From Washington:

Aug 15, 2009 / 07:01 am

After weeks of witness on the road, in church youth groups, and in front of abortion clinics, forty young people will end their three simultaneous cross-country pro-life walks across America in Washington, D.C on Saturday. The walk organizer said the endeavor helped women to reject abortion and revealed significant pro-life support. Three groups of young people with the group Crossroads began their respective walks in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles on May 23. They collectively logged 10,000 miles across 36 U.S. states in 12 weeks.

Each walker averaged over 1,000 miles and spoke to parishes and youth groups. They also engaged in “peaceful, prayerful” protests and sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics.

The effort has taken place annually since 1995. This year’s walk will end with a 1 p.m. rally at the U.S. Capitol.

Speaking in a press release, Crossroads president James Nolan said the trip showed that America is a pro-life country.

“[U]nlike polls that take a small, phone-based sample, we have had the advantage of directly interacting with thousands of Americans. And the support for the rights of the innocent, unborn has always been in the majority,” he remarked, charging that the Obama administration is “out of touch” with the mainstream.

Speaking with CNA in a Friday interview, Nolan said walkers spoke at thousands of religious services and met with people one-on-one. He claimed the effort revealed a “massive conversion” of youth towards religion and spirituality and pro-life views. It also showed a “massive rejection” of the “culture of death,” especially among the youth, he said.

Many who interacted with the walkers were “very, very supportive” of the effort. Nolan told CNA that people are “hungry for truth” and for “something new,” and are not “buying the old lies involved with the culture of death in general.”

He explained that participants walked 24 hours a day around the clock during weekdays, while on weekends they would pray at abortion clinics, youth groups, and various religious services.

The Crossroads walk has witnessed “amazing stories of conversion” and of women “choosing life,” according to Nolan.

“There was one parish out in the Midwest where after the walkers spoke at one of the evening Masses a gentlemen came up and asked if they had been praying at the clinic earlier that Saturday.”

The walkers responded that they had.

“This gentleman said that he had actually been driving his daughter to the clinic for the abortion and when they saw young people in T-shirts and praying the rosary, they decided they just couldn’t do it,” Nolan recounted.

After turning away from the clinic, the pregnant woman and her father then went to get an ultrasound. They discovered she was carrying twins.

“The father was just in shock. Before, he was just that close to choosing abortion. Now, he’s a grandfather of two.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story

The author finds little activist energy for ObamaCare in Southwestern Ohio.

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Note: This column originally appeared at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog with additional exhibits and updates on Friday morning. See the tease and this Saturday post for updated and supplemental information on the pathetic results of Organizing For America’s “Office Visits for Health Reform.”

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I hope the establishment media is monitoring and interested in reporting the real results of the attempt by Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, to lobby individual members of Congress to support ObamaCare. Sadly, I doubt they are.

If what I have learned this week holds elsewhere, it will turn out to have been a complete bust, and will demonstrate that, despite attempts to make it appear otherwise, there is no grass-roots groundswell for statist health care.

* * * * * * *

Sunday evening, I received a compelling e-mail that I simply could not ignore calling me to action (click here to see a graphic of the full e-mail):

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform.

Sign up now to visit Rep. Jean Schmidt’s office in Cincinnati this week.

Well, as a bona fide, long-ago signed-up “member” of Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, I could not turn down such an important request. (Never mind that the e-mail refers to “health reform” and “insurance reform,” which, last time I checked, are different things.)

So I went to the OFA web site, and found this sign-up form (opens in new window; red box at link added by me). It informed me  of the 2nd District Republican’s office hours, address, and phone number, and asked me to select a time to visit. You’ll notice that the form also required me to provide my phone number, “so that an organizer can follow up with you.” How thoughtful.

Separately, in keeping with the spirit of OFA’s e-mail, I “cooked up” the idea of also visiting the office of 1st District Rep. Steve Driehaus, whose district’s boundary is about ten miles away from the BizzyBlog bunker. Driehaus is, at least in theory, one of the “on the fence” Blue Dog Democrats. At an August 4 town hall meeting that made national news, he got an earful from those opposed to the plan, and told those who attended that he hasn’t decided how he will vote. Thus, Driehaus is a guy OFA should be targeting.

I made a commitment to visit Schmidt’s office at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 10, and to visit Driehaus at 3:00 p.m. In each case, I received a confirming e-mail response that also directed me to a two-page “Office Visits for Health Reform Guide” (PDF; opens in a separate window).

As you’ll see, the Guide has a few amazing claims, with no sourcing, about “The Cost of Inaction in Ohio”:

• 1,500,000 are uninsured today in Ohio, and 1,180 Ohioans will lose their health coverage every week because of rising costs.
• The average family premium in Ohio costs $1,000 more because our system fails to cover everyone.
• Our broken health insurance system will cost the Ohio economy as much as $7.1 billion this year in productivity losses due to lack of coverage.

