The Latest in TeeVee Game Shows
Kool Aid is a powerful intoxicant. So is celebrity.
So when Sean Hannity went looking for people who have been hurt by Obamacare, he easily found three well dressed white couples eager for a chance to go national with with ignorance and fear.
They each told the horrors of Obamacare. A researcher quickly found that this was typical:
First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.
Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.
One couple even had an uninsurable child and was still paying $20,000 a year for health insurance. The researcher writing the story easily discovered that they could get the same policy for $7,600 including their uninsurable child. But, they said they are opposed to Obamacare and “that the president should have focused on tort reform as a solution to bringing down the price of healthcare.”
Hey, at least Hannity found the last person in American who thinks tort reform helps consumers. He has that going for him.
I have a conservative acquaintance who is against anything progressive because she “knows stories.” Food stamps? She’s opposed to them because she has a friend whose mother’s aunt saw a lady in California buy cigarettes with food stamps. Public education? She’s against it because there’s a kid she knows in the fifth grade who can’t do multiplication. Well, she doesn’t know him personally, but she’s heard about it.
You can’t argue with people whose knowledge is based on gossip, so I tried something. I made up bigger stories. Food stamps? I know a child who didn’t have any and he was walking down the street one day and his brains suddenly fell out all over the sidewalk and all the private school kids had to walk over them to get the class and most of them got real sick because these were malnourished brains. So there.
She: (skeptically) I did not heard about that.
Me: It was in the Wall Street Journal.
She: The Wall Street Journal? That liberal rag? Pluuuuzze.
See? Kool Aid and Gossip are powerful intoxicants.
Thanks to Don A for the heads up.
What I always come back with is that sure, I’m against the lazy bums who aren’t earning a living but i’m madder about the super duper rich who are doing all they can to see that wages and jobs go down so the rich guys can get richer. Almost all Tea Partiers agree with that. Or maybe I just am bigger than they are. I don’t know.
1I think my earlier message was irrelevant to what JJ put up there but hey, most of what the Faux News says is not what you need to hear. Maybe i pushed the wrong button. One of my friends who is a retired physical therapist, and this is a true story which can be documented, knew people, more than one family, where the job was lost because the worker had a terribly sick child and the company didn’t want to pay for the health insurance. Tell folks to give the ACA a chance. Rant rant.
2Excellent tactic. I have had people tell me–online people because I don’t know any jerks like this in real life–that their own relatives cheated at food stamps or “were on welfare for 40 years” or something. The thing is that because they are, in a sense, implicating themselves in the fraud they are imagining that they are an unimpeachable source. But even the addition of “it was someone in my family” to “I heard this” makes it hard to argue. All you can say in return is “why didn’t you report them?” And “do you think that fraud reduction requires the cutting of the entire service?” I mean, all these people will take a basic bow in the direction of the notion that the safety net is important, its just that they are sure that most of it goes to the undeserving. I guess the only thing to do is to ask them why their representatives are aiming at destroying it instead of fixing it?
3Fact-checking is not in the conservative skill set for the very reasons cited here. How can I best support my self-deluding fantasies, if not by using easily contradicted stooges?
4It’s a veritable vicious circle of delusion and I wish somebody knew how to stop it. Showing relevant supporting facts doesn’t work with these morons. It enrages them.
And I heard that a woman got a black widow spider nest in her hair and when they hatched they all bit her and she died.
And Obamacare doesn’t cover that.
5Up here in the klavern that is Collin County, this is being discounted because it was published by Slate.com. Well known librul rag!
6A+ Don A.
7Slightly off topic, but I learned a new phrase last week, “NRA gullible” meaning supremely gullible.
For thirty years the NRA has said “They’re comin’ to get yer guns!”
8For thirty years the NRA has been wrong. Nobody came and got anybody’s guns.
After thirty years of being wrong, anyone who still believes the NRA claim that “They’re comin’ to get yer guns!” is said to be “NRA gullible.”
About 35 years ago, when I worked for the Texas state welfare system, I had my “consciousness raised” when I learned that 75% of the people receiving state aid were CHILDREN. If you have ANY compassion in your heart, that HAS to throw a different light on feeding the hungry. But then the Gee Oh Pee isn’t known for having a heart about the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the sick, etc.
