As the Obama administration pushes for a vote on health-care reform before Congress recesses in August, has health-industry money too thoroughly polluted the process for anything good to come of it?
On the June 15 edition of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck hostedNancy Armstrong — whom he described as a “disenfranchised Democrat” who “has a blog called MsPlacedDemocrat.com” — in order to assert that it wasn’t “only Republicans” who have hosted tea parties. One topic that didn’t come up during the discussion is the numerous posts on Armstrong’s blog advancing the falsehood that President Obama has not released a valid copy of his birth certificate.
Dr Orly Taitz, both a lawyer and naturalized citizen has personally taken on the issue of Obama’s eligibility. There is nothing wrong with her questioning this issue because Obama has literally hidden every evidence of his past. What has he hidden? All school records, passport records, employment records ( forget his stupid story about ice cream and an ice cream shop….I believe it is another one of Obama’s lies.) and his REAL birth certificate.
Armstrong’s site has also linked to variousarticles trafficking in birth certificate theories, including in a March 5 post that took excerpts from a WorldNetDaily.com article quoting a “U.S. soldier on active duty” who wrote that Obama “has absolutely refused to provide to the American public his original birth certificate, as well as other documents which may prove or disprove his eligibility. … In fact, he has fought every attempt made by concerned citizens in their effort to force him to do so.”
As Media Matters for America has noted, the Obama campaign released a copy of President Obama’s birth certificate, posting it on the campaign’s Fight the Smears website. It also reportedly provided the original document to FactCheck.org, whose staff concluded in an August 21, 2008, post that it “meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.” The Hawaii Department of Health also repeatedlyconfirmed that the birth certificate on record with the state is valid and proves that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii.
Media Matters recently documented Fox News’ purportedly bias-free Fox Nation website pushing the birth certificate conspiracy theory.
Von Brunn Promoted Work Of Legendary Anti-Semite It looks like James Von Brunn tried to use Wikipedia to promote the work of Willis Carto, the right-wing Holocaust denier and founder of the Liberty Lobby. Just last month, a Wikipedia user James Von Brunn asked the site’s adminstrators:…
Accused Far-Right Killer Has Bizarre, Troubled Past So this morning, the story of Shawna Forde — the alleged ringleader in the recent murder of a nine-year-old girl and her father near the US-Mexico border — appeared to be pretty run-of-the-mill stuff: it looked like your standard plot…
DC Confidential: Taking It in the Shorts “We’re digging ourselves out of a deep hole. We took it in the shorts with Bush-Cheney,?the Iraq War, and by sacrificing fiscal responsibility to hold power.” – Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), as quoted by Jim Galloway, Political Insider, June 12, 2009.
The Three Essentials of Financial Reform As the White House unveils its long-awaited proposals to prevent another Wall Street meltdown in the future, keep a lookout for three essentials. Without them the Street will revert to its old ways as soon as the coast clears. In…
Liberal Bloggers: Outsiders Or Insiders? First, a word of praise for “Bloggers On The Bus”—I’m so used to reading hostile reactions to liberal bloggers from the mainstream media and so many instances of exploiting some of the worst episodes or worst blog comments to…
Former Bush And McCain Mouthpiece Nicolle Wallace Claims To Speak For All Doctors Appearing on CNN yesterday afternoon, Nicolle Wallace, former spokeswoman to the presidential campaigns of George Bush and John McCain, claimed all doctors oppose the creation of a public plan, an integral component of reform. Indeed, the AMA, where President Obama spoke yesterday, has indicated that it will lobby against an effective public plan. But even […]
Appearing on CNN yesterday afternoon, Nicolle Wallace, former spokeswoman to the presidential campaigns of George Bush and John McCain, claimed all doctors oppose the creation of a public plan, an integral component of reform. Indeed, the AMA, where President Obama spoke yesterday, has indicated that it will lobby against an effective public plan. But even though the AMA represents only 29% of American doctors (or much less than that, depending on if you subtract the dues payers who don’t currently practice), Wallace incredulously cited the AMA’s position as she boldly claimed to speak on behalf of the “docs”:
WALLACE: I think the biggest problem that Obama faces is not Republicans, it’s the doctors. […] I think that most normal people look to their doctors for advice and for their reaction to the big health care debates that take place in Washington. And doctors are opposed, very strongly opposed to one of the central tenets of Obama’s plan.
BLITZER: Which tenet is that?
WALLACE: It is the public option. […]
WALLACE: But there’s plenty of competition. The docs argue that you would crowd out private insurers.
Watch it:
As Paul Begala noted, the AMA doesn’t bother to even survey its members. So not only is Wallace wrong to try to speak for all American doctors when she attacks the public option, she doesn’t even necessarily speak for AMA doctors.
It is difficult to take the AMA as an honest player in the health reform debate. The AMA secures over 20% of its revenue from selling doctor information to the pharmaceutical lobby in a complex scheme to help the drug lobby market its products. This arrangement certainly clouds the AMA’s policy voice.
Unlike the AMA, Doctors for America, an actual member-driven group, conducted a poll of physicians over the weekend asking if they support the public option. Within 48 hours, over 1,500 responded from 48 states with an overwhelming 97% of respondents voting “Yes.” One of the respondents to the DFA survey, Dr. Andrew Janssen, noted:
As a rural family physician, I see people daily who cannot afford or who have been denied private insurance. Without a public insurance option meaningful health care reform is impossible.
Even with the AMA leadership opposing meaningful reform, physician members of the AMA should support a public insurance option. A robust public plan would not only eliminate unnecessary paperwork gimmicks used by private insurers today, but would also give providers timely payments that would allow doctors to focus on delivering the best quality care to their patients.
CIA told Zubaydah they mistook him for a high-level al Qaeda operative. According to new transcripts from of a 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay, detainee Abu Zubaydah said that his CIA captors told him after he was subjected to torture that “they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden.” “They […]
According to new transcripts from of a 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay, detainee Abu Zubaydah said that his CIA captors told him after he was subjected to torture that “they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden.” “They told me, ‘Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,’” Zubaydah said. Zubaydah, who was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in one month, also said that he nearly died in prison:
Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that “doctors told me that I nearly died four times” and that he endured “months of suffering and torture” on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.
Despite President Bush’s rhetoric, Zubaydah’s torture “foiled no plots,” a point that one of his interrogators confirmed during a congressional hearing last May. The portion of the 2007 Combatant Review Status hearing transcript in which Majid Khan — an alleged associate of Khalid Sheik Mohammad — discussed his treatment at CIA black sites was “blacked out for eight consecutive pages.”
The Hollywood Liberal is an anti-war, anti republican, from right here beautiful Hollywood California.
This site was originally started to help get The Worst President Ever G.W. Bush Jr. Out of office. Now that we have accomplished that
the goal is to get Obama to start acting like a Democrat, and not an butt kissing Republican Wannabee. We will continue to fight for that goal
. Thanks H.L.
