Today: The health care lies continue, and Rachel is not having it.
End Game
Rachel started off by making a really good point about the people who are currently yelling about the government interfering in end-of-life decisions.
(Which, I cannot stress enough, no one involved in creating the health care reform bill wants to do in the first place.)
So to sum up: We were going to have a provision that meant that anyone could — for free — get complete, accurate information about his or her end-of-life options in order to make knowledgeable decisions in line with his or her personal beliefs.
And now we won’t.
Those of you who knowingly spread the false death panel rumors, every person who dies hooked up to a machine when he or she could have been in hospice or home care is a little piece of your legacy to this country.
Enjoy your hauntings. A little poltergeist action is the least you deserve.
Next on the agenda: Replacing hospital pudding with haggis.
It’s a Living
Apparently Rachel is trying to raise awareness about health care reform by making everyone’s brains fight with themselves until they get knotted.
Because it is almost impossible to believe that the three people featured in this next clip — even these three — could really be so outrageously ruthless and awful with no moral compasses whatsoever.
But for that not to be true, they would have to be too chuckle-headed to realize that they are shouting things that are completely opposed to things they have previously shouted, in one case just weeks ago.
But if that were the case, how would they manage to consistently remember to their pants on over their underpants? Or to go on TV without getting all overstimulated and swatting at the lights?
Which means each of these people must be so appallingly, soul-crushingly amoral.
(In case of impending cynicism meltdown, click here. The Lady Blagojevich reading may help too.)
I Know What You Did This Summer
Rachel opened this next segment by connecting the dots between the astroturf website Resistnet.com, grassfire.org, and (wait for it…) a Republican public relations firm.
And you know what? They’re not even hard dots to connect. It’s an easy layup for her. She’s right to be angry that there hasn’t been more aggressive and thorough reporting about this.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I — Vermont) joined Rachel to point out that frightening people with a scary fake issue is a great way to distract them from the real one.
Jeez, Republican PR guys, next time you want to derail a bunch of town halls, could you just hire some attractive streakers? We’d all be having a lot more fun.
Ms. Information
Rachel gave us an update on yesterday’s “Torture, Inc.” story from the New York Times.
Turns out even the process for building our secret CIA prisons was ridiculously corrupt.
Which I guess makes sense. If you need to set up secret overseas prisons so we can do things to people that we may not quite be allowed to do here, you probably don’t call the guy who gets all indignant when he’s offered a little graft.
Rachel also treated us to a weird leaked internal memo from DLA Piper, which is lucky enough to have Dick Armey as its senior policy advisor.
Dick Armey, in addition to being a former House majority leader in Congress and having a name that leaves me just barely clinging to the tiny scraps of adulthood I have managed to achieve, is the chairman of FreedomWorks. Which has been just a teeeeeeny bit involved with the town hall protests.
The missive is an odd butt-covering memo to DLA Piper employees, assuring them that the company is not “directly or indirectly” opposing health care reform or encouraging anyone to disrupt the discussion process.
The memo also said that DLA Piper had contacted the media with “corrections” on these matters, but somehow Rachel and staff hadn’t gotten theirs. Maybe they’re sending it with flowers?
Rachel will be appearing on Meet the Press with Mr. Armey on Sunday. It’s going to be difficult to eat breakfast while making little jabbing motions and screaming “Get him!”
Held in Iran
Just because things are changing in Iran doesn’t mean they have changed.
Imprisoned Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari was forced, at a group show trial, to speak against news reporters for inciting the mass protests we’ve been seeing since the Iranian election.
Bahari has been in custody since late June. Attempts to negotiate his release have been going on quietly since then, but Newsweek and his family are now hoping to get things moving by drawing more public attention to his plight.
Rachel welcomed Bahari’s wife Paola Gourley and directed interested viewers to the Free Maziar Bahari website.
Just Enough
Kent finished off with a segment on furries and, aw, Kent and Rachel, leave the poor furries alone.
I don’t get their way of playing, but it seems harmless and consensual and they get dumped on every time someone needs a wacky story that everybody can make fun of and go “ew” at.
If I had to choose between trying to make polite conversation with someone from FreedomWorks or someone dressed up like an animal, I will take the person in the fur suit any day of the week.
