Paid Commenters Hired By Fox News To Spread Right Wing Talking Points Across The Net:AUTHOR: RANDA MORRIS New book Murdoch’s World by David Folkenflik reveals fox news practice of using paid commenters to push right wing talking points across the World Wide Web.
In his new book, “Murdoch’s World,” David Folkenflik reveals Fox News’ practice of using paid commenters with fake social media accounts, to deceive the online community. Folkenflik says members of Fox’s online PR staff created between twenty and a hundred fake profiles on social media accounts each. The accounts are used by PR staff in order to push the station’s extreme right-wing agenda.Does this really come as a surprise?
Does this really come as a surprise? As a freelance writer I have encountered hundreds of help wanted postings for fake right-wing bloggers, paid commenters and bogus survey takers. Most of the positions pay between five and ten cents a post. The “paid commenters” ads usually appear on international freelancing sites, meaning you do not have to live in the United States to help push the tea party agenda here.The right-wing generally recruits their fake bloggers and paid commenters from outside of the US.
If you thought the tea party social media trolls just had bad English and grammar skills back when they first came on the scene, you were wrong. In order to avoid being caught, the right wing generally recruits their fake bloggers and paid commenters from outside of the US. In 2011, a help wanted posting appeared on Craigslist in Toronto. In an effort to elevate the reading and speaking skills of its online propaganda machine, the right-wing made the mistake of trying to recruit new shills just a little too close to home. That help wanted posting got the attention of several independent journalists, both in Canada and the U.S.In ‘Murdoch’s World,’ Folkenflik confirms what many social media users have known for a long time. Many right-wing commenters are using fake profiles and they are getting paid for spewing their filth around the web. Folkenflik reveals that these paid commenters use a wide range of deceptive tactics to hide their true identities. Using wireless broadband connections so that the comments cannot be traced back to their source, is just one of the many tactics employed.The former president of Advantage Consultants, Doug Guetzloe is a tea party/right-wing radio host.
w_purple007

The Most Shocking Restrictions on Women's Rights Around the Globe:Nations around the world implement repressive anti-women policies.A group of Saudi women challenged their country’s repressive anti-women policies over the weekend when they hopped into cars and drove by themselves. The action highlighted Saudi Arabia’s policies that restrict the rights of Saudi women. But the Gulf country isn’t the only nation that cracks down on women’s rights.A Washington Post article by Caitlin Dewey highlights anti-women policies around the world. Based on the World Economic Forum’s 2013 report on the global gender gap, Dewey points out a number of countries with policies that restrict women’s rights. Saudi Arabia is not even the worst violator, according to the World Economic Forum. The country comes out ahead of Mali, Iran, Morocco and more.In Yemen, a women is only considered “half” a witness when giving legal testimony, and are not allowed outside the home without their husbands’ permission.In Saudi Arabia and Morocco, victims can be charged for being raped.These types of policies are not limited to North Africa and the Middle East, though. In Ecuador, abortion is illegal unless you’re an “idiot” or “demented.” The law has also been used to criminalize miscarriages. In some parts of India, women do not have to follow traffic safety rules, which ends up contributing to the deaths and injury of thousands of Indian women each year.And Vatican City, the seat of the pope, does not allow women to vote. The Vatican is on par with Saudi Arabia in this category.
