Glenn Beck Sued For Defamation By The Boston Bombing Victim He Said Was A Terrorist

Posted by on March 31, 2014 at 6:40 pm. 3 Comments :

Shortly after the bombing at the Boston Marathon last year, Glenn Beck announced that he had exclusive information that, once released, would be “the most important story in history.” And, of course, Beck would never resort to hyperbole or sensationalism, so when he threatened the White House that they had better tell the “truth” or Beck would reveal his blockbuster scandal, you know he meant it.

Glenn Beck

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The tale Beck ended up spinning was one of a student from Saudi Arabia who was injured in the Boston blast. However, Beck knew that he was not just an innocent bystander, but had a much more nefarious role. Beck accused Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi of being complicit in the bombing. The story Beck wove included numerous false allegations of Alharbi being on a terrorist watch list and scheduled for deportation as a security risk. However, Beck had no proof to support his charges. And while other “news” outlets (Fox News, Breitbart, WorldNetDaily, etc.) briefly toyed with the story before abandoning it for lack of evidence, Beck persisted in harassing the young man.

What’s more, no conspiracy theory would be complete without tying in President Obama. Beck asserted that Obama was deliberately covering up Alharbi’s participation for reasons he fails to disclose other than the obvious: That Obama himself is the terrorist mastermind and he is executing his evil plot to rule the world as the Grand Lizard of the Global Caliphate and Secular Progressive Emporium. On that subject Beck said…

Beck: Our president, this administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and everything else – how they have covered this up, how they have aided and abetted this guy – is obscene, it’s criminal, it is out of control. And when America knows the full story on this, if she doesn’t stand up and, quite honestly, demand impeachment and the mass firing – if not shutting down – of agencies, we don’t stand a chance.

Apparently we don’t stand a chance because America didn’t “stand up” and Obama is still president. And to make matters worse for Beck, Alharbi is suing him for defamation and slander. The complaint also lists Beck’s website TheBlaze, his production company Mercury Radio Arts, and his syndicator Premiere Radio Networks, as defendents. The filing says in part…

“The defendant Glenn Beck, with the active participation of the distributor defendants, repeatedly and falsely identified Mr. Alharbi as an active participant in the crimes that were committed on April 15, 2013, repeatedly questioned the motives of federal officials in failing to pursue or detain Mr. Alharbi and repeatedly and falsely accused Mr. Alharbi of being a criminal who had funded the attacks that took place at the Boston Marathon.”

It seems long past time for someone to sue Beck for defamation. He has certainly defamed dozens of others in his short and embarrassing career. He has called Cass Sunstein the most dangerous man in America. He said that Bill Ayres is an unrepentant domestic terrorist. He repeatedly called Van Jones a committed communist. It’s surprising that Beck’s record of false disparagement hasn’t landed him court before this. Perhaps the many people he has maligned could join together for a class action suit.

Rest assured that as soon as Beck gets wind of this lawsuit he will further slander Alharbi and claim that Obama is responsible for setting it up. He probably has secret sources inside the White House who personally witnessed the meeting between Obama, Alharbi, Eric Holder, George Soros, and Satan, as they plotted to destroy Beck.

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This is How Hobby Lobby Practices Their Allegedly ‘Christian’ Values

Posted by on March 29, 2014 at 1:46 pm. 31 Comments :

This week the Supreme Court heard a case brought by the arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby. The company seeks an exemption from the mandate in the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) that requires employers to offer insurance plans that include coverage for contraceptives. The basis for their request is that they are a “Christian” enterprise and that they believe that certain methods of contraception are de facto abortion.

The problem with their legal argument is that science does not regard contraception as abortion, so the belief of the company’s owners is factually false. What’s more, they are asserting that a corporation can have a religious affiliation just like a person. That’s a strained proposition unless you believe that a corporation also has a soul, is capable of sin, and is subject to divine judgement. Do good corporations go to Heaven?

