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Ho-hum. Another news cycle, another collection of lies being pushed about the late Senator Edward Kennedy. In this edition, Swopa expertly dissects Stephen Pearlstein’s variation of the "Teddy lived to sell out his principles" garbage being circulated by Very Serious Pundit People.
It’s not just that the Villagers are passing along without comment or correction RNC-dictated lies — sorry, “talking points” — about Teddy Kennedy. It’s that the Republicans’ lies are based on projection.
For instance, take a look at Mike Huckabee’s claims as to how Teddy would have fared under the very health care reforms Teddy espoused:
The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, “The Huckabee Report,” on Thursday that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.
As I stated above, not only is this a lie, it is also — just like his charge that the Democrats were “politicizing” Kennedy’s death — a big fat case of projection. (Funny how the Republicans talking up Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan never got accused of “politicizing” their deaths. But I digress.)
Huckabee is the one who would tell an elderly woman who couldn’t afford surgery to go home, take a pain pill, and die. And by opposing any sort of meaningful reform, that’s exactly in essence what he’s doing. Why doesn’t our mainstream say this?
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Why Does Mike Huckabee Lie? Because he wants to keep control of the corporate-church Government and facts are an enemy to that agenda.
Why Does Our Media Let Him Lie Unchallenged? Because the corporate-church owns the media.
Lies support fear and fear prevents reform.
For the same reason that C-span, accepted as an honest broker of political discussion, by all too many Americans, with it being a “Public Service of your Cable Television Providers” and all, refuse to correct the most egregious of misperceptions, half-truths, lies, and damned lies which are spread by uninformed callers into these shows on a daily basis. Liars lie because they are allowed to, unchallenged by our hyper-vigilant media. It allows people to say, “I heard it on the News, so it must be true…”
Why Does Our Media Let Him Lie Unchallenged?
After all, if the media did challenge his lies it would be violating his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
:)
The right wing is speaking to their base, the 17% who want to be misled, rather than face how wrong they and their leaders are in heart, mind, and soul.
Because a lot of the people supporting him don’t want to hear uncomfortable truth; they prefer comforting lies, like this, that make them feel good about not doing anything for other people.
They’re Christians, but only when it’s convenient. When they get out in the parking lot, or out of earshot of people they’re not sure back them up, they’re heartless.
or, the advice senator tom coburn offered to the distressed woman at a town hall meeting that she should reach out to her neighbors to attend to her brain damaged husband, in light of their insurance company’s refusal to pay for further treatment for him.
The MSM are just lazy
I think All Americans should demand that the Senators and Congressmen should have to give up their healthcare if Health reform is not passed.
WHy should they have what they have denied us? Why should we let them get away with this.
The other, NOT 17 %, of us should be going to Town Halls and calling our Congressmen/women and demanding health care reform.
The American people voted for Obama and his reform. Why should 17% of us dictate what the rest of us want?
Huckabee lies because “Thou shalt lie.” is one of the special commandments that particularly devout politicians must obey.
Why Does Mike Huckabee Lie? Why Does Our Media Let Him Lie Unchallenged?
Are these trick questions? They’re too simple to be anything else.
1) like all conservatives, huckabee lies because that is the only way anyone will listen to his sick pychotic spew – to make it seem like something else.
2) What passes for “our media” lets huckabee and all conservatives lie because conservatives give the plutocrats at the head of Big Media corporations anything and everything they want to allow them to try to sate their insatiable greed amassing obscene wealth.
WHy should they have what they have denied us?
you’re not getting the republican/conservative message. People wealthy enough to afford decent health care deserve it because they’re smarter and superior to people who don’t have heath care coverage. And since people without health care coverage are inferior and undeserving of heath care coverage, by virtue of their not having health care coverage, why should the superior ones enact legislation to give it to them – that would be socialist, nazi, hilter, against the teachings of Christ, and would kill your grandmother.
It is now acceptable for ALL Xtians to be LIARS.
It’s not the media who should be calling the lies, it’s the friggin’ DEMOCRATS, who do absolutely nothing.
Or, more succinctly, poor people don’t want to work, therefore their children don’t deserve health care.
He’d also tell that old womon to get her neighbors to throw a bake sale for her medical care, like Coburn did at his “townhall”
Why doesn’t our mainstream say this?
Our mainstream media are, for the most part, subsidiaries of much larger conglomerates such as GE (Jeff Immelt) and News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch). The people who run these companies long ago sold their souls for a dollar. Fox News is run by Roger Ailes. Look them all up. There are many more names to go with these.
Under Bush, even PBS became a shill for conservative values.
per our beloved Molly Ivins:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0617-27.htm
Much of the MSM corporate media (and the Villagers who profit from it) serve as the Ministry of Truth for radical conservatives ideals including the most recent one: kill all Grandmas who aren’t rich enough to pay their yearly existence tax.
What happens if Mike Huckabee gets brain cancer and then dies even after all his treatments & therapies? If I remember correctly, Huckabee and others loved it every time George Bush invoked 9/11 to catapult his fascist capitalist agenda. Huh.
…Huckabee is the one who would tell an elderly woman who couldn’t afford surgery to go home, take a pain pill, and die.
unless she’s a very *rich* elderly woman, in which case she is of consequence, and therefore deserves care.
on edit: oops -missed the ‘couldn’t afford surgery’ qualifier. Never mind.
The media doesn’t believe in truth any longer; but only in “he said, she said.” It makes it so much easier for them, because they don’t have to do any research.
The question “Why does the media allow this?” has no simple answer.
