The Bus Project saw that hacky special by John Stossel suggesting that maybe we shouldn't allow young people the right to vote and they decided that they were mad enough to get even.

Love the correspondent's moustache. So Stossel-like.

You can join The Bus Project to mobilize the youth vote (and hell, encourage people of all ages to get out and vote) and have fun too with their Trick or Vote! campaign.

The Show: ABC's 20/20 Friday 10th October. The message: young people are too dumb to vote and should stay home instead. That's the thrust of a segment by John Stossel, self-proclaimed "libertarian" and regular contributor to the hard-right's fanzine, Commentary.

Watch it here.

The folks at Future Majority are understandably ticked, calling the segment an attack on the very idea of American democracy.

There is a lot that is wrong with this piece. Yes, there are many uninformed voters, but that category is not limited to young people, who are unfortunately the main target of this piece. Anyone who has ever watched Jay Leno could tell you that many Americans are uninformed about current events. Unfortunately, some see that as an excuse to rob people of their constitutional rights, and Stossel and ABC are happy to play along.

But all is not as it appears in this report. In talking with HeadCount, the group featured in the piece, it's clear that Stossel and 20/20 were not interested in giving the young people they interviewed a fair shake. They had a narrative to their story and stuck by it - facts be damned. More than that, they worked -um, creatively - to make sure their point of view dominated the piece.

According to Head Count, Stossel's team cherry-picked responses for their piece, giving the impression that respondents were far less knowledgeable than they were. "Far more ... were knowledgeable than implied by the report" and:

Many interviewees were knowledgeable about some issues, but less so when it came to other issues. The young voter responses included in the report were cherry-picked by Stossel and ABC producers to highlight only the incorrect answers.

Indeed, the show's one producer got into an argument with one young voter when the producer tried to say that the length of single term for a congressional representative was four years. The "young and dumb" voter had the correct answer of two years.

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ABC News, the same network that neo-cons use to further their agenda, decided to look at the question of Universal Health Care in the US. Who better to investigate it than John "The Free Market Trumps All" Stossel? As is evident from the promo from last Friday's Good Morning America, Stossel's program looks like little more than a way to demonize Michael Moore:

Download | play Download | play

And the actual program was just more of the same: ridiculing Moore and touting the excellence that competition and profits bring our healthcare system.

Julie Pierce, whose husband was sentenced to death by their insurance company and featured in Michael Moore's documentary, Sicko, decided she had to respond to Stossel. We've documented Stossel's bottom feeding, tabloid style "journalism" in the past, from denying global warming to getting smacked down by a professional wrestler, his resume is beyond lame. Kudos to Julie for calling this clown out for his hackery...

Via MichaelMoore.com:

Dear John,

My name is Julie Pierce. My husband was Tracy Pierce. I am featured in Michael Moore's documentary 'SiCKO.' In the movie, I share my deceased husband's story — his unsuccessful battle with our insurance company to receive what could have been life-saving treatments for kidney cancer.

I just read your Wall Street Journal article written on Sept. 13, 2007, titled "Sick Sob Stories." You begin by talking about Tracy's role in 'SiCKO,' and claim the bone marrow transplant denied by our insurer would not have saved him. You also accuse me of "sneering" over our situation.

In your 'reporting' of this story, you did not contact me, and you did not contact my husband's doctors. I cannot believe that a publication like the Wall Street Journal would print such an accusation without talking to anyone involved — especially in such a personal matter, which resulted in the death of my 37-year-old husband and the father of my child.

If you had contacted me, I would have told you that bone marrow transplants became a last option, only after our insurer denied many other treatments again and again and again.

Continue reading »

Contra Costa Times:

President Bush's commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence highlights some interesting connections between Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, a former fugitive from justice, an ex-president and two leading 2008 White House hopefuls.

Before entering government, Libby was a private attorney who represented billionaire international commodities trader Marc Rich.

Rich was indicted in 1983 by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani on charges of tax evasion and illegal dealing with Iran during the American hostage crisis.

Rich fled to Switzerland. He also occupied a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List for many years.

Giuliani, former mayor of New York, is now a leading Republican presidential candidate. He endorsed Bush's decision to spare Libby jail time even though he had tried to put Libby's client behind bars.

"After evaluating the facts, the president came to a reasonable decision, and I believe the decision was correct," Giuliani said in a written statement Monday evening.

Rich's fugitive days ended when former President Clinton pardoned him in January 2001, a move that prompted a congratulatory call from Libby to Rich.

 Notice anything missing from Bill's weekend trip to Iraq? I didn't see him get any fresh air out in the open. I wonder why? Bill tells the troops how much he loves them by stopping in for a quick photo-op---handing out books and signing autographs. Bill O'Reilly, the Bob Hope of this generation.

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(h/t Scarce for the video. He edited in Bill's book at the end of the clip)

John McCain had this weird---glazed look in his eyes as he attacked John Kerry's botched joke on Hannity & Colmes Tuesday night. (Here's Kerry's reply to the distortions)

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How quickly St. McCain forgot his high praise of Kerry:

In his work toward that day, Kerry earned the "unbounded respect and admiration" of McCain, who, like others in the Senate, originally viewed Kerry with suspicion. "You get to know people and you make decisions about them," says McCain. "I found him to be the genuine article."

or this : 

On a more serious note, McCain added later, "I think that the best Americans from both parties should be the nominees of their parties, so that the American people would have the very best to select from, and I would certainly put Sen. Kerry in that category."

It's sad how an election cycle will bring out the worst in people. I guess the Republicans are that desperate, but by bringing up the Iraq war front and center, they might have made a mistake:

In attacking Mr. Kerry and defending the war, the White House clearly made the calculation that achieving what has been its main strategic goal this year — firing up a dispirited conservative base — would outweigh any risk that might come in spotlighting a war that Republican Party officials said had become a huge burden for its candidates.

Doctor D meets John Stossel.

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Listening to John Stossell try to attack Al Gore and his movie about Global warming was rather comical. He had no facts or documentation to back up his points, but he did have a few choice words handy, He called us alarmists.

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John says the serious scientists scoff at the notion of global warming, but did he name one? I must say though that he did talk to the scientists so that's enough for me. What was that study he quoted again? Tyson Slocum came on the segment and did actually present some facts, but that didn't stop Stossel's onslaught, no sir. He had the final say and dug deep into his word well and called us all---Socialists who hate Capitalism.

Updated Post with Video

(I had to delete the last post because the video link locked my system)

Sirota kicks the bejesus out of John Stossel. He calls him smarmy-looking. What do you think?

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Workingforchange: "It's not everyday that you get to publicly embarrass a right-wing pathological liar like John Stossel on national television - but that's what I had the pleasure of doing earlier this week. Now, after popular demand by readers/viewers who saw the transcript of the interchange.

Here's the transcript.