The WAWG Blog

Republican City Councilor Would Rather Abolish Police Force Than See It Unionize – Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon’s police force if it votes to unionize. Some 130 police officers on the city’s municipal force want to unionize because of “officers bearing the burden of rising insurance costs, a loss of incentive pay and the city not having a pay scale.”

Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney are Scaremongering According to U.S. Generals – About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.

“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”

“Closing Guantanamo is of a strategic value,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba said. “Seeing people in orange jumpsuits and whatever have you creates such an excitement for people to be jihadists and terrorists…It’s not helping us.”

30 Moments in Mike Huckabee’s Extremism [According to Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God, Mike and Sarah Palin are the far right of the far right. They hate what America is becoming – not like them. They want it back and if they can’t have it, no one can. If the can’t have it, they can’t wait for the apocalypse.]

1. Huckabee Calls for the Quarantine of AIDS Victims
2. Huckabee Enables the Politically-Motivated Parole of Repeat Rapist/Murderer
3. Huckabee Offers Faith-Based Pardons
4. Huckabee Undermines the Teaching of Evolution
5. Huckabee Speaks for God
6. Huckabee Speaks to God
7. Huckabee Claims God Behind His Rise in the Polls
8. Huckabee Proclaims His Theology Degree a Unique Qualification to Fight Terrorism
9. Huckabee Flip-Flops, Calls for Federal Abortion Ban
10. Huckabee Calls for Consumption Tax, Abolition of the IRS
11. Huckabee Vows to Take Nation Back for Christ
12. Huckabee Declares Culture War in 1998 Book
13. Huckabee Declares Women Should Graciously Submit to Their Husbands
14. Huckabee Predicts Victory over Islam at the End of Times
15. Huckabee Boasts About Theology Degree He Doesn’t Have
16. Huckabee Destroys His State Computer Records – and Church Sermons
17. Huckabee Offers State Appointments in Exchange for Gifts
18. Huckabee Uses Wedding Registries to Furnish New Home
19. Huckabee Offers Clemency to Repeat DWI Offender (and GOP Donor)
20. Huckabee Intervenes to Save Dog-Killing Son from Legal Jeopardy
21. Huckabee Encourages Televangelist to Defy Senate Investigation
22. Huckabee Wants Americans to be “Soldiers for Christ” in “God’s Army”
23. Huckabee Calls for a Faith-Based Constitution
24. Huckabee Wants to Crimalize Abortion Providers
25. Huckabee Vows to Deport All Illegal Aliens
26. Huckabee Equates Homosexuality with Bestiality
27. Huckabee Says the Lord Gave Him Wisdom During GOP Debates
28. Huckabee Gets Scatalogical in Defense of the Confederate Flag
29. Huckabee Compares Search for Iraq WMD to Easter Egg Hunt
30. Huckabee Calls for Taxes on Pimps, Prostitutes and Drug Dealers

Glenn Beck Fabricates “Bombs” – Beck: Now they’re worried about bombings taking place. Well, let me show you some new footage. A bombing did take place this past week in a town just north of Seattle called Everett. The only reason why I know this story is ’cause I was there. Radio station KRKO, their towers were blown up. When freedom of speech is being squelched, the left usually says, “That’s fascist!” But in this case the left doesn’t even call them anything!

But in reality, there were no bombs in this incident at all. All Beck and his staff had to do was read the actual news reports:

“What they used was a machine called an excavator, it has a front arm off the front end of the machine. They stole it out of the yard,” Andy Skotdal, president and general manager of KRKO. “They went and attached it to the tower and pushed one of them over and pulled the other one down.”

Moreover, the vandalism had nothing to do with “free speech” and everything to do with the towers being a public nuisance:

The towers have been at the center of controversy for years. There are four towers currently at the location and there have been plans to build two more towers. Opponents have claimed that AM radio waves can harm people and wildlife.

More recently, nearby residents claim radio signals coming over home phone and intercom lines have increased since KRKO recently boosted its broadcasting power.

