Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant Blame the Washington Post

Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant Blame the Washington Post
As a basic rule, politicians will say anything they can get away with. If an effective politician thinks that he can call his opponent a drug-dealing, serial-murdering gangster, and have the charge taken seriously by the media, then he will do it, even if there is no reality whatsoever to the allegation. The reason that most politicians don't describe their opponents this way is because the media will denounce them as liars, who are unfit for responsible public office.

This basic truth must be kept in mind in understanding the health care debate. The debate has trailed off into loon tune land, and it's the media's fault.

The lunacy was most clearly in evidence in former Gov. Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's plan would force her to stand in front of a "death panel" to argue for the life of her baby with Down Syndrome. This "death panel" is a complete invention by Governor Palin. There is no twist or turn or contorted permutation of President Obama's plan that would prevent Ms. Palin from providing as much health care as she wants to her baby.

It would have made as much sense to claim that the transportation bill will deny medical care to her baby. After all, if the roads in front of her home are not properly maintained, and her baby has a medical emergency, then the transportation bill would have effectively sentenced her baby to death because she won't be able to get medical attention in a timely manner.

The reason that Governor Palin thought she could make up stories about President Obama's death panels is that the media have treated all sorts of other absurd inventions about his health care plan with respect. At the most basic level, opponents have repeatedly said that President Obama's plan will lead to rationing of health care.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing in President Obama's plan that resembles rationing. He certainly intends to limit the type of medical procedures that the government would fund, but opponents of the plan don't want the government to fund any procedures. So, how is restricting the procedures funded through a government plan rationing? Anyone who wants to is entirely free to buy as much health care as they want outside of the government-subsidized plan. Where is the rationing?

Using Governor Palin's story, there may be mothers who are less wealthy than her who will be able to care for a baby with Down Syndrome or other serious affliction as a result of President Obama's plan. These mothers might not otherwise have this option because they could not afford the health care. It is easy to see how President Obama's plan can lead to life compared with the current situation. It's virtually impossible to see how it leads to death.

The media have allowed the politicians to turn life into death and night into day when it comes to the health care debate because they decided that anything said against President Obama's plan should be treated with respect, no matter how absurd it might be.

The line about rationing isn't the only place where the media have fallen down on the job in the health care debate. Instead of telling us that the cost of the plan was "huge," as the have often done, the media could have put the cost in a context that would make it understandable to people who are not policy wonks. They could have told us that the projected $1 trillion cost over the next decade is equal to about 0.5 percent of GDP, less than half of the cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars at their peak.

The $250 billion ten-year shortfall that Congress is struggling to fill is a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP, rounding error in the total budget. But the media only assured the public that this gap was a big hole in the budget; they didn't try to tell us how big.

The media have the job of informing the public. They have the time and the resources to know that when opponents of President Obama's plan talk about rationing, they are not telling the truth (i.e. they are lying). If the media just pass these assertions on to the public without comment, then they are giving them credibility.

And if the opponents of health reform think they can get away with one really big lie, then why shouldn't they start moving forward with even bigger ones. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with Governor Palin's death panel line. For this we owe our thanks to The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media.

How The Right Turned The Heath Care Town Halls Into Media Circuses And Teabagger Sessions

How The Right Turned The Heath Care Town Halls Into Media Circuses And Teabagger Sessions

The leaders of the angry mob are reveling in this and have learned their lessons well. They are the victims of Hoyer and Pelosi and Obama-Hitler and the dupes with the tri-corner hats insist no insurance companies are paying them to walk around telling and screaming. No doubt. They say they're just ordinary Americans and they resent being called "tools" and "angry mobs." They love being victims though; that's their natural comfort zone. Harry Reid's frustration-laden comments about evil-mongers plays right into their hands. Are, as he claimed, "lies, innuendo and rumor," being used to drown out rational debate? Well, of course; that's the whole fucking idea. But the dupes in the tri-corner hats don't know that. They don't know they're being used by the insurance CEOs-- who they will tell you they actually hate! Brian Baird's (D-WA) town hall meeting was disrupted by a gang of teabaggers whose goal was simple: disruption. He gave them a bonus when he said they were “lynch mob mentality” and exhibiting quasi "Brownshirt tactics." Now they can whine about how they're being victimized by elites. And, of course, this is manna from Heaven for the mass media-- and not just for the GOP's own Fox News but also for relatively legitimate media like CNBC, which was caught yesterday trying to drum up a riot with some of the teabagger groups for their TV cameras. And now they can whine that the fascist secret police are arresting them for exercizing their constitutional rights.

Conservative media ignore their own long history of invoking Nazis to smear progressives
Numerous media conservatives have misrepresented House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments that protesters are "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care" to express outrage that she would call the protesters "Nazis" -- even though she didn't. However, their outrage rings hollow -- the conservative media frequently invoke Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to smear the Obama administration, Democratic officials, and progressive policies, and such rhetoric has escalated in the past few days, largely due to Rush Limbaugh.
Conservative media falsely claim Pelosi asserted or suggested that health care reform opponents are "Nazis"

Following Limbaugh's lead, numerous media figures have advanced this false claim. After host Rush Limbaugh said August 6 that Pelosi is "basically saying that we are Nazis. She is saying that the people who oppose this are Nazis, and I'm going to tell you what," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Fox News' Gregg Jarrett, and The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan and James Taranto falsely claimed or suggested that Pelosi called health reform opponents "Nazis."

In fact, Pelosi said protesters were "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." Speaking to reporters, Pelosi was asked if she thought there was "legitimate grassroots opposition" at recent town hall events. She responded: "I think they're astroturf; you be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."

Some in the media also accused Pelosi of lying for saying protesters were "carrying swastikas" -- but they were. Numerous conservative outlets and figures, including The Washington Times, Andrew Breitbart, and The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore asserted or suggested that Pelosi was lying. But swastikas have appeared at town hall meetings. Indeed, as Media Matters for America senior fellow Eric Boehlert and Fox News contributor Alan Colmes have noted, multiple protesters at health care reform protests have held signs featuring swastikas.
Limbaugh has ratcheted up Nazi rhetoric to new levels in recent days

In the past week, Limbaugh has made comparisons of the Obama administration and Democrats to Hitler and the Nazis with alarming frequency. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks responded to one such comparison by stating: "What he's saying is insane."

