CBS Reveals that Swine Flu Cases Seriously Overestimated

Posted by: Dr. Mercola

October 24 2009 | 79,548 views

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on their main flu Web site http://www.cdc.gov/flu/ that flu activity is increasing in the United States, with most states reporting "widespread influenza activity."

The CDC goes on to say, and I quote:

"So far, most flu is 2009 H1N1 flu (sometimes called "swine flu")."

But wait stop the presses.

A three-month-long investigation by CBS News, released earlier this week that included state-by-state test results, revealed some very different facts. The CBS study found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared. A CBS article even states:

"If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn't have flu at all."

Obviously CBS News and the CDC are completely contradicting each other. So who is right?

Well, CBS reports that in late July 2009 the CDC advised states to STOP testing for H1N1 flu, and they also stopped counting individual cases.

Their rationale for this, according to CBS News, was that it was a waste of resources to test for H1N1 flu because it was already confirmed as an epidemic.

So just like that virtually every person who visited their physician with flu-like symptoms since late July was assumed to have H1N1, with no testing necessary because, after all, there's an epidemic.

It's interesting to note that at the same time as the CDC decided the H1N1 epidemic warranted no further testing for cases due to its epidemic status, Finnish health authorities actually downgraded the threat of swine flu.

In late July the health ministry and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in Finland actually removed swine flu from a list of diseases considered dangerous to the public because the majority of cases recovered without medication or hospital care!

And, as the CDC continues to use fear to motivate and control Americans with their worst-case swine flu scenarios, they say nothing of the experience of those in the southern hemisphere, which just finished their flu season and found it was not as bad as expected.

CBS News Finds H1N1 Tests "Overwhelmingly Negative"

Before beginning their investigation, CBS News asked the CDC for state-by-state test results prior to their halting of testing and tracking. The CDC did not initially respond so CBS went to all 50 states directly, asking for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July.

What did they find? CBS reported:

"The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals we consulted. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico."

As you can see from this CBS News graphic, not only are most cases of suspected flu-like illnesses not H1N1, they're not even the flu but more likely some type of cold or upper respiratory infection!

(see CBS News Image at this link)

Where is the CDC Getting Their Data?

Given CBS News' findings that most cases of flu-like illnesses are neither H1N1 nor the flu, it begs the question: Why is the CDC reporting that most flu in the United States is in fact H1N1?

Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center who I spoke with in the interview above, was a consumer representative on the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee in 2003, and she asked the head of the influenza branch of the CDC how much of the flu-like illness that occurs in America every year is actually due to the flu.

The answer was about 20 percent, which corresponds more closely with the CBS News data from 2009.

According to the CBS News study, when you come down with chills, fever, cough, runny nose, malaise and all those other "flu-like" symptoms, the illness is likely caused by influenza at most 17 percent of the time and as little as 3 percent! The other 83 to 97 percent of the time it's caused by other viruses or bacteria.

So remember that not every illness that appears to be the flu actually is the flu. In fact, most of the time it's not.

Curiously, the CDC still advises those who were told they had 2009 H1N1 (and therefore should be immune to getting it again) to get vaccinated unless they had lab confirmation.

Is the CDC Purposely Misinforming the Public to Sell More Flu and H1N1 Vaccines?

Conflicts of interest are rampant in the vaccination infrastructure. The same people who are regulating and promoting vaccines are also evaluating vaccine safety.

For instance, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia earned at least $29 million as part of a $182-million sale by the hospital of its worldwide royalty interest in the Merck Rotateq vaccine. He also formerly sat on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to help create the market for rotavirus vaccine

This type of conflict of interest has been going on for some time.

In August 1999, the Committee on Government Reform initiated an investigation into Federal vaccine policy. During the investigation the Committee extensively reviewed financial disclosure forms and related documents and interviewed key officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC.

It was revealed that many individuals on two key advisory committees had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines. These individuals were even granted waivers allowing them to fully participate in discussions about vaccine licensing and recommendations for children, despite the fact that federal law states members of advisory committees are required to disclose such ties and recuse themselves from such discussions and decisions.