Just to be clear: Eco-terrorism, even without bombs, is a despicable act that deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The people who brought these towers down need to be caught and jailed.

But the threat they pose, at least so far, is strictly to property, not to people. The same cannot be said of the right-wing extremists who Beck is calling out of the woodwork now.

Someone needs to ask Beck: When, exactly, was the last time a left-wing activist walked into a church or a museum and opened fire with a gun? When was the last time an eco-terrorist gunned down police officers because he feared the President and his New World Order were trying to take his guns away?

Because just in the past year alone, there have been five such incidents involving right-wing extremists. Nancy Pelosi is right to be concerned about the potential for extremist violence from the right — because it’s already happening. And when we talk about right-wing violence, we’re not talking about damage to property or facilities — we’re talking about terrorists who kill people.
Moreover, we can thank Glenn Beck for his share of fomenting it.

This wasn’t the only case of Beck lying on Fox last night. He also went on The O’Reilly Factor and lied about the size of the crowds that came out to protest him.

Some Cruise Lines Get an F on Report Card – Millions of Americans take cruise vacations every year. However, most people don’t realize that taking a cruise is more harmful to the environment and human health than many other forms of travel. Friends of the Earth has created the first-ever Cruise Ship Environmental Report Card, an assessment of the environmental and human health footprint of cruise ships operating in the United States.

Planning a cruise? Search by destination for the cleanest cruise ships.

Already taking a cruise? Find out how your ship stacks up against the competition!

Regards,

Jim

Senators Vote Against What Their Constituents Want – The latest Research 2000 polls show that Maine voters want a public option 58% to 29% and Montana voters favor it 47% to 43%. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) just voted against the public health insurance option in the Senate Finance Committee. They were the deciding votes in the first of several times the Senate will take on this issue in the coming weeks. These senators just voted against what their own constituents want — and voted with corporate interests that have given them millions.

Money Spent on Wars Could Easily Pay For Entire Health Care Plan for Everyone – The appropriated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is around $10 billion a month, which is enough to pay for the entire health care plan by itself. But that doesn’t include the future health care costs for injured American soldiers, which is staggering. Nor the cost to the Iraqis or Afghans, of course.

Health Insurance Companies CEO’s Motto: “If we’re not broke, don’t fix it!”
The Five Most Overpaid CEOs

Despite that the companies that they are responsible for are doing terribly, these five CEOs are still sitting pretty. Here is the Corporate Library’s list of the “Highest Paid Worst Performers”:
Abercrombie’s Michael Jeffries was awarded total compensation of $71.8 million last year while it’s stock fell more than 71%.

The bulk of B J Services James Stewart’s $34.6 million windfall came from value realized on stock options, which resulted in a $30 million jackpot as company stock fell 50%.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts received total compensation of $40.8 million last year while it’s stock fell 7%.

International Paper’s CEO got total compensation of $38.2 million while the company stock dropped 63%.

Nabors Indusries’ Eugene Isenberg got a $58.7 million bonus while company stock dropped 51%.

US Income Gap Widens as Poor Take Hit – The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than $138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003. Household income declined across all groups, but at sharper percentage levels for middle-income and poor Americans. Median income fell last year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade’s worth of gains to hit the lowest level since 1997. Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

Republican Senator Openly Calls for Regime Change in Iran – Considering how well some of our other efforts at “regime change” have gone, does anyone else think it’s not such a great idea openly advocating for it on national television? Here’s Jon Kyl on Meet the Press.

I mean, what we’re trying to do here eventually is to get a regime change with a group of people in there that are more representative of the Iranian people, who we really can talk with in a way that might end up with a good result.

Sarah Palin’s Memoir Due in November; English Edition to Follow 😉 – A memoir by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be published this November, with an English translation due shortly thereafter, her publisher confirmed today.

According to Carol Foyler, a spokesperson for the publisher, translators are working “around the clock” to translate Ms. Palin’s text into English. “We have hired the best linguists in the country, but this is still hard work,” Ms. Foyler acknowledged. “It must have been easier to crack the Enigma code in World War II.”

