Texas Republican Pete Olson probably figured he could get away with using a young child as a propaganda tool at a recent town hall meeting -- but he was in for a big surprise.

Republican Congressman Olson (R-TX) tells the townhall about a mother who was turned away by the free market doctors for her unborn child's heart defect. She was denied by the free market doctors but persisted and was able to find a specialized doctor and got a very delicate operation and a heart transplant 17 days after he was born. Olson then claims that the public option would have denied him the needed health care and he would have died! After being challenged he abruptly ended the discussion. Watch as he is challenged, and clueless as to what to say.

As Olson spews out his talking points, people in the crowd repeatedly point out to him that it wasn't the government who turned this poor child away, it was the insurance companies. Olson was absolutely gobsmacked when people started calling him out on his obvious gaffe as he stood there looking like a deer caught in the headlights. It’s so encouraging to see some town hall video from health care reform supporters giving these GOP shills a taste of their own medicine!

MoveOn has generously joined in on our Standing Up For The Public Option fundraiser and it's helped keep the thermometer rising. When last I looked we were over 300,000 dollars and over 5000 donors. I can't wait to wake up and see where we are next. (I wrote this post at 11:15 PM Thursday)

Howie Klein adds:

UPDATE: MoveOn.org Joins The Battle

If you've noticed that our thermometer is going through the roof today, that's because MoveOn is in the process of sending out a request to their millions of members to join the effort to thank the Democrats in Congress who have drawn the line in the sand for a robust public option and real health care reform beyond the siphoning of public money that the insurance companies and their congressional shills want.

I was watching MSNBC and CNN yesterday and all I was hearing was that progressives supporting the public option are left to the left. WTF does that mean? When Bush used reconciliation to pass his massive tax cut for the rich bill, the media didn't say that it was a right to the right position. We get tarred for having a brain.

And now Terry McCauliffe of all people has said that he's for the public option and is offering to do a fundraiser for anyone who endorsers it in Virginia. Wow.

Not Larry Sabato has worked with Terry McAuliffe to do a major fundraiser for any Virginia candidate who makes the pledge (an effort probably worth six figures).

Terry McAuliffe? Wow! That's an effort! In fact, I'm going back on the Blue America page and donating some more.

And a new poll shows 77% percent of Americans still support the public option.

Yet, while the issue continues to be hotly debated in the halls of Congress, a new poll by Survey USA finds that the idea is as popular as ever amongst the American public:

More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

The SurveyUSA poll finds similar results to several other polls that also show that the public option is very popular, a fact that some members of Congress consider to be a detriment.

Yes, I'm a 77%er...

Jane adds:

The House Dems have 77% of the country behind them. Conrad and Bayh have WellPoint and Blue Cross behind them, and messy financial ties to boot. Will they join with the Republicans to filibuster a Democratic health care bill? Because as Kagro X says, that is very much what they are saying they will do.

I guess we will see.

First I want to say that I had an incredible time at Netroots Nation. What a treat to see so many in the liberal blogosphere gather to discuss health care and virtually every other issue we face. Kudos to all the politicians who showed up to represent their positions as well.

Anyway, a huge topic that was raging through the weekend was the state of the 'public option.' Since the Baucus Dogs haven't finished their bill we still don't have the goods to really make any sense of what the House of Lords is going to put forth. We do have the Senate HELP committee bill, but the Baucus Dogs are trying to muck up the works by stalling the process and trying to empower the teabaggers. Any member of Congress that is affected by the lunatic fringe appearing at these events should resign immediately.

I was talking to Digby at length about it over the weekend and she said she had a meeting with Mike Lux and he laid out a possible scenario to her that could come to pass even if Grassley, Bayh, Conrad, Baucus, Nelson and the rest of the paid off shills of the health insurance industry come out with a bill that doesn't have a 'public option.'

He later wrote about it in his piece: The News of Its Death Is Greatly Exaggerated

Here are a couple of possibilities for getting a bill passed:

A. The first is that conservative Senators are given a fig leaf compromise on the public option, so that they can say to people they forced a compromise, and then are brought over with all kinds of other incentives that make them more comfortable with the bigger bill.

B. The second is that the conference committee simply breaks the bill in half, one half being the less controversial part that everyone agrees upon, the other being the public option and the financing, both of which can go through the reconciliation process. Then Obama and Reid muscle the 50 votes they need for support.

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Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin were all worked up yesterday on Beck's Fox News show about the media's treatment of the town-hall protests. They agreed that the media were ignoring all the "union thuggery" caused by rank-and-file health-care-reform supporters from the SEIU who were showing up at the town halls to counter the right's angry mobs:

Malkin: I think there's a purposeful whitewashing, and a narrative that somehow these unions represent blue-collar workers. That has never been the case. They have never represented the best interest of their dues-paying, card-carrying members. It's always been about enriching and enhancing and aggrandizing the management.

And people need to know what they're up against. You need to know your enemy. The SEIU is 1.8 million members strong. And the dues that they have coerced and squeezed from those members have been poured into Democrats' coffers. Andy Stern, who is the radical social worker turned union heavy, bragged that $80 million of SEIU union dues went to the Democrats in independent expenditures, and a huge chunk of that, of course, directly into Obama's campaign treasury.

