Healthcare

OBAMA SCARE: Fox News Fears ACORN Is Back To Push ObamaCare

Posted by on October 16, 2013 at 12:07 pm. 6 Comments :

Fox News has been engaged in a massive disinformation campaign against the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) for going on three years now. After all that time, and having exhausted the considerable creative resources that came up with twelve “Pants on Fire” lies about the program, Fox’s desperation is showing.

Recently Fox News went apoplectic over a phony allegation that millions of Americans will be victimized by hackers if they try to enroll in a new health care plan. Then they fear mongered over the horror of Americans voting due to the Affordable Care Act website providing users with an opportunity to register. And now Fox is trembling at the thought of ACORN zombies helping people to get health care coverage.

Fox News Obama Scare

The Curvy Couch Potatoes over at Fox & Friends had a jolly old time resurrecting their fear of a community organizing enterprise that no longer exists. ACORN was hounded out of business by right-wing opponents after pseudo-journalist and convicted criminal, James O’Keefe, distributed some deceitfully edited and libelous videos. But that hasn’t stopped conservative media from exhuming the corpse whenever they are in need of a sensationalistic story as demonstrated by this morning’s broadcast:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: We’re getting information that ACORN operatives are trying to sign people up for the Affordable Care Act.
Brian Kilmeade: Good luck. Let them try.
Hasselbeck: They’re banking on the American people forgetting what had happened in terms of voter fraud. So we need to ring the bell a little on this one.

As previously noted, there aren’t any ACORN operatives, and multiple investigations never found any evidence of wrongdoing by ACORN or their former staff. Despite their innocence, the Foxpods think that anyone affiliated with the former ACORN must retire to caves in Antarctica rather than resuming their vocation of helping the American people to navigate the complexities of government services. Fox just hates it when any organization aspires to help people for any reason. They continue…

Steve Doocy: Remember back in the old days, we used to show this video when we would show ACORN locations back in 2009. Famously they were caught in a sting operation by a journalist that showed they were showing people how to break the law. […] After the scandal, and they were exposed, ACORN was banned from getting taxpayer money. So if they’re getting some of this navigator money in that kind of serpentine way — still illegal.

That’s cute. Doocy called O’Keefe a “journalist.” As for his allegation of illegality, there is nothing in the law that prevents organizations with former ACORN staff from getting federal grants. In fact, there isn’t even any law that prevents ACORN from getting grants as the previous ban was not included in the latest Continuing Resolution. Doocy is brazenly misrepresenting the facts, just as Hasselbeck does when she implies that ACORN will be getting $67 million. Actually, that’s the total amount of the ACA navigator program for all grantees. But then Hasselbeck introduces a new irrational fear:

Hasselbeck: The American people have great cause to be concerned about their personal information, medical information, financial information, being handed over – not just in terms of the money the government is giving out, but your information that is being given to an organization that will most likely be used against you at some point, politically.

Yowsa! ACORN using this information against us would be bad enough, but the prospect of such use being “most likely” really ought to scare the bejeezus out of the Teabaggers who watch Fox. Hasselbeck never explains how this info can used to politically harm anyone, but then again, she never offers any proof of her allegations in the first place. It is simply an attempt to dangle a ominous sword over the heads of her dimwitted audience.

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To recap, Fox has so far announced that ObamaCare enrollees are subject to financial ruin due to hackers, political strife due to ACORN, and some unspecified horror due to access to voter registration forms. They never mention the fact that they will also be covered by an affordable health care plan that may preserve their medical well being and prevent an illness-rated bankruptcy. No wonder Fox News viewers are so clueless about this and pretty much every other issue.

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

Posted by 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.

Fox News
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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.”

Sarah Palin Can’t Help Making A Buffoon Of Herself (With Help From Fox News)

Posted by on August 10, 2013 at 2:23 pm. 7 Comments :

Sarah Palin appeared on the Fox News Saturday program “Cashin’ In” to discuss her twisted perceptions of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), and the imaginary “death panels” she is obsessed with.

Palin was asked by wingnut host Eric Bolling if she felt vindicated by the presence of some Democrats who have come forward to criticize certain aspects of the law. Palin answered by mistakenly saying that “I don’t think we should condone them.” What she meant to say was that she didn’t want to “condemn them,” because she appreciated their position.