Further, the investigation revealed that the FDA's and CDC's conflict of interest rules were not strongly enforced while the rules themselves were weak. Specific problems noted by the Committee included:

• The CDC routinely granted waivers from conflict of interest rules to many members of its advisory committee.
• Those CDC advisory committee members who were not allowed to vote on certain recommendations due to financial conflicts of interest were still allowed to actively participate in committee deliberations and advocate specific positions.
• The Chairman of the CDC's advisory committee owned 600 shares of stock in Merck, a pharmaceutical company with an active vaccine division.
• Members of the CDC's advisory committee often left key details out of their financial disclosure statements, and were not required to provide the missing information by CDC ethics officials.

And, when the FDA and CDC approved the controversial rotavirus vaccine in 1998 and 1999, the Committee's report said:

• 3 out of the 5 FDA advisory committee members who voted to approve the rotavirus vaccine in December 1997 had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.
• 4 out of the 8 CDC advisory committee members who voted to approve guidelines for the rotavirus vaccine in June 1998 had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.

The rotavirus vaccine was pulled from the market one year after approval, after it was found to cause severe bowel obstructions.

Given their sordid history, can the CDC really be trusted, even today? Do you think that much has changed in just one decade?

Is the H1N1 Vaccine Really Safe as the CDC Says it Is?

CDC officials are screaming that H1N1 is so different from the seasonal influenza strains that have circulated in the past few decades that a national alarm must be sounded and everyone needs to be so afraid that we all should get vaccinated to prevent a deadly pandemic.

Yet, they say the new H1N1 vaccine is safe based on vaccines for that very same flu strain from which it is so different. They write on their Web site "the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccines are expected to have similar safety profiles as seasonal flu vaccines ..."

Another contradiction.

While symptoms of H1N1 flu and seasonal flu are virtually identical, the H1N1 vaccine is showing signs of being quite different from the seasonal flu shot.

Although both are produced using antiquated 50-year-old technology that involves injecting the virus into eggs and allowing it to grow, the virus being used to produce the swine flu vaccine has been found to reproduce much more slowly in eggs than the ordinary flu virus.

And according to a separate CBS News report, the U.S. government is now funding newer unprecedented technologies to speed up vaccine production, including one that involves growing the virus inside animal cells and another that involves flu proteins grown inside insect cells.

The risks of these, and the current fast-tracked swine flu vaccine, are truly unknown at this time.

There is NO Incentive for the CDC or Vaccine Manufacturers to Care About Safety

You may think that the CDC and the vaccine manufacturers must be concerned about safety, as if they released a dangerous vaccine and promoted it to the American public, imagine the lawsuits they would face.

This is actually no longer reality as the U.S. government has granted vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from the new swine flu vaccine.

In fact, drug manufacturers got a major boost in protection and were granted unprecedented powers to experiment on the population with the passing of the 2006 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (the PREP Act).

This law allows the DHHS Secretary to invoke almost complete immunity from liability for manufacturers of vaccines and drugs used to combat a declared public health emergency, which the "swine flu pandemic" qualifies as.

The PREP Act removes your right to a trial jury unless you can provide clear evidence of willful misconduct that resulted in death or serious physical injury. But that's not all. First you must apply for and be granted permission to sue by the DHHS Secretary.

The most problematic aspect of the PREP Act is that it removes all financial incentive to make a safe product.

In fact, vaccine makers now have a negative incentive to test it for safety, because if they are aware of problems, then they could potentially be held liable for willful misconduct!

As long as they can prove they "didn't know" of any problem, they will not be liable for damages. Hence it's in their best interest to know as little as possible about the adverse reactions it might cause.

It seems unimaginable, but you and your children are now being enlisted as an unpaid human trial subjects for experimental, fast-tracked vaccines like the swine flu vaccine.

Even if They Were Effective or Safe, Most Vaccines Will Come Too Late

Recent national polls have revealed that 30 percent to 50 percent in many communities are not planning to get a swine flu shot ... but there are many who are still ready to stand in line.

If you have not yet made up your mind and have questions, we have created some fact-filled posters that you can print and post ALL over your community, your local stores, office and schools.

You can also visit the special section of my site that is devoted to giving you all the latest H1N1 Swine Flu Alerts. This is an excellent go-to source to stay updated on all the new swine flu developments.

But I wanted to share one final detail, and that is a new study just released by Purdue University researchers and published in the journal Eurosurveillance.

The researchers found that at this point in time any vaccinations that are given in the United States will likely have little effect on the number of infections. The researchers state:

"The model predicts that there will be a significant wave in autumn, with 63% of the population being infected, and that this wave will peak so early that the planned CDC vaccination campaign will likely not have a large effect on the total number of people ultimately infected by the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus."

