You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!
DOWNLOADS: 1136
PLAYS: 707
(Fala - Resented the right wing smears he heard nightly on the radio)
Take heart. When you think the insanity, the attacks, the lunacy have gotten out of hand, there is always more. There always was. In 1944, at the height of the Presidential election, FDR observed a new low had been reached.
FDR: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or on my wife, or on my sons. No. Not content with that. They now include my little dog Fala.”
And so little Fala, the White House dog, was not immune to the brickbats, smears and innuendos.
The health-care deniers are out in full force now since the feckless members of Congress decided to pack it in until September and these lying liars are scaring the elderly as much as they can. I wonder how many heart attacks these cretins are causing with their fearmongering tactics. But it's not surprising at all since we've seen this same flick over and over again. The Religious Right/Right-to-Life/Conservatives make this crap up all the time. They failed during the Terri Schiavo fiasco, but they are like ants. They always come back and find the cat food dish.
I'm a little bit surprised that everyone's so gobsmacked about the right wing's ability to spread the alarm about Obama's alleged intention to turn all the old people into Soylent Green. How it became such an article of faith on the right is no mystery: it's a fundamental part of the Right To Life agenda and it's been going on for a long time.
How Medicare Was Saved from Rationing — And Why It’s Now in Danger
By Burke J. Balch
Editor’s note: Since its inception, the National Right to Life Committee has been equally concerned with protecting older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia as with protecting the unborn from abortion. We have recognized that involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment is a form of involuntary euthanasia, and therefore have opposed government rationing of health care. In 1997 and 2003, NRLC successfully fought to amend Medicare by allowing older people the right to use their own money to obtain unrationed care; shockingly, under the new leadership of Congress that right is now at risk. Here’s the background:
Most people are aware that Medicare—the government program that provides health insurance to older people in the United States—faces grave fiscal problems as the baby boom generation ages.
Medicare is financed by payroll taxes, which means that those now working are paying for the health care of those now retired. As the baby boom generation moves from middle into old age, the proportion of the retired population will increase, while the proportion of the working population will decrease. The consequence is that the amount of money available for each Medicare beneficiary, when adjusted for health care inflation, will shrink.
Three alternatives exist. In theory, taxes could be increased dramatically to make up the shortfall. Few knowledgeable observers consider this likely, regardless of which party is in power in Washington.
The second alternative—to put it bluntly but accurately—is rationing. Less money available per senior citizen would mean less treatment, including less of the treatments necessary to prevent death. For want of treatment, many people whose lives could have been saved by medical treatment will perish against their will.
The third alternative is that, as the government contribution decreases, the shortfall is made up by payments from older people themselves, so that their Medicare health insurance premium is financed partly by the government and partly from their own income and savings.
It goes on to promote that last as the best way to insure that the elderly will not be euthanized. Here's their earlier argument when Bush was pushing his prescription drug plan in 2003:
The news has been full of the Republican proposal to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. What Americans might not realize is that the bill as currently drafted could lead to involuntary euthanasia through the rationing of
health care...read on
UPDATE: Pat Buchanan brings us more Nazi analogies with article entitled, "Time To Go, Grampa." There is a separate place in Hell for the Buchanans of the world.
You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!
DOWNLOADS: (1616)
PLAYS: (4759)
Just when you think you've seen it all, dumbness-wise, from Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee, they do something even dumber:
A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebrandingDemocrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC ChairmanMichael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”
Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.
Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”
Steele is a complete joke, as I've written many times. I once got to meet the man, and his lame TV persona isn't any different in person. He's being stripped of his power, especially after failing in nearly all of his early tests (like the NY-20 race). They'd fire him in a second, but they obviously don't want to get rid of an African-American man who just got elected to run the RNC. And his opinion on whether to go down this "socialist" road obviously carries zero weight.
