Conservative Rightwing Jihad against Health Care Reform

"Tell a lie often enough, and people will believe it."

I don't know of any special interest group that has relied as extensively on lies, deceit, obfuscation, and fear as the Republican/ Right-Wing campaign to defeat healthcare reform in this country.

Tactics so intense and extreme are usually part of a propaganda campaign of one nation against another in a time of war. Indeed, it sounds at times as if the Republican Party and their supporters in the insurance, hospital, and
pharmaceutical industries have declared war on much of the American public and are completely ignoring all of the facts about healthcare.

This is a short list of my hall of shame nominees. Please feel free to add a coment with your choices.

Betsy McCaughey, She is the director of Cantel Medical, a medical device company. a former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, she was the former director of a biotech company called Genta. She’s also a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank funded by some of the biggest pharmaceutical giants in the country.

Ms. McCaughey wrote in an opinion piece that the government would actually tell doctors what procedures they could and couldn’t perform.

Wrong! The legislation specifically says that the council can’t issue requirements or guidelines on treatment or insurance benefits.

The Congress would make it mandatory … 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. She claims that the economic recovery package would allow the federal government to eliminate "whatever" it deems to be "unnecessary" health care. and that the sessions would "tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner."

Wrong! The bill actually provides for is voluntary Medicare-funded end-of-life counseling. Medicare will pay for them to sit down with their doctor and discuss their preferences. The sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. said on the House floor that the bill would "Put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
Investor’s Business Daily published an editorial in which it claimed that H.R. 3200 would make private insurance illegal.

Wrong! New individual, nongroup coverage will have to purchase it through a new health insurance exchange.

Congressman Steve King (R-IA) wrote that passage of the bill will see to it that up to 5.6 million illegal aliens have health insurance.

Wrong! H.R. 3200: Sec 246 — NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS
Then there are the lies and fear mongering from right-wing broadcasts and blogs.

Sarah Palin wrote that Obama death panel that the sick, elderly, disabled, and her Down Syndrome baby will likely succumb to if current healthcare reform is passed.

Sean Hannity, "If you don't have private insurance the year that this bill is passed, you can't get that later on from your employer."

Rush Limbaugh claims that the bill would "Outlaw individual private coverage."

Lies provided in talking points from the Republican National Committee such as, "Democrats are proposing a government controlled health insurance system, which will control care, treatments, medicines and even what doctors a patient may see."

Chris Matthews said "This thing, this provision, that talks about you get to talk about a living will. But it sounds to some people like, you're getting a little ill, all of a sudden somebody shows up at your door like they're a missionary and says "lets talk about how you're going to save the government money and your family the burden of continuing to live." that's the way it hits some people."

Lou Dobbs notions that end-of-life counseling could lead to "euthanasia" and that President Obama said he "doesn't even know what's in" the House health care bill. Dobbs suggests health care reform would deny liver transplants to alcoholics. President Obama and other progressives, claiming or suggesting that they or their policies are "socialist," "fascist" or "un-American." Dobbs claimed Obama policies are "raising new concerns about what many are calling a socialist revolution in prospect -- some say even a risk of totalitarianism."

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said that the House bill would ban individual private health insurance. Obama did not understand the provisions of the bill.

Rush Limbaugh claimed, on July 22, that “there isn’t global warming and there isn’t a health care crisis, but Obama says he’s gotta raise taxes over the private sector to fix both those things.”“The crisis in health care is like the crisis in everything else – manufactured.”

Sean Hannity “I just don’t understand the logic, why you believe that the government can do what the free market had successfully accomplished, which was a health care system that was the envy of the world.”
Wrong! Read this previous posting.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) on the Senate floor said “The health insurance industry is one of the most regulated industries in America,They don’t need to be ‘kept honest’ by the government.” a congressional investigation found that WellPoint’s Blue Cross of California and two other companies saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period.

An ad by the Family Research Council "To think that Planned Parenthood is included in the government-run healthcare plan and spending tax dollars on abortions,""They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay abortions."

Wrong! The words "Planned Parenthood" and "abortion" don't appear anywhere in the text.

