Lies

It's hard to believe, but Ed Martin is still pushing death panel nonsense. 

FactCheck.org evaluated this sad attempt to keep the death panel lie alive in December post titled, "Let the distortions begin."

The Independent Payments Advisory Board was created to slow the growth of Medicare spending; it has no power to ration care.  

It's just hard to believe that lying is a feature in Ed Martin's latest adventure, just like it's been a key characteristic of all his other adventures. 

Update: LaCivita is also working for Ed Martin this cycle. 

KMBC's Mike Mahoney reports that the Todd Akin campaign has hired Chris LaCivita, "the man behind the 2004 ‘Swift[b]oat’ ad campaign." The Washington Post describes LaCivita as a man "intimately involved in the Swift boat campaign."

Because nothing says "I'm on God's Team and God's on mine!" like hiring the media advisor for one of the more infamous smear campaigns in recent years.

To jog your memory:

LaCivita was a paid consultant and media adviser to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who launched a smear campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) based on lies, factual distortions, and baseless attacks on Kerry's Vietnam War record and personal life...At the time, McCain called the Swift Boat Veterans' campaign "dishonest and dishonorable."

In 2008, LaCivita co-founded the American Issues Project with the financial backing of Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based businessman who also helped fund the Swift boat smear campaign.

LaCivita was also previously a consultant to USA Next, "another Republican front group that supported the Bush administration's efforts to privatize Social Security and routinely attacked the AARP for its opposition to Social Security privatization."

"Even our universities have become targets of partisan extremists and gotcha journalists...That is toxic to our lives.”

Gov. Jay Nixon at Missouri Southern State University, as quoted by PoliticMo

Democracy Now today covered the recent smear of UM instructors by Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com website, Breitbart lackey and tea party personality Dana Loesch, and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder.  Watch it:

h/t St. Louis Activist Hub

Once you get past (a) the blanket indictment of "The Internet," (b) the refusal to name which Missouri "conservatives" helped spread the relevant junk (e.g., Peter Kinder, Ed Martin, Dana Loesch, Mark Parkinson) and (c) the glossing over of his own paper's role in advancing the smear, this is a great editorial from the Tribune's Hank Waters:

A recent example [of "provocative stuff on the Internet"] that made the news involved a video posted by right-wing critic Andrew Breitbart showing grossly manipulated excerpts of online presentations made by instructors at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Kansas City who seemed to advocate labor union violence.

The Breitbart version was circulated by conservatives eager to believe the worst about unions, professors and other devils targeted on Breitbart’s Big Government website.

Certainly, in this column lovingly devoted to free speech principles, I am not saying Breitbart has no right to criticize the professors, but he should not misrepresent what they do or say. In reaction to his latest post, university officials in both cities had to correct the record by showing more fully the content and context of the collaborative online labor studies presentations.

Michael Bersin of Show Me Progress transcribes comments from Rep. Vicky Hartlzer at a recent town hall:

We repealed the government takeover of health care. That, that's my version, yes, it's biased, but I can't remember the name. It's fancy name name, the path, uh, the patient protection, well, anyway, you remember, you know what bill I'm talking about. The Pre, the one which passed last year. Anyway, that is very, very costly and very onerous for job creation. Because it, health care costs for business are huge and now they cost have go, gone up even higher. So, the Path to Prosperity, uh, repeals that. In doing that it reduces the national debt which helps reduce that uncertainty, that dark cloud over businesses' heads...

Repealing health care reform would increase the deficit by $210 billion over 10 years, and health care reform was never and is not a "government takeover of health care."

Kinder with Jim Hoft (a.k.a. Gateway Pundit), another serial liar pushing this 'story'

Somehow, Peter Kinder's week has gotten worse.

For the past several days, #PDK has been pushing an Andrew Breitbart hit job on the twitternets and Republican radio in which University of Missouri labor professors are allegedly found advocating the use of violence. But to the surprise of almost no one outside the tea party, Lieutenant Governor's office and Columbia Daily Tribune newsroom, the videos in question were dishonestly edited -- just like they were in the other famous Breitbart hit pieces. As reported by The Star: 

Videos released on the Internet showing two University of Missouri instructors advocating union violence totally distorted their comments, a university official said this afternoon.