Here are some recent examples of Limbaugh's obsession with Nazi comparisons:

* August 6: Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate"

* August 6: Limbaugh: "[T]he Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo"

* August 6: Limbaugh discusses "the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany"

* August 6: Limbaugh claims Obama "sending out his brownshirts"

* August 7: Limbaugh again says Obama health care logo "looks damn like the Nazi logo," lashes out at reporters mentioning comment

* August 7: Limbaugh falsely suggests that Obama believed "eight years ago," the American court system was "Nazi-like"

* August 7: Limbaugh again refers to "similarities" between Dem Party leaders, "Nazi Party of Germany"; adds Pelosi "started it"

* August 10: Limbaugh explaining his Nazi reference: "Socialism is socialism," "Hitler, Lenin, Stalin were all men of the left"

Michelle Malkin So Desperate to Stop Healthcare Reform She is Demonizing Children

Michelle Malkin So Desperate to Stop Healthcare Reform She is Demonizing Children
Wasn't Malkin's infamous, and creepy, 2007 Baltimore drive-by* bad enough? I guess not, because now Malkin's zeroing in on a young Massachusetts school girl. Why? Because she got to ask president Obama a question at a town hall forum. Bad idea! (She was an "in-the-tank questioner.") The girl may as well have painted a bull's eye on her back because Malkin and her online detective pals are takin' that kid down!!

Stay classy, Michelle.

And how much hate mail and how many angry phone calls to the house from wingnuts do you think the little girls' family is now going to receive thanks to Malkin's vilification? And all because the youngster participated in a town hall forum.

Malkin's larger point seemed to be that the Obama town hall wasn't diverse enough, and that too many Obama fans were in attendance. (i.e. It was all staged.) As HotAirPundit complained, "During the Town Hall at the end of Obama's speech nearly everyone gave Obama a standing ovation, on their feet clapping. This is propaganda 101."

Here's the friendly wager: If any reader can find a single example of Malkin or HotAirPundit ever leveling similarly pointed criticism of President Bush's town hall forums during his 2005 push to privatize Social Security -- town hall forums where Democrats were purposefully shut out or were even physically removed on the suspicion that they might disagree with the president -- then I'll send that reader a complimentary Media Matters bumper sticker.

But I'm not concerned about losing the wager because Malkin and HotAirPundit specialize in advertising their hypocrisy.

*I'm not using the "drive-by" phrase metaphorically the way Rush Limbaugh does. I'm using it literally. In 2007, Malkin drove all the way to Baltimore and cruised by the row house of a working class family -- she practically peered in their windows -- in an effort to undermine their public support for a federal insurance program designed to help poor kids.

What Really Happens When You Demand the President Produce His Birth Certificate

What Really Happens When You Demand the President Produce His Birth Certificate

One of the citizens starts showing him documents. "This is clearly his school record that shows that he was a citizen of Indonesia..."

"I don't understand what that has to do with the Kentucky attorney general's office," Wilding repeated.

"He was on the ballot here in Kentucky," Taitz said.

"That was a federal election. There are federal-election laws. The FBI investigates those. So I believe that your best venue and jurisdiction lies with the U.S. district court and the FBI."

That's when Taitz lost it. "I can see that you are hell-bent on doing absolutely nothing," she said, eyes flaring. "You want to pass the buck."

"No ma'am. I'm trying to follow the law."

"I'm going to the FBI and not only reporting Obama, I'm going to report you for refusing to investigate crimes. You have a duty to investigate those crimes! Why are people paying salary for this whole office of attorney general of Kentucky? To do nothing?"

"I think we're finished," Foster said.

But Taitz wasn't finished. She marched her troops straight over to the secretary of state's office and did the exact same presentation all over again. Then she headed to the FBI to do it a third time. And the whole time, she never stopped talking:

Goldman Sachs runs the treasury.

Obama is a puppet.

There's a cemetery somewhere in Arizona where they just dug 30,000 fresh graves, which wait now for the revolution.

Baxter International — a major Obama contributor — developed a vaccine for bird flu that actually kills people.

Google Congressman Alcee Hastings and House Bill 684 and you'll see that they're planning at least six civilian labor camps.

Google an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about train cars with shackles.

The communist dictator Hugo Chavez way back in 2004 purchased the Sequoia software that runs our voting machines and the mainstream media won't report any of it — not even Fox because Saudi Arabia bought a percentage of Fox in 2007.

This is the stuff that the media never gives Taitz a chance to say because it's so focused on the news hook of the "birther" issue. (And, believe me, this has been merely a tiny sample of what I saw on my road trip this spring.) But this is the stuff that reveals who she really is, and what this movement really is. It's no coincidence, for example, that when Bernard Goldberg told Bill O'Reilly that the real force pushing the birth certificate controversy was Obama, he used the exact same language as Taitz:

But like I said — and this is important to emphasize — all of Taitz's followers seemed like very nice people. Even Taitz had her good side on the rare occasions when she stopped talking for long enough that it could come out. I saw it when she talked about her three sons, or joked about how glad her husband was to get her out of the house. But there was fear and sadness in all of the "birthers," and a sense that things were surely coming to an end. And they were willing to believe anything bad that anybody said about Obama, no matter how or implausible or unfair.

It was pus exploding from a wound.

Can Common Sense Overcome Questions about Obama's health care reform plan

Can Common Sense Overcome Questions about Obama's health care reform plan
his summer the top conversational piece on the tip of everyone's tongue revolves around health care reform. The debate rages on through a series of Town Hall-style meetings taking place around the country with President Obama.

When cutting to the heart of all the hoopla, specific questions emerge. Here's a quick glance at Obama's answers to the most common inquiries voiced by folks just like you:


* What if I already have health insurance and am satisfied with my coverage?

Simply put, things won't change much for those content with their existing, employer-provided health insurance coverage. Obama guarantees that you will be able to keep your doctor and your plan. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Washington.

* What if I don't have health insurance?

For the staggering 46 million Americans lacking healthcare coverage, the uninsured will have the opportunity to select a plan from a menu of private and public options --similar to the way members of Congress choose their coverage.

Obama's team is working on the creation of the Health Insurance Exchange, which will give people a one-stop shop for a health care plan where they can compare benefits and prices and choose the plan best suited for them. Every plan would include an affordable, benefits package.

Obama also promises to provide assistance to those unable to afford one of the plans. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Wisconsin.

* Can I still obtain health insurance with a preexisting medical condition?

Yes! Obama often recounts his mother fighting with insurance companies over medical bills after her cancer diagnosis when they suggested it was a preexisting medical condition. Obama vows to put an end to this practice in addition to stopping insurance companies from dropping people if they "get too sick." Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Washington.

* How will my Medicare benefits be affected?

Obama denies any reduction in Medicare benefits. What will change is the wasteful spending associated with Medicare such as the $100 billion in subsidies that go to insurance companies without improving care for seniors.

In addition, Obama says the pharmaceutical industry agreed to $80 billion in spending reductions to help close the "doughnut hole" for seniors falling under Medicaid's prescription drug plan.

The "doughnut hole" refers to the gap in drug reimbursement seniors face that can accrue into thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses. Read the full transcript from Obama's town hall meeting in Ohio.

* How will we pay for this sweeping health care reform?

Obama says his plan will cost $950 billion over a ten-year period. Two-thirds of the cost of reform will come from reallocating money, paid for by taxpayers, already in the system that isn't being spent wisely.

One-third of that price-tag will be covered by increased revenues, such as capping itemized deductions the wealthiest Americans use on their income tax returns. Read the full transcript of Obama's town hall meeting in Virginia.