In other words, infections are predicted to peak in late October (now) and by the end of the year it's estimated that 63 percent of the U.S. population will have been infected with H1N1 swine flu.

What does this mean? By the end of the year the majority of the U.S. population will have likely acquired natural immunity.

Natural immunity is what you gain when you recover from influenza and natural immunity is what is protecting older Americans, who have recovered from exposure to H1N1 strains of influenza in the past and are therefore less susceptible today.

This new revelation, coupled with CBS News' finding that swine flu cases are already being greatly overestimated ... and the fact that vaccines do not offer long-term immunity anyway ... and the questionable motives behind CDC's massive vaccination campaign ... puts an entirely different slant on the swine flu "epidemic," don't you think?

If you are still concerned about the swine flu, you should know that it is relatively easy to improve your immune response to fight this infection. If 99.9% of the people are not having any serious complications from H1N1, it would seem perfectly rational to believe that minor lifestyle changes could have dramatic effects on fighting this infection, and none of these involve taking potentially dangerous and unproven vaccine interventions.

Simple Measures That Can Help You Fight Illness

• Vitamin D has been well documented to increase the production of over 200 anti microbial peptides that fight infection.
• Eliminate sugar from your diet as that will impair your immune response
• Get plenty of rest
• Exercise appropriately

~~~~~~~~~

(The above article contains links and video. If you're interested, check it out. The link is in the headline.)

A pandemic is defined as being widespread, but not necessarily more deadly than any other flu. I had suspected that H1N1 was being touted as being more than it was (and I still could be wrong about that) for reasons I couldn't quite determine. It just seemed wrong. Yes, there have been deaths, but people die every flu season.

People who have health issues are more vulnerable than those who are healthy. And some people just don't know they have those issues. Others don't take care of themselves and put themselves in harm's way. I just believe that if you take appropriate care such as:

• washing your hands, not touching your face with your hands
• sneezing into your sleeve or disposable tissue (and disposing the tissue immediately)
• taking vitamins and/or supplements as needed
• eating a healthy diet
• getting appropriate exercise (any exercise is better than none)

I'm no doctor, but common sense is to take precautions such as I've outlined above to keep from getting sick or keeping whatever you do get to a mild case.

Washing your hands as often as possible may be the number one thing you can do to prevent getting sick. Alcohol based hand sanitizers are good as a second on-the-run idea, but washing hands is even better. Soap and hot water for at least 30 seconds, longer is better, is the hand washing rule. Sing a chorus of "Happy Birthday" if it helps. And if anyone looks at you oddly, either ignore it, or tell them you're timing your hand washing to as not to get the flu. Chances are, it will remind them to wash as well.

This may be the time to avoid shaking hands, social hugging and kissing, social touching and so on. You may consider it rude, but maybe it will keep you from getting sick.

Just a few suggestions and my personal opinions.

Ever Wonder......Why the man who invests all your money is called a broker?

One in a Row

Posted by Tim Nerenz on October 23, 2009 at 5:07pm

View Tim Nerenz's blog

http://timnerenz.com/content/one-row

President Obama’s new policy on medical marijuana brings to mind the old saying: even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in while. That was back when you could say “blind” and “acorn” was only a single nut, not an organized mob of them.

Let’s give credit where credit is due – the President’s decision to discontinue federal prosecutions of medical use of marijuana is practical, principled, and compassionate.

Libertarians should credit the President for recognizing the right of individuals to make their own choices in medical treatments and drug use. That’s one in a row.

Republicans can stand behind the President for recognizing states’ rights and following the Constitutional limitations on federal government powers. That’s one in a row.

Democrats should be thrilled that the President has finally done something that is supported by a majority of citizens. That’s one in a row.

You see? Limiting government is not only easy, it brings us together. The Libertarian Party has been way ahead of the curve; fighting for the rights of individuals to make our own choices over what we put into our bodies and for what purposes. Our stand was taken long before public opinion swung to our views.

But the President’s new policy is a victory for a principle, not for a Party; credit goes to the millions of people who have worked tirelessly for years to bring sanity to this issue – people from across the political spectrum as well as people who could care less about politics and have acted only out of compassion.

The President’s decision will bring peace of mind to millions of American families and it costs less than nothing – it reduces federal spending on prosecution and incarceration of people who pose no threat to civil order.

But one in a row is not enough. A Presidential directive can be reversed by the next President; or this one if the polls shift against him. It can be ignored by federal prosecutors. And it does nothing to confront the real imperative – comprehensive reform of our destructive drug laws. The President took one step, now it is time for Congress to get to work and finish the job.

The consequences of drug prohibition in this nation are far worse than the consequences of drug use. Studies continue to show that our drug laws do not reduce rates of use, abuse, or addiction. They have created new problems of crime, gangs, corruption violence, international terrorism, and the destruction of our inner cities. They have made a difficult problem impossible, and we have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on a fool’s errand that has now lasted decades.

