In a last ditch effort to stop health insurance reform legislation, the Rethugs are throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. After more than a year of spreading lies and misinformation about reform ("death panels," "Government takeover," etc.), the Rethugs are resorting to hoaxes to try to derail the bill. A fake memo from Dem leadership made available to sympathetic "media" purports to claim the Dems plan to make big changes in Medicare next year. Of course, the stenographers at Politico.com picked up the memo and ran with it without checking with Dems to determine its authenticity.
This has become a classic Rethug route for getting bogus information into the mainstream media: hand it to Politico or Drudge (not much difference), who peddle it to the cable TV nitwits, who flog it day and night until the Village media takes note. It's just what President Obama was referring to when he said yesterday at George Mason University that watching the media was like watching ESPN's Sports Center. Except on Sports Center, they don't make up the scores.