**I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson

Republicans Adopt Thuggish Mob Tactics to Cut Off Health-care Debate

Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate" (VIDEO)

Five right-wing myths about healthcare reform, and the facts
Myth 1: Democrats want to kill your grandmother. This claim seems too outlandish on its face to get much traction, but Republicans actually made some headway on it recently. Two House GOP leaders put out a statement warning that the healthcare reform bill "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." To hear opponents of reform talk about it, the legislation would force seniors to go in for sessions once every five years -- and more frequently if they're sick -- where doctors will encourage them to end their lives. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., summarized the scare tactic pretty well on the House floor last week, when she said the bill would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government," and therefore, wouldn't be pro-life. The GOP has pushed this line especially hard with some of the conservative groups behind the government's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case a few years ago, hoping to get antiabortion allies on board fighting reform. "Can you imagine the response of the American people when they find this out?" one-time GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson asked about the alleged euthanasia scheme on his radio show last month. "They're going to counsel you on preparing you to die," Rush Limbaugh pronounced a few weeks ago. Proof of how far this attack has spread came last week, when a caller to an AARP forum asked Obama about it directly. (Probably unwisely, the president tried to make light of the question, saying there weren't enough government employees to go meet with old people to talk about end-of-life care.)

There is a kernel of truth at the root of this attack: The legislation would order Medicare to pay for consultations between patients and doctors on end-of-life decisions, which it currently doesn't cover. But the consultations wouldn't be mandatory; if your grandmother doesn't want to go talk to her doctor about end-of-life care, she won't have to. Because Medicare doesn't pay for this kind of planning now, only 40 percent of seniors who depend on the government insurance say they have an advance directive that tells healthcare providers what measures they do and don't want used to prolong their life, even though 75 percent say they think it's important. The lack of planning actually costs a lot of money. Medicare spends billions and billions of dollars annually on expensive treatment during the last year of a dying patient's life. Without allowing Medicare to pay for end-of-life consultations, it's hard to know whether patients even want to go to such expensive lengths.

THE 4 others at the link

Reports: Glenn Beck fans turn health forum into ‘near riot’

Maddow calls out GOP operatives behind healthcare mobs
And just who are behind these groups?

“The executive director of American Majority’s Minnesota office — ko’inky dink — regional field director for Bush-Cheney ‘04,” began Maddow. “Executive director of their Kansas office would be a former Republican state legislator; executive director of their Oklahoma office, a former Washington, D.C. conservative lobbyist — you know, just your average middle-class Americans.”

Another ‘Recess Rally’ sponsor is The Sam Adams Society, run by “the former executive director of the Illinois State Republican Party,” said Maddow. “Sam Adams Alliance is also led by a former Dow Chemicals engineer who’s also president of the nation’s largest conservative state-level policy think tank…”

Finally, and what Maddow called “the most illustrative of all,” is Americans for Prosperity, run by Art Pope.

“Art Pope. Art Pope,” she said. “Why does that name sound familiar? Oh, right! That’s the headquarters of the North Carolina Republican Party. That building is named after Art Pope because Art Pope is a multi-millionaire far-right activist who’s given the Republican Party in North Carolina so much money over the years that they could think of no grander gesture than to name their headquarters building after him.”

After all, they’re just “average, middle-class Americans” much like yourself, Maddow concluded with a smirk.

Sick for Profit: Stephen Hemsley’s(CEO of UnitedHealth) Millions Come From Your Health


My Night at the Tampa Health Care Town Hall
Shouting as the room was filled to capacity and the others had to wait outside, holding signs like "I can't read, cut taxes" (which made no sense to me at all). When Representatives started coming in, people started shouting "No! No! No! No!" The town hall hadn't even started yet.

One thing I noticed was that many of the Shouters, and I came to call them, came in very organized. Many had 3x5 cards with printed questions. Sheets ofof paper printed out with highlighted text, usually held in the same kind of binder. I'm not sure if they all shopped at the same office depot, but the similarity was eerie.

Rep. Ryan(R) Plan to Make Your Healthcare Worse

Rep. Ryan(R) Plan to Make Your Healthcare Worse
Last week, I co-hosted Carlos Watson's morning news program on MSNBC. In an interview with Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Congressman was combative as he wrongly dismissed Democratic proposals for healthcare reform as "the government taking it over." Ryan claimed he wants to get "everybody insured" and that his Patient's Choice Act would do just that--giving people "the ability...to have a plan just like the one we have here in Congress."

It appears, however, that Ryan is just another conservative cog in what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls "a wall of misinformation."

Just check out the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) new scathing report entitled Coburn-Ryan Health Bill Would Jeopardize Coverage for Many, While Failing To Reduce the Number of Uninsured Significantly. Here's just some of the damage this bill would do:

•fails to make coverage affordable for many low-income people while also eliminating Medicaid coverage for low-income children, parents, and seniors, pushing tens of millions of vulnerable people into the private insurance market
•would cause employers to drop coverage while failing to provide viable alternatives for people who lose that coverage
•allows insurers selling coverage through (optional) exchanges to charge higher premiums for sicker people and exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions for one year
•prohibits exchanges from placing any limit on premiums and cost-sharing amounts
•doesn't set meaningful minimum standards on benefits, or limit deductibles or out-of-pocket costs
•lack of market reforms means that tax credit and low-income subsidy "would almost certainly be insufficient to enable many people who are older, in poorer health, or have special health care needs to purchase affordable coverage"
•low-income people could exhaust subsidy just to pay premiums
•low-income seniors eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare would face substantially higher costs because Medicaid would no longer pay their Medicare premiums and cost-sharing

The CBPP writes, "Overall, the proposal is not likely to do much to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and would make matters worse for many people who currently have coverage."

This might be a case of the health insurance industry getting what it pays for. The Center for Responsive Politics data indicates that the insurance industry is Ryan's top corporate campaign and PAC contributor: he received over $492,000 since he first ran in 1998, including over $210,000 in the 2007-08 and 2009-10 cycles.

Ryan is hailed--like Eric Cantor--by the right-wing as a rising star in the GOP. It seems, however, that when all is said and done he offers only more of the same: a whole lot of talking points that mask cruel outcomes for millions of people in his state and across the nation. Ryan and his conservative colleagues will be out peddling this misinformation during the August recess-- fight back.

Hannity Twists Obama's 2007 Remarks to Demonize Health-Care Reform

Hannity Twists Obama's 2007 Remarks to Demonize Health-Care Reform (Video at Link)

Right-Wingers Are Stirring Up Xenophobia to Swiftboat Health Reform
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Along with death and taxes, a third thing of which one can be certain is that conservative politicians will exploit Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration to rally opposition to any policy that might help ordinary working people.

The specter of unauthorized migrants sucking hungrily from the public teat is a tried-and-true method of turning people against their own interests.

