To date, the media have debunked the “kill granny” lie more than 40 times. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org says the claim of mandatory counseling on ending seniors’ lives is “a misrepresentation.” ABC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Tim Johnson, said “the idea about death panels” is “not at all legitimate.” PolitiFact.com has called “death panel” claims “a ridiculous falsehood.” When the Associated Press conducted a fact check of the bogus charge, it reported, “No ‘death panel in health care bill.’ “
After former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin claimed that “Obama’s ‘death panel’ ” could decide the fate of her parents or her son who has Down syndrome, conservative radio host Larry Elder aptly called her comments “over the top.” […]
It seems Sarah’s still leading that pied-piper Twitter Parade …
Sometimes, even I am amazed at just how beholden the media has become to politics. But then, The State newspaper in South Carolina continues to remind me.
When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared, the revelation that he went to see his mistress in Argentina was only a matter of time. His staff couldn’t come up with a coherent, believable story and his press spokesman was left scrambling to cover for his disappearance. Of course, anyone with any political savvy knew something was up when South Carolina United States Senator Jim DeMint tossed Governor Mark Sanford under the bus the day before the press published the story. What we see now, however, is The State newspaper trying to take credit for their own incompetence and revise the history of the whole sordid affair.
The State newspaper was able to grab an exclusive interview with the returning Governor at the Atlanta airport, but, the airport ambush of Governor Sanford wasn’t as much about investigative journalism as it was about saving journalistic face for The State newspaper. It was reported that The State newspaper had evidence of the affair for six months. The State newspaper got the story first because they did have the story first. They merely refused to investigate or report on it until they simply didn’t have a choice. When The State published the emails they had sat on for six months, Mark Lett, a VP at The State, had to defend not only the publication of the emails, but, explain why The State didn’t report on the affair sooner.
I was at the grocery store the other day when something happened; I got to see the face of the GOP supporter today. That “face” was that of a check-out clerk, a lady in her mid-50’s, I’d guess, who was working for minimum wage in a grocery store in a small town in South Carolina.
Like all the big chain stores, if you have one of their “cards” you get select items discounted. I never have those store “cards” on me, as my wife has them, so, I asked the lady behind me if she’d let us scan her card. She was very nice about it and handed the clerk her card, mentioning that the benefits “weren’t what they used to be”, to which, I agreed. I told her that it was happening with pretty much everything, and, replied to her that it wouldn’t be long before companies stopped offering benefits totally.
And that is when it happened, when the clerk snorted in derision and said, “that’s the change people voted for…“
Tea Baggers are hoping for a literal “riot” at an upcoming town hall event, in order to create a spectacle for CNBC’s cameras. And the event will be hosted by a Democratic congressman who this week had a swastika painted on a sign outside his district office.
Yesterday, Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin sent an email, obtained by TPMmuckraker, to a Tea Party google group. Martin told the group: “We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC.”
snip
Later that day, a Tea Bagger named Pat Wayman responded with a suggestion, also obtained by TPMmuckraker: “This one should be a riot! literally….” he wrote.
Wayman then posted information for an upcoming town hall meeting hosted by Rep. David Scott (D-GA).
So, if this is true, CNBC is asking Teabaggers to create a riot or near riot so they will have good footage and their right wing TV personalities can play Glenn Beck. If it is true.
There are at least two things that CNBC/GE Legal really should look at: (1) Potential criminal liability as a co-conspirator if any laws are broken; (2) Potential civil liability for any personal injury or property damage under joint and several liability principles.
WTF is all I can say. GE needs to rein in CNBC before someone is hurt.
I have had many questions asked about my screen name and sig. Some people have accused me of being a Right Wing troll. Others have doubted my sincerity because of the meaning of my screen name. I thought I might explain my choice and point out a few facts, for those who may be interested.
We have replaced the two minutes hate with the 24/7 hate/lie cycle.
My hope is to challenge that, and to bring truth to light as best as I can.
One of the first books I read as a young man was George Orwell’s 1984. Politically it opened my eyes and unplugged me from the matrix. I re-read the book once a year and every year since then. It serves as a reminder for what is at stake.
But many would like to tell us that Government is always evil. They fail to recognize that the same can be said of Big Business.
Big Business can be Big Brother too.
In fact, Big Business may be worse than Big Government sometimes. Good Government can check Bad Business. Good Business has not once stopped Bad Government, and both Good/Good and Bad/Bad can exists as well.
The question is how we keep both accountable. If we kill good government to save Big Business, Big Business will become Big Brother. That is the heart of true Mussolini Fascism, a combination of Big Business and Bad Government.
And the wall between the reality of that and the reality they would sell us can be called the Ministry Of Truth.
The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in Newspeak – was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. The were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts; the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within a half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.
Each day we see a precept from 1984 personified before our eyes. Part of my purpose in writing is to educate people to the real truth, as I perceive it from my progressive liberal perspective. Many may not agree with my views. I do not place a premium on agreement. Rather, the importance I place is on the FACT. That is where the truth shall be found.