I did my own sourcing, and determined that the claims are either flat-out wrong or squishy deceptions.

It may be that 1.5 million Ohioans are uninsured at some time during any given year, which is the operating definition of the Census Bureau, but they are not, as the first point contends, uninsured “today.”

The second assertion comes from the far-left and conceptually challenged Center for American Progress. CAP’s alleged average national per-family premium addition due to uninsured care is $1,100; Ohio’s average is supposedly $1,000. CAP naively assumes that every dollar of care provided for free is automatically added to premiums. That’s obviously baloney for more reasons than can be counted here. One of the of the biggest is that the figures providers report as non-reimbursed care often are at “list” prices that don’t reflect what patients with negotiated rates would pay. Another is that providers include fixed costs in their figures, while the true out-of-pocket costs of providing uninsured care are mostly variable.

The third claim, also from CAP, is an updated torturing of a 2003 study from the Institute of Medicine, which at the time speculated that “insuring the uninsured could $65-$130 billion in better health each year.” Six years later, CAP has almost doubled that figure to $124-$248 billion. Ohio’s share of the higher number is $7.1 billion, which OAF, deceptively using non-speculative terms, entirely and erroneously ascribes to “productivity.”

The Guide also has a small space where an OFA visitor can hand write his or her own message to their congressperson.

Now let’s get back to my OFA field trip.

Since Congressman Driehaus’s office is on the 30th floor of a downtown office building, most of his constituents can’t come to see him unless they pay to park somewhere (as I did). Of all the sites he could have picked as his one and only the First District office, he picked one at its furthest southeast end downtown. This doesn’t seem like a guy who’s a man of the peeps.

I got there at 3:25 p.m. You might think that I was worried about being late. After all, the rest of the 3:00 p.m. OFA crowd might have filled up the available meeting room, and my precious activist voice might not be heard.

Not exactly.

That’s because I was the first and only visitor from Organizing for Astroturfing, er, America, that day. This either means that no one from OFA had committed to visit Driehaus’s office during any of the previous six hours, or that if they did, they didn’t show up.

Either because Driehaus was either not there or not available, the front-desk person located the congressman’s Community Outreach/Field Representative, who told me that he had to be on a conference call shortly. He gave me his business card and said that he would be glad to meet with me at some other time to discuss ObamaCare. Since I didn’t get a chance to do so during the visit, I separately spoke with that person on Wednesday and told him that I oppose ObamaCare, and that the Congressman both as a representative and as a Catholic should vote against it. Frankly (I didn’t say this at the time, but should have), if alleged Catholic and Cincinnati Bishop Elder High School graduate Steve Driehaus doesn’t understand how fundamentally immoral ObamaCare’s statist health care is, especially from a Catholic perspective — even if abortion is totally excised from it — he’s beyond help.

Because my visit to Driehaus’s office was so brief, I was able to get to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt’s office 13 miles away on time to meet my 4:00 p.m. “commitment.” Ms. Schmidt was not there; her communications person has told me that some of the few OFA visitors who have come fully expected to actually meet with Ms. Schmidt, but to be fair to OFA, I don’t believe they are creating that impression.

The front-desk person at Ms. Schmidt’s office (which, by contrast, is located in a building where visitors can park for free), showed me that he had three earlier visitors who had dropped off their OFA “Fact Sheets.” One, who had written the word “FREEDOM” in large letters inside OFA’s message box, used the opportunity to encourage Ms. Schmidt to oppose ObamaCare. I did as well, without bothering to print anything out. The other two visitors to Schmidt’s office that day were ObamaCare supporters.

So let’s recap: In 15 possible visiting hours on Monday, the two members of Congress had four OFA visitors — two for ObamaCare and two against. I have since followed up with the offices of Schmidt and Southwestern Ohio’s 8th District Congressman, Republican John Boehner. They have reported slightly higher turnouts, but they were nowhere near even one person per office per hour overall as of late Tuesday afternoon.

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I doubt that readers are blown away by the grass-roots support Organizing for Astoturfing, er, America, has been able to generate.

Now you know that if OFA brags about how many of its people pestered their congresspersons this week to support the President’s statist health care designs, you can subtract at least two alleged supporters, and perhaps many more, from that total. Based on my experience, if OFA tries to claim that thousands upon thousands of its “members” visited their representatives, you have great reason to doubt them. Beyond that, even OFA doesn’t really know if the people who committed to visiting really did.

I sense an epic fail. How will the establishment media report it? Or will they?

From Greenville, South Carolina:

Aug 15, 2009 / 02:07 pm (CNA).- After two years of contemplating a religious vocation, Virginia Cotter thought she was finally ready to visit some orders for a closer look. When she arrived at the Sisters of Life convent in New York last year, she was in for a shock.

