Caught Red Handed. Sen. Grassley Voted for "Death Panels" in 2003
Oh those lying liars and the lies they tell.
According to Amy Sullivan at Time many of the very same death panel liars voted in favor of end-of-life counseling in 2003.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Yes, that's right. Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
Yesterday I posted a video clip of a former physician/death decider for Humana and Blue Cross/Blue Shield who had testified at a Congressional hearing in 1996. Dr. Peeno admitted that she had made decisions in favor of the profit margins that resulted in the deaths of patients.
Thirteen years later, after the Republicans and health care lobbyists devastated all hopes and efforts at any kind of healthcare reform, the death panels remain in full force today. I suppose this is the reason Sarah Palin suddenly ratcheted down her rhetoric about them. Someone in the GOP likely reminded Ms. Clueless that um, er, silly, silly woman, the insurance companies are knowingly killing off patients. Don't bring attention to it for crying out loud!
Poor, poor short-sighted, seriously uninformed Sarah. That woman does not know when to quit. This time she let the real death panel genie out of its hole in hell.
There they go again. The Republicans must be going through an identity crisis b/c the Party's Chair Michael Steele wants Sarah Palin to disappear for awhile. Go fishing, Sarah, please. Apparently some think Sarah has too many personal issues plaguing her right now. Others likely think she's too thin skinned for the foundry called national politics.
But our Guv Rick not only wants Sarah to hang around, he said he'd let her campaign with him. Look out Texas! We're in for a lot of crazy talk about nutty stuff. It'll be the pretty boy and pretty girl duo, lying and spinning tales about conservative voodoo make believe as they make their way through the state. They'll preen for the cameras and tell us all how great they. The moneyed fat cats will just love 'em. I wonder if Rick Perry will pick up the tab for Sarah's clothes? I guess that will be up to the fat cats who love Sarah.
If anyone gets an advance schedule of her arrival please do let me know when that woman from Alaska arrives so I can leave for saner ground.
Less than a year ago it was reported that the presumptive Republican nominee for President, Senator John McCain, had chosen Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his nominee for Vice President; the first thought I had after reading those reports was that John McCain had just lost the presidential election. As I watch the press conference in which Palin announced her intention to resign as governor of Alaska the only thought that I had was that this was the second worst political move that I had witness in the last year. However, the difference in my thoughts was that I understood the logic and the thought process behind the McCain campaign nominating Palin as Vice President, but I did not comprehend what the logic or thought process was behind Palin's resignation.
Palin touted her accomplishments as Governor: the promotion of private energy projects, ethics reform, and fiscal conservatism. Of course she took time to mention the cutting of the perks of the executive office such as the plane and the chef. She proudly took credit for all of the successes that where achieved in two years as governor, and how she protected Alaska from the "immoral" stimulus funds.
What do Rick Perry and Sarah Palin share in common other than the fact both are right wing extremists with an abundance of hair?
There are plenty of shared commonalities between them but the most important is obviously glaring. The governors of the states of Texas and Alaska speak from both sides of their mouths. And both think no one is paying attention.
In other words, Rick and Sarah are lying hypocrites who believe their constituents are stupid.
From Editor & Publisher, we get the news that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, and the Austin American-Statesman are among the top 15 newspapers to have gained in audience from this time last year. They actually list the top 25, but all the TX papers are in the top 15. From E&P:
Here are the top 25 dailies that had the biggest gain in audience when taking print and online readership into account. The papers are ranked by net combined audience (past seven days in print and 30 days online), according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations for the six months ending March 2009 compared to the same period in March 2008.
GREENWICH (CONN.) TIME -- 111,824 -- 30.74%
THE BIRMINGHAM (ALA.) NEWS -- 781,047 -- 11.85%
THE TIMES-PICAYUNE, NEW ORLEANS -- 820,374 -- 11.72%
WILKES-BARRE (PA.) TIMES LEADER -- 196,229 -- 10.45%
FORT WORTH (TEXAS) STAR-TELEGRAM -- 1,236,205 -- 7.09%
THE PATRIOT-NEWS, HARRISBURG, PA. -- 496,700 -- 6.45%
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 2,507,835 -- 6.13%
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 1,297,866 -- 6.09%
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN -- 861,105 -- 5.97%
NAPLES (FLA.) DAILY NEWS -- 265,181 -- 5.97%
The key, of course, is that these figures combine print and online readership. Not sure if you're counted twice if you read the print version and the online version (I imagine you are -- I don't know how they'd control that unless it was a survey, and these are raw figures). In any case, it gets to the quirk of the newspaper industry's problem:
They have plenty of readers. In fact, they have more readers. And as much as some want to wail and moan about the internet and the economic crisis, those aren't the real reasons why the newspaper industry is flailing. Newspaper industry leaders were aware of the coming rise of the internet over a decade ago, and basically sat on their hands. The recent economic crisis merely exacerbated problems that had existed for years -- (1) too many editors on staff, (2) companies demanding too large of a profit, and (3) companies refusing to plan for higher gas prices and increased cost of shipping/cutting their product -- paper.
