SubscribeJust to let TPM know, I just retroactively snuck in a couple of ads in several local French newspapers announcing the birth of my son in FRANCE. In 46 years, when he is president of France... who will have the last laugh? Me, that's who.
The whole birth certificate issue gets weirder still:Sullivan has a bit of a track record in crazytown when it comes to birth certificates, but I do wonder why they don't release them and be done with it. I guess there's some advantage in giving nutjob Republicans something stupid to waste their time and credibility on."I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago...."But why are we supposed to rely on the testimony of Dr Fukino, whom I believe entirely. It is not my job as a journalist or yours as a citizen to take public officials on trust. They are not to be trusted, whoever they are. It is our job to demand all the evidence we want or need. I know the electronic record is legit. I have no doubt that Obama has every constitutional right to be president. I think the Birthers are nuts. But there is no reason on earth that the original cannot be retrieved and shown.
President Obama’s ability to shape the debate on health care appears to be eroding as opponents aggressively portray the effort as a government-takeover that could limit Americans’ ability to choose their doctor and course of treatment, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.The birthers, coverage of the birthers, healthcare, coverage of healthcare, the recess, return to home districts, advertising in home districts: all related, even if only in the muddy mind of the undecided, 'low-information' moderate.
...The poll was taken at a moment of extreme fluidity, both in terms of the complicated negotiations going on in the House and the Senate as legislators and the administration sort out the substance and politics of competing proposals, as well as efforts by both sides to define the stakes of the health care debate for the public.
With Congress now almost certain to adjourn for the rest of the summer without floor votes on any specific plan, the next month or two is likely to see a vigorous advertising and grass roots effort to shift public opinion, and the poll offers hope to both sides.
The changes in the public’s attitude over the past month, even if not huge, suggest the reason why Mr. Obama sought so hard to get Congress to vote on some versions of an overhaul before heading home.
he commercial opens with an aging couple sitting at their kitchen table, plaintive piano music playing in the background.In As Congress Debates Healthcare Reform, Industry Groups Push Agendas, McClatchy
"They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortions," says the miffed husband in the new spot produced by the pro-life Family Research Council.
It ends with this warning from the narrator: "Our greatest generation denied care. Our future generation denied life. Call your senator. Stop the government takeover of health care."
"Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counselling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner," Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York State and a vocal critic of health-care reform, said in a recent interview.
"The old saying is: All politics is local. And that is true," said Greg Griggs, executive vice president of the N.C. Academy of Family Physicians. The statewide group of 2,700 doctors is supplementing the lobbying efforts of its national organization because it has decided that the stakes in Washington are too high for the group to sit to the sidelines.Investors Business Daily today offered an Op-ed Monday suggesting that healthcare reform was actually Obama's attempt at providing reparations for slavery. Glenn Beck has been tooting that horn also this week, along with assertions that Obama has a "hatred of white people."
Some local groups are running ads or sponsoring Web sites to communicate directly with the public — a tried-and-true way to influence Congress. A commercial sponsored by a national insurance group featuring fictitious couple Harry and Louise is widely credited with helping to derail the Clinton administration's efforts to remake health care.
In addition to large sums traditionally spent on lobbying by some companies and organizations, here are other recent efforts to influence the debate:
• North Carolina's drug industry is running full-page newspaper ads that say it supports health-care reform but not "policies that harm biopharmaceutical research."
• Pharmaceutical maker GlaxoSmithKline and Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state's largest health insurer, have started Web sites that explain their stances on universal health coverage.
• The N.C. Medical Society has disseminated information, such as its "guiding principles" on reform, to its 12,000 physician members so they will be prepped to discuss the issue with patients. One of the many principles: "Reform the tort system to prevent non-meritorious lawsuits."
As my friend and colleague Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks pointed out in a Daily Kos blog recently, billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times.
Why are these guys willing to lose so much money funding "conservative" media? Why do they bulk-buy every right-wing book that comes out to throw it to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list and then give away the copies to "subscribers" to their websites and publications? Why do they fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year money-hole "think tanks" like Heritage and Cato?
The answer is pretty straightforward. They do it because it buys them respectability, and gets their con job out there.
The AMA has long believed any health system reform can be achieved by revamping private health insurance plans. It fought the creation of Medicare and succeeded in delaying its debut decades ago. That was when it had more clout; its membership has dwindled to include barely one-fourth of the nation's doctors.For the hospitals, as reported on July 9:
"We have agreements on specific points, and the understanding is that if those points materialize, that's great," said Rich Umbdenstock, who heads the American Hospital Assn. "If they don't, we're back in discussions."These are qualified statements made with reservations. That there will be change is certain; how the change is shaped, and whether the change is made through the present bill, according to the parameters Obama has demanded, is what's up for grabs here.
The long-standing high-traffic conservative website World Net Daily regularly leads its front page with the latest Birther news, but that is directly followed by the latest "socialized medicine" news.Birther Congressman Says Healthcare Reform is "Nuts"
Beneath its Birther fever swamp, World Net Daily offers the "Breaking News" that Congress plans mandatory "counseling" for seniors that will "attempt to convince seniors to die," (the latest smear job from the discredited Betsy McCaughey) and the "Exclusive" that congressional members have exempted themselves from the public plan option (it's so "exclusive" to WND because the opposite is true.)
And at that infamous town hall for (non-Birther) Rep. Michael Castle, the loud Birther crowd also gave cheers and applause to an audience member who ranted: "if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down."
