A Blog Version Of The Inside Of My Head. The place where politics, film, the media, music, pop culture, and random topics collide in an orgy of neo-philisophical randomness that would make your mother scream.
Fox"Nation" has this as a headline right now, and it appears to be a blatant, bold-faced, lie.
ObamaCare will not protect children with pre-existing health conditions from being denied health coverage -- not until 2014. This despite endless talking points and promises to the contrary, the Associated Press reports:
Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday...
Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That's the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.
Obama's public statements have conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were more sweeping and straightforward.
Prohibits health insurers from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for children. Effective six months after enactment, applies to all employer plans and new plans in the individual market. (This provision will apply to all people in 2014).
So children with pre-existing conditions CANNOT BE DENIED COVERAGE from insurers starting 6 months after the bill is signed into law.
And it's not just highlighted by Fox"Nation", the Associated Press is actually reporting this. Why are people reporting that which is clearly NOT in the language of the law?
Am I reading this wrong myself? I keep re-reading it and it's pretty clear to me that kids that have pre-existing conditions will be covered starting 6 months from now.
It's a great tactic used by conservatives and their media masters at Fox"News". All you have to do is hint that there "might" be suspicious activity going on within the Obama administration but then offer just enough wiggle room to be able to defend yourself should the time come.
The newest allegation from the drooling, prattle-boxes on the Right is that Barack Obama "bought" Congressman Jim Matheson's vote by offering his brother a judicial seat. Even thogh there is no substantial evidence to back up this claim, it's already being spread by some of the loudest voice within the conservative movement.
There are no coincidences in Obama world, I’ve joked many times on this blog.
This one looks like a quid pro quo, smells like a quid pro quo, and quacks like a quid pro quo....
But then she also starts to side-step the claim and try and make Obama look stupid - a favored meme of conservatives.
Let us consider the possibility, for a brief moment, that it is merely coincidence.
Is the White House so fantastically blind and tone-deaf that it failed to detect the blood-red flags and blaring alarm bells that Scott Matheson’s judicial nomination would raise coming on the very day President Obama is wooing his brother, Jim?
Incorrigibly corrupt or incorrigibly stupid. Take your pick.
.....and Neil Cavuto and Michelle Bachman....
But as Think Progress has noted, the Weekly Standard writer, John McCormack, that started this new narrative literally backed out of his thesis as soon as he stated it:
Was there an explicit quid pro quo? Probably not...
And that's all the "seed" that is needed. Just give people a taste of what may or may not be and they will run with it like it is canonized Gospel.
Here's a few things about the "Climategate" nonsense that conservative are all prattling about.
1 - The emails were hacked/stolen. There is no solid proof that these have not been altered.
2 - The format of the emails mention documentation/data that is not provided in the links that conservatives continually reference
3 - Thousands of scientists volunteer their time with CRU and exchanged emails with fellow scientists. The stolen emails represent a tiny fraction of communications between scientists. Conservatives are literally cherry-picking through the stolen communications and fabricating theories.
4 - Conservatives are literally changing the definitions of words in order for this theft to be validated and their specious claims be seen as solid research.
Have you ever had one of those moments where your brain simply freezes when you hear something so outrageously stupid? Well, you're about to.
Practically from the start, Beck's claim is completely refuted. It isn't the individual that uses the website to turn in the old car, it is the dealer.
Although there are several sections within the website that allow the consumer to see if they qualify, find answers in the FAQ section, as well as read current updates on the program, this mysterious page that has Beck all in a lather simlpy does not exist on the page for the consumer.
There may be a few reasons for this. Either Beck was punked by one of his alleged "constitutional watch-dogs" or he is simply making this up as he goes along. I'm opting for the later, but who really know.
The page does exists, though in a different form, in the dealer page of supplierpayments.esc.gov. This has nothing to do with the consumer, this is a TOS that is between dealerships that are transfering billions of dollars. Naturally, the language of the TOS is going to be strong and Federal oversight will be part of that.
Even right-wingblogs are starting to own up to the very real fact that Beck has been off the rails for quite some time.
Is there a point at which most reasonable people will start realizing that Glenn Beck is a raving freakazoid nut sandwich? Maybe this point?....What a disgrace; this is nothing but unjustifiable fear mongering, by idiots.