Ms. Foyler said that the publishing company was “delighted” with Ms. Palin’s manuscript and “deeply relieved that she didn’t quit in the middle of it.”

Regards,

Jim

Iowa Congressman Steve King is Heartless and Proud of It – Iowa Republican Steve King, who in 2005 earmarked millions for flood control in his own district, told the publication The Hill that the best vote he ever cast was against relief for Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, he voted against the second emergency supplemental appropriation — introduced barely a week after the storm hit the Gulf Coast and the federal levees in New Orleans fell apart.

“Probably the singular vote that stands out that went against the grain, and it turns out to be the best vote that I cast, was my ‘no’ vote to the $51.5 billion to Katrina,” he told The Hill. Rep. King was one of 11 House members to vote against this urgently needed help for an area that, at the time, was still under water. But opposing relief for a devastated region of this country is hardly an act of political courage. The fact that he considers it a point of pride is appalling.
Rep. King also opposes health care reform. Remember, he’s heartless [conservative without conscience].

While Republicans Complain That Health Care Reform will Cost Money, Study Shows That a Good Public Option Will Increase Savings by $85 Billion – House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals’ preferred version of the public option that show $85 billion more in savings than for the version the Blue Dogs prefer. In total, a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years. That is $20 billion more than earlier estimates, a spokesman for House Speaker Pelosi said.

ACORN Video Filmmaker Lied About His Funding – James O’Keefe, the activist filmmaker who achieved sudden fame for a series of undercover videos recording ACORN workers, has repeatedly said that he is “absolutely independent” and received no outside funding to make his films.

But the Voice has learned that O’Keefe, in fact, has had heavyweight conservative backers who funded the young filmmaker as recently as a few months before his ACORN films were made.
The ACORN videos are actually just the latest of several films O’Keefe has produced and uploaded to YouTube. An earlier film posted in February, “Taxpayers Clearing House” featured nonwhite, working class people being duped by O’Keefe, who led them to believe they had won money in a sweepstakes.

That video was produced with the help of a grant — said to be about $30,000 [Thiel’s spokesman says closer to $10,000] — from Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook — an investment which made him a billionaire. Thiel now lives in San Francisco and runs a hedge fund.

NJ Politicians Pressured Them Into Approving Unsafe Medical Device – After They Received Large Donations – The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that four New Jersey congressmen and its own former commissioner unduly influenced the process that led to its decision last year to approve a patch for injured knees, an approval it is now revisiting.
The agency’s scientific reviewers repeatedly and unanimously over many years decided that the device, known as Menaflex and manufactured by ReGen Biologics Inc., was unsafe because the device often failed, forcing patients to get another operation.

But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey — Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman — agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December.

All four legislators made their inquiries within a few months of receiving significant campaign contributions from ReGen, which is based in New Jersey, but all said they had acted appropriately and were not influenced by the money. Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the former drug agency’s commissioner, said he had acted properly.

The agency has never before publicly questioned the process behind one of its approvals, never admitted that a regulatory decision was influenced by politics, and never accused a former commissioner of questionable conduct.

Senator Kyl Says “I Don’t Need Maternity Care” So Employers Shouldn’t Be Required To Provide It – Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), broke new ground defending an amendment he’d proposed that struck language from the bill defining which benefits employers are required to cover — in this case, basic maternity care. “I don’t need maternity care,” Kyl said. “So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), interrupted Kyl: “I think your mom probably did.”
The amendment was defeated, nine to 14.

Facebook Poll Asks “Should Obama Be Killed?” – A poll was posted on Facebook by a subscriber asking users to vote “should Obama be killed?”
The responses include: “yes,” “maybe,” “if he cuts my health care,” and “no.”

