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From our friends at Newshounds, the death panels and Betsy McCaughey are back fearmongering over end-of-life counseling. Sweet Jesus, these people make my head hurt. I thought we had seen the last of this shyster once the health care bill passed, but apparently I was wrong.

Fox News Tries To Rehabilitate Palin’s Discredited “Death Panels” Smear:

As The New York Times reported yesterday, the Obama administration has enacted Medicare regulations to include an end-of-life planning provision similar to one struck out of the health care reform bill after Sarah Palin “touched off a political storm over ‘death panels.’” Palin’s “death panels” accusation wasn’t just a lie, it was PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for 2009. But good ol’ Fox News resuscitated the lie and gave it new life by just “asking” if the new regulations mark the return of death panels. Fortunately, Democratic Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers and liberal pundit Caroline Heldman forcefully rebutted the suggestion.

The possible return of “death panels” was all over Fox News today with segments with such FoxNews.com titles as, ‘Death Panel’ Comeback? Return of Death Panels? and ‘Death Panel’ Deception? The ‘Death Panel’ Comeback? segment, on The O’Reilly Factor, featured Media Matters 2009 Health Care Misinformer of the Year: Betsy McCaughey. [...]

But substitute host Eric Bolling distorted those details in his introduction to the O’Reilly Factor segment (the first video below). Bolling said, “Now the reports that President Obama is bringing back end of life planning with the Medicare regulation set to go into effect next week. The White House says, ‘No, that’s not true,’ issued a statement blaming a law signed by President Bush. So what’s really going on?” Bolling later said, “Whether or not this was brought up in the Bush Administration, who cares?”

Bolling made no pretense of independence, supposedly a hallmark of The Factor. “I thought we were done with this (death panels)… but they’re back.” Bolling offered no challenge to McCaughey’s misinformation (government will be scripting end-of-life decisions, the Obama administration is enacting via regulation what it could not enact via legislation) but asked her to “take our viewer exactly what this regulation says… It incentives them to discuss end-of-life decisions.” To Heldman, he asked, “Do we really need to incentivize doctors to ask Grandma whether she wants to pull the plug year after year after year? Isn’t once enough?”

Heldman, already a News Hounds Top Dog, was in especially good form in the segment.

Yeah, heaven forbid the government might pay to help you take the burden off of your family about what to do with you if they don't feel it's worth keeping you alive and longer and you would have agreed if given the chance. The horror!

From Media Matters: The Right-wing Media Spin Cycle: Lie, Terrify, Win, Repeat

Media Matters releases new video showing right-wing media's leading role in driving movement

Washington, DC - Today, Media Matters for America released a new video demonstrating how the conservative echo chamber operates in the age of President Obama. Conservative activists - aided by Fox News, a political organization disguised as a news network - use distortions, lies, and smear tactics to shape public opinion and influence national policy.

"Unlike the Clinton and Bush years, the right-wing echo chamber is now aided by a network that has thrown any remaining shred of journalistic credibility out the window, " said Eric Burns, President of Media Matters. "The modern conservative movement has gained an enormous megaphone in Fox News that they are using to impact legislation and shape public opinion."

Burns added: "People need to decide how long they will allow the policies of their country to be dictated by a media outlet accountable not to voters or constituents but to ratings."

Media Matters did an amazing job putting this video together. I really think it's some of their best work yet.

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This was truly a thing of beauty. Betsy McCaughey gets smacked down by Dylan Ratigan and Anthony Weiner on MSNBC's Morning Meeting.

From Think Progress:

Throughout the interview, McCaughey was constantly on the defensive, complaining that she was being shut out of the debate. “Anthony, you are ignorant about health insurance,” she said, before insisting to Ratigan that “this will go down in history as one of the most browbeating interviews in television history.” “I hope that it does,” Ratigan replied. “And maybe you’ll learn at that point then to answer questions as opposed to go on television and cast accusations.”

Continue reading...