However, even if we were to accept their assertion of a religious objection to the mandate, Hobby Lobby can cannot seriously claim to have a spiritual conflict with the law as regards contraception, or even abortion. That’s because, despite the company’s owner saying that “Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions,” their business does engage in practices that violate their professed beliefs.

Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby pays millions of dollars to stock their shelves with cheap products made in China, a country where abortion is legal and is even provided by the government for free – when they aren’t forcing it on women who want their babies. It is impossible to accept that the company is unconditionally opposed to a voluntary form of preventive health care that obviates the need for an abortion, while supporting a system that encourages abortion outright. If Hobby Lobby can do business with China when the profit motive compels them to, they cannot simultaneously pretend that an American woman having access to an insurance policy that includes coverage for contraception is some sort of abomination against their Lord.

Hobby Lobby’s hypocrisy, of course, is not the only reason they should lose this case. It would be frightening if the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation can have a religious belief. That would set the stage for any business to discriminate against employees for anything from race or sexual orientation to facial hair or consumption of pork. It would enable some companies to seek an exemption to ObamaCare if they believe that only faith healing is in accordance with their religion.

For Republicans, and their PR division, Fox News, to cheer on the Hobby Lobby case represents a severe departure from their professed principles. While they falsely allege that ObamaCare allows the government to come between the patient and the doctor (in fact, the government is merely attempting to prevent insurance companies from doing so), they are embracing a ruling that would give that power to every corporation.

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Permitting businesses to dictate what sort of health care their employees can have is not an expression of the individual liberties that conservatives pretend to favor. And it’s even more offensive when corporate high priests impose their religious beliefs on the people who work for them. Especially when those beliefs are discarded in order to increase profits.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: The ObamaCare Honor System Deadline

Posted by on March 27, 2014 at 3:17 pm. 8 Comments :

Conservative politicians and pundits have been unrelentingly negative about the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) from the outset. There have been some 50 attempts by Republicans in congress to repeal, defund, or rollback the law. And Fox News has devoted thousands of hours of airtime trying to scare people away from signing up.

Given that determination to throw obstacles in the way of the law’s implementation, it is curious that these same people are so infuriated when elements of the law are delayed by the administration. That is, after all, a goal that ObamaCare’s critics have been trying to achieve themselves. Apparently they only want delays that are are imposed by their own hand. If Obama does it, it’s an outrage.

Case in point: The administration just announced that people who have had problems signing up for insurance through the new exchanges will have until mid-April to complete the enrollment process. This is a delay of only two weeks, but it gives those who have started the process a little extra time to finish it in the event that they have had technical or other impediments to completion. That modest modification has caused an uproar in conservative circles generally. But in the case of Fox Nation, the lie-riddled website run by Fox News, they have gone a step further and brazenly misreported the news to say that the “WH Eliminates ObamaCare Sign Up Deadline. Will Use ‘Honor System’ Instead”

Fox Nation

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There is absolutely no reasonable way to interpret the facts that would result in an assertion that the deadline has been eliminated. This extension is only available to people who have begun the process prior to the deadline. No one else will get an extension. Just like shoppers who are generally permitted to finish their shopping and checkout past closing time, even though no new shoppers are allowed into the store. What’s more, those who receive the extension would then have only two weeks to finish up or they, too, will be regarded as having exceeded the deadline and be subjected to penalties.

Adding to the absurdity of Fox’s distortions is their blatant hypocrisy. Despite being downright apoplectic over the falsely reported ObamaCare deadline extension, Fox was never even slightly irked when George W. Bush delayed the deadline for signing up for the Medicare prescription drug benefits that his administration passed. And in that case the delay was from May until December 31, of 2006. So Bush delaying a program’s deadline for seven months is perfectly fine, but Obama giving a two week extension to a narrowly defined group of people is tyranny – even if the conservative critics favor an extension.

