Uhm...'Scuse Me

...but you said my premiums would be going thru the roof(?)

This is just a quick and dirty look, and I should tell you right now that I haven't checked this out at all. (Democratic Underground posted the link)

So there's a whole big pile of caveats and yeah-buts left to sort thru, but still - WTF, Bubba?

The Biased Media

Hannity shits on his own head, and Eric Stern at Salon checks it out:

I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.”  Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.

As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.

“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.
But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.

I don't know why debunking this shit doesn't seem to work on some people, but I guess you just hafta stay after it(?)

And then (just for the hell of it and because I don't now where else to put this one), we can just stroll over to Washington Examiner to catch another great view of the Bullshit Parade:

These two pieces ran on the same page, on the same day.  The need to "blame the media" is an addiction for some of these buttheads.  They ran the first one - apparently without checking one goddamned thing - and when somehow they find out it was wrong, they don't retract and they don't explain; they just flip straight over into blame-the-media mode.

Today's PSA

Of all the slick shit(*) the Repubs have shoveled at us about the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, I think the one that's the most dishonest is how they talk about Obamacare as if it were a brand in itself.  It isn't.  If Obama hadn't folded like a fucking lawnchair on the Public Option, then maybe you could make that case - but he did so you can't so shut up already.

If you don't qualify for Medicare; and if you're not poor enough to be covered by your state's version of Medicaid; and if you don't wanna pay a fine; and if you want healthcare insurance, then you buy healthcare insurance from a healthcare insurance company.  That's the law - deal with it.



(*)
The abortion surcharge
Medicare as we know it will end
Death Panels (you don't really need a link on that one, do ya?)
Raiding Medicare for $716 Billion
Obamacare will cost twice the original estimate
Employers are dropping their coverage because of Obamacare
and on and on and on

Wait - That Means They Lied?

From Center For American Progress:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its allies in Congress frequently claim that gun violence is highest in places with the toughest crime laws. But a new study from the Center for American Progress (CAP) suggests something closer to the opposite is true — the states with laxer gun laws tend to be the ones contributing the highest shares of national gun deaths and injuries.

While many factors contribute to the rates of gun violence in any state, our research clearly demonstrates a significant correlation between the strength of a state’s gun laws and the prevalence of gun violence in the state. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

Color me un-fucking-surprised.

hat tip = Democratic Underground 

Deficit And Debt

No really - all your talk about your horrible tax burden and your right to keep the money you (haven't really) earned on your investments, and all the rest of the crap Repubs are always on about means precisely dick.

That Tax Cut Thing

Don't like the message?  Make it disappear and then slam the messenger.

Addicting Info:

On September 14th, the Congressional Research Service published their long anticipated study on the correlation between the tax rates and economic growth from 1945 to today. If you go to their website today, however, the report is mysteriously missing.

Before it vanished, the New York Times downloaded a copy, which they now offer on their website. When you read the report, the reason for the pull might be as simple as what the report discovered.

Mr Job Creator

You have to know what a tin-plated fuckin' phony Willard is just by watching him try to maintain some semblance of cool when he walks on camera.

But the giant steaming pile of Mitt-speak when he talks about the economy and how he knows everything there is to know about creating jobs - man, not even the Shit Flies are gonna land on that scow.

From WaPo (which sometimes tries so hard to remember they're supposed to be a newspaper - it's so cute when they do that):

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China.

Cuz

..."conservatives" really are a bunch of cowering, wimpy little pussies who have nothing but a childishly violent reflex to practically everything that happens around them.

And there's an ample supply of hucksters who're more than willing to take 'em for a nice ride.



hat tip = Crooks and Liars

History New Found

"I join you therefore in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character." --Thomas Jefferson

From a site called Liars For Jesus, and a lady who knows her shit.



This David Barton guy is running a typical play from "conservatives".  Take a guy like Tommy Jeff, who practically personified The Enlightenment and who was pretty representative of The Founders' near-unanimous rejection of "princes and popes" - you take that guy and you turn him into something he's not, using revisionist bunkum and outright lies.