Republican Lies category archive

From Kiko’s House:

Of all of the ruthlessly despicable things that right wingers have said and done in recent years, nothing can top the lie that President Obama’s health-reform legislation contains “death panels” that will determine who among the elderly will be denied medical care and be euthanized.

Follow the link and learn why he says that.

Then read his next.

They can’t tell the truth because they are not on the side of truth.

In their world, money trumps truth.

Paul Krugman:

It was the blooper heard round the world. In an editorial denouncing Democratic health reform plans, Investor’s Business Daily tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance,” because the National Health Service would consider his life “essentially worthless.”

Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, was not amused.

These guys will do or say anything to monger fear and hate. Conviction and truth have nothing to do with it.

Via John Cole.

Dick Polman recounts what happens when a Town Hall Teabagger is interviewed by someone knowledgeable (hint: It wasn’t Lou Dobbs). Follow the link to read the whole thing which leads him to his conclusion; it’s worth it to see how far removed from reality the wingnutosphere has made itself. His conclusion:

But I was most struck by one particular exchange. Abram had indicated at the town hall that her fight against health care reform marked her debut in the political sphere, at the age of 35. O’Donnell, picking up on that, asked how she “as an adult” could have lived through the contentious Iraq war without paying any attention to politics. (He could have pointed out that the government she so fears has actually been paying out roughly $3 billion each week since 2003 to fight a war that was falsely sold to people like her, thereby indebting the children she invoked.)

So, his question in essence was: If you’re so steamed up now about the cost of health care reform for Americans, how could you have not been steamed up about the cost of that war?

Her answer: “Honestly, I didn’t really care.”

And then this, moments later: “Maybe I’m just not that smart.”

Bingo! And the frightening thing is, there are so many mobbers just like her. Where have you gone, James Madison?

Here’s the actual interview:

Go here to see the wingnut-edited version.

Via Eileen Davis.

Scientific Blogging looks at end-of-life consultations as in a social context.

They report that, while most persons want an explanation of the alternatives as death approaches, only about half want an actual recommendation:

“This is an important article that has changed my clinical practice,” said J. Randall Curtis, M.PH., M.D., president of the American Thoracic Society and Professor of Medicine Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Section Head, Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, WA”I had previously assumed that almost all families would want physicians’ recommendations, but these findings indicate that there is no such consensus among surrogates. I suspect that physicians can do more harm by withholding a recommendation that is desired than by providing a recommendation that is not desired, but this study suggests we should ask rather than assume.”

Just over half (51 percent) of the surrogates expressing a preference for receiving their doctors’ advice believed that it was the doctor’s role to provide that opinion, whereas nearly four of five (79 percent) who preferred not to receive the advice saw it as overstepping.

I mentioned yesterday that my father had a Living Will and an Advance Directive, as do I. I do not know whether he consulted anyone. I know I didn’t–I know I do not want to end my life as an experiment in how long the shell of my body can be preserved after all pretense of consciousness or soul are long gone.

Too often, though, such decisions must be made by “surrogates” (relatives) who must act in the absence of any guidance from the person who is dying.

To this link in perspective, the whole “euthanisizing grandma” hysteria that the wingnuttiest have embraced has to do with a proposal that Medicare be allowed to pay for a patient’s consulting with a doctor about “end-of-life” issues such as hospice care, living wills, and the like, so that, when the time comes, the sick person’s wishes are known. Since doctors are paid under a “fee for service” model, if payment is not allowed, doctors have no fiduciary reason for providing such a service.

The harsh truth is that the death rate is, to paraphrase Mark Twain, one per person. Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away.

Not talking about dying and issues around dying is, in fact, silly and stupid; it is living with blinders on.

Much like the teabagger movement itself.

Then, again, Mencken was right.

DoughJ has details.

Yes. They were as bad as we lefties said they were.

Follow this link or listen below:

Zachary Roth over at TPM runs down the sources of the latest lie, that the proposed health care bill will allow the Federal Government electronic access to private bank accounts (since I’m scheduling this to publish tomorrow, there may be a new latest lie by the time anyone reads this):

Where does it come from? It appears to have its roots in an email “analysis” of health-care reform that includes various lies and distortions about the bill. (Politifact, the fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times, has called the email a “clearinghouse of bad information.”) One charge made in the email is that “the federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.”

