War on Tobacco's More Liberal Fraud and Flimflam

War on Tobacco's More Liberal Fraud and Flimflam
by Roger Hedgecock
06/24/2011

There's a long and colorful liberal tradition of fakery, fraud and flimflam to score political points or advance the liberal agenda. Remember these examples?

All the way back in 1992, ABC "News" had its producers lie on application forms to get hired by supermarket chain Food Lion. The "workers" then staged scenes showing mishandling of food. They were caught doing it and Diane Sawyer had to explain why her condemnation of Food Lion's greed for profit was different from ABC's greed for profit in airing this scandalous and false story.

In 1993, NBC "News" had technicians set off incendiary devices under a GM truck, causing the gas tank to explode on camera, "proving" that the truck was unsafe in sideways collisions and that Government should crack down on GM for building such a hazardous truck.

In 2000, CBS' Dan Rather asserted that military records proved George W. Bush had been AWOL during his service in the Air National Guard. The records were false, and Rather never checked, so eager was he to air the story and defeat Bush.

In the 1988 presidential campaign, Joe Biden was caught plagiarizing a British politician's speech. In 2008, Barack Obama was caught plagiarizing Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's speeches from 2006.

And how about the wholesale fraud contained in the 2007 climate report from the United Nations' IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)? Himalayan glaciers are not melting. African crops will not be cut in half by 2020, etc.

Well, here's the latest example.

In the hierarchy of liberal wars on corporate evildoers, the War on Big Oil always gets top billing. But the War on Big Tobacco is not far behind. Neither is the usual liberal fraud and flimflam.

Ever since the surgeon general's warning against smoking cigarettes was issued in the 1960s, liberals have waged a legislative and regulatory war against smoking while at the same time funding liberal causes by raising tobacco taxes and bringing class action lawsuits against Big Tobacco.

Still, the feds estimate that smoking is the leading cause of 443,000 preventable and premature deaths every year. The adult smoking rate of about 20% has remained steady for a decade. About 20% of high school students also still smoke. FIfteen billion packs of cigarettes are sold every year in the U.S. The liberal war on Big Tobacco has failed, as so many liberal ideas do. The liberal answer? More War!

The FDA revealed this week that, starting in the fall of 2012, new grisly, color pictures with messages like "smoking can kill you," must cover the top half (front and back) of every pack of cigarettes, and 20% of all tobacco ad space. The campaign was rolled out at a White House press conference, where William Corr, a deputy secretary of Health and Human Services said the new pictures "speak the truth."

The graphic, disturbing pictures include a cadaver after an autopsy, a man blowing smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his neck, a crying woman with the warning, "Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers," a crying baby with the warning "Smoking can harm your baby." The feds are confident these grisly pictures will scare people into quitting smoking based on the success of similar programs in China and Canada.

There's just one old familiar liberal problem. The pictures are fake.

Charles Hurt of the Washington Times was the only journalist to ask about the pictures and he got some startling replies.

The dead man on a steel table after an autopsy is really an actor with makeup simulating his chest zipped up with staples.

The wisp of smoke coming out of the tracheotomy hole? Photoshopped.

The crying infant in an incubator? "A creepy drawing," says Hurt.

When the pro-life movement demonstrates against abortion, they hold up very large, gruesome pictures of dead and dismembered babies. The pictures are repulsive and liberals hate them. The leftists are now using the same tactic to scare smokers, only they are faking the pictures to make their point.