We've seen plenty of stories and diaries about how the far right is not about to abandon it's ugly rhetoric and violent tendencies just because HCR has passed the House and the main bill has been signed into law. I received a personal reminder of just how true this is in my email box today, sent by none other than Carmen Mercer, the new head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. For those of you unfamiliar with Carmen (or her predecessor), here's a rather informative story from Phoenix New Times from back in August as background.
Now follow me over the fold for some really wild wingnut propaganda, complete with lies, distortions, delusions, and general insanity.
It looks like the Minuteman line will be to try and link their pet issue (opposition to immigration reform) with the right-wing gnashing of teeth over the new HCR law. This thing is a wonder to behold, since it's absolutely divorced from reality about what's in the actual bill. Here's the full text and formatting of the email on the Minuteman website, just as it arrived in my inbox. Do be aware that this is a direct link to a site that's loaded with plutonium-level, radioactive crazy.
As you can see if you're brave enough to click through, this is a screed loaded with the worst kinds of lies and distortions without anything so crass as a reference to actual sources, even bad ones. For those of you too timid (or, more likely, smart) to click through, here a screen shot of the opening section. It contains most of the more blatant lies, as well as some of the most...creative formating.
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The number of lies on that part alone is astonishing. They try to claim that the HCR law is somehow (they never do quite explain how) going to grant "backdoor amnesty for all illegals". That is just the warm-up for the first large type linking a supposed "open border" policy (which, of course, does not exist) with what they still term "ObamaCare" throughout the email. You'd think they'd start to shy away from the "ObamaCare" label since it's all too likely to make most folks think of the other healthcare entity with "care" in it's name, Medicare. And since Medicare is a widely popular program it seems kind of foolish to be implicitly linking what you want the public to hate with something they generally love.
The main lie, of course, is that "ObamaCare" is going to give free healthcare to "illegal aliens" (that's "undocumented immigrants" for the rest of us) though that very idea seems to be based on a vast misconception of what exactly the HCR law is going to do. The email rants on about how there are no requirements to prove citizenship to "get ObamaCare" and that this is going to somehow enable these folks to get free healthcare at taxpayer expense. Since we all know (despite the fact that plenty of us would like it to) the HCR law doesn't give free healthcare to anyone who isn't basically getting it already. True, it expands Medicaid coverage further up the income scale, but Medicaid is already limited to citizens and legal residents and has identification provisions to ensure that. But hey, why let facts stand in the way of your "patriotic" rant.
The one contention that even approaches reality (but never gets there) is that employers will be required to cover "illegal aliens" in their employ. This is, in a basic sense, true, simply because employers will be required to cover all their employees. Of course, this is neither free nor is it aimed at nor generally available to undocumented workers unless they're working under forged papers without their employer's knowledge. Many, if not most, undocumented workers are employed with the full knowledge of their status, so that seems like a pretty ripe red herring. It's a slim reed in any case to base this insane rant on.
Most of the rest of the email is spent spinning number games to try and support the $102 billion figure they give at the beginning. It's all imaginary figures and utter nonsense, of course, and it also contains my absolute favorite bit of unintentional irony from the whole email:
Liars can figure but figures don't lie.
Seems to me that we can all figure that Carmen Mercer is a liar.