Peter Ferrara, of the anti-tax, anti-government Institute for Policy Innovation, wrote on the National Review last month. "You may want healthcare that your doctor has prescribed for you. But the rationing bureaucracy in Washington that doesn’t even know you, or your doctor, may decide that your doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or that you are too old for the government to pay for your hip replacement to stop the pain, or to get an expensive triple bypass or a pacemaker operation to save your life."

Wrong! Plenty of faceless hacks are denying people care right now; they just work for private insurance companies, not the government, and they're denying care because that helps keep the insurers' profit margins up.

Senator Max Baucus said "Lobbyists just want what's best for America." Baucus also had praise for the drug, insurance and other lobbyists saying: "They really care about our country."

Special Interest Groups and PAC's paid by insurance companies, drug makers, hospitals, device and equipment manufacturers, and even doctors. They all pay lobbyists huge sums of money to convince legislators to maintain the status quo, or to draft legislation in their favor.

Such as Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, America’s Health Insurance Plans, Healthcare Distribution Management, National Republican Trust PAC, Aetna, American Academy of Family Physicians, National Health Underwriters, Healthsouth Corporation and many more.

Sen. Ben Nelson raised $2,257,165 from the health and insurance sectors. Democratic Rep. Mary Landrieu raised $1,676,353 from the health and insurance sectors. Democratic Rep Ron Wydenraised raised $1,414,911 from the health and insurance sectors.
Independent Joe Lieberma raised $3,593,771 from the health and insurance sectors. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe raised $1,147,630 from the health and insurance sectors. Sen. Susan Collins raised $1,559,446 from the health and insurance sectors.

To these people I say, WTF! I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. You have no sense of decency and I have no respect nor admiration for any of you!

“Not all conservatives are stupid people, but most stupid people are conservatives." J.S. Mill

Steve

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Healthcare Reform!

Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Florida’s multi-phase corporate campus. Five buildings situated around a new lake in a heavily landscaped, pedestrian setting.

If the following looks like a blank page to you, you must be a wing nut republican or a prostitute for the insurance companies who can not see the facts.

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the US health care system ranks last among other major rich countries for quality, access and efficiency. We are the only nation that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage. The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician. 15 percent of the US population has no health insurance and greater percentages are under-insured. "We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication."

While the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. Emergency rooms are typically at, near, or over capacity. Long wait times have become a problem nationally as the uninsured use emergency rooms for their primary care.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health out of the 191 member nations included in the study.

The Cato Institute argues that health care is the most heavily regulated industry in the United States. A study published by the Cato Institute suggests that this regulation provides benefits in the amount of $170 billion but costs the public up to $340 billion.

Out of the U.S. GDP;

20% is spent on all federal outlays.

4.1% is spent on education.

4.0% is spent on welfare.

3.2% is spent on the military.

1.7% is spent on transportation.

0.5% is spent on NASA.

17% of the GDP is spent on health care, with the fastest growing percentage of GDP expenditure, will soon eclipse the total federal budget.

Why are people lying and fighting so hard to retain the status quo? Payola for the politicians. Big profits for the insurance companies, and a segment of the population too stupid to realize they are being lied to.

Obamacare will take away your children! So says former Hollywood tough guy and current conservative columnist, Chuck Norris.

WTF Chuck!

Steve

Varig Airlines DC-8 Crash in Liberia

"There's nothing like the smell of kerosene and chard flesh in the morning." Steve

This is the official airliner accident report of the crash;

When entering the stratus layer, the captain told the co-pilot that it was no longer necessary to report altitude and speed and was instructed to look outside and to report as soon as he could see the runway.
Over the FR locator beacon, the altitude was about 800 feet, whereas his correct altitude should have been 520 feet. He then increased his rate of descent to between 1200-1500 ft/min, by reduction of power and by pitching the nose of the aircraft down. About 15 seconds after passing FR the co-pilot reported runway in sight, saying also that the visibility was poor and that they were too low. Descent was continued until the DC-8 impacted the ground 6023 feet from the threshold of runway 04, 180 feet to the right of the runway extended centre line with the aircraft coming to rest after a ground slide of approximately 850 feet. The aircraft caught fire.