We heard the narrative used to attack the stimulus package, federal aid to needy families, housing assistance and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

Forget about how these measures might impact their constituents -- lawmakers told us they had to oppose them to prevent hard-working Americans from being forced to subsidize foreigners who had broken the law. It fits neatly within the larger right-populist memes that fuel much of the immigration debate -- an out-of-control government that doesn’t only fail to uphold the law, but also, unimaginably, offers benefits to "illegal aliens" that are denied to ordinary Americans.

So it was inevitable that the unsettled and emotionally charged issue of immigration would be used as a cudgel against health reform. And it has -- not only by the usual motley crew of factually challenged pundits and radio hate-jocks, but by a number of conservative lawmakers.

It is nothing short of a Big Lie. The bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee says: "Eligible individuals are citizens or lawfully admitted permanent residents of the U.S." In the House, a section of the Tri-Committee bill titled "NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS," states unequivocally: "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."

As the saying goes, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Yet the facts haven’t prevented Republicans opposed to Democrats’ health proposals from claiming the opposite to be true.

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., drawled to reporters, "This health care plan, Obamacare, is going to give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance at the cost of taxpayers." Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., came up with the exquisitely moronic talking point, "if you don’t like illegal immigration, then you’re not going to like this bill either." Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, even went so far as to issue a press release falsely claiming that a Congressional Budget Office analysis projected that the House health legislation would cover 5.6 million unauthorized immigrants by 2019.

Of course, the CBO never said any such thing. Because just as the idea that we don’t sink an enormous amount of resources into punishing those who break our immigration laws is patently false, so too is the entire issue of unauthorized immigrants getting Cadillac benefits from the government. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org noted, "illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for federal health programs under current law."

"Kill Granny" Fear mongering and health-care

"Kill Granny" Fear mongering and health-care
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.

But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny."

Though the counseling provision is a tiny part of a behemoth bill, the skirmish over end-of-life care, like arguments about abortion coverage, has become a distraction and provided an opening for opponents of the president's broader health-care agenda. At a forum sponsored by the seniors group AARP that was intended to pitch comprehensive reform, Obama was asked about the "rumors." He used the question to promote living wills, noting that he and the first lady have them.

Democratic strategists privately acknowledged that they were hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.

The side battle also undercuts what many say is the more fundamental challenge of discussing sensitive, costly societal questions about how to align patient wishes at the end of life with financial realities, for both the family and taxpayers.

"I don't think it's about cutting costs; it's about quality," said Tia Powell, director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics. Pointing to extensive research, she said: "The good news is if you get people in an environment that is of their choosing, where there is support and they have good pain control, it is very likely to extend their life."

Not since 2003, when Congress and President George W. Bush became involved in the case of Terri Schiavo, who lay in a vegetative state in a hospice in Florida, have lawmakers waded into the highly charged subject, said Howard Brody, director of an ethics institute at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The attacks on talk radio began when Betsy McCaughey, who helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health-care overhaul 16 years ago, told former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) that mandatory counseling sessions with Medicare beneficiaries would "tell them how to end their life sooner" and would teach the elderly how to "decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) said they object to the idea because it "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."

Brody says the proposal to reimburse counseling sessions "is an excellent idea," because too few doctors or adult children know what an elderly person wants, even sometimes when the patient has signed a medical directive.

About one-third of Americans have living wills or a document designating a health-care proxy who would make decisions if they become incapacitated, said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit group that focuses on the rights of the terminally ill. "But it's alarming how rarely they actually get honored because often doctors haven't familiarized themselves with the patient's wishes," she said.

Wesley Smith, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, said Obama's focus on controlling costs and the legalese in the bill have contributed to the confusion. "People fear these counseling sessions will push toward less care because the point is to cut costs," he said. The average cost of care for a chronically ill Medicare patient in the final six months of life is $46,400, according to Dartmouth University data.

The emphasis on cost containment means "you'll end up with denial of care for the elderly," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who also testified against the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Possible abortion coverage and end-of-life care in the health bill will be "a watershed battle for the life community."

In the past two weeks, AARP has fielded a few thousand calls from people who mistakenly think the legislation would require every Medicare recipient to "choose how they want to die," said James Dau, a spokesman for the organization.

Though he is "willing to give the benefit of the doubt" to some who may be confused, Dau complained that the effort to "intentionally distort" the proposal "is just plain cruel to anyone who is forced to make one of these difficult decisions at the end of life."

The American Medical Association, which supports the provision, has received similar inquiries and protests from patients who fear doctors will begin denying care late in life.

"These are important discussions everyone should have when they are healthy and not entering a hospital, so they are fully informed and can make their wishes known," said association President J. James Rohack. "That's not controversial; it's plain, old-fashioned patient-centered care."

After letting the controversy simmer on talk radio and the blogosphere, expecting that it might blow over, Democrats have begun to respond.

The allegations of mandatory counseling and euthanasia "are blatantly false," Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) wrote colleagues. The accusations are "as offensive as they are untrue."

Right Wing Media, Strategists Seize Upon Gates Arrest and Controversy

Right Wing Media, Strategists Seize Upon Gates Arrest and Controversy
The controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and President Obama’s remark that the police “acted stupidly” has taken up a lot of newspaper and broadcast space in the past week, and brought some attention to the problem of racial profiling and indeed the problems of even having a public discussion of race issues in the United States.

But the fact that President Obama had to backtrack from his remarks says more about certain institutional aspects of racism in the United States than it does about individual attitudes among the electorate or among police officers. That is what is generally missing from the discussion that takes place in the major media.

It is well known that no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote since 1964. Indeed, that is the main reason why President Obama’s race was not so much of a handicap in the last election: most people who would not vote for an African-American would not vote for a Democrat in any case. This partisan divide over race issues goes back to Richard Nixon and the Republican party’s “Southern Strategy,” which – using coded racial appeals and other methods -- helped keep the White House in Republican hands for 32 of the ensuing 44 years.

All this is significant because, although individual attitudes obviously matter and are influenced by deep historical factors such as slavery and segregation, the persistence of such prejudices over time can be substantially strengthened by certain political institutions and strategies. As the Gates case illustrates, in today’s context this means the Republican party and the right-wing media – which overlap considerably.

Gates, a well-known author, scholar, and professor at Harvard University, was arrested by Cambridge police officer James Crowley for “disorderly conduct” on July 16. Crowley had responded to a 911 call from a neighbor who reported that two men were possibly breaking in to a house. It turned out that Gates was pushing open a jammed door to his own house, assisted by a driver who had dropped him off. After Obama criticized the police actions, the right went into attack mode.

Glenn Beck, a popular Fox News commentator, said that Obama “had exposed himself . . . as a guy who has a deep seated hatred for white people . . .”

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who reaches a reported 20 million people, said, “let's face it, President Obama's black, and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder.”

Talk radio has an enormous audience in the United States, with a reported audience of 50 million people each week; at least three-quarters of the programming is conservative.

