The REAL Reason People Aren't Behind Health Care Reform

Its because our media refuses to do its fucking job. Prime example, earlier this week ABC News investigates Bart Stupak's claim that the Senate health care reform bill requires the government to subsidize abortion with tax dollars. The investigation came to a clear cut answer, the claim is FALSE as its typed in red across the screen during the piece.



Fast forward to today and you have the very same network hosting a debate about health care reform. George Stephanopolous is hosting both HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the aforementioned pro life Democrat Bart Stupak. Now it would be different if this conversation was supposed to be about the bill as a whole, then MAYBE I could understand Stephanopolous being so unprepared for Stupak's argument. But being that this WHOLE segment was supposed to be about Stupak's opposition to the bill over abortion rights and his own network had already investigated Stupak's claim about the bill, you might think Stephanopolous would have been ready to step in and call him out for being wrong, lying or both over the language in the Senate bill.

And you'd be wrong.



So to recap, even thought ABC News did an investigation and found that Bart Stupak was wrong about the language in the Senate bill when it comes to government funding of abortion, the same network's host of "This Week" framed the whole debate on if they would be able to change the language of the bill so as to placate Stupak on something that he is totally wrong about......according to ABC News.

I swear I wanted to type this whole post in all caps because I just noticed this right after I left a comment about how the White House needs to take on the media more if they want to do better with their agenda but there is no way that anything I type on this blog whether it be in bold, in red, more cuss words or whatever could truly convey the contempt I am feeling at this moment for our media. Contempt and righteous anger. They are playing around with people's lives and instead of taking that seriously they just keep doing the same shit every day either more concerned with ratings than substance, or so cowed by right wingers that they have decided to just not do their job rather than be accused of "liberal bias".

I certainly hope that there is a hell and there is a special place carved out for journalists who allow harm to be done to their readers because they don't have the guts or the conscious to do their damn job.

That's A Big Ass Difference

I still vividly remember right wingers gloating over the fact that the news outlets were reporting that the Million Man March did not number a million people. Most outlets did have estimates well over half a million but the sheer fact that it was promoted as a Million Man March primarily geared towards African American men and it didn't actually reach a million people was seen as something to be embarrassed about by the wingnut crowd.

Well I wonder what the hell they have to say about this:

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands."

Yeah, check how many rubes mistook less than 100,000 for 1 million. I wonder if they will laugh and mock all the teabaggers for such a meager turnout even on a weekend when presumably nobody had to work.

Shorter RNC: "We Need The Fairness Doctrine!"

I can't take credit for the framing, that honor goes to commenter flounder on Greg Sargent's blog. However all of the bellyaching from the RNC and Congressional Republicans over ABC News' decision to air a health care special with President Obama, smacks of calls for the fairness doctrine don't you think? I mean their main complaint is that "both sides" aren't being heard correct?

Who knew that the GOP were socialist lefties?!

And kudos to ABCNews for clapping back at the RNC.

Aiding and Abetting

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo coined a phrase some years ago that Washington is "wired for Republicans" and was such a prescient statement. The establishment media are now conditioned to work almost exclusively in favor of the Republican tactic of out and out lying and relying on the MSM to report the lie without any significant push back. Take for example the "liberal media" running with missing Governor Sanford aide's statement that he had spoken to Sanford today and that he was on the Appalachian Trail and that he would be back tomorrow. They are repeating this story as a fact even though Sanford hasn't called anyone else which would support the story, the aide has no way of confirming where Sanford was calling from, and the various conflicting stories his staff and his wife gave yesterday after the story broke. This media failing is getting to the point of being disgusting.

But not every example of the media being wired for Republicans has to do with them just repeating what they are told. Sometimes its that they actively incorporate what they have been told by Republicans about Democrats into their own original smears against Democrats. Take for example this question in the supposedly liberal Washington Post and supposedly liberal ABC News Poll.

8. Which of these statements comes closer to your view: (Beneath it all, Obama is an old-style, tax-and-spend Democrat) or (Obama is a new-style Democrat who will be careful with the public's money).

Now this isn't one of those notoriously wacky RNC polls, nor is it one of those hyperpartisan FoxNews polls. Hell this isn't even a right wing Rasmussen poll. This is the Washington Post and ABC News combining to project the most blatantly false and politically damaging meme about Democrats in general and Democratic Presidents in particular.

There is no good option for a person answering this question. If you say Obama is an "old school tax-and spend-liberal" you buy into a right wing stereotype that doesn't exist in the real world. If you say Obama is a "new style Democrat who will be careful with the public's money" then the clear implication is that even if you had a positive view of him personally that only means that the rest of the Democrats historically have been irresponsible with the people's money.

In short its a bullshit question. Its almost analagous to a push poll question, meant to create an impression rather than measure one.

So lets check out those "old school tax and spend" Democratic Presidents as opposed to their "fiscally responsible" Republican counterparts.




But why should our "liberal media" let a little thing like facts get in the way of smearing Democrats, right?

Assholes.

