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Take a walk down memory lane with me to the time in 2009 during the health care debate when the Tea Party/AFP contingents were hand-wringing over death panels. Remember that? Sarah Palin was sure Grandma was going to have her plug pulled, and Chuck Grassley et al joined in the fun. Oh yes, that was a summer never to forget. Hot, humid, and stupid.

But. It was 2 years ago, after all, and so everything old is new again in reverse.

Yesterday, Rep. Woodall of Georgia got all verklempt about those mean, mean, bad Democrats scaring seniors over their health care. A really interesting little verbal brawl ensues between Chris Van Hollen and Woodall, who ends up waggling his finger and shouting "shame on you!"

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Consistency and those niggling little details are the bugaboos to the conservative ideology. It's easy to say that you want to privatize Social Security for future recipients, but that leaves the very real budget problem of knowing how to pay for current recipients, doesn't it? Where does that money come from? And if you allow those 20 year olds to take those FICA taxes to some private, non-government backed entity, what exactly happens if at 70 years old, their 401ks (or whatever vehicle is chosen) are worthless because the financial institutions have failed, like they did just over two years ago? Do you tell those 70 year olds, "Gee, that's a shame, but thems the breaks?"

Likewise, when you're dealing with Medicare, it's very easy to say that it's more efficient to offer vouchers to recipients...but then those niggling details crop up. For as much as Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels likens Medicare to a top down monstrosity, the reality is that Medicare is a non-profit enterprise. Unlike private insurance companies, whose sole purpose is to spend as little money on your medical costs as possible so as to offer a bigger profit to their executives and shareholders. So what happens when you need expensive care? For Daniels, maybe there needs to be a conversation about how your life just isn't worth the cash required. But who is in charge of making that decision, Mitch?

Daniels says that it should be up to the patient, but that isn't the way it would work. How many health insurance companies let their customers decide the care they want? So we come back to the absolutely unacceptable notion of rationing health care, based on what? Your income/socio-economic level? Your age? Even the statistical analysis of outcomes or underwriting depersonalizes and dehumanizes people in need of treatment. How would you feel if these companies told you your life isn't worth the expense?

WALLACE: You talked about Medicare 2.0, private vouchers, not a government program?

DANIELS: It will be a government program, but instead of a top- down monstrosity that we have today, once again I would divide the program and say to those who are in it or who are about to be in it, nothing will change for you.

But I think for the young people coming up who are going to shoulder the bill, we ought to trust them to make more of their own decisions. You could, again, concentrate the resources on the poorest people, and also in this case the least healthy people, people who are better off --

WALLACE: But you'd give them a private voucher so they could choose their own insurance plan?

DANIELS: I would.

WALLACE: You even say the government should put limits on end- of-life care. Are you talking about what Sarah Palin called the death panels?

DANIELS: No, I didn't say government should put limits on this, but what I'm worried about is the government making these decisions. I just stated what I think is a simple fact. I wish it wasn't, but I think it is. We cannot afford in an aging society to pay for the most expensive technology every -- for every single person regardless of income to the very, very last day.

WALLACE: Who makes that decision?

DANIELS: I think it has -- at least a part of it has to be the family and the patient himself or herself. I mean there --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Does the government at some point say we can't afford to give the 92-year-old the liver transplant?

DANIELS: Chris, I've told you, I think with some specificity, what I think ought to happen in Social Security and Medicare. I just answered the question honestly. I think this problem will have to be addressed. I don't pretend to have an exact answer to this one, except that autopilot won't work.

And surprisingly, it's Chris Wallace who points this out to Daniels, who, realizing he's been caught in the very details that make his plan unworkable, just refuses to respond any more.

Transcripts below the fold

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Meet the Press was its usual strange collection of overly-flogged stories and opportunities for marginal political viewpoints to be propounded as if they're mainstream. But there was one small snippet from Dick Armey where he slid in his pet peeve: Medicare.

Since this is the second time in a week that he's returned to this theme, a reality check is in order.

FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): I believe the folks that want to build the mosque there are making an unwise decision. But I think, when, when I look at the 18 percent of the American people that are enthusiastic about this grassroots movement, we see this as while it's an important issue. It's an issue that ought not to be distracting the president from the critical issues of unemployment, fiscal responsibility, a nation headed for bankruptcy. And the larger issues that affect the future of our children make this issue pale. On the question of should the president be sticking up for the Constitution, our folks say, "Well, great, I love him sticking up for the--we should have done that on medical--Medicare," where, in fact, he trashed the Constitution in the view of most of our folks. And in terms of him being here and then there, it reflects again our fear that this president is whimsical and doesn't really quite know where he is on any subject, even the larger subjects that are driving our folks in, in the street trying to make change in America.

