Earlier this month, the ‘Grok ran a guest piece of mine. It received several comments, pro and con, and was a totally entertaining experience. Thanks, Skip [Most welcome, sir! -Skip].
In due course, the piece rotated off as other pieces were published. Ten days after the piece appeared, Skip received another comment from Lucy Edwards. Her comment had two subjects, Bill O’Brien and Carol Shea-Porter (CSP). This article addresses the CSP comment, shown in part below:
And I suggest Mr. Johnson do some more homework before he writes about Carol Shea Porter [sic] again. The story about having someone removed from her town hall is untrue. James Pindell reported the following after the incident:
Lucy could have saved some of the homework she recommended by providing a link to her reference to Mr. Pindell, but she didn’t so it was off to Google. Since the incident, Mr. Pindell has been hired by WMUR and his old website now directs the reader to a WMUR site. Mr. Pindell’s article is not directly available, but a reference can be found on the Democratic Underground.
Lucy, you asked for more homework. OK, it is an incident that can be remembered with fondness. If you recall, it was towards the end of August 2009, Obamacare was still being debated, the people were generally opposed to the approach and wanted guidance from their representatives, and CSP ended up on a milk carton – have you seen this woman?
The New York Times, in a piece titled “Democrats Skip Town Halls to Avoid Voter Rage,” included the following:
In New Hampshire, where open political meetings are deeply ingrained in the state’s traditions, Representative Carol Shea-Porter’s campaign Web site had this message for visitors: “No upcoming events scheduled. Please visit us again soon!”
Ms. Shea-Porter, a Democrat, attended a state convention of letter carriers on Saturday, but she did not hold a town-hall-style meeting during the Congressional recess. In 2006, when she was an underdog candidate for the House, she often showed up at the meetings of her Republican rival, Representative Jeb Bradley, to question him about Iraq.
The story went viral. Others in the media and the blogosphere that picked up the story were Glen Reynolds at Instapundit, HotAir, Fox News, NowHampshire, the Union Leader, the Portsmouth Herald, and of course our favorite, the GraniteGrok.
As any good leader should, Frank Guinta stepped into the vacuum left by our ghost of a representative and scheduled a health care forum for 1 September at the Exeter Town Hall, a venue with plenty of room. Shamed into it, CSP quickly scheduled two town hall meetings for 29 August, one in Manchester, the other in Portsmouth. Both were planned as short meetings in small rooms with extremely restrictive rules – let’s call them Carol’s Rules.
Carl Tomanelli was thrown out of the Manchester meeting for breaking the rules by asking questions. He was not physically thrown out by CSP. He was tossed because of Carol’s Rules. Lucy, is this a difference without a distinction?
Lucy used the Democratic Underground piece, previously linked, almost word-for-word. (It is not considered good form to quote somebody while altering the quote to suit your needs.) She left out two sentences that were inconsistent with her partisan theme. They were:
The moment was captured on video and has been played over 50,000 times on YouTube and nearly everyday since on YouTube. This morning the Union Leader’s John DiStaso called Tomanelli "a cult hero of the right."
The ‘Grok ran a simple piece on Carl the evening of Frank Guinta’s meeting. Frank had given Carl latitude to speak at length. The Grok included a clip of Carl being thrown out of CSP’s meeting and another clip of Carl at Frank’s meeting. A “cult hero of the right,” Carl was certainly a hero of mine that day. The handsome and distinguished man with the curly white hair sitting directly in front of Carl is me.
Watch both clips. See who you believe, the CSP spin or your own lying eyes and ears.
At the 1:15 point on the first clip, notice the large young man that stands up in front of Carl. He is wearing a purple tee shirt with SEIU markings. This is an Alinsky tactic. Seed the audience with large thugs and if somebody starts to make an undesired point, have your thugs stand up and intimidate that person. Carl is an ex-New York cop; he is not about to be intimidated.
Listen to Carl’s explanation of his question to CSP. He simply wanted to know why, given such a small room, CSP had allowed out-of-state SEIU personnel to have seats that could have gone to good New Hampshire voters. He got thrown out for his efforts.
We do not want government by intimidation! We do not want SEIU thugs stealing our elections! We do not want our representatives to feel more entitled then their constituents!
We do not want Carol Shea-Porter back!
Mike Johnson is a concerned citizen, a small government conservative, and a live-free-or-die resident of Kensington with a carry permit.
