Media: Stop Covering Sarah Palin’s Facebook Lies

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 09:39 pm

Read: Samuel Alito Is The Insurrectionist Threat To Democracy On The Supreme Court

When this person speaks about policy, please ignore her.

Sarah Palin damns Obamacare to Hell and lies in the process, leaving me to conclude that the best course of action for this country is for the media to join the rally for sanity and leave Palin’s Facebook lies out of our policy debates. She’s a celebrity, not a policy-maker. Her “ideas” are no more relevant to our public debate than Paris Hilton’s ideas.

“Lies, Damned Lies – Obamacare 6 Months Later; It’s Time to Take Back the 20!” by Sarah Palin.

I’m not sure why an evangelical gal like Sarah feels she needs to use swear words like “damned” in her Facebook titles, where young eyes can’t be sheltered from her potty mouth, but apparently this is how she rolls. Or, rather, how RAM, her well paid Facebook ghostwriter, rolls. Gosh, nothing says ready to lead like having to pay someone to write your less than accurate homages to policy for your Facebook Page.

Let us note that this is brought to us courtesy of the Politifact” Liar of the Year Award” Winner for her lie on this very same subject. Yes, who can forget the “Obama Death Panels” lie Palin used to frighten white people with just a year ago. Also, too, I’m moved by the churlish use of “Obamacare”, as if the President should be ashamed that he cares about the American people’s healthcare needs. Oh, my, we hail from different lands, Sister Sarah.

Let the lies begin.

Palin begins her Facebook screed against Obamacare by attempting to delegitimize “Obamacare” by alleging “in defiance of the will of the people, the President and his party rammed through this mother of all unfunded mandates.” Mother of all mandates? Again, with the language, sister Sarah. Tsk tsk. Mothers are good things where I come from. But see, I think Palin is still smarting from the will of the people in November 2008, so this is a particularly hurtful topic for her. In order to avoid reality, she likes to pretend that the election was some fluke brought to us by the Devil instead of an actual election reflecting the will of the people. Sore losers are not usually known for their objectivity.

“We found out that it’s even worse than we feared.” So, I guess lots more people have died from ObamaCare than she feared when she brought up death panels. What evidence does she use to support this allegation? None. No one died because of Obamacare.

However, look at this shiny distraction! On day two of the healthcare reform kick off (Palin clearly misses that the bill is being implemented slowly, over a period of several years), she quotes, “The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.” Yes, she wants you to believe they know this on day two. My goodness, those are some clever witches they have in the GOP. And they say witchcraft is out.

Linky linky for this? Oh, yes, the link leads to an article which has a backstory Palin left out. Surprise surprise.

Here’s the whole Breitbarted quote courtesy of the Houston Chronicle:

“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn’t fix Medicare soon, there’ll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress’ promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.”

More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.”

So, this began two years ago. Hmmm. Which is kinda hard to blame on Obamacare. However, more to the point, Palin’s main point that Obamacare is causing Medicare to implode was directly contrasted from a report last month from the Medicare trustees that healthcare reform has actually added an additional 12 years to the life of the program.

Palin also left out of her mention of the Houston Chronicle article that one of the main reasons doctors were abandoning Medicare was due to the vast amounts of paperwork and required hoops to jump through before payments were made. However, this problem will also be addressed at least in part by the conversion to electronic records and billing. A conversion which healthcare providers are being rewarded for with an addition 1% on each reimbursement if they convert to an electronic system.

Not that Sarah would understand this, as she let over 250 people in her state DIE waiting for care from Medicaid due to her incompetence. The Bush federal government had to shut down Palin’s state run program, making another first (the first first being her quitting her job mid-term to cash in on her celebrity) for the ex-governor as the first governor to have a federally funded state run Medicaid program shut down. Lawsuits are still pending on this one.

Perhaps now is the time to point out that the woman Palin is quoting believes that Congress needs to keep their promise to seniors. We all know that Palin thinks Medicare is “socialism” and shouldn’t exist at all. After all, if Obamacare is a Death Panel, what does that make Medicare? But taking her at her word, that she cares about Medicare, why is she against Obamacare, which is addressing the funding problems with Medicare? Methinks she doesn’t know this rather salient fact.

