Bad Deeds for 9-15-2009

 

Real ‘Norma Rae’ Dead of Cancer After Battle with Health Insurer – The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment. Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer. Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it.

 

CIGNA Denies Cancer Patient Care, CEO Makes $120 Million In Five Years – Not A Coincidence – Meet Jo Joshua Godfrey. She had cancer without knowing for over a year.

I would go to CIGNA and they would tell me I had bronchitis and give me medicine and send me home. No matter what medicine they gave me I wouldn’t get better. Then the CIGNA Director called me up and she told me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. I called the doctor, and I came with my film and my CAT scan and he just put it in, it took exactly thirty seconds. He told me, ‘You have cancer,’ and he said the reason CIGNA did not want to give you your records is they’ve known right way back for years that you have cancer and they’re not going to treat you.

CIGNA took in $19.1 billion dollars in revenue last year, with a $292 million dollar income. That doesn’t include the salaries given to people like CEO Ed Hanway. He made a cool $12 million last year, and over the past five years he took in $120 million. Hanway has $28 million in unexcercised stock options. The company corporate jets, also not seen in profit statements, cost $68 million.

 

Newt Gingrich Inadvertently Gives “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award To Porn Executive – This week, Allison Vivas of Pink Visual received a fax from Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) group, informing her that she’s been chosen for a 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year award by his Business Defense and Advisory Council. From the letter obtained by ThinkProgress. Pink Visual is a porn DVD superstore — not the type of company you’d expect Gingrich would want stimulating the economy.

 

False Image Spread By 9/12 Tea Party Anti-Reform Activists – Tea Party protesters trying to tout the size of their march on Washington last weekend have been passing around a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old. Politifact asked Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, if the rally was big enough to fill that space. Piringer said no — and moreover, the picture can’t be from 2009: it doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004.

 

Right-Wing Lies About Number of People at Taxpayers March – Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration’s health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News. Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally Saturday that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as “tens of thousands.”

 

And Then the Lie Grew – Kibbe’s claim spread like wildfire during the day. From Kibbe’s mic it went to right-wing activist Tabitha Hale’s Twitter account — where, somehow, the number grew again, this time to 2 million — and from there it made it to conservative writer Michelle Malkin’s blog. Once it appeared there, there was no stopping it, and the claim was repeated at numerous –mostly right-wing — blogs.

 

Prominent Kentucky GOP Politician Charged With Murder in Ex-Fiancee’s Death – Police in Lexington, Ky., late Monday obtained an arrest warrant charging prominent Kentucky Republican politician Steve Nunn with murder in the slaying of his former fiancee, Amanda Ross. Nunn is the son of former Gov. Louie B. Nunn, a one-time gubernatorial [candidate] himself, a former member of the state cabinet and a former state legislator.

 

“Tea Party” Leader Melts Down On CNN: Obama Is An “Indonesian Muslim Turned Welfare Thug” – “Tea Party” leader Mark Williams appeared on a CNN panel on “Anderson Cooper 360” last night and promptly set to work discrediting himself and his movement. Williams denounced those carrying blatantly racist signs against President Obama during the tea parties as “no more part of the mainstream of America than the hippies who wear nipple clips and feather boas in San Francisco streets during so-called peace demonstrations.”

Cooper had done his homework, however, and caught Williams blatantly misrepresenting himself: “What you’re saying makes sense to me here when I’m hearing what you say but then I read on your blog, you say, you call the President an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.”
Williams shrugs and responds, “Yeah, that’s the way he’s behaving.” An incredulous Cooper asks Williams if he really believes Obama is an Indonesian Muslim and a welfare thug. The tea party leader digs the hole a little deeper: “He’s certainly acting like it. Until he embraces the whole country what else can I conclude.”

 

No U.S. Distributor for Charles Darwin Movie Because of Fear of Fundamentalists – The film Creation, a major-production biopic about Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, won’t be seen in the United States because no distributor with the guts to stand up to the religious right in this country can be found:

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

No wonder conservatives believe liberals lack the courage of their convictions. We prove them right every other day.

No Courage?

 

10 Lessons for Tea Baggers10 Lessons for Tea Baggers
While Glenn Beck’s furious followers alternately slandered the President as a “fascist,” a “communist” and worse, they remained unencumbered by either the thought process – or the truth. Here, then, are 10 Lessons for Tea Baggers:

1. President Obama Cut Your Taxes
2. The Stimulus is Working
3. First Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt…
4. …Then George W. Bush Doubled It Again
5. Republican States Have the Worst Health Care
6. Medicare is a Government Program
7. Barack Obama is a Christian
8. Barack Obama was Born in the United States
9. 70,000 Does Not Equal 2,000,000
10. The Economy Almost Always Does Better Under Democrats

 

Oilsands Emit More Than Some Entire Countries – Alberta’s oilsands produce more greenhouse gas emissions than some European countries right now and will produce more than all of the world’s volcanoes in just 11 years if the pace of development continues, a new report says. “Dirty: How the Tarsands Are Fuelling Global Climate Change” is set to be released Monday. The emissions are bigger than Estonia and Lithuania right now and in 2020 will be larger than countries like Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Denmark.

Regards,

Jim