Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don't have to stomach on a daily basis.
The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.
As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.
Yesterday, John McCormack blogged, "Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?"
It's just a question right? Wrong.
McCormack's "theory" is that because Obama is trying to persuade Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) to vote in favor of health care, oh my gosh, then Obama's judicial nomination of Matheson's brother Scott is corruption at the highest levels of government.
"Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother's vote?," pounders McCormack.
That's guilt by association. Glenn Beck does this all the time. He plays the six degrees of separation game to prove Obama is a communist or whatever. It's outrageous and intellectually dishonest to say the least.
Now Fox News, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck are jumping all over this. Echo. Echo. Echo. Soon it will be fact.
On CNN's Larry King Live, Bachmann said that Obama's appointment of Matheson to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is corruption and must be investigated.
The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes on Fox News yesterday also played his role in furthering this so-called "scandal."
The president is seeing 10 members of congress who voted "no" on the bill the last time, Barnes said. One of them is Jim Matheson, whose brother "just got an appeals court judgeship. I'm not implying anything. It's just an interesting factoid that I thought I'd throw out there. I think the timing is very very interesting."
Of course, there's not a shred of actual evidence to support this scandalous corrupt bargain, but hey, who needs facts when the Weekly Standard can just make things up and Fox News repeats it until it becomes the Truth.
The White House calls the accusation "absurd."
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