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Why does Fox even bother to pretend to report the news? If they would invent a headline that says a two week extension is an elimination, then why don’t they just let loose and say that Obama has ordered everyone without insurance to be rounded up and incarcerated in those FEMA camps we’ve heard so much about? It would make just as much sense and have the same disconnect from reality. Plus they could throw in that the camps would be staffed by gay, Muslim, abortion doctors who would be the only Americans permitted to own guns. I mean, if you’re gonna lie, you might as well have some fun with it.


Bill O’Reilly: Obama Supporters Are ‘Blatantly Ignorant And Lazy’

Posted by on March 27, 2014 at 12:06 pm. 3 Comments :

In last night’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly began the program with his routine and hackneyed Talking Points Memo segment. As usual, O’Reilly’s perspective was arrogant, insulting, and entirely devoid of substance or factual basis.

Bill O'Reilly

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The issue that set O’Reilly off on this occasion was a CBS News poll that showed that 53% of the American people say that President Obama has strong qualities of leadership. Obviously there must be something wrong with those results because O’Reilly knows better than everyone else. He asks “How can that be possible?” and asserts that the people are just “confused.”

The first problem O’Reilly sees with the poll is that the respondents were “adults,” rather than registered or likely voters. For some reason he thinks that’s significant. However, he is now demonstrating his own ignorance because those distinctions are only relevant in polls measuring the current status of an election. For polls gauging the opinions of the general public there is no reason to narrow the respondents to voting demographics. O’Reilly is just desperately grasping for some excuse to dismiss the results.

But the worst part of O’Reilly’s spin comes when he expresses an open hostility to pretty much everyone who supports the President:

“The harsh truth is that many of us are blatantly ignorant and lazy. We simply will not pay attention to the world around us. We get our information from other people, who may be as dumb as we are.”

In O’Reilly’s mind it is impossible to have a positive view of Obama unless you are mentally deficient. It isn’t just a matter of a difference of opinion, it is an inherent inability to comprehend the world you live in. So if you disagree with O’Reilly you are just plain dumb. And since the poll shows that 53% of the nation disagree with him, O’Reilly thinks a majority of the American people are ignorant and lazy. Wouldn’t it be nice if the American people told O’Reilly what they think about that?

The best part of O’Reilly’s remarks is that taken by themselves they are a perfect description of his own arrogance and the willful ignorance of his viewers. It is they who blindly follow the fact-free ramblings of a rabidly biased pundit whose mission in life is to deceive and distort and to disparage his ideological adversaries. And that’s the harsh truth that O’Reilly is too ignorant and lazy to grasp.


COVER-UP: Fox News Reveals Shocking Malaysian Jet Passenger Conspiracy

Posted by on March 24, 2014 at 12:57 pm. 5 Comments :

The story of the missing Malaysian jet continues to fascinate and confuse the world as we enter the third week without a definitive explanation of what happened. The vacuum that forms in the absence of knowledge often leads to wild speculation and conspiracy theories.

Leave it to Fox News, though, to engage their masterful journalistic skills to bring bona fide facts to the issue and to ensure that their viewers are always kept apprised of the latest verified details.

Case in point, this morning the kiddie crew on the curvy couch at Fox & Friends reported on a shocking revelation that the mainstream media has been suppressing. Their investigation, that mainly consisted of reading the UK’s Daily Mail (the National Enquirer of England), turned up photographs of the two passengers who were thought to be traveling on stolen passports. Now, even though everyone who dug into this concluded that the passengers were Iranians seeking to escape the oppressive regime and find refuge in Europe, Fox News believes something nefarious was afoot – or more accurately – a leg. They even got the lie-riddled Fox Nation to repost the article. Fox anchors Steve Doocy and Elizabeth Hasselbeck brought up the budding scandal with an ominous tone:

Doocy: Meanwhile, Fox News Alert: New questions about those two Iranian men who boarded flight 370 with stolen passports. Did somebody Photoshop this picture of them, because they both appear to have the same legs. That’s leading many to believe there is a cover-up happening. […] The Malaysians are saying ‘No, we didn’t Photoshop or anything like that. They had a Xerox copy and part of the guy on the left was put on top of the duplicate of the guy on the right. Do you buy that?

