Day: August 6, 2009

RPOF’s Greer Distorts Health Care, Abortion Facts

Buck Banks

jim_greer4

Besides being unrelentingly partisan and awfully casual with written English, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer usually is pretty careful about what he says, even if he’s careless about how he says it. But yesterday he sent out a fund-raising e-mail that, to use the polite term, distorts the current debate over health care and its nasty little sub-issue, abortion.

Here’s what Greer wrote:

Friends,

We have all seen and heard countless news stories, television interviews and advertisements regarding President Obama’s plan for a government-run health care system. It’s hard to keep track of what the bill actually does, especially since most lawmakers, like President Obama, haven’t read the massive piece of legislation, and other leading Democrats, including Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Alex Sink, won’t take a position on it. But I read something today that is worth sharing.

Today the Associated Press reported that the health care plan currently supported by President Obama and the Democrats would allow for taxpayer funded abortions. As the father of four children, I can’t imagine living in a nation where citizens willfully allow their tax dollars to fund abortion. The fact that liberal lawmakers and media pundits have ignored this portion of the legislation is deeply disturbing and has reaffirmed my belief that we must join together to put a stop to it.

He then proceeds to solicit contributions to protect “our tax dollars from funding abortion.”

[…]

WHO: 2 Billion Could Contract H1N1 Flu

Buck Banks

From PRO-MED:

Health officials raised the alarm about a strain of swine flu that is resistant to the Tamiflu treatment as the virus claimed more lives on Tuesday [4 Aug 2009], with Viet Nam reporting its first fatal case. India and South Africa both reported their first deadly cases of the A(H1N1) virus late Monday [3 Aug 2009]. Maria Teresa Cerqueira, head of the Pan-American Health Organization office in La Jolla, California, said a Tamiflu-resistant mutation of A(H1N1) [the Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus] had been found around the US-Mexico border in El Paso and close to McAllen, Texas. Experts had gathered in La Jolla, California, on Monday to discuss responses to the outbreak, and warned that resistant strains were likely emerging because of overuse of antivirals like Tamiflu.

“In the United States Tamiflu is sold with a prescription, but in Mexico and Canada it is sold freely and taken at the first sneeze. Then, when it is really needed, it doesn’t work,” said Cerqueira late Monday. Cases of A(H1N1) that were resistant to the anti-viral medicine have now been found in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong and Japan.

As the northern hemisphere autumn approaches, and with it the onset of seasonal flu, the WHO is working with drug companies to ensure vaccines to cope both with H1N1 and seasonal flu will be available. World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the agency hoped to give an update on its vaccine plans later this week. Leading flu vaccine makers include Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis , Baxter, GlaxoSmithKline and Solvay.

Novartis has started human testing of H1N1 swine flu vaccine candidates while Sanofi-Aventis, the world leader in flu shots, will commence within days, company officials said on Tuesday [4 Aug 2009]. The launch of clinical trials is a key part of a widening program of work being undertaken by big pharmaceutical companies as they prepare for mass vaccination from next month. GlaxoSmithKline, the other “big three” flu vaccine supplier, said it would initiate clinical studies later this month. Health care officials are relying on a vaccine to contain the spread of disease, providing a potential sales windfall for those companies that are able to deliver quickly and in large volume.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

You couldn’t sell this script in Hollywood… A pregnant woman leaves her home to go overseas to have a child — who there’s not a passport for — so is in cahoots with someone… to smuggle that child, that previously doesn’t exist on a government roll somewhere back into the country and has the amazing foresight to place birth announcements in the Hawaii newspapers?

— White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, quoted by ABC News , on polls that shows large numbers still question where President Obama was born.

Republican Phone Prank Denies Citizens’ Voices

Buck Banks

As Jon so eloquently pointed out in the preceding post, the Republican Party is all about not allowing citizens to enter into a reasoned, informed conversation about health care reform. They prefer to shout reasonable people down, and that’s the point the Democratic National Committee was making with its “Enough of the Mob” video, released this morning.

Unfortunately, the RNC remains determined not to allow conversation on the issue. When callers dialed the RNC phone number given in the video, they were prompted to press 1 to speak to an RNC representative, but instead the RNC redirected those calls to the DNC’s telephone number.

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse described the RNC’s redirection to CNN as a “neat trick”:

“The RNC is inciting angry mobs to shout out legitimate discussion at public events across the country and now they want to ignore people who deplore their tactics,” Woodhouse said. “Republicans don’t want to have a discussion about the future of health care reform — they want to shout out — and now completely ignore — anyone who disagrees with them.”

According to the Washington Independent, RNC Chair Michael Steele took full credit for the prank:

[This was in] response, said Steele, to the White House arrogantly blaming regular Americans “like my mother, like my sister” for the health care impasse.

“I thought it was a good idea,” Steele said. “Don’t sit there and think you’re going to direct a bunch of angry liberals to call the RNC when I know full well what that’s all about. I get the joke. My response was, talk to your own party, because they’re the ones ginning this up.”

Typically, the Republican Party remains unaccountable for its obstructionism and unaccounted for in the essential debate over health care.