PROBABLE CAUSE: "The failure of the pilot-in-command to arrest in time the fast descent at a low altitude upon which he had erroneously decided, instead of executing a missed approach when he found himself too high over the locator beacon."

WTF? Captain? Drunk again?

This is my unofficial report;

Sometime after 3 Am, we were awakened by the phone. A plane had crashed at Roberts Field and help was needed. I went with my dad that morning. It didn't take long to reach the south end of the airport about 7 miles away.

There we saw the DC8, the top 1/2 fully engulfed in flames. the one airport firetruck had run out of water and had broken down so the plane just burned until there was nothing much left to burn. The stench of kerosene and burnt flesh was an overlay of the normal swamp/bush smells. though we had driven through some low lying fog, there was no fog in the area of the crash having been burnt away from the intense fire.

One person was found in the bush standing against a palm tree. He had walked away from the crash into the tree where he died from injuries and burns.

As the wreckage cooled, bodies were carried out of the plane and lined up on the ground. As people tried to put the bodies in the bags, they found that they would not fit. The dead had burned in their seats and had taken a permanent seating posture. In order to get the bodies in the bags, they were stepped on to break the legs into a flat position. Such a sound.

Later that morning after returning home to clean up, we went to for brunch at the "Pan Am Hotel" at Roberts Field. All the survivors not in the Firestone hospital were there, still smelling of kerosene. The pilot was escorted past the crowd that was screaming at him in what seemed like every non-english language on the planet. We thought they were going to mob lynch him.

Every story you read or head about have much deeper stories known only to the people who were on site.

Just another brick in the wall that they call Steve.

Steve

Shit on a stick or Hardcore Colon Cleansing?

The internet can be a wonderful place. It can also be pretty disgusting and makes me ponder, WTF?! That's why I like to surf.

Started way back in ancient Greece, cleansing the colon became popular in the 1920s and 1930s In the United States. Must be something about hard economic times that drive people to poop.

There are several sites that hawk colon cleansing herbs.

First, you cleanse your colon with their herbal dietary fiber to clean out all the toxic plaque and debris that has accumulated over the years. You also have to continue to keep the colon clean with the continued use of fiber.

One of the main theories behind colon cleansing is an ancient belief called the theory of autointoxication, the belief that undigested meat and other foods cause mucus buildup in the colon. This buildup produces toxins, the theory goes, which enter the blood's circulation, poisoning the body and it makes for great pictures too!

The problem is that natural bacteria in the colon detoxify food wastes. The liver also neutralizes toxins. Mucus membranes in the colon keep unwanted substances from reentering the blood and tissues and the colon sheds old cells about every three days, preventing a buildup of harmful material.

Natural doesn't necessarily mean safe. Lava is natural.

Some potential side effects are:
Nausea, vomiting and cramps. Dizziness, a sign of dehydration, which can cause mineral imbalances. Strings of mucus, like those pictures above, is a sign the body views the cleanser as a toxin. Potential interactions with medications, bowel perforation and infection.

Do not use these product if :
You suffer from diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, severe or internal hemorrhoids, tumors in your rectum or colon, recent bowel surgery, heart disease or kidney disease.

The disgusting part of all of this is the testimonials. People dig their big wads of pooh out of the toilet, measure it and take pictures to post on the Colon Cleansing site.

I'm not going to try this but don't let me stand in your way or behind you for that matter.

Just remember, 20-35 grams of fiber will do as much as the normal colon needs to stay healthy.

Keep those photos coming kids.

Steve

Good Tasting Low Carb Bread and Pasta for Diabetics and Weight Lost

WTF is wrong with us?






66% of Americans over 20 are overweight. That's 198 million people!

32% of Americans over 20 are obese. That's 96 million people!

19% of Americans have pre-diabetes. That's 57 million people!

8% of Americans have diabetes. That's 24 million people!

These percentages are growing rapidly every year.

Inactivity and stuffing your fat little faces is a major cause. Another main cause is that people do not understand how to read the food labels found on all the food sold in America. Fats, Cholesterol, Salt, Carbohydrates, Protein and Vitamins are all listed. Is anyone teaching or kids any of this? I doubt it, waddling parents are clueless and if schools actually teach this, it is presented so lamely that the kids tune out, just like their parents did.

