And More Again

• We begin the day, as the newscasters say, with Mr. Somerby, who addresses "The Medicare Muddle" in which the conservatives blather about Mr. Obama looting Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care provisions while liberals are using almost the same language (except calling it "savings") and the pundits are not clarifying matters (possibly because they don't understand it either).

  It doesn’t occur to someone like Dean that older white voters (and others) may believe these GOP claims because they’ve heard very similar claims from the White House itself; or because he and Schultz did a very poor job explaining what is wrong with the claim; or because we’ve all been swamped in disinformation about the federal government’s “trust funds” for the past forty years, with zero attempt at clarification from our liberal leaders.
  
  Zero; nada, none.
  
  For the past forty years, conservative disinformation machines have spread a massive amount of confusion about the Social Security trust fund. The current muddle about Medicare’s trust fund is, in part, one fruit of that larger effort.

• Vouchers?  Vouchers?  Pandagon (Amanda Marcotte) at Raw Story:

  That’s always what Republicans have been on about when they talk about “rationing” and “death panels”. The concern is that if more people get insurance, then they’ll also get to have access to health care and that means you have to share. I’ve said this from the beginning, but much of the conservative discourse around health care is blowing dog whistles. If you translate their concerns into non-euphemism, they’re mostly worried that they’ll have to share waiting rooms with poor people. But what’s really annoying about all this is that Republicans are sweeping the elderly white people vote, and so they’re getting votes from people on Medicare who basically want to keep everyone else from getting coverage for fear of having to compete with them for resources. This, of course, makes no sense, since the fear is based on an incorrect assumption that younger people need as much medical care as older people. But that’s why I think race- and class-baiting is the underlying subtext to the concern-trolling about “rationing” that Republicans have been doing with their base. That’s how you get people to stop thinking and start fearing. Because they have to turn their brains completely off to think replacing a program that pays for their medical care with coupons is a good idea.

• Also from Mr. Somerby:  Journalism's elite corps in search of epiphany.
• Driftglass:

  And you know. in a way the social issues of 2012 bears some eerie similarities to the Iraq War circa 2004-2005. Once again, the GOP has painted itself into an ideological corner that is violently at odds with reality. Once again, to get out of the noose, the Party of Personal Responsibility resorts to and all-out campaign of slander and lies. Once again the spineless press simply transcribes and transmits the slander and lies verbatim. Once again, the roof they have thatched together out of pure fraud and bullshit works for awhile...and then starts to collapse right on top of their victory parade.
  
  And then comes the Holy Shit moments as the scam falls apart.

  Followed by several of the Holy Shit moments.
• Riposte to comment on Mr. Ryan's offensive statement.