Originally Posted Fri, 05/08/2009 - 15:31, bumped to keep attention to Luntz - standingup

Right now, the biggest money in the country is arrayed to prevent any sort of public or single-payer health option from even being considered, much less appearing on the slate of choices that will be worked over by the leaders we elect every ballot cycle for final passage into the law that governs every American.

Instead, the biggest money in the country is striving to assure that private gain wins over public good and they've poured massive amounts of money into lobbying our leadership.  

So, every single day, the lobbyists are telling the people we trust with our vote each cycle, exactly how we should be governed.  According to the big money.

Just a couple days ago, one of us wrote about the group of SINGLE PAYER HEROES who, in civil disobedience, dared to call into question the fact that a Democratic-majority was hosting a 'roundtable' to discuss 'health care reform' options without including ONE advocate of single-payer options.  

As they were hauled off, the lobbyists laughed when Senator Baucus joked with friends, "we need more police."

And now, apparently, the big money has bought the services of the big guns message-monger, Dr. Frank Luntz, to scientifically achieve the deception his ilk has grown rich in providing to corporate non-citizens of these United States so as to best achieve private gain's victory over the public interest.

Well-known for the effectiveness of his profitable deceptions and much sought-after by the biggest money, I only became aware of Luntz's involvement on behalf of health-care industry interests in a diary posted by Senator Jeff Merkley, "Words Designed to Kill Health Care Reform"

But I was shocked when I read a memo from Republican strategist Dr. Frank Luntz laying out plans to dismantle any effort to give all Americans access to quality health care. Dr. Luntz, the man who developed language designed to promote pre-emptive war in Iraq and distract from the severity of global warming, is at it again – this time with a messaging strategy designed to sink our historic opportunity for health care reform.

I thought it'd be instructive that the public knows just how Dr. Luntz has made so much money message-mongering for the dirtiest of the biggest money, helping George W. Bush's then-largest contributor, Enron, sustain its terror attack against the people of the State of California some eight-odd years ago.

For the first time in American history, one of the nominees for President is a non-white male. Another significant first-time achievement for this election cycle is the fact that a woman was one of the most likely alternatives for a viable candidate. And finally, for the first time in recent history, the politics of fear and smear that have become the modus operandi of the Republican noise machine have finally begun to wear thin on the American public, reducing the banality of the shrieking messengers and their flaming notes of fecal detritus to a low-intensity, somewhat irritating buzz almost lost in the background noise of general day to day life.

During the rise toward their ultimate heights of hubris, corruption and power, the Republican leadership -- closely aligned with the neoconservative mindset that had infiltrated the Executive Branch and infected a myriad of governmental agencies with politicized agendas -- began to believe that they had, in fact, finally achieved the long sought-after "permanent Republican Majority" that Karl Rove had promised.¹ They hadn't -- they had come close, but fate and fortune showed mercy on a nation beset by their arrogance and greed, and their house of cards began to tumble. That never stopped them from believing, even to this day, that their power and influence extends far enough that they can reshape reality into whatever form they wish it to take.

Some of them are beginning to wake from that dangerous delusion, just as most of the nation has begun to cast off the pall from nearly eight years of unchallenged Republican rule.