“CO2 Is Green” Campaign Thinks You Are Stupid – There is an outfit called “CO2 Is Green,” whose P.R. strategy is based in playing people for fools by means of the promotion of reductive reasoning and oversimplification. Their central premise is basically: “But human beings breathe out carbon dioxide, so it must be good to produce even more of it!” Normally when one hears this sort of statement being made, one pauses to make sure it’s not being made by a seven-year-old child. CO2 is Green, right on their webpage, happily informs visitors that “Humans inhale and exhale CO2 with every breath. How could anyone expect you to believe it is a human health hazard?” Well, in the first place, this sort of ignores the fact that human beings exhale CO2 for a reason. If you want to appreciate how CO2 becomes a health hazard, you really ought to try inhaling pure CO2 for a period of time.

Regards,

Jim

Insurance Company Tries to Get Its Customers to Oppose Health Care Reform – Humana, one of the largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans, sent letters to beneficiaries in Michigan, Florida and other states urging them to contact lawmakers to register their opposition to proposed cuts. Maybe they should spend less on these letters and more on health care.

‘Death Panels’ Author Worked With Big Tobacco to Scuttle Health Reform – The person credited with inventing the “death panels” claim about health care reform worked with tobacco giant Phillip Morris to railroad health care reform in the Clinton administration, Rolling Stone magazine reports.

An article in the magazine’s October 1 issue reveals that Phillip Morris “worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means,” Rolling Stone reports.

McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled “A Triumph of Misinformation,” debunking McCaughey’s arguments at TNR.

Remember Those Zits You Had When You Were 15? No Health Insurance for You! – A proposal to make preexisting health conditions irrelevant in the sale of insurance policies could help not just the seriously ill but also people who might consider themselves healthy, documents released Friday by a California-based advocacy group illustrate.

Health insurers have issued guidelines saying they could deny coverage to people suffering from such conditions as acne, hemorrhoids and bunions. One big insurer refused to issue individual policies to police officers and firefighters, along with people in other hazardous occupations. Some treated pregnancy or the intention to adopt as a reason for rejection.

Man Arrested For Asking Anthem Blue Cross/Shield About His Rate Increase – Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works within Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos’s organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to increase the premiums on Virginia Organizing Project’s health plan by 14.1%. Around the same time, the Virginia Organizing Project received an email from Anthem:

We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system – and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend….

As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.

Szakos immediately had some questions for Anthem. Chief among them, why is Anthem using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option while at the same time increasing rates by 14.1%?

Szakos, along with three other Virginia Organizing Project board members, went down to Anthem’s offices in Richmond, VA to ask. He left in handcuffs. Szakos, a customer, couldn’t get an answer from Anthem. There was no justification for raising rates on one hand, and spending money lobbying against health care reform on the other. And instead of trying to offer Szakos an explanation, they had him arrested.

As Szakos said in the video, this is about greed and force. There is no good explanation for these rate increases, and there is no justification for Anthem to spend money it collects in premiums from customers suffering under its “health care” plans on lobbying against reform that would help these very same people. The only thing motivating Anthem – and all insurance companies – is greed. And they get and keep their money by force.
Watch the video at the link.

Republican Mailer Infers Numerous Untruths – Senate Republicans are mailing out a “survey” insinuating that the president’s health care reform agenda includes various items that are not being considered. Written under the vague, non-partisan-sounding, but misleading title of “U.S. Senate Health Care Task Force,” the mailing, which includes a fundraising letter, was actually commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Some examples of misleading questions:

Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:
23. Denial of treatment in cases where the patient’s prospects are deemed not good?
24. A “lottery” system of determining who will get priority treatment?
25. A “quota” system which would determine who would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?

Fox News Producer Caught Rallying 9/12 Protest Crowd In Behind-The-Scenes Video – A Fox News Channel producer has been caught in a behind-the-scenes video rallying the crowd during last weekend’s 9/12 protest in Washington.

The Huffington Post has confirmed that the woman in the below video — seen raising her arms to rally the crowd behind Griff Jenkins, who was reporting from the scene for Fox News — is Fox News producer Heidi Noonan. The video shows the producer on her cell phone as she urges the crowd behind Jenkins to cheer louder. An “I’m A Foxaholic” poster appears nearby.

Fox News Lied About 9/12 Coverage, and CNN Calls Them Out For It – When Fox News ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post — as well as in two newspapers owned by Fox’s parent company — claiming that it had been the only network to cover the 9.12 tea party rally in Washington, DC, it was more than one CNN anchor was willing to take.

