Stunner. Politico Changes Their Bogus Coffin Story …Update: Democratic Underground Retracts Story
Posted by Jim Hoft on Thursday, March 25, 2010, 6:26 AM
Will someone please remind me of this the next time some elitist hack starts dogging blogs?
Politico reported an inaccurate tea party hit piece yesterday about a protest at Russ Carnahan’s home and office. They were fed their information from the Carnahan camp and forgot to factcheck it.
Here is the original story:
A coffin was placed on a Missouri Democrat’s lawn, another in a string of incidents against lawmakers after their vote Sunday on a health care overhaul.
Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) had a coffin placed “near his home,” a spokesman said Wednesday evening.
“Carnahan appreciates thoughtful feedback received both in favor and opposition of health insurance reform,” Carnahan spokesman Jim Hubbard told POLITICO Wednesday evening “We can disagree on important issues facing our country without resorting to this kind of thing. Russ Carnahan isn’t going to shy away from the importance of reform when 45,000 fellow Americans died last year due to a lack of health insurance.”
This was not true. The coffin was used in a prayer service for the elderly who will suffer under Obamacare and for the unborn who will be slaughtered under this plan. The protesters prayed for their loss of freedom thanks to this nationalized democratic plan. The St. Louis tea party patriots also prayed for Russ Carnahan and democrats who were voting at that time to nationalize the health care industry.
The Politico made the accusation that the coffin was placed (and left) near Carnahan’s home. It wasn’t. The protesters were never on his lawn. They said some prayers at his house and then took the coffin with them when they left. It’s currently sitting in a garage.
Well, it took the Politico about 12 hours but they finally updated their hit piece.
But, they didn’t mention that it was updated:
“The coffin was from a prayer vigil.”
And, then a bit later Politico made another correction:
This time they added this:
The coffin was from a prayer vigil, and protesters say that the coffin symbolized babies who would be aborted due to the health care law and was not a threat to Carnahan.
Of course, they didn’t mention that their story was updated here either.
That’s just how the media does things… They print a hit piece on tea party protesters from some democratic source. They don’t do their homework. They’re caught with egg on their face. And, then when they do make a correction they won’t admit that they made a correction.
That’s how it works.
UPDATE: You know your propaganda sucks when the Democratic Underground retracts the story:
Hat Tip Bill Hennessy
Someone needs to forward this to the Politico.
Still More… Leftist Blogger Charles Johnson Blatantly Lies About Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft
And, the MCJ has more on Scaredy Cat Russ.
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so cal chick commented:
how soon they forget…
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/rnc-protests.html
Violence against the elderly outside 2008 GOP convention
teegeearr commented:
Gosh, people thought that you putting a COFFIN on someone’s lawn was threatening? How completely crazy. Why would anyone make such a completely unwarranted inference. Oh goodness gracious.
down with dems commented:
Who are the violent ones???
Rep. Cantor’s Richmond Campaign Office Shot at Overnight
Republican Rep. Eric Cantor’s Richmond campaign office was shot at Wednesday night, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/rep-cantors-richmond-campaign-office-shot-overnight/
squeaky commented:
eric cantor’s office suffered a gun shot…….
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/rep-cantors-richmond-campaign-office-shot-overnight/
squeaky commented:
down with dems
March 25th, 2010 | 11:01 am | #3
must be those coffee party people – i assume
the “guilty till proven innocent” rules will apply.
Britny commented:
LittleGreenFrottageBalls is smearing you too.
averagemelon commented:
Gee.
Scared to death of a box. Made national news.
Wow.
Dick_Nixon commented:
Drudge still hasn’t corrected his copy on the “story”.
Politico’s collective head is up Barry’s arse so far you will never get a stragith answer from them on anything.
Chisum commented:
Rush just talked at length about this issue.
bg commented:
++
re: 45,000 fellow Americans died last
year due to a lack of health insurance
have they ever produced proof of their ever changing
‘number of deaths’ due to lack of insurance claims??
shoe on the other foot so to speak (just a sample):
Medical Errors – A Leading Cause of Death
Medical errors still common in U.S. hospitals
[Between 2005 and 2007, medical errors cost Medicare over $6.9 billion and were responsible for more than 92,000 potentially preventable in-hospital deaths among Medicare beneficiaries, report Dr. Rick May and others at HealthGrades, a healthcare ratings organization in Golden, Colorado.]
Full House Raises Risk of Hospital Deaths
oh btw re: that Canadian Health Care we so envy [..] their
Hospital deaths account for half of deaths annually, go figure..
sarc on/
but wait!! you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!!
welcome to over-taxed (in more ways than
one) government control of hospital care!!
watch the ‘number of deaths’ decline.. i’m telling you,
the chart will look like an upside down ‘hockey stick’!!
