I finally went to one of these protests. It was because our far left congress person refused to have any town hall meetings.
Here is a short synopsis.
We were all outside her office which is one building down from a corner. I got there 1/2 hour late as I had to WORK. The astroturfed professionals were there. One corner had all identical yellow shirted SEIU people about 30-35 with professionally printed out signs cheering healthcare and a nice SEIU logo. The other corner had 25+/- of identical blue shirts with the Obama logo and identical dark blue signs that said 'THANKS OBAMA." Then the third corner were 25+/- of identical white shirt with signs saying "We Support Capps." The fourth corner had 30+/- rag tag, dressed and homemade signs against Obamacare. Directly in front of her office were 100+/- of blue, white, yellow and rag tag shirts with aforementioned signs. I was across the street where there were no professionally astroturfed protesters. BTW our side had a bullhorn and kind of dominated over the chants of "HEALTHCARE NOW, YES WE CAN (yep they brought that one out), and WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW."
So yes Virginia the bussed in astroturfed protesters were from the left and not the right.
I spoke to a few pro-healthcare people not in protester uniform. What I noticed having spoken to about tenof them was:
A) I would use the page number and the exact wording that I had printed out and ask them to read the section fully. They would hurl an insult at me which included: Rasicst, War Monger, Stupid, Unfeeling, Racist ( a popular one), Greedy,... I must admit I was surprised not to have been called a fascist.
B) Of the approx. ten I spoke to only one actually gave a rationed response that he could not believe what I was saying but would look into it. I had printed several sheets with the offense, the page number and where to get a pdf file. All the others had no interest what so ever in learning as they had been thoroughly brainwashed. One was also a small businees owner and did not know about the 8% minimum payroll tax she would have to pay. In fact called me a liar after I gave her the paper with the page and line number she threw it away in front of me (also littering).
C) Our side was not organized with rhythmic chanting and was hodgepodged together. However the two sides had roughly equal numbers. If not for the professional astroturfing protesters our side would have been up 4:1. Which in the this people's republic gave me HOPE.
D) Getting the corners must be in the leftist's playbook of protesting by getting you higher visibility to traffic.
E) Always bring a bullhorn.
F) As this was a conservative protest that was then countered with a communist astroturfed counter protest there were only three officers for about 200-250 people.
G) If I am a congress critter and saw the professional astroturfed protestors I would discount them asreally just one person. The amount of main stream unorganized people that have come out for this issue is scarring the crap out of them.
H) My favorite chant from our side "OBAMA LIED, GRANDMA DIED!" That really got under the communist's skin and made them red with anger.