“Most women, and certainly girls, would be shocked at the joy that they will experience with a visit,” Cotter said. “I was on cloud nine for a week after I first visited. I could not believe the genuine joy there; all of these sisters just, like, beam.”

Even so, deciding to dedicate her life to God as a consecrated woman meant a major change in lifestyle for the 28-year-old. She will have to sell her house and other belongings, leave the company of her friends and family, learn a different way to work and dress, and a new way to pray.

“Not many lay persons pray for four or five hours a day, and that’s what the Sisters of Life do,” she said. “I’ll be going on an act of faith. But my parents raised me to do what God called me to do.”

Her parents, Mary and Tim Cotter of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, sent their daughter to Our Lady of the Rosary School for eight years. She graduated from Mauldin High and then from Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic school in Ohio that was recommended by her maternal grandparents, Elizabeth and Richard Wolcott.

Among her post-graduate experiences was a year in Los Angeles living in community with the Volunteers For Life and working in a maternity home for teens. She moved to Wyoming to work with troubled youth and then returned home to work at St. Joseph’s Catholic School.

She has been a college counselor at St. Joseph’s for three years, but Cotter will leave the post to enter the Sisters of Life convent on Sept. 5. Her application to the order was accepted on July 13.

Her first year in the Bronx motherhouse will be spent in further discernment and formation, followed by two more years of formation. She will be permitted two visits home during the first year, and none for the following two.

As a postulant and then a novitiate, Cotter will be integrated into the apostolates of the order, all of which have a strong pro-life flavor.

“We take four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, and a vow to protect and enhance human life,” she said.

The Sisters of Life community was founded by the late Cardinal John O’Connor, of the Archdiocese of New York, in 1991, after a transformative visit to the former Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. The order manages the archdiocesan Respect Life Office and offers help for pregnant women, especially in their Holy Respite homes. They operate missions, including one in Toronto, the Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat Center in the Bronx and a library of human life issues. The order also gives retreats for women who have had abortions. They are 64 in number, and are young, active and growing fast, Cotter said. The sisters wear simple navy blue and white habits.

Cotter said her years at St. Joseph’s have been good for her, with the opportunity for daily Mass and what she called “a welcoming Catholic community.” She enjoyed working with teens and has advice for any young men or women who think they may be hearing the small voice of God calling them.

“I would say you need to be open to what God’s plan is for you. Consider your options, not just assuming automatically that he wants you to marry and have a family. The thing is, nothing bad comes from discernment,” she said. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Readers are advised to make peace with the Maker soon. If we are to believe the recent utterings of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (pictured at right), humanity — or at least humanity living life as we know it — is not long for this earth.

The Sec-Gen’s August 11 speech at the Global Economic Forum in Incheon, South Korea, was so over the top that it’s likely the world’s media kept its coverage of the event relatively muted to spare the poor man from worldwide embarrassment. There is nothing about the speech that I could find in searches on “Ban Ki-Moon United Nations” (not typed in quotes) at the New York Times or the Washington Post. A search on the same string at AP.org at 3:30 p.m. came up empty. An identical Google News search came back with a very light total of 42 results.

Here are key paragraphs from the Sec-Gen’s hysterical speech, where he also (surprise, surprise) demands large sums of money “from public and private sources”:

If we fail to act, climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters.

Water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition will engulf large parts of the developing world. Tensions will worsen. Social unrest – even violence – could follow.

The damage to national economies will be enormous. The human suffering will be incalculable.

We have the power to change course. But we must do it now.

As we move toward Copenhagen in December, we must “Seal a Deal” on climate change that secures our common future. I’m glad that the Chairman of the forum and many other speakers have used my campaign slogan “Seal the Deal” in Copenhagen. I won’t charge them loyalty. Please use this “Seal the Deal” as widely as possible, as much as you can. We must seal the deal in Copenhagen for the future of humanity.

We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.

Any agreement must be fair, effective, equitable and comprehensive, and based on science. And it must help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change.

Ladies and gentlemen, the science is clear. We know what to do and we know how to do it. ….

What is needed is the political will. We have the capacity. We have finance. We have the technology. The largest lacking is political will. That is why I will convey some meetings focused on climate change. I have invited all the leaders of the world including President Lee.

…..developed countries must provide sufficient, measurable, reportable and verifiable financial and technological support to developing countries.

This will allow developing countries to pursue their mitigation efforts as part of their sustainable green growth strategies and to adapt to accelerating climate impacts.

Significant resources will be needed from both public and private sources.

Developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, will collectively need billions of dollars in public financing for adaptation.

I am talking here about new money – not re-packaged Official Development Assistance. This is one of the most important issues which we are going to discuss on September 22nd in New York, and this year again at the G20 Summit Meeting in Pittsburgh on September 24th.

Most sober worldwide observers are already severely dampening expectations that the Copenhagen conference to which the Sec-Gen refers will produce anything definitive (my personal opinion if that is indeed the outcome is, “Thank goodness.”)

