I wish cable television covered this as much as it covered whackjobs screaming about death panels.

“Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care.”

For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday — starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours — for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.

Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Los Angeles Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.

Super-clinic finds super-need in L.A. region

At the Forum, those seeking medical treatment included unemployed people who had lost insurance when they lost their jobs as well as some people with insurance who said they could not afford their deductibles or needed services that their carriers didn’t cover.

Volunteer nurse DeAnn McEwen, who works in Long Beach, said she saw one woman, a cancer patient, who had maxed-out her benefits under her HMO and couldn’t afford more out-of-pocket expenses.

Long lines as free health care offered in LA area

The tired, sweaty crowd outside The Forum grew noisy when volunteers announced that they would need to return the next day to see a dentist.

“I don’t have money to come back tomorrow! I borrowed money to get here today!” yelled Ontario resident Jocelyn Langham, 53. A cracked tooth and the fruitless 10-hour wait had frazzled her nerves.

Wow, and the righties tell us they only have waiting lines in Canada.

If you are still seeing spam in my Google Reader RSS feed, here is a fix. Unsubscribe to Mahablog and then resubscribe using this feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mahablog/XYnP

This worked at my end.

I missed it, but apparently Arlen Specter held a townhall meeting today that was on all the cable channels and was a near riot. Anyone see it?

Update: “Health Care Protesters Largely From Out Of District, Sign-In Sheets Show”

Also,

MSNBC cameras found a man with a gun in the crowd waiting for the town hall meeting with President Obama later today. He’s carrying a sign saying “It’s time to water the tree of liberty.” I assume the Secret Service has been notified.

The latest on Kenneth Gladney, the alleged anti-health reform activist who allegedly was assaulted is that the allegations he has no health insurance were not true, according to the Right. The rightie blogger Gateway Pundit sets the record straight by refuting the Left’s allegations.

However, I haven’t heard some of these allegations, and I say they are alleged allegations. For example, I have not personally seen anyone claim that Gladney was “hired” to incite the attack. Maybe somebody alleged that, but on the Web you can find allegations of just about anything.

Gateway also takes umbrage at the allegation that Gladney was “recently laid off.” No, Gateway says, he is unemployed. Um, actually, “recently laid off” sounds better. It’s a common euphemism for “unemployed.”

And the allegation that Gladney has no health insurance is not true either, Gateway says. He is insured by his wife’s employee benefits, allegedly. Which begs the question, then why did he allegedly need to ask for donations to pay for his health care?

I’m guessing Gladney must have one of those “freedom” health insurance policies that Shawn Tully wrote about in Fortune, as described in item one, “The Freedom to Choose What’s in Your Plan.” This means that if your state doesn’t deprive you of your freedom by mandating that insurance policies provide comprehensive coverage, you are free to buy a junk policy that doesn’t cover anything you might actually need paid for.

For example, today we hear about Sarah Wildman, whose blessing of liberty include a six-month old daughter and a $22,000 medical bill for allegedly giving birth to her.

Birthing our daughter was so expensive precisely because we were insured, on the individual market. Our insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, sold us exactly the type of flawed policy—riddled with holes and exceptions—that the health care reform bills in Congress should try to do away with. The “maternity” coverage we purchased didn’t cover my labor, delivery, or hospital stay. It was a sham. And so we spent the first months of her life getting the kind of hospital bills and increasingly aggressive calls from hospital administrators that I once believed were only possible without insurance.

Some people might argue that having to settle for a “junk” policy isn’t really freedom, because in some states that’s the only kind of private insurance policy most people can get. But no patriotic American talks like that. As long as it’s the free and unregulated market that determines you have to settle for a junk policy, and not the government, then Americans are still free. In most other countries people are forced to have their medical bills paid for by the government. And that means taxes. It’s so much more free to be stuck with a $22,000 medical bill than to have to pay a dime in taxes. Right?

But I digress. Let us return to the trials of Mr. Gladney. I have watched the video in which he is allegedly beaten to a pulp by Union thugs, and frankly I can’t make out who is doing what to whom in it. Beside the lady in the SEIU shirt who was walking laboriously with a cane, whom I allegedly saw in the video, another individual whom Gateway says is in the film is a terrifying Union thug and Baptist minister named Elston McCowan (see photo).

The Rev. McCowan alleges that Mr. Gladney attacked him and dislocated his shoulder. But Gateway says this is absurd. I assume Gateway has inside information he is not sharing with the public, because neither the video nor news reports of the incident clearly reveal what happened. There are just a lot of allegations flying around, from what I see. But Gateway alleges he has truth on his side, and the Rev. McCowan must be lying. Because. OK.

