The person credited with inventing the “death panels” claim about health care reform worked with tobacco giant Phillip Morris to railroad health care reform in the Clinton administration, Rolling Stone magazine reports.

In an article in the magazine’s October 1 issue, not yet available online, writer Tim Dickinson reveals that Phillip Morris “worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means,” Rolling Stone reports.

McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled “A Triumph of Misinformation,” debunking McCaughey’s arguments at TNR.

Now McCaughey appears to be playing a pivotal role in efforts to shut down this year’s health reform efforts. ABC News credited McCaughey earlier this summer with being the person behind the “death panel” falsehood, when she said in a July appearance on the radio program The Fred Thompson Show that the health care reform effort was “a vicious assault on elderly people, all to … cut your life short.”

In that interview, McCaughey asserted that senior citizens would have to face “death panels” to determine their worthiness to continue living every five years.

Last month, Gawker blogger Pareene listed off a number of McCaughey’s more questionable assertions surrounding the health care debate, including her claim in a New York Post article that Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, wants doctors to forego the Hippocratic oath and focus on “social justice” rather than healing patients. That article was entitled “Deadly Doctors.”

Susie Madrak, in her blog at Crooks and Liars, cites key parts of the Rolling Stone article:

[W]hat has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Phillip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Phillip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

“Worked off-the-record with Manhattan [Editor's note: At the time, McCaughey was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute] and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan.”

McCaughey served as lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998, under Republican Governor George Pataki. She recently resigned from the board of directors of Cantel Medical Corporation, saying she didn’t want her involvement with the firm to color her credibility on the health care reform debate. But many observers say the resignation was in reaction to an unfavorable appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

IPCC head: Lack of action on climate change could cause ‘large number of failed states’

If a letter from a presidential aide is to be believed, President Barack Obama is set to make an audacious call to end fossil fuel subsidies at the United Nations on Tuesday.

A letter (PDF) from Michael Froman, an aide to Obama, setting out the White House’s climate change priorities ahead of the Copenhagen summit, states that “eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would help energy markets work better and improve our energy security.”

That leads DailyKos blogger RLMiller to conclude that Obama “will ask the G-20 countries, including our own, to end the hypocritical practice of billions of dollars of subsidies to dirty, carbon-emitting fuels while preaching to developing countries about their carbon emissions.”

In making such a call, Obama would be echoing the arguments of many environmental groups, as well as the United Nations Environment Program, which last year called for the “scrapping” of the subsidies.

But the move will likely place the Obama administration at odds with some of the world’s most profitable companies. As DailyKos’ Miller writes: “If you thought the health insurers hated Obama, it ain’t nothing compared to the reaction by Exxon Mobil and pals!”

Miller points to a study from the Environmental Law Institute that shows the energy industry received more than $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, despite consecutive quarters of record-shattering profit during much of that time.

That compares to $29 billion in subsidies during the same period for renewable fuels.

The ELI study also asserts that US taxpayers’ money is being spent to subsidize foreign oil production, and that the subsidies are creating “perverse incentives” to continue investing in fossil fuels, even as they become more scarce.

Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies “is also a logical step in combating climate change, as it would encourage energy conservation, and facilitate new technologies,” Froman’s letter continues. “The move away from should be managed to protect those most vulnerable to price increases.”

Ending the subsidies is “certainly going to be a controversial part [of the president's agenda] in some circles,” Miller writes. “Already, some have suggested that ending fossil fuel subsidies to desperately poor developing nations will create a backlash.”

IPCC HEAD WARNS OF ‘FAILED STATES’

The head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world could see “a large number of failed states” if the world’s largest economies don’t take action on climate change.

Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the organization that shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for its work on climate change issues, told the UK’s Guardian: “We need to remind these people about impacts of climate change – the fact that they are inequitable and fall very heavily on some of the poorest people in the world. We are likely to see a large number of failed states if we don’t act in time.”

Investors cheer Baucus plan with spike in health insurance stocks

The health care reform bill unveiled by Montana Sen. Max Baucus has met with initial resistance from both conservatives and liberals.

No sooner had the plan’s outline been made public Wednesday than criticism of it began to pile on from both ends of the political spectrum. Baucus’ plan, which would cost $856 billion over 10 years, would not include a public option, but does provide for non-governmental health care co-ops and a health care exchange, is “a model that has already been tried and largely failed,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said in a letter to Baucus and Senate Finance Committee chair Charles Grassley.

