When Big Fat Idiots Attack

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
When Big Fat Idiots Attack
37
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:09pm
El Rushbo:


Limbaugh monologue contains numerous Obama falsehoods


Summary: On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh made numerous false statements about Obama's health-care plan, his employment history, his legislative record, his work on behalf of veterans, and whether he puts his hand over his heart during the national anthem.









During a monologue in his October 2 broadcast, radio host Rush Limbaugh repeated
numerous falsehoods about Sen. Barack Obama, including false statements about
Obama's health-care
plan, his legislative record, and other issues:



  • Echoing a false attack on Obama's
    health-care plan by Sen.
    John McCain and others, Limbaugh stated, "Obama wants to change the
    American system for another system." He later added: "If
    somebody tells you, for example, they want the federal government to take
    over the health-care system lock, stock, and barrel, what do you call
    that?" In fact, Obama has not proposed having the federal government
    "take over the health-care system"; Obama's plan calls
    for individuals to choose their own insurance. As The New York Times reported in a
    May 3 article, the suggestion that Obama is "proposing a
    single-payer, or even nationalized health care system along the lines of
    those in countries like Canada
    and Britain
    ... is incorrect."



  • Limbaugh asserted that Obama
    "has never held a real job in this country," defining "real
    job" as "one that requires you to get up every morning, go to
    work, make a profit for yourself or for your employer." Limbaugh
    then added: "He has been paid by foundations and the taxpayer most
    of his life to promote a socialist agenda that'll destroy everything
    that you have worked for." In fact, Obama held positions as associate and
    of counsel at the law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland
    (known as Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland when Obama joined) from 1993 to 2002.



  • Limbaugh falsely stated that
    Obama "has authored a bill ... that would require you, the
    hardworking people of this country, to pony up $85 billion per year to
    give to other countries to fight global poverty through the United
    Nations," a false claim Limbaugh has made in the past. Limbaugh was
    referring to the Global Poverty Act of 2007,
    a bill sponsored by Obama. However, Limbaugh's assertion that it
    would require Americans to "pony up $85 billion per year" is
    false. As Media Matters for America
    has documented, the bill would
    establish no specific funding sources and would not commit the United States
    to any targeted level of spending.



  • Limbaugh stated: "I would ask those of you who
    have served in the military or are serving in the military, can you name
    anything -- anything Obama has done prior to running for president to show
    his support for you?" He added: "Did he speak to veterans
    groups? Did he do interviews with veteran- and military-related media? Did
    he visit military hospitals and shake hands with the wounded? No."
    In fact, in addition to serving on the Senate Committee on Veterans
    Affairs
    since 2005, as Media Matters has documented, Obama
    has also spoken to veterans groups and visited military bases overseas
    before the start of his presidential campaign. According to an article in
    the Chicago Sun-Times on
    January 22, 2005, Obama visited a group of 500 veterans at the American
    Legion Hall
    in Evergreen Park,
    Illinois. He also visited
    Iraq in January 2006 as part of a congressional delegation, during which
    time a January 8, 2006, Sun-Times
    article reported that "Obama played basketball with soldiers and
    dined with members of the military from Illinois."



  • Limbaugh falsely claimed that
    Obama "didn't start putting his hand over his heart during the
    national anthem until a few months ago." As Media Matters has documented, on October 23,
    2007, Inside Edition
    featured a segment on the
    national anthem "controversy." The segment included two
    photographs of Obama placing his hand over his heart during the national
    anthem, which Inside Edition
    said it received from an Obama spokesman.



  • Limbaugh falsely claimed that
    Obama has not voted to fund troops "on the battlefield,"
    stating: "Did vote to fund the troops? To send them the
    armor and the bullets and the reinforcement they needed while they were on
    the battlefield? No." He added: "He spoke out against it. All
    of it." In fact, as Media Matters
    has documented,
    Obama has
    repeatedly voted to
    provide funds for fighting in Iraq
    and Afghanistan.
    As Washington Post media
    critic Howard Kurtz wrote,
    "Obama has frequently voted to finance the war but was one of 14
    Senate Democrats to oppose a war-funding bill last year -- after
    Republicans removed troop withdrawal deadlines -- saying he did not want
    to be 'validating the same failed policy in Iraq.' "


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2006
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 12:18am

Limbaugh is repulsive. Obama's health care plan goes nowhere near what I'd like to see--single payer like in Canada. Still, Obama's is better than McCain's "more of the same".

What was posted here on McCain's health care plan was the same old HIPAA stuff pertaining to portability, rephrased. The only new parts are the tax credits, tax INCREASES and the fact that he says he'll help governors--no specifics of course.

It's funny how McCain's campaign has no trouble coming up with specifics when it comes to criticizing Obama, but when it comes to their own proposals there are NONE. I guess they just can't master those higher-order thinking skills.

-----------------------------------------------
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/meet_the_new_health_.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTBYQlQ7yM

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-19-2007
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 12:53am
Ha ha, good one!
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-19-2007
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 1:02am

You might enjoy this column by Krugman. It's very good.



Op-Ed Columnist


Health Care Destruction








Published: October 5, 2008


Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.



Skip to next paragraph

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman




You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.


Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.


So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.


Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.


This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.


So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.


Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.


Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.


As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.


So what would happen?


The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.


But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).


Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.


And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.


In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”


I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-22-2008
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 1:08am
LOL! Go Rush! Expose all of Obama's lies!
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-19-2007
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 1:50am

You betcha, heckuva job!





Edited 10/7/2008 1:51 am ET by glitter_girl_5000
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 2:09am

<<"It's funny how McCain's campaign has no trouble coming up with specifics when it comes to criticizing Obama">>


Isn't "coming up with specifics when it comes to criticizing" their opponent,

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-22-2008
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 2:44am
Darn tootin'!
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2008
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 6:28am
I'm guessing this is just your opinion, right?
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-23-2008
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 6:50am
When you mentioned 'big fat idiot' I thought you might be talking about Michael Moore.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2001
Tue, 10-07-2008 - 8:29am
Wow -