Setting aside that malaprop, Palin insisted that “There are, of course, death panels” in the law that she called “evil.” However, when asked what she thought the motives were of the critical Democrats, she went completely off the rails:

Palin: It’s black and white, in the law, that there will be rationing of health care. They couldn’t go forever in not acknowledging that or they would look like complete buffoons, and they would be deemed incompetent having not read the law to understand that death panels are a part of this atrocity.

If not reading the law makes you an incompetent buffoon, then Palin is at the head of her class. This is what the law actually says about the Independent Advisory Board about which Palin and Bolling were talking:

“The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.”

It’s right there in black and white. The law explicitly prohibits rationing. Of course, Fox News will never let their viewers know that. But they did accidentally provide evidence of the dishonesty of their death panel fallacy. At the outset of this trumped up issue, Palin was referring to end-of-life counseling sessions which, in her dementia, meant death panels. In fact, they were merely opportunities for people to consult with their doctors about what sort of treatment they would want in the event of a catastrophic illness that left them unable to express themselves. After it became clear that Palin had miserably misinterpreted this provision of the law, she switched the complaint to the Independent Advisory Board (which she also misinterpreted), and pretended that that was her complaint all along. Well, Bolling’s graphic proves otherwise.

Fox News

Even after showing this graphic referring to end-of-life-counseling, their discussion covered only the unrelated Independent Advisory Board. If there is one thing you can say about Fox News, it’s that it is a network where incompetence and buffoonery runs rampant.

Fox News Doctor’s Fatal Misdiagnosis Of Bush’s Heart Surgery Wake-Up Call

Posted by on August 6, 2013 at 4:30 pm. 6 Comments :

“Former President George W. Bush, 67, underwent a procedure Tuesday morning to have a stent placed in his heart one day after a blockage was discovered in an artery, according to a statement from his office. […] President Bush’s experience is a wake-up call for all of us.”

Indeed it is. That was the response of Dr. Marc Siegel of the Fox News Medical A Team to news that Bush had emergency heart surgery to repair a life-threatening blockage.

Fox News
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The problem with Siegel’s response, however, is that his idea of a wake-up call is a useless gesture for many Americans. Siegel’s advice to “see your doctor for a physical” is sound on its face. But if you are uninsured, the costs associated with an office visit and the battery of tests required to ascertain your health status are prohibitive.

Siegel noted that Bush underwent a stress test with an EKG and a CT angiogram. Having discovered a coronary artery blockage, he was immediately admitted and scheduled for surgery. Bush, of course, is a former president and member of a wealthy family. How is an average American without insurance supposed to pay for all of that? And after the emergency care, who springs for the pharmaceuticals that would be required for the rest their life?

Bush, his family, and most Americans are grateful that his medical scare was resolved and that he will resume a normal lifestyle. But insofar as his experience was a wake-up call, it was an alarm sounding to address the shameful lack of health care for so many citizens in such a rich nation. ObamaCare is a step toward providing that care, but it is people like Dr. Siegel who are throwing obstacles in the way.

Siegel frequently appears on Fox News to denounce the Affordable Care Act and the President for advocating it. He called the Supreme Court ruling upholding ObamaCare a “disappointment.” He spins phony horror stories about death panels, doctor shortages, and unfounded claims of higher premiums and fewer services. Although, how you get to fewer than zero (as was the case for 45 million pre-ObamaCare citizens), I don’t know.

In Siegel’s world everyone should consider getting regular checkups and preventative care, but it should only be available for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it. In other words. Bush’s experience is a wake-up call to financially secure folks like Bush. But it’s a snooze button for millions of others about whom Siegel doesn’t appear to give a damn.

The Fox News Campaign To Keep Citizens From Learning About ObamaCare

Posted by 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.

Fox News
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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.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Math-Challenged Poll Analysis On ObamaCare

Posted by on May 30, 2013 at 7:49 am. 3 Comments :

In yet another attempt to turn their audience into blithering idiots, the Fox Nationalists have posted the results of a CNN poll on ObamaCare with a thoroughly misleading headline and commentary: “Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose ObamaCare.”