U.S. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, (R-Mich.) is preparing to introduce a bill calling on President Obama to formally apologize to the Cambridge Police.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee distributed an online petition asking whether “it's appropriate for our nation's Commander in Chief to stand before a national audience and criticize the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day . . .”

The Republican party is obviously in disarray as it faces the threat of becoming a permanent minority party. Its hold on power prior to 2008 was based on a fake “populist” appeal to white working class voters – the biggest block of swing voters in most presidential elections during the last four decades. But issues such as gay marriage, guns, abortion, and whether “liberal elites” shared “our values,” have lost resonance since the economy collapsed.

Hence the right’s rapid and persistent response to Obama’s remarks, and its efforts to consolidate their base around a race issue. They don’t have much else to run with right now.

Obama came under fire for saying that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” by arresting Gates. For his part, President Obama has undoubtedly had experiences similar to those of Gates and has talked about his past difficulties, for example, in hailing a cab. As Stanley Fish pointed out, he has now also had the experience of being “President While Black.”

But Obama was being generous to Crowley; a better description would have been “acted maliciously.” Even if we accept Crowley’s own police report as a completely accurate version of events, there was no excuse for putting Professor Gates in handcuffs and dragging him down to the police station. (Gates gave a more credible account of what happened that contradicts Crowley on several key points; Crowley’s account is accepted here only for the sake of argument).

According to the police report, at the time of the arrest Gates had been positively identified as the owner of the home. There is no allegation that he had threatened or was threatening Crowley or anyone else. The “disorderly conduct” charge was, according to the police report, based on Gates allegedly yelling at the police officer from in front of his house.

Police sometimes abuse their authority, and this is a prime example. There is probably not one chance in a thousand that a Cambridge jury would have convicted Gates on these or any other criminal charges. But Crowley knew that the case would never go to trial. He may have arrested Gates out of spite and to demonstrate his authority; or he may have done it to protect himself from any complaint that might have been lodged against his own behavior prior to the arrest. As anyone who is familiar with police practices in the United States knows, it is common for police to arrest the victim when they commit an abuse. For example, when police beat people they sometimes charge them with assault so that they can drop the charges in exchange for the victim agreeing not to file a complaint. This is the most generous interpretation that one can give to Crowley’s decision to arrest Gates. But either way, the arrest itself was unethical, unprofessional, and an outrage.

Prof. Gates' Unconstitutional Arrest

Prof. Gates' Unconstitutional Arrest
The now-infamous Gates story has gone through the familiar media spin-cycle: incident, reaction, response, so on and so forth. Drowned out of this echo chamber has been an all-too-important (and legally controlling) aspect: the imbroglio between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley has more to do with the limits (or breadth) of the First Amendment than with race and social class.

The issue is not how nasty the discourse between the two might have been, but whether what Professor Gates said--assuming, for argument's sake, the officer's version of events as fact--could by any stretch of both law and imagination constitute a ground for arrest for "disorderly conduct" (the charge leveled) or any other crime. Whether those same words could be censored on a college campus is a somewhat different--though related--question.

First, a quick recap. Gates returned to his Cambridge residence from an overseas trip to find his door stuck shut. With his taxi driver's assistance, he forced the door open. Shortly thereafter, a police officer arrived at the home, adjacent to the Harvard University campus--in my own neighborhood, actually--responding to a reported possible burglary.

Upon arrival, the officer found Gates in his home. He asked Gates to step outside. The professor initially refused, but later opened his door to speak with the officer. Words--the precise nature of which remains in dispute--were exchanged. Gates was arrested for exhibiting "loud and tumultuous behavior." The police report, however, in Sgt. Crowley's own words, indicates that Gates' alleged tirade consisted of nothing more than harshly worded accusations hurled at the officer for being a racist. The charges were later dropped when the district attorney took charge of the case.

It is not yet entirely clear whether there was a racial element to the initial decision by a woman on the street--working for Harvard Magazine, no less!--to call the police, although that is looking unlikely. It remains disputed whether Sgt. Crowley treated Professor Gates any differently than he would treat a white citizen in the same position. (In fact, if one accepts Crowley's claim that he dished out to Gates equal treatment under the law, this case stands as a dire warning to all citizens as to the dangers inherent in exercising one's constitutional right to free speech when in an exchange with a police officer--but more on that below.)

Indeed, Crowley did not arrest Gates for breaking and entering, for by then he was clearly convinced that the professor did live in the building. (For one thing, Harvard University Police officers had by that time arrived at the scene, and they easily could have checked not only that Gates was on the faculty, but that he lived in the Harvard-owned residential building. Gates is one of the most widely known faces in the Harvard community.) Instead, Crowley arrested the diminutive and disabled professor (he uses a cane to walk and bears a passing resemblance to the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec) for disorderly conduct--the charge of choice when a citizen gives lip to a cop.

By longstanding but unfortunate (and, in my view, clearly unconstitutional) practice in Cambridge and across the country, the charge of disorderly conduct is frequently lodged when the citizen restricts his response to the officer to mere verbal unpleasantness. (When the citizen gets physically unruly, the charge is upgraded to resisting arrest or assault and battery on an officer.) It would appear, from the available evidence--regardless of whether Gates' version or that of Officer Crowley is accepted--that Gates was arrested for saying, or perhaps yelling, things to Crowley that the sergeant did not want to hear.

As one of Crowley's friends told The New York Times: "When he has the uniform on, Jim [Crowley] has an expectation of deference." Deference and respect, of course, are much to be desired both in and out of government service--police want it, as do citizens in their own homes or on their porches or on the street. However, respect is earned and voluntarily extended; it is not required, regardless of rank.

Some have posited that Crowley's tolerance for citizen vituperation was lower because the speaker was a black man, or a member of the city's economic and social elite. As a four-decade (and counting) criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, I can say with reasonable assurance that while there might have been some degree of racial or, more likely, class animus that underlay the contretemps between citizen and officer here, fundamentally the situation can, and should, be analyzed as a free speech case.

Why? Because any citizen--white, black, yellow, male, female, gay, straight, upper or middle or lower class--who deigns to give lip to a police officer during a neighborhood confrontation or traffic stop stands a good chance of being busted. And this is something in police culture nationally--and probably all around the world (I've observed Frenchmen giving lip to Paris flics and gendarmes, also with bad results for the civilians)--that begs for change.

Heath-Care Reform and Medicare Myths

Heath-Care Reform and Medicare Myths

I am just going to provide some brief remarks, and then I want to hear from you. It is wonderful to be here today. I want to thank Mike for moderating this discussion. I want to thank Jennie and Barry for their extraordinary leadership here at AARP.

Some of you may know that, 44 years ago today, when I was almost 4 years old, after years of effort, Congress finally passed Medicare, our promise as a nation that none of our senior citizens would ever again go without basic health care.

It was a singular achievement, one that has helped seniors live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. It's enhanced their financial security, and it's given us all the peace of mind to know that there will be health care available for us when we're in our golden years.

