realthog

There's an extraordinarily good opinion piece by Frank Rich in yesterday's New York Times about the nontroversy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

The fact that the site isn't at Ground Zero and the building isn't going to be a mosque is a clue to the integrity of the wingnuts who're stirring this issue up and marketing Islamophobia in the selfish hope of gaining themselves some political capital -- the Goebbels trick, in other words. But what Rich points out is something beyond that. Our troops, he says, and specifically Gen David Petraeus, are trying to win a war in Afghanistan/Pakistan and, in essence, in the Arab world as a whole. The anti-Islam hatemongering the wingnuts have taken it upon themselves to purvey is a very large obstacle placed in Petraeus's way.

You have to ask yourself, Which side are these people on: America's or Osama bin Laden's? To be honest, you don't have to ask yourself all that hard: the answer's pretty obvious. They're on their own side . . . and if that involves selling out the American people and giving succor to al-Quaeda, they don't care.

Here's the start of Rich's article. I strongly urge you to follow this link to the rest of it.

How Fox Betrayed Petraeus

THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

As I remarked to

pds_lit last night over our mushroom stroganoff (yep, I got a mushroom bargain in a local store so bought in bulk), the only political parties that conduct business primarily though lying are the repressive ones -- the Hitler regime, the Stalin regime, the Kim Jong-il regime, the Ahmadinejad regime, and so forth. Oh, and, uncomfortably close to home and embarrassing to admit, the modern US Republican Party.

Other politicians are of course not innocent: almost all of them fib on occasion, and/or "spin". But the deliberate use of outright lying as an everyday political tool is the province of politicians whose instincts are anti-democratic and repressive.

In no context could this be clearer than the current "debate" over healthcare reform. It's hard to pin the scabrous false scaremongering e-mail that's doing the rounds directly on the GOP leadership (according to some reports, it's a fabrication done by insurance-company lobbyists), but in many other instances the GOP -- and the GOP leadership, at that -- can be seen right out in the open lying in a manner to draw admiring gasps from the likes of Richard Nixon.

Our beloved media, of course, regard as "balance" the placing of these flat lies alongside the facts and the attempt to find "middle ground" between the two: how often does one have to repeat that the midway point between truth and a lie is still a lie?

Whatever: yesterday

frostokovich sent me a copy of a statement given to the Canadian Senate by conservative Canadian Senator Hugh Segal on June 22 eviscerating the "facts" offered a week earlier to the US Senate by minority leader Mitch McConnell; in so doing, of course, Segal demolished another myth promulgated by the US right -- that the argument over healthcare is one between conservatives and liberals, because Segal's own political views exemplify the fact that all over the rest of the developed world national health services are supported with equal enthusiasm by left and right.

But that's an aside. Here's Segal's statement, taken verbatim from Canadian Hansard's transcript:

Kingston General Hospital

Hon. Hugh Segal: Honourable senators, a week ago in the United States Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican senior senator from Kentucky, made a speech opposing health care reform proposals advanced by the Obama administration. In that speech, he chose Kingston General Hospital as his example of all that is allegedly wrong with Canadian universal health care.

Perhaps unwittingly, Senator McConnell distorted, misrepresented and misstated how long KGH patients might wait for surgery. I have a duty as the senator from Kingston-Frontenac-Leeds to correct him on the floor of this chamber.

Thanks to Saskatchewan NDP Premier Tommy Douglas, Conservative Prime Minister Diefenbaker and Liberal Prime Minister Pearson, we developed a tenet of national health policy that has served millions of Canadians extremely well. Nothing is beyond improvement. However, Canada has a health care system that allows total access to every Canadian citizen or permanent resident, regardless of their province or territory, and regardless of their financial circumstances.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Unfortunately, Senator McConnell's facts and statistics were absolutely incorrect. He informed the United States Senate that there is a 196-day waiting period for hip replacement at KGH. The actual number is 91 days. He stated that it takes 340 days, on average, for knee replacement surgery. The actual number is just over 100. He maintained that cancer surgeries, including brain surgery, can take upwards of three months. At KGH, the waiting period is eight days for neurosurgical cancer, 16 days for breast cancer and 49 days for prostate cancer.

Senator McConnell said that patients in Ontario may wait six months for cardiac bypass surgery. The median wait time, thanks to the outstanding work done by Dr. Keon many years ago, is actually 16 days.

I am troubled that my American colleague, in his misrepresentation of a proud institution that has served Kingston for 170 years, has compelled me to remind him that, according to the American Institute of Medicine, there are 48 million Americans without health coverage of any kind, 9 million of whom are children. Without health insurance, a total hip replacement will cost, on average, $39,299 U.S., according to Blue Cross Blue Shield. Even with health insurance, the out-of-pocket costs for Americans for deductibles and co-insurance will typically be $3,957.

I am putting on the record accurate and current facts and figures relating to the same procedures referenced by my American colleague. I add that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average lifespan in his state of Kentucky is 75.2 years. According to Statistics Canada, that number is 80.4 years in Ontario and 78.3 years in Kingston. Furthermore, according to the Fraser Institute, in a recent study, the U.S. spent $6,714 per capita versus $3,678 in Canada in 2004.

Finally, while Canada is struggling to meet the ever-increasing demands and costs of our health care system, no Canadian will need ever declare bankruptcy to obtain life-saving treatment for their son or daughter. This fact makes the struggle worthwhile.

I regret that Senator McConnell found it necessary to "inform" the American public of the hazards of universal health care by maligning a most professional, dedicated and capable institution such as the Kingston General Hospital.

In light of this, it's not unnatural for us to expect some sort of retraction and/or apology from Senator McConnell. Okay, I'll pause a moment to let the hollow laughter subside.

And it's not just from Senator Segal that McConnell knows he got his facts wrong. Kingston General Hospital's chief of staff, Dr David Zelt, was moved to write to McConnell correcting his figures. The Toronto Globe and Mail gave the details:

..........................................................McConnell...........................KGH
Hip replacement................................... 196 days.......................91 days
Knee replacement.................................340 days.....................109 days
Cardiac bypass surgery........................6 months.......................16 days
Neurological cancer surgery.................3 months.........................8 days
Breast cancer surgery...........................3 months.......................16 days
Prostate cancer surgery........................3 months.......................49 days

In other words, you have to wait a bit for non-urgent operations -- but only a fraction of the time McConnell stated. Where McConnell was silent was on waiting times for urgent operations -- because, of course, in essence there aren't any waiting times for those.

(In the US, of course, the waiting time for an urgent operation can often be in effect infinite, in that you're dead by the time the insurance company gives the go-ahead -- or, if you don't have insurance, you're likely dead anyway.)

Initially, McConnell could have offered the claim that he had been misinformed or that otherwise he'd got his "facts" in a twist. He'd then have been guilty of only a B-Grade lie: presenting as a matter of established fact something that has not been established at all.

But to persist in the lie once the correct information has been made available to you, or simply to remain silent so that your original error is left to stand? That's a prime-time, Numero Uno, Grade-A SuperWhopper lie: the type of which Goebbels said, "If you've got to tell a lie, tell a big one."

Which brings me back to my original point: all politicians lie occasionally, but it's diagnostic of the repressive politicians and demagogues that they do so habitually, actually preferring the option of outright lying to the other political and rhetorical tools available to them. McConnell and his cohorts perhaps could present a coherent argument against healthcare reform; instead they choose dishonesty.

By their own deeds we must judge them.

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Entries tagged with mitch mcconnell

Rich riposte

why is it the GOP can only conduct arguments by lying?

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