Why the feds would target something this supposedly nefarious at a tiny niche of people who want to trade in their gas-guzzlers is as unclear to me as why they’d tell you they’re doing it instead of doing it surreptitiously, as would be the case if GB’s allusion to Nazism near the beginning were accurate. I’m looking forward to hearing more on Monday, though, especially from Guilfoyle about how agreeing to the website’s terms of use grants the state a perfectly legal license to do whatever it wants with your computer.
But, some conservative blogs are still peddling this as fact.
After spending nearly an hour sifting through the CARS website, I haven't even found anything remotely close to what Beck is prattling on about. Of course, this should come as no suprise, as Beck would likely find fault in the Obama administration should it find the cure for cancer and AIDS within the same week.
I've never been to Amsterdam, but I know it can't possibly be as bad as Bill O'Reilly and his pretty-blonde-entourage would have us think it is.
Aparently you have to be high to believe whatever O'Reilly and ( insert name of blonde Fox personality ) are talking about. Come to think of it, his audience has probably mixed their Percocets and Xanax with a little Ensure and coped a wicked buzz while watching.
It's to be expected that the GOP are going to play the role of obstructionists simply because they are in a position to do so. I won't belabor the very real point that this is not going to help them gain any votes next year, save from the very fringe elements of their voting block, but it should be pointed out that they are perpetuating one of the largest lies in regards to the proposed healthcare legislation. And they are playing on the fears of the elderly and un-informed in order to get what they want.
Here's a sampling of what they are telling people about "end-of-life" issues.
And when one reads the language that conservative appear to be referencing within the bill, they aren't even marginally close to making a semi-valid point. It's rand fabrication and lies from the moment they open their mouths. Take a look.
To substantiate their claims, conservatives point to SEC. 1233 of the House Tri Committee bill, a section titled “ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.” But while the language allows Medicare to reimburse providers for consulting with patients about end-of-life issues, nothing in the section mandates a consultation. On page 429, the bill specifically states that seniors “may” consult with medical professionals — not government bureaucrats.
No mention of a 5 year visit from someone representing the Federal Government. No mention of mandating anything.
Naturally, one would expect the particular language within a bill would be spun in one direction or the other ( dependant upon who wants to make what point ) but this is creating an issue that simply is not there.
End-of-life care is very important and personal. Lest we forget, the Right made quite the issue out of Terri Schiavo.
In the same tone with which Republicans attempted to draw out the irrational fear in people ( and with a fairly large level of success ) when they claimed that Obama was not simply "soft" of terrorism issues, but he was also a "pal" with a domestic terrorist, conservatives are now maligning Sonia Sotomayor.
In a new ad from Committee for Justice, they are stating that Sotomayor led a group that supported Puerto Rican terrorists. And for good measure, there's a dose of William Ayres thrown in.
But the facts tell a whole other story - as they always do in cases where conservatives try and paint a dark portrait of someone of opposing viewpoints - and show that the group was protecting Puerto Ricans from racial discrimination. But that and terrorism, in the eyes of conservatives, are one and the same.
There are thousands of examples of right-wing conservatives using screen-grabs of video in order to use them of proof of some wrong-doing by Democrats.
This latest example is easily debunked, but it's just too juicy for some people to ignore.
And who did the debunking? Greta Can Susteren. No, really.
Manufactured stories are nothing new to conservatives. And when there is proported photographic evidence of some misdeed perpetrated by a Democrat, they are start salivating and dry humping bed posts.
This is nothing new, as photographic memes have been around since before the internet. I could, at the veritable drop of a hat, take a screen-grab of a video of someone leaping off a building and it will look like they are flying. Can people fly? Not at all. Was Barack Obama checking out a 17-year-old girl? No. And pretending that people can fly or that Obama has an affinity for jail-bait doesn't make either one true.
It's one thing to take a person's complete statement and attempt to create this alternate reality where it means something completely different. This example, from master of conservatve disinformation - Sean Hannity, isn't "spin" at all - it's a bold-faced lie.
And I have to ask, why does anyone believe anything this man says?
The group Conservatives for Patients Rights will air a long-form, documentary-style attack on Obama's heath care reform plans on national cable and on broadcast television in Washington, starting tomorrow, the group said.
