Health Care, Tea Bags and Non Sequiturs

 

I've been listening to some of the discussion about the health care summit that will happen in Washington tomorrow and frankly don't have high hopes. Legislators from both sides of the aisle insist that they represent the views of their constituents; the Dems insisting the health care is wanted, while the GOP insists that their constituents oppose the health care legislation. Both sides probably speak at least partial truth, but little has been said about how the voters have arrived at the views they currently hold.

It's little wonder that people are confused about health care legislation, with people on both sides trying to spin the information to make their assertions sound better. And with thousands of pages of legislation, and proposals it's inevitable that some things will be unintentionally misinterpreted. The most reprehensible activity has been from people who intentionally lied to misrepresent the facts, creating fear and mistrust where no real problems existed.

While supporters of the Democrats have done some of this, most of the blame lays at the door of the Republican supporters. Those of us whose memory extends back more than a year may remember that Republicans boasted that they would prevent any health care bills from passing just so they could call the Obama Administration ineffective and some of them stated before anything was even written that, no matter what the legislation said, they would characterize it as a government take-over of health care. They've been committing premeditated obfuscation.

Death committees, mandatory abortions, giant bureaucracies, elimination of Medicare and the like became part of the mythology spread by pundits and tea parties, until large numbers of people, including some who would benefit most from the legislation, became convinced that the opposite was true. Tea party organizers, some of them white supremacists or militant theocracy advocates, were far more interested in sewing distrust and discontent with the Obama Administration than in advocating for the benefit of anyone.

The fact is, there are tens of millions of Americans without health insurance or who have to buy it for themselves (according to an AP article, 50 million uninsured and 27 million self-insured) and they're not all deadbeats or illegal aliens. Many are self-employed or working in jobs like construction where benefits are rarely provided. Others are among the many previously financially secure people who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession. Some of them are convinced that as bad as their situation is, they would be even worse if health care legislation passed.

The time has come for those of us with health insurance to let our personal desires take a back seat and start making the health care stuff be about helping those who are in a bad situation right now. We shouldn't let people who would rather be working and children who have no control of their situation die, just because it might also benefit a welfare queen, or because it might increase the popularity of a politician you dislike.

The Facts Are Just an Opinion

I was drawn to the Pew Research Center's website because of their recent survey on public perception of science, but I stuck around to look at some of their other data and, as readers of science and freethinker blogs already know, conservative xians and political conservatives are, on average, less educated, less knowledgeable about science and less trusting of science data. Although I don't have hard data to back this up, it's been my observation that conservatives are also much more inclined toward information bias.

I base this last observation on the proliferation and avid following of right wing TV and radio programs and the greater inclination of conservatives to censor and suppress opposing views in comparison to liberals. This combination of ignorance and information bias makes them the ideal targets for propagandists who want to obscure the facts.

If Rush Limbo says that global warming is a liberal conspiracy to destroy America, then decades of observation and testing become irrelevant and if the pastor says the world is 6000 years old, well you know. What I'd like to know is why is this legal?

We have libel and slander laws to protect individuals from having lies told about them, but if corporations and "think" tanks spend millions of dollars to spread lies that injure scientists, teachers, learning institutions and museums, that's just a difference of opinion and it's protected by our free speech rights.

I suspect that ignorant, fundy politicians and politicians worried about losing fundy votes have a lot to do with this difference in legal protection, but I can't help wondering what would happen if university presidents and museum directors started bringing lawsuits against groups like the Despicable Institute claiming that the plaintiffs' reputation and business were damaged by anti-science propaganda. In a perfect world it would bankrupt the lying scum.

Supporters of Palin Unite, If You Can Read the Map

I had a real WTF moment yesterday when I noticed an article that said, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll, 43% of Americans were at least somewhat likely to vote for Sarah Palin for President in 2012 and of that group 19% were very likely to vote for her. I thought it must be some kind of a joke; 19% of American voters couldn't possibly be that stupid. On reflection though, I realized that I shouldn't be surprised at all.



First, Palin is opposed to abortions and I've said before that pro-lifers would vote for Satan if he ran on a pro-life platform. Too many voters have only that one criterion for choosing a candidate, and all other information is either ignored or deemed irrelevant.



Second, she's a fundamentalist xian and fundies think only other fundies should be in office because a fundy would never lie, cheat, steal, fornicate or any of the other sinful things that fundy politicians keep getting caught doing in office. Furthermore Palin would understand that the founding fathers wanted everyone in the US to be xian and have xian teachings and ceremonies in all public venues.



Third, she's a young earth creationist and therefore knows that transitional fossils and Charles Darwin are mentioned nowhere in the bible. Furthermore she knows that all the millions of fossils and libraries full of scientific studies in universities and museums all over the world only represent a vague opinion that is part of a secular plot to undermine xianity. Besides, church ministers with bachelors' of theology degrees from xian colleges are far better educated in earth science than the intellectual elite with their hoity-toity PHd's in biology, geology, archaeology, astronomy, physics, chemistry and their ilk.



Fourth, she's not part of the intellectual elite that think they're so much smarter and better educated than the real Americans who made it all the way through high school and know that if that college stuff were really important there would be reality shows about it on TV. Palin is one of the people, and folks would feel like they could drink a beer with her. She understands that the most important requisite to the US Presidency is being down to earth. People will say of her, "She's just like me. I don't know if Africa is a country or a continent either and I don't think that information is important for someone involved in international politics."



Fifth, she supports the real Americans that are forgotten by most presidential candidates; the ones who scream racial epithets and death threats against the current president at her rallies, the ones who advocate secession from the US, the militant xian radicals who want to impose xianity on all Americans by force of arms, and all the other people who think that anyone who disagrees with their views is not a real American and should be driven out of the country or otherwise disposed of so that only real American ignorance, bigotry, xenophobia, hatred and violence can be found from sea to shining sea.

History Through a Glass Darkly

The well informed and objective folks at World Net Daily (aka Whirled Nut Daily) have come up with this thought-provoking, ignorant, crap, bumper sticker:

At the time of the American Revolution, our founding fathers would not have even known what this meant. Right and left political labels were the product of the French Revolution a few years later and then those that were said to be on the right were the Royalists and on the left were the Revolutionaries. The counterparts in the American Revolution would have been the Tories, those loyal to the King, on the right and the founding fathers of the United States on the left. I suspect they would have resented being called extremists as well since their goal was to create a well-reasoned representative government without any of the irrational emotionalism associated with extremists.

This is one of those things that really gripes my cookies. Politicians and pundits are always projecting their own attitudes and opinions onto iconic historical figures and then declaring them as historical fact. If George Washington knew all nonsense that people have said he represented, he'd come back and kick their butts.

When I have encouraged people to study more history, they frequently ask what value all those boring facts have in their life. The answer is simple. If you know the real historical facts, then you know when devious politicians and wind-bag pundits are trying to manipulate you into believing absurdities.