Fox Nation
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Fox Nation vs. Reality

Rather than linking to the actual poll results on CNN’s web site, Fox Nation links to a little known blog, Red Alert Politics, an affiliate of Clarity Media. Ultra-rightist billionaire Philip Anschutz owns Clarity as well as the conservative Weekly Standard. The excerpt that Fox extracts from Red Alert says merely that “54 percent of Americans still do not support President Obama’s signature domestic policy, compared to the 43 percent of Americans who support it.”

Not surprisingly, that is not the whole story – or even an honest representation of the limited story. A cursory glance at CNN’s web site fills in the details that Fox has deliberately suppressed. Although CNN also distorts the lede, at least they include the data that puts the poll’s results into context:

“A majority of Americans still oppose the nation’s new health care measure, three years after it became law, according to a new survey.

“But a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday also indicates that more than a quarter of those who oppose the law, known by many as Obamacare, say they don’t support the measure because it doesn’t go far enough.”

In other words, many of those who are being counted as opponents are actually supporters of a more liberal national health care plan. In a rational world, these people would not be lumped in with the Tea-publicans who want to repeal ObamaCare. They would be regarded as supporters who advocate an even more comprehensive policy.

Since 43% of respondents said that they support ObamaCare, and another 16% said that they support a more liberal version of it, a more accurate presentation of the poll’s results would say that 59% of Americans were in favor of the legislation – including some who want it to go further – and only 35% were opposed. That’s a solid majority of supporters.

But it may be too much to expect that Fox could grasp the complexities of math after they spent the last couple of years rejecting it along with pretty much every other principle of science and academia.

The Takeaway: Mitt Romney And Barack Obama On 60 Minutes

Posted by on September 24, 2012 at 2:06 pm. 2 Comments :

Alright, so Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last night and were interviewed by Scott Pelley. Both interviews were pre-taped and edited to fit into a limited period of time. The questions were nearly identical for both candidates and covered the economy and foreign policy.

So what did the Romney camp choose to focus on the next day? “Bumps in the Road” as the headline on Fox News put it. The headline refers to a comment Obama made regarding the unrest in the Middle East. Here is what the President said:

“I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road.”

Obama was plainly describing the difficulties of transitioning to democracy for countries that have been under dictatorships for decades. Romney, however, extracted a few words and then asserted that they were directed specifically at the deaths of the diplomats in Libya. This is a recurring pattern in the Romney strategy which consists almost entirely of taking fragments of Obama’s comments out of context (see Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context). It sheds no light on any issue of substance and is nothing more than a purposeful distraction and smear.

On the other hand, Romney spoke with Pelley about health care and defended his opposition to individual mandates. He asserted that Health care is available to everyone in America and explained just how the uninsured should go about receiving it:

“We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.”

And then we charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars which results in them losing their homes, going bankrupt, being unable to send their kids to school, and not having the funds to pay for other medical needs or, for that matter, food. Where Romney gets the impression that free medical care is available as necessary at hospital emergency rooms is something he never reveals. What’s more, it directly contradicts his position on this issue from only five years ago when he assailed the use of emergency rooms as a health plan of last resort:

“When they show up at the hospital they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism I don’t know what is.”

Mitt Romney Flip Flop

I’m quite sure that he doesn’t know what socialism is, but that’s beside the point. He must know that he is contradicting himself and advocating a practice that he previously rejected in the strongest terms. It also happens that the practice of relying on ERs is substantially more expensive and has far worse outcomes for the patient than access to regular care from a doctor.

If the media comes out of this taking seriously Romney’s whining about Obama using a figure of speech to describe the “bumps” that will jostle the emerging democracies in the Middle East, while ignoring the far more consequential comments and contradictions by Romney that fail to grasp the the health care challenges our nation faces, then they will have demonstrated once again why the public holds the media in such low esteem.

As for the esteem with which the public holds Romney, it just keeps getting lower by the day.

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

Posted by 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.

Fox Nation on Obamacare Ruling

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.

Obamacare Upheld: Will Bill O’Reilly Keep His Promise To Apologize For Being An Idiot?