The ad will air on A&E the History Channel, as well as on the D.C. NBC affiliate after "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The title: "End of Patient’s Rights — The Human Consequences of Government-Run Health Care."
Scott will star in the documentary, which follows him to Europe and Canada.
SEIU has also been urging NBC to reconsider airing this blatantly misleading documentary.
Rick Scott has a track record of deceit. Scott's previous ads contained blatantly false statements and misleading excerpts of interviews with health care professionals. Join us in telling NBC not to run this phony "documentary" this Sunday.
If Scott's 30-minute "documentary" contains any falsehoods, NBC could very well find themselves with an FCC violation. Furthermore, Meet the Press needs to know that they're being used by Rick Scott, and will be tarnished by his swiftboating
Media Matters Action Network has a "fact-check" video sponsored by Conservatives For Patients' Rights
Below is a clip that is going to be included in Scott's "documentary".
You can let NBC know that you don't agree with their decision to air this misleading programming. Click here.
While the next two to four months of maneuverings and hearings may provide more insights into the views of Mr. Obama's pick, barring an unforeseen development -- not unheard of in Supreme Court nominations -- Judge Sotomayor will become the second Hispanic (Benjamin Cardozo was Sephardic) and third woman confirmed to the Supreme Court. Democrats will win the vote, but Republicans can win the argument by making a clear case against the judicial activism she represents.
Karl "I'm Really Spending More Time With My Family, Really I Am" Rove in an article from the Rupert Murdock owned Wall Street Journal.
There's a problem with this though, Benjamin Cardozo was a Jew who's ancestry was traced back to Portugal. Portugal is not considered a Hispanic country.
It can, and has, been argued that what is at issue is not that Portugal is normally considered a Hispanic country, but the very real fact that people like Rove use ethnic terminology in order to seem more educated than those they are attempting to inform or represent - if they be an elected official, which Rove was thankfully not.
It is likely that this line of thinking, that one particular race has held a particular position in government, will be used against the next African American that runs for the Presidency.
Beck is like the mythical loaves and fishes. The more you break him down the more he comes back - lies increasing exponentially.
Glenn Beck is still missing the point. The confrontation on The View was about Beck creating this tale about "reserved seats" and his inability to park his ass where he wanted. It was never about who said "hi" to who first. Oh, and his wife is pissed now too.
How much do you want to bet he's going to cry about it on TV tonight?
Are we expected to believe that AMTRAK actually called this guy back?
You know how someone will "phone-stage" in order to get out of a situation or to make an excuse for something, perhaps make that clever get-away from your one-night-stand's house when you realize that you made a HUGE mistake. This is a classic example.
"Oh, we know you couldn't hear what the person on the other line was saying so we're just going to make this all up in order to save face for Glenn Beck."
There are days when I think that Whoopie Goldberg is one of the greatest female voices in the progressive movement. Then again, my view of who is and who isn't a progressive may be different from yours.
That being said, here's Whoopie AND Barbara Walters taking Glenn Beck to the wood shed and spanking the living tar out of him on The View.
I'm no sure what comment from Beck is better, his "I'm just a commentator" line or the fact that his defense of his lie is that he "knew this was coming". I mean, come on, the Micheal Steele defense - that all your dumb-ass moves are choreographed and have meaning? No one is stupid enough to believe that.
But let's look at this from an alternate angle. It's Beck's word against Walters and Goldberg. I would like to see what Steve Croft has to say about this. But do we really need that. Beck was VERY taken-aback that he was confronted with this. He thought that he could just say whatever he wanted and get away with it.
Robert Proctor, historian of science at Stanford, has developed a word inspired by what he sees as an increase in ignorance when people view a variety of "contentious" subjects.
As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he's a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.
"People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not."
After years of celebrating the information revolution, we need to focus on the countervailing force: The disinformation revolution. The ur-example of what Proctor calls an agnotological campaign is the funding of bogus studies by cigarette companies trying to link lung cancer to baldness, viruses—anything but their product
When viewing the Republican party, and the conservative movement in particular, you begin to see that Protor's thesis statement is quite equitable.
Conservativism, by its very nature, focuses on "self" rather than the needs of the "community". A perfect example of this is the conservative Right's diefication of AynRand and her magnumopus Atlas Shrugged.