Hasselbeck: And you can tell he’s carrying a duffel bag. But if they say that this is a mistake, why don’t they correct it? Why don’t they send us the good pictures?

Indeed, the pictures (posted below) show the two men with similar lower bodies. However, the explanation by the Malaysian authorities appears to make perfect sense. Especially because there doesn’t seem to have been any attempt to disguise an alteration of the photos. The obvious line dissecting the man on the left is consistent with what would appear on a Xerox copy with another photo beneath it. If there were some secret plot in the works it would have easy to conceal the line or even supply a different set of legs. But to Doocy and Hasselbeck, the fact that Malaysia hasn’t sent them “good pictures” is evidence that they are hiding something.

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If we, for a moment, take the ravings of these FoxNuts seriously, what exactly would be the dastardly scheme that is allegedly being perpetrated? For what possible reason would the Malaysian government deliberately (and ineptly) hide the legs of a passenger in a security photo? Would the exposure of his real legs have given away a classified government pants-related secret? We may never know.

Nevertheless, Fox is cranking up the conspiracy machine to titillate their already on-the-edge audience who are all too happy to swallow whatever moronic feast of crackpottery that Fox serves up. And if they think that these pictures are suspicious…..

Fox News Cover Up Passengers

Just wait until they get a look at this…..

Fox News Cover Up Obama


IDIOT TAX: Breitbart’s Bonehead Defense Of Matt Drudge’s ‘Liberty Tax’

Posted by on March 23, 2014 at 11:31 am. 19 Comments :

Anyone familiar with Breitbart News will not be surprised to learn that they did something stupid, again. After all, they are the geniuses who think that “E Pluribus Unum” is English. But their latest inanity stretches the boundary of blockheadedness even for them.

Drudge Idiot Tax

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The story began when conservative muckraker Matt Drudge boasted on Twitter that he had just paid what he called his “Liberty Tax,” a reference to the penalty for not getting health care coverage. The problem is that this fee is not payable until his 2014 taxes are due in 2015. Subsequently, Drudge was chastised by more knowledgeable people (e.g. almost anyone) who wondered whether he was deliberately lying or just ignorant.

Coming to Drudge’s defense is Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News. Boyle proceeds to back up Drudge by accusing his critics of not understanding how businesses pay taxes. So Boyle sets out to explain it to them and cites language from the IRS form for filing estimated taxes:

[S]ince he is self-employed as the proprietor of The Drudge Report, he files as a small business. According to the IRS’s website for self-employed individuals, they are required to pay taxes quarterly. […] So, when they file and pay those 2014 first quarter taxes, such individuals have to pay the Obamacare Individual Mandate tax if they opted to not have health insurance—like Drudge just did. […] Additionally, the IRS form (1040-ES) for estimating quarterly taxes specifically recommends adding the mandate penalty to line 12 for ‘other taxes’ — to pay before the first quarterly deadline of April 15.”

It’s true that some self-employed individuals are required to make quarterly estimated payments on their taxes. However, none of them are required to include the penalty for not getting health insurance until the following year. In fact, it says just that in the same paragraph that BreitBrat Boyle quoted only a portion of. Here is the whole paragraph:

“Health care coverage. When you file your 2014 tax return in 2015, you will need to either (1) indicate on your return that you and your family had health care coverage throughout 2014, (2) claim an exemption from the health care coverage requirement for some or all of 2014, or (3) make a payment if you do not have coverage or an exemption(s) for all 12 months of 2014. For examples on how this payment works, go to www.IRS.gov/aca and click under the ‘Individuals & Families’ section. You may want to consider this when figuring your ‘Other taxes’ on Line 12 of the 2014 Estimated Tax Worksheet. For general information on these requirements, go to www.IRS.gov/aca.”