Anyway, there's more stupidity going on at this special session of the RNC:
12 large eggs, boiled hard and peeled
1 Tbsp (plus) soft butter
1 Tbsp (plus) mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp Yucatan Sunshine Habanero sauce
Salt to taste
Cut eggs in half and set aside. Put egg yolks in food processor and add all ingredients. Process for 20 seconds or until mixture has blended. Check for taste and increase mustard, salt or Habanero sauce if desired. Place mixture in piping bag with star tip and pipe into egg halves. Sprinkle with paprika and chopped parsley. Chill for about an hour before serving.
Foxx is part of a team of Republican members that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has put together to create embarrassing, YouTube-worthy moments for vulnerable Democratic freshmen.
Cantor’s floor staff has created a photo album to help identify the 42 most vulnerable Democrats. The aides send daily e-mails to the members of the attack team and alert lawmakers when these targeted members are speaking on the floor. They even draft quick scripts to help focus the questioning.
Democrats are now hip to the scam and rarely take the bait. A top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) quickly ushers most junior members out of the chamber whenever Republicans launch an attack — even if the member is controlling debate.
But the guerrilla tactics — which are just about all the Republicans have — are sure to continue as long as Democratic leaders, in a time-honored bid to help junior members look productive, keep encouraging them to offer amendments and bills.
He's going with the Macaca Effect. Keith Olbermann does a good job exposing the Cantor Scripts. I mean, these fools need someone to write their lines for them. My God, check out the side-by-side Republican fools named Paul Brown and Jason Chaffetz as they recite their lines perfectly, but they forgot to memorize their lines. Or maybe they don't have the brain power to do that much.
It will take time for these newbies to learn how to debate on the floor, but how pathetic do the Republicans look when all they can do is use their membership to imitate Jesse Watters?
With the endless drone of hate and vitriol spilling out of last weeks CPAC cabal, it's comforting (somewhat) to realize the amped-up hysteria and whining is just what history does, and does over and over. It's never civilized, it's never constructive and it is always based on fear and paranoia.
So it's mild comfort to know another President faced pretty much the same barrage. President Roosevelt faced familiar taunts and similar paranoid rants during his re-election campaign in 1936.
"“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. ... Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred!"
The Fairness Doctrine seems to strike fear into the hearts of the sicko radio jocks that pollute our airwaves. The right wing talkie-kabobs made that a major talking point during the general election. Here's a piece from Murdoch's rag:
SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - and to diminish conservatives' influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate
I often post the disgusting rants of people like Limbaugh and Hannity because it is truly offensive and destructive stuff, but there's a whole cabal of minor league right wing talking heads that spew the same garbage on a much smaller scale that still penetrates into many regional pockets of our nation.
Like their better-known counterparts, these syndicated and regional radio hosts have played active roles this election season in promoting falsehoods and smears in an all-out effort to foment hate and distrust among their listeners for President-elect Barack Obama.
While the hosts vary in the degree of vitriol they spew and in their ratio of rebuttable falsehoods to unbridled smears, Media Matters for America and Colorado Media Matters have identified common themes that many, if not all, have promoted over the past year.
Here are a few examples from Country Fair, but go and check out their list.
It isn't something Santa would approve of. And I'm sure they will all be good soldiers, fighting the scary "War on Christmas."
You can also look through our tag system under "smears" and find a host of others. When you look at them all together, it really is like a mutating virus...
On Verdict with Dan Abrams, Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter was fed up with the ridiculousness of the continued smear of Michelle Obama over her "proud of her country" statement and accuses conservative talk show host Lars Larson of promoting an agenda that tries to paint Michelle Obama as an angry, black woman, noting that there was no such outrage for John McCain's repeated statement that he "didn't love America until (he) was deprived of her company".
ALTER: Yeah, you're saying...you're just talking trash and nonsense. And it's a slur, and it's really, it's frankly kind of appalling that you and others would stoop to this level, because it's not true. You don't know Michelle Obama; you haven't spoken to her as I have. To many of her friends: black, white, many different people...let me just quickly try to dispense with this. You're taking her out of context intentionally. You're trying to twist her words for your own political purposes. It's low and it's borderline racist.