Those who oppose this decision will worry that the President’s ban on medical marijuana prosecutions will lead to increased recreational drug use. I ask them only to consider this: will you now start using drugs now as a result? Neither will I; and neither will anyone else who has chosen not to use drugs. And those who have chosen to abuse drugs are not deterred by laws – we all know that.

So congratulations, President Obama, I’m behind you 100% on this one. That’s one in row.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Why Dogs Hate Halloween

Part 6

The Grating Communicator

by Ann Coulter

10/21/2009

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants.

That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher's-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, "And no, I don't want to come on 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss it." Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg's announcing that he's not interested in appearing in the next "Ocean's Eleven" movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News primetime hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's primetime lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

-- In the '80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.

-- Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU's Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.

-- Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina -- through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)

-- Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.

-- The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing "criminals" passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.

-- Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.

Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn't show Horton's picture. And yet in Keith's discussion of Bush's allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don't blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can't be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith's principal contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pomposity.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in "communications" in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it's understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can't even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher, Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic "Guys and Dolls" suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here's the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton's picture, when in fact, Horton's race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he's never been a "content guy." He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that's all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

Did You Know?

When Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, government, consumer, and business debt amounted to a little over 90 percent of the gross domestic product, which is value of all the goods and services produced in the U. S. annually. Even during the Great Depression, our darkest economic hour when we were producing so little, our collective debt totaled just over 250 percent of the GDP. By 2008, we owed more than 350 percent of all the wealth created in the nation that year.

Sources: USA Today: Dennis Cauchon, "Leap in U.S. Debt Hits Taxpayers with 12% More Red Ink", USA Today, May 5, 2009.

Who holds America's Debt?

http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

Motorcycle Fans Get Political On FairTax

Friday, October 16, 2009 11:05:18 AM from Central Florida News 13.

Reported by Margaret Kavanaugh

DAYTONA BEACH -- Friday morning some motorcycle lovers are taking to the streets for a very political cause -- rallying for tax reform. The bikers want to show their support for the FairTax Act currently being considered by Congress. Representatives said Biketoberfest is a perfect opportunity for them to get their views heard. Supporters of the FairTax Act believe that replacing income tax with a national sales tax would greatly improve the economy of the United States. One biker News 13 spoke with said bikers love freedom, and that's why they are supporting this issue. "We need more freedom, more money in our pockets. This is a real stimulus because you take your whole paycheck home," Said Mike McClain, a supporter of the FairTax Act. Participants in the rally are meeting at City Island around 9:40 a.m. to start the ride. McClain said that next year they are planning on taking their campaign on the road to 48 states.

Can the FairTax Reverse the Explosion of Our National Debt?

Our country is on the Path of Unsustainable Debt.

Experts and average people alike worry that the United States is headed for second rate status as a world power because we are "mortgaged" to the hilt to foreign creditors. One recent USA Today analysis found that our real federal debt amounted to more than $500,000 per American household. Much of the true federal (American taxpayer) debt is not even commonly tallied--such as more than $32 trillion in pending Social Security obligations. In addition to its other advantages, the FairTax is the easiest, simplest and best way to expose the true cost of government in every purchase --leading to voter awareness that will restrain politician’s penchant for spending money we don’t have.

Never before has the world seen its richest and most powerful nation so deeply in debt to even the poorest of countries. It is bad enough that we owe a trillion dollars to China, but we even owe money to Botswana!