What over-the-top rhetorical depths will Ban Ki-moon sink to if that is what indeed happens?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In an August 14 report appearing on the front page of the paper’s August 15 print edition (“Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Web”), Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times gave readers a fairly accurate impression, while avoiding the word, of activism turning into apathy in Barack Obama’s DNC- and White House-orchestrated Organizing for America (OFA) effort.

While Zeleny’s report and detailed work came out of Iowa, his key finding is intended to be a national temperature gauge: “But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago.”

That’s why it’s odd, to say the least, that Zeleny ignored the results of the nationwide reignition attempt that occurred and largely failed this past week, namely its “Office Visits for Health Reform.” In fact, there are some signs that “Office Visits” did OFA’s cause more harm than good.

Here are some key paragraphs from Zeleny’s report:

As the health care debate intensifies, the president is turning to his grass-roots network — the 13 million members of Organizing for America — for support.

Mr. Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago.

More than a dozen campaign volunteers, precinct captains and team leaders from all corners of Iowa, who dedicated a large share of their time in 2007 and 2008 to Mr. Obama, said in interviews this week that they supported the president completely but were taking a break from politics and were not active members of Organizing for America.

Some said they were reluctant to talk to their neighbors about something personal and complicated like health care. And others expressed frustration at the genteel approach, asking why Democrats were not filling the town-hall-style meetings of Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee negotiating health care legislation, or Representative Leonard L. Boswell, a member of the moderate Blue Dog Democratic group.

…. Mitch Stewart, the executive director of Organizing for America who worked as the field director in the Iowa caucuses before running the Virginia operation in the general election, said there was no expectation that every supporter would remain active. Mr. Stewart said the group had chosen not to flood into meetings of Republican members of Congress, but rather to combat what they described as misinformation about the president’s health care plans.

I submit that the reason Mr. Stewart “has chosen not to flood into Republican meetings” is that he barely has enough interested OFA bodies behind him to create more than a trickle into Republican or Democratic congressional offices.

That’s what “Office Visits for Health Reform” attempted to do during this past week, beginning with a supposedly motivating e-mail. Here is the one I received:

I set up a visit to Republican Jean Schmidt’s office, and another one to the office of nearby Democratic Congressman Steve Driehaus, for Monday afternoon. What happened during those visits is here. The short story is that I was the very first OFA visitor to Driehaus’s office as of 3 p.m. Monday, and the fourth to Ms. Schmidt’s office as of 4 p.m. Of the three previous visitors to Schmidt’s office that day, one, like me, was an ObamaCare opponent. That person had written “FREEDOM” in large letters inside the blank message box at the bottom of the second page of the “Office Visits for Health Reform Guide” (PDF) that OFA members had been asked to print out for their trip.

In a response to a Friday afternoon follow-up call, Ms Schmidt’s communications director informed me that they had received “31 or 32″ OFA visitors at that point — an average of about one per hour. I also learned from a person in the office of Congressman and House Republican Leader John Boehner, whose district is also in Southwestern Ohio, that his two offices had received 40 and 15 OFA visitors, respectively, during the entire week to that point. A Friday phone call requesting follow-up information from Driehaus’s Community Outreach/Field Representative was not returned as of 9:30 this morning.

Both Schmidt’s and Boehner’s offices reported that some OFA visitors believed that they had actually set up an appointment to see their Member of Congress face-to-face, and that some were miffed upon learning that this was not the case. On Wednesday, Greg Sargent at the Plum Line reported that aides for California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein had “complained to the White House about a deluge of visits to her offices by constituents who thought they had an appointment after OFA called on supporters to visit members of Congress ….” (to the White House? I though OFA was a “totally independent” DNC operation. Oops.)

Many congressmen and senators had a similar problem with OFA visitors’ expectations. But OFA’s original solicitation and its Guide cannot fairly be accused of creating that expectation. Readers can reach their own conclusions about the reading comprehension and mental acuity of those who really thought they could barge into a congressperson’s schedule without first directly speaking with their office.

Working the numbers, the most generous (probably too generous) guess is that about 42,000 OFA people (50 visitors per congressperson x 435, plus 200 per senator x 100) visited congressional and senatorial offices this week. Keep in mind that whatever figure OFA releases should be discounted for ObamaCare opponents such as myself and the Schmidt visitor I cited, and for the fact that, as is the case in any effort such as this, many who promised to visit probably didn’t.

My probably over-generous total of 42,000 is only 0.323% of OFA’s alleged horde of 13 million. If OFA was trying to convince representatives and senators that there is widespread grass-roots support for statist health care, it failed miserably.