Today I will just talk about carbohydrates, the body’s preferred fuel. These are sugars aka: Glucose, that provide quick energy. That's why you get hyper with a lot of sugar intake. Energy drinks contain up to 90 grams of sugar, about 18 teaspoons. A Coke Classic is 40 grams, about 8 1/2 teaspoons. No wonder so many are so fat and sick!

A lot of exercise regiments suggest a good dose of carbs for workouts lasting more than an hour as if you could even stand in one spot for an hour. To much sugar intake has been linked to diabetes and fat asses.

Net Carbs are total carbs minus the dietary fiber. The lower the number, the better for your body, simple as that.

People eat to much wheat and starchy food which is very high in carbohydrates.

Now the problem with changing to a healthier diet is that we are spoiled by the taste of the foods we eat now. I have found two products in my search that I can highly recommend, both for their low carbs but more importantly, their taste.

Dreamfields Pasta.

No crappy tasting whole wheat pasta here. This stuff tastes good enough that people I have tried it on can not taste or tell a texture difference from regular pasta. Dreamfields website says they have found a way to protect carbs from digestion, like fiber acts. Total carbs is 41g minus 5g of fiber and minus 31g of protected carbs leaves you with 5g of net carbs per serving. So two servings, 4 oz, gives you only 10g of net carbs!

Pepperidge Farm Carb Style Bread.

I do not find this bread on their web site. Perhaps I live in a produce test area?
Anyways, a soft, moist bread with a slightly sweet taste. very good toasted. The taste and texture is superior to those whole wheat, nuts, berries and twigs breads. 5g of net carbs per slice.

Just my diabetic take on this.

Steve

Connie Mack, Congressman Elected Under Assumed Name!

Can a Congressman get elected and seated using an alias?

Does the vote for a person using an assumed name count?

Is there not a law dealing with this? WTF!

One Congressman has done this, Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy IV who uses the alias of Connie Mack IV, (R-FL)

McGillicuddy was listed on the 14^th district ballots as Connie Mack. A Certificate of Fictitious or Assumed Name can not be located for a Connie Mack. The web site for Congressman Mack does not mention Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy IV. and his Fort Myers residence is listed on the tax roll as owned by Cornelius McGillicuddy IV. There is no Congressman legally named Connie Mack.

This charade is abetted by his wife, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) by her failure to use the McGillicuddy name.

I contend that, by using an assumed name, both parties are illegally seated in Congress and should be removed from office for fraud.

Steve

Sheriff Mike Scott Beats the Hatch Act Rap

The Hatch act is intended to prevent public officials from becoming involved in elections.

A Florida sheriff, Mike Scott, was charged with violating this act when he, dressed in his Sheriffs Chief uniform, spoke to 9,000 people at a Republican rally for Sarah Palin. He brought up Barack Hussein Obama with an emphasis on Hussein hoping to invoke a tie to terrorism and fear.

Erica Hamrick, deputy chief of the Hatch Act Unit said that The U.S office of Special Counsel Says that Scott did violate the Hatch Act but closed the case when she thought the federal board that rules on these matters may not rule in the Special Counsels favor.

The Florida Commission of Ethics could have investigated Scott for corruptly using his office for gain. They choose not to investigate the complaints.

Some also are questioning whether Scott violated the county code of ethics. The statute says no county government employees are allowed to wear any uniform or clothing that would identify them as such while engaging in a political campaign not sponsored by the county, even if they are off-duty. But the sheriff, according to Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Larry King, is not considered an employee of the county — he is an elected official. His budget (Pay check) is approved by the county, but he answers to the governor and to his constituents.

Sheriff Scott said "This official closure is my second vindication.....The first was on Inauguration Day when our president put his hand on the bible and took the oath with the exact same name I mentioned in my speech."

Sheriff Scott said this 6 days later about an officer he fired. "It is always regrettable to part company with members on unfavorable terms; however, our standards remain high and our tolerance for wrongdoing low." The officer was fired for downloading porn on his office computer, not illegal but is against sheriff office policies. What Scott did is also wrong, legaly wrong, but the Sheriff gets away with it.

WTF! Scott, It must be nice to be a Republican in a Republican county in a Republican state. Double standards X 3.


Steve