UPDATE: New gloss on the eternal question:

Are they liars or just morons?

What was old is new again: Since the "death panels" lies are back, it seems only appropriate to bring back this offering by the great R. J. Matson from last year's holiday season.

If Media Won't Correct The "Lie Of The Year," What Will They Correct?



December 26, 2010 8:01 pm ET by Jamison Foser



If you thought the New York Times' write-up of a Medicare regulation about advising patients of end-of-life care options was bad, wait until you see the Associated Press. The Times article invoked Sarah Palin's 2009 claim that a similar provision constituted "death panels," while explaining only that Palin's (deeply false) claim was "unsubstantiated." The AP didn't even offer that caveat. Here's how the wire service's report handles Palin's lie: [T]he practice was heavily criticized by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some other Republicans who have likened the counseling to "death panels." . . .…



Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach. Palin's use of the phrase "death panels" solidified GOP opposition to the health care bill. That isn't even "he said, she said" reporting (which is bad enough.) That's just "she said." But what she said was false. That's worth mentioning, don't you think?



Nobody should be surprised when Palin lies -- after all, she knows news organizations like the AP will just type up what she said and pass it along to their readers, without lifting a finger to correct the record.

“Lincoln famously put forth the notion that government should be of the people, by the people and for the people,” Johnson said. “This is one substantial way I can show that my commitment to the people of Eastern and Southern Ohio is to help them, not to gain exclusive benefits for myself.”



Johnson said Congress must focus on repealing Obama Health Care and instead adopt patient-based, market-driven health care solutions.



“I oppose ObamaCare because government-controlled health care will create more debt and huge bureaucracy,” Johnson said. “We need to reverse the government takeover of our health care, and we should adopt common sense, patient-centered, private sector solutions like making health care portable from job to job and state to state, tort reform, and promoting health savings accounts.”

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I know we're supposed to make nice to those poor misunderstood Teabaggers, and bow before the legitimacy of their grievances. It's just kind of hard when, besotted by their newfound power, they're off on a screaming rampage, wildly wielding their weapons of psychotic destruction against every vestige of reality and human decency caught in their path.Since, on a scale of zero to a gazillion, they know less than nothing about life (I'm deducting points for the preposterous wrongness of nearly everything they think they know), and have chosen to devote their lives to a relentless war on reality, it's hardly surprising that they're both totally ignorant of and in denial about death. The only clue these wacko scumbags may ever get about the subject is likely to come at the very "moment of." If then.To the extent that the human race has a lick of sense, death is something we attempt to incorporate into our lives, to understand the reality of it and, as best we can, plan for the eventuality that none of us can avoid. But again, just as the Teabagger spit on life, they defecate on reality, and will do everything in their power to eradicate it.Which is a roundabout way of saying that. Now personally, I don't give a damn how clueless these people wish to remain about their own deaths, and I can only wish them the speediest possible encounter in the hope thatmay perhaps penetrate those seemingly impenetrable skulls. But when they screech and foment and wield their bloody axes to preventfrom attempting to cope with reality, they go too far.Of course it served the demagogues of the Right only too well to pretend to go along with what even they surely knew was a conspiracy of cretinousness, that there was something insidious about the sane, sensible provision included in the health care package to enable people who so wish to avail themselves of professional counsel in anticipating and preparing for death. But apparently for people who believe that they have the right and power to turn back reality, this incredibly modest proposal is intolerable.More power to Media Matters' Jamison Foser for trying to blow the whistle on the media enablers of the big lie:It's an interesting question, of a thumb-suckingly intellectual sort, as to whether someone like Princess Sarah knows better and is simply being conveniently cynical or is sincerely befuddled when she spews nonsense like this. Right now it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. Those of us left behind in what the Bush regimistas referred to sneeringly ashave to stick together to insist on,, equal time for reality.From Morocco Howie passes on a post from Modernesquire on Plunderbund , citing the case of incoming Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio, who early this month made a great show of announcing his refusal to accept Congressional health care benefits as an expression of his outrage at the newly enacted national health care package. As the Ohio Free Press reported Does this man know how to do "self-righteous," or what?The only wee problem, as Modernesquire notes via the Youngstown News's Windy.com blog , is that the congressman-elect left out a tiny bit of the picture. In foregoing congressional health care coverage, which actually is provided through private insurers, he isn't exactly falling back on a "common sense, patient-centered, private sector solution." As a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Johnson "has and will continue to receive federal health-care benefits from that branch of the military."The point is not -- as lame-brained, similarly fake-self-righteous apologists for the congressman-elect have blustered -- that he didn'tthat coverage. The point is that he has declared himself unalterably opposed to "exclusive benefits" for himself and to "the government takeover of our health care." The reality is that his much-derided "ObamaCare" is provided entirely by market-driven private insurers, whereas his military health care is in factSo there's no question that Congressman-elect Johnson is a 100 percent raving hypocrite. The only remaining question is: Is he really that stupid, or is he just another right-wing pathological liar?

Labels: death panels, Media Matters, reality-based community