Fox Nation vs. Reality: Fox News Recycles Three Year Old ObamaCare Lie

Posted by Mark NC on September 17, 2013 at 8:11 pm. 6 Comments :

The professional prevaricators at Fox News really had to extend themselves to achieve their latest pinnacle of dishonesty. The lead story on their community web site, and Home of Flagrant Fallacies, Fox Nation, was another in their series of attacks on the Affordable Health Care Act (aka ObamaCare). The blazing headline read “Even Obama Buddy Warren Buffett Has Soured on ObamaCare: Scrap It and Start Over!”

That would be a disconcerting development if it were true. But like so many things on Fox, it is not only untrue, it is an embarrassing fictionalization that reputable news enterprises avoid at all costs. Fox, it seems, seeks out this sort of malarkey.

Here’s the story. An obscure web site (Money Morning) that appears to thrive by hooking readers into dubious investment schemes, published an article that purported to be a recent interview with the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. The article, titled “Buffett: Scrap Obamacare and Start All Over,” presented quotes that were portrayed as his current, and negative, opinions about ObamaCare. For instance…

“We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,” he added. “And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.”

There are just two little problems: 1) The comments were actually made three years ago and 2) They were so far removed from context that Buffett’s spokesman disavowed them. The truth is that Buffett was commenting on a draft version of health care reform that was being debated in the senate in 2010. Contrary to the impression left by Money Morning that Buffett was criticizing ObamaCare in its current state as the law of the land, Buffet was merely offering his opinion of what he would prefer while the bill was still being crafted.

It is fair to say that Buffett had some constructive criticism at that stage of the bill’s development. However, when asked directly whether he would support the bill, he said that he would favor it over the other option of no bill at all. So Money Morning misrepresented the timing of the quotes, as well as the substance of their meaning. And to make matters worse, their blunder was picked up by numerous right-wing news outlets who were more than happy to hype what they thought was a falling out between Obama and Buffett.

Along with Fox Nation, the false story was published by the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and the highly choleric NewsBusters. Since the publication, Money Morning edited their article to reflect that the content was three years old, but they did not acknowledge that their previous version was wrong (here is a link to the cached original text). Both the Weekly Standard and NewsBusters posted corrections. But neither of Rupert Murdoch’s properties, the Wall Street Journal and Fox Nation, have bothered to set the record straight.

The degree of dishonesty exhibited here was documented by PolitiFact, who did a thorough analysis. Their conclusion was that the misrepresentation of Buffett’s comments was a “Pants On Fire” lie. It is well worth reading their entire article. Included in their findings is the fact that Buffet expressed his support for ObamaCare just last year, and he praised the Supreme Court’s decision upholding it.

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It’s noteworthy that the Fox Nationalists posted their phoney story well after it was already known that it was wrong. And they have had plenty of time to discover the error and correct it, but have not done so. That’s because they don’t care whether their reporting is true or not. They only care if they can influence their gullible audience, even if that means misinforming them. And that is something that they do better than just about anybody else.

Comical Weapon: Sarah Palin/Fox News Cling To ‘Death Panel’ Lies

Posted by Mark NC on September 10, 2013 at 11:20 am. 2 Comments :

You have to give Sarah Palin credit for perseverance. It was four years ago that Palin invented the notion that the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) contained an ominous provision for something she called “Death Panels.” At the time she was referring to a section of the bill that provided reimbursement for end-of-life counseling, a service that enabled people to discuss with their doctors the measures they would want taken in the event they were gravely ill and unable articulate their wishes. Palin’s “Pants-on-Fire” mutilation of that simple and useful proposal was designated as the “Lie of the Year” by PolitiFact. And yet, she continues to peddle the same turd-o-licious deceit in a new video (below) aimed at raising money for her struggling Super PAC. And, as usual, she can count on the truth manglers at Fox Nation to help her to promote these time-worn fallacies.

Palin introduces her video with a particularly offensive conflation of her death panel lie and the current crisis in Syria: “Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction. Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare.” Not only is she revisiting her weary untruths, she is resorting to terrorist rhetoric. Her desire to “bomb” ObamaCare, in this context, both belittles the horror of actual bombings by the Assad regime, at the same time as it creates images of the destroyed lives (both medically and financially) of the people who would suffer without access to the medical services that ObamaCare provides. Palin, and her Tea Party, cohorts couldn’t care less about the well-being of Americans who are unable to purchase insurance from greedy corporations who exclude anyone with costly illnesses or preexisting conditions. Just as she couldn’t care less about the victims of atrocities in Syria.

