Republican Lies category archive

Chris Matthews grills Republican Party Chairman Rhince Priebus on the anti-intellectualism and hypocrisy of the Republican Party.

Priebus’s ability to avoid giving direct answers to direct questions is awe-inspiring.

Excerpt:

“Do you have a hard time with the fact that your party left this country in wreckage?” Matthews said. “…You think you left this bed all made for him.”

Via Bob Cesca.

Watch Thom Hartmann engage two right-wing mouthpieces and decide who has the facts.

Facing South reports on the fraudsters:

After signing a photo ID bill in May, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) attempted to allay fears of voter disenfranchisement by promising to personally shuttle those without ID cards to offices where they could get them. As she told a local Fox affiliate:

Find me those people that think that this is invading their rights, and I will go take them to the DMV myself and help them get that picture ID.

Think Progress did a quick calculation of what the governor’s ID taxi service might involve. With about 178,000 eligible S.C. voters lacking ID cards, they estimated it would take Gov. Haley more than seven years in driving time to get everyone processed — “assuming there’s no traffic.”

You can guess how that promise turned out:

Voter Fraud on Koch:

From the write-up:

(T)he Koch-funded Astroturf group Americans for Prosperity is reaching into their bag of dirty tricks to keep their buddies in power at any cost. The group is sending what look like absentee ballots – but with late return dates written on them – to trick Democratic voters in two districts where Republicans are facing recall.

The Rude One dissects wingnut coverage of a news story, then points out the obvious:

They lie, this awful, destructive right wing. Often. And repeatedly. And they lie with such brazenness and bravado that it’s as if lies are steel-toed boots kicking in the teeth of truth. How do you fight that?

Details of his research (and lots of rudeness) at the link.

Thom Hartmann explains how Truman was correct (Truman is at the very end) as he dicusses “the question Republicans can’t answer”:

This is short, and it is must-listen.

Via C&L, which has examples of voter disenfranchisement efforts in Wisconsin.

Nickolas Kristof recounts the dangers of Teabagger insanity and ignorance (one of those is bad enough; the two together are mighty dangerous) on financial policy (emphasis added):

We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.

(snip list of the practical effects of default)

. . . Republican zeal to lower debts could result in increased interest expenses and higher debts. Their mania to save taxpayers could cost taxpayers. That suggests not governance so much as fanaticism.

More broadly, a default would leave America a global laughingstock. Our “soft power,” our promotion of democracy around the world, and our influence would all take a hit. The spectacle of paralysis in the world’s largest economy is already bewildering to many countries. If there is awe for our military prowess and delight in our movies and music, there is scorn for our political/economic management.

Read the whole thing.

Via DelawareLiberal.

More here.

“The most insidious form of fraud is people voting . . . wrong.”

Via TPM.

Thom Hartman reviews the history of predictions that Social Security and Medicare will go broke. They have been consistently wrong.

He also points out why the predictions keep coming. (Three hints: Banksters. Three-card monte. Country club memberships.)

Steven Conn, a professor at Ohio State, reviews recent economic history and then discusses the fallacy of Republican Economic Theory. He points out that, despite the Republican Party line (that’s “line” as in “pick-up,” with all the sincerity thereof) the past ten years of Republican tax cuts for the rich have led to the slowest job growth since the presidency of Herbert Hoover.

He stops short of calling it the “Big Republican Lie.”

I don’t.

A snippet:

And in all these places, we hear the same refrain: Tax cuts create jobs! But clearly, in the last decade, they haven’t – unless you’re looking for work in China.

Remember that old definition of crazy? It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Given the evidence at hand, the Republican position on taxes – that if we keep moving money from the middle class to the rich, we’ll all benefit – starts to sound pretty crazy to me.

Follow the link. The article is worth the three minutes it takes to read.

Chauncey DeVega comments on the GOP’s new BBFF Herman Cain’s role as “the complexion for the protection” of the teabagger right:

Via Kiko’s House.

Lies and lying liars dept.

Via Balloon Juice.

Via Jack and Jill Politics.

Not who you think they are. Steve Chapman discusses this in the Chicago Tribune. A nugget:

Most GOP candidates, however, don’t care (about climate change–ed.). Rick Santorum dismisses such claims as “junk science.” Michele Bachmann derides the notion that carbon dioxide could be harmful. Tim Pawlenty’s campaign declined to answer when asked if he agrees with Romney.

During last year’s campaign, the National Journal reported, “Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect.” (The exception: Mark Kirk of Illinois.)

Conservatives fear liberals will use climate change to justify heavy-handed intrusive regulation and wasteful subsidies, and they are right to worry. But that’s no excuse for pretending global warming is a myth or refusing to do anything about it. It’s an argument for devising cost-effective, market-based remedies that minimize bureaucratic control.

If today’s Republican attitude had prevailed four decades ago, Americans would not have such vital measures as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Then, many people worried that environmentalism would strangle economic growth and personal freedom. But both have survived and even flourished.

Conservatives once understood that corporations are not entitled to foul the environment, any more than individuals have the right to dump garbage in the street.

I remember my first trip to Los Angeles, thirty years ago.

The sky was a glorious orange; from my hotel in Little Toyko, I could barely see Dodger Stadium about two miles away; breathing was an exercise in filtering hazardous waste from each breath. At the time I lived in northern Virginia, where we had regular pollution alerts and orange skies of our own.

It’s much better now, though from Burbank in the hills east of downtown L. A., you can sometimes see the orange cloud down in the valley.

Republicans clearly long for those good old days when you couldn’t breathe air in Pittsburgh or eat fish pulled from the Delaware River (well, actually, you probably still shouldn’t [pdf], but it’s better than it used to be).

Chancey DeVega has an penetrating, acerbic review of the Teabagger circus Republican debate in New Hamphire the other evening. I commend it to your attention.

A nugget:

The Tea Party GOP wants to make her (Ayn Rand’s–ed.) dystopian vision of unregulated free markets and a further maldistribution of wealth upward into America’s salvation. In total (and despite three decades of evidence to the contrary), the Great Recession will be cured by less regulation and not more, where the State gives more resources to those with the most with the hope that they will somehow “trickle down” to the rest of us. Please don’t pee on my head and tell me that it is raining.