Most political forces aren't helping matters...though I'd argue there are different levels of blame. Democrats get mad at things like this:
I'll stop there out of mercy for the newspaper industry. But that's how Democrats criticize the newspaper industry. Republicans, on the other hand...
The evisceration of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s by conservative Republicans allowed the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who then promoted more conservative Republican policies such as further media consolidation to spread Rush to more channels across the board, along with increased capital to fund more right-wing talk radio.
And...
In any case -- despite their faults and their attackers (those both fair and not so fair), the people are still going to traditional sources of news. They may also be getting their news from the internet -- which the latest Pew Report clearly stated -- but there is still a demand for information from traditional sources of news.
Tomorrow, I'll look at the absolute wrong approach, and hopefully on Wednesday or Thursday talk about the better approach. In the mean time, feel free to discuss your thoughts about all of this in the comments.
WSJ: "He walks the walk of a true conservative. And he sticks by his guns - and you know how I feel about guns," Palin wrote in a letter to Texas Republican women.
Do you remember with the Texarkana Gazette editorialized back at Palin in reaction to her out of state endorsement of Rick Perry?
But Lord, have mercy, she is an outsider with an opinion about Texas politics and government. And she sounds like the Yankee she is, if we use the definition that Yankees come from north of the Red River.
If Perry relies too heavily on Palin, he may find himself with a lot of time to watch Russians from her front porch come January 2011.
For immediate release.
Contact: Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann
Robin Cravey today announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2010. He was recruited to run in the Republican primary by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in a secret full moon meeting at Barton Springs Pool.
The announcement came just one day after Cravey withdrew as President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Two Wheelers amid revelations that he underreported his tip income as a cabdriver in 1975.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed Rick Perry for re-election, calling him the "true conservative" in a primary election showdown with fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Palin, who electrified the GOP base as the party's vice presidential nominee last year, has strong support among the party's social conservatives. Her endorsement appeared aimed at undercutting Hutchison's appeal with GOP women. Both groups will be important in picking the party's nominee in next year's Republican primary.
KBH who? Hutchison isn't getting out of the primary. She's just not.
On a side note, I wanted to comment on how I came to read this story. It was posted by the Dallas Morning News. It got picked up by Mark Halperin's Time magazine blog. A friend of mine read it on her blog, and shared it on her Google Reader feed. That's how I saw it -- and now some of you will read it for the first time here on BOR, and possibly e-mail the story to someone else.
It is the glorious evolution of the news industry.
As we all know, this week is the last of the G.W. Bush Administration. Given a national Democratic landslide election and George W. Bush's recent approval rating, there is little doubt that there is more than a tad of dancing taking place in a plethora of streets throughout the U.S. and the world.
For much of their eight year term in office, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have remained tightly entrenched behind iron gates. They avoided the press and media as much as possible. They steered clear of the public and chose to helicopter in and out of their homes and offices whenever feasible. And yet for the past two weeks both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been parading around on the Sunday morning talk and political news circuits. In their final days in office both men desperately tried their darnedest to re-write history. I imagine at this time, after Bush's farewell address, both men are securely ensconced back in their delusional bubbles in undisclosed locations.
With regard to Presidential exit interviews, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan is one of many who offered commentary on Bush's farewell address.
"It's hard to talk about moral clarity when you have tarnished our government's moral standing in the world," McClellan said. "If you look at the speech it was really a feel-good farewell speech. It was designed one final chance to burnish his legacy by highlighting his humanity, showing his humanity, his compassion, his inner decency and good intentions."
But "there are really two problems they don't seem to get," Bush's ex-press secretary remarked. "First of all, the public trust. The president long ago sadly lost the public trust. They are no longer listening to what he has to say or buying what he is selling. Unless he is willing to come out and talk candidly about his own mistakes, his own policy mistakes, and address those issues openly with the American people they are not tuning in."
Yesterday I posted a 