Right. Because, of course, Malkin's corporate friends in Republicanland would do so much more to protect the interests of working-class people than unions would.

Malkin's claim that unions have "never" been about helping working-class people is of course grotesquely ahistorical, but fairly typical of corporate shills like Malkin. Indeed, if anyone's doing whitewashing, it's Malkin, who like Beck has airbrushed out of their realities the facts about progressives and unions and the central role they have played in creating the great American middle class upon which these two parasites feast.

But most hilarious is the charge that it's the unions who have introduced violence into this scenario, when in fact the entire tone of these protests from the right has been ugly and violent. The presence of SEIU regulars is essentially in response to the threats fomented by the right. After all, it isn't SEIU members who are calling up teabaggers and threatening them with gun violence -- it's the other way around.

This is underscored by the strange coda that Beck gives at the end of the segment:

Beck: You know, um, I have to tell you I think the clock is ticking, gang. I think everybody needs to back away -- not from your passions, not from what you believe in. You believe in health care, you keep going. You believe it's wrong, you keep going.

But we need to be very, very careful. I fear for the future. Somebody's going to do something stupid and it will change the Republic -- [snaps] -- overnight.

One can only assume that he's referencing his previous plea to his audience not to indulge in acts of violence. And as we can see, he has real reason to be concerned.

But just whose side is it with the propensity for violence and thuggery, Glenn and Michelle?

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(Rachel Maddow discussed the astroturfing a-holes going to the August town halls.)

You can always count on the media and the wingnutosphere to be hypocrites whenever any sort of protest takes place. For Republicans, they usually have to pay for their Zombie Plumbers to show up which is called: Astroturfing.

Astroturf refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.

No, it's not the fake grass that was used in baseball and football stadiums, but big cash being paid by corporations to promote conservative philosophy and undermine real change. Matt Yglesias writes: Astroturf vs “AstroTurf”. Read it.

The Malkins of course just love Astroturfing and probably view it as just another tool conservatives have to lie and cheat their way through another tough issue. And the media wittingly comply with their wishes. Think Progress has a whole list of these lobbyist/corporate shills. Even Newt Gingrich is supplying a toolkit for the teabaggers to use to disrupt health care town halls.

Thers at Whiskey Fire explains:

Which brings us to today, where by the miracle of wingnut headcase engineering, the Moral Wall Switch for coordinated attempts to disrupt other people's public events has been hastily and incompetently flipped from Evil to Good. To wit, here's the Tea Party-associated Freedom Works offering advice to Tea-Baggers about how best to disrupt town-hall meetings held by elected Democratic officials who want to discuss healthcare with their constituents:– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.” – Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

Unsurprisingly, this is precisely what the Tea-Baggers have been doing. (Check out the video especially.)

And what has been the reaction from those who invented imaginary liberal behavior and are watching as their side actually does precisely the stuff they only pretended liberals were doing and which they denounced as Wicked, Deranged, and Perfidious?

Cheering it on, of course. Duh.

How long will it take the traditional media to expose the corporations that are running this con and even mention the word "astrotufing" in a serious way? I know, don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: It's taking Robert Gibbs to try and wake up the media from their slumber over these events:

We have Robert Gibbs openly calling this the Brooks Brothers Brigade. That's a start.

Q: Are you concerned at what appears to be well-orchestrated protesting of health care reform at town halls as derailing your message?

GIBBS: NO, I get asked every day about the myriad of things that could be derailing our message. I would point out that I don't know what all those guys were doing, what were they called, the Brooks Brothers Brigade in Florida in 2000, appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country

Q: They seem to be pretty widespread.

GIBBS: I seem to see some commonality in who pops up in some of these things.
Q: Like individuals?

GIBBS: Yeah.

Q: Really?

GIBBS: Yeah.

Q: Can you discuss names or ....

GIBBS: I don't have names but I think you can see quite a bit of similarity between who shows up where.

He's clearly trying to lead the horses of the press corps to water, not that they'll drink.

I heard some Villager on TV say that Gibbs is making a mistake because he is only making Matt Drudge's website bigger. Really, I thought he already ruled their world.

[H/t Atrios]

Judging from the talking points being constantly spewed by the likes of Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Eric Cantor (R-VA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Max Baucus (DLC-MT), Blanche Lincoln (DLC-AR), Mary Landrieu (DLC-LA), Joe Lieberman (DLC-CT), and Ben Nelson (DLC-NE), and by the coverage in the corporate media, all of it driven primarily by corporate dollars, one would think that most people oppose Obama's tyrannical plans to impose dreaded health care reform on the American people. But, no. Americans overwhelmingly want health care reform. Wisely, they don't trust the crooked CEOs who run the insurance companies and they don't trust the bought off, sold out Republicans in Congress. Every single poll that comes out shows that Americans-- by gargantuan margins-- favor genuine, government-run health care.