/sarc off
==
Zachary Bauer commented:
Carnahan is scared of the voters in this district. The story has one purpose; to make him out to be a victim and help the campaign money to start flowing in.
His republican opponent John Wayne Tucker will no doubtedly beat him in November.
http://www.johnwaynetucker.com
TyrannicalDems commented:
97.1 FM radio, when they did their local news, reported that Russy Carnahan said “someone put a coffin on his lawn. Then a group of people who will having a vigil removed it.” This report came on during a break on the Laura Ingram show. So it looks like the Carnahan vermin are calling all the media to make the vigil look like some kind of death threat.
What a bunch of socialist weenies.
Michael commented:
Unfortunately, we have PC conservatives like Jaime Allman that used his radio show (97.1 St. Louis) to say he disapproved of the coffin even while he probably knew how it was used symbolically. Yuck.
indigo commented:
Thanks Jim for standing up to these totalitarianists. Watch your back.
sarainitaly commented:
gawd – how many posts has Politico had to recant lately? I swear, every time I read one of their posts, it is later changed because they didn’t fact check it!
Chisum commented:
Rush is talking about this, again.
Jim Ramsey commented:
I love this comment that 45,000 people died last year because they had no health insurance–does anyone know where this lie comes from? Not having health insurance is not a lethal disease–been in the healthcare business for 41 years and have never seen anyone die from it. Why do we allow leftwing socialists to persist in spreading their big lies without challenging them on every one???
mark l. commented:
wow…
missouri delegation is 0 for 2 for craptacular lying.
the state is also blessed to be represented by emmanuel cleaver.
funny…of all the states that they would be from, it’s the one that also hosted the sieu beatdown of kenneth gladney.
advice to moderate dems-
run away from the missouri delegation.
Palinfan commented:
Jim, that 45,000 deaths a year due to no healthcare is indeed wrong and should have been fact-checked. I called the DNC and they said it’s more like 3,434,887 deaths a MONTH because minorities, womyn, and gays are denied healthcare. Additionally, studies have shown that most of these hapless individuals were denied healthcare by Sarah Palin.
Nony Mouse commented:
[quote]“Russ Carnahan isn’t going to shy away from the importance of reform when 45,000 fellow Americans died last year due to a lack of health insurance.”[/quote]
Seriously?
Okay, I can handle that the CDC says that, for example in 2006 72,449 deaths were caused by Diabetes. Diabetes is a condition that is medically defined. I can grasp the problems that it causes the body, the sorts of things doctors and hospitals try to do to treat it, and why someone can die of it.
What the hell does a death due to lack of health insurance look like? I’m pretty sure that they don’t keep a stack of generic insurance cards in the pharmacy: “You need to hold this in your hand at least once a week, while calling a phone number that won’t be answered by a human. It’ll raise your blood pressure and stress level just enough.” Sorry for your delusions, but no. A lack of health care may be more specific, but would also include the people who could have gone to a doctor, but decided not to for whatever reason. And considering that I’ve had to resort to threats and/or coersion to get someone to go to the doctor who had a BROKEN BONE (and insurance), there have to be people who just don’t go until it’s too late.
CommieBlaster commented:
Ignore it.
Here’s the ultimate answer: http://commieblaster.com/velvet-revolution/
they lie commented:
The leftist propagandists have their marching orders and the script is the same from all of them. They’re all smearing the right with almost the exact same words in a coordinated effort. It’s disgusting.
Largebill commented:
Others have said it, but it’s worth repeating: NO ONE has died from not having health insurance. People die. People die for many reasons. The most common reason for dying is the body expires of old age. The old age death may be expressed as heart failure or a couple dozen other more specific causes. Among younger people the most common cause of death is poor judgment.
Bottom line: we are all going to die. Doctors can possibly change the date of death and somewhat improve the quality of life but not the fact of certain eventual death. This debate is really about the size of government and personal freedom. The Dems are for greater government control and less personal freedom.
ic commented:
Some open-minded self-righteous people seem to be awfully anxious about the next election: do anything, say anything to pre-emptively discredit potential opponents.
Spendulus commented:
Look, let’s be reasonable. Creatures of the Midnight Signing of Frightcare need places to hide when the sun comes out.
JAL commented:
I, too, would like to now where the “45,000 died from lack of health insurance” number comes from.