It’s pretty funny, however, that most of the video recounts all of the criticism heaped on her for her desperate and obvious falsehoods. There are clips of President Obama, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Joe Biden, and Fox’s Bob Beckel, all pointing out that she was full of Grade-A Crapola. Then, in an attempt to claim that she was right all along, she spins her original claim about end-of-life counseling to one addressing the ACA’s Independent Payment Advisory Board. This, of course, is another lie because the IPAB is just a process to maintain high standards and low cost for medical reimbursements. The section of the ACA that refers to the IPAB says explicitly that “The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.” And then Palin has the gall to close her video by saying “Why wasn’t there just more honesty through this whole process.” Why indeed, Sarah?

This video is nothing more than a transparent and self-serving effort to fill the coffers of her PAC. She makes no attempt to validate her spurious allegations, although she does include dog-whistle imagery designed to make her dimwitted disciples salivate, such as a series of posters labeling Obama a socialist. It’s the same old tired smear tactics that contributed to her electoral defeat in 2008. But after failing at reality television, films, books, etc., she has nothing left but to fall back on the schemes that once helped her to fleece the far-right fools who make up her fan base.

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The Stupid Burns: Fox News SHOCKED That State Health Care Programs Aren’t Called “ObamaCare”

Posted by Mark NC on September 2, 2013 at 12:03 pm. 19 Comments :

Ever since Barack Obama was elected President, Fox News has endeavored to sabotage his administration with insults and brazenly dishonest characterizations of his policies. They have referred to him as lazy, ignorant, and ineffectual, while simultaneously portraying him as a persistent, evil, genius, working hard and successfully at destroying the country.

Setting aside the obvious paradox in those contrasting descriptions, one of Fox’s proudest achievements was the labeling of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as “ObamaCare.” It was an attempt to hang the legislation that was a product of a fractured congress around the President’s neck, and was clearly meant derogatorily. The President later adopted the name as an affirmation that he does indeed care about Americans having access to health care. However, now Fox is pretending that “ObamaCare” is some sort of official title, and that avoidance of it is tantamount to a snub.

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The absurdity of this criticism is mind-boggling on multiple levels. First of all, the name “ObamaCare” was the creation of the President’s foes and is in no way official. It would be like expecting GOP-controlled states to call their photo-ID laws, the Voter Suppression Act (although that, at least, would be accurate).

Secondly, the fact that states are creating names like MNsure, Vermont Health Connect, California Covered, etc., is evidence that refutes one of the biggest Tea-publican myths about the ACA – that it is a big-government, federally controlled program. In fact, the ACA is just an insurance reform that permits states to create their own system of exchanges that offer health coverage to people who cannot get it from their employer or other private provider.

The ACA’s exchanges are entirely implemented at the state level, which is something that conservatives ought to be celebrating. Instead, they invent lies about Washington intruding on the jurisdiction of the states. But this complaint about how the states name their programs is an ironic example of the right inadvertently admitting their own lies. The states obviously have the right to control their own affairs, and if they choose not to use a name that was invented by anti-health care activists, it is within their power to do so.

It is notable that this epically idiotic article is the product of Fox News, not its lie-riddled affiliate Fox Nation (whose dishonesty is documented in Fox Nation vs. Reality). And the embarrassment of an allegedly serious news operation spewing such nonsense is even more pronounced when Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is cited as the source for the story. The Journal included a couple of telling examples of insurance consumers. One was a rather moronic Tea-publican who was opposed to his own self-interests:

“The all-Minnesota marketing of the insurance plan didn’t persuade Andrew De Jong, a 25-year-old volunteer in the Minnesota Republican Party’s state-fair booth who said he currently works at a ‘bunch’ of part-time jobs that don’t offer him insurance. He said he has no plans to look for coverage on MNsure because he opposes Obamacare.”

What a brainiac. He would reject even exploring potentially valuable benefits because of his anti-Obama indoctrination. And then there was the liberal who made quite a bit more sense based on actual facts:

“Mr. Schauer, a part-time student, also works part-time as a park-and-water patrolman at the Dakota County Sheriff’s office, where he doesn’t qualify for employer-based health insurance. He said he broke his arm last winter in a snowboarding accident and was motivated to keep coverage. The MNsure calculator estimated he would pay about $65 a month for coverage with tax credits. ‘I figured it would be higher,’ he said.”

