8/10/2009:   There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. That's a very old saying, but one which deserves to be updated with a quintessentially more evil addition, "and GOP lies."

Sarah Palin, not the queen of the GOP but more like one of the most popular jesters, had the gall to say out loud and in front of cameras and microphones: "And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Sarah's sole purpose now that she's an unemployed Ted Nugent in a skirt is apparently to parrot any lies the GOP hands her and to iron my shirts. Okay, maybe not that last part, but the world would be a better place if that's all she did all day, y'know?

If all I did was pick on every ass in the GOP that was making up ridiculous conspiracy-theory lies about healthcare reform, I'd be here all day. Sure, it would be fun, but I'd wear my fingers to the bone without addressing the lies themselves, so let's get to it starting with the most egregious:

Death Panels. Right-wing tool and governor wash-out Betsy McCaughey said that the House’s proposed health care bill would mandate counseling sessions advising seniors to allow themselves to be killed off with pain meds and refusing further healthcare for them. John Boehner, king of the GOP liars and poster child for tanning booth abuse gave the slippery slope variation that the same provision "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."

Johnnie, your pants are on fire.

Page 425 of the plan, which the RWTs (right wing tools) cite, would force Medicare to pay for (not schedule or force) counseling for seniors that need to make end-of-life choices, including but not limited to directives on healthcare options they'd like to refuse or require, power of attorney, living wills, etc. There is nothing in there about euthanasia, and there is no "slippery slope" implied. If you're a senior on Medicare and you want your doctor's advise on medical procedures as they apply to you should you be unconscious with a life-threatening condition, you can have Medicare pay for those counseling sessions. That's it. How Sarah "Quitter" Palin and Fred "Gollum" Thompson came up with "death panels" is beyond me...

Rationing. No bill currently being considered mentions rationing in any form. RWT Tom Price and GOP slag and professional flip-flopper Betsy McCaughey have both spewed foam on microphones and the first row of reporters about how the latest stimilus bill, and now the healthcare reform bills, will force rationing of care. Outright lies. The stimulus bill creates a council to coordinate research into which treatments work best and are most effective for the money. The described council has no power to "mandate coverage", and its recommendations are not to be construed as "clinical guidelines for … treatment." Nothing in there about rationing, sorry.

Abortions. No bill currently being considered mentions paying for abortions, and one of the bills actually states that no public funding will go towards paying for abortion procedures. Obama did originally state that healthcare reform would cover reproductive health services, but he hasn't mentioned it since taking office and isn't pushing it with Congress, which has clearly taken a less expansive role in the process of sorting out the nitty from the gritty in the healthcare reform bills. The Senate bill makes a point of leaving what is covered and not covered in respect to women's healthcare up to the secretary of health and human services, a limp-wristed approach that has people on both sides of the abortion debate extremely upset. But no bill thus far has come right out and labeled abortion as a covered and paid for procedure.

Single Payer. The RWTs keep waving the spectre of a Canadian-style single payer system in the faces of anyone that will listen, pointing to long wait times and ridiculously understaffed clinics. The truth is two-fold. First, you're not *forced* into the government payor system. You *can* get your own healthcare insurance if you can afford to do so, and the hospitals there will gladly accept your insurance care when you walk in if that's the option you chose. Second, the only bill that described a single-payer system was killed in committee. The bills currently being considered would extend existing systems to cover everyone, and the government plan is just one option to consider alongside your current health insurance options.

45 million uninsured. Right wing blow-hard and Gollum stunt-double Fred "Cryptkeeper" Thompson recently wasted a fraction of his last, hot, unpleasant breaths and several hundred people's time disparaging the claim that there are, at any one time, 45 million people in the U.S. that are uninsured, saying that the true number was about half that, and most of those were illegal immigrants. In fact, a large number of the uninsured recorded were in fact immigrants, but most of those were here legally (sorry Fred, you're either stupid or lying once again). And while the statistics have to include people that are insured some fraction of the year, analysis backs up the statistic that, at any one point in time, there are roughly 45 million people in the United States that lack health coverage.

