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Limbaugh and the Rams? Perhaps not . . .

So, Rush wants to own a professional football team. What's the big deal? Well . . . there is the fact that very, very few African-American players would play for him. Why? It seems that Rush's mouth sometimes runs ahead of his brain. Check out a few examples:

"Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

"Sorry to say this, I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." --on Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, while working as a commentator on ESPN

Perhaps he could own an WNBA team? Maybe not . . .

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."

Maybe he could give up on professional sports and take on a cause, like Parkinson's research. Wait . . .

"He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act. ... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting." --on an ad by Michael J. Fox endorsing Claire McCaskill for Senate for supporting embryonic stem cell research

Guess a career change isn't in the cards for Rush. Poor him.

They Wait

More Health Care Humor

A Public Service Announcement Worth Listening To

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

This Makes Me Feel Better

Gotta love Garrison Keillor.

Sept. 23, 2009 | The president has declined to talk about racism in connection with the carpet-chewers of the right who are suffering road rage over his existence, and he's wise to turn that one down. The country doesn't need a sermon on race or civility right now. What it needs is to believe that our leaders are trying to do the right thing, no matter how inconvenient, and if they forge ahead and fix health insurance, then the ragemeisters of the right will find other hobbies.

Mr. Obama is a Chicago guy, and he doesn't wilt if some gin-crazed cracker from South Carolina calls him a liar, so don't trouble your pretty head about civility.

It was women's suffrage that tamed politics. All through the 19th century, going back to Jefferson vs. Adams in 1800, politics was a blood sport. Hecklers followed a candidate like fleas on a dog. Newspapers were rip-snorting partisan and tore into the opposition with gay abandon. The English language is rich in invective and it all got used. When you went after your opponent, you got warmed up by calling him a horse thief, drunkard, agnostic, wife-beater, agent of Satan and tool of Wall Street, and then you got to the serious stuff. But once women appeared, in their little pinafores and corsages, we became, temporarily, a quieter, gentler people than we actually are and sat still at League of Women Voters forums on world federalism and perused the editorial page, written by silver-haired gents with distinguished jowls who penned judicious columns of On The One Hand This, On The Other Hand That, and nobody ever yelled at them except their wives.

That's sort of gone now. Now a column appears online and then the anonymous reader comments and the reader says, AW SHUT YER TRAP YA BIG FAT NOBODY, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? NUTTIN, THAT'S WHAT. GO BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE YA COME FROM. It's a loud raspy voice that was familiar to Lincoln and Mark Twain and now it's back, thanks to the cranky right, which feels disenfranchised by the election of Obama. And to their delight they've found that it drives the center-left right up the wall.

The old union guys who built the Democratic Party enjoyed public face-offs and knew how to deal with hecklers -- you get up close to them and snap their underwear -- but the party's been taken over by academics who come from a medieval world where your insignia grants you a worshipful hearing. As Shakespeare wrote, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark." But that ain't going to happen in politics.

The right believes that if you throw enough mud, some will stick, and if you characterize healthcare reform as an evil plot by one-eyed space aliens, you can defeat the thing. The fact is that there are 40 million uninsured Americans and soon, if nothing is done, there will be more. This is a moral dilemma, the same as if habeas corpus only applied east of the Mississippi or that green-eyed children will only be educated through the sixth grade. Not acceptable in the country I live in. And it's up to people who care about the common good not to be scared off.

The right is operating in the grand old irreverent American middle-finger spirit of contrarianism. The carful of kids who drive country roads busting mailboxes with baseball bats are expressing the same freewheeling spirit and the computer hackers and graffiti artists and every conscientious rock 'n' roll band for the past 50 years.

But the price of being an angry jerk is that nobody wants to invite you over for supper except your mother, and even she feels a little uneasy. It's very simple: The anonymous bums in the bleachers can abuse the umpire, but the players can't because they have numbers on their backs. Bold contrarians get thrown out of the game. The American people, by and large, don't admire wackos. A few wacko congressmen can't do much harm, but you wouldn't want them on the County Board. You want sober people who can add and subtract. And you don't want one to marry your sister. The angry guy in a lather about Mr. Obama to the exclusion of rational thought will have to go to the weenie roast alone and nobody is going to dance with him except out of pure pity and I'm not sure he's going to enjoy that.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of "77 Love Sonnets," published by Common Good Books.)

© 2009 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

No Racism Here

I haven't posted for a while because the blog post that has been bouncing around inside my brain is one that questions whether hate speech can actually encourage physical violence. The problem is I can't write about the radical rhetoric of the Right without violating my own pledge of civility.

So, instead, to answer the question of whether the Tea Party gatherings have gone too far . . . perhaps even scratched the ugly scab of racism open . . . I give you these images and allow you to decide their intent.

Thanks, Extreme Right!

It's official: the Right has gone so far off the deep end that their credibility is in tatters. Shouting at the President during a joint session of Congress trumps even the birthers in the quest to turn the Republican Party into a club for conspiracy theorists and paranoid schizophrenics. Obama, whose overhaul of health care really is game-changing, seems downright moderate next to the folks with the swastika posters who shout at women in wheelchairs. So tonight, I thank Rep. Joe Wilson for further perpetuating the stereotype that all Republicans are on the fringe. Of course, this stereotype is false, but who I am to tell Conservatives how to manage their image?

