Barack Obama is trying to dispel more of the hideous rumors being spread by all of you right-wing mobsters. Yesterday he tried to convince Americans that he did not support a Canadian-like healthcare system for the United States. He called this debate a "bogeyman" saying, "I don't find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think that they make a good bogeyman."

We're not saying Canadians are scary ... we're saying their healthcare system is. Then there's Pamela Anderson, but that's another story.

Just last week I posted an article by Scott W. Atlas, "Ten reasons why America's health care system is in better condition than you might suppose." In that article he gives several "scary" statistics on the Canadian healthcare system compared to the United States.

- Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

- Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

* Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).

* Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.

* More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).

* Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).

- Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."

- Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long--sometimes more than a year--to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

- People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."

- Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

- Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade--even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

Fear not, though. Your Dear Leaser says that a Canadian model won't work in the US because our system has already been built around a private-based system. What the hell difference does that make when he has every intention of destroying free-market healthcare in this country? Look .... Understand this now when you can do something about it, or discover it later when you cannot. This is NOT about providing better health care to all Americans. This is NOT about saving money on health care. This is about CONTROL! Nothing less. Obama has been making it perfectly clear as far back as 2003 that he favors a single-payer system. Single-payer is simply a code word for "government."

For those of you who still have doubts ... try to wrap your government-educated minds around this. Single-payer means that there is one entity paying the bills. When all the bills are paid by one entity it is easy to figure out that it will be that entity that will ultimately make the decisions on who will and who will not be paid and what they will and will not be paid for. This isn't rocket surgery.

Sure .. Obama is trying to back off his "single-payer" obsession right now by pushing something called the "public option." This public option will be a government health services payment plan (we really should stop calling this insurance) that will compete directly with all employer and private plans out there. Well ... we can call it competition, but it will be a massacre. How in the world does a private business compete with a government program that can operate from here to the end of time at a loss? Obama and the looters know full well that their "public option" will drive employer-provided and private insurance plans out of business. As Obama his own self has said many times, "It make take time .... Five years, ten years ..." But he knows the goal, and you should pull the blinders off and see what's coming as well.

In the meantime, the looters will continue with their newest tactic of demonizing the insurance companies; trying to paint them as the source of all that is evil in the universe. Many Americans, having been conditioned to do so, will buy right in.

We've got another Democrat upset with the angry, right-wing mob when it comes to these healthcare protests. Rep. Brian Baird of Washington said that "a 'coordinated national effort' to disrupt public meetings with shouts and demonstrations, which he said Republican leaders were 'egging on,' was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. 'He believed himself to be a patriot fighting against an oppressive government,' Baird said of McVeigh, whose act killed 168.'"

I've searched the news archives to see if I could find any stories where this moonbat congressman made similar comments about Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and other leftist groups who protested President Bush at every turn. Guess what? Couldn't

Nazis. Brown shirts. Un-American. Right-wing mob. And now we have a comparison to a terrorist. Brian Baird is today's poster boy for a panicked Democrat Party. They fear they're losing their grip. Maybe name-calling will turn the tide.

A listener pointed me to this article by David Sirota that appeared on Salon.com. It's called "The me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd: Nothing will keep the rich from whining about how tough easy street is," and it is written by David Sirota. Based on the title, I knew that I was in for a treat. So what I am going to do is explain to you why this whiny liberal has no idea what in the heck he is talking about.

I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Healthcare and Tax War. And yet, I'm euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face ....

I'm also fairly certain that when many of you run into the me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd, you don't feel like confronting the faux outrage. But on the off chance you do muster the masochistic impulse to engage, here's a guide to navigating the conversation:

What they will scream: We can't raise business taxes, because American businesses already pay excessively high taxes!

What you should say: Here's the smallest violin in the world playing for the businesses. The Government Accountability Office reports that most U.S. corporations pay zero federal income tax. Additionally, as even the Bush Treasury Department admitted, America's effective corporate tax rate is the third lowest in the industrialized world.

My response: Sorry. Obama isn't talking about raising taxes on corporations. He's talking about raising taxes on Americans earning over $200 or $250,000 a year. These small business owners provide 70% of all jobs in our economy, and are creating 80% of all the new jobs. They report their income on individual income tax returns ... the returns filed by the very people that are Obama's crosshairs for a tax hike. Your little ploy of plugging "corporations" into a discussion on raising business taxes sure didn't work all that well for you, did it?

What they will scream: But the rich still "pay close to 60 percent of this nation's taxes!"

What you should say: Such statistics refer only to the federal income tax. When considering all of "this nation's taxes" including payroll, state and local levies, the top 5 percent pay just 38.5 percent of the taxes.

My response: Once again you try to change the terms of the debate. This is not about "the nation's taxes." We're talking about raising income taxes. So, as uncomfortable as it may be to you, let's keep the discussion there. The top 1% of income earners in this country pay over 40% of all income taxes. They earn about 20% of all income. By any measure they're more than carrying their load.

What they will scream: But 38.5 percent is disproportionately high! See? You've proved that the rich "contribute more than their share" of taxes!

What you should say: Actually, they are paying almost exactly "their share." According to the data, the wealthiest 5 percent of America pays 38.5 percent of the total taxes precisely because they make just about that share -- a whopping 36.5 percent! -- of total national income. Asking these folks to pay slightly more in taxes -- and still less than they did during the go-go 1990s -- is hardly extreme.

My response: Well, we've pretty much covered this, haven't we? The discussion is over income taxes, not "total taxes." It's too bad you libs have to change the terms of the discussion in order to come even close to making a valid point.

I hope you noticed a few other things about Sirota's Salon column. There's the name-calling, of course. The "Brooks Brothers Brigade," and "me-first, screw everyone else." Leave it to a liberal looter like Sirota so play the wealth envy card. And as for this "me-first" stuff .. imagine how much better off our country would be if every citizen was dedicated to providing for their own needs first and foremost, and then found time to insert themselves into the lives of others.

By the way ... David Sirota was once the press secretary for Vermont Congressman (now Senator) Bernard Sanders. Sanders is an avowed socialist. Funny how the pieces fit, isn't it?

Senator Tom Coburn answers ten questions that politicians won't answer about healthcare reform.

The White House has decided to open its own website to combat 'myths' about the Democrat healthcare plan.

This new White House "Reality Check" website says that Obama's healthcare plan "would not add one penny to the deficit." Back up a minute .. that is simply not true.

Yesterday a caller on the show asked me to look up Rahm Emanuel's brother Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel and see how he could influence Obama's healthcare debate.

Guess what we get to look forward to by the end of this year? Another debate on immigration reform!

Where did the money for the bank bailout go? Well ... watchdogs can't really tell you. That's government for ya!

The Democrats have found a source of support for their healthcare reform efforts. George Soros is going to pump $5 million into getting this thing passed.

Recent Gallup polls found that 41% of Americans believe that the media greatly exaggerates global warming.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 32% of Americans support a single-payer healthcare system, while 57% oppose it.

The federal government is holding back $100 million in oil drilling leases because of environmental protests and lawsuits.

The Democrats are the ones complaining out astroturfing .. and yet they are the ones offering money to organize and get this healthcare bill passed.

$50 million of federal economic stimulus funds is going to be used by NASA to develop commercial passenger transport to space.

How many of the lost jobs in July can be attributed to the increase in the minimum wage?