The summations by these two prospective health insurance consumers pretty much says it all. Conservatives blindly reject things they’ve been told to reject without any thoughtful consideration. Liberals weigh the facts and arrive at conclusions that best meet their needs.

As for Fox News, they just continue to make up phony issues and disseminate them to their undiscerning audience. Their well established goal is to make ObamaCare fail by discouraging people from enrolling in the exchanges, even if that means they are left unable to seek care if they need it, or driving them into bankruptcy because of their lack of coverage. This was explicitly stated by a Republican quoted in the Wall Street Journal article who said flatly that “We want to keep people out of the exchanges so they will fail.”

Notice that they don’t want to keep people out of the exchanges because they don’t work. They want to keep people out so that the program fails, which, of course, would mean that Americans who choose to participate would be left without options to seek necessary, perhaps life-saving, medical attention. That’s what they must mean by “compassionate conservatism.”

The Wacko Caucus: Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz Ties Syria To ObamaCare

Posted by Mark NC on August 30, 2013 at 2:47 pm. 8 Comments :

In 2012 the Tea Party lost some of its key figures in congress. Allen West and Joe Walsh were rejected by voters. Michele Bachmann hung on by a thread, but is now so tainted by scandal that she announced her retirement shortly after the election. Folks like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump continue to be little more than comic relief.

For more craziness found at Fox Nation, check out the ebook from News Corpse:
Fox Nation vs. Reality.

Consequently, the second string of the Tea Party bench has had to step up their game. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is one of those vying for the role of Grand Teabagger. His latest attempt to distinguish himself from the pack is a monumentally perverse analysis of the crisis in Syria:

“Fundamentally, actually, these two issues, you look at Syria, you look at Obamacare. They’re tied together. They’re tied together by an arrogance of this administration, that they don’t believe they’re accountable to the American people, and they are going to jam their agenda down the throats of the American people.

And on both of them, the answer is the same as it was on guns; it’s the same as it is on stopping amnesty, which is the American people have to rise up and hold every elected official accountable, Democrat and Republican. Every one of us, including me.”

Syria and ObamaCare are tied together? I wonder why he didn’t also include Benghazi, the IRS, food stamps, and birth certificates. Bachmann would have. Cruz may not be up to this challenge.

The generous portion of ignorance that Cruz is serving up extends beyond the obvious delusional conflation of two completely unrelated issues. His assertion that ObamaCare was jammed down the throats of the American people is easily refuted by the fact that it was passed by a majority of the people’s representatives in both the House and the Senate, signed by the popularly elected President, and affirmed by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

Then Cruz escalates the craziness by attempting to shore up his argument with examples that rip his twisted logic to shreds. On the matter of guns, the American people support the President’s proposal on background checks by an unprecedented 90%. And what Cruz derisively refers to as amnesty, but which is actually a balanced approach to immigration reform, is also favored by a wide majority of Americans.

This is the pathetically low level of discourse that Republicans are engaging in with regard to the complex situation in Syria. They have instituted their typical strategy of being against anything and everything that might emerge from the White House. One faction of the GOP says that if Obama does not strike Syria, then he is weak. Simultaneously, another faction warns that such an attack would be an unconstitutional abuse of power. One side says he must strike because he drew a “red line” last year over chemical weapons. The other side says attacking for that reason would be an act of vanity. One side says he must wait for allies and the United Nations to sanction any attack. The other side says that doing so would be an abdication of our sovereignty.

There is one thing missing from every right-wing criticism: what they would do. I have yet to hear what Ted Cruz’s plan is; or John Boehner’s; or Don Rumsfeld’s; or Rush Limbaugh’s. These people have nothing but complaints and no ideas or solutions. It’s pretty much the same way they deal with health care, immigration reform, the economy, etc. They bitch relentlessly and offer nothing constructive.

For the critics in congress who think the President should not act without congressional approval, if they are so concerned why don’t they just come back to Washington and vote on it? They don’t need Obama to do that. The truth is, they are deathly afraid of actually having to go on the record because they don’t have any solutions and they don’t want to be held accountable regardless of the actions taken or the outcome.

While it may seem that there is no way that Obama can win under these circumstance, I have developed a three-point plan that I believe would satisfy all of his critics in the GOP, and on Fox News:

Fire bibles into Syria and turn Assad and the rest of the country into evangelical fans of the 700 Club.
Authorize a pipeline from Damascus to New Orleans so that Syrian oil could be refined in the U.S. and sold to China.
Approve an arms sales treaty with the new Syria in order to introduce more weapons into the region and create jobs in Kentucky.

