A gentle correction. From Mediate:

Speaker John Boehner broke one of the rules tenuously keeping the web from descending into anarchy and goatse .gifs by adding his own editorial stance to a re-tweet concerning health care law.

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The “MT” at the front of his Tweet stands for “modified Tweet,” which his certainly was. But this is usually reserved for a Tweet that has to be shortened so as not to go over 140 characters, not one that is altered so as not have its meaning drastically changed.

People. This is like arguing on Myspace: unfruitful.

There is no Rule Book of The Webernetz which says that “Lo, Thou Shalt Only Use ‘MTs’ when thou shalt choose to Retweet the Tweet of another and they remarks exceedeth 140 characters.”

Seeing as John Boehner advertised that he was modifying a Tweet, and quite hysterically IMO, it seems a bit over-the-top to call his update “dishonest” and perhaps as “dishonest” as the action of which Boehner is accused.

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It’s no shock that liberal darling and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman doesn’t like the GOP or its plan to repeal President Obama’s health control law.  However, in his Sunday column he felt it necessary to not only call the Republican effort wrong, the bearded Spock called them illogical.

He begins with an anecdote to prove wrong the GOP’s insistence that the Medicare “Doc Fix,” which totals over $200 billion, should be included in the cost of Obamacare.  Many could retort Krugman’s critique by pointing out the $500 billion in Medicare that Obamacare actually cuts, so paying for another year of doctor fixes is very much related to the overall health tab of the United States.

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The link between Autism and the Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine (MMR) is the medical version of the “birther” and “truther” stories.  The findings of the original scientific paper haves never been  duplicated, the original paper was withdrawn as false by the medical journal which originally published it and the Doctor who conducted the study lost his licence because of the rules he broke while conducting it. Despite all of that evidence, there are people for whom there is not enough evidence in the world to convince them the original study was bogus. While those believers (such as “actress” Jenny McCarthy) continue to try and convince parents not to vaccinate their kids, unnecessary cases of Measles and Mumps in the world continue to rise as do needless deaths from these childhood diseases.

Yesterday, the case against against the linkage of the MMR vaccine to Autism became even stronger.  The British Medical Journal published an independent investigation claiming  that the British doctor who authored the study, Andrew Wakefield, was guilty of an “elaborate fraud” by faking data in his studies linking vaccines with autism.

According to the editorial in the Medical Journal introducing the investigation,  it was not possible that Wakefield made a mistake and that he must have faked the data. To back up their claim they presented evidence generated by an investigative journalist who generated a series of articles based on examining the same medical records that Wakefield did.

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From Breitbart.tv: The new liberal talking point appears to be that the term “ObamaCare” is really meant as a derogatory, partisan attack word. If that’s true, then why did the Obama Administration buy GoogleAds directing “ObamaCare” search traffic to the government’s health care web site?

I’ve said before that the media is so invested in this administration because their very survival depends upon its success. The only people who consume mainstream media anymore are the people who are part of the ideology that the MSM blatantly supports. They’ve bet all their chips on the success of the Progressocrats, the new amalgam of socialists and Democrats which saw the progressive caucus bubble up within the DNC before eating it away from the inside.

You won’t see the stories below in the pages of the NYT or on the screens of NBC. You won’t hear them discussed at the water cooler. They’re the stories that show without any doubt the cards held by those who wish to enslave the masses to the god of government. A theocracy, to be sure, but one that holds up the state above all else.

Each of these stories have been chronicled across the Bigs sites over the past year. These stories are what progressives are trying desperately to erase from the annals of history, an effort that the new penny press, new media, refuses to allow.

1. The Pigford Case

You have a finite number of black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. They are awarded a settlement. You have over 73,000 more applicants, more than the number of actual farmers or people related to farming, all claiming a piece of the settlement. The settlement is billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Over 36% of the claims were already rejected due to fraud. Instead of vetting the claims and awarding to those who were truly wronged, elected officials decide to increase the size of the settlement so everyone can get a check. People who farmed their whole lives got the same size check as someone who never farmed.