Today, we've got so many dedicated doctors and nurses and other providers across America providing excellent care, and we want to make sure our seniors and all our people can access that care. But we all know that right now we've got a problem that threatens Medicare and our entire health care system, and that is the spiraling cost of health care in America today.

As costs balloon, so does Medicare's budget. And unless we act within a decade -- within a decade -- the Medicare trust fund will be in the red.

Now, I want to be clear: I don't want to do anything that will stop you from getting the care you need, and I won't. But you know and I know that right now we spend a lot of money in our health care system that doesn't do a thing to improve people's health, and that has to stop. We've got to get a better bang for our health care dollar.

And that's why I want to start by taking a new approach that emphasizes prevention and wellness so that instead of just spending billions of dollars on costly treatments when people get sick, we're spending some of those dollars on the care they need to stay well, things like mammograms and cancer screenings and immunizations, common-sense measures that will save us billions of dollars in future medical costs.

We're also working to computerize medical records, because right now too many folks wind up taking the same test over and over and over again because their providers can't access previous results or they have to relay their entire medical history, every medication they've taken, every surgery they've gotten, every time they see a new provider. Electronic medical records will help to put an end to all that.

We also want to start rewarding doctors for quality, not just the quantity, of care that they provide. Instead of rewarding them for how many procedures they perform or how many tests they order, we'll bundle payments so providers aren't paid for every treatment they offer with a chronic -- to a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead are paid for, how are they managing that disease overall?

And we'll create incentives for physicians to team up and treat a patient better together, because we know that produces better outcomes. And we certainly won't cut corners to try to cut costs, because we know that doesn't work. And that's something that we hear from doctors all across the country.

For example, we know that, when we discharge people from the hospital a day early without any kind of coordinated follow-up care, too often they wind up right back in the hospital a few weeks later. If we had just provided the right care in the first place, we'd save a whole lot of money and a lot of human suffering, as well.

And, finally, we'll eliminate billions in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program, giveaways that boost insurance company profits but don't make you any healthier. And we'll work to close that donut hole in Medicare Part D that's costing so many folks so much money.

Drug companies as a consequence of our reform efforts have already agreed to provide deeply discounted drugs, which will mean thousands of dollars in savings for the millions of seniors paying full price when they can least afford it.

OBAMA: All of this is what health insurance reform is all about: protecting your choice of doctor, keeping your premiums fair, holding down your health care and your prescription drug costs, improving the care that you receive. And that's what health care reform will mean to folks on Medicare.

And we've made a lot of progress over the last few months. We're now closer to health care reform than we ever have been before, and that's due in no small part to the outstanding team that you have here at AARP, because you've been doing what you do best, which is organize and mobilize and inform and educate people all across the country about the choices that are out there, pushing members of Congress to put aside politics and partisanship, and finding solutions to our health care challenges.

I know it's not easy. I know there are folks who will oppose any kind of reform because they profit from the way the system is right now. They'll run all sorts of ads that will make people scared.

This is nothing that we haven't heard before. Back when President Kennedy and then President Johnson were trying to pass Medicare, opponents claimed it was socialized medicine. They said it was too much government involvement in health care, that it would cost too much, that it would undermine health care as we know it.

But the American people and members of Congress understood better. They ultimately did the right thing. And more than four decades later, Medicare is still giving our senior citizens the care and security they need and deserve.

With the AARP standing on the side of the American people, I'm confident that we can do the right thing once again and pass health insurance reform and ensure that Medicare stays strong for generations to come.

So I'm hoping that I can answer any questions that you have here today. I'm absolutely positive that we can make the health care system work better for you, work better for your children, work better for your parents, work better for your families, work better for your businesses, work better for America. That's our job.

So thank you very much.

Corporate Socialist Heath-Care dropped sick policyholders

Corporate Socialist Heath-Care dropped sick policyholders

Blue Cross of California encouraged employees through performance evaluations to cancel the health insurance policies of individuals with expensive illnesses, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) charged at the start of a congressional hearing today on the controversial practice known as rescission.

The state's largest for-profit health insurer told The Times 18 months ago that it did not tie employee performance evaluations to rescission activity. And executives with Blue Cross parent company WellPoint Inc. reiterated that position today.

But documents obtained by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and released today show that the company's employee performance evaluation program did include a review of rescission activity.

The documents show, for instance, that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

WellPoint's Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said.

"When times are good, the insurance company is happy to sign you up and take your money in the form of premiums," Stupak said. "But when times are bad, and you are afflicted with cancer or some other life-threatening disease, it is supposed to honor its commitments and stand by you in your time of need.

"Instead, some insurance companies use a technicality to justify breaking its promise, at a time when most patients are too weak to fight back," he said.

Fox News Poll Propels Myth About Obama "Czars"

Fox News Poll Propels Myth About Obama "Czars"

Last week, ThinkProgress noted that Fox News reporter Wendell Goler thoroughly debunked conservative fearmongering about President Obama’s supposed 30 czars, which they often claim “don’t need to be confirmed by the Senate.” “There is no constitutional issue” and many of these “czars” are “confirmed by the Senate,” reported Goler. Despite this, a new Fox News poll asserts that “Obama has appointed over 30 czars” and “Czars are advisors to the president who work outside of the cabinet and do not have to be confirmed by the Senate”:


As ThinkProgress noted, Fox regularly cites a list by Taxpayers for Common Sense to support their claim of 30 czars. But that list includes Senate-confirmed positions such as the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Additionally, it also includes Elizabeth Warren, who is employed by Congress as the head of chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program.

Recent History: Torture, Assassination and surveillance

Don't Turn the Page on History
By Tom Engelhardt

If there seems to be something odd about this latest flap, if there's much that we don't know yet, we do, at least, know one thing: This particular small splash from the previous administration's deep dive into crime and folly will have its brief time in the media sun and then be swallowed up by oblivion, just as each of the previous flaps has been.

After all, can you honestly tell me that you think often about the CIA torture flap, the CIA destruction-of-interrogation-video-tapes flap, the what-did-Congress/Nancy Pelosi-really-know-about-torture-methods flap, the Bush-administration-officials-(like-Condi-Rice)-signed-off-on-torture-methods-in-2002-even-before-the-Justice- Department-justified-them flap, the National-Security-Agency-(it-was-far-more- widespread-than-anyone-imagined)-electronic-surveillance flap, the should-the-NSA's-telecom-spies-be-investigated-and- prosecuted-for-engaging-in-illegal-warrantless-wiretapping flap, the should-CIA-torturers-be-investigated-and-prosecuted- for-using-enhanced-interrogation-techniques flap, the Abu-Ghraib-photos-(round-two)-suppression flap, or various versions of the can-they-close-Guantanamo, will-they-keep-detainees-in-prison-forever flaps, among others that have already disappeared into my own personal oblivion file? Every flap it's day, evidently. Each flap another problem (again we're told) for a president with an ambitious program who is eager to "look forward, not backward."

