by 
My hometown newspaper, The Intelligencer, ran a full page advertisement (image here) paid for by one Joe Gallagher. He paid good money to put up information he had received via email. Without fact checking it. The paper took his money and ran his ad. Without fact checking it.
Yeah. People are a little upset. Take this email for example written by someone I know back east. This message was sent to many people in the Doylestown area, as well as folks like me way out here in Arizona. Definitely worth sharing.
From: A.
You probably all saw the full page ad on page 8 of the Intell on Tuesday about the Healthcare bill. Just to let you know that it is part of an organized scare campaign that has been circulating the internet recently. You may have heard also about the screaming and disruptive and aggressive behavior that has recently gone on during town meetings and a recent meeting at the Constitution Center in Philly.On July 30th the award winning St Petersburg Times published a factcheck on this internet misinformation that ended up as a published ad in the Intel yesterday 8/4. It is the journalistic responsibility of the newspaper to clarify misinformation that is being circulated with the clear intent of scaring/shocking people and also adhere to truth in advertising by not to publish blatant misinformation ads like this.
No matter what your thoughts are on health care reform, please check out this website, copy and paste if you need to, so you can be informed about this important issue.
politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…e-mail-analysis-health-bill-needs-check
There are actually two important issues here. One is the misinformation that is circulating and is causing my generation, but especially older folks, much confusion and fear about health care reform. The WWII generation is especially scared about this and is getting bombarded by those who know how to work this sort of strategy on their fear very well……does that sound familiar?! Voices from the past, perhaps? So maybe tell your peers that they really need to talk to their parents and grandparents to let them know that they need to step back from all this noise, really listen and demand factual information before coming in any conclusions. Resist getting caught in this environment of fear.
The other problem is that very loud and aggressive, and very well organized, groups of people are going to town meetings, etc, and disrupting the events by shouting down anyone who wants to speak. They seem to forget that this is a Democracy and we ALL have the right to free speech, not just the shrill. Not surprisingly our elected officials are getting hundreds, many hundreds, of emails each day from those oppose any kind of health care reform. So maybe tell your peers that they need to let their elected officials know that there are people out there, too, that are not happy with the status quo, want some answers to their questions and expect hard work to get something accomplished on Washington.
End of soap box!
Full page advertisement full of falsehoods. Just bending the truth a little with a couple of emails. What’s the harm?
There’s an old proverb that says a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on. That’s surely true when the lie instills deep personal fears, and lies appear to be in full sprint as the nation’s health care debate goes local.
Source: blogs.usatoday.com
I’ll tell you what the harm is: people are going full blown crazy out there. Take the other night, Friday, I met a guy while I was picking up a pizza for the family. He had one hell of a car parked out front. It was just he and I in the place, the only two customers. And I drummed up a conversation with him to inquire if I might take a photo of his Firebird. It really was one of those cars you had to see to believe. How can you discribe such a beast with mere words? It would never do it justice. The hood reads “GOD” in huge white letters sweeping up and over the intakes. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
He followed me out and even popped up the hood. That’s four hundred and fifty four cubic inches of American Muscle right there, people. Makes that chromed air cleaner look tiny, don’t it?
We started bullshitting about this and that while we waited. Light stuff mostly, the weather, summer, traffic. Then he goes right in to health care. Tells me “if we can’t stop him, the government is going to have access to our checking accounts. Our checking accounts!”
I said one word. That word was “what”?
“Oh, you’re naive. You’re naive if you think that’s not what he wants to do!” He was getting loud now. The guy behind the counter was staring at us and he did not look happy. Rule number one: don’t piss off the people who are making your dinner. It’s just a bad idea.
Checking account? What? The government (“him” being, assumedly, Obama) isn’t going to, you know, tax the money out of me anymore? Now they’ll just automatically deduct whatever they think I should pay from my account without any warning?
“Yeah. That’s what they’re gonna do. He wants your money. It’s un-American. I work.”
