Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be limited to senior citizens. Over the past couple of months, the Chamber of Commerce has taken great pains to misinform small businesses about what the Affordable Care Act does for them, too. But out of nearly 700 seniors quizzed about what health-care reform meant for them, not one was able to get all of the answers right.
A recent National Council on Aging poll conducted between July 9 - July 12, 2010 yielded some pretty startling statistics.
- 21% of respondents said they were "very familiar" with the law, and an additional 64% said they were "somewhat familiar" with it. Of those, 60% said they were satisfied that the information they received was accurate and reliable.
- Yet, when asked if the new law would result in future cuts to their basic medicare benefits, 55% of the "very familiar" group answered "Yes", as did 47% of the "somewhat familiar" group.
- 62% of the "very familiar" group said they believed the new law would increase the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years, with 57% of the "somewhat familiar" group concurring.
- Half of those "very familiar" with the law believes it does not improve the quality of care for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses, and 46% believe Medicare payments to doctors will be cut.
- Remarkably, only 52% of the seniors "very familiar" with the law agreed that uninsured Americans will be covered and younger people would have extra protections.
I would love to know how many of those claiming to be "very familiar" with the law watch Fox News. I would put money on it being more than half. Reading these results made me want to go out and scream from a tall building "This is why we can't have nice things!!!!".
Fortunately, NCOA is a little more measured than me. They've created materials to help seniors understand the law and what their benefits are under the law. Now we need to get out there and help them understand it, because seniors' health is as important a feature of the new law as coverage of the uninsured.
Oh, and maybe we should get them to turn off Fox News for awhile, too.
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Aaaah, the first amendment
It seems the anti-mosque protesters in California have torn a few pages from the Abu Ghraib field manual. Protesters of a planned mosque and Muslim community center in Riverside County, California are calling on locals to come to a rally outside an existing mosque with their pet dogs because, as the protest organizer says, Muslims "hate dogs."
Stupid bitch. I think that stereotype has been debunked many times. That said, I think the Muslims in Abu Ghraib are not fond of being tortured with guard dogs, but I suspect that they hated the guards.
Regardless of that, given how Xristian Xrazies are always shrieking about that they are the most discriminated against people in the world, wouldn't you think that they would be more receptive to letting Muslims practice their faith in peace?
(TPM)
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When a lynching is not a lynching
Does insanity from the right know no bounds?
On Monday, former Reagan administration official Jeffrey Lord astonished the left and the right by penning an article in the conservative American Spectator attacking former-USDA official Shirley Sherrod for using the term "lynching" to describe the murder of one of her relative years ago. The problem, according to Lord, was that the victim, Bobby Hall was beaten to death by a blackjack, rather than being hanged by the neck. "It's…possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching."
Critics, even at his own magazine, pounced, noting that a lynching is an extrajudicial murder by a mob, whether or not the weapon of choice is a rope.
Lord defends his statements with more of the same.
"Certainly the image in my head of a lynching is rope around the neck. And when we really got into this, it was quite apparent to me that there was all sorts of other things. That there has to be a mob — mob action. Well what is a mob? Is it two people? Is it three people?"
Is this not typical of right-wing behavior? When criticized for making erroneous or misleading statements, they don't back down. Instead they keep on attacking with all the vigor they can muster. So convinced are these people that the crusade they are on to destroy anything tainted with the evils of liberalism is a worthy one that even when faced with facts, they are able to justify their words and actions to their own supposed satisfaction.
Scary insane.
And just for the record, Sherrod used the term lynching correctly. A rope is not necessary for an act of murder to be considered a lynching.
"to seize somebody believed to have committed a crime and put him or her to death immediately and without trial, usually by hanging" -Encarta Dictionary
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Good. Obama cancels some offshore leases.
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Always the messenger, never the message
A Pentagon investigation will determine whether criminal charges will be filed in the leaking of Afghanistan war secrets, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday.
No word on if the Pentagon will investigate who stole $8.7 of the $9.1 billion that was supposed to be spent on reconstruction in Iraq.
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Glenn sums up the Wikileaks leak.
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Phyllis Schlafly hasn't lost any of her charm: refers to African Americans as "the blacks", and unmarried women as "welfare sponges".
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In case you missed Colbert's return and his take on the Sherrod matter ... well, just watch.
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4,413 soldiers killed in Iraq; 1,207 in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Coalition Military Fatalities By Year
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| 2002 | 49 | 3 | 17 | 69 |
| 2003 | 48 | 0 | 9 | 57 |
| 2004 | 52 | 1 | 7 | 60 |
| 2005 | 99 | 1 | 31 | 131 |
| 2006 | 98 | 39 | 54 | 191 |
| 2007 | 117 | 42 | 73 | 232 |
| 2008 | 155 | 51 | 89 | 295 |
| 2009 | 317 | 108 | 96 | 521 |
| 2010 | 260 | 80 | 62 | 402 |
| Total | 1207 | 325 | 438 | 1970 |
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American Taliban: church announces 'International Burn a Koran Day"
The Dove World Outreach Center, based in Gainesville, Fla. is observing the anniversary of the September 11th attacks this year in the most offensive and irreligious way possible — Terry Jones and his flock will burn a Qur'an (Koran). Jones is the author of "Islam is of the Devil."
The Church is calling the occasion the "International Burn a Koran Day."
By the way, if prejudice against Islam is not enough, the Church also offers homophobic observances. They are protesting Gainesville's openly gay mayor with a "No Homo Mayor" protest.
What is fascinating is that Christian and Muslim extremists do not seem to realize how much they have in common with each other.