Of course, he's not alone. Given the last eight years of disaster piled on catastrophe, who in our American world would want to look backward? The urge to turn the page in this country is palpable, but--just for a moment--let's not.

Admittedly, we're a people who don't really believe in history--so messy, so discomforting, so old. Even the recent past is regularly wiped away as the media plunge us repeatedly into various overblown crises of the moment, a 24/7 cornucopia of news, non-news, rumor, punditry, gossip, and plain old blabbing, of which each of these flaps has been but a tiny example. In turn, any sense of the larger picture surrounding each one of them is, soon enough, lessened by a media focus on a fairly limited set of questions: Was Congress adequately informed? Should the president have suppressed those photos?

The flaps, in other words, never add up to a single Imax Flap-o-rama of a spectacle. We seldom see the full scope of the legacy that we--not just the Obama administration--have inherited. Though we all know that terrible things happened in recent years, the fact is that, these days, they are seldom to be found in a single place, no less the same paragraph. Connecting the dots, or even simply putting everything in the same vicinity, just hasn't been part of the definitional role of the media in our era. So let me give it a little shot.

As a start, remind me: What didn't we do? Let's review for a moment.

In the name of everything reasonable, and in the face of acts of evil by terrible people, we tortured wantonly and profligately, and some of these torture techniques--known to the previous administration and most of the media as "enhanced interrogation techniques"--were actually demonstrated to an array of top officials, including the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, within the White House. We imprisoned secretly at "black sites" offshore and beyond the reach of the American legal system, holding prisoners without hope of trial or, often, release; we disappeared people; we murdered prisoners; we committed strange acts of extreme abuse and humiliation; we kidnapped terror suspects off the global streets and turned some of them over to some of the worst people who ran the worst dungeons and torture chambers on the planet. Unknown, but not insignificant numbers of those kidnapped, abused, tortured, imprisoned, and/or murdered were actually innocent of any crimes against us. We invaded without pretext, based on a series of lies and the manipulation of Congress and the public. We occupied two countries with no clear intent to depart and built major networks of military bases in both.

President Obama and His Signing Statements Promise

President Obama and His Signing Statements Promise

A recent diary by David Swanson asserts, in part, that President Obama as a candidate said of signing statements that "It is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability. I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law."

Mr. Swanson then says "Obama now does this routinely."

But it is historically, legally, and politically wrong to equate President Obama's use of signing statements with President Bush's, or to suggest that President Obama is doing what he pledged not to do. Any historical or legal scholar can easily point out how wrong Mr. Swanson is.

..a history of Obama's generally correct use of signing statements at link.

[T]he use, nature and frequency of [President Bush's] signing statements demonstrates a "radically expansive view" of executive power which "amounts to a claim that he is impervious to the laws that Congress enacts" and represents a serious assault on the Constitutional system of checks and balances. ( Bush abuseed signing statements, using them in place of vetos - which is unconstitutional)

In Bill O'Reilly's Sights
Last week I was greeted with an uncomfortable curiosity: a brace of hate mail in my inbox, received within a 20-minute span. The first came at 7:26: "You are an uneducated writer! You need to get your fact straight! You are a liberal bastard! You need to get informed!" All arguable propositions, perhaps, but that still left the question: why was this person realizing that precisely now, and why, two minutes later, did "Dr. Anthony" feel moved to inform me, "I've noticed a trend that left-wing extremists tend to be exceedingly ugly & perverse. Living with that ugliness & deviance seems to lead to an aberration of thought as well. I am attempting to formulate the correlation..."

And then, while he did, as if on a schedule, another deluge hit some three hours later, the messages several notches more frightening:

"Your a piece of s---. we will hunt you left wing libs down one by one. you lieing piece of trash."

"So perlstein,whats your problem with Fox and conservatives. you jews should be dancing on the ceilings.you have control of the government,obama,congress, senate...."

"You sir are far more dangerous than Sarah Palin ever will be."


Another Conservative Hypocrite Hoist On His Own Petard-- Paul Stanley (R-TN)

I have a feeling all DWT readers will know the punch line of this tale before they read another 15 words. Tennessee state Senator Paul Stanley was the driving force behind his state's anti-gay adoption legislation. No, he wasn't caught in a toilet trying to seduce an undercover cop. The ultra-conservative freak was having an affair with a young woman who was working as a legislative intern. What the hell is wrong with these Republican hypocrites? They're such a cliche at this point that it's becoming painful to write about them! The woman, McKensie Morrison, is 23 years old.

Executives Receive One-Third Of All Pay In The U.S., But Congress Is Still Afraid Of A Surtax

Executives Receive One-Third Of All Pay In The U.S., But Congress Is Still Afraid Of A Surtax

The New York Times reported today that Democratic leaders, “bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party,” are reconsidering the House Ways and Means committee’s proposal to implement a surtax on the richest one percent of Americans as a way of financing a portion of health care reform.

There has indeed been a lot of pushback against the surtax proposal, which prompted Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to suggest that only households making more than $1 million should be subject to it, instead of the graduated scale starting at $350,000 that Ways and Means proposed.

.....Increasing taxes on this small percentage of people — who have done very well for a very long time — would raise revenue to put toward health reform, which is the single biggest problem for America’s bottom line. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said, “it certainly is okay for me to tell my friends on Wall Street, who just got a bonus of $600,000, they’re going to pay more in taxes so we can lower health care costs

Conservative Media Creates Own Health-Care Narrative

Conservative Media Creates Own Health-Care Narrative
Despite passage of health care reform bills in House and Senate committees and the endorsement by major medical organizations of congressional Democrats' reform efforts, numerous television pundits have suggested that President Obama's health care plan is in serious jeopardy.

As The Washington Post observed in a July 20 article: "Cable news programs repeatedly declare the president's health care program is teetering or embattled despite a week in which [President] Obama's proposals were endorsed by the doctor and nurses associations and committees in both legislative chambers passed major bills." Indeed, despite passage of health care reform bills by the House Ways and Means Committee, House Education and Labor Committee, and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and endorsements of congressional Democrats' reform efforts by the American Medical Association and American Nurses Association, numerous television pundits have suggested in recent days that Obama's health care plan is in serious jeopardy.

Eric Cantor a Regular GOP Lie Machine

Eric Cantor a Regular GOP Lie Machine

Virginia congressman Eric Cantor may be a GOP rising star, but he sure is a hypocrite. How else to describe someone who's a leading critic of President Obama's Recovery Act and joins his congressional colleagues to urge Virginia's Department of Transportation to apply for stimulus money for high-speed rail? If that isn't two-faced, what is ?

He's also a demagogue: " Millions of jobs will be crushed by the Administration's policies." Say what? The stimulus may have been too small and overemphasized tax cuts, but it's helped states, including his own, with longer unemployment benefits, expanded food stamps and subsidies for people who've lost jobs to extend their health insurance. It's also kept teachers in the classroom, cops on the street and got workers rehired. Hours after Cantor delivered the GOP's weekly radio address blasting the stimulus, Vice-President Biden announced that $ 1.5 million of the bill's money would go to the Richmond Police Department to retain officers. And $20 million is going to Chesterfield County, a suburb of Richmond, to help 275 teachers from being fired. Virginia's working men and women should remember that Cantor fought hard to cut a provision in the stimulus bill that was designed to help low income workers.