That's why the insurance companies and their shills in Congress are fighting tooth and nail, like mad dogs, to kill the compromise between an Insurance company bailout (the Senate Finance Committee plan authored by Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley) and single payer. The compromise, which offers consumers a choice, is called the "public option." Anyone who likes their for-profit Insurance company's service can stick with it. Otherwise, they can opt for the non-profit government run plan. Studies by the insurance industry show that within a couple of years there will be virtually no people choosing for-profit insurance companies.

John is in Florida but he e-mailed me this story from the NY Times and asked me to pass it along and remind people that Blue America is asking for donations for the television ads we're doing to make Arkansas voters aware that their senator isn't really their senator; Blanche Lincoln belongs to the Big Business CEOs who have financed her career. While she works behind the scenes to protect the interests of her Insurance Industry patrons, Americans "are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll." Even half the respondents who admitted they are Republicans prefer this plan, while among normal Americans, the margins are staggering. Look at this chart and then please consider learning more about (or donating to) our Campaign for Health Care Choice.

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Bill O'Reilly must really being feeling guilty subconsciously over the death of Dr. Tiller. But he's also looking to blame somebody else for his behavior and that somebody is NBC news. He is one sick person. He has the audacity to use the murder of our military recruiter named Private Long to his own advantage -- as did Malkin -- to try and convince his audience that he did nothing wrong in his vile behavior towards the late Dr. Tiller. The old faux comparison if I ever saw one. Has he no shame?

Last night on The Factor, BillO took up half his show trying to defend himself and used his favorite conservative professor, Brian Russell, to do so, as well as his favorite stooge, Juan Williams.

In his talking points he was upset that NBC was blaming him for Tiller's death so now tried to fake out the audience by saying that since NBC covers torture and the debate over closing Gitmo, they helped drive Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad over the edge to commit this atrocity.

O'Reilly: ..so here's my question. Is NBC complicit in the murder of Private Long? After all, that network has relentlessly branded America a torture nation. A nation run by human rights's violators. Didn't NBC news incite Mr. Muhammad to kill the soldier? The answer is no. The killer is a loon. The media had nothing to do with it. That is the truth. However, Private Long's situation will not be heavily debated on NBC News Because they're not much interested in the truth. Brian Williams is a big problem here. Last night as managing editor of the Nightly News, he allowed a correspondent to highlight me as a villain in the Tiller situation. Williams takes his orders directly from NBC President Jeff Zucker, who is a committed liberal, who has completely ruined the news operation, turning it into the most far left outfit in the history of broadcasting....

Psych out. He didn't mean it. Hey, Bill. NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC and most every other legitimate news organizations never called America "Iraqi baby killers", and never called America mass murderers time and time again over the invasion of two Middle Eastern countries, but that's how you portrayed Dr. Tiller. The media in general did almost no reporting on the run-up to the war that was counter to any of the propaganda the Bush Administration put out. They've been covering the news, Bill, even if they've done it badly.

And by the way ... General Petraeus, your hero, believes that America made many, many mistakes, which includes torture, the breaking of the Geneva Convention, and creating an extralegal prison at Guantanamo Bay in his criticism of America's behavior after 9/11. So is he to blame for Mr. Mohammad's actions too?

Billie Boy continued on his anti-choice rant about Dr. Tiller and then said that the government has the goods that GE is doing business with Iran. And he's going to be looking into to it very, very closely. I feel bad for Pvt. Long's family, their grief must run deep, but now they also have to withstand Bill O'Reilly using his death in a crass, cheaply sensational way for his own self-serving justification for the inexcusable.

McCain and Obama debate the economic crisis' effect on national security.

We're already in a situation that no matter what gets done, the economic meltdown is going to drag a lot of people worldwide under. We're in the same situation with global warming - in that case quite literally. Now Republicans and their energy lobbyist friends are saying we're going to have to choose which one sinks most.

As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.

"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and nonprofit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

What they have the axe out for is "Cap and Trade", a policy plan whereby companies either reduce emissions or pay to pollute. The energy industry, of course, hates it - and now wants permits to pollute to be free. Their vest-pocket representatives on the Hill already have such a bill in the works and it's sponsored by two Dems - Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va and of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. Even that's not good enough for House Republicans. Oklahoman wingnut Inhofe says "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," while Texan Joe Barton says even the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff."

Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill — and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits — as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.

"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

The energy lobby is apparently quite willing to cynically sacrifice lives to its members own pocketbooks, just as the financial sector is. Both are also willing to sacrifice national security on the altars of their own greed too. It's not too long since a Republicans were trying to sink the production of an NIE on the national security implications of gobal warming - even after a Pentagon report in 2003 (PDF) and a government-funded thinktank of retired military leaders in 2007 both called climate change a pressing threat to national security. More recently, even once-was-neocon Francis Fukuyama admits that the financial meltdown will have massive negative implications for America's place in the world and governments worldwide are publicly worrying about its effects on geopolitical stability.

Of course, we've seen this kind of corporate selfishness before - from the military/industrial complex Ike warned about so accurately. It's become obvious that the problem is any too cozy corporate/government symbiosis. Such relationships are bad for We The People, end of story.

Crossposted from Newshoggers