Dick Cheney Forgets His Oath?

by LiberalViewer (Allen Asch)

Call for Action from the Hmong Community in Sacramento

Dear Friends,

Doctors without Borders has pulled out of Thailand leaving 5,000 Hmong hopeless, starving, dehydrated and ill.  Please spread the word to your families, friends, and neighbors and ask them to call the White House to pressure the Thai government to stop the humanitarian crisis, to stop the forced repatriation and resettlement of the Hmong to third countries.

Our Hmong familiies are in desperate need of help from the International Community. 

The calling campaign will start on Monday June 1 to Friday June 5, 2009.  Our goal is to deliver at least 500-1000 messages to the White House so they will pay attention to the crisis in Thailand.

Below is the phone script and phone # to the White House. Also listed below is the Press Release from Doctors Without Borders reaching out to the International Community for help for the Hmong in Thailand. Our fellow Hmong brothers and sisters deserve respect and dignity here and abroad.

Please help the Hmong community and their families who live in Thailand and Laos by calling the White House this week. Thank you for any help you can provide. It will be sincerely appreciated.

Pao Vang
__________________________

Editor’s note: second to last paragraph
Sentence to be corrected:  “…resettle the Hmong in the United States and other third countries”
Correction: eliminate “…and other third countries” from the script and eliminate “As a Hmong-American” as appropriate

GOP Wastes No Time In Embracing Frank Luntz’s Vapid ‘Patient-Doctor’ Health Care Rhetoric

Earlier this week, a memo written by right-wing message guru Frank Luntz was leaked instructing the Republican Party on how to frame the health care debate in order to defeat progressive reform. Since his pivotal role in helping craft Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Luntz has had an impressive record of cloaking regressive and conservative policies with carefully poll-tested language. For instance, Luntz is credited with persuading Republicans to use the intentionally misleading term “death tax” to describe the estate tax.

According to CQ, Republicans are enthusiastically embracing Luntz and his health care memo. At a private workshop organized by the House leadership, Luntz was welcomed with applause and cries of “Welcome home!” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) gushed, “We look to him for how do we express the things that we believe in ways that are effective.”

Luntz’s health care memo urges Republicans to denounce progressive reforms as ideas based upon a “committee of Washington bureaucrats.” The memo then calls for Republicans to strongly emphasize the “protection of the personalized doctor-patient relationship” because this approach allows Americans to believe that the GOP is doing something to “protect and improve something good“:

ThinkProgress compiled a video featuring Rep. Phil Gingrich (R-GA), Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) all embracing the vapid “patient-doctor” talking point in the past 48 hours. Watch it:

As the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky details, Luntz’s strategy is to “obstruct health reform by ignoring what Obama is actually offering.” In all fairness, Luntz is very candid about his strategy of misdirection. Since Republicans currently have absolutely no plan for reforming health care, Luntz says to avoid projecting a policy plan and instead focus on language that “captures not just what Americans want to see but exactly what they want to hear.”

Indeed, Luntz also provides his polling and language advice to a plethora of health insurance companies.

NO SOCIALISM HERE!

REGULATION VACATION CELEBRATION!