The RNC Can't Count The Party of Corruption and Generational Theft

The RNC Can't Count The Party of Corruption and Generational Theft
RNC Chairman Michael Steele is clearly confusing the difference between our national debt, which stands at roughly $11.4 trillion, and this year’s budget deficit, which just exceeded $1 trillion.

To help jog Steele’s memory, here’s a bit of a deficit recap: Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in 2001. Budget experts projected a $710 billion surplus for 2009 when he came into office. But the deficit soon exploded, thanks largely to the Bush tax cuts — which accounted for 42 percent of the deficit. When Bush left office, he handed President Obama a projected $1.2 trillion budget deficit for this year, the largest ever.

As for the debt, when President Bush took office, it was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion.

Just last month, the New York Times published the results of an examination from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The report, which examined federal spending stretching back almost a decade, found that Obama “is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits”:

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.

Try as Steele might, this is blame shifting that just won’t work — especially after the Bush administration made it clear that “deficits don’t matter.”

Fox Continues Promoting Birther Lawsuit While Ignoring Red Flags Indicating It’s A Hoax

Fox Continues Promoting Birther Lawsuit While Ignoring Red Flags Indicating It’s A Hoax
Reported by Ellen at Newshounds

On Tuesday (7/14/09), I posted about several instances in which Fox News had added legitimacy to the irrational and baseless conspiracy-theorist “birthers” who continue to insist, despite evidence to the contrary, that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and thus an illegitimate president. One such effort came from Sean Hannity, reporting on a soldier challenging his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama is not eligible to be president. Hannity had failed to note in his report the availability of Obama’s birth certificate and how the birther claims have been completely investigated and debunked. Hannity gave an update to the Afghanistan story last night (7/15/09) and took it a step further by suggesting, along with the plaintiff, that the subsequent revocation of the soldiers deployment orders indicated that his allegations were proved true. But Hannity omitted key details that point to a scam by the soldier. With video.

At about 40 seconds into the video below, Hannity says, “We told you yesterday about an Army Reserve soldier who challenged his deployment orders on the grounds that President Obama HAS NOT PROVEN (Hannity’s emphasis) that he is a U.S. citizen. Now that soldier, Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, who was supposed to deploy to Afghanistan in coming days, has now had his order revoked. According to his lawyer, ‘They just said, ‘Order revoked.’ No explanation, no reasons – just revoked.’ Now Major Cook and his lawyer expressed joy at this outcome and they took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not, in fact, a legitimate citizen by birth.”

A Fox News producer similarly suggested that the Obama administration was trying to sweep the matter under the rug by posting the banner: After claiming Obama not U.S. Born soldier has his order revoked.

Once again Hannity failed to point out that Obama’s birth certificate has been produced, that FactCheck.org, (hardly a liberal or Democratic organization) has concluded that Obama was “Born in the U.S.A.”

Had Hannity bothered to do the simplest of Google searches, he would have also uncovered this key piece of information from that day’s Georgia Ledger-Enquirer newspaper:

Earlier today, (Lt. Col. Maria Quon, U.S. Army Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Army Human Resources Command-St. Louis) said Cook submitted a formal written request to Human Resources Command-St. Louis on May 8, 2009 volunteering to serve one year in Afghanistan with Special Operations Command, U.S. Army Central Command, beginning July 15, 2009. The soldier's orders were issued on June 9, Quon said.

"A reserve soldier who volunteers for an active duty tour may ask for a revocation of orders up until the day he is scheduled to report for active duty," Quon said.

She added that there is an administrative process to request revocation of orders. As of this afternoon, Cook had not asked for his orders to be revoked, Quon said. She could not say why the soldier's orders were pulled today by 3 p.m. CDT.

So, Maj. Cook filed a request to serve the Commander-in-Chief in Afghanistan on May 8, well after Obama had assumed the presidency, but now, about two months later, is claiming that Obama is not qualified to be president. And instead of going through the administrative process to revoke his orders, which would seem to be a pro forma matter, he sued in federal court.

I wasn’t the only one to smell something rotten in Wingnuttia.

Media ignore Sessions' double-standard on judges' reliance on personal experience

Media ignore Sessions' double-standard on judges' reliance on personal experience
In reports on the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, numerous media outlets quoted Sen. Jeff Sessions' assertion that he would not vote for a justice who would rely on personal experience to decide cases. But Sessions voted to confirm Samuel Alito, who highlighted the importance of his personal experience during his hearing.


In reports on the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, numerous media outlets, including the Politico, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and PBS, quoted or reported on Sen. Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) assertion that "I will not vote for -- and no senator should vote for -- an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court." These outlets did not note that Sessions voted to confirm Justice Samuel Alito, who stated during his confirmation hearing in 2006, "When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

Republicans Are The Real Radicals In Our Courts

The Real Court Radicals

f you wonder what judicial activism looks like, consider one of the court's final moves in its spring term.

The justices had before them a simple case, involving a group called Citizens United, that could have been disposed of on narrow grounds. The organization had asked to be exempt from the restrictions embodied in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law for a movie critical of Hillary Clinton that it produced during last year's presidential campaign. Citizens United says it should not have to disclose who paid for the film.

Rather than decide the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable exercise of judicial overreach. It postponed its decision, called for new briefs and scheduled a hearing this September on the broader question of whether corporations should be allowed to spend money to elect or defeat particular candidates.

What the court was saying was that it wanted to revisit a 19-year-old precedent that barred such corporate interference in the electoral process. That 1990 ruling upheld what has been the law of the land since 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act banned independent expenditures by both corporations and labor unions.

To get a sense of just how extreme (and, yes, activist) such an approach would be, consider that laws restricting corporate activity in elections go all the way back to the Tillman Act of 1907, which prohibited corporations from giving directly to political campaigns.

It is truly frightening that a conservative Supreme Court is seriously considering overturning a century-old tradition at the very moment the financial crisis has brought home the terrible effects of excessive corporate influence on politics.

In the deregulatory wave of the 1980s and '90s, Congress was clearly too solicitous to the demands of finance. Why take a step now that would give corporations even more opportunity to buy influence? With the political winds shifting, do conservatives on the court see an opportunity to fight the trends against their side by altering the rules of the electoral game?

Such an "appalling" ruling, Schumer said in an interview, "would have more political significance than any case since Bush v. Gore." He added: "It would dramatically change America at a time when people are feeling that the special interests have too much influence and the middle class doesn't have enough. It would exacerbate both of these conditions."

So when conservatives try to paint Sotomayor as some sort of radical, consider that the real radicals are those who now hold a majority on the Supreme Court. In this battle, it is she, not her critics, who represents moderation and judicial restraint.