Let's start off with this little gem, courtesy of Investment Business Daily:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
Perhaps the brain trust at IBD would be interested in this little tidbit:
Stephen Hawking was born to Dr. Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking, a political activist.[citation needed] He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary and an adopted brother, Edward.[7] Though Hawking's parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while Isobel was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe).[8] According to one of Hawking's publications, a German Wehrmacht V-2 missile struck only a few streets away.[9]
After Stephen was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.
Hawking, in case it escaped the fact checkers at IBD, is British, and has lived in the U.K. his entire life. (Fact checkers!? What am I saying? This is a right-wing propaganda organ -- facts need not apply.)
What also seems to have escaped the IBD is that we already have such a system in place in this country -- it's called "private insurance." If you get really sick, your insurance company will cancel your coverage. They would refuse to cover people like Stephen Hawking because he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disiease, which is a "pre-existing condition." Insurance companies don't like to cover those, because it actually costs them money, and they're in business to make money -- lots of it. Digby has some comments on "death panels," to borrow a phrase from that paragon of rational discourse, Sarah Palin.
At any rate, IBD doesn't get any points for accuracy, truth, or honesty on this one. (Neither does Palin, but we've seen examples of her truthfulness too often to need further documentation.)
And on that score, I got this e-mail from one of my favorite Internet idiots, Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government (they want the country to be run by major corporations, and we all know how accountable those are to those of us who are actually paying the bills). Wilson wouldn't know a fact if it bit him in the ass. Included in the fantasies on The Daily Grind was this breathless report on the "War of the Watchdogs":
Less than an hour later, First Lieutenant Adam Bitely of NetRightNation.com urged the freedom-loving watchdogs to counter the counter-watchdog-attack by:
"Email that address [flag@whitehouse.gov] reporting Barack Obama for not telling the truth on Health Care. Let's try and flood that inbox with as many reports about Obama and his minions attempting to deceive the public as possible."
Adam Bitely is another partisan hack who doesn't seem to have a life -- I get e-mails from him pretty much every day, too. He's as reality challenged as Wilson. If you've been following anything but Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O'Reilly, you know that the ones who are trying to deceive the public are the ones that Wilson and Bitely support. They're not interested in fixing a broken system -- they just want to damage the government further, now that King George I is off in Texas clearing brush for a living.
Maha took IBD to task as well, but she has a couple more items, as well. This one I thought was nice -- I hadn't heard much about the right wing's favorite racist in a while:
Good Morning, Little Lulu. Malkin is outraged about the “freedoms” that will be taken away from Americans by “Obamacare.” What freedoms, you ask? Here they are listed; I paraphrase the first three somewhat to clear up some ambiguities.
1. The Freedom to be ripped off by less-than-comprehensive junk insurance policies.
2. The Freedom to see your premiums jacked up if you get sick.
3. The Freedom to pay for your health care out of your own pocket or savings, or do without.
Here Lulu pisses me off:
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan.
The entire reason the Obama Administration avoided marching to single payer or Medicare-for-All is to allow people to keep their employer-based insurance, and this is the thanks he gets. We shoulda just said “screw ‘em all” and go for single payer.
And the last is just a lie:
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
We lost that freedom already, after most of us got shuffled into HMOs. Catch up. Lulu.
It seems Little Lulu is no better at truth than Wilson and Company.
(Maha also has this updateon one of her other items, the alleged protester who was allegedly attacked by alleged SEIU thugs and allegedly hospitalized with alleged injuries. See for yourself.)
In case anyone was still wondering, this "debate" is NOT about healthcare, a'right? It's about damaging the Obama administration, and Obama's ability to actually do anything to repair what the Republicans have done over the past 15 years. It's about damaging the Democrats (who really don't need any more help -- Rahm Emanuel is taking care of it for them). The Republicans don't really care about affordable, comprehensive health care that actually pays some of your hospital bills, they don't care about children with life-threatening diseases and parents with no means to take care of them. They care about gaining power, and if they can't win -- or steal -- elections (apparently, they were being watched too closely in 2008), they'll resort to violence. Tristero has some observations on this:
I don't believe them. Beck and Palin urging that wingnuts not get violent calls to mind those ever-so-outwardly-pious 19th Century warning guides to vice in New York City which urged their readers to avoid like the very Devil Himself the southwest corner of Bowery and 3rd because there's a large whorehouse on the third floor that disgracefully offers free wine to the first fifty men who use the password "Johnnie sent me."
This is their pattern: create an environment grounded in fear and hate; make jokes about killing your targets (gays, immigrants, Nancy Pelosi -- it doesn't really matter: the right can always find someone to point at); when the inevitable happens, wring your hands and say "We don't condone violence" (which is itself a bald-faced lie). Rinse. Repeat.
I honestly don't believe in violence. I do, however, believe in self-defense. Take that as you like.
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