Mitch gets fact-checked

Back in June, Mitch McConnell was busy scaremongering over health reform on the Senate floor:

Take the case of Shona Holmes, a Canadian citizen who was told by the bureaucrats running the health care system in that country that she’d have to wait six months... six months to see a specialist to treat her brain tumor. Here’s how Shona described her plight: "if I'd relied on my government, I'd be dead."

Today the Associated Press exposed Mitch's dishonesty about Shona Holmes:

She never had cancer — a fact routinely omitted by the advocates who have seized on her case. Technically, she didn't have a tumor, either.

...The Mayo Clinic diagnosed Holmes with Rathke's cleft cyst, which the clinic describes as a rare fluid-filled sac that grows near the pituitary gland near the base of the brain and can cause hormone and vision problems over time. The condition is not known to be fatal and the clinic, in trumpeting her treatment, makes no claim that her life was in danger.

Republican Leader Repeats False Claim AGAIN

The DCCC issued this press release today:

Earlier today, House Republican Leader John Boehner again repeated a false talking point when he tried to claim Cap and Trade will cost the average family $1,700 a year. Boehner continues to stubbornly repeat this bogus claim even though the independent, non-partisan FactCheck.org called him out for using these incorrect numbers on Meet the Press. [Fact Check.org, 9/22/09]. Additionally, the non-partisan independent fact checker Politifact published a report calling this claim "false."

As Politifact made clear, the statement "that households will pay $1,761 in new taxes every year is based on a blogger's incorrect assumptions and overly simple math. The estimate does not account for revenue that will be returned to consumers in the form of rebates and other efficiency measures. Furthermore, the number is based on old numbers; the Treasury estimate was written on the premise that all permits would be sold, which, ultimately, is not the form that the Waxman-Markey legislation has taken. Finally, both Alexander and McCullagh portray money raised by selling these permits as a tax. We rate Alexander's claim False." [Politifact, 9/18/09]

BACKGROUND

• Republican Leader Boehner: "Democrats in Washington had egg on their faces when the Obama Administration's own estimates found that the national energy tax will cost families an extra $1,700 per year." [Republican Leader Boehner Statement, 9/30/09]



• Republican Leader Boehner: "Earlier today, the President addressed a United Nations ‘Climate Change Summit' in New York and touted a variation on the Democrats' national energy tax - legislation that, according to the Administration's own estimates, will cost families an average of $1,700 a year in higher costs." [Republican Leader Boehner Statement, 9/22/09]



• Republican Leader Boehner: "It's a cap and trade system, this big giant tax on the American people that this week, we just find out, the Treasury Department said will cost the average family $1,700 per year." [Meet the Press, 9/20/09]

McConnell's cry for freedom

Today's Herald-Leader includes this must-read editorial about Mitch McConnell:

McConnell was steamed [last week] because his hometown insurance giant, Humana, was ordered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to cease sending mailers to its Medicare customers warning of benefit cuts if Congress enacts proposed health care reforms.

...It's stirring, isn't it? Spine-tingling, really, to hear our senior senator defend the free speech rights of a corporation whose foundation and founder have pledged $1.5 million to his center at the University of Louisville. Humana's PAC and employees also constitute McConnell's seventh-largest contributor.

But then you'd expect nothing less from the man who patented the principle that "money is speech" and who has collected more than $3.2 million from health care interests over the last 20 years.

Republican Scare-Mongering

Cassandras of Climate

Today's column by Paul Krugman is great:

For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists.

So here we are, with the greatest challenge facing mankind on the back burner, at best, as a policy issue. I’m not, by the way, saying that the Obama administration was wrong to push health care first. It was necessary to show voters a tangible achievement before next November. But climate change legislation had better be next.

And as I pointed out in my last column, we can afford to do this. Even as climate modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is worse than we realized, economic modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the costs of emission control are lower than many feared.

Editorial comic roundup

(Click for larger image)

President Obama's weekly address

The President recaps the progress made during the intensive discussions with world leaders at the G-20 Summit.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

Video: Bunning sleeping on the job

Yesterday it was reported that our own Jim Bunning was caught napping on the job. We now have video of it:

Bunning falls asleep during health care bill mark-up

Think Progress has the story:

Yesterday during the Senate Finance Committee’s mark-up of chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care bill, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) chastised the whole operation. “I do not support a government takeover of the health-care system,” Bunning complained, saying the bill “confiscates more money from the taxpayers” and “tramples on American freedom and liberties.” Soon after, Bunning decided to take a little nap:

During opening remarks at the Senate Finance Committee session, the Kentucky Republican appeared fast asleep for several minutes, with his head cocked to the side and his eyes closed, before a staffer roused him. Bunning’s head was propped in his hand and his mouth was slightly open while he slept, several witnesses told HOH.

The staffer nudged his shoulder to wake him once it became clear that members of the audience had noticed the snoozing Senator (it was apparently the giggling from the crowd that tipped the staffer off).