Maggie finds Reagan’s Welfare Queen
Listen to Maggie’s First Town hall meeting. Some guy named Michael ID’s a Welfare queen. Like Reagan’s queen, this one probably doesn’t exist either. The story is updated - she buys steak and lobster and drives a Lexus. Oh - she shops at Wegmans too. Probably wearing a gangsta rap tee shirt too.
These Town Hall meetings These Town Hall meetings are more of the same just like the ones rolled out for the unFAIR plan.
I’ve listened to a few callers - This is more Maggie’s talking points -
Blame everyone but her and her administration. Listen to the bits about blaming the schools.
I’ll have more later but the phrase, “partisan hack” comes to mind.
Amazing stuff, simply amazing.
Part of me thought this must be a joke when I first heard it.
OK, somebody needs to bust them on this crap. She states you must push “star 3″ in order to ask a question. First off, I recognize the voice of Michael. This is all a sham. A FOIL request should be made for the software used for these so called “town hall meetings” as well as the dates and times of calls.
They don’t exist. This is all a pre-recorded elaborate tape they play and want you to listen to to try to poison minds. It should be illegal, since it’s all perpetuated on a lie.
She’s about as popular as Bush these days. How “ironic” that every “staged stooge caller” loves her and favors Minarik’s mentality.
And to Michael, the welfare lusting lobster wanting caller - I know who you are! Your voice is a little too unique to try to pass as yourself off as a benign member of the community!
Let this be a lesson to the community. Hire an unemployed TV anchor, get a dramatic actress wannabe. Muffin Mouth Maggie still thinks she’s delivering the morning news. She’s about as pathetic now as she was the day she was fired.
I got a call like this a few nights ago and listened for a few minutes. One of the callers raised a similar issue — Medicaid fraud. Maggie said that more needed to be done, etc.
Then, the next caller was a woman who was on Medicaid because she had a disability (I forget what it was, but it was something life-altering and terrible, like MS). That woman told Maggie, basically, that she was tired of the emphasis placed on Medicaid fraud, that she had a need, that’s what Medicaid was for, etc. Maggie had to backpedal furiously, say that of course there are legitimately needly people on Medicaid, that it’s too bad some take advantage of it, etc., etc.
Judging from what I heard the other night, I don’t think the calls are staged. I do think there’s self-selection by callers — most people don’t have the time or inclination to listen to a dull, repetitive call at 7 p.m. For example, on the night I listened, a couple of the questions came from very earnest high school students.
I’m in the process of listening to the entire meeting but a couple of things.
Are the calls entirely staged? Probably not, however, I won’t be surprised if there isn’t a little astrotrufing going on here shielded by self-selection.
I mean I’m pretty active in things and don’t know if I would have the patience to listen to a 40 plus minute call and wait my turn after I press *3.
Given the self selection - I’m not convinced that this is a representative sample.
Finally Maggie gets credit for (I saw some where) involving 8000 plus people so far in the conversation. Sorry some autodialer dialed 8000 phone numbers. By that measure if you were home or not you give Maggie credit for involving you in the process. Sorry Maggie it isn’t that easy.
During the “FAIR” plan promotion, Maggie would stage these town halls. You would be asked if you had a question and what it was, and then required to wait until the call was over to learn they never reached you.
I heard one caller at that time ask something that was not favorable to Maggie, and they claimed to have lost the connection on that call! Anyway, I suspect most of the questions are taken from audience plants.
With respect to the use of this gimmick now, (I guess we’re all supposed to be duped into thinking that we’re having a say in government here) Maggie is doing the usual Maggie Minarik thing - playing to people’s biases and prejudices. She must be operating on the theory that the enemy of her growing army of dissatisfied constituents is her friend. So she’ll target the poor and minorities, playing up stereotypes, and blame them, even though they had the least ability to change anything.
Maybe the “pre-selection” works like it does in the White House press briefings… When Maggie needs a break, the right button is pushed — does anybody remember Jeff Gannon/James Guckert?
Or maybe it’s like Bush’s Town Hall Meeting in Greece. You had to be invited, the public could not get close, and if you were protesting, you went to jail.
That’s the GOP way!