Today there are few politicians from either political party who can resist the easy reelection strategy of promising and legislating more and more spending. More worrisome is the fact that for many in the voting public, such spending seems divorced from our own earnings. The idea that government spending must eventually come from our own paychecks is obscured because our taxes are largely hidden from sight through payroll withholding and payroll taxes. Thus, many celebrate the refund of a few hundred dollars after April 15th but overlook the fact their refund is but a tiny piece of the thousands of dollars that have been withheld from their paychecks throughout the year. What we are actually doing is making a big interest free loan to our government throughout the year.

Few members of the public would agree that the lucrative industry that has grown up around the tax code justifies the damage to our economy caused by the income tax system. It's a really attractive system for a very small population of both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. and a really bad deal for all the rest of us. Love of power over the tax system and the profits derived from those close to the inner workings of these Congressional committees unite both Democrats and Republicans in Washington--and makes clear the distance between what is good for these few and what is good for the nation.

Because our taxes become obvious with every purchase under the FairTax--instead of hidden from us in payroll taxes--we will all begin to see the true cost of the federal government every time we shop. It's right there on every receipt instead of hidden from us through payroll withholding. Many believe that when we finally "connect" the cost of the federal government with what comes out of our personal spending, a far different attitude about vote-buying spending promises will make "earmarks" like the "bridge to nowhere" a thing of the past. Families well understand that incurring debt beyond one's ability to pay is a dangerous path. The FairTax makes obvious how much our government costs us, making unchecked government spending recognized as equally irresponsible and makes it far less acceptable to the American public. The FairTax is the most direct path to healing our nation's finances.

Sources: USA Today: Dennis Cauchon, "Leap in U.S. Debt Hits Taxpayers with 12% More Red Ink", USA Today, May 5, 2009.

Who holds America's Debt? http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

The Bogus Death Statistic That Won't Die

By Michelle Malkin

October 23, 2009

Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida has found his calling: death demagogue. First, he accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to "die quickly." Next, he likened health insurance problems to a "holocaust in America." Now, he's unveiled a new website entitled "namesofthedead.com" in memory of the "more than 44,000 Americans [who] die simply because they have no health insurance."

Just one problem: The statistic is a phantom number. Grayson's memorial, like the Democrats' government health care takeover plan itself, is full of vapor. It comes from a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health. But the science is infused with left-wing politics.

Two of the co-authors, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are avowed government-run health care activists. Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which bills itself as "the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program." Woolhandler is a co-founder and served as secretary of the group.

Sounding more like a MoveOn.org organizer than a disinterested scientist, Woolhandler assailed the current health reform legislation in Congress for not going far enough: "Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives."

How did these political doctors come up with the 44,000 figure? They used data from a health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994. The questionnaires asked a sample of 9,000 participants whether they were insured and how they rated their own health. The federal Centers for Disease Control tracked the deaths of people in the sample group through the year 2000. Himmelstein, Woolhandler and company then crunched the numbers and attributed deaths to lack of health insurance for all the participants who initially self-reported that they had no insurance and then died for any reason over the 12-year tracking period.

At no time did the original researchers or the single-payer activists who piggy-backed off their data ever verify whether the supposed casualties of America's callous health care system had insurance or not. In fact, here is what the report actually says:

"Our study has several limitations," the authors concede. The survey data they used "assessed health insurance at a single point in time and did not validate self-reported insurance status. We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview." Himmelstein et al. simply assumed that point-in-time uninsurance translates into perpetual uninsurance -- and that any health calamities that result can and must be blamed on being uninsured.

Another caveat you won't see on Grayson's memorial to the dubious dead: The single-payer advocate-authors also conceded in their study limitations section that "earlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7 percent and 11 percent of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified. If present, such misclassification might dilute the true effect of uninsurance in our sample."

To boil it all down in plain English: The single-payer scientists had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died. They had no way of assessing whether the deaths could have been averted with health insurance coverage. A significant portion of those classified as "uninsured" may not have been uninsured, based on past studies that actually did verify insurance status. But the Himmelstein team just took the rate of uninsurance from the original study (3.3 percent), applied it to census data and voila: More than 44,000 Americans are dying from lack of insurance.

Next, the political doctors cooked up scary-specific death tolls for all 50 states (California -- 5,302, Texas -- 4,675). Newspapers dutifully cited the fear-mongering factoids. The single-payer lobbying group co-founded by Himmelstein and Woolhandler took it from there. Last month, the group set up its own memorial on the National Mall for the phantom 44,000 casualties of uninsurance.

