Today is the last day you can sign up for health insurance via the Affordable Care Act exchange.  Here’s the chart thrown up by Fox News:

Look at that!  LOOK AT IT!  Look at how far short “Obamacare” has fallen from its goal!  IT’S A TRAIN WRECK!  WE TOLD YOU SO!  ARGLE-BARGLE!

Argle-bargle indeed.

Let’s pretend we studied propaganda techniques in school and take a look at this chart.

Here we’ve isolated the chart and done some examining of the units of measurement so generously provided by Fox News Corp.

There are eight divisions.  I’m lazy, so I’m going to go with the 6,000,000 number since it’s even.  It takes up three of the divisions, which means that each division is worth exactly 2,000,000.

So for each line that the bar reaches, that’s another two million people who have signed up for health insurance on the ACA exchanges.

The second bar reaches just past the eighth line, which means that…

Hold on there, bucky, that can’t be right, can it?  The second bar reaches past the eighth line, but Fox News Corp. has labeled it 7,066,000.

But if each line is worth 2,000,000…

There, I fixed that for you, Fox News Corp.

Here’s what we tell the third graders: always look to see who is giving you information and what they’re trying to sell you.  Here we find that Fox News has deliberately distorted the comparison between the 6 million and 7 million columns so that it looks like “Obamacare” has fallen short of its goal by about eleventy-million.  (Either that or they are incredibly incompetent.  It’s the classic choice of “stupid or evil.”)

But there’s actually more lying to look at:

We see that as of last Thursday (March 27), the ACA had registered six million people, but that is short of the actual goal of seven million.

However, that’s a lie.  The 7,000,000 figure was the Congressional Budget Office’s original estimate of how many people would sign up for insurance via the federal exchange.  Because of the website’s bumpy start (sure, private industry contractors can always do a better  job…), the CBO revised that estimate downward to 6,000,000.  Again, this is not a goal, it’s an estimate.

So here’s the actual news:

Based on the CBO’s revised estimate, the Affordable Care Act goalpost of 6,000,000 people signing up for health insurance on the federal exchange was passed four days before the deadline.

Here’s what Fox News Corp. reported in its chart:

Obamacare has failed to meet its goal of 7,066,000 people by a factor of about 2.66.

Here’s the deal, O conservative acquaintances: we can differ on whether “Obamacare” is a good thing or not—personally, I think it is a waste of time: let’s go straight to single payer universal healthcare.  But you cannot pretend that Fox News Corp. has done anything but lie to you with this chart.  Not to me, darlings; I don’t watch that particular entertainment channel.  To you.

And so what you have to ask yourself is what I would teach third graders to ask: What are they trying to sell you, and why?

Feel free to respond in comments, but we’re only discussing the particulars of this chart.  Comments about the ACA and its legitimacy will be deleted.  There will be no Gish Galloping here.

(hat tip to Media Matters)

UPDATE

As of midnight last night…

There, I updated that for you, Fox News Corp.

Hey there—it’s a bonus late-night liberal rant!

As you may be aware, the Republican party tends to have issues with women voters.  (It also has issues with black voters, Hispanic voters, educated voters, and young voters, but let that pass.)

So in Texas, where local toadstool Greg Abbott is running for governor against the lady Democrat Wendy Davis, the GOP has started yet another PAC aimed at women voters to splain to them why voting for Republicans is not as horrible as they might think.

Yeah.

So the nice (R) lady in charge of this thing was asked about equal pay for women.  And lo: she did not disappoint.  You can go read that if you like, but for me, here’s the money quote.  After agreeing that Texas women “want and deserve equal pay,” honcho Cari Christman went on to say:

“But honestly, Jason, we don’t believe the Lilly Ledbetter Act is what’s going to solve that problem for women. We believe that women want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.”

Ahem, as Delores Umbridge would say.  The Lilly Ledbetter Act is not rhetoric.  It is a real-world solution, otherwise known as a law.  “Real-world solutions, not more rhetoric” is what Aristophanes would identify as rhetoric.

Why aren’t these people tarred and feathered?

I’ll get back to Burning Man plans tomorrow.  Today I want to toss out a couple of links that have been sitting around waiting for me to share them.

People, there are crazies among us.  Lots of them.  Many, if not most, of them completely conservative wackadoodles.

Do not mistake me: I don’t like name-calling, and there are plenty of ways to be conservative/Republican and still make a valuable contribution to society. How and also ever, because of the internets we are now able to see into the deepest recesses of the fearful, unhappy lizard brains of the far right.  Worse, they’re able to put it out there where we cannot help but see it.  It’s really squicky.

I suppose we’ve always had these people around, but mostly they kept to themselves (and for reasons that will become clear in a moment).  If they published anything, it was apt to be typed and mimeographed and handed out at the lodge meeting.  Now, they have the magic of 21st century technology at their fingertips, and they use it.

