be sure to look for the article when it comes online

it isn't there yet. i checked as well (in rolling stone that is). no one in their right minds should be the least bit surprised
1) all the shite about death panels is drek
2) one can't be a witch doctor, communist, nazi, socialist, dictator, muslim, hippie ALL AT ONCE
3) people are afraid of a black president (some not all)
4) big bid-nez (health care) is behind all this shite (regarding health care reform that is. other big bid-nez is behind other lies regarding this administration)
5) obama and his administration are NOT perfect by any means but they're NOT the anti-christs
6) a lot of people on the right lie (not all of 'em)
7) faux news is NOT fair and it's NOT balanced

Report: ‘Death panels’ author worked with big tobacco to scuttle health reform

By Daniel Tencer

The person credited with inventing the “death panels” claim about health care reform worked with tobacco giant Phillip Morris to railroad health care reform in the Clinton administration, Rolling Stone magazine reports.

In an article in the magazine’s October 1 issue, not yet available online, writer Tim Dickinson reveals that Phillip Morris “worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means,” Rolling Stone reports.

McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled “A Triumph of Misinformation,” debunking McCaughey’s arguments at TNR............

however here IS an article from this month's issue by the most wonderful matt taibbi
Sick and Wrong
MATT TAIBBI

Watch Matt Taibbi break down his report on the sad state of health care reform in his blog, Taibblog.

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America................

a shout out to matt taibbi

i sure as shite couldn't do it in a million years. there are things i dream of doing - undercover - to expose the filth and the greed and the immorality and the dishonesty and on and on. i couldn't go to a religious weekend. i'd at the very LEAST burst some blood vessels (mine - from yelling) and at the most, be arrested for some criminal act i'd committed.
An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com.
The following is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book, The Great Derangement" (Spiegel and Grau, 2008). Update: Matt Taibbi has responded to readers concerns about a passage in this excerpt. Response pasted at the bottom.
I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I'd spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio -- anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.
There was an old-fashioned white school bus in front of the church entrance, with a puddle of heavyset people milling around its swinging door. Some of these were carrying blankets and sleeping bags. My heart, already pounding, skipped a few extra beats. The church circulars had said nothing about bringing bedding. Why did I need bedding? What else had I missed?
"Excuse me," I said, walking up to an in-charge-looking man with a name tag who was standing near the front of the bus. "I see everyone has blankets. I didn't bring any. Is this going to be a problem?"
The man was about five feet one and had glassy eyes. He looked up at me and smiled queerly.
"Name?" he said.
"Collins," I said. "Matthew Collins."
He scanned his clipboard, found my name on the appropriate sheet of paper, and X-ed me out with a highlighter. "Don't worry, Matthew," he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "A wonderful woman named Martha is going to take care of you at the ranch. You just tell her what you need when you get there."
I nodded, glancing at his hand, which was still on my shoulder. He waved me into the bus..........

some stuff you might not know about mike huckabee

and it's FUNNY stuff in an effed up way of course. as if having chuck norris endorse you wasn't FUNNY enough

Mike Huckabee Is Not a Sane Man
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Mike Huckabee, the latest it girl of the Republican presidential race, tells a hell of a story. Let your guard down anywhere near the former Arkansas governor and he'll pod you, Body Snatchers-style -- you'll wake up drooling, your brain gone, riding a back seat on the bandwagon that suddenly has him charging toward the lead in the GOP race.
It almost happened to me a few months ago at a fundraiser in Great Falls, Virginia. I'd come to get my first up-close glimpse of the man Arkansans call Huck, about whom I knew very little -- beyond the fact that he was far behind in the polls and was said to be very religious. In an impromptu address to a small crowd, Huckabee muttered some stay-the-course nonsense about Iraq and then, when he was finished, sought me out, apparently having been briefed beforehand that Rolling Stone was in the house. "I'm glad you're here," he told me. "I finally get to tell someone who cares about Keith Richards."
Before I could respond, Huckabee plowed into a long and very entertaining story -- one that included a surprisingly dead-on Pirates of the Caribbean-esque impersonation -- about how Richards and Ron Wood got pulled over for reckless driving while on tour in Fordyce, Arkansas, a million and a half years ago, in 1975. Richards ended up getting a misdemeanor conviction -- an injustice that stood for thirty-one years, until Huckabee, a would-be rock musician himself, stepped in and pardoned Richards last year............