Himmelstein (who was also the driving force behind another flawed study tying medical debt to personal bankruptcies) eschewed scientific nuance and caveats to take to the airwaves and declare starkly that an American "dies every 12 minutes" because of lack of insurance. And now Grayson has taken the monumentally dishonest concept online to solicit sob stories and put flesh on the weak bones of these dubious death numbers.

Where's the White House health care "reality check" squad when you need it?

---

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).

FairTax on Twitter

It's FairTax Friday - look at your paystub!

Taxes on savings destroys Americans incentives to save money. FairTax~ No more taxation on retirement accounts!

FairTax.org

It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

-Samuel Adams

Why Dogs Hate Halloween

Part 5

Circle Flies

A cowboy from Texas attends a social function where Barack Obama is trying to gather more support for his Health Plan. Once he discovers the cowboy is from President Bush's home area, he starts to belittle him by talking in a southern drawl and single syllable words.

As he was doing that, he kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around his head. The cowboy says, "Y'all havin' some problem with them circle flies?"

Obama stopped talking and said, "Well, yes, if that's what they're called, but I've never heard of circle flies."

"Well Sir," the cowboy replies, "circle flies hang around ranches.

They're called circle flies because they're almost always found circling around the back end of a horse. "Oh," Obama replies as he goes back to rambling. But, a moment later he stops and bluntly asks, "Are you calling me a horse's ass?"

"No, Sir," the cowboy replies, "I have too much respect for the citizens of this country to call their President a horse's ass."

"That's a good thing," Obama responds and begins rambling on once more.

After a long pause, the cowboy, in his best Texas drawl says, "Hard to fool them flies, though."

The Rights and Obligations of Liberty

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." --George Washington

In a recent discussion with a colleague, I lamented the fact that too few American citizens understand their obligation, before all others, to support and defend our Constitution, much less, engender the ability to do so. She responded that, though she considered herself a conservative (mostly because she identifies closely with some conservative principles), understanding our Constitution was not her "passion."

My friend holds degrees from the nation's finest academic institutions and is professional in all her endeavors. However, like most Americans under 50 years of age, she never had a basic civics course and consequently has a difficult time articulating even the most fundamental constitutional principles.

The fact is, as Americans, we not only enjoy the rights affirmed by our Constitution, we have obligations to understand the mechanics of that affirmation in order to sustain it for our generation and those to come.

No matter what our calling, our occupation or our passion, we have a debt and duty as citizens to both learn about and support our Constitution, and we are obliged to do so above and before all other pursuits, for without constitutional Rule of Law, there are no other pursuits.

Of course, because ignorance is institutionalized by most government education systems, including those of "higher learning," and because ignorance is apparently considered virtuous by some social subcultures, there is little probability that a too large portion of Americans will ever comprehend this obligation, much less honor it.

Fortunately, in the words of Samuel Adams, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

But, what of those like my well-educated colleague, who is among America's "best and brightest", who are, however, uninformed about their obligations as citizens of the greatest experiment in human history? What of those who, as one consequence of enjoying the highest standard of living on the planet, tend to take our legacy of liberty for granted and have become complacent about its attendant responsibilities?

George Washington noted at the conclusion of the American Revolution, "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity."

These days, most Americans believe that liberty is their birthright. They enjoy the (relative) personal freedom of our great society but forget the corresponding personal responsibility. For most of us have never had to fight for liberty and, thus, have little concept of its value or any sense of gratitude for its accumulated cost.

In his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, Justice Joseph Story wrote, "Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence."

Likewise, John Adams noted, "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know..." He added, "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, [are] necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties."

To that end, James Madison wrote, "What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?"

James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of George Washington's original Supreme Court justices, put it most concisely: "Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge."

Unfortunately, this wisdom has fallen upon deaf ears. The popular support of the current Democrat hegemony is evidence aplenty of just how uninformed the majority of Americans are regarding their Constitution and the Rule of Law.

That most erudite of contemporary economists, Walter E. Williams, wrote this week in American Idea, "At the heart of the American idea is the deep distrust and suspicion the founders of our nation had for government, distrust and suspicion not shared as much by today's Americans. Some of the founders' distrust is seen in our Constitution's language such as Congress shall not: abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, violate and deny. ... Other founder distrust for government is found in the Constitution's separation of powers, checks and balances and the several anti-majoritarian provisions such as the Electoral College and the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify changes in the Constitution."