Problem solved!

In one respect Cruz might actually be onto something. Syria and ObamaCare are indeed connected in that both concern agendas that Republicans wholeheartedly supported until Obama became involved. ObamaCare, complete with an individual mandate, was originally the brainchild of the uber-rightist Heritage Foundation, now headed by former Sen. Jim DeMint. And the neo-con right has long advocated military engagement with Middle East adversaries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria. So if Cruz is looking for dots to connect, I think I found them.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The IRS Commish On ObamaCare

Posted by Mark NC on August 1, 2013 at 7:35 pm. 4 Comments :

Fox News must have a battalion of glassy-eyed interns locked up in a basement somewhere watching congressional hearings all day to find snippets of testimony that they can deceitfully distort. And one of those scalawags is gonna find an extra lump of high fructose corn syrup in his satchel for this one:

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), the Commissioner of the IRS, David Werfel, was asked a question regarding the application of the law to IRS staff. Texas Republican Rep. Sam Johnson asked, “Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from the very law that you’re tasked to enforce?”

To be clear, the issue was not really about any request to be exempted from the existing terms of the law. It was actually about an amendment offered by another Republican, Dave Camp of Michigan. Camp’s proposal would force federal workers into ObamaCare exchanges, and out of the federal health care plans they currently have. So what the IRS employees were requesting was that Camp’s amendment be rejected so that they could keep the plans they are on now, which is what President Obama had intended in the bill as it was passed. Camp’s attempt to amend the bill would profoundly alter the impact it would have on federal employees. Not surprisingly, they opposed this change, as did Commissioner Werfel who responded saying…

“[W]e have right now, as employees of the government or the IRS, affordable health care coverage. I think the ACA was designed to provide an option or an alternative for individuals that do not. And all else being equal, I think if you’re an individual who is satisfied with your health care coverage, you’re probably in a better position to stick with that coverage […] I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I’m pleased with rather than go through a change if I don’t need to.”

Exactly. The President has said many times that one of the features of ObamaCare was that people who were satisfied with their current plan would be able to keep it. Those without coverage, or who were not satisfied with the coverage they had, would have the option of shopping for a plan through the new exchanges. The effort by the GOP to screw with that formula was designed to sabotage the whole program.

So contrary to the false quote by the Fox Nationalists, the IRS commissioner never said that he didn’t want ObamaCare. He was saying that he didn’t want the Camp amendment that would force him and his department into a situation where they had fewer options than the law presently provides.

This is all a part of the larger strategy that the GOP is deploying to sabotage ObamaCare before it even gets underway. That strategy includes forty meaningless votes in the House to repeal the law, threats to withhold funding for it, and amendments to cripple or deform it. And, as always, Fox News is ready to lend a hand with any misinformation and propaganda that they might need.

Stephen Colbert On The Tea Party Burning ObamaCare Cards That Don’t Exist

Posted by Mark NC on July 30, 2013 at 5:00 pm. 2 Comments :

The Tea-publican brain trust is at it again. It’s not enough that they campaigned feverishly to prevent the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) from becoming law; followed by an eye-popping 40 useless, symbolic votes in the House of Representatives to repeal the law; followed by Republican-led states refusing to participate in the health exchanges, transferring responsibility to the federal government they claim to hate; followed by efforts to intimidate schools, libraries, and sports teams from helping to educate Americans about a program that is available to them that can save money and even lives. And of course, Fox News is at the forefront of this festival of disinformation.

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Nope. None of that was enough. So now they are embarking on a coordinated campaign to convince people that they should not sign up for ObamaCare when it becomes available. That’s right…If you are a young person with no health care, a family with over-priced private insurance, a patient with a preexisting condition, a senior on a fixed income, the GOP thinks you should forgo the benefits to which you are entitled and risk having expensive medical costs keep you from getting necessary care, or drive you into bankruptcy. Nice of them isn’t it.

The centerpiece of their campaign is a program to get people to burn their ObamaCare cards. There’s just one problem with that – as Stephen Colbert reveals, there is no such thing as ObamaCare cards. But never fear, the folks at the Koch-funded Tea Party asylum, FreedomWorks, are planning to make their own cards which will be suitable for burning. Watch Colbert spell out out the whole process works:

This is so typical of how the right works. Their most fervent desire is to see people suffer, rather than adjust their demented viewpoints. That’s true with regard to health care. It’s true with regard to the economy and jobs. It’s true with regard to foreign policy. And it’s really kind of depressing that so many people fall for it. Thank goodness for Colbert whose perspective on this sort of lunacy can bring laughter back into the debate, along with a big scoop of wisdom.

