Patriotism or racism?

There is a new group opposed to President Obama. It calls itself "Special Operations for America." You can see its web site here: (http://soforamerica.org) The group is headed by Ryan Zinke, a former SEAL and currently a career politician in Montana.

The organization got caught illegally using U.S. military logos on its sites, and had to be ordered by the military to remove them. (See here.)

The SOFA organization is also using on its web site a digitally altered video of Obama that makes his skin darker and more shadowy, making him look more sinister.

Do this comparison:

The video used by SOFA is on their home page, here (http://soforamerica.org). It's the video embedded on the right side, where you can see Obama with his extremely dark skin. If you open that up in Youtube.com, it is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsrSAqRrCc0. Scroll to the 1:00 mark, and watch the next 5 seconds.

Now for the original, which is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGBkCIsAQUA. Scroll to the 0:32 mark and watch the next 5 seconds.

Notice the alteration of his skin tone and color. (Maybe they should have added the beat of some jungle drums, too.)

I like to think our active duty military personnel and our veterans are better than this, but obviously some of them don't want to be better, and they are not afraid of displaying openly their racial bigotry toward our commander in chief.

Maybe Mr. Zinke and his buddies were once heroes, but today they are racists, and bring disrespect to the military and to America. This type of despicable behavior is not appropriate for a modern civilized people. It is nothing but an appeal to racists and a promotion of ugliness in a quest for personal political gain. America should be better than that.

The health care law and death panels!

We have all heard about those death panels that are being set up by the new health care law the president got passed. You know, the faceless bureaucrats who sit behind their desks and decide who will die because it would be too expensive (remember those words) to allow efforts to keep them alive.

The news about the death panels started with the tea party darling Sarah Palin. (See here) The notion has been endorsed by another tea party mouthpiece, Michelle Bachmann. (See here)

Senator. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said that his daughter would not be alive today if the law had been in place when she was born. He said:

"I don't even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents [sic] on what would be covered," Johnson writes. "Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?" (See here)

Republican Congressman Phil Gingrey, from Georgia, says:

“Under this IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board)… that the Democrats put in Obamacare, where a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy, I guarantee you when you withdraw that the patient is going to die,” Gingrey said recently. “It’s rationing.” (See here)

Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, who has made a career out of fighting these death panels, says Obama wants to "pull the plug on Grandma." (See here)

I could go on and on about this, but what's the point. The death panel accusation is pure lie. It is a lie by people who claim to be Christians. They want you to believe their lies. They want you to VOTE based on this outrageous lie that they are telling you. The health care law does not call for death panels, pure and simple. (See Wikipedia)

I know it is sad to think that somebody would order that your child, your parent, your spouse, or even you, be denied life saving treatment because it is too expensive (remember those words). But the health care law does not provide for that. It is a lie so big that it has been voted the "Lie of the Year" in 2009. (See here)


(The death panel lie is not the only lie about the health care law. See this article entitled "Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200." That article is nearly three years old, exploding lie after lie, and we still get in our emails the same old lies that have been proven to be false.)


Again, it is an outright lie that the health care law provides for death panels. This lie is designed to cause distress to millions of Americans, to cause them to worry needlessly that they or their loved ones will be allowed to die unnecessarily because keeping them alive is too expensive (remember those words).

Here is a comment at the Tea Party Nation site by a woman whose son is in medical school:

"My son is in his 3rd year of medical school and the thought of him possibly being the doctor that is "FORCED" BY THE GOVERNMENT to write the patient order to remove those tubes horrifies me--this is not why he wants to become a doctor--to give folks mediocre care; to have to be the one who has to carry out the govt's death panels!" (See here)

This woman is agonizing over the thought that her son, when he is practicing medicine, will be ordered to let people die! She is a victim of the vicious lie that the tea party and Republicans are telling. 

Although the death panel accusation against the health care law is a lie, there are death panels! They really do exist in American health care! They have existed for years!

