Mark Halperin: media favours right-wing stories

Time magazine's Mark Halperin has recently asserted that the mainstream media will give a lot of weight, credence and devote coverage to stories which originated from the conservative or right-wing media entertainment industry. Halperin recently wrote that:

"The Sherrod story is a reminder — much like the 2004 assault on John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — that the old media are often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative new media. In many quarters of the old media, there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny. Additionally, the conservative new media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by old-media decisionmakers is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative new media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the old media find it irresistible."

Halperin is spot on here. As he explained, we've seen it time and again, and will likely continue to see the mainstream media duped and run wild with smear campaigns which originated from the conservative media entertainment industry.

Medical marijuana for veterans in 14 states

From the Associated Press:

Washington — Patients treated at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics will be able to use medical marijuana in the 14 states where it's legal, according to new federal guidelines.

The directive from the Veterans Affairs Department in the coming week is intended to clarify current policy that says veterans can be denied pain medication if they use illegal drugs. Veterans groups have complained for years that this could bar veterans from VA benefits if they were caught using medical marijuana.

The new guidance does not authorize VA doctors to begin prescribing medical marijuana, which is considered an illegal drug under federal law. But it will now make clear that in the 14 states where state and federal law are in conflict, VA clinics generally will allow the use of medical marijuana for veterans already taking it under other clinicians.

"For years, there have been veterans coming back from the Iraq war who needed medical marijuana and had to decide whether they were willing to cut down on their VA medications," John Targowski, a legal adviser to the group Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, which worked with the VA on the issue.

Targowski in an interview Saturday said that confusion over the government's policy might have led some veterans to distrust their doctors or avoid the VA system.

Dr. Robert A. Petzel, the VA's undersecretary for health, sent a letter to Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access this month that spells out the department's policy. The guidelines will be distributed to the VA's 900 care facilities around the country in the next week.

Petzel makes clear that a VA doctor could reserve the right to modify a veteran's treatment plan if there were risks of a bad interaction with other drugs.

"If a veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the veteran from receiving opioids for pain management" in a VA facility, Petzel wrote. "The discretion to prescribe, or not prescribe, opioids in conjunction with medical marijuana, should be determined on clinical grounds."

Opioids are narcotic painkillers, and include morphine, oxycodone and methadone.

Under the previous policy, local VA clinics in some of the 14 states, such as Michigan, had opted to allow the use of medical marijuana because there no rule explicitly prohibiting them from doing so.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are 14 states and the District of Columbia with medical marijuana laws. They are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New Jersey also recently passed a medical marijuana law, which is scheduled to be implemented next January.

One and the same

The Democratic Party will be linking the far right-wing Tea Party movement with the Republican Party, in order to portray the GOP as a party of extremists and lunatics, with the right-wing grassroots activists as tools of the Republican establishment (which essentially is pretty accurate, considering the sympathy for the Tea Party and the crazy policy ideas of the Republicans, as well as many Tea Party and insane Republican candidates running for the Senate and the House of Representatives this fall).

It appears that the Democratic Party's strategy will be to from the November midterm elections as a contest between themselves and a joint Republican-Tea Party cabal which will privatize pretty much everything and defend big oil and Wall Street.

The Democrats plan to use the statements of Tea Party activists', as well as Republican sympathy and support for the movement, and present a "Republican-Tea Party Contract With America," similar to the 1994 Republican Contract With America which propelled Republicans to win control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades.

Democrats will portray the Tea Party movement as "the most potent force in Republican politics," according to the DNC website:

For the better part of the past year, Republicans have tried to come up with a new agenda for the American people with mixed results. However, with the Tea Party now the most potent force in Republican politics, and with the recent launch of the Tea Party Caucus on Capitol Hill garnering the support of Republican leaders like National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Pete Sessions and Republican Caucus Chair Mike Pence, the Republican Party agenda has become clear. Republican leaders and Tea Party supported Republican candidates can now rally around the "Republican Tea Party Contract on America" as the blueprint for how they would govern.