However, writes Williams, "The three branches of our federal government are no longer bound by the Constitution as the framers envisioned and what is worse is American ignorance and acceptance of such rogue behavior. ... The American people, along with our elected representatives, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, care less about what is and what is not permissible under our Constitution. They think Congress has the right to do anything upon which they can secure a majority vote, whether they have the constitutional or moral authority to do so or not."

Williams concludes, "We are losing what's made our country great. Instead of moving toward greater liberty, we're moving toward greater government control of our lives."

Indeed, I was speaking with another colleague recently who is a Slovak national -- he was a "Young Pioneer" raised under Communist tyranny in Czechoslovakia. He has spent five years undergoing the rigors required to become a U.S. citizen (I suggested he should have simply walked across the Mexican border instead), yet he questions his pursuit of citizenship now that the U.S. is rapidly devolving into the sort of tyrannical regime he left behind.

Natural-born Americans have never experienced such a regime, and so we proceed headlong into that authoritarian abyss like so many lemmings following the ignoble piper, Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm.

Of such pipers, Alexander Hamilton wrote, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."

Regarding the wayward affections for socialism of Obama's minions, Washington wrote, "[W]e ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly, and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before they are capable of appreciating their own."

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free," wrote Thomas Jefferson, "it expects what never was and never will be."

But, ignorance is bliss -- at least until it runs head-on into reality, and reality is just around the corner.

Samuel Adams assured us that, "No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

It is for this reason that The Patriot launched the Essential Liberty Project on Constitution Day last.

Essential Liberty is the most cost effective means for educating Americans of all ages and all walks of life about the proper context for understanding our Constitution and the liberty it preserves and safeguards.

We have created through Essential Liberty a foundation to accomplish the most important task we have ever undertaken. Our mission is based on the principles outlined in the Legacy of American Liberty and will utilize a whole series of educational tools to accomplish this mission.

I will continue to write concerning the Essential Liberty Project in the next couple of months, as we move to full throttle for 2010.

We must never forget our debt of obligation to those generations of American Patriots who have extended, at great cost in their fortunes and lives, the legacy of liberty to us, and we must remain steadfast and irrevocably committed with our fortunes and lives to extend that legacy to our posterity.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander

Publisher, PatriotPost.US

ObamaCare

Earlier this week, the Finance Committee filed their version of ObamaCare. Clocking in at 1,502 pages, the bill contains cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage, fines on those who do not purchase their own insurance, taxes on many private insurance plans, taxes on medical devices and drugs, and new taxes on employers. This is a far cry from the campaign promise President Obama made when he said he would not raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000.

And that’s just the beginning. Visit our Virtual War-Room to Take Action!

ObamaCare supporters in the House and Senate are working on their strategies to include a public option and other heavy-handed, big government regulations into their final bills. In the end, it all adds up to the same thing…government-run health care.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting to hide the enormous costs of ObamaCare by breaking-out some of the more expensive measures like the Medicare Doctor Fix into separate legislation. The Congressional Budget Office has already estimated the bare-bones version of the bill will cost $800 billion, but the real cost is actually much higher when you add up all the things they are trying to move separately. Reid has also indicated he will circumvent the U.S. Constitution, which requires bills like this to begin in the House, by stripping the text of another unrelated bill already passed by the House and inserting the health care overhaul as an amendment.

As Obama and his cronies on the Left inch closer to bringing ObamaCare to a vote, Congress needs to hear from you now more than ever.

We’ve updated and improved our virtual war-room where you can call your Congressmen, Senators, as well as specific targets we feel will be critical to the final outcome. They all need to know that far from giving up and accepting their watered-down policies – we’ve only just begun.

Representatives and Senators need to hear from you not only on the phone, and via email and traditional mail – but in their own backyards. A district office visit doesn’t take long, and is a very important step that shows you are serious about preserving our freedoms. Many folks are having trouble getting through to their Congressmen on the phone – some offices are no longer answering, other lines are jammed. If they won’t listen when we call, then you need to show up on their doorsteps!

Take action and look at all the ways you can have an impact on this issue in our virtual war room.

Sincerely,

Dick Armey

Chairman

FreedomWorks.org

PS: If you haven’t done so already, be sure to purchase a copy of our 9/12 panoramic picture online here. This is a great reminder of the power the grassroots have when we come together!