing mystery meat.

I blame Congress for not getting their act together to come up with a more comprehensive piece of legislation before the recess (and I think there was some very deliberate foot-dragging going on too) but at the very least the legislation being proposed would end the practices of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions (and currently the definition of “pre-existing condition” is pretty much anything the insuror decides it is); charging excessive premiums to anyone who’s every been sick before and would subsidize insurance for lower income families and individuals.  As well as get more people insured through employer and/or individual mandates.  (Whether or not the public plan makes the final cut is somewhat precarious and it would help if progressives would push hard for it and quit moaning that it’s not <strike>single-payer</strike> Medicare-for-all.)

At my age I have plenty of friends who have had cancer, or have chronic diseases like diabetes, so that loss of coverage if they lose their jobs is a very real and very frightening prospect.  Fixing these outrageous practices alone would constitute significant health care reform!

What really is a heaping, fetid pile of something is the refusal of Dems, progressives, liberals to get behind the reform issue wholeheartedly for the sake of the millions of Americans who are suffering for lack of decent health care coverage.

Kevin, it’s going to happen long before the end of the month.

Yesterday Hannity mocked the Democrats referring to the protestors as a “mob” by suggesting they all get “mob names.”

Kos is reporting that in less than 24 hours thousands have joined Twitter and Facebook groups called “I am the mob” and are planning to come to the town halls armed.

The SEIU got a death threat voice mail today.

Ditto to what marindever said.  The dems have themselves to blame by not being focused and foot dragging.  But the blame is only in not having a cohesive stance or message.

The GOP, their operatives and the other currently affiliated hatriot operations out there are completely to blame for the ginning up of fear and lies and mob mentality. At this point, I will be completely surprised if this crap doesn’t cause loss of life to someone by the end of the month - angry mobs rarely quiet down until they’ve gotten their pound of flesh and have crossed a line too far (and too late) that it finally sinks in how shameful and reprehensible their actions are. 

I really don’t think the light bulb of “OMG what have I done” is going to click on until it is too late…and for some of the sickest of the sickos - I fear even more that they will just get-off on bloodlust and violence and want to cause even more.  The whole “copycat” fuckhead thing…

And yes, those that encourage, condone, gin-up, and even *wink* approval to these fuckheads are fully responsible and deserve to be held fully accountable for incitement!

Regarding the potential for very bad shit, very soon: People like Rush and Beck and Hannity should get the gas chamber for what they’re doing in the name of armchair agitation and ratings-bait.

Talk is sometimes just talk, but sometimes it’s a dress-rehearsal in your head. As Polly would confirm, it was only a few days after the election when the memes of “Obama is a tyrant,” “Obama is illegitimate,” “Obama is destroying America,” “Obama will enslave us all” and “patriots must take up arms” began to pass from taboo ideation into the “Yes, we must” and “When do we start?” strata of Actionable Crazy on the Birther threads. More recently, those sentiments have begun to bleed through into the more mainstream blogs in the form of cautious “10th Amendment” and “secession” chatter, a steady drumbeat of “2010 will be too late” and routine speculation that Liberals will lose the next Civil War because “Conservatives have all the guns.”

It’s one thing to sit around a blog full of like-minded nutsos with a flashlight under your chin, swapping paranoid Red Dawn fantasies of Community Action Centers in flames and cowering New York limousine-liberals begging for their lives at the point of a bayonet. But it’s something else again when the guy on the radio is telling you that everything you believe is true, and using the same loaded language that you, up till now, have only whispered online.

Rush, Beck and Hannity (and Savage and Cunningham and 100 others) are validating the language of the wackos, and creating a public mindspace in which violence is not only a possibility, but a duty. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve gone beyond criminal negligence and are now officially shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. They are no better than terrorists who fly airplanes into buildings, And if—God forbid—one of their amped-up zomboids goes Manson at a Town Hall meeting or a Tea-Party meet-up, I hope they get the full Abu Ghraib treatment from a Pakistani with a set of jumper cables, who lost his wife and children when a Predator fired a Hellfire missile into a wedding reception at Peshawar.