Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Best of the Web, via Instapundit:
…the absence of [health care] alternatives in New Hampshire means that some policyholders in some parts of the state have to drive long distances to get to a hospital that is on the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield coverage network.
Not surprisingly, [Sen. Jeanne Shaheen] is facing hard questions from constituents suffering under the new health-care regime. Her approach to answering them seems an unpromising one. It is to suggest that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Blogger Jason Pye seems to have been the first to pick up on a Shaheen appearance last Friday “Good Morning With Dan Mitchell,” a radio talk show that airs on WKBR in Keene. His post includes audio of Shaheen’s exchange with an unidentified caller, which Pye says he obtained from America Rising, a conservative opposition-research group:
The caller told Shaheen that “President Obama’s health care is not affordable.”
“It’s cost me more, my deductible has more than tripled and my monthly premium has doubled, so it’s not affordable,” he said. “And so, I’d rather have my old healthcare, my old system back.”
Shaheen dismissed his concerns out of hand, telling him to leave his name with the host so her office could call him back “because that doesn’t sound right to me.” She chalked the caller’s complaints up to “misinformation.”
“It sounds, and there’s a lot of misinformation about what’s happening with the health care law,” Shaheen told the caller, “so we’ll get back in touch with you, we’ll find out what’s going on with your plan, and we’ll help you sort that out because you shouldn’t be paying that much more.”
Now perhaps this was a Republican prank call, or maybe the guy actually is misinformed. Offering to help sort the matter out is obviously the wise political response, noncommittal in substance while demonstrating (or at least asserting) a commitment to constituent service.
But it was awfully impolitic for the senator to preface her promise with the prejudicial statement “there’s a lot of misinformation.” The customer may not always be right, but a smart salesman doesn’t begin a transaction by saying he’s probably wrong.
The complaint is about more than bad salesmanship. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there” turns out to be a recycled hackneyed catchphrase, burbled up by programmed democrats who’ve been coached on what to say & do when cornered about this bad legislation. I’ve often theorized that democrats are just kids with complacent, weak or just plain dim mothers who, when the confrontation came about because of cookies missing from the jar, failed to call out the lie. The kids grew up, the lies got bigger…and, the liar’s expectation of getting away with it, interestingly, began to act as a powerful force to ensure that they would, at the end of each episode, get away with it after all. Natural confidence-men. And confidence-persons.
Well hold on a second Ma…there are a lot of cookies missing from this jar. Well YEAH. Who took them? Who put all this misinformation out there?
It is true that there’s been a lot of deliberate misinformation about ObamaCare. Example: “If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you’ve got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.” That was Barack Obama in July 2009.
Here’s another example:
My understanding…is that — and I know this is true of the bill that has come out of the committee in the Senate–if you have health coverage that you like you can keep it. As I said, you may have missed my remarks at the beginning of the call, but one of the things I that I [sic] said as a requirement that I have for supporting a bill is that if you have health coverage that you like you should be able to keep that. . . . Under ever [sic] scenario that I’ve seen, if you have health coverage that you like, you get to keep it.
A lot of misinformation indeed. That was Jeanne Shaheen in August 2009, responding to a constituent named Emil in another telephone town hall. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York noted it (along with similar comments from 26 other then or future Senate Democrats) in November, and via a Google search we found it on Shaheen’s official Senate website.
So Shaheen was an active participant, if perhaps an unwitting one, in a massive consumer fraud at the expense of many of her own constituents. No wonder she’s so defensive.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.