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This month saw the launch of a multimillion dollar ad campaign meant to sink President Obama’s as yet unannounced health care plan. James Fallows covered the first round in the fight over health care in 1994. He says the 1994 plan failed in large part because of a single wildly inaccurate magazine article.
Pardon me, but I had to laugh bitterly at this question raised by Bob (my rough transcript): "Fifteen years ago, there was no blogosphere, no Talking Points Memo to go over the health care proposal line-by-line: can you Swift Boat a policy issue in 2009 in the way that they were able to pull off in the Clinton Administration?"
Let's not forget that the verb "Swift Boat" comes from 2004...when THERE WAS a blogosphere, sites like Talking Points Memo (and bloggers like Atrios, Digby, and others) were fact checking the lies coming from the right wing...but it didn't make a difference. Cable news still gave the Swift Boaters and Jerome Corsi extensive air time, and the leading newspapers gave their false claims attention in "covering the controversy." Don't think that it couldn't happen again in 2009.
Actually I appreciated the piece. Although it mentioned the Swift Boaters, its focus was on 1994 and the difference between then and now.
I think this speaks volumes to just how much rubbish accusations of "Liberal Bias" were and are from the right-wing.
Until the Internet liberals had no balanced way of responding.
Why is it so controversial that the Anti-Republican House Organ OTM has its own lexicon. That is the hallmark of any house organ.
By the very nature of the job description of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology there is no other purpose of this position but to have the ability to standardize care for all Americans based on a formula contrived by bureaucrats in Washington D.C.
I surely don't want the DMV to run health care much less comb through the doctor's bills and patient charts as a pretense to dictating the best practices for every American. This segment and the attached articles are either naive or completely in the bag for the Pelosi Plan.
The Pelosi Plan? Pretty soon she will say that the National Health Service lies to Congress on a regular basis. Congress in charge of health care would be even worse than the DMV!
Judging from late-week public reaction to spurious charges by Rush, et al, about our new Supreme Court nominee, the electorate are in no mood to have their potential government officials Swift Boated this season! That includes by hysterics such as Matt W.
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