Posted by on June 28, 2012 at 9:10 am. 4 Comments :

The Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) today and there will be abundant coverage of this historic decision for the remainder of the day, of the week, and of this election year. Partisans from across the political spectrum will be parsing the decision for ways to portray it as either a victory or an incentive to motivate their followers.

But there is something that occurred in the months preceding this decision that deserves renewed attention. On March 26, 2012, Bill O’Reilly debated the healthcare act with Caroline Fredrickson, President of the American Constitution Society. After a tumultuous exchange that mainly exhibited O’Reilly’s arrogantly thuggish personality (transcript below), O’Reilly concluded by saying this:

“Ms. Frederickson, you’re going to lose, and your argument is specious. We appreciate you coming on. But this is absolutely a mandate. It’s absolutely a force. It’s absolutely police powers from the federal government, and it’s going to be 5 to 4. And if I’m wrong I will come on, and I will play — I will play your clip. And I will apologize for being an idiot. But I think you’re desperately wrong.”

Bill O'Reilly on ObamacareWill O’Reilly keep that promise? Although there are incidents far too numerous to mention wherein O’Reilly proves that he’s an idiot, there are few times that he’s committed to admitting it himself. In addition to his debate with Fredrickson, O’Reilly also did a Talking Points Memo segment asserting with absolute certainty that the mandate would be ruled unconstitutional. He should not be allowed to forget his mistakes and his promises. Email him here to ask him to keep his word.

On a side note: After the long awaited decision was announced, Fox News cut away from their coverage to air an interview of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch by his sycophantic lackey, Neil Cavuto. There was nothing particularly newsworthy disclosed in the segment. It appeared to be simply a distraction from the Supreme Court’s far more consequential news. That will likely be the tactical approach that Fox takes for the remainder of the day. They will attempt to downplay an event that they previously trumpeted as the most important Supreme Court decision in decades. They will dodge and weave and misconstrue as they plaster the air with dissenting views from Republican politicians and pundits. The headline, for the time being, will be “Obama’s health care tax increase survives.” And as soon as the House vote on holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of congress occurs, that will become the headline.

Here is the transcript of the O’Reilly Factor interview with Caroline Frederickson. Note how precisely she predicted the Court’s decision that the act would be upheld under the taxing authority of the Congress. Note also O’Reilly’s brutish incivility as he threatens to cut off the interview if she didn’t comply with his demands to answer questions the way he wanted her to.

O’REILLY: Name one thing, one thing that the federal government forces you to buy. One.

FREDRICKSON: Well, let me first correct that —

O’REILLY: Ms. Frederickson.

FREDRICKSON: No, no. I want to correct you.

O’REILLY: Look, my — my opinion is my opinion. Your opinion is yours. I don’t want to be corrected. Ms. Frederickson please answer the simple question. We don’t have all night.

FREDRICKSON: The legislation — you have to let me answer.

O’REILLY: Are you going to answer this question or not? If you’re not going to answer, I’ll abort the segment right now.

FREDRICKSON: The legislation does not require people to buy health insurance.

O’REILLY: Of course it does.

FREDRICKSON: It imposes a penalty for those who don’t.

O’REILLY: You want to play the semantic game?

FREDRICKSON: Forces people to buy in the form of a tax.

O’REILLY: That’s a police power, OK? To impose any penalty is a police power.

FREDRICKSON: Tax power. And it’s designed completely within the rational scope of the legislation —

O’REILLY: No. Ms. Frederickson. This is not —

FREDRICKSON: — to encourage people to buy health insurance.

O’REILLY: This is becoming absurd. It’s police power if you punish someone for not doing anything. Sounds absurd.

FREDRICKSON: Now, you’ve got to let me talk if you’re going to invite me on your show.

O’REILLY: No, I don’t have to let you talk if you’re not answering the question. Because you’re dodging the question. I’ll go back.

FREDRICKSON: No. It’s actually —

O’REILLY: Name one thing the federal government compels you to buy. One thing.

FREDRICKSON: Well, let me say that under the Militia Act of 1792, people were compelled to buy muskets and powder.

O’REILLY: What act was that?