Obama Steers Student Down Wrong Path

Well, it's out, and it's every bit as bad as we had imagined. President Obama's address to the nation's students includes some heinous and immoral ideas that are totally inappropriate for children. Read it for yourself, but I think that asking kids to work hard and take responsibility for their education is clearly something straight out of Marx. What we will say next that individuals have responsibilities beyond their own? Sacrilege I tell you!

Read this and see how much of it you can stomach!

The President: Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

That German Healthcare

I have been intrigued by the liberal use of Nazi imagery to deride those who champion health care reform and claim that Obama's views on the issues are somehow parallel to those of Hitler's. This got me wondering was it Hitler who brought universal health care to Germany? The answer is no. The roots of the current German health system date back to 1885 . . . just a bit before Hitler's time.

Ok, so the Germans are about 150 years ahead of us in the health care debate, but their system sucks, right? Not so much. With just a little bit of digging, I found a number of reputable websites that describe the German system in a way that make it seem, well, downright logical.

I particularly liked the question and answer format of the post I found on

http://www.healthcaretownhall.com.

Read it for yourself and see if the German system sounds like something worthy of Nazi iconography.

Inside Germany’s healthcare system

Continuing our series of interviews looking at health systems from around the world, Milliman consultant Axel Meder discusses the healthcare system in his native Germany.

Q: The healthcare system in Germany has been in place for a long time. How is it funded?

A: The system is more than 150 years old, and has remained viable through economic ups and downs—notably, two world wars and the depressions that followed. It’s a hybrid system, funded through both public and private entities. Most of the population is covered through the public system. But those who are self-employed or who earn more than 4,050 Euros per month may purchase private health insurance coverage. We call it “substitute” coverage, because it takes the place of the public insurance coverage others use.

Q: Are there differences in coverage between the public and private systems?

A: In the German healthcare system, coverage is mandatory. All citizens can see a physician or use a service as they see fit, regardless of whether they are covered by public or private insurance. It is essentially a one-tier system. About 90% of the German population is covered by the public healthcare system, with the remaining 10% covered privately. Private insurance must provide a minimum level of coverage and it also allows people to purchase additional benefits, like a single-bed hospital room, consultations with the chief doctors, and upgraded benefits for prescription drugs. But all patients have access to essentially the same treatments and options, although there are physicians and clinicians who offer their services to private patients only. There is no obligation for higher-earning people to opt out of the public system—private insurance is entirely voluntary.

Q: How is the insurance funded?

A: Financing for public health insurance is pay as you go. The premium one pays depends upon income. This year, the rate is 15.5% of gross income up to a maximum of 3,675 Euros per month. The employee pays 8.2% and the employer pays 7.3%. After retirement, the premium rates remain the same; only the basis changes from gross wages to state and private pensions. So after retirement, the state pension system pays the 7.3% instead of the employer

Private insurance premiums are initially rated based on risk factors such as gender, age at purchase, and coverage. Premiums cannot increase due to the increasing age of an individual, but can increase for inflation, changes in medical practice, and utilization, for example, if more insureds receive expensive treatments or drugs. In addition, private insurance premiums usually include a risk premium (for the underwritten health risk), lifelong aging reserves, cost loadings, and a contingency margin between 5% and 10% depending on exposure. The contingency margin ensures coverage in the event there is a major problem affecting many people, such as a pandemic or other catastrophe risk. Most years, this part of the premium is not used, and it becomes profit for the insurance company. Some of the profits are repaid to insureds; for instance, if a person doesn’t make any claims during the year he may get back 5%, 10%, or even 30% of the premiums paid.

Q: What is the purpose of lifelong aging reserves, and how do they work?

A: When a person is young, an aging reserve is added to his or her premium and is invested in an interest-bearing account. It must earn 3.5%, but often earns more. In this way, when the risk-based premium is higher later in life, the invested amounts can offset what might otherwise be an unaffordable premium, so coverage can continue. The aging reserves are tax-privileged for policy holders and insureds, and they can be used only for this purpose. The 3.5% interest earned is mandated by law and can be reduced only if there is a sustained reduction in market interest rates. If someone changes private insurance companies, he or she takes part of the aging reserves they’ve built up to their new insurer. Insurers have built up aging reserves of more than 125 billion Euros through the private system.

Q: Under what circumstances does a person lose or change coverage?

A: Everyone in Germany has to be covered, either through public or private insurance, so a person cannot lose coverage. People always have the right to cancel their policy and choose a different one. Companies have the right to cancel the policy only in the first three years. The private system tends to be more attractive for younger people, because of lower premiums and the reserve account. When someone is around age 45, the premiums in the private system may be higher than in the public system, so private insurance becomes less attractive and only a few people change from public to private insurance. If someone opts out from public insurance, he or she cannot go back into the public system.

Q: Can insurance companies change the premiums in the private system?

A: Insurers can change premiums under certain circumstances. For example, inflation, changes in the billing rates of physicians, dentists, and other service providers, or medical/technical advances. In these circumstances, insurance companies are able, and obliged, to examine their premiums to make sure they are planning adequately for their risk. When the premium increases, the increase becomes, in effect, a new layer of coverage, beginning with the age of the insured at that time.

Q: How does the availability of public insurance affect German insurance agents and companies who sell private coverage?

