Republican Lies category archive
Old Tea, New Bags 0
Tennessee Teabaggers want to whitewash (you will pardon the expression) slavery.
These folks are nuts.
Birthwrongs 0
Steve Chapman, writing in the Chicago Tribune, takes a look at the current rage in Wingnut World–repealing the citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. He skewers the paranoid race-baiting that underlies that effort, including the bizarre fears of Manchurian pregnancies. A nugget:
Sure they are, congressman. And while they’re here, they’re putting LSD in the water supply. Unfortunately, the fear of “anchor babies,” as they are known among anti-immigration activists, is spawning not only weird fantasies but also actual legislation.
Non-Starters 0
A letter writer in Florida has suggests that Republicans turn the table on President Obama:
How the GOP can reach out to President Barack Obama.
Stop shouting lies about his birthplace and trying to convince the American people that he was born in Kenya and is a Muslim (not that there is anything wrong with being a Muslim).
Admit the truth that the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress was responsible for the breakdown of the financial markets that caused this economic downturn.
Stop spreading falsehoods about the reforms to health care.
Not holding my breath.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
The confluence of racist lies and gunnuttery: School board member decides to attend meetings backing heat. Wonder whether this leads to a new meaning for the expression, “a heated discussion.”
Brett Reese is alleged to have left a voice-mail message for KFKA-AM 1310 owner Justin Sasso on Wednesday in which he threatened a “shootout” if Sasso did not stop his advertising reps from calling on businesses that underwrite Reese’s noncommercial station, KELS-FM 104.7, the complaint said.
(snip)
Critics, including other members of the school board, have said the letter was originally written by white supremacists.
A statement from KFKA said Reese’s letter has been reviewed multiple times by historians, who have labeled it, at best, “full of ‘half truths.’ “
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Fact Check dot org investigates:
Lee: And to the contrary, I think there is abundant research suggesting that in cities where more people own guns, the crime rate, especially the murder rate actually goes down.
That’s not true.
Follow the link for the full report.
Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right (Updated) 0
I received an email today from one of my leftie mailing lists with the subject line
Tell Sarah Palin: Violent threats have consequences.
You may recall that many found Sarah Palin’s gun sight graphic deplorable when it was first published.
It was indeed crude, rude, stupid, combative, tasteless, and silly all wrapped up in one cute little ball of yarn-spinning (much like Palin herself).
But it was not a threat.
Calling it one detracts from the larger problem and requires ridicule, for it clouds the issue, which is this:
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Adherents of the right wing quickly and casually label those with whom they disagree as traitorous, treasonous, and unAmerican (as well as perverted, godless, and whatever else pops up in their Roget’s–no insult is beyond their pale).
Rightwingers cannot brook disagreement. Anyone who disagrees with them becomes not just an opponent, but also their and the country’s enemy. Once someone is so labeled, he or she becomes fair game for whatever loony-toon decides that the violent rhetoric of the right is not rhetoric, but a call to action.
You seldom hear violent rhetoric from the mainstream left (such as it is). As Bob Cesca pointed out this morning:
Furthermore, the rightwing’s tactics of hate militate against reason and compromise.
After all, one cannot reason with a traitor, can one? If one’s political opponent is ipso facto a traitor, simply because he or she opposes you, conciliation becomes impossible.
So, why do they do it?
The facts lean left.
Fear and hate obscure facts. Fear and hate is what they got.
Addendum:
I did not expect to have an update for this post, but I really must direct you to Field’s remarks.
Shorter Scalia: Women Don’t Count 0
Ann Woolner, writing at Bloomberg, explains. A nugget:
When the Amendment was written, “Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant,” Scalia said.
Here we have a perfect example of what’s so very wrong about so-called originalism, the theory Scalia claims to follow. The idea is that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its authors’ original intent, no changes allowed.
The 14th Amendment wasn’t meant to protect women, religious minorities, ethnic groups, and certainly not homosexuals. Written after the Civil War, its single aim was legal rights for newly freed slaves.
