Faux News, the original Fake News
In September 2015, we gave some recommendations on how to bypass the corporate mainstream media, which were doing an awful job reporting real news. We suggested that readers and viewers choose their own news sources, follow such sources on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and share important stories. This way, you can act as your own news editor and broadcaster. Given the mainstream media’s abysmal 2016 election coverage, and with Donald Trump now in the White House, these efforts are more important than ever.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Affordable Care Act, Congress, culture war, Dmytro Firtash, Donald Trump, media, Medicare, Milo Yiannopoulos, Obamacare, Republican Party, Russia, RussiaGate, Social Security, Sweden
President Obama at the COP 21 climate conference in France
President Barack Obama this week signaled that he would have a robust final year in office as he announced executive actions on the registration of gun purchases, especially narrowing the “gun show loophole.” Obama also held a town hall meeting aired by CNN on Thursday to talk about his anti-gun violence actions. Moreover, just a week ago, President Obama appeared on an epic, hilarious episode of Jerry Seinfeld‘s web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Obama was not only very funny and relaxed, he also managed to plug his Affordable Care Act, which has covered an estimated 17.6 million more people in the past two years, causing the percentage of Americans without health insurance to drop to the lowest level ever measured. In short, President Obama is exploding the stereotype of the lame duck president.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, climate change, CNN, economy, EPA, gun control, gun violence, guns, ISIS, jobs, Keystone XL, Obamacare, Second Amendment, State of the Union, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership
John Boehner at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference
After announcing his resignation from Congress, Republican U.S. House Speaker John Boehner told John Dickerson of CBS‘ “Face the Nation” that we should “beware of false prophets” from the Republican Party who promise things that they know can’t happen in our current government, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act. Most people think that Boehner was referring to Republican U.S. Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz, among others. However, the corporate mainstream media are giving John Boehner a pass by portraying Boehner as the adult in the room who was unable to manage an unruly Republican right wing, when in fact Boehner was part of the GOP’s anti-government anarchy. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said upon hearing the news of Boehner’s resignation, the Republican Party is “a political party at war with its own government.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, Congress, GOP, Hillary Clinton, John Boehner, Meet the Press, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, President Barack Obama, Republican Party
Protesters opposing Arizona anti-immigrant law
Republicans and conservatives, which are curently one and the same, love to come up with short, catchy labels for things. Here’s a list of popular Republican political phrases. Those labels and phrases are always loaded, either in favor of the Republicans, against the Democrats, or both. So, if you’re a Democrat, a liberal or a progressive, why would you ever use those Republican labels, making them even more popular so they get taken up by the mainstream media and become part of our vernacular? The answer is, you shouldn’t. But plenty of Democrats, liberals and progressives are making this mistake lately. Here are a few examples of Republican-loaded phrases that Democrats, and thus the mainstream media, are using all over the place. Hopefully, these will serve as a reminder to cut it out:
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Leave a comment! Tags: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, DARK Act, Democratic Party, Discrimination, Food safety, healthcare, immigration, Obamacare, Republican Party, Right to Work, Supreme Court
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) (L) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R)
President Barack Obama and other White House officials (such as Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Press Secretary Josh Earnest) have been quick to characterize Tuesday’s Republican Election Night victories as the beginning of a period of Republicans being “partners in governing” the United States. For example, at his post-election press conference on Wednesday, President Obama said:
… So I look forward to Republicans putting forward their governing agenda…. I am very eager to hear Republican ideas for what they think we can do together over the next couple of years…. I’m looking forward to them putting forward a very specific agenda in terms of what they would like to accomplish…. And what we’re going to make sure that we do is to reach out to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, who are now running both chambers in Congress, and find out what their agenda is. And my hope is, is that they’ve got some specific things they want to do that correspond with some things that we want to get done…. They’re the majority. They need to present their agenda.
This is an important Democratic frame, because, up to now, the Republicans have acted as a minority party even though they held a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, President Obama tried this “shared responsibility” frame once before, after Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, and the frame did not stick. The question is whether Republicans will be held responsible for co-governing now that they will also run the U.S. Senate.
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Vote Nihilism
Ve believe in nossing, Lebowski. Nossing. And tomorrow ve come back and ve cut off your chonson.
–The Big Lebowski, 1998
What to make of last night’s mid-term election? Democrats never articulated a positive unifying theme. Most of the Democrats’ endless fundraising appeals tried to scare supporters about the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove pouring millions of dollars into Republican campaigns. Republicans ran a national campaign on a unifying theme, but that theme — “President Obama is bad” — was also wholly negative. Most voters didn’t vote for anything.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2014 Election, Affordable Care Act, Congress, Democratic Party, economy, gun control, healthcare, marijuana, Obamacare, President Obama, Republican Party, unemployment
President Obama held a press conference yesterday (see video above), and it turned into a masterful attack by the President against Republicans on the Affordable Care Act:
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi celebrates 4th anniversary of Affordable Care Act, 3/22/14.
Last night, major media outlets reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is granting a limited extension of the March 31 deadline to enroll for coverage under the Affordable Care Act for 2014. According to these reports, enrollees who certify that they began the enrollment process by March 31 will be given a brief extension to complete the process.
Predictably, Republicans moved swiftly to attack the ACA extension. For example, on Twitter, many users linked to an early Fox “News” report of the extension, and commented negatively, such as @puristflyfisher, who wrote: “If Obamacare doing so well why more time needed to sign up.”
Aside from the valid reason that this limited Affordable Care Act extension is warranted because of previous difficulties with the healthcare.gov website that has been overwhelmed with 1 million visits this past Monday and over 1.2 million yesterday, the extension could be good politics for the Democrats. Here are some reasons why:
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This week, Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America), the Obama administration’s activism arm, sent around an email asking a terrific question about the Affordable Care Act:
Now that more than 3 million Americans have health insurance — a number that is growing every day — do these Health Care Repealers still want to take it away?
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In 2013, we saw too many instances of the Republican-Corporate-Media iron triangle pushing stories containing big lies about the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, and even President Obama‘s rather minimal vacation time. If you’re as sick of these phony stories as we are, then all of us need to make some New Year’s resolutions to try to defeat them. In 2014, we resolve to:
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