And Bob Cesca noted:

Jamison Foser makes a good point: why is McCaughey on television in the first place? While it's frustrating that cable news continues to elevate wingnuts and crazies, there's actually an upside to bringing in people like McCaughey. I'll explain. In the case of this Ratigan segment, he's doing the opposite of what Fox News does all the time. Fox News claims "balance" by including occasional liberals. Weak, barely articulate, outnumbered liberals who are way out of their depth. So the debate is automatically stacked in favor of the conservatives, while Fox News can claim "balance" in a very superficial way. Ratigan, today, lined up a strong liberal against a weak wingnut, and Ratigan is clearly more sympathetic to Weiner's position on healthcare. That meant two pro-reform voices against one weak anti-reform voice. It's a start.

Yes it is.

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From John King's State of the Union, James Carville cites the tobacco industry using Betsy McCaughey to plant a story at The New Republic as an example of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that President Obama is facing. Of course Mary Matalin pretends she has no idea who Betsy McCaughey is.

KING: All right. Let's stay for a moment on the -- because I said we would mention it after the break, and Mary brought up that term that we came to know during the Clinton years -- the Clinton presidential years, the vast right-wing conspiracy. It was on his mind.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY: Your wife famously talked about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" targeting you.

GREGORY: As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?

CLINTON: Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARVILLE: Again, this week, there was breathtaking proof that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy. It was revealed in Rolling Stone that Philip Morris paid -- paid a woman named Betsy McCaughey to plant a piece in The New Republic, all right?

This was -- this is not -- in other words, this was a tobacco company paying for a piece printed in a so-called respectable magazine.

Now, I don't know that, in The New Republic in 2006, that, oh, gee, the whole thing was, kind of, a mistake after they went through all of that. I don't know if The New Republic has called the president to apologize, but I suspect, as we go through, we're going see more and more instances of this.

And every Clinton person, when the president told us the stuff with Taylor Branch, it felt good. And you know what really made us feel good, is Bill Clinton's doing a whole lot better than The New Republic is. They're sitting there at the CGI, and everybody went "Yes." That was a great moment to be a Clinton person.

MATALIN: I don't even know what he's talking about, but I'll say...

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Countdown's Worst Persons for August 31, 2009 with winner Michael Scheuer. Runners up Betsy McCaughey and Pat Boone.

Jon Stewart takes on fear monger Betsy McCaughey who brought her great big prop of a bill with her to appear on the Daily Show. It was more of the same from McCaughey with the government wants to kill grandma type nonsense.

Part 1

Extended Interview Part 1

Extended Interview Part 2

And lookie here: ‘Death Panel’ Myth Creator Betsy McCaughey Resigns From Medical Board:

Betsy McCaughey — an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats’ health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of “death panels,” as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute — has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a “leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market.”

Updated with the on air interview.

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Rachel Maddow talks to the AARP's John Rother about the fear mongering astroturf ad campaigns targeted specifically to scare the hell out of seniors on health care reform.

BARACK OBAMA: The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't-it's too expensive to let her live anymore. I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, et cetera.

The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican then-House member, now-senator named Johnny Isakson from Georgia who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people's options. And somehow, it's gotten spun into this idea of death panels. I am not in favor of that. So just-I want to-I want to-I want to clear the air here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Also, the president would like to make clear that he is not in favor of rubbing chewing gum into everyone's hair, nor is he in favor of forced sex changes, nor is he in favor of making everyone wear nude-colored panty hose on their hands like mittens all year around just for the pure inconvenience of it all. He'd like to make that clear.

What's being called a debate about health care policy right now is so far from an actual debate about health care policy that the charge from his critics that the president of the United States has to rebut in public is whether or not he wants health care reform because he secretly wants to kill all of the old people. And apparently he doesn't.

As we've discussed before, the health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people rumor was started by a woman named Betsy McCaughey. She is the person who in "The New York Post" and on right-wing talk radio first promulgated this idea that Medicare covering consultations about living wills is secretly the murder of the elderly.

Continue reading »

Media Matters has more on McCaughey:

During appearances on Lou Dobbs Tonight and Glenn Beck, Dobbs and Beck allowed Betsy McCaughey to advance the false claim that provisions in the economic recovery act would permit the government to control health care. In fact, the provisions she cited address establishing an electronic records system in part for the purpose of "reduc[ing] health care costs resulting from inefficiency, medical errors, inappropriate care, duplicative care, and incomplete information." It does not say that the federal government will determine what constitutes "unnecessary care."