“I usually don’t suffer fools gladly,” CNN’s Rick Sanchez began. “Especially when it comes to the fools who perpetuate falsehoods. Well, today thousands of you flipped through the pages of the Washington Post, only to come up a lie so bold and so upsetting that frankly I’m just not going to sit here in silence and allow my craft or my news operation to be unfairly maligned.”

Over a large photo of the rally, the ad asks, “How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN Miss This Story?”

“Enough is enough,” Sanchez went on, sounding as though he had been taking lessons in righteous indignation from Keith Olbermann. “And yes, I’m talking to you, Fox News. You, who claim to be fair and balanced. At what, I wonder? … They are saying we did not cover this story. They are using a lie to try and divide people into camps. … That’s an offense to myself and my colleagues, who risked their lives in Iran and Afghanistan and around the world to bring the news.”
Watch the video at the link.

Regards,

Jim

45,000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance – Harvard researchers published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health a study which reveals roughly 45,000 American adults die every year because they are not covered by health insurance. Researchers specifically noted that lack of health insurance now kills more adults than kidney disease.

Insurance Industry Enjoys Exemption From Anti-Trust Laws – Many people don’t know that the insurance industry, under the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, has a broad anti-trust exemption that facilitates regional monopolies. The Act allows states to regulate the insurance business instead of the federal government, but also allows that, as long as the state regulates the industry, federal anti-trust laws would not apply.

As a result of this exemption, states have seen markets for health insurance where one or two companies predominate. In the state of Maine, Wellpoint controls 71% of the market. In North Dakota, Blue Cross controls 90%. Using the Herfindahl/Hirschman Index, a metric for market concentration, a 2007 study by the AMA found almost every health insurance market in the United States is highly concentrated.

Lou Dobbs Continues Wing-Nuttery – On his radio show — broadcast from the anti-immigration organization Federation for American Immigration Reform’s “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” legislative advocacy event — Lou Dobbs interviewed WorldNetDaily staff reporter Jerome Corsi, who Dobbs described as “a pretty good guy to talk to” about immigration issues. Corsi has most recently been promoting the theory that President Obama is planning to round up conservatives and put them in concentration camps.

This willingness to abet the most insane wing-nuttery is yet another drop in the bucket of evidence that CNN needs to give Dobbs the boot if it ever hopes to salvage what little credibility it has left. A new site called DropDobbs.com is a joint effort by various progressive organizations to demand CNN make a change. Also go to www.bastadobbs.com.

Government-Spending Protesters Protest That More Tax Money Wasn’t Used to Get D.C. Metro Service Ready for Them – Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system. Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services. Seriously.

Limaugh Says We Need Segregated Buses – In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses. Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”

75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name the First President of the U.S. – Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today. The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday. About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.

This state also has a lot of people who don’t believe that global warming is real.

Fox News Promotes False Story About ACORN – Fox News conservatives, along with Foxnews.com and Fox Nation were agog over what Sean Hannity called “the most shocking undercover footage… captured to date” by those two conservative media darlings, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe. Giles and O’Keefe, you may recall, have released a series of videos of their escapades posing as a pimp and a prostitute to entrap ACORN on film (and without a care that they likely broke the law while doing it). Although their previous efforts seem to have uncovered some genuine wrongdoing by some low-level ACORN staffers, their latest “expose” seems to have only exposed how shoddy their own journalistic instincts and ethics are, along with those of their benefactor, Andrew Breitbart, and Fox News. With video.

Predictably, Giles and O’Keefe’s latest video release was treated as major news on Fox News yesterday (9/15/09).

Glenn Beck devoted his entire show to it. Sean Hannity was full of credible enthusiasm as he announced that in San Bernardino, CA, the supersleuths uncovered “a much more serious crime.”
On Hannity, as on Beck, earlier, viewers were treated to ACORN’s Tresa Kaelke’s story about how she used to work for an escort service, her tips for how Giles and O’Keefe might cover up their prostitution business in order to acquire a home for themselves and their underage girls from El Salvador, and the “explosive” news that Kaelka had killed her husband.