The "Going Galt" movement within the party is intended to show those within the opposition that they are going to remove the "wealth" that they produce as a form of punishment. To that, I would as what it is that they produce that the remainder of America would even want.
The latching on to the fictional John Galt character - his actions, and their intended results - remind me of Texas Governor Rick Perry and his threats of secession. As stated in a previous post, where I discussed the very real fact that conservatives love to say things that "sound good", Perry and his ever eager compatriots tout removing Texas from the union simply because it is nothing more than a talking-point that is top-of-the-list at the moment.
What would happen, should Texas become it's own country? They would lose any and all federal dollars that come into Texas, for a start. Any and all representatives of Texas would be removed from both houses of Congress. And that's two big points for a start. It was, perhaps, the ignorance of Governor Rick Perry that caused him to make these threats of secession during the recent teabaggery in his state.
The rapid and consistant discemination of misinformation by the conservative movement has contributed to the pervasive ignorance that weaves itself into the Republican party as a whole. The advent of Fox"News", as well as the internet, has increased the level of ignorance to near stratospheric proportions.
The way in which Fox"News" presents information to their audience is not only consistant with right-wing, conservative ideals, but further feeds the ignorance within their target demographic. A recent example can be seen in he following video excerpt:
Had you not seen the original footage of Obama speaking about healthcare, you would then be laboring under the assumption that what Wendell Goler and his Fox"News" producers were presenting you was the complete story.
We can see the distribution of ignorance directed at the Republican demographic in other areas such as The Employee Free Choice Act, Obama has made he country lesssafe, and a gaggle of other prattling nonsense.
The primary inclination of conservative bloggers, pundits, and the media that employ them, is that their target audience will disregard their own ability - and need - to investigate any and all topics that are presented to them in favor of absorbing and regurgitating what they are told.
The very real epidemic of ignorance within the conservative movement, from my perspective, has been and will continually be their ultimate downfall.
And this is doubly so in comedy. If you don't have the timing, your jokes - even your whole act - will just fall apart.
Spaking of jokes, enter Fox"News".
Marc Thiessen, it seems, suffers from some specific form of memory loss that appears to only take place within the brains of Right-wing Republicans. Timothy Noah writes in The Slate:
What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument), is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got—an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"—that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.
One would think that if Fox, and the pundits and commentators they employ, takes the issue of national security seriously that they would at least be able to grasp the basics of a timeline of events.
The response to this would most likely be, "but we stopped an attack", and that's great. But the fact that they are blatantly rewriting the history of events in order to validate torture techniques that have no proven track-record of providing actionable intelligence kind of takes lying to a whole new level.
I have to wonder whether or not he realizes that he just lied, and blatantly.
I'm reminded of something that my father used to tell me. If you lie enough, you'll have to keep lying in order to keep from saying you're wrong.
It's pathological, the lying that comes from the lunatic-fringe - of which Gingrich is a primary spokesmodel. The former speaker is of the mindset that you have to be continually agressive, and without pause. It's a militaristic mindset that doesn't allowe for nuanced, strategic diplomacy.
I'm almost of the mind that Newt knows that he just lied. But, does he really care?
Max Blumenthal has this vry direct, very unashamed style of interviewing. He's very calm in his approach, but his questions - while delivered in a calm, rational fashion - are far more relevant and sharp than most in the media.
Here's what happens when he bumps into John "Don't Hold Sarah Palin To Any Type Of Standard" Zeigler at this years CPAC.
Why the rage? Well, the roots of Ziegler’s fury lay in a series of reports I produced in 2006 about the factually challenged TV movie The Path To 9-11, in which I laid out the film’s ulterior right-wing agenda......In early 2008, I received a series of emails from someone calling themselves “Konrad Ziegler.” “I am producing a documentary on how "The Path to 9/11" got essentially killed in 2006 and I am wondering if you would be willing to do an interview with me and take a victory lap for your role in helping to create that reality,” the mysterious filmmaker, “Konrad,” wrote me in an email. Given the unusually cryptic nature of his request, I declined to respond.
When the film Blocking The Path To 9-11 appeared, my suspicions were confirmed—“Konrad” was actually John Ziegler. Variety panned Ziegler’s documentary, calling it “tedious.”