w_purple007

The Latest Benghazi Hoax: DAVID BROCKConservatives are out in force this morning claiming Lara Logan's segment on CBS' 60 Minutes is evidence their yearlong effort to convert the tragedy in Benghazi into a political scandal was warranted.  Far from it -- it is the latest Benghazi Hoax.From watching the 60 Minutes segment, you would be led to believe there is a "lingering question" involving the U.S. military's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The report did not let viewers know that an anti-terrorism team was deployed from Spain, along with Special Forces based in the United States and Croatia. None of these forces even made it to Libya until 11 hours after our diplomatic and CIA teams had been evacuated.Furthermore, the belief that the military did not do everything it could to rescue those in Benghazi has been contradicted by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, and former Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.Claims that the military didn't do everything it could to help those in Benghazi go hand-in-hand with the conspiracy that a "stand down" order was issued to a Special Forces team in Tripoli. Even congressional Republicans have debunked this claim:"Contrary to news reports, Gibson was not ordered to 'stand down' by higher command authorities in response to his understandable desire to lead a group of three other special forces soldiers to Benghazi."While those interviewed during the 60 Minutes report decried the lack of funding for embassy security, the program failed to note:For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program -- well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012.The 60 Minutes piece follows the same pattern as every other element of The Benghazi Hoax we've witnessed for the past 13 months. Supposedly new revelations promoted by different media outlets are simply worn-over versions of the same hoaxes debunked months before; context that would provide critical information to viewers or readers is missing; and the right-wing media exaggerate the new allegations to something unrecognizable from the original report.Nothing in the 60 Minutes report implicated Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in any wrongdoing leading up to the attack in Benghazi -- in fact their names were never mentioned. But conservatives are already on the attack against the president and former secretary of state. Evidence, context, and truth don't matter as long as tragedy can be converted into political scandal.Already this morning, cheered on by Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is using the CBS report as the pretext for blocking every Obama appointment before the United States Senate until "the survivors [of Benghazi] are being made available to the Congress" -- never mind that they have already answered questions from numerous investigators and that the Senate has access to those interviews.  Once again, rather than do the country's business, conservatives, led by their media, would rather halt the work of government in an attempt to score political points with their base. 
w_purple007

How Kentucky Built The Country's Best Obamacare WebsiteDylan Scott,Kentucky did it right. The state's online health insurance marketplace has become Obamacare's city on a hill while the federal HealthCare.gov has been flummoxed by a month of glitches and bad press. Whatever the federal website seems to have failed to do to ensure its success on the Oct. 1 launch, Kentucky did.Kentucky, with its deeply conservative congressional delegation, might seem like an unlikely place for Obamacare to find success. But Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear saw the law -- and a state-built marketplace -- as an opportunity to help put the state on a path to greater health.His state routinely ranks toward the bottom in overall health, and better health coverage is one step toward reversing that norm, he said."For us to make a transformational difference, we needed to do something game-changing." Beshear told TPM in an interview. "The (Affordable Care Act) provided us a tool to do that. It's succeeded so far beyond our wildest dreams."Kentucky has been cited by numerous sources -- the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the Advisory Board Company -- as among the best of the best marketplaces since its launch. While the federal site has stumbled, Kentucky is being held up as evidence that the marketplace concept can work in practice.The numbers back it up: more than 26,000 people have enrolled in coverage, more than 50,000 have started applications and more than 300,000 unique visitors have checked out what the marketplace has to offer. For a state with about 625,000 uninsured people, those are promising figures.President Obama even called Beshear to congratulate him on the exemplary rollout.It started with the commitment to build the state's own website rather than default to the federal version. Beshear created the exchange via executive order, over the objections of a Republican-controlled state legislature, which sought other means -- including an effort