Rockefeller, who told reporters he could not support the Baucus plan in its present form, was invited to the White House for a meeting Wednesday almost immediately after making his statement. The White House’s presumed interest in Rockefeller’s opposition strengthens the notion that the Baucus bill, or something similar to it, is what President Barack Obama will eventually support.

As RAW STORY reported earlier this week, the pharmaceutical group with whom the president struck a deal earlier this year for their support of health reform has backed the Baucus proposal.

Even before the plan was unveiled, Republicans had already given notice that they would not support the effort — a strange outcome, considering that Baucus’ plan was developed principally in order to create bipartisan support for health reform, and Baucus himself was accused of leaving Democratic lawmakers out of the process.

But others on the left have criticized the Baucus plan as well. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the plan “absolutely fails to meet the most basic health care needs of working families.”

House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) offered faint praise for parts of the plan, but said she hopes “to see modifications that result in the Senate bill better reflecting the work of the House to make health care more affordable for all Americans and promote competition that is key to keeping costs lower.”

In fact, it would appear that most of the support voiced for the Baucus plan so far is coming from centrist “Blue Dog” Democrats, and — so far — a sole Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe of Maine.

“I believe the Chairman’s legislation moves in the right direction away from a government-run system contained in bills that have passed other Congressional committees,” Snowe said Wednesday.

And House Rep. Stephanie Sandlin (D-SD), co-chair of the Blue Dog Democrats’ group in the House of Representatives, said that “today, the Senate took an important step forward as Congress moves to send responsible health care reform legislation to the President’s desk.”

The other group to have been cheered by the Baucus plan is investors, who rallied health insurers’ stocks on Wednesday after the plan was unveiled — a clear sign that the business community sees the plan as good news for the private health insurance system.

A federal judge in Georgia has threatened Orly Taitz, de facto leader of the birther movement, with sanctions if she ever brings another “frivolous” case before him, news reports say.

Judge Clay Land of the US District Court in Columbus, Georgia, threw out a case brought by US Army Captain Connie Rhodes, who earlier this month sued for the right to refuse deployment orders to Iraq, on the argument that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, President Barack Obama, was not born in the United States and is therefore not the legitimate head of the army.

According to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Judge Clay stated in his ruling that the plaintiff “has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States.”

The ruling continues: “Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.’”

As WTVM-TV in Columbus reported, the judge also stated that Rhodes’ attorney, birther leader Orly Taitz, “will be subject to counsel sanctions for bringing any future actions in his court which are similarly frivolous.”

The judge’s ruling represents a significant legal defeat for Taitz and the birther movement, which received a great deal of attention from the media this summer. Media watchdog groups specifically targeted CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who gave the discredited theory that Obama was not born in the United States a disproportionate amount of coverage, according to some observers.

Taitz was behind this summer’s release of a purported “Kenyan birth certificate” for President Obama, which was dated two years after the president’s 1961 birth date, and contradicted Hawaiian officials’ long-standing insistence that the president’s Hawaiian birth certificate is legitimate.

Judge Clay ruled that that document, which evidently formed the backbone of the plaintiff’s case, was illegitimate because Taitz’s organization paid money to acquire it, making it tantamount to bribery.

However, the legal actions challenging President Obama’s citizenship have not ended. A US District Court judge in California recently allowed another lawsuit challenging President Obama’s citizenship to go forward. This one, brought by Capt. Pamela Barnett, also involves Taitz. The first hearing is set for October, when the judge will review a motion to dismiss the case.

Pharma group that made deal with Obama now backing Baucus health bill

The health care reform plan proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is an “absolute gift” to health care insurance companies, says an industry whistleblower.

Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna, said the Baucus plan “would not provide affordable coverage … gives the industry too much latitude to charge higher premiums based on age and geographic location, fails to mandate employer coverage, and pushes consumers into plans with limited benefits,” Politico reports.

Potter’s claims come at a time when it looks increasingly likely that the White House will back health care reforms that will be very similar to Baucus’ proposal.

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the pharmaceutical trade group that struck a deal with President Barack Obama to support health care reform is backing Baucus’ bill — an indication that Baucus’ plan may be the one that the president will eventually support.

As RAW STORY reported last week, the version of health care reform supported by Sen. Baucus (D-MT) would cost $850 billion to $900 billion over 10 years, but would not include a public health option.

