I did a Search of the last two weeks of DailyKos a few minute ago, looking for stories and diaries that contained the keyword "birther."
There were 270.
This is insane. This is something that must have the neo-cons laughing out loud with pure delight.
Because the real "birther" conspiracy is working exactly as planned.
A few days ago, I talked with an elderly woman about health care reform. We were both waiting as our cars got oil changes.
This woman was absolutely opposed to the bill now in Congress, indeed, to any health care reform at all. Why?
"There are things in that bill that will let the government decide when old people die. There are things in that bill that will let the government decide who gets to see a doctor. No one's even been given a chance to read that bill yet; who knows what else is in there?"
All lies, of course, but lies I've heard before in the last few weeks, the kind of lies that neocons are brilliant at concocting, lies that spread more easily because the people who should be refuting them are busy giggling and snarking and sneering about....birthers.
You think that's not planned?
Bite down on this piece of logic. The birthers do not matter.
Not one iota. They have no power. They can not actually do anything to get Obama removed from the Presidency.
Do you really think that if they huff and puff enough, someone--who?--is going to send someone--who?--to the White House to throw the current President of the United States out in the street?
The birthers do not matter. They are a non-issue in terms of actually getting what they want.
So why are they constantly in the news? Why, every time the controversy of them dies down, does some neocon pundit, or Congressman or "journalist" say or do something that brings them to the country's attention again? (Like Eric Cantor's claim that it's actually liberals behind the birther "conspiracy?")
Because the birthers are pure gold when it comes to getting what the people behind them actually want......to distract liberals and progressives.
While people like us scamper happily after the birthers like a lot of Pavlovian-trained dogs, the neocons quietly but effectively spread lies like these:
From Politifact.com:
On the radio show of former Sen. Fred Thompson on July 16, 2009, [Betsy] McCaughey said "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner."
She said those sessions would help the elderly learn how to "decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care ... all to do what's in society's best interest or in your family's best interest and cut your life short."
Here's the link to the story: (I can never get a link to attach to a label. Live with it.)
http://www.politifact.com/...
Or how about the series of emails circulating throughout this country, again full of more carefully crafted lies about the proposed health care reform bill? Again, from Politifact, here are a few of those:
http://www.politifact.com/...
I received one of those emails the other day, from my elderly stepmother, who sent it to me as "proof" that Obama wants to absolutely control every aspect of health care in this country.
So what? One old woman, one lying email. Except that she also sent it to 37 other people--I counted the names--and each of them probably sent it to a dozen or so more.
Do the math.
These are the kinds of lies and slanders we should be diarying about, getting angry about, doing something about. These lies matter. They can actually erode support for things that desperately need to be fixed: health care, global warming, international tensions, and the two wars we're still fighting.
But we're too busy changing "Birthers, birthers, birthers!" to concentrate on that. Like hounds after a carefully laid false scent, we're howling and yelping after those absurd and totally impotent birthers, while back in the shadows, the neocons grin in delight. Every moment spent on the birthers means less time spent on digging out and refuting the lies that are eating away at the support Obama and concerned Democrats need to get real reform through Congress. Every bit of space devoted to the birthers on this blog and others means less space available to get facts out to the public.
Facts that could refute the subtle but deadly slant in articles like this:
http://www.cnsnews.com/...
This was not the first time the president had used his grandmother to illustrate his point on health care. In an April 2008 interview with The New York Times Magazine, Obama suggested much of the cost of health care in America comes from the elderly and those with chronic illness.
"That’s where you get into some very difficult moral issues," Obama said – specifically considering whether "in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else's aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they're terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question..."
...The president told the magazine that the chronically ill and elderly represent 80 percent of American healthcare costs, and said, "(T)here is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place."
...Michael Tanner, a senior policy fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told CNSNews.com the question illustrates the fundamental contradiction in the health-care debate.
"Everybody wants to live forever, and everybody wants their loved ones to live forever, and nobody wants to pay for it," he said.
Tanner suggested Devinsky’s question gets to the root of the matter -- whether government should make decisions like the ones Obama made about his own grandmother.
Ah, yes. Obama might save his granny, but he's wondering how much money it would save if the government let yours or mine die. Just a thought, fellow citizens. Just a thought.
The kind of thought we should be concentrating on refuting.
I just did another two-week Search of this site using the keywords rationing+health care and the number of stories and diaries on that topic was 137.... half as many as on the topic of birthers.
(On the right of the Dkos site as I type this, there is a strip listing four DKos videos. One is on Rockefeller and the "co-op" plan. The other three are about... birthers.)
Why do we spend so much time and effort chasing after birthers? Because it's fun. We've never actually been scared of them, and our initial outrage has degenerated into an opportunity to snark and quip and sneer....if you don't believe me, take a good look at most of the comments on the latest "birther" diaries. But while we amuse ourselves, the neocon leadership delights in our lack of attention to things that matter infinitely more. Do you think that Cantor's recent remarks weren't carefully planned? What could be more calculated to revive our flagging interest than the astonishing announcement that the birther conspiracy was actually--"Are they kidding?!!!"-- our conspiracy? Google "Eric Cantor"+birthers and you'll get more than 75,000 hits. Sweet! Very sweet...for Eric Cantor and the rest of the neocon gang.
"How awful?" "How dare he?" And off we go, gleefully distracted once again, baying and yelping, chasing the reek of birthers, following the scent of this certificate versus that certificate, what Lou Dobbs said and what Rush Limbaugh said, gossiping about birthers, enjoying our outrage, honing our quips, while truly dangerous lies spread and spread and spread....
(My thanks to the people on Kos who have written about the subjects above. I have tremendous respect for you and I'll keep reading what you write. I also normally appreciate and enjoy the humorous and satirical writers on DKos....but right now, I'd just the hell like them to quit singing the tune that serves no one but the neocons.)
UPDATE: I see that Media Matters is now using their limited resources to condemn Lou Dobbs for his "birther" comments by running spots on his own show. What a coup! That'll show him!
That'll show him that Media Matters is being sucked in like the rest of us, wasting their time and money on the non-issue of spreading the "truth" about the birthers instead of taking on the neocon lies about health care reform, the government's economic policies, torture and attempts to get us out of a war we've been involved in much longer than we were involved in WWII.
Twenty years from now, I wonder how many historians will say, "To a certain extent, progressive causes faltered because of the distraction of what history has shown to be a relatively minor "birther" controversy."
We are so being played.....for the suckers we are.