to prevent the exchange from finding office space -- to block the site's creation."Each state is unique," Beshear said in explaining his decision. "We felt that we could best address the uniqueness of Kentucky by designing our own exchange instead of trying to take a cookie-cutter approach that of necessity a federal exchange would be."From that point forward, Kentucky's game plan for a successful website launch could be read as a counterpoint to the mistakes that the Obama administration made in building its own website. The recipe for success in Kentucky was: A pared-down website engineered to perform the basic functions well and a concerted effort to test it as frequently as possible to work out glitches before the Oct. 1 launch.Beshear officially created the marketplace, now named kynect, on July 17, 2012, a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. In October 2012, the state hired software developers to build the technological infrastructure behind the marketplace.Testing was undertaken throughout every step of the process, said Carrie Banahan, kynect's executive director, and it was crucial because it allowed state officials to identify problems early in the process. She laid out the timeline like this: From January 2013 to March, they developed the system; from April to June, they built it; from July to September, they tested it.That stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by federal contractors at last week's hearing on HealthCare.gov, which underwent testing only in the two weeks before launch. They stressed that they wished they had more time to test the marketplace's functionality."It would have been better to have more time," Andrew Slavitt, group executive vice president at Optum/QSSI, told the committee.From a design standpoint, Kentucky made the conscious choice to stick to the basics, rather than seeking to blow users away with a state-of-the-art consumer interface. A big part of that was knowing their demographics: A simpler site would make it easer to access for people without broadband Internet access, and the content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."We wanted it to have a branded feel, but that was not the most important part," said Gwenda Bond, an exchange spokesperson. "The most important part was that it works. I think a lot of people would say that simplicity is good website design.""It's not glitzy, but it's very efficient," Banahan added.Beyond its operational function, the marketplace also plays a role as an ambassador of sorts to convince skeptical residents who might not be inclined to support anything to do with the Affordable Care Act. After all, this is a state where President Obama lost by more than 20 points in the 2012 election.The smooth launch should help those people understand what they stand to gain from the health care reform law, Beshear said."What we've found in Kentucky when we started talking with people was that there was a huge amount of misinformation and misunderstanding. People were very confused," he said. "What I've been telling them is: Look, you don't have to like the president, and you don't have to like me. It's not about the president and it's not about me. It's about you, it's about your family, it's about your children.""So do me a favor. It won't cost you a dime to go on that website and just find out what you might qualify for. I'll guarantee you you're going to like what you find, and that's what's been happening."
w_purple007

Michele Bachmann Quietly Returns Campaign Cash From Notorious Ponzi Schemer:By Mariah Blake Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has quietly returned campaign contributions from an ex-con who lured investors for one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in US history—and on whose behalf the tea party lawmaker sought a presidential pardon. According to campaign finance reports, last quarter Bachmann's campaign committee paid $14,000 to a bankruptcy trustee for Frank Vennes, a former North Dakota pawnshop owner who was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting fraud.Vennes has a long history of run-ins with the law. In 1986, federal agents investigating a drug ring in Bismarck came to suspect he was laundering drug money. Posing as Chicago businessmen, investigators began giving Vennes large sums of cash to smuggle out of the country. In one case, according to court documents, Vennes hand-delivered $100,000 to Geneva, where his associates either lost or stole it.The following year, Vennes was convicted of money laundering—along with cocaine distribution and illegal firearm sales—and sentenced to five years in Minnesota's Sandstone penitentiary. He later sued the federal government for more than $10 million, claiming the federal agents had forced him to peddle drugs and guns to recoup the missing $100,000 and threatened to kill and "dismember" his children if he refused. (Vennes lost; the case was thrown out on appeal.)Vennes had a jailhouse conversion and threw himself into studying scripture. After his release, he embedded himself in Minneapolis's evangelical community, with the help of his prison