Remember the little girl I talked about in a previous message? (See here) What was the danger there? It's in the video, as clear as can be. The problem was that the girl's insurance company was going to soon cut off her coverage because of a lifetime limit on coverage. In other words, the girl would likely die because some faceless insurance company bureaucrat would decide enough is enough, and would cut off her coverage on the grounds that continuing her life saving treatment is too expensive. (Sound familiar?)

Here is a video I have not mentioned. (See here) It is about another girl, one who needed emergency surgery on her heart when she was 15 HOURS old. Watch the video. Watch the anguish of her mother, who knows that the tea party and Republicans are doing everything they can to take away the law that is keeping her daughter alive. What Christian could possibly want to return to a system where insurance bureaucrats send out letters telling parents that their child cannot live, because that would be too expensive?

Here is another person who is helped by the health care law. (See here) The children in that video are not sick. But who wants to send them a letter telling them that their mother must die because it would be too expensive to keep her alive? Do I hear any volunteers?

Actually, I misspoke. I said there are death panels. That's not true. Because of the health care law that the president and the Democratic Party passed, those death panels are now forbidden. They are ILLEGAL. No longer can those death panels make life and death decisions for you, your children, your parents, just because the insurance company decides it is too expensive, and your life is not worth enough.


Those who complain about death panels are, in reality, just liars and fake Christians. They are claiming to be against death panels and they tell lies about imaginary death panels on the one hand. On the other hand, they are actively working to return death panels to America, so millions of people, like the ones you see in the videos, can die--all because it would be too expensive to keep them alive.

The owner of a business is not responsible for the business?

Let's say you go to a restaurant and order a steak dinner.

Now let's say what you get is a chicken sandwich. You ask to speak to the owner. The owner says "I'm just the owner, I'm not responsible."

So you are out of luck, right? Of course not! The owner is responsible for the business, whether he cooked the meal or not!

Look at what Mitt Romney thinks about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jrt8Tqc-HBE

Now, he wants to be our president, right?

A lie about a graph

I was browsing the Tea Party Nation site, and ran across a fabricated graph that was attributed falsely to President Obama. You can see the article and the graph here:

http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/is-it-november-yet

This is what the graph looks like:

The author of that post claimed, "This chart by the way is not a joke, it was actually circulated by the Obama Campaign yesterday. There are seriously no words."

It seemed odd to me that the Obama campaign would be very stupid to put out a graph entitled "Unemployment Rate With and Without Better Stories." I decided to do a little checking, but while reading the comments to the post, I discovered that somebody beat me to it.

Here is a post by one of the tea party members who fell for this. Because corrections to lies at the Tea Party Nation web site often disappear mysteriously, I quickly copied the member's reply, and I'm putting it here.

That person's reply is this:

LOL! At least I can laugh about what happened to me, so I guess that's a good sign.

I sent this story and graph to a friend, and she wrote back after a while. She pointed out that where this article said "This chart by the way is not a joke, it was actually circulated by the Obama Campaign yesterday" is not true.

She pointed out that this chart was not on the Obama site, but was on Mitt Romney's site, at this page.

http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/07/13/graph-of-the-day-obama-bett...

She said to notice that there is a link for the source of the graph on that page. That link is 

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/330924.php

She told me to go to that page and read what is right before the graph, and then read what is right after the graph.

Before the graph is this:

"The Obama campaign released a new chart showing what unemployment will be like in a second Obama term (if God forbid, there is one)."

Right after the graph is this:

"I may have lied and that chart is from the great @slublog (who you should be following on Twitter if you're not already) and not the Obama campaign. Who is to say? Dave in Texas reminds me to remind you that as often as you see that chart around, it was invented by a former commenter/co-blogger here at the HQ named Geoff."

By the time I read that, I was so embarrassed! To make things worse, about an hour later, she sent me another link to this document:

http://www.ampo.org/assets/library/184_obama.pdf

The original graph is on page 4 of that document, and it is over 3 years old. Then it became obvious that this graph was altered by somebody later, so it could be claimed that Obama released it "yesterday."

