Democracy Has Prevailed.

August 11, 2015

Why Does Betsy Mccaughey Have Any Credibility?

This past Sunday the Tribune-Review published this piece by Betsy Mccaughey.

It's a warning about how the President's Clean Power Plan will ruin us, just ruin us entirely.

Wasn't Betsy Mccaughey one of the loudest "Death Panel" screamers, warning us about how the Affordable Care Act was going to ruin us, just ruin us entirely starting with our ailing grandmothers?

Why, yes.  Yes she was.

From Mediamatters:
As Media Matters for America senior fellow Jamison Foser pointed out, what is most problematic about this individual is not simply her false and misleading claims, but that despite her consistent pattern of promoting falsehoods, the media continue to provide her with a platform -- and a veneer of legitimacy. Most notably, Rupert Murdoch-owned papers The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post have repeatedly provided her space on their op-ed pages, and Murdoch's Fox News Channel has repeatedly hosted her and advanced her claims. As The Atlantic's James Fallows has noted, she is an example of someone for whom there "seems to be almost no extremity of being proven wrong which disqualifies" her from being given a platform in the media. Indeed, the media's willingness to treat her as if she were a legitimate policy expert has continued even after she has backtracked on many of her claims after they were debunked.
So why should we treat her as if she had any sort of credibility?

In fact what's happened to all of the Obama doomdays our conservative friends have warned us about?  For an answer to that question, we turn our lonely eyes to Paul Krugman:
What did the men who would be president talk about during last week’s prime-time Republican debate? Well, there were 19 references to God, while the economy rated only 10 mentions. Republicans in Congress have voted dozens of times to repeal all or part of Obamacare, but the candidates named President Barack Obama’s signature policy nine times over the course of two hours. And energy, another erstwhile GOP favorite, came up only four times.

Strange, isn’t it? The shared premise of everyone on the Republican side is that the Obama years have been a time of policy disaster on every front. Yet the candidates on that stage had almost nothing to say about any of the supposed disaster areas.

And there was a good reason they seemed so tongue-tied: Out there in the real world, none of the disasters their party predicted have actually come to pass. Mr. Obama just keeps failing to fail. And that’s a big problem for the GOP — even bigger than Donald Trump.
And then he talks a bit about Mccaughey's "speciality", Health Care Reform:
Talk to right-wingers, and they will inevitably assert that it has been a disaster. But ask exactly what form this disaster has taken, and at best you get unverified anecdotes about rate hikes and declining quality.

Meanwhile, actual numbers show that the Affordable Care Act has sharply reduced the number of uninsured Americans — especially in blue states that have been willing to expand Medicaid — while costing substantially less than expected. The newly insured are, by and large, pleased with their coverage, and the law has clearly improved access to care.
And where are those death panels?  Ms Mccaughey, can you help a blogger out ?

5 comments:

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

For an answer to that question, we turn our lonely eyes to Paul Krugman:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

Credible truth teller ungodly progressive Amanda Marcotte claimed the Bush Administration tortured people to death. with waterboarding.

"many who died from the torture she [Dana Perino of Fox News] is defending.
...
actual people who have feelings and thoughts and consciousness and are actual people, and to torture them. Sometimes to death.

I don’t even know what to say sometimes."

http://rhrealitycheck.org/reality-cast/2015/08/10/conservatives-struggle-sorting-fact-fiction/

What were their names?

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

More Obamacare lies Debunked by Politifact and Media Matters.

The claim is a straightforward one: That under the so-called Affordable Care Act, the federal government will recognize and subsidize a great deal of hokum, things like naturopathic medicine and acupuncture that have no scientific basis, that have been clinically shown to be useless or worse, and that are rooted in rank mysticism, from the “qi” energy that acupuncturists claim to manipulate—and which does not, technically speaking, exist—to the “innate intelligence” underpinning chiropractic theory—which does not, in fact, exist, either. As endless peer-reviewed scientific studies document, this stuff is pure quackery

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414434/politifact-and-me-kevin-d-williamson

Ol' Froth said...

LOOK OVER THERE!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

Something specific that has been bothering me about recent complaints regarding the Clean Power Plan, one of which you drew attention to with your post about Joe Bastardi's recent article, is the repeated assertion that the plan's provisions would reduce global temperatures by only about 0.01 degrees C. by 2100. I've seen slighly higher numbers, such as 0.018 and even 0.03 degrees. The tricky thing is identifying the source of the numbers. McCaughey says her number is an official EPA estimate, but I can't find the EPA publishing such a number anywhere. Judith Curry cites the 0.03 degree estimate but gives no indication from where she got that number. Bastardi appears to be pulling his 0.01 degree estimate from Lamar Smith's questioning of Gina McCarthy during her appearance before the House Science, Space, and Techology Committee. Again, Smith is vague about where he got that number from and McCarthy did not address the validity of that estimate. I tracked down the 0.018 degree estimate to a paper by Paul Knappenberger and Patrick Michaels, who used the EPA's MAGICC software to come up with that number. Unfortunately for the HTTTs of the world, Knappenberger and Michaels have a problematic "research" history. If that is the sole source of all these confident assertions, let's hope somebody competent is taking a hard second look at the numbers. Of course they could be right but that would just suggest the president's plan is too timid, not that it's a fool's errand.