Inside the school gymnasium, the president said: "Medicare and Medicaid are on an unsustainable path. Medicare is slated to go into the red in about eight to 10 years."
Outside the school, the Journal's Jonathan Weisman interviewed Diane Campbell of Kingston, N.H. Campbell's mother has an autoimmune disease that "is treated with expensive transfusions of gamma globulin, paid for by Medicare." Campbell's sister, the story notes, "was born with no arms and one leg, and is also covered by Medicare, the government-run, health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled."
In a more logical world, one might expect Campbell's worldview to incorporate the reality that her family relies on a government program to provide essential health care. Campbell might have quarrels with the generosity of Medicare benefits or with how the Medicare program is run. She might legitimately worry that in extending health care to others, the government could divert resources currently available to her mother and her sister through Medicare.
But whatever critique she provided, presumably it would come from a perspective that was consciously left-of-center, because Campbell's bottom line appears to be that the government should continue to extend, or even expand, medical benefits to her family.
Now take a look at the placards that Campbell was waving (that's her in pink).
The two signs are identical, except that one contains a crucifix while the other contains a peace sign. They read: HEY AMERICA, YOU WANT CHANGE. HITLER DID TOO!! A drawing depicts Obama giving the Sieg Heil salute in front of a Nazi swastika. Lest you confuse Campbell's signs with Christian-tinged leftist agitprop, the word SOCIALISM appears under the rendering of Obama as storm trooper. "Adolf Hitler was for exterminating the weak, not just the Jews and stuff, and socialism—that's what's going to happen," Campbell told the Journal.
This is why I don't watch town hall meetings on TV. Nobody with at least a halfway informed opinion shows up.