Furthermore, Boyle’s defense is based on Drudge’s assertion that he is filing as a business, not as an individual. But what both Boyle and Drudge neglect to mention is that the mandate for businesses with fewer than 100 employees (which certainly includes Drudge) to provide health insurance to their employees was delayed until 2016. So no matter how you slice, Drudge has no tax liability for the coverage mandate in 2014.

So Drudge’s “Liberty Tax” really turns out to be an “Idiot Tax,” because he doesn’t actually owe it. If he did pay the penalty (which we don’t have any proof of) it’s his own ignorance of the law that is to blame, not ObamaCare. And Breitbart’s lame-brained attempt to rescue Drudge only proves that when dumb right-wingers do dumb things, other dumb right-wingers will jump at the chance to compound the dumbness. And dumbest of all is that Drudge is bragging about putting his health in jeopardy by not having insurance. He regards liberty as being at risk for devastating financial hardship that would ultimately fall to other Americans in the form of higher premiums and fees for services.

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Further evidence of this cycle of stupidity is that Fox News featured this Breitbart story as the top headline on their lie-riddled Fox Nation website. And round and round it goes.

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St. Vladimir: The Putin Worship Continues On Fox News

Posted by on March 22, 2014 at 11:23 am. 2 Comments :

The old saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has been taken to heart by Fox News and much of the Republican Party. That is the only explanation for the ongoing love affair that is playing out on Fox News for the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Given an opportunity to compare Putin with President Obama, Fox News invariably comes out on Putin’s side.

St. Vladimir

The latest example of this is Fox News host Jenna Lee who interviewed the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger yesterday. The segment focused on how Putin is teaching the west a lesson that “fatigue isn’t an option,” a reference to the observation that Americans, after more than a decade of war, are tired of it and reluctant to commence a new confrontation over Crimea. In the course of the discussion Lee presented a scenario that favorably juxtaposed Putin to Obama and other American leaders:

“[Putin] had people openly weeping in the crowd. I don’t remember a time when any of us have been moved to weep based on a speech about America. That actually alarms me.”

Really? Because Fox News was one of the most ardent critics of Obama’s impact on his audience. They frequently characterized him as Messianic and looped video of supporters crying, and even fainting, during his speeches. They called him a “celebrity” president and insulted voters as having been swayed by his soaring rhetoric and appeal to emotion, rather than the substance of issues and policies.

Perhaps when Lee says that she can’t remember “any of us” being moved to weep, the “us” she is referring to is Fox News personnel. Certainly the only weeping Obama has ever induced from them is when he defeated Republican opponents at the ballot box – twice. Obama’s passionate oration is often belittled on Fox as theatrics, but the drama produced by Putin is seen by Foxies as powerful and patriotic. They are dripping with admiration for the Russian strongman and lament that Obama doesn’t emulate his persona and tactics. Of course, if he were to do so, Fox would turn and pounce on him for sounding like a tyrant.

Just this morning Fox strategic analyst Ralph Peters called Putin “gifted” and said that “He is a dynamic, powerful leader with a clear vision of what he wants and the west is leaderless.” Sarah Palin’s schoolgirl crush causes her to see Putin as “one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans.” Sean Hannity was “humiliated for my country” after seeing photos of a shirtless Putin doing a butterfly stroke next to a picture of Obama riding a bike (which was a manly pastime when George W. Bush did it).

The infatuation that Fox has for Putin is palpable. But it is also opportunistic. They only admire him so long as they can convert their idolatry of Putin into disparagement of Obama. They tried the same thing with conflicts involving Syria and Iran, but after the administration’s success in forcing both countries to retreat from their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Fox News likewise retreated. And if Putin fails to achieve his goals in Ukraine, look for Fox to forsake their besainted one. But don’t expect them to give any credit to Obama. That would be sacrilege.


Right-Wing Media Feeding Frenzy Over False Story About White House Press Secretary

Posted by on March 21, 2014 at 1:23 pm. 5 Comments :

There is a strain of faith that intertwines everything that emanates from the conservative media pulpit. They are so fiercely intent on believing any bad news about President Obama and all things liberal that they will suspend common sense entirely in order to preserve their dark fantasies.

