Lies and the lying liars who tell them:
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lies
Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!
The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”4 What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.5
Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!
The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.6 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.7
If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.8 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.
Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!
The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.
Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.9 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.
Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!
The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.10 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.11
Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!
The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy.
Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.12 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade13—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.14 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.15
We’re closer to real health care reform than we’ve ever been—and the next few weeks will decide whether it happens. We need to make sure the truth about health care reform is spread far and wide to combat right wing lies.
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The above was sent out by MoveOn. Good stuff. They also encourage people to email this to friends. Just copy and paste that puppy and email away. If you use Facebook and Twitter you can spread the word more as well:
Also, if you’re on Facebook, please post the list today by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. If you’re on Twitter, retweet: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5
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Remember Fight the Smears? I spent the better part of a year using it as inspiration and fodder to hammer insane wingnut lunatics out to prevent Barack Obama from becoming President by lying and sowing seeds of fear and loathing among the masses.
It didn’t work out well for them.
One reason it didn’t was a coordinated effort by the campaign and by bloggers like me who fought back – hard. It’s the only way you deal with insane ignorant bullies. Hit them hard and keep hitting them until those who might sheepishly go along are forced not to. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. It took up a ton of time I didn’t have, but it was worth it.
The Fight The Smears website was a brilliant idea and one in a long list of Obama campaign innovations that will be studied for years. The reason it worked was due mostly to it’s simplicity. A clearinghouse for campaign lies and smears that were being forwarded ad nauseum and parroted in right wing outlet after right wing outlet. The messaging was simple too. Fight the smears. Simple. Easy. Effective. The site was resource with which armies of supporters could battle the insanity of the Palin Mobs. The energy of supporters enabled the campaign to harness a cadre of people willing to get the message out and counter misinformation. Daily.
Mission Accomplished.
That we have to do it again is sad, really, but that’s where the Birthers, Palin Mobs, and Townhall Rioters have led us. It is the summer of wingnut discontent and it requires action. Enter “Health Insurance Reform Reality Check“. Not quite “Fight The Smears”, but “Reality Check” is the perfect messaging for what is happening. We are in serious need of a reality check. The stuff that is being peddle by the right is not reality. Death panels. Nazi end of life euthanasia for seniors. So-called “Socialized Medicine”. Killing the Down Syndrome child of a former VP candiate. These fuckers are as unhinged as ever.
So the next time you hear one of these fantastical objections to health care reform (ie complete made up crazy shit), use Reality Check to answer them. Whenever and wherever you see them. Our instinct is to laugh them off, sure. It’s what I did with most of the original Birther arguments and Obama smears. We should begin taking them on directly and unequivocally.
So what is in it for us average Americans? What will health care reform get us? Let’s first answer what it WON’T do:
NO Euthanasia for seniors
NO Government takeover of health care
NO Government rationing, but prevention of rationing by insurance companies
NO Veteran health care affects
NO Small business burden
NO Medicare cuts
NO Forcing you out of your current plan
Of course, the “no socialized medicine” argument is easily debunked by explaining to people what Medicare is (Government run health care). The ignorance in this debate is breathtaking. It’s going to take at least as much work as it did defeating the Obama smears. The misinformation may even be worse!
OK, so that’s what health care reform WON’T do. What about what’s in it for us? Good question. Here are several consumer protections guaranteed by reform. It’s too bad they couldn’t have grabbed realitycheck.com. It doesn’t look like it’s being used and that would be a sweet URL to point people to.
Fight it.
Mock it.
But don’t forget to COUNTER it!
See also: www.healthreform.gov
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Too bad we can’t see this on TV. Hopefully it will at least make the rounds as much or more than smear emails. Brian Deese, a campaign policy advisor, refutes the various deceptions that John McCain is using to attack Barack Obama.
McCain’s latest “negative ad” (You listening PeeDee?):
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The Obama camp sets it straight:
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So I got put in a pickle. Let me illustrate:
[rock] [eric] [hard place]
You see. I made it known how we were gonna fight anonymous email smears of Barack Obama:
1. Reply to everyone who got the email that you can tell (you may need to copy addresses from a quoted email that was forwarded). Tell them the truth.
2. Forward it to watchdog@barackobama.com
3. Forward it to me eric@plunderbund.com and I’ll blog it (include the entire message including original sender/recipients)
All well and good until you get one from your own mother. This is how insidious this thing is. It’s like a hyperactive viral form of cancer. So now what, right? Post mom’s email? Post her friends who sent it to you?
Hell no I’m not posting my mom’s email address.
The object of this exercise has always been to fight the anonymity. To draw out into the open those who would hide behind an email address and a false attack smear sent to their entire address book. My mom is not anonymous to me. I can answer these smears directly by emailing or even picking up the phone. What I DID do that is consistent with the strategy is to answer her and the others who were copied along with her:
Hi everyone. I’m Eric Vessels, son of Judy and George. I received a forwarded email that contained your addresses as well.
The information in that email that you received about Barack Obama blowing off the troops in Afghanistan is false. It has been thoroughly debunked by the Army Times and the author, Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, has recanted his story:
“I am writing this to ask that you delete my e-mail and not forward it, after checking my sources some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong. This e-mail was meant only for my family. Please respect my wishes and delete the e-mail and if there are any blogs you have my e-mail portrayed on I would ask if you would take it down too.â€
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_blog_obama_072508w/
The Army refuted the accuracy of the account of the Obama visit.
“These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect,†Bagram spokesman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green told the New York Daily News.
Obama didn’t play basketball at Bagram or visit the Clamshell, she said.
“We were a bit delayed … as he took time to shake hands, speak to troops and pose for photographs,†Nielson-Green said.