The media lost it’s editorial integrity with the advent of 24 hr news channels. Up to that point you had serious (4th Estate type) journalists giving critical accounts of the news in nice neat 30 minute segments on shows expected to lose money. When the 1st 24 news channel came along there wasn’t enough news to fill the space between the commercials. The few journalists with integrity refused to sell out and do fluff news to fill time so they split and were replaced by the “Will Say Anything For Money” roster we have today.
Of course dumping the Fairness Doctrine was pivotal and that really opened the door for the semi-salacious style of reporting that has proved to be a way to boost the numbers. It’s all about appeasing the advertisers, to hell with the content, give ‘em dirty laundry..cue Don Henley.
As far as what remains of the previously liberal mainstream media, most of the top reporters/hosts are asshole buddies with the politicians they are reporting about and the politicians are reciprocating by passing legislation favorable to the employers of the reporters. This vicious circle is only driving the mainstream media further from the left, and face it friends, it ain’t comin’ back as long as the news is a sub-department of the entertainment division with a mandate for profits.
What pisses me off the most is how can the right create it’s own total media universe with enough television, radio, print and internet content to keep their crazy listeners on the “mainline” 24X7X365 and the left still can’t get Air America Radio out of the hangar, much less off the runway?
We can’t compete with the current model. MSNBC proves that. We have to find new ways to create a real competitor to the mainstream conservative media. Don’t tell me the money is not out there. It’s like Matt Taibbi said in his “Sick and Wrong” piece in RS, the right at least knows how to fight while most of the masses who got Obama elected took off their T shirts in November and went home.
Thank the deity of your choice for the Jane’s and Christy’s,and Marcy’s and Jeremy’s and Amy’s and Laura’s and Rachel’s (and all the rest) who are standing up to those bastards in whatever way they can letting them know we’re still here, there are more of us than there are of them and we’re not going away.
Make your own media, it’s easier than you might think.
Why should 17% of us dictate what the rest of us want?
because currently that 17% is making a hell of a lot more noise than is the 83%.
Mornin’ all,
Remember the Christmas campaign ad where what looked like a crucifix floated behind the Huckster?
Well I was surfing the teevee channels and noticed Huckabee on Fox. The logo on the wall behind him looked like the Fox Searchlight Pictures logo with the two spotlight beams crossed. Of course the camera angle had those crossed spot beams sitting right on the Huckster’s shoulder. Sure looked like a crucifix to me.
(Pardon me while I go adjust my tin foil hat)
Some may have that “I deserve it, you don’t” attitude but I think the real reason has more to do with money. There’s money to be made bleeding us dry and they’re going to take it all before we’re broke. They’re destroying the middle class and thus the beauty that was once America but if it puts more money in their pockets then they’re all for it.
The Onion had a headline:
“Congress Deadlocked On How NOT To Provide Healthcare”
What forum would you suggest the DEMOCRATS use? How about using the old fairness doctrine? Oh I forgot, the conservatives got rid of that.
How about MSM? Nope, that doesn’t work. Those guys are on the take. Besides, you’ve clearly already given up on anything that approaches fairness from them.
Oh I know. Follow every conservative around and call them out — but which media should we use?
You’re naive at best. And since the rules here require civility above all, it’s difficult to find the words to describe what your little tirade represents at its worst.
(Same bind the democrats find themselves in when dealing with conservative liars. Where do they begin?)
Actually,John@13 has a point. Primrose, are you srious or just being snarkily ironic?
Both the media and the Ds need to do more work on this.
The MSM need to lose the whole ‘he said, she said’ theory of ‘balance’ and do real reporting again (and not print PR as reporting or news).
The Ds need to learn to fight back and to use sound bites effectively, instead of talking things to death.
Their “savior” died to give them permission to openly LIE about anything.
Since when did dishonesty, “me first”, NIMBY, insular selfishness, love of money, use of torture and violent hatred become hallmarks of American Christianity? Where did the values of honesty and compassion and brotherly love and being our brother’s keeper disappear to? They’ve been systematically tagged as soft, weak, liberal, and dismantled by the right wing ‘big box churches.’ I read a statement made by a blogger on another site that asked “why aren’t Christians Christian anymore?” What a terrific way to ask “what is going on?”
Never gonna happen friend. The MSM will only continue to drive away from the left. Accept it, get over and work to move on to whatever comes next. The MSM is totally under control of corporations who are telling government what to do in the form of campaign donations. No matter how much much we can raise, even if it’s more, it’s not the right kind of money according to Taibbi. (I think he said that because Congress critters know the corporations are a more dependable money stream just mho.)
I don’t want bureaucracies making those decisions. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they’re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they’re being made by private insurers…
[W]hat we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know, and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help, maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.
Maybe because persecution still exists.
With the advent of the “Prosperity Gospel”, which holds that God will reward those who are sufficiently pious with monetary success. The poor are poor because God looks upon them with disfavor, therefore they deserve nothing. If they see the light and become “Saved” and become truly devout, fiduciary rewards will surely follow. Ask Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, or the others who have parlayed their “Ministries” into personal fortunes. The people who act against their own interests believe that someday their own righteousness will allow them to join the ranks of the wealthy, so they support the uber-rich now.
And Huckabee claims to be a Christian.
While thumping his bible he spews one lie after another, lives with
hypocrasy and shouts how wonderful and good he is.
Because he is a republic, when their lips are moving they are lying. The republic media isn’t about to point out the lies under any circumstances.
When do we get tired of asking “why does the corporate media lie?” and begin developing a coherent strategy to undermine and ultimately destroy the corporate media?