Unless he’s doing a Jayson Blair act, it’s highly unlikely that the Times’s Zeleny didn’t know about OFA’s “Office Visits for Health Reform” campaign this past week. His failure to even acknowledge its existence is in fact backhanded proof that OFA’s effort was indeed an epic fail.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Nice:

Original links: NewsBusters; BizzyBlog

More from IBD:

…. Thanks to Tom Blumer, from whose Newsbusters.org blog we learned about Green’s plan, we know that in 2005 and 2006 the congressman opposed legislation requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.

Now, what’s more important to the current and future health of our republic? Trying to hold clean elections or excluding “outsiders” from public meetings?

Green isn’t the only lawmaker trying to duck the hard questions about health care revision bills from voters fed up with an imperial federal government. Some congressmen are holding telephone town halls, while others have canceled public meetings altogether.

And at least one, Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., has been charged with packing a town hall meeting with union members — his real constituency? — and locking out more than 1,000 voters.

…. The Democrats have only themselves to blame for the grilling they’re getting at these town halls. They’re the ones who exaggerated the problems and cooked up a national health care scheme to solve them. They’re the ones who tried to ram it through Congress. All of them should have the courage to come out of hiding and get the verbal flogging they deserve.

Though I haven’t taken control of NewsBusters yet (/kidding), thanks to IBD for noting and spreading the word about the hypocrisy of Green and anyone else who insists on proof of residency to attend a town hall, but could care less about a potential voter proving that they are who they say they are on Election Day.

As discussed earlier today, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to go to an out-of-district town hall about health care, not the least of which is that you, your spouse, or your relatives are receiving health insurance coverage from a company that is located or headquartered there.

(Left half of graphic is from the cover of Michelle Malkin’s NYT #1 bestseller, “Culture of Corruption.”)

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

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Synopsis:

If what I have learned this week holds elsewhere, the attempt by Organizing for America to turn out thousands upon thousands of its minions at congressional offices (“Office Visits for Health Reform“) will turn out to have been a complete bust and will demonstrate that, despite attempts to make it appear otherwise, there is no grassroots groundswell for statist health care.

Supplement: In case someone whines that I went out of my home congressional district to “bother” another congressperson, here’s my pre-emptive response:

• I lived, worked, or went to school in what is now Driehaus’s district for well over a decade.
• Over the years, I have done and continue to do much of my business with employers located in the district, and employees who live in it.
• Most important, the whining congresspersons and others who are complaining that many attendees at town halls during the past few weeks don’t live in their districts are conveniently forgetting that many of them may work for employers who are located or headquartered in that district. Many of these alleged interlopers are covered by those companies’ health insurance plans. Thus, they could be severely hurt if ObamaCare passes. Such people have more than enough justification for being allowed into a related town hall meeting, and to contact that district’s congressperson, if they’re concerned that he or she is going to vote to ultimately ruin their employer-provided coverage.

At least one Congressman has publicly noted that he will require photo IDs of all future town hall attendees so he can verify that they are district residents. The Congressman, Eugene Green of Texas, apparently doesn’t see any irony in the fact that he has opposed laws requiring voters to present valid identification at the polls.

Privacy Alert: I noted in the column that OFA required those participating in the office visits to provide their phone numbers, “so an organizer can follow up with you.” Here’s the pictorial proof (click here or on image to see the full-sized version; red box is mine):

As I said in the column: “How thoughtful.”

Yes, I gave out a real phone number, and no, I have not been contacted by “an organizer” as of 9:00 a.m. this morning.

Update: Incorporated into this post (“Organizing for Apathy: Zeleny NYT Column On OFA Ignores Pathetic ‘Office Visits’ Campaign Results”).

The White House’s perpetual campaign site, er, home page, currently has rotating messages at the top left. Two of them relate to health care (yellow underlines are mine):

The administration would be well-advised to hold back on the blather about “blatant falsehoods” and “misinformation” until their guy in charge stops disseminating them himself.

Take Obama’s claim that the surgeon’s fee for a single leg/foot amputation is $30,000 – $50,000 (please).

Here, from the White House’s transcript of the President’s Tuesday appearance in Portsmouth, NH, is the beginning of what Obama had to say in comparing the costs involved in preventive care against diabetes to the cost of one of its potential consequences:

So we are going to be taking steps, as part of reform, to deal with expanding primary care physicians and our nursing corps. On the doctors’ front, one of the things we can do is to reimburse doctors who are providing preventive care and not just the surgeon who provides care after somebody is sick. (Applause.) Nothing against surgeons. I want surgeons — I don’t want to be getting a bunch of letters from surgeons now. I’m not dissing surgeons here. (Laughter.)

He probably wasn’t going to get many letters at that point, but in his next statement, he guaranteed a groundswell of well-deserved outrage (bold is mine):

All I’m saying is let’s take the example of something like diabetes, one of — a disease that’s skyrocketing, partly because of obesity, partly because it’s not treated as effectively as it could be. Right now if we paid a family — if a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they’re taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that’s $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 — immediately the surgeon is reimbursed. Well, why not make sure that we’re also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation, right? That will save us money. (Applause.)