The Fox News Campaign To Keep Citizens From Learning About ObamaCare

Posted by Mark NC on June 29, 2013 at 12:32 pm. 23 Comments :

We all know about the Republican support for a health care system that gouges patients, fails to serve at-risk constituencies, and enriches heartless corporations (who in turn enrich the Republicans). We know about the right-wing’s indifference to families who are thrust into bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills. And we are all too aware of the Tea Party conservatives’ fixation on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which they have voted on thirty-seven times in the House of Representatives knowing full well it would never advance to the senate.

There is no ambiguity in the fact that the GOP is determined to defend a broken system that favors the rich and abandons everyone else to a Randian law of the jungle that guarantees that people will die unnecessarily. And Fox News is a critical component in the anti-health propaganda fest designed to keep the American people ignorant and sick.

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In recent days Fox News has been escalating their disinformation campaign by attacking uncontroversial plans to give the American people information about their options under the new law and to educate them about the health insurance exchanges that will be launching next year. Fox has taken the side of the GOP anti-health zealots by criticizing routine efforts to provide the public with details about the program.

Reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to publicize the availability of insurance plans by advertising and otherwise partnering with sports leagues, libraries, and schools have been met with ludicrous objections from the right. They have characterized these efforts as communist-style indoctrination and tyrannical coercion, even though they are nothing more than free market publicity. Fox News anchor Bret Baier went so far as to call it “threatening.”

Bret Baier: Forget reading, writing and arithmetic, you are paying about a million dollars to train public school children in California how to promote President Obama’s health care reform law. […] Officials are promising – or threatening – strict enforcement of the grants with monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

Holy crap! Now the feds want reports to ascertain whether federal grant money is being used effectively. What’s next, concentration camps?

Other plans being discussed include working with the NFL and the NBA to educate citizens about their options. This has been lambasted by right-wingers on Fox who seem to think that providing information to citizens about programs that they are entitled to use is the work of Satan. They call it propaganda, but it is no more propaganda than public service announcements about seat belts or the dangers of drug use.

The only propaganda here is that employed by Fox News who is trying desperately to misrepresent ObamaCare and the efforts to educate the public about it. Their arguments against publicity campaigns that work with sports leagues, schools, and libraries, consist mainly of phony attempts to turn it all into a political debate. However, ObamaCare is not a political debate – it is the law. And consequently, people are entitled to know what it is and how to use it. There is nothing partisan about that.

What Fox and the GOP are hoping to do is to sabotage the new health care law. They want it to fail (like everything else this administration tries to do) so that they can achieve their goal of repeal and restore the previous system that made them all rich, but that left millions of Americans without coverage. And the best way to produce failure is to make sure that the American people are kept ignorant of the program, which would keep enrollment down. So any effort by the government to let the people know what their options are must be shot down by any means necessary.

This campaign of deceit by Fox and their benefactors is meant only to harm citizens who may be interested in improving health care for themselves and their families. It is not an effort to persuade anyone of the political merits of the plan. It merely informs people of what is currently available. But the anti-health right prefers that the nation be kept as ignorant as possible. That’s something that is apparent to any objective person who watches Fox News. But in this case, the result is not merely being ill-informed, it can lead to serious repercussions for the medical well-being of innocent citizens who are more interested in the health of their families than the phony political controversies that Fox is trying to create.

Fox is embarking on a shameful exercise in greed over humanity. And even Fox viewers should be concerned that their network is working so hard to make sure they stay stupid.

So F**king What? ObamaCare Makes Smokers Pay More?

Posted by Mark NC on January 28, 2013 at 2:40 pm. 18 Comments :

And the problem here is what?

The Fox Nationalists are very concerned about the allegation that “ObamaCare Makes Smokers Pay $5,100 More A Year.” It’s a display of empty outrage because insurance companies have required smokers to pay higher premiums for years. And why shouldn’t they? Smokers are willfully engaging in behavior that will result in severe and expensive health problems that may cause their premiums to rise.

So F**king What?

If smokers don’t pay more for coverage, their hospital bills will be dispersed to everybody in the plan. That would raise premiums for people who have healthier lifestyles and keep health care costs down. Is that fair? Whatever happened to the conservative principle of personal responsibility? Now that ObamaCare is being rolled out, conservatives think that smokers should not be charged for the expenses they ring up. All of sudden Fox is for socialist medicine?

