Pants on Fire

From Conor Clarke at the Atlantic:

One of the wackier developments in the recent health care debate has been the sudden return of Betsy McCaughey. Fifteen years ago McCaughey wrote an error-laden piece for the New Republic, a piece the magazine later recanted, that became a rallying cry of the successful effort to kill Clintoncare, and that McCaughey parlayed into a short-lived career as the lieutenant governor of New York. McCaughey’s health-care shtick in 1994 was to brag about having read all 1,000-plus pages of the bill and cite, with Biblical certainty, obscure provisions that made the Clintons look like serial killers.

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Fear Factor

From THE HUFFINGTON POST:

The contest to be the member of Congress saying the dumbest possible things about health care has just gotten ratcheted up about a thousand more notches, thanks to North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx. Foxx, if you recall, was the congressional luminary who declared the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder a “hoax,” right in front of Shepard’s mother. She’s a delight for the senses, especially the stupid ones!

Anyway, today she came up with a brand new health care reform objection when she said that the Republican health care plan — whatever that is! — would “make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

(Video at link)

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What an Operation!

From Ezra Klein at The Washington Post:

There’s been a lot of anxiety over leaks outlining the compromises being made in the Senate Finance Committee’s health-care plan. Among these compromises is a rejection of the public option and the absence of an employer mandate. Disappointing stuff. But, at this point, completely predictable.

Look at this picture. Study it. This is who is in the room helping Baucus put together his bill. Olympia Snowe, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, Jeff Bingaman and Kent Conrad. In a Senate of 60 Democrats and 40 Republicans, the health-care reform bill is being written by three centrist Democrats, one centrist Republicans, and two conservative Republicans. And until last week, Orrin Hatch was in the room, too.

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(l to r:  Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe)

Is there a doctor in the House? Yeah, 14 of ’em!

From the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON — In the struggle to overhaul the nation’s health care system, 16 physicians have ended up in ringside seats — as members of the House and Senate.

But they have taken different lessons from their experiences in medicine, and they do not agree on what a bill should look like.

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Don’t let the door hit you in the Bridge to Nowhere on your way out!

From The New York Times:

Up here in Alaska, wildlife metaphors tend to be as abundant as their flesh-and-blood counterparts, and Gov. Sarah Palin has helped herself to them generously in explaining why she’s stepping down today, barely halfway through her term.

She didn’t want the state to be stuck with a “lame duck” chief executive, she said. She could hang around the Statehouse and go with the flow, she allowed, but “only dead fish go with the flow.”

Palin’s departure — she’s officially handing over power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell at a community picnic in Fairbanks — has left many Alaskans largely confused.

Some are confused, but there are others who are scared shitless that she’ll have plenty of free time now!

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What Tom Coburn does when he’s not birthin’ John Ensign’s babies

From TULSA WORLD:

WASHINGTON – Armadillos, marshmallows and American liberty.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn managed to connect those three in a speech Thursday on the Senate floor to explain how he traps armadillos that visit his yard in Muskogee and what Americans could learn from their fate.

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Gee, Gordon’s Giddy!

From MEDIA MATTERS:

Advancing the conspiracy theory that President Obama lacks a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president, radio host G. Gordon Liddy falsely claimed during the July 23 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball that there is “a deposition, which is a sworn statement, from the stepgrandmother, who says, ‘I was present and saw [Obama] born in Mombasa, Kenya.’ ” In fact, while the conservative news website WorldNetDaily claims to be “in possession” of affidavits from Anabaptist minister Ron McRae and Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, two individuals who purportedly took part in a telephone interview with the president’s stepgrandmother, McRae’s and Shuhubia’s accounts have been discredited, and even WorldNetDaily does not claim to have a “sworn statement” from the stepgrandmother herself.

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(That’s Lou Dobbs in the upper right corner, if you were wondering.)

CNN: Conspiracy Nuts Network

From Salon:

This week, the birthers — the movement that believes President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the U.S. and thus not eligible to be president — have gone mainstream, and in a big way. That’s due in part to a YouTube video of a woman shouting at Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., about Obama’s birth certificate. It’s also the work of CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who’s apparently found yet another conspiracy theory to love.

Dobbs actually first began giving the birthers a boost last week, when he had Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama in 2004 and 2008 and is now suing over the president’s birth certificate, on his radio show, along with Keyes’ lawyer, Orly Taitz, the “queen bee” of the birthers. Since then, he’s latched on to the movement, discussing it several times on his radio show and on CNN. On a night he was off, a fill-in host on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” interviewed Keyes and Taitz.

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