Lies And The Lying Liars

Original Link: http://www.pufferfishblog.com/weblog/2009/02/lies-and-the-lying-liars.html

Media Matters has a great breakdown on the evolution of a wingnut lie. The game is played like this: an opinion piece is published with a blatant lie about Obama's stimulus package. Then Rush Limbaugh picks up the article and reads it to his minions. From there the lie is used as fodder by Drudge, the WSJ and Fox News (and as a special bonus, Fox interviews WSJ opinion writers). The following day, Rush then cites the "news" reports from other outlets as proof that there's truth to his false claims.

Here's the particulars this time: Betsy McCaughey, a staffer at a conservative think tank, wrote an opinion piece asserting that a policy in the stimulus package would create a "new bureaucracy" called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. The most obvious problem is that this "new bureaucracy" was actually created five years ago by Bush. According to McCaughey, the feds would "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective." McCaughey said the federal government would then "'guide' your doctor's decisions," adding, "Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far." The problem, of course, is that this isn't remotely true:

In fact, the language in the House bill that McCaughey ... referenced does not establish authority to "monitor treatments" or restrict what "your doctor is doing" with regard to patient care, but rather addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients "to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care."

If the name Betsy McCaughey is familiar, it's because she wrote the notorious "No Exit" article published in TNR that distorted the Clinton health care plan of the early 1990s and helped defeat it in Congress. She's back with more bullshit.

Anyway, this is standard operating procedure for conservatives. They take an obscure issue and spin it into something terrifying: "ZOMG! Government health care overlords!" Then they demagogue anyone who speaks out with claims of ignorance or that they're a subversive communist. Then, once they've done that, they repeat the scare tactics all over again.

All of this blather from the GOP about getting back to basics is really just hoping that this crap will work again.