Was there shouting? I would think that Obama would have the gravitas to just look at someone, and the someone would cease, for then, the asshattery.

At least one can hope.

There was tons of Maximum Strength Asshattery outside the event, but the actual Town Hall went off without a hitch, no shouting, no disruptions.

The event was so smooth and attentive that it was actually shocking to go back outside and experience another monster waves of Maximum Strength Asshattery.

hey lets see the faux news interview if it goes up well done LT

I'll be sure to link to it if I can find it also. I've got the media team from D.C. combing through the ether to get footage.

I have to start a file of this stuff now for all the media stuff I've done in print, radio and television.

Weird.

So so jealous that you got to go. Can't wait to see LT on The Daily Show tonight.

“Hey America, You want Change? Hitler did too!” — stood Diane Campbell, a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise owner from Kingstown, N.H....

...“Hitler killed six million people; he killed everyone who wasn’t perfect,” Ms. Campbell said. “I have an elderly mom and a severely handicapped sister, and I fear for their lives if this plan goes though.”

Are these people for real?

Are these people for real?

unfortunately.

Omigod Dersins, not only are they real, they're EVERYWHERE out here.

New Hampshire has the highest asshat-to-regular citizen ratio of anywhere I've ever lived.

Our state motto should be, "Live Free or Die From Your Own Ridiculous Behavior."

saw scary signs and stupid people

And apparently, at least one of them was packing heat. We live in interesting times...

The whole "Death Panel" & "Obama wants to eat my grandma!" shit has got to be having the same effect on free-thinking moderates as the Kenya "birth certificate" did.

Right? Is the "mainstream media" even beginning to point out the utter maked-up-ness of these people's bullshit yet? Or is it all still "Some say...?" I don't go in for TV news.

So cool you got to go, LT -- I'd love to see the Fox bit.

Oh man, Devils - watching Obama eviscerate the opposition's argument during the event was like Gandalf appearing to the hobbits.

He took on all of their talking points and shut them all down, peppered with several significant pauses and "let me be perfectly clear" type language.

The man is unstoppable and doesn't shrink from a fight.

"Hitler killed six million people..."

I wonder which of the other five million he thinks deserved it.

Hey Birdie - there's just no rational dealing with these people.

You know when you're overtired and your ears start hearing everything at pitch volume and the world kind of goes a little white at the edges? That's what it's like to have to carry on a conversation with a Tea Bagger.

Your nervous system just decides it's time for an out-of-body experience, but there's nowhere to go.

I'm glad to hear the actual meeting went off without incident. I was wondering what might happen today.

I am so insulated by the community I'm a part of here that I forget that even though the state is now about 90something% transplant from other states (read Mass.), there still is a huge contingent of goode olde Yankee crack-pottery just waiting to come out of the woodwork. I guess I've been very lucky to have lived in the places in NH that I've lived. I have a lot of respect for you LT that you can be involved with them olde timey Down-eastahs.

I'm also glad to hear it went off well. I've been hearing frightening things, but my dad (who is the person I normally go to for a rational view on wtf is going on in the world) has taken up shield with the fucking Birthers, of all people.

We have plenty of ding dongs down here, too. It is astounding what they think (and I do use that term quite loosely)is the "truth".

Grrr... I eat ding dongs for breakfast!

I'm in Texas. I don't even *try* to talk about politics.

I am not into politics, but I can't tell you how relieved I am to come here and read what you write. I also think Obama is trying to do the best he can with the crap he inherited, but nearly all of my coworkers have the same asshat beliefs as the tea party people. So I don't even bother trying to discuss politics at all.

Considering that all of the computers at my new job are named after guns, I'm trying to avoid political discussions with my co-workers. The servers are named things like Deserteagle, mg42 and Glock; I'm thinking of renaming my desktop "Brady".

Dude, I was looking for you on CNN this morning! I knew without a doubt you must be there. :)

Are these people for real?

There is a long history of these kinds of claims being made. When Prescott Bush, the grandpa of W, first ran for Senator in Connecticut, his primary opponent put out anonymous pamphlets through churches that charged Bush as a Nazi due to his ... get this ... association with Planned Parenthood. (Remember, Pres was a typical Northeastern, socially liberal but fiscally conservative "Rockefeller Republican".) PP was ... shall we say ... not entirely divorced from the idea that we should alleviate poverty and other ills through social engineering and mass sterilization. Taken to an extreme, this idea -- which was widespread in Western countries prior to WWII and known as eugenics -- could be considered support for euthanasia.

You can find this connection still being made today by certain right-wing and left-wing nutcases.

Of course, it didn't help that Pres worked for a bank that worked for Fritz Thyssen, who helped Hitler in his early days before eventually fleeing Germany for his life, and as such falls in the same category as companies like IBM who pretended not to notice quite a lot. But my point is that this is one of those examples of the paranoid style in American politics^.

This also surfaced during the campaign against Medicare which used Ronald Reagan as a spokesman.

So, if you know your history, this isn't shocking. It's just the way the game has always been played.

Dhartung - regardless of how much I know about the past, it's still shocking to me to see signs comparing Obama to Hitler or ones that use the word nigger followed by a bunch of swear words. At a health care town hall rally.

The only thing this "game" is doing for me is making me a better person by comparison.

This kind of thing makes me happy to live in NYC where most people seem to be able to intuit that Obama isn't yearning for a septuagenarian genocide. I live in a nice, sane bubble.

I haven't been following this at all because I'm already too exhausted by other things, but I heard that thing about no care for the elderly this morning on NPR (well, actually, I heard Obama refuting it) and my jaw dropped.

People as brazen as the teabag organizers shouldn't be allowed to communicate with people as stupid as the teabaggers. It's just a really bad mix.