Think Progress

By Lee Fang at 4:50 pm September 28, 2009

At the How To Take Back America Conference last weekend, conservative speaker Kitty Werthmann led a workshop called “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.” Announcing the panel in a column preceding the conference, talk show host Janet Porter gushed how Werthmann’s description of Austria in the 1930s is a “mirror to America” today — noting “They had Joseph Goebbels; we have Mark Lloyd, the diversity czar.” The room was packed over capacity to hear Werthmann, who grew up as a Christian in Austria and serves as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum South Dakota President.

During her session, Werthmann went through a litany of examples of how President Obama is like Adolf Hitler. She noted that Hitler, who acted “like an American politician,” was “elected in a 100% Christian nation.” Although she failed to once mention Antisemitism or militarism, Werthmann explained how universal healthcare, an Equal Rights Amendment, and increased taxes were telltale signs of Nazism. Werthmann also warned the audience:  Source

TPM Muckraker

Brian Beutler | September 22, 2009, 5:24PM

Zack asked this question earlier, and we’re still waiting for an official answer, but news stories from back in April strongly suggest that Humana wasn’t the only insurance company enlisting seniors (legitimately and otherwise) to lobby against changes to Medicare Advantage. In fact, the problem may have been industry-wide.

Here’s an April 13 story from the Eagle Tribune in Massachusetts:

Across Massachusetts, senior citizens are writing letters to newspapers demanding that their representatives in Congress protect a form of health insurance called Medicare Advantage.

At least that’s what newspaper editors are supposed to think.

Source

Politico

By CAROL E. LEE | 9/17/09 8:55 PM EDT

One of the country’s leading Hispanic organizations is launching a campaign designed to pressure CNN to rein in host Lou Dobbs.

The organization behind the campaign, Democracia Ahora, is kicking off the effort Friday with the release of a report based on interviews with 100 Hispanic leaders about the impact of Dobbs’ evening show.

The results of the report are not surprising – 90 percent of the interviewees believe Dobbs is helping create a negative image of Hispanics, with his frequent criticisms of illegal immigration.

But Democracia Ahora is hoping the report inspires a grassroots movement aimed at executives at CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, to draw attention to what the group calls “frequent negative portrayals of Hispanics on the Lou Dobbs show.” It is using its release to start a national campaign, “Enough is Enough!” that will be carried out through a Web site, www.TellCNNEnoughisEnough.com, that goes live Friday.

Source

Huffington Post
Posted: 09-16-09 06:00 PM

On September 15th, Van Jones addressed his friends and supporters about his recent resignation with the following e-mail message.

Dear Friends:

My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so. I resigned from the White House on Sept. 6, and I have remained silent since then–in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama Presidency.

Over the past several days, however, many people have been asking how they can help and what they can do.

The main thing is this: please do everything you can to support both President Obama and the green jobs movement. Winning real change is ultimately the best response to these kinds of smear campaigns. Source

The Daily Beast

by John Avlon

September 14, 2009 | 12:53am

Republicans are now benefiting from the tens of thousands of angry white people who descended on Washington over the weekend—but they’ve tapped into something ugly that they can’t control, says John Avlon.

The weirdness of the Wingnut summer isn’t over. The anger has metastasized into the body politic, and it’s going to get a lot uglier from here.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is establishing itself as a potent political force, able to rally tens of thousands of citizens to the Washington Mall after Glenn Beck’s call. Joe Wilson’s outburst isn’t an embarrassment of incivility to these folks; it is a rallying cry for an army of useful idiots. But Republicans will soon find that they cannot contain or moderate this strain—while Democrats won’t understand what hit them. Source

Think Progress

By Zaid Jilani on Aug 15th, 2009 at 10:40 pm

Earlier this year, Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), an anti-health care reform group led by the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Rick Scott, began running a commercial attacking the British health care system. The TV ad runs through “tragic stories” of British citizens who it portrays as being against government-run health care such as the National Health Service (NHS). Watch it: Source

by David Michael Green

www.opednews.com

The events of recent decades have been ominous.

The events of recent weeks more so.

It’s not so much, I guess, the visage of obese, over-fifty, white men angrily wrecking even the tattered remnants of the democratic process in this country that is most disturbing. We’ve seen that before.

I think it’s the willful ignorance translated into incoherent, and in fact ironically self-defeating, rage that I find most discouraging. Can we really live in a country populated by so many fools, people who can so readily, proudly and belligerently be made into tools of their own destruction? Can the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power on the world’s stage possibly be so incredibly backward at its core? Source

Think Progress

By Matt Corley on Aug 12th, 2009 at 10:52 am

Last week, The Hill reported that Rep. Brian Baird’s (D-WA) office had received a fax that depicted President Barack Obama as the Joker and warned of “Death to All Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!” The Secret Service has said that the fax was “potentially an investigative intelligence matter.” Now, a second member of Congress is reporting that he received the same fax. On CNN this morning, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) — whose office was recently vandalized with a swastika — held up a printout of the fax, adding that the picture of Obama he received had “the swastika on his forehead.” Watch it:  Source

TPM DC

Less than a day after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) validated cooked-up fears that Democratic health care legislation would create “death panels,” it appears, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the Senate Finance Committee will not be including a provision to reimburse Medicare doctors who provide end-of-life counseling to dying patients in its bill.

Grassley is the Finance Committee’s ranking member, and one of six senators on the panel working to craft a bipartisan health care bill.  Source

TPM DC

The White House denies it on the record, and PhRMA denies it on the record, but below, via Ryan Grim, is an outline of the deal drug manufacturers supposedly struck with the Obama administration early last month.

Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.

1. Agree to increase of Medicaid rebate from 15.1 – 23.1% ($34 billion)

2. Agree to get [follow on biologics] done (but no agreement on details — express disagreement on data exclusivity which both sides say does not affect the score of the legislation.) ($9 billion)

3. Sell drugs to patients in the donut hole at 50% discount ($25 billion)

This totals $68 billion

Source