It would, however, levy a new tax on insurance policies, in the hope that “employers would buy cheaper, less generous coverage for employees, thereby reducing the overuse of medical services,” as the New York Times put it.

“Conservatives are already claiming that Democratic reform would lead to health care rationing,” reported The Hill. “A tax like that is unlikely to assuage those concerns.”

In his speech to Congress last week, President Obama hinted that the Baucus bill may be his preferred choice when he touted the notion of a health insurance exchange — a key plank of the Baucus bill.

The details of the Baucus bill are expected to be released on Wednesday.

“The Baucus framework is just an absolute joke,” Politico quoted Wendell Potter as saying. “It is an absolute gift to the industry. And if that is what we see in the legislation, [America’s Health Insurance Plans chief] Karen Ignagni will surely get a huge bonus.”

It was Sen. Baucus who, back in June, announced the deal between the White House and PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group representing the US’s largest drug makers. Under that deal, pharmaceutical manufacturers agreed to reduce drug costs to Americans by $80 billion over 10 years, or an average of $8 billion per year, and committed themselves to a $150-million ad campaign supporting the president’s efforts to reform health care.

Those ads began running last month.

But, as Matt Taibbi points out on his blog, the deal also ensured that any health reform bill supported by the White House would not authorize Medicare to negotiate mass discounts for pharmaceuticals. Most single-payer health systems (of which Medicare is an example) have the ability to negotiate bulk price reductions. This helps to explain, for instance, why drug costs are significantly lower in Canada than the United States. Under the pharma deal, no such mechanism would exist in the US.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that at least part of the $150 million big pharma committed to pro-health reform ads will go to supporting the Baucus bill directly.

“President Obama has cited the deal with the group as signifying a new era of cooperation,” the Times reports. “But some critics say the advertising fund could be wielded against alternative approaches to health care legislation.”

Some critics of the White House-big pharma deal say it was politics, rather than policy, that prompted the White House to support the Baucus plan.

The Times quotes James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, who said of the Baucus plan: “Essentially what the US got was not $80 billion, but $150 million in Obama campaign contributions.”

The US economy is recovering from the shock of last year’s banking collapse, but could continue to need financial assistance for an indefinite period into the future, the Treasury Department stated in a report released Monday.

The report (PDF), entitled “The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies,” states that “although we are rolling back emergency support programs that are no longer needed, significant parts of the financial system remain impaired. Unanticipated events could intensify pressure on the financial system. In this context, it is prudent to maintain capacity to address unforeseen developments.”

The report said, as quoted by The Hill: “In those markets where conditions have improved, it is unclear whether the improvements achieved to date will persist without a period of continued government support.”

Given the usually subdued and diplomatic language used in government reports on the economy, such a declaration will likely be read by many economists as an indication that there could be trouble ahead for the economy.

The report does have a measure of good news. For instance, a $250 billion “placeholder” rescue fund that President Barack Obama had held over for the 2010 budget will now be canceled, due to a lack of need. But the original $750 billion TARP program, passed in the last months of the Bush administration with the support of then-presidential candidate Obama, will remain in place indefinitely.

President Obama gave an address Monday on Wall Street, where he said “the work of recovery continues,” according to the Guardian’s live blog.

The president also issued a warning to the banks whose balance sheets collapsed last year.

“Hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.”

However, as many observers have noted, Wall Street already appears to be returning to old habits. RAW STORY reported earlier this month that investment banks on Wall Street are creating a new class of securitized assets, based on life insurance polices that were purchased from terminally ill people. This new investment class is profitable only if the people whose policies were securitized die when they were expected to — or sooner.

Obama’s plan for a wholesale overhaul of the US’s financial regulatory framework, which the White House announced in June, has been criticized by some for concentrating too much power in the hands of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank that some economists blame for the current fiscal crisis.

Others — mostly Wall Street insiders — have criticized the plan for being too stringent and possibly resulting in investors moving their money off-shore to places with fewer regulations.

Right-wing bloggers have declared a former ally of theirs persona non grata for linking another conservative blogger to the white supremacist movement.

Charles Johnson’s claims that Robert Stacy McCain, formerly an assistant national editor at the Washington Times, has links to white supremacist Bill White have been met with personal attacks against Johnson by numerous right-wing bloggers.

On Sunday, Johnson — whose blog Little Green Footballs has in recent years shifted from staunchly conservative to moderate — linked to several articles alleging that McCain had links to White, and that he was known for engaging in loud, racist tirades at the Washington Times.

