Day: October 5, 2009

Naming Names in the Tea Bag/Town Hall Wars

Trish

teprbaggers

Rolling Stone has an excellent article that is required reading if you want to understand what’s really going on in the health care reform battle. The hotheaded “little people” of the summer of 2009 are getting PLAYED by rightwingers with everything to gain from obstructing reform and none of the pesky morals, ethics, or consciences that often get in the way of unbridled greed. For example:

The fourth group behind the town-hall protests, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, [was founded by] Rick Scott…the former CEO of Columbia/HCA, the world’s largest hospital conglomerate. Scott was ousted from the company after it was caught overbilling taxpayers for Medicare treatment; it eventually pleaded guilty to criminal fraud and paid a record $1.7 billion in penalties. Scott now runs a chain of urgent-care clinics that serve uninsured Americans fearful of being bankrupted by hospital emergency-room visits. “He is one of those people who’s gotten very, very, very rich off of sick people,” says Potter, the former CIGNA executive. “He doesn’t want that cash cow to go away — so that’s why you’re seeing all his money there.”

Indeed, Scott has bankrolled Conservatives for Patients’ Rights with more than $5 million of his own fortune. “We have invested a lot of time, energy and resources into educating Americans over the past several months about the dangers of government-run health care,” he boasted in August. “And I think we’re seeing some of the fruits of that campaign.” To block reform, Scott has also hired CRC Public Relations, the firm that orchestrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry in 2004. CRC enjoys high-ranking connections to the right-wing establishment, with a client list including the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committees, the Federalist Society, the Parents Television Council and the Christian Coalition.

There is more, much more, including tobacco companies that don’t want expanded coverage to be paid with taxes on their products, oil and gas billionaires who are looking down the road at Obama’s other policies and want to wound him now before it’s their turn to do battle, and hardline party hacks who just need the work. Do yourself a favor and read the excerpt online, then go out and buy the full hard copy.

Media Guy’s Media Studies Pop Quiz Returns

Buck Banks

It’s time once again for Media Guy’s Quarterly(-ish) Media Studies Pop Quiz. Here’s the first question:

The Washington Post recently announced a new social-media policy stipulating that its “journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything — including photographs or video — that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.” In addition, “This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.” What, in effect, does this mean?

A. Washington Post reporters are a bunch of opinionated, biased, partisan, racist, sexist atheists (or, possibly, Wiccans) who should be thankful they have thoughtful, proactive bosses who are willing to protect them from their worst impulses.

B. In the cyber cafeteria, the Washington Post is now relegated to sitting by itself at that one table with the wobbly leg in the corner by the trash bins — and not even Mrs. Musbocker, the lunch lady, is nice to it anymore.

C. Increased sales of My Little Pony Secret Diary With Locket at D.C.-area Toys ‘R’ Us stores.

Take the rest of the quiz here.

Watch Anti-American Tea Baggers Cheer When USA Loses Olympic Bid

Jon Ponder

The Hate America crowd: The ebullient folks in the video above are attendees at last week’s “Defending the American Dream Summit” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a spin-off organization from the group that spawned Freedomworks, the corporate lobbyists who astroturfed the Tea Bagger movement.

Watch as the Tea Baggers laugh, clap and cheer after a woman at a microphone delivers the news that the United States lost its Olympic bid, prefacing the announcement by saying, “if anyone cares.”

Media Matters has a video round-up of anti-American crowing over the loss by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others below:

Verbatim

Buck Banks

He knows that I don’t play politics … and I certainly don’t play it with national security and neither does anyone else I know. The lives of our young men and women are on the line. The strategy does not belong to any political party and I can assure you that the President of the United States is not playing to any political base. And I take exception to that remark.

— National Security Adviser Jim Jones, in an interview on CNN, responding to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who said last week that the Obama administration doesn’t “want to alienate the left base of the Democrat [sic] Party.”