Liars, Damned Liars, and Republican Hacks
Michael Parenti wrote in his book Dirty Truths, “Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Do these people meet in rooms and discuss coordinated action? … No, they do so while jumping out of airplanes.”
Within the Corporatocracy there are people whose full time job is to make up lies. They range from touting the benefits of one brand of toilet paper over another to starting illegal wars. My assumption is that the bigger the lie … the bigger the paycheck. And for the last month or so The Corporatocracy has been writing big checks to their hacks who’ve been making up the lies about Obama’s Healthcare “reform.”
The Right Wing Media Hacks on radio and television have been playing a bizarre version of “Can You Top This?”.
First there was Sarah Palin babbling about “Death Panels” and now that lie has morphed into the “Death Book for Veterans.”
From Media Matters:
Wallace crops VHA doc to falsely suggest Obama administration pressuring vets to end their lives
August 23, 2009 2:57 pm ET
On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace repeatedly cropped quotes from a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is pressuring veterans to end their lives prematurely and to accuse Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth of lying about it.
Wallace referred to a Department of Veterans Affairs pamphlet as the “Death Book.”
The job of refuting the Corporatocracy’s lies falls to our poorly paid watchdogs: Crooks & Liars, Media Matters, TV News Lies, and a shrinking number of radio and television correspondents.
Meanwhile The Corporatocracy is spending hundreds of millions to protect their hundreds of billions in healthcare profits.
From the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/07/health_care_continues_its_inte.html
Lobbyists Spend Millions to Influence Health Care
By Dan Eggen
Drugmakers, hospitals and insurers continued to pour millions of dollars into lobbying during the second quarter of this year, hoping to limit the damage to their bottom line as lawmakers and the Obama administration wrangle over landmark health-care legislation.
… The industry already set records from January to March, when health-care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day.
From Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aqMce51JoZWw
Six Lobbyists Per Lawmaker Work on Health Overhaul By Jonathan D. Salant and Lizzie O’Leary
Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) — If there is any doubt that President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul U.S. health care is the hottest topic in Congress, just ask the 3,300 lobbyists who have lined up to work on the issue.
That’s six lobbyists for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, according to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense. More than 1,500 organizations have health-care lobbyists, and about three more are signing up each day. Every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is involved in an effort that could affect 17 percent of the U.S. economy.
These groups spent $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group, more than any other industry.
Though poll after poll over the last 16 years has shown that the majority of Americans want universal healthcare, and are willing to pay $500 more a year in taxes to get it … the media arm of the Corporatocracy only shows us the easily led yahoos who furiously support the present healthcare system that is completely against their own best interests.
The strangest description I’ve read regarding the healthcare issue was an article entitled, “Obama’s Healthcare Deception, Communism in Socialistic Disguise.”
This is the sort of lunacy where you just have to stand back and marvel at the outrageous quality of the lie. Combining the two top bogeymen, communism and socialism, in the same headline is sheer twisted genius. It reminded me of a stand-up comic explaining how tabloid editors come up with headlines.
There are 3 boxes. In the first are celebrity names, the second holds verbs, the third box is filled with adjectives. Blindfolded the comic picked a paper from each box and voilà … The Headline:
Donny and Marie … Are … Aliens!
Obama is a Communist disguised as a Socialist. Absolutely amazing and sickening at the same time.
You have to give these guys credit. Trillions of dollars of profit are on the line and they continue to crank out top-flight work in lie after lie after lie. Each one more audacious than the last. And then the lies are distributed to the media hacks and another news cycle begins.
In 1849 Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
152 years later during his first appearance at the Gridiron Club dinner in 2001, George W. Bush jokingly said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on.”
Fox News and the rest of The Corporatocracy’s hacks have made Bush’s little joke come true.
I guess after our elected representatives “fix” Healthcare we can tackle reforming Corporate Media. Afterwards we can flap our arms really hard and fly to the moon. Just be on the alert for Flying Pigs. They never use their turn signal.
August 24, 2009
