Republican Lies category archive

And it grows up bent.

Behind this is a truth: The facts of history do not list to the far right. Wingnuts recognize this, so they manufacture their own facts, such as their bogus idea that the Founders created the United States as a Christian nation.

As they wrote Constitution when the European religious wars of the Reformation were recent history; had lived, many of them, obligated under British rule to support an established church; and witnessed persons persecuted by the British colonial rulers because of their religious beliefs, the last thing the Founders wanted was to establish a church. Hence, the establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment.

Manufactured facts have the troubling characteristic of not being factual.

There is another word for manufactured facts which are not factual.

Lies.

H/T Karen for the link.

Tom Levinson explicates the “GOP War on Knowledge” which seeks to discredit opponents by claiming that they are too smart, too knowledgeable, too grounded in reality:

More broadly, the game now is to paint one side — the side that did not author our current disaster — as a hopelessly out of touch and inherently incapable group of impractical experts, folks who know only theory and have none of the so-called common sense needed to recognize that the succour of the rich and powerful is the alpha and omega of sound policy. It’s Spiro Agnew updated for the digital age, with the pointed headed intellectuals now turned into mindless social engineers recrafting America to match some abstract (probably French) social theory.

Read the whole thing.

(Aside: Hofstadter was right.)

A commenter to this post said:

What they need to do is stop the direct to consumer advertising, like all the other countries, with the exception of New Zealand.

I agree.

The advertisements for prescription drugs directed at private citizens put a lie to the theory that market forces will encourage businesses to act morally (remember that private citizens cannot purchase prescriptions drugs without a prescription; all they can do is pester their doctors for prescriptions).

Market forces encourage business to sell more stuff using any means possible.

For example.

Note that this article talks about the FDA’s failure to regulate. If the FDA is failing to regulate (and it is), it is not because the persons who work there don’t care.

It’s because 30 years of Republican Economic Theory and Faith in the Fee Hand of the Market have spayed the FDA.

The FDA is a gelding, as are most other regulatory agencies.

Republicans, under the tutelage of their corporate masters, have made it so.

E. J. Dionne, musing over a conversation he had with Joe Biden:

For Republicans, American power is rooted largely in military might and showing a tough and resolute face to the world. They would rely on tax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth.

Obama, Biden, and the Democrats, on the other hand, believe that American power depends ultimately on the American economy and that government has an essential role to play in fostering the next generation of growth.

The question: Should TR’s “bully pulpit” be used to bully or to lead?

After selling the US economy to the highest bidder, eroding the middle class, pursuing a bubble machine that would have made Lawrence Welk jealous, the Republican prescription for improving things: More of the same.

The first public debate Thursday night of the six Republicans seeking the GOP nomination to run for Congress against Glenn Nye was less about their differences than their shared views that the federal government has to shrink and the U.S. has to become energy independent.

Their messages varied, but all carried the same theme – less government interference.

This is politics from the “To hell with facts and experience; if I believe it, therefore it must be true” brigade.

If these folks were in charge of education, we’d still be attributing fire to phlogistan.

Oh, wait.

Read more »

Aside: We need a new term for a political scandal to replace “gate.” It’s shopworn. How about “Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie,” as in “climategreatandgloriouspatrioticwarforalie.”

Fact Check dot org takes a look at that email so-called scandal. Shorter version of the analysis: Any attempt to turn it into a scandal is a load of hooey.

But, then again, it’s been carried by our favorite load of hooey carriers from the beginning. Probably something to do with their fossil fuel stocks . . . .

Truman was correct, you know: The Republican Party, now and ever the Party of Privilege.

Rules are for the rest of us:

Republicans went on the attack yesterday as the House opened floor debate on a sweeping package of new rules for Wall Street banks and traders, calling the legislation an unwarranted intrusion by government that will stifle economic recovery and do more harm than good.

We have seen the results of Republican Economic Theory. Yet they cling to it.

One does have to admire in a perverse way their committed refusal to learn from or admit to their mistakes.

A triumph of marketing over reality, like all of Republicanism, a combination of ideology and wishful thinking, devoid of facts:

Reagan devoted billions in spending to new military hardware and to researching weapons systems, including his Star Wars missile shield, a program that he endorsed in March of 1983. In his 2008 book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz explained how Reagan’s first budget marked a sharp turn in the nation’s economic direction: “wealth would be redistributed toward the wealthy, while the government would be starved of funds to meet non-military needs.” The exploding budget deficits that resulted were among Reagan’s most significant legacies. In 1980, the national debt stood at $994 billion; by 1989, it had nearly tripled to $2.8 trillion. Wilentz puts the blame squarely on Reagan’s program to reduce taxes while increasing the defense budget and failing to curb government’s growth beyond the social programs, which in any case weren’t a large part of the budget. While “the administration and its supporters were quick to blame a spendthrift Congress” for the deficits, Wilentz writes, “the administration itself (which never submitted a balanced budget) was chiefly responsible,” because incoming federal tax revenues in the 1980s “came nowhere near the levels required to cover the immense new outlays on the military.”</blockquote>

Ground yourself in reality. Read the whole thing.

