5 thoughts on “What can you do to fight fake news?”

1. It's an unimaginable task, but refudiating (sic/Palin) Republican lies as much as humanly possible is required. At some point, like a 3-year old who ate the cookies, they'll refrain.

   But as long as they get away with it, they'll continue lying like Cory Gardner – and his dumass constituents will continue to believe it:

   You'd think that having to keynote a big Republican dinner the weekend the Obamacare repeal died because of a complete and total fuck-up on the part of Republican leadership would be a cause for some reflection, maybe even some self-examination. If you're Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, apparently not. He was the keynote speaker at the Cuyahoga County Lincoln Day dinner this weekend, and apparently blew the crowd away with utter bullshit. At least that's what Robert Frost, GOP chairman for the county, said.

   "He was really incredible. You could hear a pin drop as he explained everything," said Robert Frost, county GOP chairman. […]

   "Everyone in the media has portrayed the repeal of Obamacare as this chaotic, upside-down, cloak-and-dagger soap opera," Frost said. "What we learned from Gardner is that, when it comes to process, well, process is messy and complicated, but that is what it is supposed to be.

   "Funny how you forget that after eight years of not following regular order," a reference to the expansive use of executive orders by the Obama administration.

   Eight years ago, the incredibly complex ACA legislation went straight from the House leadership's offices to the House floor for a vote, Gardner said. "There was no debate, there was no discussion, it was crammed down the throat of Congress to be voted on."

   Gardner, who wasn't part of the GOP electoral sweeps that seized the House majority in 2010 and the Senate's in 2014, said Republicans have chosen to return to "regular order" in enacting legislation in Congress.

   Where to start? If the 18 days in which Trumpcare was crafted and died was what legislative process "is supposed to be" we're in some deep shit going forward. Because it is about as far from "regular order" as anything we've ever seen.

   See, regular order is what happens when you have two responsible parties in Congress. Members and committees think about things that need to be legislated. The committees consider those things over weeks—and sometimes months—of hearings with expert witnesses to help them craft the legislation to deal with those things. Then all the ideas that have developed over that process are put into legislative language and are sent to places like the Congressional Budget Office, which figures out what those things mean for the federal budget and the people who will be affected, and various departments of the government and other stakeholders. Based on the feedback from those reviews, the committee meets again and makes changes to the legislation in a process called mark-up. Then the committee votes on the rewritten bill and either passes it to go to the floor or doesn't pass it and keeps working.

   That's regular order—and hey, talk about coincidence!—it's the process President Obama and congressional Democrats followed over months and months in crafting the legislation that became the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. 

   Did anyone in CO do that dirty task? Did his Institutional Brother correct his faulty memory? Did CPols call out Gardner's lies?

   No, no, and no. 

   Log in to Reply

   1. Our junior senator can be really passionate when his public words are channeling (and aligned with) his inner-Koch.  I'm sure he blew the Cuyahoga Repubs away with his passion on the subject.  He did, remember, vote to gut the ACA over 60 times in the lower chamber. 

      I'm awaiting his public praise for Cheetolini's latest move re: eliminating the Clean Power Plan. 

       

      Log in to Reply

      1. thank you for that……….there it is: on tape, lie after lie after lie. 

         And here's Tom Delay lying on Chuck Todd's show yesterday without so much as a peep from the Million Dollar Journalist:

         In any case, the interview should have ended right here:

         Delay: "Chuck, let me just put it in perspective. Before Obamacare, everybody got healthcare."

         You can't just sit there like a cigar-store moderator and let him get away with something so egregiously untrue, much less let him base the rest of the argument on it. Before the ACA was passed, everybody didn't get healthcare. That was the reason that Harris Wofford ran for the Senate in Pennsylvania on the issue. That was the reason Bill and Hillary Clinton made a run at it in the early 1990s. That was why Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts did everything but mow the lawns of every Democrat in the Great and General Court to get his plan passed up here. And that's why Barack Obama broke as much rock as he did to pass the ACA. Hell, "everybody" doesn't get healthcare now, but more of them do than did before.

         This is a master class in how not to conduct an interview, and that's not even to ask the question of why in the fck we should have a retired goon like Tom DeLay foisted on us in the first place.

         Chuck Todd is running promos saying he's willing to "call balls and strikes". Problem is he doesn't have the balls to really do it and still pretends both sides are equally bad and good and truthful.  

         Log in to Reply

         1. Former Representative John Dingell has an epic series of tweets (put out on March 21), commenting on the effort to get healthcare for all — starting with his father, the previous Rep. Dingell (#1), introducing legislation in 1943. Rep. Dingle (#2) worked on it his whole career, beginning in 1957. When the ACA passed, he was still at it. When he retired, Rep. Dingell (#3 — John's wife) took his place and continues the effort.

            Log in to Reply

         2. This is a great piece on white socialism…

            Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In America

            By funding government programs with tax credits and deductions rather than spending, we have created an enormous social safety net that grows ever more generous as household incomes rise. It is important to note, though, that you need not be wealthy to participate. All you need to gain access to socialism for white people is a good corporate or government job. That fact helps explain how this welfare system took shape sixty years ago, why it was originally (and still overwhelmingly) white, and why white Rust Belt voters showed far more enthusiasm for Donald Trump than for Bernie Sanders. White voters are not interested in democratic socialism. They want to restore their access to a more generous and dignified program of white socialism.

            Log in to Reply