If you think that sounds wonky, then you may be someone who doesn’t believe that the Pigford case was on the up-and-up. Also, you are probably a racist, since this case involves black Americans and even the original black farmers who are raising concern about this case are also racists, according to INSERT SOROS OUTLET HERE.

Related:

Pigford Investigation Resources

Credit Where It’s Due: HuffPo Blogger On Pigford Fraud

2. Journolist

Long story short: a bunch of editorial geniuses decided to gather in an email distro and share ideas about how to inject their socialist narrative into mainstream media. They also talked smack about conservative political leaders because takes balls to talk cruelly about people with whom you disagree in a private email thread full of glee club members. These people all still write for the same publications that they did before, with the exception of the whistleblower, and these are the folks who tell you that media is not progressively biased.

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ABC News continues to behave like they are working hand-in-hand with the Obama Administrations’ health care take-over message machine.  The latest effort came from ABC News Political Director Amy Walter as she offered a harsh warning to Republicans:  Don’t mess with ObamaCare (video below).

In 2009, ABC News reporter Linda Douglass was named the Director of Communications for the White House Office of Health Reform.  Her infamous warning against mis-information from the right about ObamaCare with her plea for Americans to report their fellow citizens who spread the conservative message on the health care legislation to “Flag@WhiteHouse.gov” got most of the headlines during her tenure.

But, Ms. Douglass’ most lasting propaganda effort while working in the White House may have been the exclusive “Health Care Forum” broadcast live from the White House exclusively on her former network hosted by ABC News anchors Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer.

Now, ABC News Political Director Amy Walter continues her network’s critical role in the ObamaCare debate:

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When you tell a liberal the truth they recoil in disbelief.  Seriously.

Just watch Kirsten Powers and her disbelief  in this interview when the bomb is dropped about 6:00 in.  She’s so flustered when she finds out the truth that President Bush vetoed the 2008 bill with the end-of-life provision in it and it was the Democrat Congress that overrode the veto and forced it into law.

Here’s the transcript:

SCHLAPP: And government itself, let me tell you, the language here right, the language is different. They made the language worse, instead of doing this once every five years, now the Obama administration is allowing this to happen every year and actually reimbursing doctors to do it every year. So, that’s quite a slight of hand. And doesn’t government — aren’t they a little conflicted here? They have to find this huge health care savings for seniors at the same time they’ve become the counselors to seniors in their end of care decisions?

POWERS: Where was your outrage in 2008 when the Bush administration said that Medicare would reimburse end of life counseling?

SCHLAPP: It was a veto that was overridden by the Democrats. So, I give President Bush credit for vetoing that bill.

POWERS: No, it was a 2008 law. I mean, I don’t know what are talking about.

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Yes, the MSM is at it again — and really should do their research before sticking to a narrative floated by the most incompetent White House ever.  While the Obama White House spoon-feeds the narrative that the end-of-life provision first appeared in a 2008  Bush-era law, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, they forgot that the particular bill they reference was actually VETOED by President George W. Bush and the veto was OVERRIDDEN by the Pelosi-led Democrats and some willing Republicans. The Hill’s Jason Millman, along with the WSJ repeat the false narrative:

The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disabled. However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

“The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by [healthcare reform],” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin told The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003, Medicare added a consultation visit for seniors new to the program, according to the Journal. Another 2008 law, enacted under Bush, said the visit can include “end-of-life” planning discussions.

Now, the WSJ has corrected its earlier version to include the information on the veto, but The Hill has not. Millman did not mention the veto or the veto override and pins the blame right on the Bush administration. That 2008 bill that dealt with doctors’ reimbursements and more, but the Democrats slipped in the end-of-life planning by opening up the Social Security Act, which I have stated many times is dangerous, because once changed, it is difficult to amend again and allows for tinkering with the Medicare fee schedule and covered services definitions and requirements.

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Your taxpayer dollars at work promoting Cuba’s failed socialist system … PBS recently aired a report on Cuba’s outstanding health care system.