Check out these links, and then we’ll chat.

• http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/latest-government-conspiracy-theory-fake : Yes, that’s right.  Snowpocalypse was a government conspiracy.
• http://www.riseearth.com/2014/02/what-church-isnt-telling-you-about.html#.Uxh0pV7Vgq_ : How nice a guy can Pope Francis be if he’s concealing space aliens from us?

These next two are, scarily, not fringe lunacy:

• http://www.first-draft.com/2014/03/today-on-tommy-ts-obsession-with-the-freeperati-oh-so-do-mi-o-edition.html : The whole thing is worth the read, but scroll down to just past the Dante’s Internet graphic (cute) and read that huge block of type.  (‘SHTF’ is prepper for ‘Shit Hits The Fan,’ prepspeak for when it all comes undone.  (‘Preppers’ are those who are convinced that SHTF is inevitable and who ARE TAKING STEPS BY GOD TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AND THEIR LOVED ONES DAMMIT!!!1!))
• https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=771001902923833&id=135010313189665 : ::sigh::

I had another link, to a roundup of conservative religious reaction to Russell Crowe’s Noah movie, but I can’t find it.  And I could have clogged this post with dozens/scores/hundreds of similar websites.

So why do I find this display of human frailty endlessly fascinating?  I think it’s the absolute fearfulness with which these people view the world. It’s like they’re literally zombies, infected with some virus to which the rest of us are immune but which reduces them to paranoid automatons.  The first two links are just amusing crazytalk, but the last two are worth noting because of the twin responses to this virus, rage and fear.  The prepper is consumed with anger at the world; the endtimers retreat into fearful incantations and shibboleths.

Here’s the most important point: their fear is not occasioned by their worldview—they’re not scared because they see things to be scared of.  It’s the reverse: their brains seem to be hardwired to be fearful, and so they see things to fear.  And if they don’t really see things to fear, their brains organize the randomness of reality into some really scary shit.  Where you and I would see some domestic and international political problems that require our attention and teamwork to be resolved, these people see vast machines that are out of their control, and their main response is to run away.

It’s exactly like our little dog Mia.  Whenever the doorbell rings, she barks and barks and barks. Even when we invite the people into our home and talk amiably with them, she barks.  Even when it’s the cleaners who have come every week for years, she barks.  Is there a threat?  Not even, but she barks: her brain is so fearful that she has no choice.  (She flinches even when my lovely first wife, whom she adores, reaches to pet her.)

Why do their brains work this way?  Pleasure, pure and simple.  Just like most of us go see 3 Days to Kill or Captain Phillips or Non-Stop for the frisson of adrenalin we get from the fake fear, these peoples’ brains provide them with an emotional rush every time they think of black helicopters or the Anti-Christ.

All I can say is, bless their hearts.  It’s a hell of a way to live.  And there is no cure.

One of the most gobsmacking brainfarts on the part of the conservative side of America is the inherent contradiction in their positions on a) tax cuts; and b) social welfare.  In a nutshell, it says that if we give the rich more money, they will work harder (with undoubted benefit to all of us), but if we give the poor more benefits (even if temporary, as is the norm), they will just get lazy.  We laugh, but the right wing believes it.

How, you might ask, is this even possible?  The answer is essentialism, a term I encountered recently in this Slate article.  As amateur philosophers, we all recognize that things can be grouped into categories, and often we base those groupings on the essence of the individuals.  For example, as the article says, dogs are “doggy” and cats are “adorable, fluffy little jerks.”

The philosophical trap we fall into, however, is that we start to believe that many surface attributes are in fact essential when they are not.  This would include some physical traits, such as sex, race, etc., but it can also include social traits or abstract traits, like gender (not the same as sex—see what I did there?) or religion.

Or economic status.

The researchers in the article devised statements to test peoples’ sense of essentialism with such phrases as ““It is possible to determine one’s social class by examining their genes.”  In other words, that’s just the way “those people” are—they were born that way.

Rich people were found to be much more likely to believe that their class status and that of others is determined largely by essentials.  Poor people are poor because they’re… you know… poor people.  People like us, on the other hand…

None of this surprises me at all.  I’m just glad to have a name for it.  Now if we could just find a cure for it…

So, the founder of Domino’s has a sad.

One of the more offensive comments rightwingers make about employers not wanting to provide their female employees with perfectly legal medication as part of their healthcare is that if women don’t like the religiousy beliefs of their employers, they are free to seek employment elsewhere.

I have a counter-offer: if Tom Monaghan’s deeply held religiousy beliefs conflict with the law of the land, he is free to sell off his interests and go do something else.