If America is going to continue to be the only industrialized nation to lack national health care, then the free market insurance programs (which is what ObamaCare is) have a right to establish conditional premiums based on health models and actuarials. If smokers are able to pay, then they must do so. They always have the option to quit smoking which would remove them from the high risk group as well as improve their health and make them less annoying to others.

GOP Can’t Make Up It’s Mind On ObamaCare

Posted by Mark NC on July 4, 2012 at 4:44 pm. 1 Comments :

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney spokesman: “The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax.”

Reince Priebus, Republican Party Chairman: “Our position is the same as Mitt Romney’s position. It’s a tax.”

There is apparently some internal debate as to Mitt Romney’s position on whether the mandate in the Affordable Care Act is a tax or penalty. This debate has been raging for many months, but escalated considerably when the Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare is constitutional. So let’s bring in someone who would have to be regarded as an authority on Romney’s position.

Mitt Romney: “I said that I agree with the dissent, and the dissent made it very clear that they felt it was unconstitutional. But the dissent lost. It’s in the minority. And so now the Supreme Court has spoken. And while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said that it’s a tax and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that.”

There…that should clear it up. Except that it doesn’t. Romney seems to take both sides. He agrees with the dissenting jurists who did not hold that the mandate is a tax. But he also concedes that the majority ruled that it is a tax. So Romney seems to be saying that he acknowledges the ruling of the majority, but that he doesn’t agree with them. Therefore, he acknowledges that the Court holds that the mandate is a tax, but he still thinks it’s a penalty.

That’s a convenient stance because it permits him to criticize the President for raising taxes while asserting that his own identical legislation was merely a penalty. Isn’t that special? And if he’s able to escape the hypocrisy inherent in that, then he is surely the reincarnation of Houdini.

What’s more, Romney also seems to be saying that once the Court has spoken, the matter is closed. Therefore, he must be conceding that ObamaCare is constitutional and that there’s no way around it. So he, and every other right-wing blowhard who insisted that the law not only violated the Constitution, but abolished the very notion of American liberty, were desperately wrong and are terrible interpreters of constitutionality. That’s not much of a recommendation for a prospective president.

Despite the disarray in the GOP, the Court was clear about the administration of the mandate. They did not say that it is a tax (no matter how much Romney and Fox News say they did). It’s not really that hard to grasp. Take it from Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel:

Fox Nation In Feverish Panic To Digest News That Obamacare Is Constitutional

Posted by Mark NC on June 28, 2012 at 3:23 pm. 10 Comments :

For the past several months, Fox News has been been struggling mightily to dismiss the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as a blatant overreach of congressional and executive power. They have characterized it as a job-killing, deficit-raising, breach of constitutional law. They attempted to belittle President Obama, whose background as a professor of constitutional law was mocked by the hosts and guests on Fox.

Today was a nightmare come true for the right. Obama’s constitutional expertise was affirmed by the Supreme Court with a deciding vote provided by the conservative Chief Justice, John Roberts. Consequently, the weasels at Fox shifted into overdrive to fight back against this utterly devastating rebuke. By midday Fox Nation posted eighteen separate articles, all with negative appraisals of Obama and the Court’s decision.

Some of the standouts include, “A Dark Day For Freedom,” “Obama Taunts Romney After Ruling,” “Palin: ‘Obama Lies, Freedom Dies” But without a doubt my personal favorite was the report of a tweet by the DNC’s Patrick Gaspard that said “It’s Constitutional, Bitches.” And then there was the story that Fox Nation posted with great alarm that the “Stock Market Drops After Obamacare Upheld.”

It should be noted that this story was published well before the markets had closed. At the time it was posted the market was indeed down about 160 points. The Fox Nationalists may not have considered that the drop might have something to do with economic news, including a report that the losses incurred by JPMorgan, previously said to be about $2 billion, were probably closer to $9 billion. They failed to make that observation even though the biggest losers on the DOW were banking stocks. But more importantly, by the time the markets closed they had rebounded to a trivial loss of only 24 points – a 140 point reversal.

By the logic that Fox was using, if a drop in stock prices was evidence that the business community was opposed to the Court’s decision, then the recovery minutes later is evidence that the market approves of the decision. But don’t expect to see that story on Fox. They are now fully engaged in their primary mission to destroy this presidency on behalf of the GOP and their wealthy, corporate constituency. It’s all downhill from here. Expect Fox to dial up the crazy as they encounter additional defeats, like the one today, on the road to November.

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So F**king What?

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