No one in their right mind who is not a fool can look at our Corporate controlled media and not see a similarity to Orwell’s Ministry Of Truth. The Right Wing Noise Machine is fully aware that their policies are not in the interest of the Average citizen of Earth. In order to convince the poor that they want free market fiscal conservative economic policies they have created a place that can be best described as the debate between fact and false. To deny fact, science and reality and equate it with falsity and lies. This is an important part of their agenda.
Thus
Ignorance = Strength
The issue is whether you will make your own decisions, do you own research and form your own opinions, or if you will allow programmers to pre-program you.
If we remain ignorant, we give strength to those who would exercise total power over us, whether they are Business or Politically oriented
As if it weren’t bad enough that Fox Nation populates its web site with right-wing hysteria and links to uber-conservative purveyors of propaganda, they have now demonstrated that their editors are (at least) as stupid as their readers are gullible.
Today I observed a graphic at Fox Nation linking to a column in the Washington “Moonie” Times written by Amanda Carpenter, an O’Reilly Factor frequent fluffer. The article itself was chock full of nuttiness that I’ll get to momentarily. First I need to point out that Fox Nation is so desperate to disparage its enemies that they will project whatever demon suits them into their coverage whether it’s there or not. Here is the graphic showing the groups they say are allegedly mobilizing against town hall protesters:
The National Endowment for the Arts??? Are they really mobilizing against town hall protesters? Were those artists who were crashing community centers and public halls where Tea Baggers were fighting to keep the insurance companies between you and your doctor? Umm…No.
“The American way of life is being systematically dismantled and destroyed. The Republic is in danger. We are tired of everyone in the U.S. Congress, Democrats, Republicans, everyone, and they don’t care, but believe me, they better start. Otherwise, as I said on O’Reilly last night, we are entering the most dangerous time in American history.”
– Glenn Beck
“It is not time to pick up guns . . . It is not time to blow anything up”
I call bullshit on Beck’s pre-emptive Cover Your Ass job.
Glenn Beck and his insane on air ravings are brought to you by billionaire Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation.
How many people realize that the fitness club killer in Pittsburgh was a right-winger and a racist?
I’ll bet almost nobody.
That’s because the media isn’t telling you.
George Sodini, the man who took the lives of four women, and then his own, at a Pittsburgh-area fitness club Wednesday, leaves behind a long history of right-wing anti-government militancy.
In political rants on the Internet, going back to the early days of the Web, Sodini showed a consistently anti-government attitude. As first reported by Greg Mitchell at his Huffington Post blog, in the mid-1990s Sodini posted to a newsgroup titled misc.activism.militia, where right-wing libertarians and survivalists compared notes on the state of politics, and made plans for upending the “socialist” policies of the Clinton White House. Sodini appeared to support a violent overthrow of the US government in order to return the country to its “Constitutional order.”
(snip)
The Associated Press and other news outlets have omitted references to President Barack Obama, the election of “The Black Man” and remarks that black men have “their choice of the best white” women when republishing excerpts of the diary by a Pittsburgh-area man who killed three women and himself at an LA Fitness gym Tuesday evening.
In fact, the Associated Press’ primary story contains no reference to Obama at all, even though the first entry of the killer’s diary came the day after Obama was elected and references Obama’s election directly.
The omission was noted by the blog of Editor and Publisher.
WENDELL POTTER: I thought that he hit the nail on the head with his movie.
But the [Insurance] Industry, from the moment that the Industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned.
BILL MOYERS: What were they afraid of?
WENDELL POTTER: They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore.
With all that is so terribly wrong in this sordid and rapidly decomposing empire the amount of fixation on the White House ‘Beer Summit’ offers a crystal clear glimpse through the looking glass at WHY we are all fucked. The media fueled racial circus of the story of the rogue cop James Crowley and Professor Henry A. Gates led to yesterday’s sit down with The Pope of Hope and the V.P. from the Usury State over a few beers in a symbolic conference that was given the importance of say The Yalta Conference. In our cheapened, dumbed-down, busted-flat in Baton Rouge and fucked up the ass with no lube by the oligarchy lemming colony it’s media manufactured horseshit like this that gives me zero hope that anything will ever be fixed in my lifetime. With healthcare reform pretty much dead other than the certainty that the insurance corporations will be rolling in the dough from the coming mandated coverage, the wars still raging and the phony recovery setting up millions of suckers for the next fleecing it’s drivel like this that serves as news.
Glenn Beck’s unique brand of asylum-spawned demagoguery has drawn comparisons to some notable cranks in history and fiction. Most often he has been likened to either the 1930’s fascist radio priest, Father Coughlin, or to the prototypical, paranoia-crazed tele-pundit, Howard Beale, from the film “Network.”
While both of those models contain poignant resemblances to Beck, neither by themselves comes close enough to capture the full spectrum of his dementia. They don’t even begin to explain his silly costumes and props; his facial tics and nonsense, gurgling noises; his panic-laden admonitions of doom. This is a man who, every day, adds new items to his list of things that cause blood to shoot from his eyes. Were he to be taken literally, he would be severely anemic by now, and his studio would be a quarantined biohazard zone.
However, I think I have just found someone with whom Beck shares a more striking resemblance…