I feel really bad that I fell for this. My friend has told me not to believe everything I read, and I had always told her I knew what was true and what wasn't. Now I've learned my lesson. Thank God my friend is understanding, but she did say she would rather not be bothered with any more stuff like this, as she doesn't have time to separate the truth from all the untruths. I won't repeat what she said about the tea party, but I'll just say that she really made me feel like a fool for even being a member.

Be careful, people. I don't want you feeling like I did when she ripped me a new one. LOL!

Welfare Reform Requested by Republicans Comes Under Attack

Two Republican led states, Utah and Nevada, have requested that they be allowed some flexibility in the welfare program so they can spend more time helping recipients find work, and less time filling out paperwork. Some states actually spend more time filling out documentation than they do on job finding efforts for people on welfare. (See the Wall Street Journal)

So the Obama administration has decided to allow some waivers for states that think they can do a better job. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

In its waiver announcement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that demonstration projects approved will be “focused on improving employment outcomes” for participants.  This is a major step forward.  Under the current structure, states can meet their TANF work participation rate – the only measure of state performance – without recipients finding paying jobs.  These demonstration projects will help to shift the focus of TANF employment programs from process and “bean counting” (whether recipients participate in programs) to outcomes (whether they actually find and keep jobs). (See here) 

Now what is the Republicans' response to this new empowerment to states to try more effective measures?

A leading tea party site calls it "dictatorship" by President Obama. (See here) Judson Phillips says, "Just like that a law enacted by Congress and signed by another President is set aside.  Yes, it remains on the books, but it is effectively gone."

That is a lie. The law remains. And the goal, as shown above, is still to find employment for welfare recipients, but to allow states to try to do a better job of it.

But Judson Phillips and the tea party are not the only ones participating in the lie. House Speaker John Boehner says Obama has "gutted" the work requirements. (See here)

Mitt Romney says, "President Obama now wants to strip the established work requirements from welfare." (See here) That is a lie. Lying Republicans have even gone so far as to say that the new approach would be "opening the door to letting states count such things as bed rest or going to weight-loss programs." That is a lie.


If these Republicans were telling the truth, then maybe they should explain why two Republican led states asked for this flexibility in the first place. 


Republicans have long asked for more power and flexibility in their handling of programs. Now that they get it, at their own request, they turn around and accuse President Obama of being a federal dictator. Will these lies never stop?


Many of these liars, like the tea party, claim to be good Christians. Maybe I'm behind the times. Maybe something about Christianity changed, and one of the commandments now has been amended to "Thou shalt lie."


I predict more so-called Christians will cheer the lies now being told about the welfare flexibility. It's time for decent Americans to stop applauding these lies and the liars, and start condemning them.

Repealing Health Care - again, and again

As expected, on July 11, 2012, the House of Representatives voted to repeal every provision of the health care law. Every Republican voted for the repeal. They said they want to take a stand on health care. This is the 33rd time they have voted to repeal the law. I think we know where they stand now.

Here is a video that shows a 4 year old girl and her family: click here.

That girl's health has been under attack for years now. She has survived the recent attack in the Supreme Court. Now she is under renewed attack by the Republicans, who want to repeal the health care law, but have no plan of their own. That's right, their "repeal and replace" is really "repeal and do nothing."

Every Christian--indeed, every caring American, regardless of religion--should view that video. Think of the anguish the parents must be going through, to see their girl's health being held hostage to 33 Republican attacks, with more to come. How would you feel if it were your child?

There are those who smugly ask "yeah, that's sad, but tell me how we are going to pay for all of this!!!!!" The answer is simple. We will pay for it the same way we will pay for you and your family's health care when you file a claim on your own insurance. Is that answer not good enough? If your child developed a serious medical condition, and you have insurance, and your insurance pays, nobody would come running to you claiming that your child is bankrupting our nation, would they?

Imagine this scene. Jesus is standing before a crowd, preaching compassion and caring for the sick. The crowd is listening. Suddenly from the back of the crowd, somebody yells, "How the hell are we going to pay for all of this, Mr. Liberal smarty pants?"

What would Jesus do?