Flash back with me to the August 16, 2009 edition of Meet the Press, where Dick Armey appears on Meet the Press with Rachel Maddow, Tom Daschle, Sen. Tom Coburn and...Dick Armey!

Death panels, anyone? While teabaggers are in an absolute froth over "death panels" and seniors are trembling over the potential loss of "their" Medicare, a position that Dick Armey used frequently to stir up town hall uprisings and the like, Rachel Maddow quietly calls him out on his personal radical views then.

MS. MADDOW: This is a really important point. The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY: I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW: This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY: Right. Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW: You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY: And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW: Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

Dick Armey and Paul Ryan march to the same tune. That's not altogether surprising, and Armey has remained consistent in his objection to "mandatory Medicare." But that's where his honesty begins and ends, because while he believes it should be abolished, he's also aware that Medicare and Social Security are: a) wildly popular programs; and b) not going to be made "voluntary". Knowing that, he used their popularity and the security they give seniors to whip up anger against health care reform, and in particular, the public option, which is where the whole "government-run healthcare" is terrible (for all but seniors) except where it isn't (for seniors only).

Meanwhile, Dick Armey remains healthy and fit, thanks to his Medicare which he cannot opt out of without also opting out of Social Security benefits, which he evidently has no problem receiving.

The only whimsy I see is Dick Armey's.

When asked how those Obama death panels were working out for her, Granny Grassley replied, "Hands off my Medicare!"

Open thread below...

...and thanks very much to our amazing readers for your helping John and David's book Over The Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane climb the Amazon charts! Your purchase at the link also helps C&L. Thank you!!!

The Mayo Clinic, the world famous institution cited by all sides in the contentious health care debate, defines schizophrenia as a serious brain disorder "in which reality is interpreted abnormally" resulting in "hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior." Apparently, that affliction is now running rampant among supporters of the Republican Party. As recent polling about conservative beliefs regarding Medicare, taxes, supposed "death panels," President Obama's citizenship and more shows, the crisis of Republican schizophrenia has reached epidemic proportions.

Here, then, are the five symptoms of incurable Republican schizophrenia:

(If you exhibit one or more of these warning signs, see your physician immediately. If you don't have health insurance - and if your state voted Republican, you're much more likely not to - Democrats will try to provide it for you.)

1. "Keep Government Out of Medicare." In July, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) described an angry constituent who confronted him at a South Carolina town hall meeting, "keep your government hands off my Medicare." Despite his best efforts to explain that Medicare is a government program, the voter, Inglis lamented, "wasn't having any of it."

But as new data from Public Policy Polling revealed, that same cognitive failure is now far more widespread than swine flu. While 39% of all Americans responded that the government should "stay out of Medicare," 59% of self-identified conservatives and 62% of McCain voters hold that oxymoronic view.

2. "Barack Obama is a Muslim." An April survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 11% of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, a figure largely unchanged since its polling started in March 2008. Yet 17% of Republicans and 19% of white evangelicals (74% of whom voted for John McCain) insist the President is an adherent of Islam, despite his repeated pronouncements and decades of church attendance to the contrary.

3. "Barack Obama Was Not Born in the United States." This contagion is running rampant among the ranks of Republicans. And even with repeated treatments of birth certificates and Hawaiian newspaper announcements from 1961, there is apparently no cure.

A DailyKos/Research 2000 poll found that a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. To be sure, this is a Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008. This week's PPP survey only confirmed the chronic birtherism plaguing the Republican Party:

Only 62% of respondents reported believing that Obama was born in the United States. 10% thought he was born in Indonesia, 7% thought he was born in Kenya, 1% thought he was born in the Philippines, and 20% weren't sure. Among Republicans 44% think he was not born here while just 36% believe that he was.

(In a promising development, only 10% of respondents weren't sure if Hawaii is part of the United States. On this score, conservatives were only slightly more confused than liberals and moderates.)

4. "Government Death Panels Will Euthanize My Grandma." Sadly, the Republicans' Birther and Deather psychoses represent a cradle-to-grave illness.

Despite the vaccinations administered by PolitiFact, ABC News, the New York Times and countless other care-givers, Republicans persist in their virulent health care death panel delusions. This out-of-control CTD (conservative transmitted disease) has spread like wildfire, thanks to vectors like Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. (Even a Republican like Senator Chuck Grassley, previously diagnosed by President Obama as sane, came down with the deather flu.)

An NBC poll this week quantified the deather madness: a staggering 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly. (Majorities also wrongly believe that reform proposals on the table would constitute a government "takeover" of the health care system, one which would cover illegal aliens.)

As MSNBC noted, viewers of Fox News - a strong predictor of Republican allegiance - were overwhelmingly afflicted by this health care dementia:

In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.

5. "President Obama Raised Taxes on Working People." The Republicans' profound cognitive disorders are not limited to their hallucinations about Barack Obama's birth or the health care imbroglio. As the Tea Party movement shows, furious right-wing zealots are outraged by no taxation with representation.