The university made the determination after reviewing hours of unedited videotape of class lectures...

But university officials, who have spent the week reviewing much of the “18 hours of an unedited video of the Labor in Politics and Society class,” say the website videos are obviously bogus.

“It is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning,” UMKC Provost Gail Hackett said in a statement.

The editing is evident when, at one point in the middle of the lecture, [professor Judy] Ancel appears in different clothing.

You can also read a statement from Ancel here. Ancel is one of the targets of the smear, and her statement provides context for several of the quotes the Breitbart lackeys used in their hit piece.

Yet Thursday afternoon, Kinder appeared on air with Dana Loesch, a right-wing radio personality and an "editor in chief" for one of Breitbart's websites. In that interview, Kinder says all of the following:

These are outrageous videos that everybody, every citizen in Missouri, should go and watch them.  The mainstream media -- the lamestream media -- is ignoring this issue. I did see something on Fox and Friends either Monday morning or Tuesday morning on this after you and Andrew Breitbart broke this story and lead on it on BigGovernment.com, as you're doing on so many stories.  But we've had the St. Louis and the statewide media in Missouri asleep on this, by and large, with the exception of your fine efforts...

This is terrorism. Let's call it what it is.  Industrial sabotage tactics are a form of terrorism.

Listen to their full conversation here:

Really outrageous stuff, but sadly, not even a little bit shocking.

Media Matters released a devastating recording today of Fox News executive Bill Sammon boasting to a cruise ship lecture audience that he repeatedly lied (or in Sammon's words,"engaged in...rather mischievous speculation") regarding Barack Obama's true socialist agenda.   Sammon admitted that he didn't believe the garbage he was spreading, but did it anyway, because he was the Fox News executive in charge of political coverage.  Here's a video with Sammon's comments, plus context, released by Media Matters today:

After the recording was made public this morning, Sammon told The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz that "he doesn’t regret repeatedly raising it on the air because, Sammon says, 'it was a main point of discussion on all the channels, in all the media' — and by 2009 he was "astonished by how the needle had moved.'"  In other words, it was okay for him to held spread the lie as a Fox executive, because a lot of people on his own network followed his lead and further spread the same lie. 

Via GOP clipmeister John Combest, we bring you Todd Akin's most recent bit of right-wing puffery, on display this weekend at the St. Charles County Lincoln Day event.   In Akin's bizarre view of the world, we lived under an "undiluted Democrat tyranny" in 2009 and 2010, during which we saw the "socialization of health care" and other disasters.   To paraphrase Jon Stewart, it seems that Akin is confusing tyranny with losing.

Note in Akin's program ad that he says it's time for "true Patriots" to help elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate.  He does not say, however, that campaign ads should be absent of obvious spelling and grammatical errors.

Where does one even begin with this?   How can candidates for federal office to associate themselves with such dishonest, outrageous individuals without real questions from allegedly reasonable persons? 

Is there a chapter in Running God's Way that outlines the best practices for lying to your constituents, week after week? 

I ask because Rep. Vicky Hartzler can't seem to speak or write about the federal Affordable Care Act without lying about it.  In her most recent newsletter to Fourth District residents, Hartzler falsely claims that the law will add "over $700 billion to our nation’s deficit," and repeats PolitiFact's 2010 "Lie of the Year" about how the law is a "government takeover of health care."   She also says health care reform is a "job-killing" act, even though nonpartisan fact-checkers have called the claim "misleading" and "false."

Honestly: Why can't she talk about the law honestly? 

