Of course, she sings a different tune when the “disrupters” aren’t on her side:

However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted “Just say no!” drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

Hypocrisy in Washington hardly seems noteworthy but Pelosi is pretty adept at distinguishing herself. In a city full of liars, hypocrites, and power-obsessed thieves she still manages to set the bar higher and higher.

The title of the piece is “Obama’s healthcare horror” but the real issue lies deeper:

What does either party stand for these days? Republican politicians, with their endless scandals, are hardly exemplars of traditional moral values. Nor have they generated new ideas for healthcare, except for medical savings accounts, which would be pathetically inadequate in a major crisis for anyone earning at or below a median income.

And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the “mob” — a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

Meanwhile, anger grows:

The announcement:

American Forces Press Service has launched a military blog called “Family Matters” dedicated to helping military families deal with the challenges and situations unique to a military lifestyle. The blog features tips from experts, useful resources and timely responses to comments and questions. Upcoming topics include back-to-school tips, education benefits, dealing with deployments, childcare and more. Read “Family Matters” at http://afps.dodlive.mil/.

Not much there at the moment but it might evolve into a useful resource.

Georgia Democratic Congressman David Scott was obviously fired up and ready to tee off on someone for astroturfing (He’s been drinking his party’s own Kool-Aid) that he forgot that real people are showing up with real concerns. The rest of his rant gives rare insight into just how consumed these guys are with their own positions and power.

Additional video of the event can be found at 11Alive.com.

Twitter
Monitor the discussion

Frank Rich on the growing discontent:

But this mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

No president can do that alone, let alone in six months. To make Obama’s goal more quixotic, the ailment that he diagnosed is far bigger than Washington and often beyond politics’ domain. What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.

It’s a cynicism confirmed almost daily by events. Last week Brian Stelter of The Times reported that the corporate bosses of MSNBC and Fox News, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, had sanctioned their lieutenants to broker what a G.E. spokesman called a new “level of civility” between their brawling cable stars, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. A Fox spokesman later confirmed to Howard Kurtz of The Post that “there was an agreement” at least at the corporate level. Olbermann said he was a “party to no deal,” and in any event what looked like a temporary truce ended after The Times article was published. But the whole scrape only fed legitimate suspicions on the right and left alike that even their loudest public voices can be silenced if the business interests of the real American elite decree it.

Rich, not surprisingly, finds Republican strategists missing a real opportunity to capitalize on this anger:

The best political news for the president remains the Republicans. It’s a measure of how out of touch G.O.P. leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are that they keep trying to scare voters by calling Obama a socialist. They have it backward. The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy. If anything, the most unexpected — and challenging — event that could rock the White House this August would be if the opposition actually woke up.

I think he’s right. Screaming “Socialist!” isn’t far off the mark and it’s an easy way to fire up the base but Republicans are missing an opportunity to craft a message that would have wide appeal across party lines. Frankly, I don’t expect them to do this because the resulting platform would require meaningful political reform. Reform? Yeah – not interested. That leaves the average American pretty much stranded since the Libertarian party will continue it’s tradition of failing to take itself, and the political system, seriously enough to offer us a meaningful alternative.