Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Affordable Care Act Misinformation

By John Ballard



The Affordable Care Act (the new law, signed into law by President Obama March 23) is being attacked from all sides, including a host of outright lies picked up by FactCheck.org and listed by Joe Paduda. The folks at Fact Check were fairly charitable in their report, allowing as how the process was so complicated and all it was easy for people to get confused. 



I'm with Paduda, that this crap is so far off the wall that only the most gullible, suspicious dimwits can bring themselves to believe it.



Ok. I'm not exactly what one would call a 'fan' of the health reform bill - too much coverage, not near enough cost control. There are plenty of issues with the current bill, more than enough to make serious students/wonks concerned without having to resort to outright lies.


Yet that is precisely what some are doing. Here, collected for your reading pleasure by the good folks at FactCheck.com, are the top nine falsehoods perpetrated by those not smart enough to focus on the real issues.



  • Requires patients to be implanted with microchips. (No, it doesn't.)

  • Cuts benefits for military families and retirees. (No. The TRICARE program isn't affected.)

  • Exempts Muslims from the requirement to obtain coverage. (Not specifically. It does have a religious exemption, but that is intended for Old Order Amish.)

  • Allows insurance companies to continue denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. (Insurance companies have agreed not to exploit a loophole that might have allowed this.)

  • Will require 16,500 armed IRS agents to enforce. (No. Criminal penalties are waived.)

  • Gives President Obama a Nazi-like "private army." (No. It provides a reserve corps of doctors and other health workers for emergencies.)

  • "Exempts" House and Senate members. (No. Their coverage may not be as good as before, in fact.)

  • Covers erectile-dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. (Just as it was before the new law, those no longer in jail can buy any insurance plan they choose.)

  • Provides federal funding for abortions. (Not directly. But neither side in the abortion debate is happy with the law.)



Details at the links. For example, the bill did not mandate implantable devices of any kind, least of all microchips. Rather, it said that implantable devices will be registered so that physicians can access data about safety and effectiveness in a way that "protects patient privacy and proprietary information." And again, it didn�t become law.

Selective paranoia. How many of those worried about microchips think about pacemakers, heart valves, stents and the pins in granny's new hip, all of which have file records and/or manufacturer's serial numbers. And forget about ubiquitous GPS location capability with which nearly everyone is in sheep-like compliance.

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Clearly most people simply believe what they are predisposed to believe and uncomfortable with new information in whatever nest they snuggle. tristero, Billmon and others discuss this phenomenon at Digby's place this morning. It seems an exercise in futility even to point out wrong information. Again I have flashbacks of the Sixties as I tried in vain to engage my Southern peers in conversations about race. It worked for a small number (who were too afraid to admit they might agree) but on the whole it has taken the passing of a generation or two to see meaningful changes in social patterns or the law. I so want to see this ash cloud of stupidity either settle or blow past, but I see little evidence of either happening. 



I have been waiting for a homophobic reaction to last week's presidential memo ending hospital visitation discrimination against gay and lesbian partners but the news so far has been quiet on this issue. (Video images of volcanic plumes are too good to waste, especially when they make an otherwise dull story about airline economics more interesting.) Most of Christendom will no doubt ignore the fact that Barack Obama's presidential memo is a more truly Christian gesture than all the sub-Christian rhetoric that typically comes from those saintly quarters.  



As in my younger years I am estranged from my Christian roots because so many churches are no longer on the side of the angels. And those that are seem too intimidated to take action lest they step on someone's toes.



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