Gateway also repeats allegations that a woman was smashed in the face, but exactly what he is referring to isn’t clear. This seems to be a fact the right blogosphere is sharing with itself that the evil mainstream media and YouTube are suppressing. Allegedly.

[Update: I see now the face smashing incident is in a separate video, which can be viewed here. I can’t make out what’s happening in it, either, but from the voices somebody did hit somebody. Again, I do not condone hitting people, whether with cameras or cell phones or anything else, nor do I think it’s OK for “my” people to hit “their” people. However, I lack the moral clarity of most righties, who understand that all evil emanates from the Left, and if anyone on the Right does something violent, it is justified.]

Gateway goes on to assure us that the video shows Gladney being attacked by three Union thugs and a woman being smashed in the face, and I will have to take his word for that because I can’t tell what’s going on in the bleeping video. There is a lot of anger and some physical aggression, which I do not condone, no matter who is responsible. And I will take Gateway’s word that Mr. Gladney spent a night in the hospital and has real injuries, and I wish him a speedy recovery. I also wish the Rev. McGowan a speedy recovery for his alleged dislocated shoulder.

Via Josh Marshall, the genuinely demented Investors’ Business Daily published this in an editorial:

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.”

One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.

The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

As Josh points out, Hawking is, in fact, British, and has lived his entire life in the UK.

I Best He Has Whiplash, Too. You may have heard that a African-American, anti-health reform protester in St. Louis was attacked beaten by SEIU “thugs” last week. According to the rightie blogosphere, the protester, Kenneth Gladney, is in serious condition. This is supposed to be a video of the attack:

I’m with Steve Benen — I can’t make out what’s going on in this video, or who is doing what to whom. The only two people I see in SEIU shirts are women who don’t look physicially capable of harming anyone, unless the one limping lady smacked the guy with her cane off-camera.

Let me be clear that this kind of shouting and probable smacking around of somebody, although I can’t make out who exactly, is unacceptable and inexcusable.

Still, Steve Benen gives us this tidbit from local news:

Gladney did not address Saturday’s crowd of about 200 people. His attorney, David Brown, however, read a prepared statement Gladney wrote. “A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”

Supporters cheered. Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance. [emphasis added]

And he has a lawyer, who no doubt is preparing to sue somebody. So much for tort reform.

Good Morning, Little Lulu. Malkin is outraged about the “freedoms” that will be taken away from Americans by “Obamacare.” What freedoms, you ask? Here they are listed; I paraphrase the first three somewhat to clear up some ambiguities.

1. The Freedom to be ripped off by less-than-comprehensive junk insurance policies.
2. The Freedom to see your premiums jacked up if you get sick.
3. The Freedom to pay for your health care out of your own pocket or savings, or do without.

Here Lulu pisses me off:

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan.

The entire reason the Obama Administration avoided marching to single payer or Medicare-for-All is to allow people to keep their employer-based insurance, and this is the thanks he gets. We shoulda just said “screw ’em all” and go for single payer.

And the last is just a lie:

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

We lost that freedom already, after most of us got shuffled into HMOs. Catch up. Lulu.

See also: Chris Good and James Fallows at The Atlantic;

Linda Moore of the Memphis Commercial Appeal describes a townhall meeting held by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis. I want to point out one of the comments:

Posted by Mmmm on August 8, 2009 at 2:21 p.m.

I attended and most of the people in that meeting were not residents of the Congressional District 9. I support Health Care Reform and I voted for Obama and Cohen to deliver results. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Cohen to vote the interest of your constituents.

Some of these people even came from Mississipi with little navy blue folders that had a Republican party emblem. The folder had instructions about what to ask and how to cause a disturbance. In 2009 we are still trying to overcome ignorance.

Some of the other commenters denied this was true. The article itself is the usual — mostly senior citizens terrified of what will happen when government takes over Medicare and terrified of euthanasia.

Last Sunday, August 2, the Orange County Congregation Community Organization held a prayer vigil for healthcare reform at the St. Callistus Parish in Garden Grove, California. From their website, I take it this organization holds several such gatherings every year, on various topics.

Here is a PDF of the program. As you can see, there were several speakers, most of them from local churches. There were a number of prayers, a choir, and a dance company. One of the speakers (listed under “Focus on National: Healthcare Reform”) was Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who gave a five-minute presentation.