ministry friends. He eventually began soliciting private funding for a firm called Petters Company Inc. (PCI), which ostensibly bought overstocked electronics and resold them to big-box retailers at a profit. And he invited local pastors, churchgoers, and religious charities to invest. Vennes also helped set up a family of hedge funds that funneled more than $1 billion dollars into PCI—which, it turns out, was a Ponzi scheme. It's unclear whether Vennes knew this at the time, but the record shows he actively misled investors about PCI's business dealings.By 2005, when Bachmann rolled out her first congressional campaign, the scheme was teetering. Vennes, who had been seeking a retroactive pardon for his previous conviction, began pursuing one with new vigor. According to subsequent FBI wiretap recordings, Vennes knew he might face criminal charges, and was desperate to avoid the stiff sentencing that comes with being a repeat offender. As I reported in The New Republic, that's where Bachmann came in:In the run up to the 2006 election, Vennes and his associates began donating generously to Michele Bachmann, who was making her first run for Congress. He, his family, and his business associates—namely, lawyer Craig Howse, whose firm managed Vennes's business affairs and lobbied for him in Minnesota, and financial adviser Darrel Amiot, who helped Vennes bring in investors—made two batches of coordinated campaign contributions totaling just under $50,000 to Bachmann and her joint fundraising committee. Vennes also gave $10,000 to the Republican Party of Minnesota.After being elected to Congress, Bachmann began lobbying for Vennes's pardon, an unusual step given that he lived outside her district:In December 2007, Bachmann…wrote a letter to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which two years earlier had recommended that the White House reject Vennes's clemency petition. Noting that she was "confident of Mr. Vennes' successful rehabilitation," she argued that he needed the pardon because his criminal record was a stumbling block “in the area of finance loan documents," which limited the growth of his business and his charitable giving. "Mr. Vennes is truly a unique man in that he is not asking for a pardon that he may achieve personal success," she added. "Mr. Vennes is seeking a pardon so that he may be further used to help others. As I know from personal experience, Mr. Vennes has used his business position and success to fund hundreds of non-profit organizations dedicated to helping the neediest in our society."According to a former Bush administration official who was privy to the negotiations, around this time both Bachmann and [Tim] Pawlenty also began lobbying the White House on Vennes's behalf (an allegation Pawlenty denies). This apparently helped set some gears in motion. In early June 2008, the White House asked the OPA to take a second look at Vennes's application, after which it began vetting the case anew. On June 30, Vennes, his wife, and his lawyer dumped another $11,200 into Bachmann’s campaign coffers. According to the Bush administration official, Vennes's pardon application was sent to the White House with a recommendation for approval, where it remained, presumably awaiting end-of-term signature by President Bush.Vennes's pardon never came through. In September 2008—just weeks before the 2008 presidential election—federal agents raided his home as part of a burgeoning investigation into the Petters Ponzi scheme, and the breathtaking details of the swindle began coming to light. At the time, the Petters fraud, which brought in more than $36 billion over the course of a decade, was the largest known Ponzi scheme in US history. Its collapse would turn out to be spectacular.The fallout from the scam moved through the Twin Cities like a slow-motion tsunami. Businesses went bankrupt. Charities slashed staff and walked away from half-built offices...Countless people also lost their homes or watched their retirement savings dry up. The tight-knit evangelical circles in which Vennes moved were among the most devastated. "If only a few had gotten hit, the faith community could have stepped in to help them," explains Carolyn Anderson, the attorney representing evangelical investors. "But everybody got hit. The safety net was ripped out."There's no indication Bachmann knew about Vennes's ongoing criminal activity. In October 2008, she sent OPA a second letter saying she "may have too hastily accepted his claims of redemption" and withdrew her support for his pardon. But she didn't return Vennes's donations—until now. Bachmann's recent $14,000 payout covers roughly 80 percent of the contributions that Vennes and his wife made directly to her campaign, but not the $10,000 they gave to her joint fundraising committee or the thousands of dollars their family and business associates donated, according to campaign finance reports. The refunded money will be divided among Vennes's victims, who are expected to recoup pennies on the dollar. Bachmann's office did not return calls and emails seeking comment.Below are Bachmann's letters regarding Vennes's case.