On the website selling hateful mugs and tee-shirts as well as the book, readers are told:
It is not a contradiction to say that God is a God of love AND hate. The Bible has plenty of references to godly hatred. Which is only logical. Don't you hate anything that would try to destroy what you love? A hurricane that rips your house apart? Cancer that threatens a loved one? What is truly astonishing to see is that people, even so called Christians, have such little knowledge of the Word of God. God has not changed. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Source; Yahoo
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Fuckabee guest: Obama's Socialism Is Bringing Us To The End Times
Tim LaHaye is the zillionaire author of the Left Behind series, which have sold 65 million copies to date. But he wants even more money, hence the "Obama is bringing us to the End Times" crapola.
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I just lost my r-e-s-p-e-c-t for Aretha.
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Yes, there's another oil spill
And it's the largest oil spill ever in the mid-West.
A state of emergency has been declared in southwest Michigan's Kalamazoo County as more than 800,000 gallons of oil released into a creek began making its way downstream in the Kalamazoo River, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports.
How many oil spills this summer alone? I count around a half-dozen, including, you know, the big one.
By the way, MSNBC has been flogging a new meme for a couple of days now: "Where's the oil?" I have no idea what the hell they're thinking, but, no, MSNBC, the oil didn't vanish. It wasn't magically absorbed by nature. 92 million gallons of oil doesn't just disappear. But thanks, MSNBC, for giving the impression that it's all over and the oil is gone. Good job. Really, really smart.
Just in: Adding insult to the Gulf's injury, a wellhead hit by a tug boat is now spewing oil near a Louisiana marsh area, officials said Tuesday.
The oil is shooting up 20 feet into the air, the office of Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.
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Republican filibuster of the day
Today they filibustered the DISCLOSE Act...
The DISCLOSE Act would require corporations and interest groups to identify themselves when they sponsor political ads and, in the case of smaller organizations, to reveal their donors.
Yep. The Republicans want to make sure contributions to political campaigns in the form of TV ads are totally secret. This way, no one will know who's really pushing false or misleading information.
The Modern Republican Party: Making Sure the American Voter Is Totally Oblivious.
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Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, DNC Vice Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other Democratic members held a press conference yesterday to introduce what they call the "Republican-Tea Party Contract on America." Here's the handy 10-point blueprint for how the Republican-Tea Party would govern, based on actual positions taken and held by Republican-Tea Party members:
And here's the DNC web ad tying the Republicans to the Teabaggers.
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Mark your calendars! The end of the world is nigh, and we've got a specific date: the Rapture will occur on 21 May, 2011, and the world ends on 21 October 2011.
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The Rude One:The anti-moratorium rally ate our oily souls.
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Against the backdrop of a Senate that can't seem to grasp the reality of climate change, NOAA has issued "The 2009 State of the Climate report." It's just a scientific study "based on comprehensive data from multiple sources," so there's no reason for anyone in the GOP to take it seriously. They eschew science anyway. But, it's really happening, obviously.
And, like everything else, the Republicans will delay and obfuscate (solely to protect their corporate paymasters' bottom line) until the problem is intractable. Climate change is the greatest danger facing humanity as a whole and the Republicans treat it as a political toy instead of doing the responsible thing. By the time everyone wakes up it will be far too late.
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Jill: Snooki is a rocket scientist compared to Iowa Republicans.
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Would someone please remind the administration that Dick Cheney is not in charge?
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.If I wanted a president that treated privacy concerns as though they were soap bubbles and kowtowed to every request by the
If you think that the FBI might be overusing "national security letters", the "double-top secret we doan need no steenkin' search warrant" letters, maybe it's because they have issued hundreds of thousands of them.
This fuckery needs to stop.
President Carebear sits down at his Macbook (MacBook One? A Preznintial Seal instead of the Apple logo?) and demonstrates that he knows how to find out about Health Insurance. So many questions!
Was he really the Demo-dolly running the show-me part of this video?
Did he design the website himself?
Why is there no Public Option?
Why wasn't Single Payer on the table?
How did he lose control of his most important issue?
Why will his first example patient have to wait until 2014?
Well, whatevs. Imagine the same scenario with Chimpy McStagger. Hahaha, trick question! Chimpy would have the simpler plan: tell your limo to take you to the nearest Emergency Room.
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They grow up so fast
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Birthers' grand new strategy: no matter where Obama was born, he can't be president
Remember Emily Henochowicz, the American art student whose eye the Israeli army shot out in May during a protest of the Flotillacide? They're refusing to pay her medical bills because she put herself at risk by participating in a breach of the peace and anyway, the tear cannister that hit her in the head, also breaking her jaw, wasn't fired directly at her (the IDF claims), but ricocheted. So that's okay then.
(Read the comments on that Ha'aretz article if you want to feel crappy about human nature all day.)
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Spontaneous Heterosexualism
Is there a more detestable group of lying control freaks out there than Tony Perkins' Family Research Council (FRC)? This 'family values' organization of holier-than-thou conservatives are relentless and shameless in saying whatever suits their narrow-minded agenda, truth be damned.
Here's their latest homophobic babbling.
In the ad, the FRC urges Holland, Michigan city leaders to reject a proposed ordinance that would make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
"Pro-homosexual activists want … Holland to give homosexuals special protections under employment discrimination laws. But does this make sense?" the ad asks, then goes on to list myths about being gay.
In the "myth vs. fact" section, the ad claims that gay men and lesbians experience considerably higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse than their straight counterparts and that gay people are not seriously disadvantaged by discrimination.
Under the tagline "Myth: Sexual orientation can never change," the ad states that thousands of gay people have altered their sexuality. "Research confirms that such change does occur – sometimes spontaneously, and sometime as a result of therapeutic interventions."
As I said, truth be damned for these people. And lest we forget, one of the founders of Family Research Council is a guy named George Alan Rekers. The same closet homosexual who was involved in the RentBoy scandal a few months back. I guess that spontaneous change thing didn't work for poor George.
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