Newly freed MALE slaves, that is.
The leopard reveals his spots.
“Originalism” is to the law what the Laughable Curve is to economics: Fancy dress clothes for sacrificing the public good to the benefit of the privileged.
Home, Home on Derange 0
Bob Cesca reports.
Remembrance of Things Past (Updated) 0
Haley Barbour may not remember Jim Crow, but Mike Littwin of the Denver Post does.
If you weren’t there or have that new ailment, “amnesia Barbour barbarica, read his reminiscence. A memory from 1962:
When she asked which side I was taking, I said, innocently, “I’m pro-integration.”
“How would your mother like it,” she said, and I find it stunning even today, “if you brought home a little colored girl?”
Afterthought:
Oppression is seldom oppressive to the oppressor.
Addendum:
Shaun Mullen considers those who still don the gray and take to the barricades, though they do it today with pen, not with bayonet. A nugget:
Read the whole thing.
Sharia Hysteria 0
Leonard Pitts in the Chicago Tribune:
We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of America’s mind.
It was last seen last month in Oklahoma. There, voters gave emphatic approval to a measure outlawing the use of Shariah law — a strict and often brutal interpretation of Islamic religious strictures — in state courts. Shariah is not known to be a problem in Oklahoma, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the United States, something even the bill’s backers concede. But, said the initiative’s sponsor, then-Republican state Rep. Rex Duncan, why wait?
Of course, by that reasoning, one can also justify laws regulating time travel, flying cars and pink unicorns pooping in public parks. Should we assume Oklahoma legislators are hard at work on laws to restrict these and other non-existent troubles?
It’s called the politics of hate.
It’s what the rightwing does best.
Birthing Tilted Windmills (Updated) 0
This is silly.
And the reason it’s silly is that the governor of Hawaii could show a videotape of the live birth and the loonies on the right would claim it had been doctored.
Abercrombie was a friend of Obama’s parents and knew him as a child, and is deeply troubled by the effort to cast doubt on the president’s citizenship.
Loons and whackjobs will not be persuaded by evidence.
Addendum, Later That Afternoon:
Andy Borowitz satirizes the silly:
Ms. Taitz said that she did a thorough title search on the islands and has concluded that rather than being a U.S. state, “the islands of Hawaii appear to be colonies of Kenya.”
Update from the Phony War on Christmas 0
Zombie lies never die, American Red Cross version:
Atrios, talking about something else, puts the phony war on Christmas in a nutshell:
Bushonomics, Illustrated 0
Isn’t it just wonderful how Republicans want to give us more of what brought us this?
Click for a larger image
Via Atrios.
Birchers Bark 0
On Radio Times, historian Sean Wilentz traces the lineage of Glenn Beck to the John Birch Society and analyzes his smoke-and-mirror trickery.
From the transcript:
It’s a version of history that demonizes the Progressive era, particularly Woodrow Wilson, sees it as the beginnings of America’s going down the road to totalitarianism, which ends, in Beck’s version, with Barack Obama.
It’s a version of history that is beyond skewed. One history professor said that, you know, it’s not worth a pitcher of warm spit. But of course, that’s what Beck expects us to say. He lives in a kind of, you know, Alice in Wonderland world, where if people who actually know the history say what he’s teaching is junk, he says that’s because you’re trying to hide the truth.
Follow the link above to read the transcript.
Follow this link to read the summary, listen to the show, or download the podcast.
Dick Destiny has more on the lunacy.
Conventional Wisdom May Be Conventional, but It Is Seldom Wisdom 0
Eight false facts lies accepted as facts by Very Serious People, via Tom. Note how many of them form part of the basis of teabaggery.
2. President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy. Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3. President Obama bailed out the banks. Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4. The stimulus didn’t work. Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5. Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts. Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6. Health care reform costs $1 trillion. Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc. Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8. Government spending takes money out of the economy. Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.