w_purple007

At Least 9,900 People Have Died From Guns In The U.S. Since The Newtown Shooting: On Dec. 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza -- armed with his mother's guns -- stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and murdered 20 children and six adult members of staff. As the nation mourned in the wake of that unthinkable tragedy, many citizens and lawmakers raised their voices to demand stricter gun control laws, President Obama vowed to use his power to curb gun violence. "We're not doing enough," he said at a December vigil. "And we will have to change." Tragically, change has been slow in coming.According to Slate's gun deaths tally project, at least 9,001 gun-related deaths in the United States have been reported by the media since the Newtown shooting.This number, says Slate, is a gross underestimate of the actual number of deaths caused by guns in the last 10 months."As time goes on, our count gets further and further away from the likely actual number of gun deaths in America -- because roughly 60 percent of deaths by gun are due to suicides, which are very rarely reported," the news outlet says. "When discussing this issue, please note that our number is by design not accurate and represents only the number of gun deaths that the media can find out about contemporaneously."Using 2010 data on firearm deaths provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Slate estimates that the number of gun deaths since the Newtown tragedy is likely closer to 28,600. As Salon's Sally Kohn points out, that works out to about 90 people a day.Slate partnered with @GunDeaths, a Twitter feed that crowdsources gun deaths reported by the media, to track gun-related fatalities since the Newtown shooting.According to a September report by The Daily Beast, the @GunDeaths Twitter feed, which is run by an anonymous Twitter user, is the first-ever attempt to create a central database documenting all gun-related deaths. .“It seems shocking that when guns are in the headlines every day, there’s no one attempting to create a real-time chronicle of the deaths attributable to guns in the United States,” Slate's editors, who have been tallying the reported gun deaths on an interactive map, told The Daily Beast of their decision to embark on this project.
w_purple007

Who's more overworked than you? House Republicans. No, really!:House Republicans must be exhausted from all that not working
A little Monday morning laugh: October was an "exhausting" and "grueling" month for House Republicans and now they're "struggling" to come up with things to do in the 19—count 'em, 19—days they have left to work this year:
The House votes Monday evening and will finish its work week Wednesday. After that, the House is out of session until Nov. 12. Internally, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and senior Republicans aren’t discussing coming back early from the scheduled recess, but instead, they are wondering if they’ll cancel some of the remaining days in session.
So even those 19 days aren't set in stone. (And for the record, most Americans will be working about 43 more days this year.) But let's cut these hardworking public servants some slack because:
After an exhausting October full of late-night and weekend votes, the slower pace is a sharp change for the House.
With "full" presumably being the nights Republicans gleefully stayed late to vote on their government shutdown and then, 16 days later, begrudging stayed late to end their government shutdown. Grueling!
But for however many days House Republicans do manage to drag themselves into the office, their agenda will be jam packed with ... the same damn thing:The future of Obamacare — and how far to go in trying to undo the 2010 Affordable Care Act — remains at center stage for House Republicans. [...]
In the meantime, it appears that the House will — once again — vote to delay portions of Obamacare, setting up another fight with Senate Democrats and the White House.And in other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
Just a little something to start out your five day work week. Enjoy.  
w_purple007

Marco Rubio wants to ditch his own immigration bill:Awkward!
Back all of 10 months ago, Republicans were looking at election returns and realizing that passing comprehensive immigration reform was the only way to start digging themselves out of their massive deficit with Latino voters. So Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was going to make his name as his party's savior and elevate himself for 2016 by bringing some far-right members of Congress on board with a bipartisan bill. Rubio was always worried about backlash from the far right, though, and now, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pushing Republicans in an even more extremist direction, Rubio is selling out his own bill:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) now opposes a bicameral conference committee to reach a final resolution to the Senate-passed bill, his spokesman said, arguing that the support is not there for a comprehensive overhaul and that Congress should act where there is consensus.
"The point is that at this time, the only approach that has a realistic chance of success is to focus on those aspects of reform on which there is consensus through a series of individual bills," Alex Conant, a top spokesman for Rubio, told TPM in an email. "Otherwise, this latest effort to make progress on immigration will meet the same fate as previous efforts: failure."Of course, the only individual immigration bills that are likely to even get a vote in the House are punitive, anti-immigrant bills—think sharks with laser beams and building a dang fence—while House Republicans will do anything to kill the needed path to citizenship. That will keep hurting Republican electoral chances as the percentage of Latino voters grows, but first it will hurt immigrants and their families.
w_purple007

The next Obamacare attack: Beat up on the sick people:Beating up on the "moochers" is a Republican value.