Obama's poll numbers are dropping on healthcare, and I took the opportunity to point our that there's a connection between the organized campaign to label him some kind of racist alien socialist who's ineligible to be president, and his difficulties getting his social and economic agenda passed...There is one main reason the U.S. doesn't have the social democratic traditions and programs enjoyed by most Western democracies -- we are the only such nation without some kind of universal healthcare -- and that reason is our history of ethnic, racial and class strife.New America Media: The Birther Movement Won't Go Away: And for Good Reason:
The birthers got an open boost from GOP ultra-conservatives, led by House Representative John Campbell, who are pushing for a bill that requires all future presidential candidates to produce their original birth certificates. That, of course, would apply to Obama as well when he presumably runs for reelection in 2012. The real value of the birther movement is that it’s a tailored backdoor movement that can be used to destabilize the Obama administration. At the very least, it keeps the president off balance on policy initiatives he’s pushing on health care, the economy, and a softer foreign policy outreach -- all policies fiercely opposed by ultra-conservatives.It's nice to see that I'm not alone in my reading of this bizarre fascination and its seemingly mysterious simultaneous origin in the many separate minds of individual wingnuts.
...While legions of Web sites continue to recycle the rumor line about his birth certificate, and whether the birth certificate that Hawaii produced is legitimate, more than two dozen lawsuits or petitions have been filed in various state courts contesting Obama’s U.S. citizenship. (One of them was filed by political gadfly Alan Keyes.)
The Supreme Court’s refusal to demand that Obama pony up his birth certificate has done absolutely nothing to take any steam out of the movement. If anything, it probably added some vapor to it, by convincing more people that the courts are in cahoots with the Obama White House to keep the real “truth” about his imagined foreign birth secret from the American people.
The worst thing about the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate is not that CNN’s Lou Dobbs has latched onto the issue for ratings and to make mischief against Obama. Or that others in the media have even dignified the controversy by treating it as if it’s a legitimate issue. The worst thing is that none have connected the dots and seen the birthers as the shock troops to torpedo Obama’s political agenda.
Their hope is that by sowing enough conspiracy paranoia about him, they can do just that.
PhRMA's battle plan includes a Calendar of Events for January and February, as well as other documents, revealing that the industry's strategy is to work in a highly coordinated way with allied organizations and "front" groups. Their activities include releasing reports, conducting a major grassroots public relations and lobbying campaign, initiating state media tours to challenge increased publicity about how much cheaper drugs are in Canada, and opposing the "Allen" bill (H.R. 664/S. 731), which is the most popular Medicare prescription drug bill in Congress.
"I'm disappointed," he said, explaining he lives on Social Security and a small amount of retirement money. "I just am tired of doing what I'm doing, and I get 50 e-mails a day telling me I'm a great patriot and they're praying for me. I don't want to hear it. Just send me $10."
Shannon says he spent 60 to 70 hours a week on his efforts and received only $240 in the entire two years despite displaying prominent donation buttons. The home page now just has a logo and the words, "Closed. Lack of support."
"There was no warning. This is freaky scary. " said Tony Licursi of Kennesaw, Ga., of the sudden shutdown. "There was more info there than [Roman historian] Tacitus could've ever dreamed."
Surprise, surprise: Birther sentiment was strongest in the South and among the 60-plus crowd - presumably because seniors can't log on to the Internet and rely on rumor, word of mouth and right-wing talk radio.This. This is why we need to get everyone access to the Intertubes.
No matter how dumb, the people who are questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. could eventually cause real problems.
The memo, authored by Robert MacGuffie, who runs the website rightprinciples.com, suggests that tea partiers should "pack the hall... spread out" to make their numbers seem more significant, and to "rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation...to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early.... to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda...stand up and shout and sit right back down."I know many of you aren't just interested in this as an online discussion about health care reform: you're planning to *participate* in these debates. Be aware that many more disruptive, non-deliberative strategies are being planned to derail the real-world discussions during Congressional recess.
MacGuffie is a volunteer for FreedomWorks, the industry funded group that helps organize and support the tea party protests. But he denies that his small group has any direct affiliation with FreedomWorks. "We are recommending with that memo that other grassroots groups that share our view should go to the townhalls of their members and use the strategy that we did," MacGuffie told me, confirming the memo's authenticity. "We are trying to get into that town halls to make them understand that they do not have the unanimous support from people in their communities."
Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.
Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.
And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.
Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.
The story/the spinPerhaps you mean to say the three scenarios at the end went for Bush. Otherwise, the vote goes to Gore.
The study's key result: When the consortium tried to simulate a recount of all uncounted ballots statewide using six different standards for what constituted a vote, under each scenario they found enough new votes to have narrowly given the Florida election--and by extension the presidency--to Al Gore. Under three models that attempted to duplicate the various partial recounts that were asked for by Gore or ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, however, Bush maintained a slight margin of victory.
But that said, Palin is sort of right on one point -- there are people who weigh whether children like Trig are worthy of insurance. They're called insurance companies, and they have decided that these children are not in fact worthy of coverage. That's because Down Syndrome is a "pre-existing condition."This is the sort of loss of message discipline that absolutely destroys resistance to a policy. Conservatives now have to turn around and say: "Umm.... Ms. Palin? Stop. YOU'RE HURTING US."
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posted by muddgirl at 1:58 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]