Don't Believe The Hype.

More trickery from conservatives opposed to health care reform...

From ThinkProgess:

Earlier this year, Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), an anti-health care reform group led by the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Rick Scott, began running a commercial attacking the British health care system. The TV ad runs through “tragic stories” of British citizens who it portrays as being against government-run health care such as the National Health Service (NHS). Watch it:

Now, the Daily Mail is reporting that two of the women featured in the commercial say they were “duped” into appearing in CPR’s ad campaign:

Furious Kate Spall and Katie Brickell claim that their views on the NHS have been misrepresented by a free market campaign group opposed to Mr Obama’s reforms in a bid to discredit the UK system. [...]

Ms Spall and Ms Brickell both agreed to appear in a documentary on healthcare reform. But neither knew that the footage would be used as part of a TV advertising campaign carried on US networks.

The Daily Mail article goes on to note that both Spall and Brickell actually support government-run health care and were advocating for reforms within the NHS, not for its abolition.

CPR’s ad campaign is one of many misleading attacks being used by American conservatives against the United Kingdom’s single-payer health care system, which is so popular that even Conservative Party politicians unambiguously endorse it.

The right-wing Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) ran an editorial recently claiming that physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance” in the UK because the NHS does not offer proper care to the elderly, prompting Hawking to remind IBD that he both lives in Britain and that without the NHS’s “high quality of treatment,” he “wouldn’t be alive today.”

Fed up with the deceptive attacks against their health care system from the American right, British citizens have started the “We love the NHS campaign” on Twitter, which has become one of the top trending topics on the service, with even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown taking part.

Crazy Is As Crazy Does.

If conservatives wish to separate themselves from the right-wing dead-enders many claim do not speak for them, and if they wish to be taken seriously and stop being viewed as insane, maybe this list from Karl Frisch of Media Matters would be a good place for them to start:

Top Ten list of "Right-Wingers From Whom Conservatives Should Be Demanding Apologies."

10) Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, for falsely claiming a hate-crimes bill that adds gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans to the list of protected groups would also protect those who commit incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, and a host of other perversions.

9) Fox News' Sean Hannity, for hosting "Internet journalist" Andy Martin, who once called a judge a "crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race."

8) Syndicated radio host Neal Boortz, for describing welfare recipients as "human parasitic garbage lining up to get their applications to loot."

7) Fox News conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Glenn Beck, for describing Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court as, "Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic. ... You're in!"

6) MSNBC's resident cranky uncle, Pat Buchanan, for saying prior to Sotomayor's selection that he wanted Obama to pick a Supreme Court justice "who has real stature, impresses people" but thinking instead that Obama would pick "a minority, a woman and/or a Hispanic."

5) Syndicated radio host Jim Quinn, for repeatedly calling NOW the "National Organization of Whores."

4) Cincinnati-based radio host Bill Cunningham, for alleging that "Obama wants to gas the Jews."

3) Michael Savage (née Weiner), the third-highest-rated radio host in America, for saying "Obama hates" and "is raping America."

2) Fox News' irrepressible mega-star Bill O'Reilly, for repeatedly quacking that the legalization of gay marriage could lead to folks marrying ducks.

And No. 1, the conservative movement's de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, for saying of Obama, "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles ... because his father was black."

Conservatives, that'll get you started. Let us know when you need more names.