I haven’t been getting blog posts out of my head onto the page for a while—a long while—and so last night I decided on a plan of action:

1. Move my WordPress app to the dock on my iPad, where it is always in front of me.
2. Stop waiting to formulate coherent thoughts into well-crafted essays.

So here we go. Fragments.

Today we have Bobby Jindal, the up-and-coming-Republican-who-totally-does-not-look-like-Kenneth-the-Page,^[1] totally solving the birth control issue. The birth control issue, you may recall, has nothing to do with women being afforded the opportunity to control their reproductive systems, but is all about the religiousy^[2] freedomy stuff. Corporations should not have to violate their religiousy freedoms by offering birth control when it conflicts with their deeply held religiousy beliefs.

First of all, before we get to Jindal’s Gordian solution, I have to say that I was unaware that corporations had deeply held religious beliefs. We all know that they’re people, at least since 1886, but do corporations pray? More on that in a moment.

Jindal, in the meantime, wants to help everyone out. And it’s so easy! Just make birth control available over the counter instead of by prescription! So easy! Now corporations don’t have to violate their deepliest held religiousy beliefs and provide contraceptives to their female employees—those slutty slut sluts can simply go buy it themselves! Thereby placing a financial burden uniquely on their female employees not borne by those other employees, i.e., men!

Oh, wait.

Here’s the deal on corporations’ deeply held religiousy beliefs. It’s bull. All of it. If the owner of Job’s Christian Widgets does not believe in birth control, he does not have to buy it. She does not have to buy it. Whatever.

But he/she does have to provide it in Job’s Christian Widgets’ health insurance as a matter of health. And why is this not a violation of Mr./Mrs. Job’s own personal deeply held religiousy beliefs? Because providing health insurance (which employees are at least in part paying for) does not keep Mr./Mrs. Job from worshipping freely. At all. Ever. In any way.

Matter of conscience, you say? Bushwah. Let us presume that Mr./Mrs. Job is a good old-fashioned Southern Baptist. Leaving aside the fact that Southern Baptists didn’t give a rat’s ass about contraceptives until about 40 years ago, we can guess that he/she is still completely opposed to the consumption of alcohol, and yet there is no movement afoot to support stripping JCW’s employees of their ability to have a cold one after work. (Or the deeply religiousy Mr./Mrs. Job themselves, for that matter. The corporation, on the other hand, might have difficulty doing shots with the gang after the shift.)

Mr. Jindal’s brilliant solution is just one more rightwing “tails we win, heads you lose” proposals.

—

^[1] Totally a GHP alumnus, Theatre 90
^[2] My new word. Religiousy : Religion :: Truthiness : Truth

Rick Santorum, whose Google problem has been well documented — don’t bother clicking on those links , since they all go to the same place ; I merely link to exacerbate Rick Santorum’s well-documented Google problem—really blew it in the GOP debate last night.

The moderator sandbagged him with a YouTube question from a gay soldier serving in Iraq, and Santorum did his Santorum thing, saying that the repeal of DADT was “social engineering” and that if he were elected President he would reinstate DADT.

The audience, of course, booed… the gay soldier. Of course. Nothing to say about that except that the Republican base seems intent on completing their devolution into knuckle-dragging yahoos.

Let’s talk about “social engineering.” That’s Republican code for “lifting of statutory discrimination against People Who Are Not Like You And Me,” and here I am speaking as an upper middle class white male, which to the Republican brain is the only possible You and Me that could be considered.

So what would you call it if you enacted a law to suppress a naturally occurring segment of the population in an organization, to hide them utterly, and if they dared show themselves, expel them from the organization? In other words, you crafted a law to make sure that this naturally occurring segment of the population vanished. What would you call that? That would seem to me to be the quintessence of “social engineering.” But that certainly will never occur to the Republicans. (Actually, I’m sure it has. They’re just manipulating the yahoos.)

The rest of the GOP field last night maintained a discreet silence. After the debate, when asked about the booing, the only comment from anyone, including Santorum’s people, was that the booing was “unfortunate.”

I’ll say it was unfortunate, only not in the way that the GOP minions want you to think they meant it. They didn’t mean that it was a shame and a disgrace to the Republican party that audience members for their Presidential candidate debate booed one of our troops. They meant that it was unfortunate that the rest of the nation saw what knuckle-dragging yahoos their candidates are trying to appeal to.

“Unfortunate.” Really? That’s the best you can do, boys? What about “My candidate condemns in the strongest terms the lack of respect these audience members showed one of our fighting forces. There is no place for this kind of homophobia in my Republican party.”? Did we hear anything approaching the sort? Will we ever?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the modern Republican party. Vote for them at your peril.

From the Huffington Post:

Newt Gingrich, who is currently mulling a presidential bid in 2012, said at a political event in South Carolina (12/16/10) that most of America’s problems can be blamed on the “leftist news media,” Hollywood, tenured academics, overpaid federal workers, and unemployed people.