Right-Wing Media Circus

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Such was the case when Catherine Anaya, a local reporter with the Phoenix CBS affiliate KPHO, aired a segment introducing her interview with the President. She made some startling comments that reverberated throughout the right-wing mediasphere:

Anaya: We started here shortly after 8 o’clock with a coffee with press secretary Jay Carney inside his office in the West Wing. And this was off-the-record so we were able to ask him all about some of the preparation that he does on a regular basis for talking to the press in his daily press briefings. He showed us a very long list of items that he has to be well-versed on every single day.

And then he also mentioned that a lot of times, unless it’s something breaking, the questions that the reporters actually ask-or the correspondents-they are provided to him in advance. So then he knows what he’s going to be answering and sometimes those correspondents and reporters also have those answers printed in front of them, because of course it helps when they’re producing their reports for later on. So that was very interesting.

First of all, Anaya’s report began with the statement that her meeting with press secretary Jay Carney was “off-the-record,” and then proceeded to report it anyway. That’s the first sign that we are dealing with a spurious story. But the core of the controversy concerns her assertion that White House correspondents are required to supply their questions to Carney in advance. That nugget of pseudo-news set off a flurry of outrage from the usual right-wing media hacks. For instance…

  • Glenn Beck: Did a reporter just admit the daily White House press briefing is a sham?
  • Truth Revolt: WH Press Secretary Gets Questions from Reporters Before Press Briefing.
  • NewsBusters: Ariz. Reporter: Carney’s Briefing Questions ‘Are Provided to Him in Advance’
  • Weekly Standard: Reporter: WH Press Secretary Gets Questions from Reporters Before Press Briefing
  • Newsmax: Phoenix Reporter: Carney Gets Questions In Advance
  • Rush Limbaugh: Local Phoenix Reporter Reveals Jay Carney’s White House Briefings are Scripted with Questions Submitted in Advance

Needless to say, the story was not true. Anaya later corrected the record and apologized for her “bad reporting.” She admitted that “I made two major mistakes: I reported an off the record conversation and what I reported was not accurate. […] The White House never asked for my questions in advance and never instructed me what to ask.”

The Weekly Standard is the only one of those listed above that placed a correction in their original story. Truth Revolt, a side project of Breitbart News editor Ben Shapiro (whose name candidly suggests a revolt against truth), went to the trouble of posting an update that only reported denials of the story by Carney and Fox News correspondent Ed Henry, but not Anaya’s retraction. NewsBusters, a website that purports to hold media accountable, just deleted the whole article with no acknowledgement of their error.

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None other than Fox News recognized the shoddy practices of news enterprises that fail to confirm the authenticity of their reporting. Howard Kurtz wrote for his Media Buzz column that…

“…even as this tale caught fire across the web, the only thing it proved is that a local CBS reporter mangled the facts —and has finally retracted her charge. […] Bad reporting. Muddied. Incorrectly applied. And the apology took too long.”

Not exactly. It also proved that conservatives with partisan agendas will believe anything that fits their preconceived vision of an evil and calculating president. It also proves that they will disseminate their dishonest delusions even after they have been documented as false. The professional missteps of Anaya were unfortunate and embarrassing, but the blindness and persistence of those who continue to flog her mistakes even after she apologized is far worse because they have knowledge their deceit and engage in it anyway.


Koch Brothers Tea Party Front Group Caught In An ObamaCare Lie (Again)

Posted by on March 20, 2014 at 4:32 pm. 4 Comments :

In the past few weeks Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the Koch brothers financed Tea Party propaganda outfit, has produced a couple of anti-ObamaCare ads that featured alleged “victims” of the health insurance reform. The campaign ended in embarrassment for AFP when the phony “horror stories” were revealed to be utterly false. Independent analysis of the insurance coverage available to the subjects of the ads proved that they were better off under ObamaCare than they were without it.

