Fuck the Birthers, fuck the goddamn teabaggers, fuck the Dems for lurching ever farther to the right, fuck the corporatist lobbyists poisoning our democracy, and especially fuck ALL the rightwingers for calling for Civil War 2.0 anyway!On the day after President Barack Obama asked the nation to back his planned revamp of the $2.4 trillion system that pays for health care, opponents and supporters squared off Thursday on the sidewalks surrounding the U.S. courthouse in downtown Baton Rouge.
Police officers kept the two groups — which police estimated to be about 125 people — apart as the sides shouted at one another.
The gathering was largely peaceful — police reported no arrests — but points made on health-care plans soon were overshadowed by arguments of whether the president is an American citizen.
Obama spoke to the nation Wednesday night, arguing his proposed overhaul of the health-care system would help provide coverage for an estimated 47 million uninsured Americans and curtail the rising costs for consumers.
“I’ve also pledged that health insurance reform will not add towards deficit over the next decade. And I mean it,” Obama said during a nationally televised news conference.
Several proposals before Congress, now controlled by Democrats, generally provide subsidies for people and employers to purchase insurance, penalize those who don’t and provide a larger government safety net for those who can’t afford a policy.
Medicaid provides health care for the poor and uninsured. Medicare provides health care for the elderly.
Opponents, who include Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, contend taxpayer subsidies and the ability to operate at a loss eventually would drive most consumers into government-run health care.
“I don’t believe it’ll work,” Dwight Hudson, of Central, told the crowd of opponents to applause.
“Cost is the problem,” said Hudson, adding he is not particularly satisfied with his health insurance because the deductible is too high.
He favors a consumer-driven system that allows competition within private industry to drive down prices and expand opportunities, he said.
Hudson said he is affiliated with a newly formed local “Tea Party.”
Nationally, the Tea Party is funded by the some of the biggest donors to the Republican Party, according to media reports.
Hudson said he was a registered to vote as an independent and was unsure of the GOP’s position on the issue.
Hudson said he and others in the local Tea Party became aware through an Internet posting that supporters of Obama’s plan would rally at the courthouse.
Tea Party members, who contacted each other via e-mails and phone calls, and others arrived about 15 minutes into the supporters’ event in numbers that eventually came to overwhelm the couple of dozen attending the original event.
City police were called for help at 10:15 a.m., said Sgt. Don Kelly, a spokesman.
Federal marshals kept the crowd off the steps of the courthouse and on narrow sidewalks.
Many spilled into Florida Street.
Steven Walker of New Orleans, state director of Louisiana’s Organizing for America, said he wanted a handful of people to share their struggles caused by inadequate health-care insurance.
Obama’s plan would lower costs and free up options for people with insurance while giving people without insurance access to policies, said Walker, whose group is affiliated with the Democratic National Committee, which is promoting Obama’s agenda.
Walker said Obama’s plan would allow individuals greater choice.
“But this is a campaign of smear and fear,” Walker said pointing to an opposition sign that condemned the president as a communist.
“These people are anti-Obama,” he said.
A few feet down the sidewalk, on the other side of a cordon of police officers, Kurt Wagner, a Port Allen insurance sales manager, asked the crowd: “Is he rightfully the president?”
“No,” responded his listeners.
The issue of whether Obama was born in the U.S. has been making the rounds on blogs since the election.
Obama has distributed copies of a certification from the state of Hawaii saying he was born in Honolulu.
Because the certification of a live birth is not a birth certificate, some people contend the president has not adequately proven he was born on American soil, one of the criteria for becoming president.
Outside the Baton Rouge federal courthouse Thursday, the debate over Obama’s birth raged much longer than the one involving his health plan.
Note to self: vote Landrieu and Cassidy along with Bobby the Singsong Exorcist out in 2k12
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