A: Private health policies are typically sold by independent brokers and agents. As private health insurance is a consulting-intensive product, direct sales play a lesser role. The lifelong aging reserves mean that the private insurance premiums are higher in the early years of the contract, making the policies more challenging to sell. Therefore, most of the policies are sold when the insureds are at age 25 to 40. Private insurers also offer supplemental insurance, which is not considered to be a substitute for public coverage. With these policies, one can purchase enhanced benefits like a private room in a hospital, or overseas coverage.

Q: How do private and public insurance coexist in Germany?

A: Some constituents would like to see the private insurance system abolished, but others believe its existence is critical to the system’s survival and that some physicians and providers would not survive without it. From an actuarial perspective, the private insurance system is more financially solid compared to the public pay-as-you-go system, because private premium rates include assumptions for, among other things, interest and increasing benefits. However, when interest rates are low, it can be difficult to earn the mandated 3.5% return on the reserves. In addition, as private premiums are increased, the resulting premiums are becoming unaffordable for retirees on fixed incomes. Insurers are trying to defuse this situation by using more of the surplus capital they have accumulated to mitigate increases.

Why the Death Penalty Must Be Abolished

The fear that an innocent person might be executed has long haunted jurors and lawyers and judges. And, in recent years, so many men have been exonerated from the nation's death rows that some states have been forced to place moratoriums on their capital punishment systems. Death penalty proponents have invariably seen such exonerations as evidence that the system is working, as a kind of insurance that no innocent individual will ever face death.

That argument no longer holds water. After an exhaustive investigation, David Grann (a reporter for The New Yorker)has reached the conclusion--supported by voluminous research--that Texas executed a man, Cameron Todd Willingham, on forensic evidence that was so poor that arson experts who reviewed it after Willingham's conviction (following a two-day trial)called it little more than folklore. No one, however, not even the governor of Texas was willing to grant Willingham a new trial or even a stay of execution. In fact, Grann's work reveals that none of those who could have righted the scales of justice for Willingham even bothered to read the evidence of his innocence.

If you haven't heard of this case, take a moment to read it at and say a little prayer that sooner rather than later, we will come to our senses and abolish capital punishment.

Secession for Texas? Obama a Marxist?

Texas Governor Rick Perry has officially out-tea-partied even the most rabid of the hard Right by suggesting that Texas might well be forced to leave the union if American continues to drift left . . . presumably into the dangerous waters of Marxist or Nazi (your choice) totalitarianism. (Never mind that those two systems of government are diametrically opposed; a gun strapped to your leg at a town meeting is enough logic for those who see no conflict with drawing swastikas on Obama while calling him a communist.)

Perry's contribution to the lunatic fringe was reported in The Huffington Post, which reported Perry's remarks late Wednesday, saying "Perry suggested [at one of three Tea Party gatherings he planned to attend] that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. 'There's a lot of different scenarios,' Perry said. 'We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that'?"

Clearly, Texas must be a Conservative paradise. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in Rick Perry-land, which the Commonwealth Fund ranked 46th out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia in terms of the overall quality of its health care system, 50th in children's access to health care, 44th on equity, and 42nd in overall quality of children's health care?

Personally, I'd love to be an educator in a state whose students are 49th in verbal SAT scores in the nation and 46th in average math SAT scores.

I could go on and on about "utopian Texas," but the reality is that these comments were not meant to be taken seriously. They were, instead, meant to stir up the base in advance of what could be a tough Texas Republican gubernatorial primary. That Perry thinks of the Tea Party as his base speaks volumes about the state of the Republican party,not just in Texas, but across the country. Things are pretty bad for Republicans, and without the emergence of Lynne Jenkins' "Great White Hope," Perry soon may need a lifeboat to navigate the waters of Nazi-Marxist-Islamic-Pacifistic progressivism.

Name that Blog

The Kansas Democratic Party is introducing a community blog feature to its website and taking suggestions as to the new blog's name. Take a moment to read the message from the state party below and suggest a name!

Do you have something to say, but no medium to say it? Well that's about to change.

We're excited to announce that as you read this, work is being done on the new website you asked from us last June. One of the signature features of our new website will be a community blog where you can write about your local party, candidates, and partner organizations.

It'll be 100% free and open to all Democrats. All we need to make it official is a new name:


Here's how it will work.

We'll be accepting your suggestions for blog names throughout the first half of this week with the contest closing Wednesday night at 11:59 PM. Thursday morning, we'll select the best five names from across the state and have you vote for the blog name you like the best. Whichever name gets the most votes by Monday, September 7th at 11:59 PM will be the winner!

We strongly encourage you to organize around your favorite name, but we'll talk more about that later. For now, if you've got a good idea for a blog name, submit it on the KSDP website, at the address below:

http://www.ksdp.org/nameourblog

It's an exciting time to be active in Kansas politics, and we can't wait to hear directly from you!

Thanks for all that you do,

Mike Nellis
Online Director -- Kansas Democratic Party

P.S. This blog is about you -- don't forget to make your suggestion before Thursday!

True Colors

It all started this morning while I was in the shower. My wife was listening to NPR, as is our habit. Over the sound of the rushing water, she said, "Ted Kennedy has passed away." I stopped there and said a little prayer for a fellow human who had lost a battle with cancer.