Koch Bros. Fatcat

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So AFP abandoned that strategy and released an ad that consisted of a lone spokeswoman making vague criticisms of ObamaCare in a tone of voice dripping with despondency and a tag line bemoaning that “It just doesn’t work.” However, even with this tactic of avoiding any verifiable content that might get them tied up in another counterfactual morass, they still managed to produce a thoroughly dishonest commercial that received a “False” rating from PolitiFact.

The principle claim in the new ad was that “millions are paying more and getting less.” However, as PolitiFact’s research shows, there is no truth to the claim:

PolitiFact: Americans are getting more benefits under the law in a number of ways — including, in some cases, being able to buy affordable insurance for the first time.

In addition, insurance purchased in the individual and small group marketplace must meet 10 essential health benefits. This includes coverage for emergency services and hospitalization, prescription drugs, free preventative coverage for things ranging from basic immunizations to HIV screening, and maternity care.

The law also caps out-of-pocket costs, providing greater protection from exorbitant hospital bills. The most a person could pay for health care in a year is $6,300; the most a family can pay is $12,600.

Before the law passed, some insurers capped annual or lifetime benefits, forcing people who thought they were covered to pay large hospital bills once they passed the threshold.

People with pre-existing conditions are also seeing a lot more benefits, since they previously couldn’t buy a policy at all.

PolitiFact concludes by saying that “At worst, they’re paying more to get more, though in many cases they’re actually paying less.” They also include a chart that shows that, while insurance premiums have risen since ObamaCare became law, the rise is slower than in any of the previous fourteen years. What critics of ObamaCare always seem to forget is that before it came along insurance companies routinely raised premiums, canceled plans, narrowed doctor networks, and declined coverage. They also refused patients with preexisting conditions, terminated patients when they filed claims, and capped benefits at amounts far below realistic costs for care.

Prior to ObamaCare it was always the insurance company that came between the patient and the doctor. And their motivation was strictly related to increasing profits. ObamaCare’s mandates are aimed at improving health care and medical outcomes, not enriching corporations and their executives.

As for Americans For Prosperity, the Koch brothers, and their PR division, Fox News, you have to wonder, if ObamaCare is so terrible, then why do they have to repeatedly lie about it to make it look bad? Why can’t they find any real horror stories? Why can’t they tell the truth about the economics of the program? Why do they so feverishly try to frighten people away?


Between Bill O’Reilly And Two Ferns: Video Proof That Plants Are Smarter Than Fox News Hosts

Posted by on March 19, 2014 at 1:36 pm. 6 Comments :

After Bill O’Reilly did his Superbowl interview with President Obama, O’Reilly predicted that “the interview that I did is going to go down in journalistic history.” So far, the only historical notice taken of the affair is O’Reilly’s boorishness and Narcissism.

Bill O'Reilly

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A much more likely candidate for the history books is the interview conducted by Zach Galifianakis on “Between Two Ferns.” It showcased the comedy stylings of the President while demonstrating his keen awareness of modern media and the impact of the Internet as a communications platform. Following his Ferns outing, which has racked up nearly three million views to date, traffic to Healthcare.gov spiked by 40%.

Bill O’Reilly’s famously sensitive ego must have been severely injured by the popularity of the Ferns bit, because he devoted one of his “Talking Points” segments to criticizing it as “problematic” and “desperate.” In fact, whenever O’Reilly is confronted with challenges to his omnipotence, he responds with venom and vacuous attacks. Another recent example of this is his criticism of CNN’s coverage of the Malaysian airliner. O’Reilly complained on his program that CNN was overdoing it, but the real source of his complaint is more likely the fact that CNN has been crushing him in the ratings ever since the jet went missing. Apparently cable news viewers are satisfied with CNN’s reporting, despite O’Reilly’s whining.

Well, now we have a fresh take on the O’Reilly/Galifianakis battle of the interviews courtesy of HuffPost Comedy. And, if anything, it shows that a fern would be a more than acceptable replacement for O’Reilly.