Now the Right is using a video of Rep. Sanchez’s part of the program to accuse her of disguising a “townhall” meeting as a prayer vigil. A number of sites are doing this, accompanies by the usual hatespeech. The comments manage to include a lot of anti-immigration and anti-Catholic rhetoric as well.

Putting aside how many times the Right has wrapped religion around a political issue — Justice Sunday, anyone? — it wasn’t a bleeping town hall meeting.

Just shows us that the Right will use any opportunity it can find to spout hate.

This is from the December 15, 2003 issue of the American Conservative, by James Bovard:

When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, “The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.” The local police, at the Secret Service’s behest, set up a “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush’s speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president’s path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, “As far as I’m concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind.”

Bovard points out that if someone had wanted to harm the President he could have cleverly disguised his intentions by holding a pro-Bush sign.

I urge you to read the entire article from this conservative journal, taking note of the parts about FBI surveillance of peace groups — remember how the feds were watching the Quakers? — and the part about how citizens were being urged to turn in “suspicious” people to the FBI. And this part:

The Bush administration’s anti-protester bias proved embarrassing for two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech, resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in free countries. When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, “The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by the US President, George Bush, and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can’t be heard.” Demonstrators were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament building and prohibited from using any public address system in the area.For Bush’s recent visit to London, the White House demanded that British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of the city, and impose a “virtual three day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters,” according to Britain’s Evening Standard. But instead of a “free speech zone”—as such areas are labeled in the U.S.—the Bush administration demanded an “exclusion zone” to protect Bush from protesters’ messages.

Throughout the Bush Administration the American Conservative was one of the few voices of reason from the Right on the issue of constitutional rights, separation of powers and authorities. Note that this magazine was launched by Patrick Buchanan and is currently running articles calling for “free market” solutions to health care. But credit where credit is due.

The point of the “free speech zones” was not security, obviously. The point was to suppress speech for political purposes. Just as it was the point of screening people at Bush rallies to be sure no one but loyal, registered Republicans were allowed inside. For eight years liberals were told that’s just how things were, and suck it up.

But now, confront some clearly agitated righties with the realities of physics, seating capacities and fire code laws, and President Obama is being compared to Hitler.

I remember during the 2004 Republican convention, the NYPD turned several blocks around Madison Square Garden into not only “no free speech” zones; they were also “no loitering,” “no photographing” and sometimes “no walking” zones. If it weren’t for Macy’s they might have roped off the entire area, but at least one could still shop at the Columbus Circle Macy’s. That said, one afternoon during the convention I left Macy’s and boldly walked down the street opposite Madison Square Garden — the President would not have been there at the time — just out of curiosity. I carried no signs and wore no buttons or other indicators of political preference. I was nowhere close to an entrance to Madison Square Garden and made no attempt to enter. I was just a 50-something woman walking down the street with a Macy’s shopping bag. There were no protesters, and the only people I saw going into and out of the Garden looked like young staffers. No VIPS. I pulled a camera out of my purse to take a picture of Madison Square Garden showing the “Republican convention” sign — from across the street — and the cops told me to get off Seventh Avenue and go somewhere else. No pictures.

So we liberals complained about this at the time, and most of the Right told us to suck it up.

My experience with leftie demonstrations goes back to the Vietnam era. Although I can’t say I was active in the antiwar movement then, I was sympathetic, and attended a few demonstrations, none memorable. More recently I took part in some big antiwar demonstrations in New York and Washington. However, I have long-standing issues with the way many people on the Left behave during demonstrations. I’ve never personally seen lefties get violent, but I’ve seen them get stupid and vulgar. I lot of leftie demonstrators are more interested in drawing attention to themselves than in doing anything effective for the cause. And I never again in my life want to be subjected to some young man hogging a megaphone and screaming “no blood for oil” incessantly for an hour and a half. And I mean that.

But I’ve also been in big leftie demonstrations that were confronted by hostile counter-demonstrators, and it was rare to see anyone get into a shouting match. Mostly the counter-demonstrators were just ignored, although in one march in Washington I remember some of us sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” for them. They didn’t join in.

So, yes, demonstrations tend to be messy and undisciplined, and there are always a few hotheads who make everybody else look bad, and I appreciate sometimes there are crowd control and security issues that may override someone’s need to vent.

But it would be really nice if we could all recognize that we have a common interest in preserving a right to free speech, and we also have a common interest in public order and civility and letting the other guy speak, too.