In his posting, Johnson linked to a two-year-old blog piece by George Archibald that he found via Google’s cache. The article stated in part:

FishbowlDC, an Internet Web site of MediaBistro, reported on August 22, 2007, a huge blow-up in the newsroom at The Washington Times involving bad-tempered white supremacist assistant national editor Robert Stacy McCain and fellow editor Victor Morton, an orthodox Catholic – with McCain angrily resigning and slamming his way out of the building through side-doors where he always went every 20 minutes to smoke a cigarette.

I know Stacy McCain, an ill-tempered racist who sat on the other side of my desk for many years and carried on loud telephone conversations almost every day full of racist and ultra-right comments, and often got into loud verbal fights with both reporters and editors in the newsroom.

It appears Archibald’s blog is no longer online.

Johnson also linked to a story from the Redding News Review, in which the white supremacist alleged to have Washington Times links — Bill White — is quoted as boasting of his connections to the newspaper.

A white supremacist, responsible for the ongoing harassment of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, claims to be good friends with top level staffers at The Washington Times, and has been published numerous times by the publication.

“[Robert] Stacy McCain is a pretty good friend of mine, Francis Coombs is a big fan of our website,” White wrote on his Web site in 2005.

Coombs is the managing editor of The Times and thought to be the hand-picked successor for the top job, should his boss Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden resign. McCain is an assistant national editor at The Times.

Regardless of the veracity of the claim — now several years old — that a major Washington, DC, newspaper had a relationship with a white supremacist, the right-wing blogosphere has responded with anger.

On his blog, Stacy McCain, the target of Johnson’s piece, called Johnson’s claims “destructive idiocy.”

Blogger “Doug” at the Daley Gator declares Johnson to be “The Daley Douchebag.”

“Charles Johnson, who seems to hate anyone who is actually Conservative, a supporter of the second amendment, pro-life, Southern, or who dares to fight for their principles has lost his marbles!” the blogger pronounces.

On his blog POWIP, blogger Dan Collins declares that “Charles Johnson’s done.”

“Charles Johnson’s gone completely off his rocker,” Collins wrote. “Charles has apparently swallowed hook, line and sinker the view that resistance to the policies of The One is prima facie evidence of racism, a canard voiced by pothead pseudo-intellectual Bill Maher, for which he’s receiving kudos from the sycophantic worshippers of Baracky.”

Indeed, Johnson has been playing up what he sees as the racist element of right-wing opposition to the policies of President Barack Obama.

During the Tea Party protest in Washington, DC, this past weekend, Johnson blogged several times about the racist overtones of some of the protesters’ signs, such as one “nominating” Obama for “President of Kenya.” Another blog item debunked the claim by some protest participants that there was no Nazi imagery at the protest. As Johnson’s post shows, there was plenty.

At VodkaPundit, blogger Stephen Green makes an effort at actually countering Johnson’s argument.

“I’ve worked with [Robert] Stacy [McCain] in person a couple of times, at the DNC last summer and at CPAC in February. Both were crowded, high-stress situations. At no time did I see Stacy treat anyone — of any color, creed, whathaveyou — with anything less than respect and good humor,” Green writes.

“So, is Robert Stacy McCain a white supremacist? Hell if I know. But he enjoys breaking bread with agnostic half Jews like me, which would certainly make him a different kind of white supremacist,” Green concludes.

The dispute between Johnson and his former conservative allies appears to reflect a growing schism between right-wingers and moderates in the American conservative movement.

Johnson’s apparent excommunication from the movement was a long time coming. In April, RAW STORY reported that Johnson had come under attack for criticizing Fox News host and radio personality Glenn Beck, over Beck’s “over-the-top irresponsible extremism and conspiracy theories.”

Insurers’ delays are ‘almost … like murder,’ Sutton said

The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

In 1979, her story was turned into the movie Norma Rae, a thinly-veiled fictional adaptation of Sutton’s struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the character inspired by Sutton.

As Daily Kos blogger hissyspit points out, last year Sutton gave an interview to the press where she described a struggle with her health insurer over treatment. The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, wrote in 2008:

[Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

“How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death,” she said. “It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.”

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer is taking a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

In 2008, the North Carolina branch of the AFL-CIO urged supporters to donate money to Sutton’s medical fund. On its Web site, the union had stated that “after initially being denied coverage by her insurance company for life saving treatment, Sutton is now on drug and chemo therapies and has undergone two surgeries.”