Thank god my pizza showed up about this time in our downward spiral of a conversation. I wished him well and went on my merry way with an armful of goodness and anywhere to be in a hurry. So this guy doesn’t want the government to take money (his money) out of his bank account without his permission… Nobody would want that. It would be completely unreasonable. But, that isn’t what’s on the table. It’s unreasonableness is, well, essentially meaningless. Health care is what is on the table. Taking your money without your permission is not. It has, quite simply, nothing to do with it.
Well, aside from giving this poor bastard something to worry about. And something to fight against. Even if he is battling a ghost.
I cannot follow the argument anymore. It all makes zero sense to me. For example, people with government run health care (Medicare and Medicaid) scream that they don’t want government run heath care. And, in the same breath, demand that the government leave their existing (government run) health care coverage alone. People actually think the government will decide who lives and who dies. The old and infirm are out of luck under the Obama plan. We’re just going to abandon the helpless out on the rocks and let the wolves devour them as night falls. The Democrats will kill Sarah Palin’s baby! The Democrats will euthanize the elderly!
The conversation, or what passes for one, has become completely insane.
We are going to have universal health care coverage in this country. It may not happen now; it may not happen with Obama. But, mark my words, it will happen. It will come. It is inevitable. You’d sooner hold back the tide than avoid every citizen in this country being guaranteed a basic level of health care.
by 
IGNORANCE IS POWER TOO.
the Gov’t will empty your bank acount without your permission – just don’t pay the IRS & see………..don’t ask me how i know this. Steve.
Up in Canuckistan we have socialized medicine. We don’t kill disabled babies or the elderly though – just the cosmically ignorant.
the group that everyone should be paying attention to is those that are on the front line – the family practitioners & PCP’s that are the source of preventative care and the gateway to specialized care and treatments.
i don’t know if i’m for or against socialized HC yet because i don’t understand enough of either side of the equation.
but when you’ve got a massive nationwide shortage of family medicine practitioners and PCP’s needed to cover the insured, adding 35-40 million new clients (the currently uninsured who would be guaranteed coverage) to the waiting rooms is scary for EVERYONE, insured or not, and what ever reform takes place needs to occur at all levels of the system. Student loan help for those in general medicine is a start i guess. but it doesn’t increase the meager salary they make in comparison to specialists or the hours they work when they hit the clinics, a couple of the major factors for the shortage.
while it could be better, we have a fairly high standard of care now, even for those who are uninsured albeit they go into great debt or it’s covered by the taxpayer (county hospital ER’s, etc.). any reform needs to ensure that the level of care does not decrease and do what ever it can to increase it.
take care of yourselves people.
…people have fought & died for years to defend the concept of free speech…
…now, more than ever, “free speech” is used to misinform & malign…
along these lines, if you missed the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 webcast today, seek out Sen. Reids closing statement. it was inspiring to say the least along w/ the balance of the summit.
let me beat dave to his logic…uhhh…errr, “keep Government out of our health care but don’t fuck with my medicare”….duhhh or something like that
So far, the people I have encountered first hand with the loudest voices(for or against healthcare reform) seem to be the least educated, at least on the topic to which they gush about. Its like they get these emails/read the ads, assume it must be true ( I assume because it is what they want to believe, and the authors know this and target accordingly) and spout it off as fact. It scares me, pisses me off, and leaves me feeling a bit hopeless. I don’t bother to do anything except look concerned and nod, maybe give a “hmmmm” to keep things going until I can bail the fuck out.
Yes…the government/obama are going to take (all of) our paychecks, all of our guns (except shotguns–the scariest perhaps), our stem cells, make us have abortions and convert us into facists/socialists/narcissists/hedonists/etc-ists. Or so I have been told.
Yep, we all have freedom of speech but, you need to shut the fuck up because I diagree.
And painting GOD on your hood? wtf is he getting at with that exactly?
I guess I should post this quote again:
“It isn’t getting any smarter out there” —Frank Zappa
We miss ye, Frank.