Attacking the HealthCare.gov roll-out problems is so last week. The Web site will be fixed, so the next round of attacks from the right is gearing up: A variation on the theme of trying to convince young people that having insurance is bad. This time, they're focusing on the people who will see an increase in insurance costs, and will try to pit them against the people who really need insurance.
There is a chunk of previously insured people in the individual market who are losing their coverage and will potentially have to pay more for insurance. Those are the people who previously had high deductible, low coverage, catastrophic insurance plans. They paid bottom dollar for plans that would help them if they ended up in the hospital after an accident or major illness, but generally wouldn't provide any coverage for routine medical care like check-ups, immunizations, prescriptions, etc. Those kinds of plans are no longer allowed under Obamacare. All plans have to cover a basic core of preventive services, and some people will have to pay more for that better coverage (though many will receive subsidies to bring those costs down). And those people are truly seeing rate shock, even though they're getting much more for their money.Enter the Republicans and their new strategy.If a flood of stories about “rate shock” scare people out of browsing for plans themselves, all the better. But the real backup plan, such as it is, is to pit a thin demographic — healthy, young, middle-class, disproportionately male individuals who had cheap but crappy insurance until now and are resentful that they have to pay more — against the newly insured, and older, sicker beneficiaries who will see their costs go down, and hope the latter don’t have enough clout to prevail in a political brawl. [...]
They want to mortally damage the law. And as such they don’t care nearly as much about the dollars people will spend because ACA-compliant insurance benefits are fairly generous as they do about the dollars people will spend because they’re cross-subsidizing the ill and the aged. And those are precisely the grounds to fight on if the goal is to get liberals to circle the wagons around Obamacare.Republicans are making a bet that there will be enough of these people to make a difference, ignoring the fact that there are millions who will be paying less for their coverage, and there will be millions more able to get insurance for the first time because of their pre-existing health issues. Chances are pretty good though, that when the Web site is running at full steam and people are signing up—the majority of whom will see lower premiums—that will become the story. There's even a chance that those who are forced out of their catastrophic plans and into something that gives them more coverage will come to appreciate the greater benefits.
But none of that is likely to keep Republicans from continuing the fight, a fight that the public has shown pretty conclusively and repeatedly that it's sick of. And once again, Republicans will find themselves on the losing side of the Obamacare battle.
w_purple007

Fox's Williams Calls Out Fellow Pundits For Claiming US Has The Best Health Care SystemEvery once in a while, Fox;s Juan Williams gets one right, and this segment from Fox's Cashin' In this Saturday was one of them.No, Hoenig and Fields, The U.S. Health Care System Isn’t Even Close To Being The Best.On today’s Cashin’ In, the fat-cat conservatives fearmongered about the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) by discussing how the problems of its co-ops could leave taxpayers on the hook for a billion dollars. Not surprisingly, it was left to liberal Juan Williams to point out how the co-ops’ problems are largely the fault of Congressional restrictions put in place after lobbying from the insurance industry – and thanks to budget cuts demanded by Republicans. Instead, the Fox News conservatives suggested it was all because President Obama had somehow impeded our country’s fabulous free market health care.In the middle of the debate, Williams was asked by regular Jonathan Hoenig, “Didn’t we have a free market health care before the Affordable Care Act?”As Brian went onto explain in his post, the right-wingers are the ones who have their facts wrong when it comes to where the United States ranks compared to other countries and our healthcare outcomes.Did Fields do any research on the subject before she shot from the hip? If so, how did she miss the World Health Organization’s ranking of the U.S. as number 37 in overall ranking, which included 15th in overall performance and first in overall expenditure per capita? Or the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking of seven countries – in which the U.S. came in dead last? (Business Insider, June 2012)So Fields and Hoenig are the ones who were “factually untrue.”By the way, France came in first in the WHO ranking, with Italy second. In the Commonwealth ranking, Australia and Canada came in first and second, respectively. Almost all the countries ahead of the U.S. have some government-funded insurance.Of course they're lying. It's a feature, not a bug.
w_purple007