In fact, I’m still trying to figure out how The Dick Cheney had all those heart surgeries and procedures over the years; don’tcha have to HAVE a heart first?
9Gosh, why do I think Faux in any shape is a type of porn?
10Marge said:
“One of my friends who is a retired physical therapist, and this is a true story which can be documented, knew people, more than one family, where the job was lost because the worker had a terribly sick child and the company didn’t want to pay for the health insurance.”
I have first hand knowledge of a nationally known Houston company that still advertises on Rush show. This company found ways to exclude a new client (sign up your small business and get big business benefits type thing) because the admin of the professional employer type company found out one of the employees had MS. I personally was let go from two jobs when my health went south in the 80s.
I got into a discussion with a Fox news type at the VA hospital today about Obama Care and insurance for his wife. He would have to pay higher premiums for the ACA insuance but would get much of it back in a tax refund. He didn’t like that and was going to buy a policy to cover her that would be cheaper monthly but more expensive than the ACA policy with the tax break. To shorten my post, some folks are so committed to the closed loop of Rush, Fox and them that you can’t have a decent discussion with them about the facts.
11The following post from “The Rude Pundit” today describes how the roll-out for Bush’s Medi-Care Prescription Drug Program Part D went!
Let’s just show the cards here. If you haven’t figured it out, this is all about the sign-up period for what was the then-new Medicare prescription drug program, Part D. The “people” up there are actually senior citizens. The senator was Olympia Snowe of Maine, a Republican. The congressman was Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, who is now a senator. The governor was Richard Codey of New Jersey. The president was George W. Bush. The time period was from mid-October of 2005, which was the start of enrollment before the plan went into effect on January 1, 2006.
And on it went. “The system was certainly overwhelmed,” said a spokesman for Walgreens on January 4, 2006 about the national computer network that his company’s stores was using. Others reported ongoing glitches, using phrases like “mild chaos” and “a confusing nightmare.” Computer issues caused thousands to lose whatever drug coverage they had. It got so bad that governors had to step in to make sure that seniors got their medications. To state it plainly, after the program started, the entire thing was seen as one giant glitch. It wasn’t until months later that the law was seen as starting to work as it was intended, except for the pesky doughnut hole in drug costs (which Obamacare fills).
This all was on top of the fact that, shortly after its passage as one of Bush’s signature achievements, it was revealed that the $400 billion law would end up costing over $530 billion.
The bill was passed in December 2003. In November 2004, there was a vote to raise the debt ceiling. You know what didn’t happen? The Democrats in the Senate didn’t hold the debt ceiling hostage because the act was confusing and unpopular – remember, it passed the House only because of bribery and threats by Tom DeLay. They didn’t try to undermine it or sabotage it. No, they tried to make it better, with Republicans refusing to do so.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, tried to fix things in December 2005. She said that “all of the problems that have occurred could have been avoided if Republicans had not blocked a crucial amendment she cosponsored during federal budget debates last month. Lincoln’s bill would have added six months to the transition period to ensure that pharmacists are reimbursed under Medicaid until each eligible senior is assigned to a new drug plan under Medicare. Her amendment was uniformly opposed by Republicans in the Finance Committee and during budget debates on the Senate floor last month.” It failed because Republicans didn’t want to delay the law.
Now, you want the real kick in the teeth? Defending the administration in those early days of the law’s implementation was then-Representative Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri. He acknowledged the problems with the sign-up, and he noted, “Remember: when Medicare started in 1965 there were reports of confusion, patients and doctors didn’t understand the new program and seniors were complaining that hey had not received their new Medicare cards. Sounds familiar.”
Yeah, it sure does.
12Have any of these folks ever been on the receiving end of the damn near endless calls from insurance companies, some of which never existed before, calling you up at home and at the office evangelizing their insurance policies. How can people in this day and age be so isolated? Is it a free choice, like joining a monastery and never saying a word for the rest of your life or is it some kind of contagion from other people or is it in the good ole’ DNA? Honestly! I want to know!
13