Well Done FOX, Your Lies are Working

Americans are not the 'sharpest knives in the international cutlery drawer.' This is well known world wide. I travel a lot, believe me. If you doubt me, watch this video. Now, lets try to figure out why Americans are not really known for their superior gray matter.

Two polls came out this week, one by Daily Kos and the other by NBC. By joining these two polls - the first about who watches FOX News, MSNBC or CNN and the later which shows the misconceptions on Obama's health bill - one can deduce that Republicans are most often wrong about the issues surrounding the proposed health bill and they are getting the majority of their news from FOX. The grain of salt to take along with these numbers is this: the first poll is by a progressive organization and the second by FOX's competitor. So read this from the pro-corporate, conservative Wall Street Journal:

Nearly half of Americans believe that a proposed overhaul of the health care system means the government will decide when to stop providing medical treatment to senior citizens, according to the latest polling by NBC News released this evening.

Some 45% said they believe the plan is likely to include such a provision that has become known as “death panels” despite bipartisan efforts by President Barack Obama and the provision’s author, Republican Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson to dispel the idea. (Isakson, in a recent interview with the Washington Post called the confusion “nuts.”)

To be sure, 50% of respondents said they believe the bill was unlikely to include such a provision, but the deep split over the veracity of “death panels” underscores the difficulty Democrats have had in selling their overhaul to the public.

Further, a majority of Americans (55%) believe the bill will extend health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants even though no proposals currently under negotiation would do so. An equally high number (54%) believe the overhaul will lead to a “complete” government takeover of the health care system, although there is also no actual proposal for that, either.

Additionally, 50% believe that the overhaul will use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions. While it is unclear if the final bill would do so, current law bans federal funds from being used to fund abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life. The president has said he is not interested in expanding abortion rights in the health care package. “I’m pro-choice, but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care,” Obama said in a July interview with CBS.

Americans are also sharply divided on the town hall meetings taking place during the August recess, with 43% of respondents saying the often disruptive and angry encounters with lawmakers—focused mainly on health care—are doing “more harm than good” while 42% said they are doing “more good than harm.” The meetings, however, have also captivated Americans, some 85% of which said they have “seen, heard, or read” news coverage of the events.

As for the president’s approval on handling the health care issue, his numbers are virtually unchanged from last month with 41% saying then and now that they approve of the job he’s doing. While 46% in July said they disapprove, now 47% said the same.

Despite the headwinds Democrats are facing on health care, the NBC poll offers little in the way of good news for their Republican opponents. By a nearly three-to-one margin, 62%-21%, Americans said they disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling health care reform.

The poll, conducted Aug. 15-17 of 805 adults, has a 3.5% margin of error. The full poll results are posted at msnbc.com.

Wall Street Journal