In its obituary the Greensboro News-Record describes her now-legendary struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant:

In 1973, a 33-year-old Sutton was working at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, where she was making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions she and her fellow employees endured compelled her to join forces with Eli Zivkovich, a mill worker turned union organizer, and attempt to unionize the plant employees.

Sutton eventually lost her job, but the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers at the plant and Sutton briefly became an organizer for the union.

In 1977, she was awarded back wages and her job was reinstated by court order, although she chose to return to work for just two days.

The compromise health care reform proposal introduced by Sen. Max Baucus on Monday appears to have been literally written by a former health insurance company vice president, several bloggers asserted Wednesday.

The proposal, which does not provide a public option but compels individuals to purchase health insurance, was written by Liz Fowler, a former vice president of WellPoint and currently the senior counsel to Baucus, writes blogger Marcy Wheeler at the Firedoglake Web site.

Wheeler points out that the name “Liz Fowler” appears as the author in the document properties of the PDF file circulated by Baucus’ staff earlier this week. (The PDF can be found here. To see the author, save it to your hard drive, right-click on the icon, and select “Properties.”)

However, it’s unclear to what extent Fowler wrote the document herself. As Jane Hamsher pointed out Wednesday morning at her Campaign Silo blog, parts of the document match, almost word for word, a health bill amendment put forward by House Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, a Blue Dog Democrat, in July.

Hamsher cites blogger Jon Walker’s comparison of the two texts:

Ross’ amendment:

The governing documents of the cooperatives incorporate ethical and conflict of interest standards designed to protect against insurance industry involvement and interference in the governance of the cooperative.

Baucus’ framework:

Its governing documents must incorporate ethics and conflict of interest standards protecting against insurance industry involvement and interference.

The health reform proposal was put forward by Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat who is part of the “gang of six” Republican and Democratic senators who are working on a compromise health plan that could pass the Senate.

Amanda Terkel reported at ThinkProgress on Tuesday that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted the document had been sent to special-interest groups before it reached the White House.

The plan has taken criticism from all sides, not least because of its requirement that all individuals under the age of 65 must purchase health care coverage, under a penalty of $3,800, as Jed Lewison states at Daily Kos.

By comparison, under the plan, the penalty for companies employing 50 or more people that do not purchase health insurance for their employees would be $400 per employee — a fraction of what it would cost to cover those employees, and therefore unlikely to serve as incentive to purchase employer-provided health care.

Even without a public health option, the Baucus plan is estimated to cost $850 billion to $900 billion over 10 years, according to the New York Times.

NBC’s Ken Strickland reports that the “gang of six” have not decided yet whether to accept Baucus’ proposal.

The White House has sent out talking points attacking Sarah Palin’s op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, a report at the Politico Web site states.

The former Alaska governor’s op-ed argues that it was reasonable for people to believe the Democrats’ proposed health care reform includes “death panels.”

Ben Smith reports at Politico: “The White House has … chosen specifically to focus on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and evidently to make her the face of the opposition, or to respond to her ability to project herself into the debate. She is the only Republican named in the talking points.”

“Every non partisan organization that has looked at [Palin's] claims say they are false,” states the mailer that Smith says was sent out to “allies” of the administration. “And the ideas in her op-ed are both scary and risky. Eliminating Medicare and giving our seniors vouchers instead is a bad idea that we shouldn’t adopt.”

That refers to a passage in Palin’s WSJ op-ed in which she argues for a voucher system to replace Medicare:

Instead of poll-driven “solutions,” let’s talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines.

Earlier in the piece, Palin wrote, “Is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.”

The Democratic National Committee jumped into the fray over that comment. Writing at the Alaska Politics Blog at the Anchorage Daily News, Erika Bolstad quotes Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the DNC, as saying in a statement that “the way Sarah Palin is trying to scare Americans you’d think it’s Halloween already.”

Sevugan went on: “What the American people find truly scary is that insurance rates have doubled this decade and continue to rise at a rate three times faster than their wages, and that rather than take on the insurance industry Republicans have become their biggest defenders. And what Sarah Palin should find truly scary is that her reputation as a serious leader can in fact sink even lower than it already has when she continues to stand by such outlandish claims.”

The Democrats’ talking points come hours before President Barack Obama is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on the issue of health care. Political observers call the speech a make-or-break moment for the president’s health care agenda. Some pundits had urged the president to be more aggressive in selling health care reform to the American public.