The only problem? It’s not true. As ACORN has stated in its press release, “They were not believable”, said Ms. Kaelke of the two actors. “Somewhat entertaining, but they weren’t even good actors. I didn’t know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me. Like Stephan Colbert does – saying the most outrageous things with a straightface.” While her sense of humor might not be funny to many people, the fact is that she spun false scenario after false scenario and the videographer ate them up.

ACORN provided a copy of a San Bernardino police report of their investigation into the “homicide” of Kaelke’s husband. The police concluded, “the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party’s known former husbands, who are alive and well.”

ACORN also points out that the fact that the filmmakers, Breitbart and Fox presented the video as truth, without any independent investigation, calls into question all of their journalistic standards. The organization also questioned why some footage that reflected well on ACORN had been edited out of the video.

Fox News Newspaper Ad Makes False Claims About Tea Party Coverage – In this morning’s Washington Post, on page A9, the Fox News Channel took out a full-page ad, chest-thumping about its coverage of this past weekend’s Tea Party protests in Washington, DC (which were heavily promoted by Fox News). “How did, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?” the text reads. It makes one wonder: Did Fox’s marketing department bother to check on its competitors’ coverage before they made these claims?

Here are the facts. By rough count, on September 12, CNN ran no less than 14 reports on the Tea Party rally, beginning at approximately 7:00 a.m. During the same time period, MSNBC offered viewers four reports on the Tea Parties.

In the local DC market, the Tea Parties also received coverage. CBS reported on the story during the six-o’clock and eleven-o’clock news broadcasts, NBC did the same during its six-o’clock and seven-o’clock broadcasts and ABC covered the Tea Parties in all three evening broadcasts. No one missed the story.

It’s especially galling to see an advertisement claiming that ABC News “missed the story” — and not just because ABC News Radio referenced the rallies in 69 separate broadcasts.

Regards,

Jim

Glenn Beck Tries to Prove Number of People Attending Rally by Citing University of – I Don’t Remember – Citing “a university,” Glenn Beck claimed on Monday that 1.7 million people had attended the anti-reform protest in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. He couldn’t remember the name of the school, for some reason. “We had a university, I think it’s University of — I don’t remember which university it is — um, look at the pictures. And you know, they can do body space and calculate, 1.7 million, that crowd was estimated.”

Fox News host Gretchen Carlson pointed out that her network, like most of the press, had estimated the crowd in the tens of thousands. Beck dismissed that “official report.” D.C. police told ABC News the rally actually numbered 60,000 to 75,000. While an official estimate has not been released, the network reasonably noted that it would be impossible to confuse thousands with millions.

Many Employers to Raise Cost of Health Benefits, Survey Finds – Though Americans who already have medical coverage may be wary of change, a new survey indicates that they may be hard-pressed to escape it — even in the absence of health-care reform. As businesses contend with rising costs, many workers face an erosion of health benefits next year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.

Almost two-thirds of corporations surveyed by the Mercer consulting firm plan to call on employees to pay a greater share of health plan costs next year, according to a report last week.

The authors of the study said the findings underscore the need for federal action to rein in costs.

Insurance And HMO Industries Spend Nearly $700,000 Per Day To Kill Health Care Reform Measures – A campaign finance watchdog’s analysis of insurance and HMO political contributions and lobbying expenses found the industries spent $126,430,438 over the first half of 2009 and $585,725,712 over the past two and a half years to influence public policy and elected officials. The group, Public Campaign Action Fund, found that in the first part of 2009, the industries were spending money at nearly a $700,000 a day clip to influence the political process and that the monthly pace of political spending this year has increased by nearly $400,000 over the average spent per month in the previous two years.

“The insurance and HMO interests are fighting health care reform with hundreds of millions of dollars,” commented David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “Why are so many in Congress willing to listen to an industry that is spending tens of millions every month on politics rather than on lowering their premiums or helping to address the costs of health care?

