The Latest Laughable Claims of the Radical Right

It's not just the 'radical right' that's making "Laughable (and not so laughable) Claims" crooksandliars.com points out that Michael Steele, RNC Chair, is playing over-the-top with old lies in a highly-polished ad in which Steele claims:

President Obama and Congressional Democrats are promoting a government-run health care experiment that will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan. Medicare should not be raided to pay for another entitlement.

The C&L link below contains both the Republican Ad and a fact by fact rebuttal that requires little effort to verify.

Are Americans Dumb Enough to Believe Republicans Are Defending Medicare?

Here's what Michael Steele claims the Democrats are trying to do to seniors:

President Obama and Congressional Democrats are promoting a government-run health care experiment that will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan. Medicare should not be raided to pay for another entitlement.

Even though, oddly enough, it's not true:

On the contrary, the bill includes several key provisions that improve Medicare benefits for seniors, including the following:

Phases in completely filling in the “donut hole” in the Medicare prescription drug benefit (where drug costs are not reimbursed at certain levels), potentially savings seniors thousands of dollars a year.

Eliminates co-payments and deductibles for preventive services under Medicare.

Limits cost-sharing requirements in Medicare Advantage plans to the amount charged for the same services in traditional Medicare coverage.

Improves the low-income subsidy programs in Medicare, such as by increasing asset limits for programs that help Medicare beneficiaries pay premiums and cost-sharing.

[...]

Malkin's link to a video of one teacher's "super Obama support" shows her intense bias. One teacher. Hmmm... Last time I checked we have thousands upon thousands more. Then she ends her screed with this:

"Reason number 999,999,965 to take control of your own children’s education."

I always roll my eyes when she says since according to Mrs. Malkin, public schools are akin to the movie "Tron" with the Master Control Program making you "play" or die.

And the Hot Air comments to Ed Morrissey's article just keeps proving:

People will believe what they want no matter if the truth is staring them in the face!

I'm having flashbacks to the Bush years and all the Hard Left chatter...

Steve, that claim about $500 billion in cuts to Medicare spending isn't false, but it is misleading because it only tells part of the story. The net cuts will amount to $219 billion, and really those are the same kinds of "cuts" that Democrats always like to demogogue about when the GOP proposes them- they're reductions in the rate of increase of spending, not actual cuts (this rhetorical dishonesty was rampant during the Reagan years, when program increases that were lower than the Dems wanted were always proclaimed as Reagan 'cutting' everything and forcing grandma to eat cat food and what have you.)

<a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/more-sen... also points out that Obama himself is being hoisted on his own petard with this, since he falsely accused McCain of proposing similar 'cuts' to Medicare during the campaign. I don't think either side should be distorting the facts and fearmongering, but the Dems certainly have gall to complain about the GOP now turning their own false claims right back at them.

Update: Even the reliably right-wing Ed Morrissey can’t let Boehm’s stratospheric claims go unchallenged, concluding: “There are a lot of good reasons to be worried about the Obama administration, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them.”

I think you need to reread Ed's article. He completely debunked the claims that Boehm made. Even that one statement you quoted doesn't in the least imply that he is taking this 'concern' seriously- to the contrary, in fact. He's just saying that this kind of rumor is distracting from real concerns that he thinks we should pay attention to regarding the Obama administration.

These are good, but they're not as over-the-top as when Republican Congressman from Georgia Paul Broun said Obama might be a dictator who will establish a new Gestapo and compared him to Stalin and the Nazis last November over Obama's proposal for a civilian security force. The level of paranoia is as bad, if not worse, than the far left had over Bush.

"I'm having flashbacks to the Bush years and all the Hard Left chatter..."

That's because of the desperation and irrationality of proponents as DemoCare is self-destructing.

Here's a factcheck.org link that works: More ‘Senior Scare’
A TV ad's false claims about Democratic Medicare proposals.

And here's FactCheck's Summary:

The conservative 60 Plus Association is running a TV ad saying Congress plans to pay for overhauling health care "by cutting $500 billion from Medicare." It claims that this "will mean long waits for care" and cuts to MRIs and other imaging services, that "seniors may lose their own doctors" and that "government, not doctors, will decide if older patients are worth the cost." Actually, the House leadership’s version of the health care bill would trim a net total of only $219 billion from the projected growth of Medicare spending over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And Congress isn’t proposing to cut benefit levels or to deny treatment to anyone who is "not worth the cost." We find this ad to be mostly false.

You can cling to 'partially true' but "mostly false" is what they said. Your argument is just more deflection and non sequitur aimed to distract and I'm not going to play that game.

CStanley wrote: "I think you need to reread Ed's article. He completely debunked the claims that Boehm made."

I know, which is entirely consistent with what I said in the update to the post; i.e., that even a pundit as consistently right-wing as Ed concluded that Boehm's claims were without merit.

So I went back and re-read my update re: Ed Morrissey and attempted to clarify it -- just to make sure there's no further confusion about what I meant. Clearly, Morrissey sees no credibility in Ken Boehm's claims.

I think what you wrote now is more clear, Pete, thanks. Maybe I was misreading, but I thought you were implying that even though Ed is not part of the radical right, he was agreeing somewhat with the concerns expressed by Boehm and that's not the case.

You mean people actually take Malkin SERIOUSLY???

"the bill includes several key provisions that improve Medicare benefits for seniors"

Irrelevent. The issue is:

"will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan"

which, along with how it reflects on the quality of and motives behind the effort, has seniors worried, and which obviously was not "disproved" by the irrevelent list of improvements. (And astute people promptly remark, additionally, "and how are those improvements going to be funded, and why would we have any confidence about this, either?")

"would trim a net total of only $219 billion from the projected growth of Medicare spending over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And Congress isn’t proposing to cut benefit levels or to deny treatment "

Which, at best, makes them only less (in terms of dollars) wrongful than they otherwise would be.

Edit: I meant to post this on the other thread about how health care reform will decimate the population. Please disregard it here. I have removed it from this thread and posted it there, instead.

Why does the WH need at least 10 government workers to simultaneously add web sites to the web crawling program the vendor is creating... if this is just for archiving 7 web sites?

From page 3 of the solicitation:
“(K) Provide a web-based tool for government employees to administer and manage this record keeping. (i.e. add new publicly accessible websites to the crawl or adjust the crawl frequency.) Provide a minimum of 10 simultaneous login accounts.”

Indeed. FactCheck.org also addressed the RNC ad.

I have attended four townhall meetings held by Rep. Vic Synder and Senator Tom Ross, and I have been amazed at the organized resistence from conservatives and their paranora that President Obama has a socialist agenda and their fear of government.







I've attended four townhall meetings with Rep. Vic Synder and Senator Tom Ross, and I am dumbfounded at the paranora these organized conservative groups have about government and the absurd pronouncements they make about President Obama's "socialist agenda." First, I was struck that they didn't seem scared to death of the devious, Orwellian, and facist government they gave us the last eight years and the debt and death of that tarbaby of a war in Iraq. Secondly, most of the most outrageous of these citizens seemed to the the very people who would benefit greatly by a competitative government plan similar to the VA, medicaid, and medicare. I can only account for the irony by agreeing with Bill Mahar's comment that "Americans are stupid." It must be the failure of our education system.