Outside Obama-Specter event, a vocal joust

Outside the Convention Center yesterday afternoon, critics and defenders of President Obama's health-care initiative took the opportunity to express their views on the president's plan, and taunt one another.

"Health care now!" boisterous Obama supporters at 12th and Arch Streets chanted while Obama headlined a fund-raiser inside the center for Sen. Arlen Specter.

"USA! USA! USA!" the smaller crowd of opponents shouted from the opposite corner.

Sometimes the verbal jousting got a bit petty.

"Pigs!" someone on the conservative corner shouted at the liberals, referring to the massive rise in debt-financed government spending.

"Losers! We won!" a supporter of the president shouted back, referring to last year's election.

Other interests were represented at the demonstration.

"UFO Disclosure Now," read the sign of one man with his own conspiratorial (or comically mocking) agenda.

Much of the media took up another corner while the fourth was occupied prominently by antiabortion protesters who held up large graphic signs depicting aborted fetuses and condemned sinners through an overpowering loudspeaker.

"We are long overdue for a civil war," one abortion opponent warned.

Despite such rhetoric, there were no arrests and only a minor scuffle between one antiabortion demonstrator and the large contingent of police on hand for crowd control.

Capt. William Fisher, commanding officer of the Civil Affairs Unit, estimated that the overall gathering - counting media, police, and onlookers who were all mixed together - reached nearly 400 around 4:30 p.m. before thinning out.

For most of the demonstration, traffic continued to flow through the intersection, and motorists honked to show support for one side or another.

Specter, whose switch from Republican to Democrat elicited howls of outrage from his former party, was also the target of ire from some demonstrators.

On the anti-Obama corner, Betty Schieber, 71, a GOP committeewoman from Langhorne, held up a sign declaring: "Dump Benedict Arlen."

"I'm hoping he gets the message that he's not going to get reelected," she said. "That's what happens to traitors."

She added, "I worked my backside off for this guy, and he backstabs us."

Obama's detractors held signs decrying the massive increases in spending and debt that have been incurred this year.

Cheltenham resident Don Adams, of the Independence Hall Tea Party Association, displayed a sign calling Obama "control freak in chief."

"I think Obamacare is needlessly interfering in our health-care system," Adams said. "It's government intervention at its worst."

Antoinette Kraus, 27, a health-care activist, said she supported Obama's health-care effort because her mother has had problems getting coverage because of epilepsy, a preexisting condition.

"I've seen my parents struggle with the insurance companies," Kraus said.

Among the curious onlookers was Karina Keff, 35, of the Netherlands, who currently works in Philadelphia and was hosting her visiting mother and sister.

"We would have thought there would be more people out," she said, mentioning that protests in Holland were much bigger and more volatile. Here yesterday, the demonstrators were, for the most part, "giving each other a chance to say something."