LEAKED: Joe Wilson’s List of Possible Things To Yell at Obama’s Presidential Address

• Lack of healthcare weeds out the sick and poor!
• Give me hypocrisy or give me death!
• You Lie!
• The tree of liberty must be watered with ignorance … and I am the gardener!
• If everyone had healthcare, …what’s next? Hilter?

Regards,

Jim

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

A little background:
During the first hundred years of our country’s history, the spoil, or patronage, system was used to fill government jobs. Getting a job was based on political patronage and not on ability to perform. This lasted until 1883 when the Pendleton Act created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission and started a transition to awarding jobs based on merit. By 1900, only the senior positions were left as spoils to the victor.

In 1939, the Hatch Act was passed and prohibited federal employees from participating in politics. The Supreme Court upheld the act in 1947 and 1974 and Congress tried to drop the acts limitations in 1987 and 1990 but failed.

(Profiteering – A term for the act of making a profit by methods considered unethical.)

(Privatizing – The transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement.)

From chapter seven of George Lakoff’s The Political Mind:

Privateering is a special blend of privatizing and profiteering. Privateering is the surreptitious destruction of the government’s capacity to carry out its critical moral missions of protection and empowerment. It is accomplished by privatizing government functions which results in the loss of public accountability and the transfer of wealth from the public coffers to corporations. Each instance of privateering damages the foundation of our American democracy.

Privateering requires:

• Someone in the government, an enabler, that is willing to eliminate a government/public function
• The transfer must be by surreptitious means such as by budget cuts, executive orders, signing statements, reassignment of regulators, purposeful lack of enforcement, putting lobbyists in charge of government agencies, no bid contracts, etc.
• Someone in private industry, a provider, must accept the government function
• The transfer must be arranged surreptitiously between the enabler and provider.
• There needs to be something to transfer like military functions, monitoring food and drugs, product safety, interrogating terrorists, disaster relief, or providing good education for all citizens.

Privateering has consequences:

• Profit becomes a key part of the process. When conflicts arise between profit and performing the transferred public function, the public will suffer.
• The public becomes a captive market and profit will grow to whatever the market will bear. Some may not be able to afford the cost.
• Wealth is being transferred from tax payers to wealthy corporations while services that should have been provided by the government are reduced or lost altogether.
• Each act of privateering removes accountability to the public and robs us of our democracy.

If you take privateering to the extreme, the government’s moral mission to protect and empower all citizens is transferred to private enterprise which will only protect and empower those that can afford the high costs. Our “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are subjugated to high profits and we will all pay what is asked or do without for a service the government should provide. Corporations become a surrogate government but with no accountability to the citizens.

One notorious example of privateering is a military for the highest bidder – Blackwater/Xe. Xe has tens of thousands of mercenaries and pays them in the neighborhood of $450,000 a year. They claim they can put as many as 20,000 ‘troops’ on the ground on short notice. Xe has made billions of dollars on the Iraq Occupation and two thirds of that has been through no bid contracts. All of this, and more, was paid for by we the people without any accountability to us for any actions by Xe.

Privateerng has also eliminated or replaced non-profit governmental drug, food, and environmental inspectors with high paid inspectors employed by the corporations who’s products they are inspecting. According to George Lakoff’s The Political Mind, these biased corporate inspectors have “fudged reports” for Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and Merck and citizens have died as a result.

As privateering has grown during recent decades, citizens have been poisoned by peanut butter and spinach. Again non-profit based government inspectors are eliminated or replaced by Congressional budget cuts, while leaving food inspection to food importers and producers where profit supersedes public protection.

Additional privateering has eliminated or replaced inspectors at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The result is the importation of millions of toys containing lead based paint.

Privateering is central to our nation’s health care. Only here, instead of destroying it as an existing non-profit government function for protecting citizens, it is already in private hands – hands that deny care to assure a profit.