…pirata…“Yep, we all have freedom of speech but, you need to shut the fuck up because I disagree.”…
…ya, but when freedom of speech is outlawed, only assholes & outlaws like us will have the balls to speak up…
…just sayin’…
My mother’s swedish friend’s son’s opthamologist has a client whose daughter’s cousin just tweeted that we (meaning the lucky ones to have voted for Obama) are going to all get free blowjobs from Michelle, while she is wearing one of those pink raver wigs.
Then, while you are in the throes of ecstasy due to her being a toothless reptile (it’s all true. I read it in the Weekly World News, who got the story from a paraquat-sprayer from the 70’s in Tulsa…) Obama and the Fed will drain your bak account, sell you identity to Al Qaeda, and make you gay.
Then that blowjob will be the worst experience of a lifetime, because, like a shark, Michelle’s teeth will suddenly spring back at full length and sharpness, and she’ll use just the tips of them to serrate your cock, and you gotta beware because her drool is all kinds of full with the aids of the cancer of the tuberculosis of the diahreah of the brain.
BUT THAT’S NOT THE WORST PART.
You’ll be forced to admit on national TV (or possibly in the local paper…I’ve heard both so I’m not taking any chances…) that you helped plan 9-11 with the Bush family and helped plant the thermite in the Twin Towers in order to implement the last few steps of the New World Order, while in the background you hear Dick Cheney’s peals of laughter as he skins your grandmonth, Ed Gein style, and makes an abortion cocktail out of your wife’s no-longer-sterile womb.
And don’t even THINK about fact-checking any of this since the Jews run all the media and banks and they are all involved in the Bilberburg-shit and you’ll never find out the truth.
Except right here. On D.C.
— BP
…tom ‘fucking’ cruise has gotta be involved in all this…i just sense it…
So which one of you are going to turn that guy in. flag@whitehouse.gov It’s the American thing to do….
…c’mon, kg…we’re on the honor system on this blog…
…we’re hoping anyone who needs to, will turn themselves in…
In the UK I have a fully-staffed doctor’s office about two blocks from where I live and all I had to do to register was show up with some proof of residency and my NHS card and they signed me up. I got an appointment at my convenience, got my prescription filled (blood pressure, it’s genetic) and everything’s hunky dory. The meds cost £7.20, around $12, for a month’s supply. All meds, for everything, cost the same.
The people here are pretty freaking proud of what they accomplished in creating this organization, and though they moan at times, it’s only at the extreme edge of things. A 26-year old guy who sits next to me at work got a non-necessary knee surgery after a two month wait. All free of charge. He only complains that maybe he might have took the place of somebody who needed it more.
And the icing on the cake is that when the government argues about this NHS program, the two main ideologic parties argue over who could run it better, with each claiming they could help more people than their political rivals.
In the US, the Ku Klux Klan seems to have taken over.
I believe bikepunk.
KG seems to miss the point of the white house’s intent. They want you to write in with the things you hear, NOT RAT OUT AN IDIOT WHO BELIEVES EVERYTHING SOMEONE NAMED ‘OILY TAINT’ JABBERS ON ABOUT.
Its about the information, jackass. Since you are a grown man (I can only assume…) It’s entirely possible to copy-paste the information that is false, or ‘Whut I dun heerd at mah last klan rally’ and send it to them.
But I guess you’re too fucking paranoid and stupid to think of that one yourself, eh kg.
bikepunk wins.
We have to ration healthcare. Let Peter Singer explain it to you if you have the attention span:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html
We already ration. We will ration in the future. It’s a basic part of reality when dealing with scarce resources.
…damn, and I didn’t even get a chance to comment that the government doesn’t care about you. …that this is all for money from insurance-pharma-lobby. …that there are greater things going on that deserve more attention (how much money do we owe everyone again that we can’t pay back because we are broke?). …that maybe, just maybe, “the people” don’t want socialized health care. Even the stupid opinions are opinions, stupid or not, they are individuals thoughts and that’s what free speech is all about. Maybe some of them aren’t stupid. Then again, maybe the stupid majority will choose something because there are more of them than non-stupid people. (McCain vs. Obama vs. Ron Paul)
Maybe the fact that the US is the fattest country in the world, uses more prescription drugs than any other country, uses more energy than any other country and has more debt to the world than anyone, anywhere…just might have something to do with the fact that socialized health care is coming whether you like it or not, but the fight keeps your mind off the important things.