AARP. Obama said at one point that the "AARP is on board" with the health care reform debate. A lot of RWTs jumped on that, claiming that the AARP hasn't endorsed any of the bills. In fact, they're both right. The AARP has said, on their website an in TV and radio ads that healthcare needs to be reformed, that the bills in Congress are the right step, and that the RWTs are lying their collective asses off, but they haven't actually come out and endorsed any particular bill. Socialism, Communism. These are the labels thrown out whenever the Democrats come up with a social net program. It's the label that was thrown at the New Deal, Social Security, unemployment insurance, any legislation support unions, Welfare, environmental protection, clean air and water acts, you name it. So it's not at all surprising to here the RWTs screaming it at the top of their lungs. Here's where I throw them a bone: they're right. It is a socialist program insofar as the wealth of the nation is tapped to provide some minimal level of healthcare for everyone. And if you think that's a bad thing, regardless of the label you put on it, then you are truly heartless. Look a baby in the eye that is suffering from kidney failure and will die without a replacement and tell the uninsured mother the baby will just have to die because you don't want to have to have your taxes increased even a single penny to help out, and you have absolutely no soul. But to be accurate, making a publicly funded healthcare option available does not a socialist country make, neither does it define the U.S. and communist. The soldiers that died to protect your freedoms did not protect you from not paying taxes or from being included in the social dynamic. If your taxes are raised, they are being raised by your representatives, hence taxation *with* representation. If you don't like your representative, vote for someone else. It's your option and your right. Get over it.

Increased deficit, nearly double the premiums. The organization "Conservatives for Patients’ Rights", a RWT group that wants to make sure patients have the right to not be able to afford insurance, claimed that healthcare reforms bills being considered would nearly double your premiums, What they don't tell you is that would be true of less than 1% of the population, and those would consist solely of a fraction of the people who currently pay for their own healthcare insurance. So if your employer pays for your insurance or you're part of a group insurance plan, your healthcare costs will stay the same or could even be reduced.

$99 trillion. Some scumbag stood up at a townhall meeting and enflamed the hired RWT protestors with the assertion that this country has a structured debt of $99 trillion. This is a complete statistical lie. If you extended the country's debt out 100 years with no payments and compound interest, like some kind of 5th grade math problem, then yes you could say we'd be swimming in an impossible amount of debt. In the real world you pay your debts, but what really gripes me about this guy is that he just threw that number out there to argue against any taxation to pay for the healthcare reform bills being considered. The fact is, the two main bills being considered would add $597 billion in one case and $239 billion in the other. A far cry from adding a trillion dollars, as the CPR organization claims, and a drop in the bucket compared to the illegal war in Iraq. Lessee now (making weighing motions with hands), what's more important? Bombing a small, nearly defenseless country into oblivion and terrorists a perfect, destabilized training ground, or giving the poor, young, and elderly decent healthcare... hmmmm....

If a RWT tells you one of these lies, ask to see the part of the bill they're talking about. Don't accept the page number or a quote, tell them you want to see the bill itself. If they can't produce it, tell them they haven't read it and either they are lying or stupid. And if they keep yacking, yell over them. Scream in their faces. Get a little spit flying. Call them Nazis and anarchists. Chant "USA! USA!" Hey, it's payback. Have a friend record it and put it on YouTube and I'll send you a tee-shirt with a Spine Award For Life logo.

There were never any WMDs in Iraq.
No links to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, and Condie lied to you.
You ignored the facts.
You re-elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
But now it's time to show your support for the troops.

I'm going to leave this up for a while yet. These traitors have not been held accountable for their crimes, and I want to make sure they never quite leave the public eye. Bush and Cheney deserve to be in jail, but even if that justice is never meted out, our nation deserves to have the crimes publicly recognized and measures taken to ensure that such a presidency can never happen again.

8/10/2009:   Blackwater is in the news again. Eric Prince's mercenary army, stationed here in the United States with enough firepower, equipment, and troops to take possession of most small countries, is once again being accused, this time by two of its former high ranking officials, with wanton murder in the name of a religious extremist crusade against innocent Iraqis.

In other words, he's America's Osama bin Laden, and Bush's regime was the Taliban.

But don't take my word for it. Try this out:

And Wikipedia's entry on Blackwater. Or pick up Jeremy Scahill's book, "Blackwater - The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army." And remember, Al Qaeda is now trying its best to take over the country it currently resides in, Pakistan, a large country with a strong army and nukes, and thus far they are succeeding. You might want to take a moment to really think about the genie that Bush and Cheney let out of the bottle. This was an army that didn't answer to the U.S. military chain of command, wasn't subject to military rules or even courts-martial. They answered directly to Bush and his secretary of defense and were funded out of the military budget as "defense contractors" at Bush's directive. When you keep it sanitized and clinical, it still sounds bad, but you must read up on these guys -- Eric Prince is no prince, he's the biggest religious whackjob in America today, and he personally commands the biggest private army in the world. YOu *need* to be freaked out a LOT about this.

The following people voted against the Constitution, against the Fourth Amendment, against your rights, freedoms, liberties, and protections. A version of the FISA reform bill that grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law at the president's behest and gives the president the ability to grant immunity without oversight or further authorization, has passed the United States House of Representatives on Friday, June 20th, 2008. These are the people that voted for that measure. Included among them are Democrats that have betrayed their constituencies, including my own Jerry McNerney. Let us not forget these traitors at election time.