NPR was, not surprisingly, very respectful in its coverage, and I had a sense that somehow the Right would let the family mourn before hurling their last insults at the man who came to be known as the Lion of the Senate.

That illusion was shattered when one of my colleagues emailed me before 9:00 this morning irate at a friend's facebook status that wondered what kind of country makes heroes out of "child molesters and drunk-driving murderers." Surely, this was just one person spewing venom, right?

Knowing somehow this facebook user wasn't alone, I checked the some of the right-wing websites to see if she had compatriots out there ready to pounce. Here's some of what's posted by readers of the American Spectator:


Eric Cartman| 8.26.09 @ 5:58AM

Dude,

He should have died trying to save the girl he killed driving drunk. He was and will remain a cowardly, drunken, degenerate slob! Say Hi to Hitler for me, Ted!


Solo| 8.26.09 @ 8:09AM

Well...the "Lying Liberal " is finally burning in hell!

Good riddence, you feckless bastard!!


william| 8.26.09 @ 5:45PM

All you Kennedys seek is Fame and Sex and Greed and Riches. You're all in Hell where you belong you Fair Haired Sons of Bitches!


There is much more of the same out there, but I simply too sickened to reveal more. What's been written and said about the late Senator in the last 12 hours says much more about the writers and speakers of such venom than about the man himself.

Democracy: Bush-Cheney Style

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to launch an investigation into whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in connection with the torture of terror suspects during the Bush era made news headlines today as former Vice-President Cheney defended what he calls "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

These techniques, whatever euphemism that one attaches to them, are torture plain and simple; and they do not and cannot represent the values of American democracy . . . unless, of course, you think it's appropriate to threaten detainees with mock execution, imply that you are willing to rape their mothers . . . front of them, and make promises to find and kill their children.

The full report is available online at the address below, but one need not read it in it's entirety to know that these methods do not represent the best of America. We must never again allow ourselves to become monsters even as we attempt to combat the monstrous actions of others. Whether is happens at Guantanamo or in Abu Ghraib, wrong is wrong.

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/IG_Report.pdf

Guns at Town Hall Meetings

It's not exactly news; in fact, the national media has been reporting for a least a couple of weeks that a handful of opponents of health care reform have been attending Obama town-hall meetings armed with handguns, presumably to protect themselves in the event that a death panel appears.

Such events have gotten me thinking about just how much handguns cost our current health care system and our society as a whole.

These thoughts led me to the work of Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig whose book,Gun Violence: The Real Costs(published by Oxford University), concludes that handguns cost America 100 billion dollars a year.

Here's a snippet of the review of the book from the Oxford University Press:

"Until now researchers have assessed the burden imposed by gunshot injuries and deaths in terms of medical costs and lost productivity. Here, economists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig widen the lens, developing a framework to calculate the full costs borne by Americans in a society where both gun violence and its ever-present threat mandate responses that touch every aspect of our lives.

All of us, no matter where we reside or how we live, share the costs of gun violence. Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book bag for our children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center, the steps we take are many and the expenditures enormous."

Perhaps a major facet in the heath care debate has been overlooked: the connection between our obsession with guns and the high price we pay for that obsession.

Lies, Lies, and More Lies

This one really takes the cake. It is so bold, so outrageous that I had to fact-check it myself to see if it could even be true. Surely, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa (a man known as a moderate) didn't really say that Senator Ted Kennedy, who is battling a brain tumor while fighting for health care reform, would go untreated if he were a British citizen?

Yep, he said it. Forget for a moment that Sen. Kennedy is NOT advocating a British or Canadian-style single-payer system. Forget that that none of the plans emerging from either the House or Senate committees includes a single-payer provision. Focus instead on this, the latest of the Republican lies. I can't even write "misrepresentations" anymore.

This lie flies in the face of a simple truth: if Sen. Kennedy were a British citizen, he would receive the same care is receiving here with one major exception. His care would be cost-free, as it would be for ANY Brit who suffered from brain cancer (or any other ailment.)

Shame on you, Chuck Grassley.

So What is a Health Care Cooperative?

House Democrats want a full public option; Senate Dems (at some of them) seem to be leaning toward health care cooperatives. Secretary Sebelius alluded to the Senate option on the weekend talk shows, and Republicans gleefully began predicting a civil war among Democrats that would effectively kill reform. But what exactly are health insurance cooperatives, and are they real alternatives to a full public option? We can't settle for margarine when the recipe calls for butter, but how do we know the implications of such a decision without a full understanding of our options?

Again I defer to the NYT:

August 17, 2009, 4:02 pm
So What’s a Health Insurance Co-op, Anyway?
By Anne Underwood

If a public insurance option were to be abandoned, it could be replaced by an alternative favored by some moderates like Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota: the health insurance cooperative. Legislators have not spelled out how these plans might work, but health insurance co-ops do have a history in this country. Anne Underwood, a freelance writer, quizzed Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who has written extensively on health care policy, including the feasibility of establishing health insurance co-ops.

Q.

What is a nonprofit co-op?

A.

The basic idea is that consumers get together and start a company to produce something that otherwise might not be produced or would be underproduced. Co-ops are a familiar concept in the United States, especially in rural areas. I live in western Virginia, and we belong to an electric co-op that produces our power. Farm co-ops and dairy co-ops are also common.

Q.