My stupid opinion continues… The media is owned and it is all shiny shit to occupy the raccoons, to keep them afraid as well as control what information they get, which in turn creates a predetermined and anticipated reaction that has already been prepared for. OOOHHH Art Bell in the house!
Thanks for the article peter, it was good. …and bikepunk wins.
just give me free condoms and I am good
Don’t give me that bullshit bp, if Bush would have made that statement there would be days of posts on this page deriding it. Your government has asked for you to turn in dissenters and you explain it away.
How very ‘punk’ of you to think the government only has your best interest at heart.
Why don’t all you idiots who want to have socialized medicine get together and have it. And leave us alone if we don’t want it.
It’s funny how the left keeps claiming that conservatives just lie. Bush lied, they’re lying about the health care plan….keep going. Big fucking pussies don’t like the answers so they cry to their mommies that the big bad righties are liars. Pussies.
Why don’t all you idiots who don’t want socialized medicine go ahead and die already?
You already have socialized medicine. Our tax dollars already subsidize healthcare in this country. ER visits for the uninsured, VA care, Medicare/Medicaid for the elderly. All fucking socialized medicine.
If you fucking mouth breathers would wise up you’d realize that if you’re so against socialized medicine you’d be out protesting and burning down VA hospitals across the land. Fuck the vets! They should get a goddamn job now that they’re back and get some health insurance already! Bad back? Head injury? Lost a limb? Sweep the floors or get a desk job and pay your way!
Go shove your head back up your ass where it belongs.
teh stoopid flying around about the bill is unbelievable. It is not socialized medicine. There is no single payer proposal. The likelihood that there will even be a public OPTION is getting smaller as the lies about what healthcare reform are spread further and further.
There’s a good debunking of many of the lies going around via e-mail at PolitiFact, who have rated the recent e-mail circulation at a liar-liar-pants-on-fire level.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/jul/30/e-mail-analysis-health-bill-needs-check-/
More at Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-bergthold/and-so-it-begins—-the-a_b_249354.html
DC Town Hall….? hahahaha
That’s an AWESOME CAR! And it probably says God across the front ’cause we all know God is a red blooded american nascar driver at heart.
I’m suprised the guy didn’t start ranting about how Obama wants to take his car and give him some crappy little 65 HP electric hybrid instead.
If I wanna rev it up and inhale the fumes there’s nothing Ol Obama Hussien is gonna do about it!!!
Baddcog ~
I want to rip donuts across the Whitehouse lawn while throwing empty Coors cans out the windows and blasting Van Halen I at maximum volume till I get cuffed up like my name was Henry Gates… You in?
I will fly there to partake in that awesomeness. But Coors? I’ll have to spring for some PBR. Altho, if it’s free… I’ll drink it more-n-likely.
It better be filmed and with multiple camera angles too.
…i’m thinkin’ a maxxed out ’69 “general lee” dodge charger all orange n’ shit w/ a big ol’ stars n’ bars flag painted on the top would be good for that little adventure…
…o’course layin’ on the horn n’ playin’ “dixie’ might be in bad taste…
…just speculatin’…
Mark my words, gentlemen, when I finish school and get some experience (money) under my belt – I will buy a hotrod. Something ’65-’72, big block, American, convertible. Vroom, vroom, donuts, cheseburgers and ice cream on Sundays with my girls in the back.
I can almost see it now…
sure th general lee sounds good, really does bikesgonewild, however, I would suggest the car from the blues brothers. just seems more like it.
Beer and “donuts” at the whitehouse…maybe that can be Obama’s next regular guys summit?
Hell Yeah Big Johnny!
You even got my beer right. But I think it’ll have to by Skynard instead of Van Halen. Or maybe both, but Skynard first incase we get caught BEFORE the music change.
Only the strong shall prevail…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8360697575044509579
Gotta love the Godmobile. Light ’em up! ‘Murca, Fuck Yeah!