FREDRICKSON: This doesn’t require — The Militia Act. This doesn’t actually require people to buy health insurance. And I think it would be good if you read the legislation.

O’REILLY: I did read the legislation.

FREDRICKSON: It imposes a penalty. And a penalty is different from – –

O’REILLY: That’s compelling something to do something if you’re going to punish them for not doing it.

FREDRICKSON: No. It’s a tax. Essentially, people have to pay a very modest amount — it’s about $95 a year — if they choose not to buy health insurance.

But it’s part of a scheme in which Congress rationally chose to build a national market for health insurance and cover the uninsured.

O’REILLY: Ms. Frederickson, you’re going to lose, and your argument is specious. We appreciate you coming on. But this is absolutely a mandate. It’s absolutely a force. It’s absolutely police powers from the federal government, and it’s going to be 5 to 4.

And if I’m wrong I will come on, and I will play — I will play your clip. And I will apologize for being an idiot. But I think you’re desperately wrong.

FREDRICKSON: All right. Well, I look forward to it.

She was right, Billo. What say you?

{Update] This evening on the O’Reilly Factor, Laura Ingraham was in at the anchor desk because Bill O’Reilly was on vacation. Well, that would have been the perfect dodge for O’Reilly to avoid keeping his word and hoping that by Monday everybody would have forgotten.

However, Ingraham immediately announced that O’Reilly was on the phone from North Carolina to comment on this momentous news event. He spent ten minutes of his precious vacation time bashing the decision, the President and, on another subject, Attorney General Eric Holder. But he never mentioned that he is an idiot. Somehow, the fact that he is an idiot slipped his idiotic mind. I’m shocked!

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Nuking The Fact Checker

Posted by on April 9, 2012 at 2:02 pm. 5 Comments :

I have previously noted the often hilarious overuse of hyperbole by the dimwits at Fox Nation. Today they deliver additional proof that they don’t really know the meaning of the words they use.

Fox Nation

The Fox Nationalists are referring to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column. The Post analyzed remarks by President Obama about the Supreme Court that the rightist media is twisting into absurd allegations of threats and ignorance of constitutional law. But a reading of the Post’s article reveals something short of a nuking. In several places the Post outright validates the President’s points:

The Post affirms Obama’s claim that…

“…the Supreme Court hasn’t overturned a sweeping law in quite some time. By ‘sweeping,’ we mean statutes that apply to virtually all citizens, as the Affordable Care Act does.”

The Post agrees with Obama on the economic substance of the ACA.

“The court affirmed Social Security under Congress’s Constitutional power to tax, while the Affordable Care Act deals with something different: the power to regulate commerce. As such, the health law involves an economic issue, just as Obama noted.”

The Post certifies that Obama was correct in saying that the Court overturning the ACA would be extraordinary.

“Many of the right-leaning legal experts we talked to acknowledged that the modern Supreme Court has largely — but not entirely — shown deference to Congress when it comes to such matters.”

The Post takes the President’s side on the question of whether prior cases were applicable due to their having a focus on economics or commerce.

“[T]he government lost two such cases during the Bill Clinton years. It argued unsuccessfully in U.S. v. Lopez (1995) that possession of a firearm at school constituted economic activity, and in U.S. v. Morrison (2000) that violence against women affected interstate commerce. Those cases dealt with economic matters, right? Not technically. The Supreme Court determined that the laws didn’t involve commerce at all.”

The Post notes that Obama was correct in his assessment of the Court’s deference to Congress.

“Obama correctly noted that the Supreme Court has shown more deference to Congress since the 1930s when it comes to economic legislation, but he said the court has upheld such statutes without exception ever since. This is only true in a very narrow sense.”

This is Fox Nation’s impression of having been nuked by the Washington Post. In fact, the Post gave Obama two Pinocchios, which they define in part as “using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.” I’m not sure how the President could have made his case about a legal issue without resorting to legalistic language, so the Post is being somewhat obtuse in their rating.

But one thing is certain, there was no nuking going on. That’s just an effort of the part of the Fox Nationalists to inject a negative spin and hope that their audience doesn’t read the article for themselves (which they don’t have to worry about considering the incurious, dittoheadedness of their audience).