So co-ops can be formed to provide health insurance, too?

A.

We had them in the 1930s and 1940s, because the Farm Security Administration sponsored them before we had health insurance. There were 600,000 people in the Midwest who were insured through them. Texas was a big area for them.

Q.

What happened to them?

A.

The Farm Security Administration withdrew support in 1947, and they all collapsed. They had a hard time getting going anyway. Two have survived — Group Health Cooperative of Washington and Health Partners in Minnesota. From everything I’ve read about them, they function reasonably well. But they’ve basically become like other insurance companies with a few little added bells and whistles for their members.

But one thing that it’s important to get straight from the beginning is the difference between insurance co-ops and health insurance purchasing co-ops. There was a real movement in the 1990s to purchase insurance through co-ops. Those are similar to the exchanges that are being proposed. A few of them got going. They were not remarkably successfully, either. The idea was that consumers bargain with insurance companies to buy insurance. They’re not insurance providers themselves.

Q.

So what we’re talking about are insurance co-ops that would function as insurers themselves.

A.

The argument I make is that it’s really hard to start an insurance company. You don’t just get a bunch of people together and say, “We’re going to start an insurance co-op.” The biggest problem is coming up with a network. You have to find doctors and hospitals and negotiate contracts. Most are already locked up by the dominant insurers. They’re not going to give you — a tiny co-op — a better deal. That’s assuming they’ll deal with you at all. The alternative would be to rent a network, but you’re basically buying your product from your competitor. There’s no way you’ll get a good deal there, either.

Q.

What are some of other challenges in setting up a co-op?

A.

You need to establish a brand identity, figure out how to handle claims, develop actuarial expertise, establish reserves, meet state licensing requirements and solvency requirements.

Q.

Does it improve competition in any way?

A.

What you have in the United States now . . . is concentration of insurance markets. You hear this stuff about 1,300 insurers in the United States and all this competition. But just try to get more than one of them to bid on your contract for a health plan in the Shenandoah, where I am. One insurer controls 87 percent of the market in Harrisonburg, Va. That’s true in many places. The idea that there are 1,300 insurers and that we have access to all of them is like saying there are 10,000 produce stands in U.S. If there’s only one within 10 miles of where you live, that’s the one you have access to.

Health insurance is very local. It’s very hard to break into an insurance market. The thought that you’ll have a few businessmen get together and set up a co-op that will compete with Aetna or Cigna is just dreaming. It’s not going to happen.

Q.

So how would a public plan be superior?

A.

If you had a public plan that could use Medicare rates, the infrastructure would already be there. It could use the Medicare network. Providers could always opt out, as they do today. Some doctors won’t take Medicare patients. The Energy and Commerce bill with Blue Dog amendments allows the secretary of health and human services to negotiate rates. Any provider who didn’t want to be in the public plan could opt out.

The United States government already has brand identity. It could compete. Maybe it would be a lousy competitor and fail, or maybe it would be a great competitor and force private insurers to compete and come up with a product that was more affordable than what they’re selling now. I don’t see a problem with trying it.

The idea that the public plan will dominate the market, I don’t see that. As the president said, we have a post office, Federal Express and U.P.S. I use all three. The idea [of relying solely on private insurers] is like saying we’ll abolish the post office and give people vouchers to send letters with Federal Express. That’s what we’re doing if we don’t have a public plan.

Who knows? Maybe some consumers might put together a co-op that would survive. But the idea that co-ops will provide competition in the private market that would have effect on cost is an illusion. We’re talking about using taxpayer money to pay money to private insurers without any competition. How crazy is that?

Q.

So what’s the appeal?

A.

It’s a co-op, a consumer-run business — not the government taking over health care. Second, the idea of a co-op is familiar in the upper Midwest. They have dairy co-ops and electrical co-ops. It’s an idea familiar to constituents, and those co-ops work reasonably well for producing certain kinds of goods in certain markets. The problem is, they don’t make sense for health insurance.

The argument that we’re headed toward government-run, socialized medicine plays pretty well in a lot of conservative parts of the United States. This is an alternative. The problem is, it’s an alternative that wouldn’t work.

Q.

Would nonprofit co-ops at least help to control costs?

A.

I don’t see how it does anything to control costs. I don’t see much in the legislation outside of Medicare reforms that will control costs, except for the public plan.

I also see it as a strategy to get a bill through the Senate Finance Committee. The final bill that comes out of conference may look different. I hope so.

The other thing is, nobody has seen the co-op proposal yet.

Q.

Might health care co-ops be structured in different ways?

A.

I did a memo on how you might structure one to work, if you established a national cooperative. If the federal government set up a co-op itself, the co-op could then be set up regionally and funded adequately to get things going. You might be able to come up with a co-op that would in fact work.

But I still think it is a poor alternative to the vigorous public plan.

Q.

Should we be worried that the public plan will fare so well that we end up without private alternatives?

A.

In Germany and Australia, they have competition of public plans and private plans. In fact, what has happened is that the market stabilizes, the public plan provides things some people want, and private plans provide things other people want. What you end up with eventually is a market in which people get what they want.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted in its analysis of the House bill that about two-thirds of people who had the option would go for private market and one-third for public. The vast majority — about 160 million — would stay in employer-covered plans, because the exchange wouldn’t be available to them. Probably some people will go with the public option because it’s cheaper. Others may think private insurance will offer more care or broader coverage.