You can find out more information about this particular smear here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/troopssmear
I’ve been in or around the military for the better part of my life. I grew up on Fort Knox, where I met at least one of you on this list as a kid. I have fond memories of it all. I know from this experience that there are a range of cultural, political, racial, and ethnic experiences within the military life. These diversities are a large part of what formed the person I am today.
Let’s have political debate. Let’s exercise our American right to vote for the person we think best represents us. But let’s not propagate lies, innuendo, and false attacks against those we have decided not to support.
It belittles us as Americans and certainly is beneath a code I first learned on a rock at West Point.
So my request is that you don’t accept receiving nor allow yourself to send these types of false email smears, no matter which candidate for POTUS you support.
Thanks for your time and I wish you all well.
Eric Vessels
This is what makes these kinds of attacks so pervasive and dangerous. Long after they have been debunked they float around and get forwarded by people who take them at face value and that lie spreads. This is why we fight.
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This from a guy who considers himself a McCain fan:
“But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”
Mr Duyet reminisces instead about how he often summoned the future US presidential candidate to his private office for informal chats.
“We used to argue about the war – about whether it was right or wrong,” he says.
“He is a very frank man – very conservative, and very loyal to his country and the American ideal.
“He had a very interesting accent and sometimes he taught me words in English and corrected my accent. I have followed his career since he left prison.”
Private office for informal chats? Man, that doesn’t sound like the imagery we have been sold. It sounds more like an…um…what’s the word? Country club?
So Tran Trong Duyet, is John McCain lying?
“He did not tell the truth,” he says.
“But I can somehow sympathise with him. He lies to American voters in order to get their support for his presidential election.”
Let’s be clear here. If John had just been shot down and housed in a prison where he was treated properly within the confines of an oft GOP-maligned Geneva Conventions, he should be considered an honorable war veteran. I got no qualms there. If he embellished his captivity by telling stories of torture when his injuries were really sustained in the crashing of his plane, then he’s a dishonest, opportunistic man unfit for command.
Let’s just hope the entire truth comes out before it’s too late and this man possibly has his hand on the big red button!
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If you needed any indication of the slime that is going to be tossed in the next few months during the Presidential Election, one need look no further than Jeff Gannon (outed male hooker fake reporter) and Larry Sinclair (lying smear merchant seeking 5 minutes of fame) coming together at the National Press Club. No pun intended.
The National Press Club is going to give this lunatic the stage to do what? Spout his deranged nonsense about Obama having a drug induced homosexual affair? Please.
You will remember back in January we told you about this nut case. I’m surprised he’s still around, much less getting any more attention.
Hold on to your seats change fans. Turning this ship around is going to be tougher than it looks. Keep hard charging. Full ahead flank!
(ht BI)
Action Item: Call the National Press Club (Sylvia Smith, President) at 202-662-7500, and tell them they need to deny an outlet for this smear merchant to slander a candidate running for President and a sitting Senator with absolutely no basis in fact.
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Last November I went down to Columbus to meet some friends at Brazenhead. We ate. Had a few beers. Talked politics and life. Good times. Afterward, a buddy and I decided to hang out a bit more and shot over to Hi Beck for some pool and another beer or two. Again, good times.
This is about the time that rumors were all around Columbus about Marc Dann and his scheduler Jessica Utovich. I was hearing stuff, but not paying too much attention to it all. On our way out we see someone we knew who worked for the Shamansky campaign so we stop to say hey having both known the guy. It turns out he was also Jessica’s roommate at the time and so he asks me to talk to her – presumably to “clear her name”. She obviously had her roommate fooled given what we now know.
So I talk to Jessica for a while and at one point she tells me “you guys gotta tell the other side. you gotta get it out there that nothing is going on”. I listen because I was genuinely sympathetic at the time. I also tried to settle her. She looked nervous and a bit flustered. It ends with me telling her if there is nothing there don’t worry. Have a good night.
Immediately after they walked away (they were leaving too), I look at my buddy and we both shake our heads. The first thing out of his mouth is “wow. she’s a bad liar.” Sure enough. She wasn’t leveling with me. Now, I don’t mean to focus on her. Mainly because from what I’m also hearing she has issues and may have been swept up in actual feelings for Marc and not just doing the sleep around to get ahead routine. I think she was young and naive and responded poorly to an environment in the AG’s office that surely was not professional and most certainly was not healthy. I feel bad for her.
What angers me is that she lied to me and tried to use this blog and me to help cover for her knowing that we’d be misled in the process and end up looking like fools. I held off – for more reasons that one – giving Dann any cover. Most especially because of what she said. I also held off posting this because I figured there was a chance that it was a simple smear campaign and I didn’t know enough about it to comment on a chance conversation with Utovich.
We now know what many of our guts told us: there was something to this all along.
Marc Dann also lied to me. He campaigned on integrity and ethics. He was the Democrat standard bearer of corruption fighting and good government. When he was “Attorney General-elect” he put out press releases touting his new leadership team’s “new commitment to integrity, ethics, accountability, professionalism”.
We got some of that in the form of actual policy, lawsuits, and other actions. But we got more than enough of the opposite to completely overshadow those things. With a campaign against the culture of corruption and the levels to which it sunk, it simply wasn’t good enough to be a little bit better than that other gal. What we needed was a total model of integrity, ethics, and professionalism. Just like Dann promised.
He also promised not to let us down. Well, Marc. You did.
Marc Dann and Jessica Utovich both lied to me. I half understand why Jessica might. I don’t understand at all why Marc Dann did and I don’t accept it. I won’t move on from this until Dann is no longer our AG. The only way to bring back what Marc promised us is, ironically, to get rid of him.
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