In his new video announcing his campaign for the US Senate, Crazy Ed Martin declares that Democrats have "enacted a government takeover of health care."  This, our faithful readers will recall, was PolitiFact.com's "Lie of the Year" for 2010. "The phrase is simply not true," the nonpartisan fact-checkers note. And "FactCheck.org, an independent fact-checking group run by the University of Pennsylvania, has debunked it several times, calling it one of the 'whoppers' about health care and saying the reform plan is neither 'government-run' nor a 'government takeover.'"

Lying isn't a new practice for Ed (see here, here, here, here, here, and here), but it's good to see that he's not going to change who he is now that he's on a bigger stage. 

Besides facts, there were several other notable omissions in Martin's announcement video: how Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are fixing to "take away..the ultimate freedom to find your salvation"; the federal version of his public record destruction initiative; and how a DC-based "taxpayer-funded character assassination" might differ from the one he executed inside Matt Blunt's Jefferson City offices.  I'm sure there are others. 

Here is Ed's video, taped deep inside the Freedom Bunker. 

In this week's constituent newsletter from Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer:

The $1.2 trillion health-care law enlarges government and increases federal spending, deficits and debt.  It also initiates a government takeover of the health-care sector -- one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

For the two hundred and thirty billionth time, it's the Republican repeal plan that would dramatically increase the federal debt and deficit -- Affordable Care Ac will reduce the deficit -- and health care reform ain't a "government takeover of the health-care sector."

Accordingly, press outlets in the Ninth Congressional District should just print his newsletter without challenging his lies, and should definitely not conduct any follow-up reporting.  It's not like they're responsible for informing the public about what elected leaders are doing or anything.  

Perhaps concerned by the general lack of interest in her Senate candidacy, former Treasurer Sarah Steelman has decided to voice her support for Congressional Republicans health care dog and pony show.  Steelman isn't a fan of the Democrats' health care reform bill, of course, and is doing her part to continue the misinformation and lies we've been seeing from Republicans for a long, long time.

Steelman regurgitates Republicans false rhetoric about the law's impact on unemployment (PolitiFact.com weighed in on this talking point today), and declares that "Obamacare adds $1 trillion to our national debt."  This is completely misleading, of course, as the reform bill reduces the federal deficit over ten years, and it's the GOP repeal bill that will add $230B to the federal deficit.

In a tweet to followers this morning, Rep. Vicky Hartzler described health care reform as a "job-killing, deficit-increasing, unconstitutional government takeover." 

First, PolitiFact.com called Republicans' "government takeover" nonsense their Lie of the Year for 2010.   

Second, the health care reform law reduces the deficit.  It's,like, a fact.  When the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill in March, they determined that the law will cut $1.3 trillion from the deficit over 20 years while increase coverage so that 95 percent of Americans will have health insurance. And this week, the CBO released its analysis showing that the Republican repeal plan will add $230 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.

Nice try, though. 

Ed Martin, purveyor of fraudulent fraud charges, is giving a talk to the Missouri Eagle Forum next month titled, "Election Fraud is like Original Sin: Reflections on my Battles with ACORN and Stolen Votes."  I don't have any idea what GOP lies about ACORN and vote fraud have to do with Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man (maybe it's a reference to the Ninth Commandment?), but it's pretty clear that banging the fraud drum is Martin's project of the moment. 

Whatever they do, I hope the reporters who hang on Martin's every word (except the truly crazy ones -- it's key that they don't spend too much on those) don't ask Martin to give evidence for his claims, or ask him who might be paying for his latest misadventure. 

In the second sentence of a farewell column published in the Columbia Business Times (and perhaps elsewhere), Sen. Kit Bond decries the "government takeover of health care."

Maybe Kit missed the memo about how this junk is PolitiFact.com's "Lie of the Year?"  Or maybe telling the truth wasn't the point in the first place?  Either way, he can stop now.  

The 2009 PoliFact.com "Lie of the Year" was the GOP myth about "death panels."  In Missouri, the lie was spread by leaders like Roy Blunt, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Ed Martin and others.

This year's "Lie of the Year" comes from GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who encouraged his fellow partisans to call the health care reform law a "government takeover of health care."

[A]s Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn't let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry...

The phrase is simply not true.