The market will sort itself out, just as the market for automobiles sorts itself out. We don’t have to all buy top-end cars. In Germany, 50 percent of people go public, and 50 percent private. I think it’s unlikely the the public plan would drive private insurers out of business.

Obama Pens NYT Op-ed on Health Care Reform

If you haven't had a chance to read Obama's well written piece in the NYT, here it is. I continue to be amazed that the well reasoned and logical arguments that are being put forth by the President and Democrats in Congress are being drowned out by a discussion of conspiracy theories involving death panels and health care for undocumented workers. Of course, if your major source of news is Rush (who once imitated Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms to make the case that the actor was exaggerating the effects of his debilitating disease to make a political point)then there's really no hope for negotiation. But enough from me, here are the words of a President who actually writes his own books.

August 16, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Why We Need Health Care Reform
By BARACK OBAMA

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.

Third, by making Medicare more efficient, we’ll be able to ensure that more tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies. This will not only help provide today’s seniors with the benefits they’ve been promised; it will also ensure the long-term health of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. And our reforms will also reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs.

Lastly, reform will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable. A 2007 national survey actually shows that insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million Americans in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition. The companies either refused to cover the person, refused to cover a specific illness or condition or charged a higher premium.

We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

Despite what we’ve seen on television, I believe that serious debate is taking place at kitchen tables all across America. In the past few years, I’ve received countless letters and questions about health care. Some people are in favor of reform, and others have concerns. But almost everyone understands that something must be done. Almost everyone knows that we must start holding insurance companies accountable and give Americans a greater sense of stability and security when it comes to their health care.

I am confident that when all is said and done, we can forge the consensus we need to achieve this goal. We are already closer to achieving health-insurance reform than we have ever been. We have the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association on board, because our nation’s nurses and doctors know firsthand how badly we need reform. We have broad agreement in Congress on about 80 percent of what we’re trying to do. And we have an agreement from the drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. The AARP supports this policy, and agrees with us that reform must happen this year.

In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

That is not a future I want for my children, or for yours. And that is not a future I want for the United States of America.

In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will.

Gotta Love Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Healther Skelter - Obama Death Panel Debate
www.thedailyshow.com
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Palin's Facebook Status Claims Obama Death Panel Could Decide Fate of Her Child

The Huffington Post, along with several other media outlets, reported this weekend that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is at it again making "extraordinary, unsupported and incendiary claims [including one] that [asserts]President Obama's health care plan will result in a 'death panel' that is fundamentally 'evil'."

In a recent Facebook posting, Palin lashed out at a scenario "in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

This, of course, is beyond wrong. It's just plain (Palin) stupid. But, worse than just being idiotic, such language actually works AGAINST children with special needs. I could write much more about this, but I found an excellent response on MOMocrats (yet another website I recommend). Here it is:


Sarah Palin, you are not my advocate. You do not speak for me. You do not speak for my child.

You do not speak for the many good friends of mine who have children with chronic medical issues far more severe than my own son's neurological disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder. You do not speak for all parents of children with Down Syndrome. You do not speak for the member of my extended family who has Down Syndrome.

What you said on your Facebook page, about mythical Obama "death panels"?

If enough people believe it — if enough people are scared by it into opposing any kind of health insurance reform — that politically motivated statement deliberately promoting a dangerous rumor that has been proven to be patently false could cause tens of thousands of children with special needs in the United States to continue to suffer without adequate health care for years to come.

In the United States, children with chronic health issues are often denied coverage by private health insurance companies that consider their health concerns to be a pre-existing condition. Some of those children denied coverage under private health insurance are, thankfully, able to qualify for public health insurance through Medicaid or SCHIP — two of our country's existing socialized medical insurance programs — but some are not. And those children who do have private insurance coverage are often forced to pay high co-pays for routine procedures, and are frequently denied authorization for recommended medical care.

Every day in the United States, children with autism or cerebral palsy are denied occupational therapy. Children with juvenile diabetes are denied insulin pumps. Children with asthma are denied inhalers. American parents of children with chronic health conditions must fight a tangled bureaucratic health insurance system constantly to make sure that their kids can get access to the care recommended by their doctors.

And that's why the National Down Syndrome Congress supports health insurance reform. That's why the Autism Society of America supports health insurance reform. That's why Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the American Diabetes Association, and the March of Dimes all support health care insurance reform. Because all of these organizations are advocates for children with special needs.

That's why I support health reform. Because I am a parent of a child with special needs. Because I've spent hours and hours of my life tangled up in the red tape that stands between my son and his needed health care, desperately fighting against enormous for-profit corporations who see my beautiful, beloved child not as a person who needs help but as a profit loss.

I support health insurance reform because I want exceptional children like my son — children like your son, Trig — to get the best of care. And under our current broken health care system, far too many do not.

Vocab Word of the Day: Astroturfing

Here's the word in context courtesy of politicsdaily.com

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office sent out a fact sheet to reporters Tuesday afternoon, calling recent demonstrations at congressional town hall events 'Astroturf,' the Washington euphemism for a corporate public relations campaign disguised to look like a grass roots citizen movement.

