(cross posted at dKos)
Haven't heard this particular unhinged talking point? You will if you wander too close to the right side of the blogosphere, it is on its way to be accepted wisdom. How did they come to this conclusion? Well if you suggest a combination of bad faith, poor reading comprehension skills, and a total disregard for critical thinking then you pretty much hit the mark. But that doesn't mean this all came out of nowhere, instead it is a misrepresentation of Sec 102 of HR3200, aka the Tri-Committee Health Care bill.
(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.-
(A) IN GENERAL.-Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.
For the wingnuts this is a smoking gun hidden right in plain sight on page 16. It never bothers them that the bill goes on for dozens of pages writing regulations for an insurance product it just banned. Well that is wingnut logic.
To get the real explanation of Sec 102 check out the extended entry.
Natasha quick hits to this piece by David Roberts arguing (fairly well) that progressives should avoid spending time arguing with the various wingnuts that pervade our discourse. He concludes:
Some time in the next hour, somebody will say something stupid on cable TV. Somebody will write an idiot op-ed. Somebody will be wrong on the internet. Let. It. Go.
Focus on wavering Dems and their constituents and their constituents' jobs. Focus on how energy/climate legislation will make the country cleaner, healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous. The Newts can't stop anybody, they can only distract and sap energy from those doing the work.
They are not Boogie men. They are douchebags, and everyone hates them.
I wish I could agree, but I don't. Douchebags they are, but these vipers have not been defanged.
Your favorite news source, Right Wing News, conducted a survey of hundreds of conservative bloggers to determine which Republicans they like and which they don't. The qualification of "must be alive or mostly alive" eliminates the obvious favorites and leads to some funny names in the top ten. Sarah Palin got the most "favorite" votes. Call me naive but I'm still shocked they just don't care that she 1) knows nothing and 2) is unable to hide the fact she knows nothing.
Okay, kudos for putting Ted Stevens near the top of "least favorite," but you know he's only there because he got convicted. If he had been acquitted he'd be near the top of the other list.
To be fair, their dislike of moderates is paralleled by the netroots dislike of centrists. But where's George Bush on least favorites? Just how much more damage would he have to do to the country before they said "We don't like that guy!"? Which names (or absentees) surprise you?
[Note: some salty language here, for them's who are discombobulated by that sort of thing. Also, David Rees ends all his videos with a loud 'bang' (cannon shot?), which can embarrass one at work, and startle pets and children at home. His signature bang comes at 1:30 in this video.]
This, and a few other items after the jump, are posted in honor of those sweet but poorly informed kinfolk of mine who sent out some, uh, "interesting" e-mails during the recently concluded Presidential campaign.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my experience at the BlogWorldExpo political panels, and noted the alarming moral degeneracy among the conservative attendees. I was helped in this by the notes taken by K T Cat. He made my point for me by condensing several examples of this government's behavior (warrantless wiretapping, shredding the Constitution, going to war on lies, etc.) that I find more offensive than words for sex and body parts into the dismissive phrase "Bush administration policies," then promptly declaring that sexual attitudes should be the top priority of society.
Right. Because when your fellow citizens are being made homeless by the perfidy of our banks and financial institutions or remaining homeless because the Bush administration abandoned the poor of the Gulf Coast, or are living in debt peonage, or when police violence and impunity continues to escalate across the nation, or while the country is being bled dry to feed Halliburton, Bechtel, CH2M, Lockheed Martin and Blackwater, that's the time to rail against the horrors of one of our species' most basic biological urges. Unless it's time to rail against the horror of knowing that you helped pay for a kid's bone marrow transplant, which ought to make you mad, for some reason.
Which is no better than the ignorance displayed by someone in the audience at a Friday panel at Blog World, from the near unnavigable site Democast, who insisted that the Tamil Tigers were just another example of a dangerous Muslim group bringing fascism to the world, after I mentioned that they were the original suicide bombers. But as I'd said, the Tamil Tigers are a nationalist movement, spurred by the racist policies of a Sinhalese government instead of religion, and they happen also to be Hindu. Not Muslim. Not Arab. Tamil Hindus. Kind of puts a damper on blaming all the ills of the world on the Scary Islamic Jihadis.
Wingnuts. They'd almost be cute if their leaders hadn't seized control of the government by means of vote fraud and a corrupt court. Also, if they weren't so racist. Really dampens the charisma potential.