November 25, 2009 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Republican Lies | Bookmark this post

Fact Check dot org deconstructs the ravings of the Chamber of Commerce against health care reform. Follow the link for the full analysis:

Would the House-passed health care bill make a tough economy worse and wipe out more jobs, as claimed in a TV ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?

Or would it help small business and encourage economic growth, as claimed in an ad sponsored by a big labor union and other supporters of federal efforts to expand health insurance coverage?

Who’s right? Will jobs be lost as businesses are required to cover their employees? Or will the economy, and jobs picture, brighten as almost all Americans acquire health insurance?

The truth is the House legislation would likely have a “small” effect on jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A RAND Corp. expert says the job loss would be “quite minimal.” A third estimate puts the job loss at several hundred thousand low-wage jobs, or well under one-half of 1 percent of all jobs. Furthermore, the bill doesn’t kick in until the year 2013, and by then the economy is expected to be much improved, with unemployment down to 5.8 percent according to CBO’s projections.

It is all about their country club memberships.

Brad Friedman in the Guardian:

And if anybody needed more evidence that the White House is absolutely right about Fox not being a news organisation, on Wednesday night primetime anchor Sean Hannity was forced to admit that he’d falsified footage of a recent Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill. When the attendance wasn’t large enough to give the impression of the angry Republican mobs Hannity might have hoped for, he and fellow Republican Michele Bachmann told viewers the crowd was tens of thousands of angry voters larger than it actually was while showing two-month-old footage from a completely different rally to underscore their point.

He goes on the point out, as have others, that videos don’t edit themselves and that Hannity’s claim that the error was “inadvertent” is–what’s the word?–laughably preposterous.

The Associated Press documents the lies in her book.

Okay, let’s be kind. Delusions.

Liar or nutcase? Nutcase liar? Lying nutcase? Inquiring minds want to know.

AP link via the Booman.

See the preceding post. The offense rests.

Via TPM.

Addendum:

Will Bunch, the Next Day (emphasis added):

For Fox News, which has stepped up its partisan cheerleading for the right wing since Barack Obama became president, size — of anti-administration protests, that is — matter. And when they run misleading footage to make a conservative rally appear to be much, much better attended than it really was, that accomplishes several things. It fires up the right-wing base — the people that GOP wants to get rowdy at town hall meetings or flood congressional phone lines. And the bogus report also pressures wavering lawmakers, especially those centrist Democrats looking for any excuse not to support health care reform. Using doctored footage to make a point is not news. It’s propaganda, and in America that makes it a serious matter, indeed.

. . . will re-form the status quo into something worse than it already it is:

And it is already pretty bad:

Americans are more likely than people in 10 other countries to have trouble getting medical treatment because of insurance restrictions or cost, an international survey of primary care doctors released on Wednesday found.

While the United States spends more than twice as much as other developed countries on healthcare, it lags well behind in key measures of quality, the annual survey found.

Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary analysis finds: It won’t cost as much as some other proposals and it pretty much accomplishes nothing.

The proposal would reduce the rolls of the uninsured by about 3 million in 2019, leaving about 52 million people without medical coverage, the CBO said. Also, the CBO said that premiums for some people, mostly the less healthy, would go up, feeding into Democratic criticisms that the Republican plan would allow insurers to “cherry pick” and enroll healthier, less costly people.

It will reform the status quo into the status quo antiquated.

But that’s what can be expected from those who think of the 1950s as some kind of golden age.

Any fool can file a lawsuit.

It is a one of the glories of American jurisprudence.

Fortunately, the law does not take kindly to fools.

A federal judge today (October 29) dismissed a lawsuit brought by individuals claiming that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, as a result, does not meet the qualifications to be president. Along with bouncing the lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter eviscerated the controversial lawyer representing the “birthers” who sued Obama. In a 30-page order filed today, Carter stated that he was “deeply concerned” that attorney Orly Taitz “may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this court.”

The inevitable result.

John McQuaid writes at the Guardian:

Clearly “news” is not what Fox is about. Republican media strategist Roger Ailes, the network’s founder and architect, has run a brilliant rhetorical game from the start: Fox adopts the outward forms of the establishment US media and pretends to hew to its standards – in order to undermine those very things. Fox claims to give its viewers the straight story, while proclaiming it’s the New York Times and CBS that are really biased.

Shaun Mullen has more.

Inevitable result:

Mendacity in Virginia.

Bob McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor and graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regents University, makes stuff up. It is a Republican tradition.

From Fact Check dot org (emphasis added). Follow the link for the full analysis:

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell’s new ad claims that Democrat Creigh Deeds’ policies would bring $7,800 in higher taxes over four years for Virginia households. The ad would be devastating, if it were true.

The rewards of failure in American politics is continued income. Frank Rich in the Toimes:

Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess — even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.

Making an error, very human.

Persisting in error, guaranteed Sunday network talk time.

Via John at Eschaton.