As promised, Barack Obama in the stimulus package delivered on his pledge of tax relief for 95% of American households. Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn't only jump start gross domestic product and refill empty state coffers in the second quarter of 2009. As Nate Silver thoroughly documented, "Obama has cut taxes for 98.6% of working households."

Nevertheless, frothing at the mouth Tea Baggers spouting Republican Tax Day lies took to the streets not to thank the President, but to blame him for the tax cuts they received. While Andrew Sullivan described their unreasoning mania as "adolescent, unserious hysteria," the Daily Show's Jon Stewart diagnosed their disorder:

"I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing."

Back in April, I appropriated Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic statement to conclude that with their rag-tag band of revolutionaries, secessionists and agitators for violence, Republicans were "defining political deviancy down." Sadly, the delusional and the deviant are now descending on town hall meetings with guns. The Republican schizophrenics are no longer just a danger to themselves.

UPDATE: Newsweek adds the "Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate" to its list of "Seven Falsehoods About Health Care." Meanwhile, the RNC added to a new pathology, suggesting in a poll that "GOP voters may be discriminated against for medical treatment" under a Democratic health care plan.

(This piece originally appeared at Perrspectives; the image via Huffington Post.)

Following this abysmal appearance on The Daily Show, it appears that Elizabeth McCaughey has decided to cut and run from her position at a large medical company.

Betsy McCaughey — an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats’ health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of “death panels,” as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute — has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a “leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market.”

From a press release:

CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN – News) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform. Read on...

At this time it isn't known if McCaughey resigned voluntarily or if she was asked to step down, but one thing is for sure -- her credibility on any issue regarding health care, or reform of the industry has been destroyed. Oh well, at least she'll have more time to spend with her family!

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(John Amato: I was involved in breaking the Specter story and asked him at the time if Grassley should be kicked out of the negotiating process because of his egregious statements. He said that if all Senators were kicked out of things because they made wrong statements there would be no Senators.

Well, Arlen Specter said he'd call Grassley about his "pulling the plug on Grandma" remark, and he certainly tried. Maybe he even got through!

Via Greg Sargent, something the corporate media has virtually ignored:

This passed unnoticed, but it’s a big deal: Over the weekend, and very quietly, Senator Chuck Grassley completely retracted his widely-reported claim last week that people have “every reason to fear” that the House health care proposal would create a “government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

The retraction was buried deep in this Washington Post article on Grassley’s role, with a spokesperson admitting Grassley doesn’t really believe what he said about “grandma”:

Grassley says he opposes that counseling as written in the House version of the bill, but a spokesman said the senator does not think the House provision would in fact give the government such authority in deciding when and how people die. The House bill allows patients to decide for themselves if they would like such counseling.

Let’s be clear: By clarifying that Grassley doesn’t think the House bill would “give the government such authority in deciding when and how people die,” his spokesperson completely repudiated his widely discussed claim. This goes much farther than Grassley did in a statement released Friday clarifying he’d never used the words “death panel” and was merely worried about “unintended consequences.”

So, either Grassley made his claim about “grandma” to a crowd in his home state last week and didn’t believe it; or he changed his mind since then.

Grassley’s retraction will get nowhere near the coverage his initial statement did. False or outlandish claims are “controversial,” so they get rewarded with media attention; their subsequent retractions tend to pass unnoticed, because the press has moved on to the next false or outlandish claim. The big news orgs blared Grassley’s initial assertion at the electorate for days, but almost no one will ever learn that Grassley didn’t really mean it.

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There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the frothing at the mouth right-wing rage over health care reform. But thanks to the 24/7 media's transformation of politics into just another form of entertainment, delusional Birthers, deceitful Deathers, raging Teabaggers and town hall intimidators are dominating press coverage of the debate. And it's all a recurring symptom, Rick Perlstein argues in the Washington Post, of a nation in which "crazy is a preexisting condition."

In his instant classic Nixonland, Perlstein documented how Richard Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," fanned the flames of racism, anti-communism and the budding culture war not only to take power in his time but to help produce a bitterly divided America in ours. Now in his Washington Post op-ed, Perlstein makes clear that we've been here before.

The repeated outbreaks of "black helicopters" in the 1990's, the National Indignation Convention in 1961, cries that the Civil Rights Act would "enslave" whites and countless other episodes of seeming conservative madness, Perlstein reminds us, result from the combustible combination of authentic fear and manufactured outrage:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

But Perlstein's cautionary tale is not merely one of the more things change, the more they stay the same. In its pursuit of entertainment over objective truth and conflict over common sense, he suggests, today's media environment rewards extremist claims and behaviors it once shunned:

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From Southern Beale, a very important point:

Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.

You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.

In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.

And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

Amen.