ABC News Should Post A Retraction

All day today the cable news shows have been buzzing over an ABC News story about the CIA intelligence report on the briefings given to Congressional leaders over the torture program. To hear ABC News tell it the report proved that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was lying when she said she wasn't briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded. And dutifully all of the cable news shows repeated this throughout the day. Well Greg Sargent over at the Plum Line Blog (did I mention his blog is awesome) actually did some REAL investigative reporting and he called the CIA and came up with this.

In the newly-released documents detailing the torture briefings given to members of Congress, the portion describing Pelosi’s single briefing says she was told about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general, but doesn’t specify whether she was told about the use of waterboarding. That was specified about some briefings given to others.

I asked CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano why. His answer: Because the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

In a statement to me, he explained that that “the language in the chart” is “faithful to the language in the records.”

“Nothing is being hidden or hyped,” he continued. “CIA is simply being true to the records. That’s all there is to it.”

Now to be clear this doesn't qualify as proof that Speaker Pelosi wasn't briefed on waterboarding, but what it does do is prove that the CIA didn't have any information that showed that she WAS briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded and thus no such information could have been in or inferred from the report. I will now patiently await the retraction from ABC News that I know will not be forthcoming.

Don't Believe The Hype

Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel fame, nails exactly why the ABC News framing of the CIA Intelligence Report as some kind of gotcha moment for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is so bogus.

"Conformed Their Conduct To That Advice"

Holder also stressed that intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct.

Statement from Attorney General Eric Holder concerning the release of OLC memos and any potential prosecutions of CIA personnel.


Yesterday ABC News posted a breaking a story about an intelligence report released by the CIA on the briefings that took place going back to 2002 and beyond of the members of Congress on the enhanced interrogation torture techniques authorized by the now infamous OLC memos. The focus of the ABC News story was on whether or not Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was briefed on Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded, something she previously denied had happened during one of the briefings. Now personally reading the report, to me, doesn't refute Speaker Pelosi's story at all. There is no notation of a specific mention of waterboarding during this briefing as there are in subsequent briefings to other members of Congress. And about the only thing it does say is that she was briefed on the techniques used against Abu Zubaydah. But I think the focus of the article is totally off, perhaps intentionally or perhaps not. But here is the thing to keep in mind. This briefing took place accordiing to the intelligence report on September 4th of 2002. The OLC memo authorizing EITs was dated August 1st of 2002.

Why do those dates matter? Well allow me to quote from that August 1, 2002 memo:

You have informed us that the use of these techniques would be on an as needed bases and that not all of these techniques will necessarily be used. The interrogation team would use these techniques in some combination to convince Zubaydah that the only way he can influence his surroundings is through cooperation. You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of excalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.

Now to go back to the dates. The OLC memos authorizing 10 torture techniques to be used against Abu Zubaydah including waterboarding was dated on August 1, 2002. Thats just 34 days before the September 4, 2002 briefing to Speaker Pelosi. So if we are to believe that the CIA briefed Speaker Pelosi and told her that waterboarding had already been used on Abu Zubaydah on Sept 4th, how does that square with using the 9 other techniques in escalating fashion from just 34 days earlier? Now obviously perhaps the truth is that the intelligence report just confirms that Speaker Pelosi was telling the truth. But then there is also the evidence that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in the month of August. Now if in fact the CIA had employed the techniques prior to August 1st and or they did not use waterboarding as a last resort, wouldn't that imply that they hadn't "conformed their conduct to that advice" the litmus test that Attorney General Holder put forth as to whom would be open to prosecution for torture?

I have posted before about the timeline discrepancy with respect to Khalid Sheik Muhammed. From all the public reports it would seem that in the same month that KSM as captured he was waterboarded 183 times. That would lead a reasonable person to believe that waterboarding wasn't the last resort but the first resort of these CIA interrogators. But thats not the bill of goods that has been sold to the public at large. Lets just go to Dick Cheney's words a few days ago in an interview published on Politico:

Cheney: Well, I don’t believe that’s true. That assumes that we didn’t try other ways, and in fact we did. We resorted, for example, to waterboarding, which is the source of much of the controversy ... with only three individuals. In those cases, it was only after we’d gone through all the other steps of the process. The way the whole program was set up was very careful, to use other methods and only to resort to the enhanced techniques in those special circumstances.

I personally believe that Cheney and the rest of the pro torturists are framing the issue this way so as to get people to believe that we waterboarded only when we had no other choice. In fact he specifically wants you to believe that the CIA had tried "all other steps" before resorting to waterboarding. Now reasonable people might hear that and think "Well gee, they tried everything they could but the detainees wouldn't talk so they felt they had to do something drastic". This plays into the "24" ticking time bomb mindset that is prevalent in our country these days. I have seen and heard many people say stuff like "You have to do what you have to do to protect the homeland" or some version of that. But what if it was shown that we DIDN'T have to use these techniques to get the information as FBI interrogator Ali Soufan has asserted several times? What if it was shown that we didn't even try to get the information any other way and went straight to torture. And bigger than that, if these people didn't follow the advice of the OLC memos? Do you think that would affect public opinion? I do.

The intelligence reports should actually be furthering the push towards prosecutions for torture, but our MSM is instead going to use it to push a flame war. We deserve better and we should demand better!