Reminds me of the fraudulent Iraqi death number Lancet published — then retracted years later (after it was embedded in the global consciousness) when a basic glance at the who and how should have sent up caution flags.
kato commented:
2 + 2 = 4
E = mc2
Liberal = Liar
bill-tb commented:
Exactly what kind of reporting did you expect from a bunch of Washington Post first out the door types? It’s far easier to just put out the lies from the lefties than it is to do some actual reporting.
drjohn commented:
Can’t even find the story on Politico now.
LOL
yaddayadda commented:
Channel two news had the Russ Carnahan garbage on TV tonight. They showed the coffin in the owner’s garage as well as interviewed him. He came across as very articulate and reasonable and told the true side of the story.
The reporter went to Carnahan’s office and of course little Russy wasn’t any where to be seen.
The reporter asked his spokesperson about the “controversy”. She talked a big loop d loop.
First she claimed Russy didn’t think the coffin was a death threat, and then she starts saying something to the effect, well in light of the recent violence against Congressmen….blah blah. So she was in effect trying to say it was a death threat. So once again, the Carnahan organization was shown to be a bunch of liars and fools.
nohype commented:
The great economist Joseph Schumpeter said about reading Marx that when Marx resorted to ad-hominem attack and ridicule, it was because he did not know how to refute the argument of his opponent. We see the same thing happening in the Obamacare debate.The meme being pushed that those who oppose Obama’s policies are violent racist thugs lacks evidence and is meant to divert attention from the inability of the Left to honestly defend much of what it is doing.
MGB commented:
So if 45,000 die every year from lack of health insurance, why is Obama letting thousands more die because Obamacare doesn’t take effect for years? Doesn’t he care about those lives? It’s disgusting, isn’t it? How heartless can he, Pelosi, and Reid be? I’m outraged.
About that coffin: Dana Loesch talked today about a recent anti-war demonstration wherein 50 coffins were placed on the White House lawn. This was a protest against Obama’s war policy. So, wasn’t that a threat?
Coffins = death threat or at least a threat of violence, going by the Carnahan/Sara Howard/SEIU standard; ergo, the anti-Iraq/Afghan war protesters are also potentially violent “domestic terrorists”, to borrow a phrase used to describe Tea Partiers.
JCW commented:
Umm … is it just me, or does the “original story” picture also show the text:
“The coffin was from a prayer vigil, and protesters say that the coffin symbolized babies who would be aborted due to the health care law and was not a threat to Carnahan.”
What Gateway Pundit QUOTES from the article doesn’t contain this paragraph — but you can see it right there in the picture GP labels as the “original story”.
It could be that GP is quoting from a story that’s even earlier than the one in the screen shot; if that’s the case, I’d suggest yanking the first screengrab since it seriously undermines the post’s primary point.
If the screenshot accurately reflects the original story, however, then I’m confused as to what the controversy is here. Politico posts a story with a reasonable description of what happened, changes it later (to a less-informative — and, as a consequence, possibly more sinister description), and changes it back later still. What’s the cause for outrage at Politico here?
Perhaps Politico said that the coffin was LEFT at Carnahan’s in the original story? GP says they did, but doesn’t provide a quote. In the screenshot of the original story, Politico says multiple times that the coffin was “placed” — which it was. It’s clear that the DU poster had said it was left at Carnahan’s, but so far the only evidence I see that Politico said the same is GP’s assertion.
I wouldn’t mind a little clarification from GP on this.
JCW commented:
Okay, so a little digging, and I found the story in the first screenshot. The paragraph I was wondering about reads the same as in the picture, and like in the picture, it has the timestamp:
3/24/10 9:35 PM EDT
and below that:
Updated: 3/25/10 3:51 PM EDT
What wasn’t in the picture (not GP’s fault) was the editor’s note at the bottom of the story, which reads:
-Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the coffin was placed in front of Carnahan’s house and not on his lawn.
I’m guessing that the story was changed from what GP quoted to the way it now reads on what was formerly known as the original story.
So, GP: I’m satisfied on the “where’s the controversy” question. Politico incorrectly said the coffin was “placed on [Carnahan's] lawn”, and while they didn’t EXACTLY say that the coffin was left there, they did leave out any context that would have suggested otherwise. Boo Politico.
There is still the problem of your screenshot telling a different story than your quote; it’s confusing, and folks out to discredit you might take advantage of that. You might want to update and clarify that the story we see in that picture isn’t the ORIGINAL original story.
Thanks for pointing out the story in any case, keep it up!
Common Sense commented:
Now I agree that the coffin story was misrepresented by Carnahan and the media. I’m with you guys 100%.
However, we as conservatives have to stop doing stupid things like carrying around coffins! That makes us look like idiots. We will never win over those on the fence if we’re seen as people who carry around coffins!
Come on guys, use some common sense. There are better ways to get our message across.