Since the left is buzzing that Joe Wilson is a Health industry darling for taking donations from the health care industry, I did some checking.  Thanks Eugene, for getting me curious.

So off to opensecrets.org and here is what I found.  Yes, Joe Wilson did take $244k from the health industry.  Here are his top three industry contributors:

• Health Professionals $244,196
• Lawyers/Law Firms $211,870
• Real Estate $195,179

Wow.

But then I did more checking, and compared to his contemporaries, he is a frugal piker.

Pelosi:

• Lawyers/Law Firms $689,225
• Transportation Unions $563,600
• Health Professionals $555,750

Reid:

• Lawyers/Law Firms $3,285,351
• Casinos/Gambling $1,521,470
• Real Estate $1,013,256
• Health Professionals $932,876

So, I popped over to the industry section, and found these totals for the health care industry:

This cycle so far:

• 2010  Total:   $12,051,244
• To Democrats:  $7,028,002
• To Republicans:  $4,997,478

2008

• 2008 Total:  $95,185,139
• To dems:  $50,024,729
• To Repubs:  $44,890,149

 Hmm.  So digging into the health care industry, who are the top recipients?

In the speech to congress last night, Obama said this:

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

This prompted Rep Joe Wilson (R, SC) to vocally call him a liar.

So….who lied?

Answer:  Neither and Both.

The problem lies in the nuance of the statements.

The reforms do NOT apply to illegals, but they also do not include any provision to actually check to see if someone is illegal, so they are shadow rules at best. 

Factcheck.org sums it up:

The president is correct: The House bill contains a section (Sec. 246) titled “NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS,” which states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

The entire health care issue has gone bonkers. 

MSNBC runs an edited video of a guy packing guns at a protest and insinuates its a racial issue, conveniently ignoring that the unedited video shows this to be a black man wearing guns, not a white one.  Should they be called MSDNC?  Nice to see the race baiting continues.

And some mutter about the crazy conservatives also conveniently forgetting some of the gun toting demonstrators are FOR health care reform.

And then there is the whole notion of reform.   If you protest the health care takeover you are against reform completely, but no one on the left apparently wants to admit there is a huge area of other options between do nothing and Government takeover.

John Mackey the CEO of Whole Foods runs an editorial detailing many of those options and now faces a boycott by liberals because he dares to suggest we can fix it without socialism.

Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

At Obama’s town hall meeting the there are so many plants now they should be called greenhouse meetings.

Here is the story:

Video: Astroturfing at Obama’s NH “town hall”

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has the video evidence of the strategy used by Barack Obama to get a roomful of complacent supporters at his Portsmouth, New Hamsphire “town hall” yesterday. The group he launched, Organizing for America, had supporters bused into the event — and they went directly to the head of the line to get into the forum. It’s the quickest and most effective way to ensure that the President doesn’t have to answer any tougher questions than those about the “mean signs” of his opponents:

Andrew Malcolm says this shows a desperation in the administration, and that even with the White House organization, Obama’s losing on the ground:

While Obama’s poll popularity has slipped somewhat, the popularity of his keystone programs has slid dramatically. Now, we fully understand why the president set that early August deadline for a completed bill. His internal polls predicted the kind of coalescing opposition we’ve seen recently in congressional town halls around the country.

Not too terribly long ago, the Democrats were up in arms over Bush, the war and all manner of side issues, and back then, people like Nancy Pelosi were pretty sure Dissent was good:

My how times have changed.  Now, dissent is fascist and unamerican.

What the Liberals once hailed as the most pure form of patriotism is now the most hated and reviled.

Pelosi and Hoyer in a an op ed at USA Today were clear that they (now) consider this to be an unthinkable pass time.

Even SoS Hillary Clinton has been on record contradicting that belief:

We hear tale of how the conservatives are planting paid operatives, how they are astroturfing, and are not “real”.  And yet it is the democrats that are advertising in Craigslist for people to work for health care reform.  See for yourself.  Here are a couple samples:

There are thousands of these ads making me wonder who is paying?   I wish I was getting paid that much to protest.  Heck I am not getting paid anything.

Again, it is amazing that this kind of organized campaign to support the Democratic agenda is considered OK, while identical campaigns to oppose it are demonized and vilified.

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We’ll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

Free Colorado has a great series of videos, all of which interviewed people to ask how they feel about being called as a mob.

What is clear is that at the core of the protests are regular people.  Are organizations also trying to spur protest?  I would imagine so, the same way that I get 3 or 4 letters from democrats asking me to attend the rallies and speak out in favor of health care.   Like this one from Obama himself.  Apparently only the community organizer in chief is allowed to organize.

See more on that site.

Rather then name calling why not listen to what people are saying?

Maybe congress should take their input and incorporate it into law, you know, like a representative republic should do…

…Because I keep getting letters from him to organize.

This is a direct cut and paste from one such letter received last week.

This is the moment our movement was built for.

For one month, the fight for health insurance reform leaves the backrooms of Washington, D.C., and returns to communities across America. Throughout August, members of Congress are back home, where the hands they shake and the voices they hear will not belong to lobbyists, but to people like you.

Home is where we’re strongest. We didn’t win last year’s election together at a committee hearing in D.C. We won it on the doorsteps and the phone lines, at the softball games and the town meetings, and in every part of this great country where people gather to talk about what matters most. And if you’re willing to step up once again, that’s exactly where we’re going to win this historic campaign for the guaranteed, affordable health insurance that every American deserves.

In St Louis, the ‘hits’ keep on coming.

And since the Democrats are now astroturfing and encouraging this, this will only get worse.

The title seems glib but sadly it is true.  According to some of the Democrats, having the audacity, the sheer gall to protest about Health Care means you are a political terrorist and are working out of the Nazi playbook:

Taking a page right out of Nancy Pelosi’s playbook of stating that town hall meeting protestors are sporting swastikas thus implying that they are Nazis, low rated radio host Bill Press is now accusing them of using Nazi tactics in a sanity-challenged column. This follows on the heels of Press’ attack on the protestors on Fox News as reported earlier this week by Seton Motley here in NewsBusters. Here is Press going completely over the edge on the subject of the protestors in his column:

…Taking a page right out of a Nazi playbook, organizers bus in professional protestors and arm them with instructions on how to take over meetings, shut down discussion, shout over any pro-health care reform speakers, and then post video of the resulting chaos on YouTube. It’s mob rule, pure and simple.