What’s the truth? The section of the legislation on which this claim is based states that the bill will “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice.”

As Politifact points out, the bill’s legislative summary makes clear that the intent of this section is to “adopt standards for typical transactions” between insurance companies and health-care providers, and continues: “The legislation generically describes typical electronic banking transactions and does not outline any special access privileges.”

Read the Politicfact analysis of the email here.

The truly sad part is that some are so bigotted or stupid or afraid or some combination thereof as to believe the lies. DougJ reports from the field and explains why this should not surprise us.

Charles M. Blow on the anti-health care mobbery (emphasis added). Please follow the link for the full analysis:

Not only are anti-reformists showing up, they’re terrorizing legislators with their tomfoolery when they do. Blinded by fear and passion, armed with misinformation and misplaced anger, they descend on these meetings and hoot and holler in an attempt to shut down the debate rather than add to it.

I must say that this says more about them than it does about any forthcoming legislation. Belligerence is the currency of the intellectually bankrupt.

Trapped in their vacuum of ideas, too many Republicans continue to display an astounding ability to believe utter nonsense, even when faced with facts that contradict it.

I got nothin’ against demonstratin’. I’ve done plenty of it in my time. One of my favorite memories is of waving a picket sign in Richard Nixon’s face.

I got a lot against mobbery.

Jamie Sanderson has more.

They can’t help themselves.

Josh Marshall:

Grassroots activist and “just a mom” at town hall turns out to be GOP official and former staffer for candidate who the host of the town hall, Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI) beat last year.

Rachel Maddow: “Politically, the facts don’t really matter . . . .” “This is professional corporate-funded Republican-staffed PR. And it should be reported as such.”

I tried to go to the website, Recess Rally dot com, but it seems to be inaccessible. It did not 404, so it may just be whelmed or down.

It should be out. After all, Rachel Maddow outed it.

Via Brendan.

Dick Polman analyzes the whoppers. His conclusion:

Democrats might be wise to heed this warning, penned in a letter in 1867: “The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might.” Credit that one to Mark Twain. In their summer pitch for health care reform, Democrats need to refute the outrageous lies with, at minimum, equivalent fervor.

Because the lies can lead to bad things, such as, for example, the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq.

But Republicans can’t help the lies. It’s all they have left.

Over at the Great Orange Satan, percival constantine (the poster’s capitalization, not mine) looks at similarities between Orly Tait’s Kenyan Scam and the venerable Nigerian Scam and sees dollar signs.

YouTube link via the Huffington Post.

Dick Polman (emphasis added):

Her quote: “The health care reform bill would make it mandatory – absolutely require – that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care…all to do what’s in society’s best interest…and cut your life short.”

(Fred Thompson’s credulous reply was priceless. He said, “I didn’t know that,” thereby demonstrating what happens when you give a microphone to a failed politician who won’t even make a pretense of fact-checking.)

The lie soon traveled ’round the world, getting worse with each right-wing re-telling.

On the Media has more. Go to the website, where there’s a transcript, or listen below:

StevenD reports on the latest crazy conspiracy theory from the wingnut brigade: That the World Health Organization created the swine flu virus so as to commit genocide against honest, godfearing everyone all over the world.

His summation, well, sums it up:

And they call us Moonbats? I love how they manage to link Obama, Sibelius, the CDC, WHO, Pharmaceutical companies and George Soros to this master plan to commit mass murder across the globe, but particularly here in the United States. I’m just surprised they didn’t add Michael Moore and ACORN to the list of co-conspirators. At least most of the “conspiracy theories” from the left regarding Bush and his administration turned out to be true. They really did lie about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in order to start a war. The NSA and other government organizations did carry out a massive and illegal warrantless surveillance program against Americans. We did torture prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. White Phosphorus was used as a weapon against civilian populations. The White House really did out Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. Bush planned for war with Iraq back in 2002 and we have the British government’s “Downing Street Memos” to prove it.