This was simply unbelievable.

Out state-run media is no longer just liberal – It’s communist:

They forgot to mention that Cuban President Raul Castro just warned his fellow Cubansthat they are running out of time and if they don´t change now, their will be an economic collapse.

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The so-called “non-partisan” and “independent” fact checkers over at Politifact have named  2010’s “Lie of the year.” The winner was the phrase “A government takeover of healthcare” used by critics of the President’s healt care takeover.

A number of issues arise when you start to fact check the fact checkers.

They first blamed the quote on GOP strategist Frank Luntz, who Politifact claims is “a consultant famous for his phraseology.” The phrasing in the article has similar implications to when President Obama and others repeatedly claimed the existence of some vast right wing network thwarting their plans, even when they controlled Washington for 13 months. Politifact plays right into the notion of shadowy GOP figures weaving a tapestry of lies, et cetera.

In the actual fact-check portion they say, “’Government takeover conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed … relies largely on the free market.” I’m not sure how a 2,000 plus page bill creating a mountain of new regulations, allowing less free activity, and unconstitutionally forcing people to buy a product “relies on the free market”. It seems the authors of the bill had a different end in mind.

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This seems pretty nuts. Correct me if it’s something completely in the ordinary for a federal agency:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has bought a Google advertisement to steer people searching for “ObamaCare” to a page that is customized to detect searchers’ locations and steer them both to local health insurance information and to a list of “what’s in the law for you.”

“We are using a bunch of search term[s] to help point people to HealthCare.gov. Part of our online efforts to help get accurate information to people about the new law (i.e. also use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and webcasts),” an HHS official confirmed by e-mail.

Is this customary? Or is this the government using your tax dollars to steer Google searches to pages which feature only complimentary content about the most unpopular pieces of legislation from this administration?

From Judge Henry Hudson, an early Christmas gift to America [pdf of decision]:

Despite the laudable intentions of Congress in enacting a comprehensive and transformative health care regime, the legislative process must still act withing constitutional bounds. Salutatory goals and creative drafting have never been sufficient to offset an absence of enumerated powers. – page 21

And a few pages later we get this:

In her argument, the Secretary urges an expansive interpretation of the concept of activity. She posits that every individual in the United States will require health care at some point in their lifetime, if not today, perhaps next week or even next year. Her theory further postulates that because near universal participation is critical to the underwriting process, the collective effect of refusal to purchase health insurance affects the national market. Therefore, she argues, requiring advance purchase of insurance based upon a future contingency is an activity that will inevitably affect interstate commerce. Of course, the same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence.

It should be noted that Judge Hudson is already under attack by the Center for American Progess, which set up a conference call trashing his decision, it appears, the moment it was released. Their complaints being echoed by the usual suspects at the Washington Post. Over at Gawker, they’re rehashing claims that Judge Hudson has a connection to Sarah Palin and Republican politics.

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Bill Sammon, manager of Fox’s Washington Bureau, sent out an email instructing staff to call the “public option” the “government option.” Renaming government projects and entities to falsely reflect public ownership (and suggest choice, when in fact, there is none) isn’t new. Germany had the Volkswagon which literally translates to “People’s Car,” then there’s the People’s Republic of China.

So Sammon had no interest playing a game of semantics devised by the left to curate public favor by renaming what the option actually is – and? Media Matters is furious that Fox refused to play the game according to the frame that Media Matters is desperately trying to set.

Luntz argued that “if you call it a ‘public option,’ the American people are split,” but that “if you call it the ‘government option,’ the public is overwhelmingly against it.” Luntz explained that the program would be “sponsored by the government” and falsely claimed that it would also be “paid for by the government.”

Media Matters is upset that Fox didn’t use a term that would skew the field to the left.

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A new AP story says that, according to Obama’s own deficit commission, Obamacare isn’t going to bend the cost curve without some serious cuts from the top down:

Sarah Palin take note: For the first time, the government would set — and enforce — an overall budget for Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs that cover more than 100 million people, from Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes to premature babies in hospital intensive care.

