Gore: Polluters like big tobacco

By GottaLaff

Hal Sparks made an interesting point on the Radio Machine a few days ago: If we frame the global warming issue as a polluting issue, there could be a broader understanding and eventually, a willingness to accept the dire consequences of the abuses to Mother Earth.

In other words, the naysayers who deny the existence of man-made climate change might be more amenable to accepting responsibility for polluting our environment, and be more inclined to understand that concept.

Former Vice President Al Gore, citing tobacco industry campaigns of years past, told CBS that disinformation from industrial polluters has made achieving political agreement on climate change more difficult.

“Some of the largest carbon polluters have been vigorous and try to convince people — as the tobacco industry did years ago on the link between smoking cigarettes and lung disease — that there really isn’t a link between global warming pollution and global warming,” Gore said in an interview broadcast Thursday on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

People pollute. Industries pollute. And now their words pollute.

There is no denying that pollution dirties up our air, our water, and as a result, our bodies. It is universally accepted that this is a bad thing, despite how one feels (or believes) about the somehow hard-to-grasp concept of global warming.

By reframing the arguments, and by comparing polluters to the tobacco industry, Hal Sparks and Al Gore may be on to a thing or two.

Report: Death paneler Betsy McCaughey joined big tobacco v. Clinton health care

By GottaLaff

The real McCaughey does it again. She's such a seasoned pro, Death Panel Barbie looks like a rank wannabe by comparison.

Betsy palled around with Big Tobacco to blow toxic smoke at us even earlier than we realized. Quite a team, those two:

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.

Cancerous Death Sticks + Death Paneler = Death to Americans. There you have it, our very own homegrown "terrorists" proving themselves to be a bigger threat to humanity than any Rushpublic will ever admit.

What part of saving lives don't they understand?

ABC News credited McCaughey earlier this summer with being the person behind the “death panel” falsehood, when she said in a July appearance on the radio program The Fred Thompson Show that the health care reform effort was “a vicious assault on elderly people, all to … cut your life short.”

In that interview, McCaughey asserted that senior citizens would have to face “death panels” to determine their worthiness to continue living every five years. [...]

Susie Madrak, in her blog at Crooks and Liars, cites key parts of the Rolling Stone article:

[W]hat has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Phillip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Phillip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

“Worked off-the-record with Manhattan [Editor's note: At the time, McCaughey was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute] and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan.”

McCaughey served as lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998, under Republican Governor George Pataki.

You're only as good as the company you keep...

Please read the whole thing here.