We’ve got another one here folks in Orange County.  Last Friday Orange County had a huge event, it was the Democratic Party of Orange County’s Annual Truman Awards Dinner and our Keynote Speaker was Nancy Pelosi.  It got our local Republicans in a bit of a tif and a lot of Teabaggers showed up to protest her presence.

We expected protesters, I even wrote about their plans at Daily Kos, but we weren’t expecting this…

City Council member Choi was wearing his City Council badge that night as well, there was no mistaking it was him, thank you to the Liberal OC for that and our local paper, which failed to mention that detail.  They insist there is no bias, sure.

Steven Choi was also seen “posing with another protester who was wearing a rendering depicting Pelosi as an SS Guard” and “including one portraying President Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler together” and yet he defended his actions.

“I’m a Republican Party member and went there to express my disapproval of her policies,” Choi said. “I have big concerns with what is going on with the government pushing down the mandated health issues… As a small businessman it would impact me.”

Choi said a woman who was at the event with the Irvine Republican Council placed the rendering on his back. He described the criticism as a partisan attack.

“They are making a case out of nothing,” Choi said.

Beth Krom is also on the Irvine City Council and she’s running for Congress, thank goodness, and she also had a reaction to her fellow city council person.

 

   “When I was the Mayor of Irvine and then President Bush came to Irvine, I attended and showed respect for the President despite the many misgivings I had about his policies.”

   “We who hold public office have an obligation to hold ourselves to a high standard when it comes to how we comport ourselves in public. At least that has always been my perspective.”

   “I was utterly disgusted when I saw my City Council colleague Steven Choi, who recently announced plans to run for the State Assembly, parading around the lobby of the Hilton Hotel with a picture on his back depicting Speaker Pelosi as Josef Stalin.”

   “Those around him had images of the Speaker and the President as Nazis. I’d like to say this behavior is out of character for Council member Choi, but this is the same Council member who accused a City Council candidate of having ties to Islamic Terrorists without any basis. My guess is that he also had a hand in the mailers that went out during my 2006 race for Mayor that showed me as Chairman Mao.”

   “There seems to be no limit to the derision and division that Councilman Choi will advance in the name of his “republican values.”

Her opponent is John Campbell, ex used car salesman and birther, John Galt loving Republican.  We’ve got lots of those.

I was there Friday night with my Husband Gary Pritchard, who ran for State Senate last year.  We think Orange County can be blue, we’ve got over 500,000 Democrats here, more than 20 States in the US.  “The OC” can be a force to be reckoned with and the extremism has become even more extreme just as many here have noticed over the last year.  

Nancy Pelosi gave a stirring speech about Health Care Reform and I know many here aren’t quite enamored with her.  The disappointment with Democrats in Congress is understandable.  We can’t all have Bernie Sanders (although it would be a good goal to attain).  But it certainly doesn’t mean we have to tolerate the Steven Choi’s of the world.

Beth Krom deserves to oust John Campbell, we’ve had enough of the extreme of the extreme.  So please support Beth Krom and if you live in the OC, let Steven Choi know that it is NOT okay to express himself in this way representing his city and position, especially one that is supposedly “bi-partisan”.

And since I was lucky enough to attend the Truman Dinner, Gary sat on the planning committee (The highlight for me was finally meeting California Assemblyman Jose Solorio) I’m posting some of the photos I took of protesters.

I would post my lousy video of Nancy giving her keynote speech but it’s only a minute and a half and it looks like I took it during a massive earthquake.

It cuts in where she’s speaking of a proposal by Truman for universal health care by the way.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

In April we posted A Warning About The Tea Parties here.  The post warned:

They are not what they claim to be.  They are not “spontaneous” or “grassroots.”  They are another corporate-funded campaign to trick people into supporting more cut taxes for the rich.

. . . The events have been widely promoted by corporate-funded conservative PR professionals who specialize in “astroturf.”  This is a term for the use of money to create an appearance of widespread “grassroots” support.  Currently the corporate-funded conservative lobbying groups Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, are organizing the events and conservative media including talk radio and FOX News are widely promoting them.  Support appears to be coming from Koch Industries, the largest privately-owned company in the country.

Many blogs and organizations have conducted research into these “tea party” groups, and warned that this corporate-built group was put together by lobbyists, for lobbyists, to further the goals of their corporate clients.  The names of the lobbyist groups organizing these events were posted along with their own documents proving they were behind the groups. Their strategies were exposed.  The entire operation was laid out in advance.

Then we watched the operation unfold.  Over the summer summer the groups were sent to Congressional town hall meetings that discussed health care reform.  They were given specific instructions to disrupt the meetings, while presenting an appearance of being ordinary citizens who are upset and against the health care reform.  Copies of these instructions were posted on the web.  The instructions include:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.  If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

These are the actual instructions given to these groups. They were instructed to disrupt the town hall meetings, and not let others speak.  And this is what they did, across the country.  The entire time, blogs and organizations tracked this, showed how the lobbyist organizations were organizing it, showed where their online calendars were sending people to the different meetings, posted photographs of the signs they carried, that were printed by the lobbyist organizations, and showed newsletters printed by these lobbyist organizations taking credit for their work.

Now the summer is over, and we are witnessing phase two of the strategy.  The lobbyists and Republican members of Congress are going on news programs and claiming that “the public” opposes the health care reforms, because of the disruptions and occurred at town hall meetings!  This is utterly transparent to anyone who follows the news.  It was set in stone that they would say this now, even before the first town hall meetings began, because this was the strategy all along.  The script was written before the first town hall meeting:  make it look like people are upset at the health care reform, then try to kill health care reform based on these manufactured corporate astroturf performances.

Legislators: do not fall for it.

The oil and coal corporations have already started organizing these groups to show up and disrupt meetings on climate-change legislation, again creating a false appearance of public opposition to efforts to fight global warming.  Bloggers and organizations are writing about this now.

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as “citizens” will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation. 

Do not be fooled when it happens again.  And if you allow this lobbyist strategy to succeed this will become “the new normal” for politics in this country.  If the corporations get away with organizing people to disrupt meetings and intimidate legislators of course they will continue to 

Click through to Speak Out California

They could’ve used some stimulus over at the teabagger rally in Hermosa Beach yesterday. As the video from the LAT shows, there were maybe two dozen folks there.

The Times put on its best Fox costume for Easter to celebrate the event with a print story and video, but the hyping couldnt cover up what was true about this made up news: no one was there.

and at this not so massive teabagging in LA, it was mostly chatter about the CA bgt mess and the coming proposition elections, not OB’s bgt and the stimulus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

where is a fat drug addict when you need one?