And they said that George W. Bush was out of touch.

Yesterday, The American College of Surgeons struck back — hard (HT the Corner), and reminded the public that this isn’t the first time in recent weeks that the President has misrepresented and/or smeared these professionals (bolds are mine):

CHICAGO—The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.

Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon’s decision to remove a child’s tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what’s right for the patient.

We agree with the President that the best thing for patients with diabetes is to manage the disease proactively to avoid the bad consequences that can occur, including blindness, stroke, and amputation. But as is the case for a person who has been treated for cancer and still needs to have a tumor removed, or a person who is in a terrible car crash and needs access to a trauma surgeon, there are times when even a perfectly managed diabetic patient needs a surgeon. The President’s remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

If a Republican or conservative had committed such an obvious gaffe, it would be front-page news. But then, so would “inhalator,” “57 states,” “Arkansas is closer to Kentucky than Illinois,” and any number of other howlers that the establishment media has ignored out of this guy for about two years.

The surgeons should therefore no be surprised if there is media near-silence on the latest error. In fact, they should expect it. Heck, on the high end of what Medicare pays, it’s “only” overstates the cost of an amputation by a factor of 26 to 44.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Topside Update, 2:15 p.m.: Imagine that — Roxana Mayer was also an Organizing For America “host” during the Texas primary last year.

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Anyone visiting here even semi-regularly knows that the establishment media consistently fails to determine the legitimacy of people who “say the right things.” Further, when someone else, often a blogger, digs and finds the truth, the reporters and publications involved may sometimes grudgingly acknowledge it, but even then usually incompletely; and more often than not, they won’t give credit where due.

This all-too-typical scenario has played out in the past two days in the case of a certain Roxana Mayer. In two posts (here and here), LA-area blogger Patterico, best known for his relentless skewering of the target-rich environment known as the Los Angeles Times, exposed Ms. Mayer, who claimed to be a doctor when she spoke at a town hall meeting held by Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (and who later hugged her, as seen at the top right), as a leftist fraud.

As Patterico noted in the title of his second post, Mayer’s mantra ought to be “I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One at Town Hall Meetings.” Patterico also showed that Mayer was also a Texas Obama delegate at last year’s Democratic Convention.

At first, the Houston Chronicle took Mayer’s word that she is a doctor, failed to investigate her bona fides, and reported the following:

Some attendees at the meeting spoke in favor of the plan, go (sic — going?) so far as to want a system where the government had complete control.

One supporter, Dr. Roxana Mayer, a physician who does not live in Jackson Lee’s district, praised the reform plan for overhauling a broken system.

“I don’t know what there is in the bill that creates such panic,” she said.

Suspicious, Patterico began digging, finding the following in short order:

• “The AMA Doctor Finder doesn’t list any physician named Roxana Mayer.”
• “Nor does the Texas Medical Association.”
• “Linked In lists a Roxana Mayer — who, according to LinkedIn, is slated to graduate from the University of Houston with a Masters in Social Work in 2010.”
• “However, the University of Houston lists a student by the name of Roxana Mercedes Mayer.”

So Patterico went to the source, e-mailing the LinkedIn Ms. Mayer. Hilarity ensued. By the time the exchange ended, “poor” Ms. Mayer was in full moonbat mode:

(Patterico)

1) Are you the person who attended Jackson Lee’s town hall meeting?

2) Are you a doctor?

3) If not, why did you claim to be one?

4) Were you a Texas delegate for Obama?

5) Why did you go to the town hall meeting?

6) Who encouraged you to go?

7) Did Sheila Jackson Lee’s husband have anything to do with your going?

(Mayer)

I suspect you don’t need me to answer the first four…but I’ll say for what it’s worth, I went to get a question answered for myself and two other people close to me who are doctors. Too bad she didn’t answer it. I also went to lend support to the reform effort. It’s easier to be against something especially since anger is such a great motivator.

Also, I have never met the Congresslady or her husband–it’s a big school. I do think this is all very funny because I just assume that if my going had been part of a conspiracy, it would have been more seemlessly executed.

While I’m sure I lack your creativity and passion, I have possessed some spontaneity from time to time.

(Patterico)

If I understand what’s going on here, you’re not a doctor, but you play one at town hall meetings. Is that about it?

(Mayer)

Do you mean play a doctor like you play a journalist? Then the answer is no. But who knows, that was only my first town hall meeting–even though I was a delegate. If I go to another one, which I seriously doubt because my husband is already extremely annoyed, then maybe I’ll play a plumber.

After Patterico did the dirty work, the Chronicle’s Cynthia Horswell added the following four paragraphs to the story this morning, while giving Patterico no credit:

In an e-mail to the Chronicle on Thursday morning, Mayer confirmed she is not a licensed physician.

“I have been advised to refrain from making any further statements,” she said.