As opposed to Bush’s two wars; unregulated, criminal financial shenanigans; GOP obstructionism in Congress; and feed-the-rich tax policies?

Or as opposed to a disgraced has-been who deliberately poisoned America’s political discourse with his vituperative buzzwords?

Putz.

Honey, please. Today at school someone , the same person as usual , forwarded another of those emails. This one, thankfully, was not political in nature, just the old one about cell phone numbers being released to telemarketers. I dutifully found the Snopes.com link and replied to all without comment, other than to say, “This is an old one.”

But I’m commenting here. Jesus H. Spaghetti Monster, people, where are your brains?? If there were a looming deadline of such awful significance, wouldn’t you have read about it in the newspaper? Seen it on the news? HEARD ABOUT IT FROM ONE OF YOUR RANTING NUTJOB RADIO FROTHERMOUTHS???

Years ago, before the intertubes were invented for the purpose of keeping the unwashed in a turmoil of anxiety, these things were spread orally, over lunch at work. I remember my own lovely first wife, who is far more skeptical than the run of the mill executive, coming home breathless with horror at the kidnapping of a little boy by mysterious women with canvas bags in the restrooms at the mall. (Need I say that the little boy was white and the kidnappers were black?)

We were all to beware sending our children to the restroom alone, of course, because those people lurked everywhere. Pretty horrific stuff for any parent, to be sure.

After one tiny frisson, however, my rational brain kicked in. I pointed out to MLFW that if such a kidnapping had taken place, wouldn’t that be the only thing on the news for weeks? Had we seen anything like this in the newspaper? She did the grinding-gears-because-because-but-it’s-such-a-good-story! face and realized that I had to be right. Again.

The current emailer just replied to my reply with, “IT’S NEW TO ME!!!!” I can’t tell whether she’s offended that I have—once again—exposed her to the entire school as a panicky, credulous git, but darling, the fact that you’ve never encountered information before doesn’t mean that you have to take it at face value. Quite the reverse, IS WHAT I’M TRYING TO TEACH YOU HERE.

Onward to the midterm elections. ::sigh::

I saw —yet again—one of those bumper stickers the gist of which is “Like your freedom? Thank a veteran.” These things drive me nuts.

Let me see if I can parse this whole thing. First of all, I find the sentiment to be a snide bit of conservatism. (Hold that thought.) The implication is that without our armed forces deployed in Iraq, we would soon find ourselves without freedom of the press; that unless we use our soldiers to invade and occupy somewhere, we will no longer be able to hold free elections.

Such thinking is of course incredibly bad thinking. Our armed forces have not been engaged in any kind of conflict the outcome of which would have affected our system of government since 1865. Everything since then has been wars of empire or wars of strategy. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, which could be justified in terms of self defense, was not occasioned by any threat to our actual constitutional structure, nor would we have lost any of our rights had we decided not to tackle the project. I will say nothing of Iraq.

I think it likely that the teabagger on the other side of that bumper would offer the rejoinder that, in our current two wars at least, we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” To which I would reply, that’s not freedom you’re worried about, sweetheart, it’s safety. Those are two different things. You know, the things Patrick Henry was quick to distinguish one from the other: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

And even that kind of thinking is ludicrous, not to mention cowardly. No one in their right mind suggests that any of the Islamic extremists are prepared to invade us. What are the teabaggers thinking is going to happen, Baghdad Dawn? I suggest those people check under their bed every night, and then sleep tight and leave the rest of us alone.

Yes, certainly, the extremists are constantly plotting to harm us. No question. But it’s also true that all such plots have been foiled by careful police work, not by armed incursions either “over there” or here. And it’s also true that our military response to the problem has served as our enemies’ greatest recruitment tool. So thanking a veteran for keeping us safe is offbase as well.

So does this mean I hate our military? Of course not. The men and women who choose to serve in our armed forces are mostly people with a vision of service. I respect that more than a teabagger would believe possible.

However, I distrust our military, and in that I don’t think I am alone. It seems to me, from my reading of Max Farrand’s Annals of the Constitutional Convention, that most if not all of the founding fathers were of the same opinion. And certainly our greatest general-Presidents believed as I do. Can you imagine George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower suggesting that patriotism required us to, in effect, idolatrize our army?

Our founding fathers were clear on the subject: funding is to be restricted and controlled by the Legislative; the armies and navies are to be commanded by the Executive, a civilian. There is no independent military, and this arrangement is the source of our liberty, not the use of firepower. One only has to think of places such as Turkey, Pakistan, Chile, to realize that our liberty excludes our army from our freedoms. And that is why we remain free.

Oh, and how am I so sure that it’s a conservative bumpersticker?

You’re welcome.