Privateering is destroying America’s democracy by eliminating our governments moral mission to protect and empower all of its citizens. Privateering is supplanting that moral mission with protection and empowerment of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The protection provided by existing government agencies is being eliminated or replaced by self-serving for-profit corporations that give short shrift to citizen protection or, as in the case of health care, are being kept with self-serving for-profit corporations that give short shrift to citizen health. Maintaining health care privateering prevents government protection for all citizen’s lives – some 46,000,000 at last count.

Other Privateering realities:

Privateering results in spending more on defense contractors and spending less on corporate regulation. Both put profit first while ignoring accountability to and protection of citizens.

Privateering implies an ‘inefficient’ government is being replaced by ‘less bureaucratic’ private enterprise. Privateering doesn’t remove government from the process, it replaces it with an unaccountable government that costs significantly more.

Without war, Blackwater can’t make a profit, without denying care, health insurance can’t make a profit.

Conservatives without conscience (CWC) want life protected at all costs while it exists in the womb. Once you are born, however, CWCs believe “you’re on your own.” Your life after birth and your health are totally up to you – even though they are both subject to many systemic factors:

• your parents,
• your parent’s genes,
• drunk drivers,
• contaminated peanut butter,
• exploding gas tanks (Think Ford Pinto),
• improperly tested medications,
• contaminated air, water or soil,
• violent criminal acts, or
• any abuse by others.

Protecting life against all the things we can’t control is a moral issue. That’s why we need health care for all citizens – not just those that work for companies that provide health insurance or those that are rich and healthy enough to afford their own insurance.

Germany’s health care system is totally private and covers every citizen from birth to death. Citizens pay for insurance. Profit is allowed for providers of health care but insurance is non-profit. In fact, in all other democracies which provide health care for all their citizens, health insurance is non-profit.

Why does America let 20,000 citizens die each year due to lack of health care? Why does America let 700,000 families a year declare bankruptcy because their health care costs exceed the limits of their health insurance, if they have insurance? Why …? Profit for insurance companies.

Profit above life is morally wrong!

You’ve heard the question before – Do you still beat your spouse? – and there is no answer that doesn’t imply a negative. Well, polls being sent out by the ‘leaders’ described in Conservatives Without Conscience (CWC) to their fearful supporters are also making negative implications by asking questions that aren’t based on anything real.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has included several fear mongering questions in their State of the Nation’s Health Care Survey that was mailed to supporters this month. They ask their right-wing authoritarian followers to rate their agreement with each question from strongly agree to strongly disagree and include undecided.

Under the heading of The Price of Health Care Reform, they ask:

In order to reform America’s health care system I would be willing to:

• Give up my right to a private doctor altogether.
• Pay a premium to have the right to see a private doctor.
• Submit a special form to a government official to determine whether I am allowed to have a medical procedure.

First, has anyone proposed the first two options anywhere? Well, that doesn’t matter. The idea is implied by the question. Can you see the flood of emails going out now about having to give up access to a private doctor or paying extra to see one? How long will it be before the CWC leaders make this a key “talking” point.

Second, the third option is currently already true if you replace ‘government’ with ‘insurance company.’ This is how the CWCs hide the reality. Supposedly the government would require that you fill out a form for health care. However, when was the last time you went to a new doctor or hospital and didn’t have to fill out many forms before you could get service?

Under the heading of Rationing and Restricting Health Care, the NRSC asks the following:

Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:

• Denial of treatment in cases where the patient’s prospects are deemed not good?
• A “lottery” system of determining who will get priority treatment?
• A “quota” system which would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?

Again each question implies a negative that is not based on any written proposal on health care. This question tries to hide the reality that rationing is already happening.

According to T. R. Reid’s new book, The Healing of America, 20,000 American’s die each year because our health care is rationed by the insurance industry. There are 700,000 bankruptcies declared yearly because health care costs exceed the insurance ceiling and the family must pay. Insurance companies will cover you as long as the cost of your care doesn’t exceed their limits. Once the costs of your care start to impact their bottom line, your health care is subjugated to profit and will be rationed.

Our health care system rations health care to the healthy and those that can afford to pay for it.

The CWCs are lying while calling President Obama a liar.