In the initial story about the event, the Chronicle reported that she was a doctor based on her claim at the meeting.

Today, Jackson Lee denied knowing Mayer and said she was not planted as a friendly voice in the crowd.

Horswell’s story, time-stamped at of 10:46 a.m. CT as of the time of this post (saved here at my host for future reference) has the same URL to which Patterico linked, meaning that Horswell’s current renditon has effectively flushed all previous versions down the Chron’s memory hole.

Horswell still hasn’t told readers that Mayer was an Obama delegate. Patterico commenter ”mike in houston” reports direct e-mail evidence from Horswell that the Chron reporter has known this from the very beginning of this sordid episode and has chosen not to disclose. Mayer’s status as a delegate, along with additional “coincidences” reported at LoneStarTimes.com, would tend to severely if not fatally dent the credibility of Jackson Lee’s claim not to know her — even beyond the hug picture with Mayer and Lee the Chron has already published.

The caption to that picture is currently on at least its third rendition, currently reading “Sheila Jackson Lee hugs Roxana Mayer at her town hall meeting at Peavy Neighborhood Center. Mayer identified herself as a physician who does not live in Jackson Lee’s district. However, her name does not appear in the database maintained by the Texas Medical Board, which licenses all doctors in Texas.”

Two previous renditions captured by Patterico read as follows:

• “Sheila Jackson Lee hugs Dr. Roxana Mayer, a pediatric primary care physician, at her town hall meeting at Peavy Neighborhood Center.”
• “Sheila Jackson Lee hugs Roxana Mayer at her town hall meeting at Peavy Neighborhood Center.”

Understatement of the week by Patterico: “Not the greatest vetting by the Chronicle.” Not the most honest either. And sadly, also not atypical.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

• At HotAirPundit via Gateway Pundit – “Bus–ted… Obama Bussed In Supporters For New Hampshire Town Hall.” Funny — I haven’t seen any footage of ObamaCare opponents bussed in from anywhere.
• At the Wall Street Journal — “U.S. retail sales unexpectedly fell in July despite the debut of the government’s ‘cash for clunkers’ program meant to jump-start the auto business and help turn around the economy.” As noted here a week ago (fourth item at link), it may be “because” of C4C, not “despite” it.
• Christine “Title IX Saved the World (not)” Brennan thinks Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino should take some time off or resign over what appears at the moment to have been a single extramarital episode, about which Pitino has apologized, apparently sincerely (see video at link). I’m inclined to agree with the time off part at least, but I’d welcome any evidence of where Brennan stood on Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which was about lying under oath in legal proceedings about affairs that lasted for years. Something tells me she wasn’t so harsh. If not, why not?
• From Patterico (HT to an e-mailer) — “Roxana Mayer: I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One at Town Hall Meetings.” Capsule: “I questioned the credentials of a woman at a Texas town hall meeting who claimed to be a doctor, but turned out to be anything but. She is a graduate student in social work — oh, and an Obama delegate.”
• Puncturing the “They have no alternative” lie — “RSC Chairman Tom Price has introduced the Empowering Patients First Act. This is another positive solution from the Republican Study Committee that grants access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans, and is centered around the patient.” Of course, solutions such as these have been around forever, but the statists who are in charge in Washington don’t want to hear about anything that enhances freedom and choice.

Does the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger moonlight as a Code Pink operative?

There has to be something that explains what I’ll call his Iraqnaphobia.

Last month (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the AP reporter erroneously cited the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “major factor” explaining why “the deficit has widened.” In a quick review of the related June 2009 Monthly Treasury Statement, I cited three examples of higher spending in other areas of government that were larger than last year, both in dollar and percentage terms, than the $33 billion, 7% increase in total defense spending. NB commenter Arminius further pointed out that “Our military spending amounts to 5 percent of GDP. Iraq and Afghanistan amount to 15 percent of that 5 percent. Obviously, as Tom notes, larger culprits are responsible for the massive deficit.”

It’s simply not possible that the two wars could be a “major factor.” No matter – This month, in an otherwise fairly decent report, Crutsinger did it again (bold after title is mine):

Federal deficit higher in July, $1.27T this year

The federal deficit climbed higher into record territory in July, hitting $1.27 trillion with two months remaining in the budget year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the July deficit totaled $180.7 billion, slightly more than the $177.5 billion economists had expected.

The Obama administration is projecting that when the current budget year ends on Sept. 30, the imbalance will total $1.84 trillion, more than four times last year’s record-high.

The soaring deficits have raised worries among foreign owners of U.S. Treasury securities including the Chinese, the largest holder of such debt.

Massive amounts of government spending to combat the recession and stabilize the U.S. financial system have pushed the deficit higher. The cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with depleted government tax revenues, also are major factors.

