[Guest post by Nick James*]
President Obama’s cabinet has quietly begun touring flyover country in order to build support for various policies. The small-town tour’s most recent stop was Reserve, Louisiana, where Kathleen Sebelius, Eric Shinseki, Hilda Solis and Tom Vilsack showed up to wow the rubes with snake oil promises of Free Healthcare. The rubes weren’t buying; even the local media described the crowd as “skeptical.”
Sebelius perpetuated the lie that 47 million Americans have no insurance coverage – many included in that statistic are not Americans, and many are already eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP. (Watch this video for a breakdown of the uninsured.) She also pushed the new talking point recently introduced by Donna Brazile about the “underinsured” and even tacked on an additional 5 million. No comment on the 83 million who will lose their private insurance if the House Democrats’ bill passes.
Although the town hall was held in the middle of the work day with very little notice or publicity, the meeting room was packed. There was a line 20 deep waiting outside of the door to get in. On the whole the crowd seemed very pro-life and hostile towards the Obama officials.
(Photos courtesy of Nick James of La. Dads.)
One man declared, “It will be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country!” This video also includes a clip of Sebelius’ response to a question whether Congress will have to partake of the wonderful new plan the Democrats are devising for the proletarians. That development will likewise occur on a cold day in hell:
How clueless was Ms. Sebelius? She was perplexed when a reference to FEMA was greeted with outrage and she brushed off concerns by the elderly about Medicare cuts.
Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu needs to walk a very fine line if she wants to keep her job, and she knows it. She intends to hold another town hall in August “where more health care questions can be answered.” I guess she didn’t get the memo that “The time for talk is through.”
[*With a little assistance from Laura and xposted to Hot Air's Green Room.]
With that 47 million figure, you forgot that another good chunk of those are people who are only temporarily uninsured — for a brief period of time, about a year if I remember right.