Health Care Mobs = Swift Boat Vets... And the Press Plays Dumb, Again

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted August 21, 2009.

Mini-mob members being treated as deeply important newsmakers is reminiscent of August 2004.

Here we go again.

During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

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Sound familiar? Recall August 2004, when the right-wing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (egged on by corporate interests) stole a month's worth of campaign headlines by propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an attempt to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet they were treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Honestly, the only thing missing this time around is a crackpot, best-selling book. In 2004, the Swifties used the release of Unfit for Command to launch their media-based smear campaign. This summer, it could have been something like ObamaScare: How Liberal Health Care Will Destroy America. (The Swifties' right-wing publisher must be kicking itself over the missed marketing opportunity.)

But what has been perfectly consistent is the way the press has, again, fallen for a right-wing smear campaign and dressed it up as news. Just as with the Swifties, the press has turned over its summer coverage to a band of agitators spreading misinformation. Five summers ago, the Swift Boat Vets helped hijack the election. They lied about documents, they lied about eyewitness, and they lied about their partisan affiliations and connections. For several crucial weeks during the campaign, journalists turned away from the pile-up of Swift Boat falsehoods and contradictions, rarely daring to call the Swift Boat attack out for what it really was -- a hoax. Too spooked by the GOP Noise Machine and its charge of liberal media bias, the press propped up the Vets as serious men and showered them with attention.

This year, the press has handed over untold hours of free airtime to mini-mob members whose sole purpose seems to be to spread as much fear as possible. (The ones who show up toting guns and Nazi posters make that point rather emphatically.)

Fringe players on the right are making wild accusations that cannot be backed up by fact. The mainstream media response? We must cover the phenomenon daily, even hourly!

So, day after August day, these vacuous health care "debates" are aired on cable television, just as news consumers suffered through night after night of vacuous Swift Boat "debates" five summers ago. In both cases, the press for the most part handed in its referee's whistle and focused its attention on simply reporting the fact-free claims and then getting the Democratic response. (i.e. he said/she said.) It turns out journalists are petrified of calling out right-wing activists as liars, and the other side knows it.

What's amazing is that even a conservative Republican congressman has conceded that the mini-mobs (this summer's news superstars) appear to be completely detached from reality. "You cannot build a movement on something that is not credible,'' Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina told the Los Angeles Times after being confronted by belligerent, fact-free protesters who were convinced that as part of health care reform, children would soon be forced to receive swine flu vaccinations. "At town meetings, the hostility went straight through to hysteria,'' said Inglis.

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... With Lliberty and Equal Justice for All

By Aurora Grajeda

(Originally posted at Coalicion Primero De Mayo Blogs on 07/03/07 12:28:11 am, Categories: Noticias, Español)

Excellence in hypocrisy

Some are more equal than Others.

To follow the Rule of the Law - “The Other”

In the darkness at night or at the break of daylight, terrorists with federal police badges, issued by the office of ICE, arrest undocumented immigrants inflicting terror in their relatives, especially to the children living in those houses, separating them from their parents and close relatives, some of which actually are American Citizens and among them are many who have been deported without concern to the violation of their constitutional and human rights.

Raids and Deportations are the punishment to “Violations” of the laws (?) of Immigration, or at least that is what the individuals say that, in great part, are guided by xenophobia and racism, they attack the Immigrants accusing us of being criminals, carriers of diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis, members of gangs, etc., and for these reasons, deserving of the consequences as it is the separation of families, the destruction of the labor of 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the so called `land of opportunity' where not even ours children have the same educational opportunities that other young people/have, with the consequent waste of their minds, and therefore, of a better individual and community future.

To follow the Rule of the Law - “The Some”

As the latest example of the historical hypocrisy of the governing class of the United States of America and the also inherently hypocritical corruption of the administration of President G.W. Bush, who shamelessly commuted a section of the sentence to jail for Lewis “Scooter” Libby, proclaiming respect for the citizen's jury:

”Respect for the jury's verdict” Bush said in a declaration. ” But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am exchanging the portion of the sentence of Mr. Libby which would require him to spend thirty months in prison.”

Excessive? To lie under oath to a Grand Jury in a case of leaking the clandestine identity of an agent of the CIA who was investigating the proliferation of arms of mass destruction (Nuclear), “Scooter” Libby committed perjury in order to conceal his participation and that of other members of the Administration in the crime committed against the Agent Valerie Plame, who was under the category of NOC (Not Official Cover (Without Official Protection)) Putting in danger her life, that of her family and the network of contacts accumulated in the years she worked under that identity.

“Scooter” Achieved his objective, he could not be condemned for his participation in the leak of the clandestine identity of Mrs Plame, but it could not avoid to be found guilty of perjury in a maneuver, that in the words of the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, “Is equivalent to the comparison of a Baseball Umpire to whom the player throws dirt in his face to cover his vision of the play" , Scooter being the player and the Public Prosecutor, Fitzgerald, the Umpire in the analogy.

And the play? Well, according to the speech of Ex-President George H.W. Bush, father of the present President who said:

” I have nothing but contempt and anger for the ones who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my opinion, the most insidious of traitors.” - George H.W. Bush, 1999-04-26, in the dedication ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence.

But according to his son, G.W. Bush, 30 months of jail is a “excessive punishment” for the following charges:

There were five charges. Two charges were for the crime of lying to the FBI; two charges for lying to the Grand Jury, charges of perjury; and another charge, the most serious of all, was the obstruction of justice.

The jury found Mr. Libby guilty in all of the charges except in one. Where they found him innocent was the one in which the jury had struggled with the point for the last five days, many back and forth questions. It was the charge that claimed that Mr. Libby had lied to the FBI on the conversations that he had, about Valerie Plame the agent of the CIA who was at the center of this investigation of the leak, with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine.

Why is it that President G.W. Bush does not have the sense of Justice to discern that the raids, deportations, separation of families and many other manifestations of this war against the immigrants, are brutally excessive as punishment for crossing the border and to work without legal documents, which are not crimes, as the enemies of the immigrants paint it, but that in fact have been administrative violations?

Why doesn't he declare a stop to the raids and deportations? Lack of sense of Justice? Perhaps, or... maybe is nothing less than lack of testicular fortitude? Is it hypocrisy? After all, he demonstrated his hypocritical cowardice by not going to Vietnam while proclaiming his support for this invasion and declaring it as Just.

... With Liberty and Equal Justice for All

Excellence in hypocrisy

Because Some are more equal than Others, isn't?

Bush commutes Libby’s sentence

VIDEO: Bush I Calls Leakers “The Most Insidious of Traitors”

Bush at Center of Intelligence Leak

Bush “Commutes” Scooter Libby’s Sentence: Welcome to the Monarchy