This time, referring to Table 3 the July Monthly Treasury Statement, total defense spending through ten months of the fiscal year has been $531 billion, up 8.1% from $491 billion at the same time last year. That $40 billion difference hardly is “major” in the context of a total deficit increase so far this year of almost $900 billion ($1.266 trillion through July 31, compared to $377 billion last year). If Arminius’s 15% estimate for the cost of the two wars as a percentage of the total defense budget is accurate (that would annualize out to about $100 billion, which seems about right based on information I have seen in previous years), you could zero out the entire war effort and not even make a 10% dent in the projected year-over-year deficit increase of almost $1.4 trillion ($1.84 trillion this year vs. $455 billion last year).

Bigger contributors to the enlarged deficit on the spending side Crutsinger should have individually cited, instead of lumping them all into a “spending to combat the recession” catch-all, include:

• HHS, up $95 billion, or 16.3%.
• Department of Labor, up $62 billion, or 131% (you read that right).
• Social Security Administration (mostly not a recession-related increase), up $62 billion, or 11.4%.
• “Other” (all within Treasury Department itself, not described in detail anywhere else), up $232 billion, or 228% (you read that right).

On the collections side, the roughly $550 billion decline in receipts through 10 months ($1.74 trillion this year vs. $2.29 trillion last year, before other adjustments I would normally make, but won’t now in the interest of space) is almost 14 times bigger than the total increase in defense spending, and totally dwarfs whatever miniscule increases might have occurred in the Iraq and Afghan theaters of the War on Terror (am I allowed to say that?).

On this one, Crutsinger is clearly cracked. The AP is pathetically ignorant and/or deeply negligent in allowing his Iraqnaphobia to stand uncorrected, as it almost surely will.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

So it turns out that Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan is partially responsible for the attempted deception over abortion in ObamaCare.

Just a reminder: It’s in there.

Since he’s such a darling of Ohio’s far-left loonysphere/thugosphere, this item is required linkage:

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is currently playing a key role in assisting the pro-abortion lobby, and the White House, in resisting genuine pro-life amendments to the Obama-backed health care bills. You can find more information on this subject in these sources:

1. The August edition of National Right to Life News contains a detailed report on the ongoing fight in Congress, one section of which is devoted to Ryan’s role in attempting to undercut the efforts of pro-life forces. The article quotes NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson as saying, “When Tim Ryan calls for ‘common ground,’ you know he has a memo from Planned Parenthood in his pocket.” The article includes a color photo of Mr. Ryan over the caption, “Tim Ryan (D-Oh.), impersonates pro-life lawmaker.” You can view or download the entire article (PDF format) here.

2. John McCormack, an editor at The Weekly Standard, posted a piece on Ryan on August 4 under the title, “A Pro-Lie Democrat?” Ryan comes off poorly in this piece, which is based in part on the public record of his recent activities on abortion-related issues, and partly on an interview Ryan gave to McCormack on July 31. (Sample: Asked by McCormack, “When do you believe life begins?,” Ryan replied, “That answer’s above my pay grade.”)

3. He earned that hug: To view a photo taken at a July 23, 2009, press conference on Capitol Hill, showing Congressman Tim Ryan being hugged by pro-abortion Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.), the former executive director of the pro-abortion PAC called EMILY’s List, click here. In the photo, Ryan is flanked by top officials from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and by Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fl.), who has voted pro-abortion without exception throughout his congressional career. The press conference was called to promote a so-called “common ground” bill introduced by Ryan and DeLauro and endorsed by a coalition of pro-abortion groups, including Third Way, which admits to having written the bill.

Ryan is part of the reason why abortion really is in there:

On July 21, with much fan-fare in the media, Ryan released a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who is solidly pro-abortion) calling for a “common ground solution” regarding the health care/abortion issue. Days later, in a House committee, the approach promoted by Ryan was offered in a House committee by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), a legislator who has voted on the pro-abortion side 74 times and never on the pro-life side. The Capps Amendment was narrowly adopted over the objections of the pro-life members of the committee. The Obama-backed bill will create a nationwide “public option” insurance plan. Under the Capps Amendment, which Ryan endorses, this government plan is explicitly authorized to pay for any and all abortions. Abortionists would send their bills to the federal agency and receive payment checks from the federal agency. Moreover, the bill creates a big new program of federal subsidies to help low-income families buy health insurance — and the Capps-Ryan amendment explicitly authorizes these subsidies to flow to plans that cover elective abortions. The amendment contains phony bookkeeping requirements that do nothing more than provide a political smokescreen behind which this system of government-operated and government-subsidized abortion coverage would operate. In short, the “restrictions” in the amendment are as phony as Ryan’s pro-life credentials.

The Capps-Ryan amendment has been condemned by pro-life groups.

There’s much more at the link, and at the Weekly Standard.

He’s not even original, uttering the same “it’s above my pay grade” blather about when life begins as candidate Obama did at Rick Warren’s Church last year.

That ignorant answer proves that being a congressman is above his mental capacity.