Pelosi said that while Democrats are putting forth proposals to reform health care, 'those not interested in health insurance reform are disrupting public meetings and not allowing concerned constituents to ask questions and express their views. Many of these opponents who are shutting down civil discussion are organized by out-of-district, extremist political groups, and industry-supported lobbying firms.'
The statement, citing numerous media reports, linked disruptions of congressional meetings to the insurance industry and conservative organizations like FreedomWorks, which is run by former House Republican leader Dick Armey."

Manufactured dissent and heckling brought to you by the Far Right.

Eloquence Personified

Rachel Maddow on Health Scare

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Reagan on Health Care

It was 1961 when Ronald Reagan warned his fellow Americans of a new government program that would literally spell the end of American freedom should it pass. Here are the late President's words:

“Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day…we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

What monstrous socialist experiment was Reagan warning against? Medicare, the single most popular government program of all time. Medicare was the big “threat to our freedom” that Reagan was referencing. In the words of a fellow blogger on plunderbund.com, "Have you told your children and your children’s children yet that we are no longer free?"

Refuting the Birthers

While you're not busy convincing the elderly that health care reform doesn't equal euthanasia, read up on this excerpted post from salon.com on how to refute the conspiracy theorists who steadfastly maintain(in spite of all the evidence to the contrary) that President Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and cannot, therefore, legally serve as President.

Myth 1: Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

This is the big one. It may also be the most easily refuted. First of all, during the presidential campaign, Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate. There are allegations that what Obama released is a forgery, but state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

If that wasn't enough, two Hawaiian newspapers carried announcements of Obama's birth in August 1961. (Read the Honolulu Advertiser's item from Aug. 13, 1961, nine days after Obama's birth, here.) The traditional joke that Birther debunkers make is that his grandparents must have placed those announcements because they knew that he'd want to run for president nearly five decades later. The truth, though, is that the notices are even stronger pieces of evidence than that. Obama's family didn't place them -- Hawaii did, as it does for all births. The announcements were based on official records sent to the papers by the state's Department of Health.

Myth 2: Obama can't be president because his father was a British citizen

Some of the Birthers -- like de facto leader Orly Taitz -- believe that Obama wouldn't be eligible for the presidency even if he were born in the U.S. That's because, in their infinite wisdom, the Founding Fathers included in the Constitution a fair amount of phrases they never really bothered to define. One of those is this explanation of who can be president: "No person except a natural born citizen."

The Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the question of what "natural born citizen" means. So the Birthers have simply settled on their own definition -- someone born to two citizen parents -- and found a source,"The Law of Nations," a 1758 book by the Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel, to back them up.

There are a couple of problems with this. Most important, Obama isn't the first president with a non-citizen parent: Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president, was. His father was from Ireland and apparently did not become a U.S. citizen until more than 10 years after the future president's birth.

Plus, even if the Founding Fathers did rely on Vattel as much as the Birthers say -- always a dubious proposition -- Swiss philosophy books aren't legal precedent in the United States. British common law is. And in 1898, in the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court looked into the meaning of "natural born" in the common law and concluded that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen.

Myth 3: A Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, showing he was born in Mombasa, has been discovered

It's a hoax. Once Taitz released the document, purportedly a certified copy of a Kenyan birth certificate, it took less than two days for Internet sleuths to prove that it had been forged.
Quantcast

The first signs were a couple of small but revealing errors: The certification is dated Feb. 17, 1964, when newly independent Kenya was known as the Dominion of Kenya. It wouldn't start calling itself the Republic of Kenya until December of that year -- but the document refers to the republic. Additionally, the document's header refers to "Coast Province," but as two British professors who are experts in Kenyan history pointed out to Salon, at the time the certificate was supposedly produced, the country's provinces were referred to as regions.

For the final nail in this myth's coffin, one particularly enterprising man, Steve Eddy, located the original Australian document on which the Kenyan certificate was apparently based. The two documents share several identical numbers, including the page and the book of records in which they can be found, and minor changes were made to the names of the registrars responsible for the Australian copy. Taitz claims the Australian certificate "was created to try to discredit my efforts" but it was in fact available on the Internet as far back as 2007.


Myth 4: Obama's grandmother said he was born in Kenya

There's a kernel of truth to this one. In an interview with a street preacher named Ron McRae, Sarah Obama, the second wife of the president's grandfather, did say she was there, in Kenya, for her grandson's birth.

Unfortunately for the Birthers, it was the result of a miscommunication -- or perhaps a mistranslation -- and as soon as McRae started pressing the issue, Obama's family realized what had happened and corrected him. Most Birthers simply ignore the corrections, excising them from audio and transcripts of the conversation posted online. McRae just believes it's part of the conspiracy and that Obama's younger relatives were coached to hide the truth.

The full audio can be downloaded here. What follows is a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

MCRAE: Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?

TRANSLATOR: Yes. She says, yes, she was, she was present when Obama was born.

MCRAE: When I come in December. I would like to come by the place, the hospital, where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?

TRANSLATOR: No, Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.

MCRAE: Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.

TRANSLATOR: No, he was born in America, not in Mombasa.

MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was going to go by and see where he was born.

TRANSLATOR: Hawaii. Hawaii. Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father was also learning, there. The state of Hawaii.

