The Teabaggers Were Right! There ARE Death Panels!

If all the senators who had taken significant bribes-- let's say $100,000 and more-- from the Insurance Industry had to recuse themselves from voting on the Health Insurance Reform legislation that the Senate will soon be taking up... well, first of all, there wouldn't be a quorum. The only members of the Senate who haven't taken these massive bribes from Big Insurance are Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), John Barrasso (R-WY), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Patrick Leahy (D-NH), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jon Tester (D-MT), Jim Risch (R-ID), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mark Begich (D-AK), Jim Webb (D-VA), Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Herb Kohl (D-WI), most of them relatively new members who haven't had enough time to get a spot at the trough.

Yesterday Markos at Daily Kos discovered something that may be intuitive but is certainly not something the mainstream media has cared to examine-- that Max Baucus, the head of the Senate Finance Committee and the man who has consistently collaborated with Republicans who are most determined to kill health care reform, is not being supported in his anti-health care maneuverings by his own constituents. Baucus, who has scooped up $1,190,463 from his pals in the Insurance Industry, garners approval from 49% of the state's Republicans, very high for a Democrat, though not enough to save his political skin in an election against a real Republican. Only 41% of independents approve of his health care actions. And his own electoral base? Democrats disapprove of someone many of them now see as a corrupt bag of wind taking cash from lobbyists and selling them out. His approval on health care among Democrats is a dismal 34%-- and 55% disapprove! Why? Well, 78% of Montana Democrats favor a public option-- as do 41% of independents and even 23% of Republicans.

Progressive blogger and author Milt Shook has made it more than clear how by spending a trillion dollars on health care, the American people will save ourselves seven trillion.

The White House has been responding to the purposeful lies being spread by the Insurance Industry and amplified by right-wing Obama-hating crackpots like Jim DeMint and by media propagandists like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Savage and the rest. There are a dozen videos on a White House website dedicated to Health Insurance Reform. The topics deal with the ginned up teabagger chants and hysteria one by one and the people who are forever screeching "Read the Bill," never considering the idea of trying "Understand the bill" or respecting the rights of the folks who come to the health care town halls to find out what is in the actual bills being circulated (in Congress, rather than on extremist websites):

1- Congress did not vote to exempt themselves from reform;
2- Reform will expand your choices, not limit them;
3- No bill puts off care for the disabled for "further study;"
4- The Indian Heath Service will be fine and American Indians will benefit;
5- Reform will eliminate insurance discrimination against the disabled;
6- Reform will stop rationing-- not increase it;
7- The euthanasia distortion on help for families;
8- Vets health care is safe and sound;
9- Reform will benefit small business-- not burden it;
10- Your Medicare is safe, and stronger with reform;
11- You can keep your own insurance;
12- There is no panel to decide end-of-life care.

Hey! Wait one minute! Are you callin' Sarah Palin a liar and a fear-monger? She-- and plenty of Republicans-- claim there are death panels. In fact one of them, Betsy McCaughey-- who first invented the whole idea of death panels-- was in the news again yesterday, having been forced to resign from a position on the board of Cantel Medical. I guess they were embarrassed after Jon Stewart allowed her to make a fool of herself Thursday night on his show and to demonstrate that she was making it all up on behalf of the Insurance Industry. In fact, it has become abundantly clear where she-- as well as Palin and the rest of the well-compensated obstructionists-- came up with the whole idea of death panels. No one knows better than the Insurance Industry about death panels. Watch this 30 second exposé:




UPDATE: Would "Opportunist" or "Self Serving" Be A Better Description Of Betsy McCaughey?

Most people who actually know here skip right over that stuff and go right to "loathsome" and "shameless." In 1997, when NY Governor George Pataki kicked her off the Lt. Gov. slot on the Republican ticket, she jumped parties and claimed-- about as convincingly as Arlen Specter has-- that she was suddenly a Democrat. According to a NY Times article at the time, she couched her defection in terms of idealism, claiming that her experience with the GOP convinced her there was something wrong with their values. Doesn't this sound exactly like Specter?

''Tomorrow I will be announcing that I am joining the Democratic Party. I made this decision after years of soul-searching. I found that I had to choose again and again between doing what I knew was right, instead of what Republican politicians expect me to do... I've searched my conscience about leaving the Republican Party and I decided it was better to change parties than to change my principles.''

...She complained that she was forced to turn to Democrats in the Legislature when Republicans rebuffed her efforts to expand pre-kindergarten programs in the state and to restrict the ability of health maintenance organizations to refuse to pay for experimental cancer treatments.

''It showed me which party puts patients ahead of politics and campaign contributions,'' she said. ''It's the Democratic Party.''

Uh... yeah.