"I STILL have old people who come into this office and ask me about 'the death panels.'"

[phantom power]

I’ll just leave it there because I don’t really want to consider the ass-covering comments of millionaire media personality Joe Scarborough. I guess I’m supposed to be thrilled that some “number” of famous people have decided Romney’s lies have become too embarrassing and blatant to ignore. I’m not impressed. I think that’s an incredibly low bar. I think they aren’t doing their job.

Romney launched these attacks weeks ago. They are completely untrue. Paul Ryan now repeats the lies. That means Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have had weeks to spread a flat-out lie to vast sections of the country. That’s an absolute failure of news organizations to report the truth to their readers.

If millions of people believe these lies, and they will, it will be because political media waited weeks to gather the courage to write a simple factual statement: Obama did not gut welfare to work rules, and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are spreading this completely false attack because their campaign professionals believe Barack Obama is vulnerable on these charges because Obama is an African-American. That’s the truth and it’s not complicated and it’s not nuanced and it’s not difficult to write.

Political media waited weeks to admit this obvious truth. They allowed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to spread this flat-out lie to millions of people, and this lie has now become “true.” They failed millions of people. Again.

Update: To this day, years after political media and conservative celebrities spread the lie that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama inserted “death panels” into a federal law, I STILL have old people who come into this office and ask me about the “death panels.” That lie stuck because they waited MONTHS to correct it.

Good job! Thanks so much for finally getting around to reporting simple unequivocal facts.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/08/22/romney-and-ryan-continue-daily-lies-on-welfare-to-work-rules-media-personalities-begin-to-cover-their-asses-by-finally-admitting-these-are-racially-charged-flat-out-lies/

[Atman]

1. We already have Death Panels.

They're called Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente, etc, etc, etc...

.

[patrice]

2. Does Adelson have Tea Party connections whose responsibility it is to keep the race "threat" going?

You know what, though elders are BIG media consumers, I don't really believe that many of them watch the "news" or much commentary either. Or at least not enough to account for the prevalence of these myths about that Black "guy" in the WHITE House.

Where is this "be afraid of the Negro in the White House" stuff coming from? How is it spread?

True Story: Even old Eisenhower Republicans can be pretty racist if pressed a little bit and they're the most reasonable of their cohort. If that generation also picks up talk of "Civil War II," coming from the extremes on the Right and on the Left, it is easy for them to mistrust and ultimately fear the younger generation (that's pretty busy alienating itself anyway or just declining into total apathy) even more than they already do. It's easy to hypothesize that they feel threatened by the future.

Other than the media, what is the mechanism by means of which, TTE, "Obama gutted welfare-to-work, ergo my health services are going to disappear" and all of the variations on that theme are spread?

I don't think regular Republicans carry that kind of talk, because the fact that they are moderate is the result of being around people who won't let them get away with the crazy stuff, so . . .

What other, wide spread, conduit for these kinds of lies is there? AND is motivated by race issues AND has received a very nice boost forward this election season from Libertarians, such as Log Cabin Republicans, and by means of their racist Libertarian candidate Ron Paul (and Rand Paul on the gun issue)?

Q. Add it all up? Who is it at the grassroots level, likely paid by Adelson superPACS, that optimizes the racist lies told by media?
A. The Tea Party.

http://www.irehr.org/

[genxlib]

3. If only

I have no doubt that the Democrats would win in a landslide if we could have an honest debate in this COuntry.

That's a big IF.

With conservative radio and fox poisoning the atmosphere and big money Super PACs blanketing the media, it is almost impossible to break the clutter.

Of course the media is useless. My only hope is that Romney/Ryan are being so egregious that they have stepped over the line. The press is actually showing signs that they might still show a backbone now that the R/R camp is treating them like suckers.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. You need to keep a stack of forms handy

Tell them if they want to be on the Death Panel, they have to apply like everyone else.

[Mariana]

5. Conservatives/Republicans suck.

I don't even mean the leadership and the RW media (although they do indeed suck), I'm talking about the rank and file racist pigs who can't stand that there's a black man in the white house. They're the ones spreading these bullshit e-mails around and posting the crap on facebook. They're the ones telling this to their parents and their neighbors and the people they go to church with. These assholes think nothing of frightening old people and disabled people with these lies - and most of them know damn well they're lies.

I wonder how many people have died because they were afraid to go to a doctor or hospital after being told about "death panels".