Kansas Senate

It’s a set of dance moves that would make John Kerry proud.

Government run healthcare supporters gathered in Wichita Saturday to protest the Healthcare Freedom Amendment (HFA). The Amendment, sponsored by Reps. Brenda Landwehr, Peggy Mast and Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, would try to prevent the federal government from imposing fines, or even jail time, to Kansas citizens who choose not to have health insurance. Opponents of the HFA claim that it would opt Kansas out of any “public option” that passes in Washington. However, no where in the two page document are these provisions found.

The Wichita protest was to target Rep. Landwehr for her support of the HFA and was a follow up to a rally in early November in Shawnee targeting Sen. Pilcher-Cook. At that protest, government healthcare supporters were met by a large group of freedom loving patriots.

The spin from the left was that they were all shipped in by Koch Industries, even though they were unable to produce any evidence of this assertion. One would think big buses with a whole bunch of people would be easy to document. Of course, they are unable to do so because it simply doesn’t exist. Any “busing” by Koch or AFP is pure fiction, a grand lie concocted by liberals to convince themselves only the left can produce an uncoordinated, spontaneous grassroots movement.

The Koch lie seems to be in line with previous attacks by the left, where even they admit they were wrong when challenged to provide evidence.

This morning, I received an e-mail from Melissa “Missy” Cohlmia, the Communications Director for Koch Companies Public Sector. In it, Ms. Cohlmia asked:

“Can you point me to the facts behind this statement? The astroturf movement is paid for by David Koch of Wichita-based Koch Industries to the tune of $20 million of his own treasure.”

Admittedly, I failed in my post yesterday to appropriately link that statement. Mostly, however, that failure was because it’s a commonly known fact that Koch Industries is behind Americans for Prosperity, widely reported by the traditional and non-traditional press.

In fact the truth is AFP now has over 700,000 individual donors. Koch donations now account for less than 5% of AFP’s donations.

But as liberals go, they just couldn’t stop themselves and had to go even further.

One way that’s ever so popular with liberals is parading the children around. We must do it for the children, don’t you know! Thus Kansas’ 58,000 uninsured children becomes the call for more government programs. Of course, never mind there’s already a program out there called Kansas Healthwave. To a common sense Kansan that’d be evidence of a government failure, but to a liberal, it’s a call to more government action.

In fact, it seems the lefties have gotten themselves so worked up, they’ve forgotten what exactly happened in Shawnee less than a month ago.

In a weekend update, the left says things never got out of hand.

Despite the tone of our local Fox affiliate, that morning never got ugly. Passions are high on both sides, but never did the event escalate over some shouting matches.

But just a few weeks later, an organizer with the same liberal blog told a very different story to the Wichita Eagle.

“We had a bunch of (tea party supporters) come out and get pretty much in everybody’s faces,” said Sarah Burris, a spokeswoman for Forward Kansas. “They just want to raise a ruckus.”

Could it be liberals change their story based on what they think will get them the most traction in the press?

It also looks as though it’s okay to come from out of town for the rally, just as long as you make the trek for the right side. Just before the Shawnee rally, liberals had this to say:

…none, I repeat none, of the pro-Reform rally members will be bused in from surrounding areas — like American’s for Prosperity and David Koch did in Washington DC yesterday.

But they boasted of all the out of town folks for yesterday’s gathering:

Many of the demonstrators drove to Wichita from cities all over Kansas. Colin Curtis, of Manhattan made the trip because he wanted to ensure his side was represented in the debate

And I guess when flip-flopping on your version of protest etiquette doesn’t yield the results you want, you can always just start calling names.

From Twitter:

• @sarahburris: If you use teabagger in a press release do we think they’ll use it? #fwks
• @sarahburris: @immunis the experts say only if its in a quote just FYI #fwks

From the Wichita Eagle:

“We had a bunch of (tea party supporters) come out and get pretty much in everybody’s faces,” said Sarah Burris, a spokeswoman for Forward Kansas.

Now that’s a term even the Wichita Eagle won’t publish, try as the liberals might.

I’m willing to make a decent bet (tea party supporters) was inserted because the liberal’s spokeswoman decided to use a derogatory term for their opponents rather than show a little class.

Unfortunately, facts don’t get in the way of liberals. Their perception is reality, no matter how skewed it is, no matter how little evidence they have to support their assertions.

It’s the kind of insinuations and lies we should expect from this group in the future.