Democrats today are accusing Republicans of circulating a fraudulent memo that claims to be sent to ‘Democratic health and communications staff’ and which suggests the majority party leadership wants to make big changes to Medicare next year after health care passes.

A senior Democratic leadership aide told TPMDC in an interview the memo, printed by Politico and leading the Drudge Report this afternoon a few days ahead of the health care vote Sunday, is ‘a hoax.’

Politico has now pulled the story. The GOP is going ALL-IN to stop reform.

Right-wing media have seized on a dubious, three-month old email “survey” that purports to show that physicians are concerned about health care reform and that 46 percent of the primary care doctors surveyed “indicated that they would leave medicine – or try to leave medicine – as a result of health reform.” Many media figures have falsely attributed this survey to the New England Journal of Medicine. For example, on Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said: “The New England Journal of Medicine has published a report and did a survey, and they said the impact of reform on primary care physicians, 46 percent, they say, feel reform will force them out or make them want to leave medicine.”

This is false.

Media Matters for America contacted the New England Journal of Medicine, which confirmed it neither conducted nor published the “survey.”

So they use pink. Interesting.

Of course, you have to go into this with the assumption that any journalists at Fox News (save perhaps Shep Smith and Catherine Herridge) have any actual credibility.

By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a ‘cancer,’ Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel’s efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization. Beck has become a constant topic of conversation among Fox journalists, some of whom say they believe he uses distorted or inflammatory rhetoric that undermines their credibility.

Fox has never really been a news channel, so much as it is a well-financed version of a right wing AM talk station, the buffoonery of Beck just takes that up to another level. I’ve got little to no sympathy for the journalists quoted, once you take a job with Fox News everyone with a pulse knows you’ve just signed up with the TV arm of the RNC anyway.

What liberal media?

So, like with his American news outlets it’s no surprise to read a story like this in The Sun, lambasting Labour for supposedly turning England into a squalid welfare state.

Unmarried Asbo mum Lisa Lovatt, 35, who has five children by two men, epitomises the slide into state-funded family chaos under 13 years of Labour.

Only her eldest daughter still lives with her as other kids are looked after elsewhere. And her booze and fags lifestyle on benefits shows the mountain the Tory leader will face as PM in his battle to put old-fashioned virtues like marriage and respect at the top of the agenda.

This is the same junk we see on Fox News and in the NY Post in America, if not quite so blatantly partisan as the British press tends to be. I’m just an American with a weirdo interest in British culture, but one reason I’d like to see David Cameron lose is for the egg it would put on Murdoch’s face.

So I ask: Is Glenn Beck wearing a pro-confederate neck tie?

Check out these images of Beck from his Monday, March 1 show:

The tie that Beck is wearing looks a lot like this tie:

The problem is this tie is “J105- Anglo-Confederate Society ” from the Ben Silver collection. As the Ben Silver website explains:

During the War Between the States, British MPs wore a similar cravat in Parliament to express their sympathy for the Southern Cause.

Back in 1994, the confederate-sympathizing tie became an issue in the Virginia senate campaign of Democrat Chuck Robb, who wore a tie with a similar design.

If it is a confederate tie, this wouldn’t be Glenn Beck’s first flirtation with the neo-confederate movement. In 2007 when his show was on CNN, Beck had a guest from Team Revisionist on air:

Beck has also given airtime to Tom Woods, a historian and economic theorist who was present at the group’s founding. Woods was just 21 years old at the time and insists that he is no longer a member. But even those who have accepted those explanations say he harbors radical, pro-Confederate views.

In his book, “Politically Incorrect Guide to the American History,” Woods wrote that “strictly speaking, there was never an American Civil War…Other, more ideologically charged (but nevertheless much more accurate) names for the conflict include the War for Southern Independence and even the War for Northern Aggression.”

“Woods clearly wants to tender a neo-Confederate interpretation, in which slavery is shunted into the background as a motive for southern secession,” wrote Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a San Diego University Professor who reviewed the book for the Journal of Libertarian Studies.

Nevertheless, Woods has appeared twice on Beck’s radio program and three times on his Fox News show.

Thanks to the reader who sent this tip in, who was willing to question… with boldness.

You bet. Which is why I do everything in my power to have nothing to do with it.