Palin attracted wide attention by denouncing nonexistent “death panels” in Obama’s overhaul, but a fixed budget as the commissioners propose could lead to denial of payment for medical care in some circumstances.

In regard to “death panels” the AP makes the same mistake made by every other commentator on this issue. It’s time to set the record straight. Yes, it’s true there were no “death panel” provisions in the Affordable Care Act, but it’s also true Palin’s statements were never, ever aimed at a specific provision in the bill. They were always intended as statements about the dangers of turning health care over to government bureaucrats. Let’s lay out the facts in detail and try to put down this pernicious media created myth.

Sarah Palin’s “death panels” comment appeared on Facebook on Friday August 7th, 2009. The post makes no mention of any specific element of the bill. Instead it directs readers to view this clip of Michele Bachmann on the the house floor:

As you can see, Bachmann is referencing this article by Betsy McCaughey which brought to light remarks made by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel. Palin mentions Dr. Emmanuel’s remarks in the midst of her Facebook post, but both her opening and concluding paragraph makes it clear that her “death panels” statement is ultimately her worry about what could happen after a government takeover of heath care:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course…

Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back.

Later the same day, Dave Weigel noted part of Palin’s Facebook post. He did not cite “death panels” but did copy the part about Dr. Emmanuel. Liberal site TPM picked it up from Weigel but chose to highlight the paragraph about “death panels” instead. By 7PM that day, blogger Andrew Sullivan was linking to TPM and highlighting the death panels statement, labeling it a “mix of camp and high farce.” Crooks and liars was even more outraged, though mostly that Palin would use her son to make a political point. (more…)

John Donvan and Caren Zucker have written a beautiful article for The Atlantic, entitled, “Autism’s First Child”, accompanied by a video packet that ran on Good Morning America and followed by a lengthy interview on NPR, about the first patient ever diagnosed with autism, Donald Triplett.  These reporters share how they searched and found this man who had been lost to history, and share with the world what a successful life he turned out to have.

Donald was raised in a small town, by parents who stuck by him despite the recommendation of professionals to institutionalize him, and alongside neighbors who loved, accepted and supported him.  He went to college, joined a fraternity, worked at a bank, drives a car and plays golf.  It is a story that, as a mother of an eight-year-old boy with autism, gives me hope.

But the problem is that it wasn’t the whole story, or the most newsworthy part of the story.

You see, in 1943, Leo Kanner, a Johns Hopkins child psychologist, wrote a paper in which he described a rare disorder he found in eleven children.  The disorder became known as “autism” and Kanner referred to the first case he found as “Donald T.”, a boy who was indeed lost to history.  And it was a journalist who found that Donald was still alive and living well in Mississippi.  But it wasn’t ABC’s Donvan and Zucker who found him in 2010.  It was a UPI’s Dan Olmsted who found him in 2005. (more…)

Jennifer Haberkorn’s recent article in Politico, “Republican Party Eyes Choking Health Law Funding,” reveals far more about her merits as a journalist and health care “expert”, than it does about the GOP’s strategy of defunding Obamacare.  In anotherwise dreary and predictable piece, one passage stands out:

Thus far, Republican efforts to repeal or defund the law have fallen largely on deaf ears. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday found that 35 percent of the public opposes the law, down from 41 percent last month. Those who oppose the law overwhelmingly support repealing it. Support for the health care plan has hovered at about 50 percent.”

One more time, please?  I may not be a journalist or a member of the juice box mafia, but this appears to me to be one of the more egregious examples of cherry picking that I’ve seen in the mainstream media in recent times.

According to Real Clear Politics’ Health Care Polling average- opposition to Obamacare is 14.8 points higher than support.

Polling Data

Not even the Democrat firm of Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows support for Obamacare greater than its opposition.  Indeed, the Kaiser Family Foundation poll is considered such an outlier that it is not even included in Real Clear Politics’ exhaustive sample of polls on the recently passed health care bill. (more…)