Myth 5: Hawaii allows parents to get birth certificates for their foreign-born children

This one is actually true -- just not in the way the Birthers think. Here's their position, as outlined by World Net Daily, a conservative news site that's become the unofficial Birther Web headquarters: "The 'Certification of Live Birth' posted online and widely touted as 'Obama's birth certificate' does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same 'short-form' document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii."

Children not born in Hawaii can get a birth document from the state. But it won't say they were born in Hawaii, as Obama's does.

"If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali," Janice Okubo, the director of communications for the state Department of Health, told the Washington Independent's David Weigel recently. "You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate."

Latest Tactic to Block Health Care Reform? Scare Senior Citizens

Here's an article worth reading if you are need of a response to someone who maintains that the Obama plan for universal health care includes a euthanasia provision for senior citizens.

Michael Goforth: AARP rebuts claims of health care reform impact on seniors

If I were a senior citizen and believed some of the claims being made concerning the potential impact of health care reform on seniors, I’d be fighting against changes.

In recent weeks, particular concerns have been raised by Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and self-proclaimed patient advocate. In a column and on talk shows, she has claimed that a provision in the health reform package includes a requirement that seniors on Medicare be given “end of life” counseling, essentially telling seniors how to end their lives sooner as a means of cost savings.

Some lawmakers have contended that amounts to government endorsement of euthanasia.

That would be a despicable and deplorable mandate and should anger seniors and their families if it were true.

On Saturday, the AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy organization for senior citizens, challenged McCaughey’s claim as a “gross, and even cruel, distortion.”

A statement from John Rother, the organization’s executive vice president, was posted on its Web site:

“Ms. McCaughey’s criticism misinterprets legislation that would actually help empower individuals and doctors to make their own choices on end-of-life care. This measure would allow Medicare to pay doctors for taking the time to talk with individuals about difficult end-of-life decisions ...

“Facing a terminal disease or debilitating accident, some people will choose to take every possible lifesaving measure in the hopes that treatment or even a cure will allow them more time with their families. Others will decide that additional treatment would impose too great a burden — emotional, physical and otherwise — on themselves and their families, declining extraordinary measures and instead choosing care to manage their discomfort. Either way, it should be their choice.”

In addition, the bill provides that doctors and patients be able to compare different types of treatments to find out which may work best for the patient.

“The main opponents of this research are those groups with a vested interest in a health are system that wastes billions of dollars each year on ineffective or unnecessary drugs, treatments or tests,” Rother said. “Given Ms. McCaughey’s position as a director of a medical device producer, I would hope that any potential conflict of interest has not influenced her commentary.”

There was more:

“AARP is committed to improving the quality, effectiveness and affordability of health are for our 40 million members and their families. We will fight any measure that would prevent individuals and their doctors from making their own health care decisions. We will also fight the campaign of misinformation that vested interests are using to try to scare older Americans in order to protect the status quo. Profits should never be allowed to come before people in this debate.”

This debate over what should or should not be included in a health care reform package is intense and will continue to be. And, as there are numerous complexities in trying to change such a massive system, there are certain to be differing perspectives on its aspects. And, there is some degree of misinformation being publicized by all parties involved.

Key to understanding and making personal decisions for or against reform measures is to treat each ”expert opinion” with a healthy dose of skepticism, to consider the potential motives, political or financial, that the source may have, and to weigh the levels of trust or distrust one may have in the messenger.

As we have learned too often in recent partisan debates, if misinformation spreads far enough and loudly enough, it becomes “fact.” And, when that happens, people can take positions directly opposite of their own best interests and end up losing when they think they may be winning.

michael.goforth@scripps.com

Is National Health Care on Its Deathbed?

The August recess in upon us, and the right wing war machine has health care reform in the cross-hairs. Their strategy? Intelligent debate focused on our nation's need find a solution to rising health care costs . . . not quite.

How about attending town hall meetings and heckling speakers? That's more like it! Salon.com reports that, in fact, a "leaked from a volunteer with conservative group FreedomWorks entitled 'Rocking the Town Halls -- Best Practices' advises exactly this sort of behavior. (The man listed as author, Frank MacGuffie, denies having written the memo on behalf of FreedomWorks.) The memo tells protesters to spread out to appear more numerous than they are and maximize disruption, reminding them, 'Try To 'Rattle Him,' Not Have An Intelligent Debate'."

Such protesters have gone as far as hanging those members of Congress (like Rep. Frank Kratovil, D-Md.) in effigy. Others speakers have been greeted by their own images with devil horns drawn on their heads. Then there is the (dare I say it) liberal use of the Nazi swastika to degrade and deride those support reform at such meetings.

The truly tragic part of such actions is that they make headlines and may, in fact, do what the right does best: frighten people into believing that the status quo is far less frightening than change. Without significant reform, the status quo is not comforting in the least. It will, instead, give way to a stark reality. Millions of Americans can't afford their health care now; in a few more years, the cost of health care will be impossibly high.

According to www.healthcareforamericansnow.com, the full cost of employer-sponsored insurance in Kansas currently equals 25 percent of the median family income. Without meaningful health reform, that number will grow to 48 percent in 2016. Spending half of your income to insure your family simply will not work, but that's where we'll be without meaningful reform.

Those shouting down Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter (among others) have blinded themselves to the fact that the current system is not sustainable. They question Obama's citizenship with such vehemence that they fail to see the 14,000 Americans who lose their health insurance every day. It's time to stop shouting and start thinking.