Making matters worse, the entire article she quotes so disingenuously is about the dysfunction of Medicare over the past few years, not about Obamacare. The article cited even blames the problem on something that occurred in 1997.

“The problem dates back to 1997, when Congress passed a balanced budget law that included a Medicare payment formula aimed at reining in spending. The formula, which assumed low growth rates, called for payment cuts if spending exceeded goals, a scenario that occurred year after year as health care costs grew. The scheduled cuts, expected to be modest, turned out to be large.”

In 1997, Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. But in all fairness, the funding problems with Medicare are more complicated than that. It is a legitimate problem, but it is not the result of Obamacare. Anyone who uses under-funded Medicare as a reason to point fingers at President Obama is obviously completely out of their element as well as being unfamiliar with the eight years of Republican rule under George Bush, or they wouldn’t even go there.

Perhaps this kind of complexity is simply above someone who had to write her three ideas for the Republican Party on her hand, and in doing so, revealed that she did not understand the difference or relationship between tax cuts and budget cuts. A failing, I might add, she apparently shares with many of her Republican brethern.

So it is in Palin’s second paragraph that she has already deliberately abused public trust by Breitbarting a scary quote and falsely attributing it to Obamacare, which is never related to said quote. In point of fact, Obamacare took steps to remedy this problem, so if Palin really cares about seniors and is serious about solutions, she should at least grasp this very important fact.

When the media reports on Palin’s Facebook screeds without fact checking them, are they suggesting that we take budget advice from someone who doesn’t even understand that she’s discussing a budget issue? She thinks the Medicare problem is a result of Obamacare. Hello? And while she sells herself as a fiscal conservative, Palin took over Wasilla when they had a surplus and then quickly ran into a 18 million dollar debt from sheer incompetence. She pulled a similar hit and run on the state of Alaska, leaving it to chase the limelight with the largest debt burden in the United States — a 70% debt to GDP ratio.

Pardon me if I’m not bowled over by her jingles about Death Panels and sore loser screeches about common sense conservatism. Thanks, but no thanks, to that bridge to nowhere, Ms Palin. I prefer a Medicaid program that is actually allowed to operate and I prefer candidates who at least try to be a part of the solution. Also, too, crazy debt is not my thing.

This is a festering, inaccurate pustule of a post by Palin and only serves to demonstrate her stark unwillingness to be serious about policy, her failure to understand budgets and her craven need to insert herself into a debate that has nothing to do with someone who quit her job as governor and furthermore, so mismanaged her own state’s Medicaid program that it was shut down by the federal government.

The blatantly out of context quote took place in her second paragraph out of sixteen paragraphs. Now you can see why she gets away with this nonsense. I shudder to think what the rest of this Facebook screed holds, but I have a long standing belief that if you lie this obviously in the second paragraph, you don’t deserve to be read or taken seriously. I hereby revolt from the notion that I must even bother debunking such garbage.

On that note, I encourage you to laugh heartily when confronted with these specious talking points which will infest the Right today and linger for several months until Palin has once again been outted as the liar she is. It’s not even worth engaging with anyone who is so dogmatic and demagogic that they would take this woman’s word for anything. If they don’t bother to click on her links and actually read the material she pretends back up her arguments, they deserve to be suckered.

Just stop the insanity and turn off the crazy. If the media wants to let Palin run another two month end game around sanity, so be it, but I’m not going along for the ride this time. She isn’t attempting to debate and she isn’t confused. She is deliberately using lies, fears and smears in an attempt to delegitimize this president. This is not an ideology debate. This is political terrorism via emotional fear.

Sarah Palin is a menace to civilized debate and a cancer on the morale of this country. She doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously anymore.

Let the revolution begin: Tell the media to leave Sarah Palin’s Facebook page out of our policy debates. Let this be a part of of Stewart’s “restoring sanity” rally. Please, for the love of all that’s reasonable and sane. And remember, healthcare reform has actually added an additional 12 years to the life of Medicare.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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