Republican Lies category archive

More here.

Cartoon via BartCop.

On the Media takes out the Shona Holmes story–and story is the right word:

“It just makes me angry that the media isn’t looking into this any more. It wasn’t hard for me to find out what she actually had . . .”

Read the transcript here or listen below:

If there can be any such thing as an unAmerican activity, I nominate suborning lies. It’s a Republican thing.

Via Balloon Juice, where John Cole adds this comment:

The reason Republicans in DC are running from some guy on the street asking them whether or not Obama is an American citizen is because they have spent the last thirty years cultivating a base of insane crazy people, and while they may escape a reporter from FDL, they can’t escape the base.

After all, he’s got health care.

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The other day, I heard a caller to a radio show predict that getting to the bottom of the current rumors of a CIA assassination program would be like peeling an onion.

He based that, he said, on his experience as a contractor in Central America some years ago. Contracted to do what, he would not say. But I know from acquaintances of mine who were in Central America in that period that a lot of stuff that we never heard of went on during “drug interdictions” in Central America.

First, he predicted, we would learn that it was authorized to work in a wider field than currently reported.

Next, he predicted, we would learn that it wasn’t just in the planning stages. Rather, it had been “operationalized.”

Next, he predicted, we would learn that, not only had it been operationalized, it had actually assassinated people.

Then, he predicted, we would find that, not only had it assassinated people, but that it had assassinated the wrong people. For the wrong reasons.

Well, we’ve reached step one:

Reporter Joby Warrick added: “The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.”

This revelation, buried in paragraph 12 of the Post’s report, was highlighted by Talking Points Memo’s Zachary Roth later in the afternoon.

“‘No geographical limitations’ presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone — including even the US itself,” he opined. “And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question.”

Something the Dog Said at the Great Orange Satan. It illustrates the laughable curve scam as well as anything I’ve seen (emphasis added):

In the 50’s we had 24 graduated brackets. This allowed a higher and higher level of tax up to the 90% at $300,000 and above. Which makes plenty of sense, when you think about the fact the lowest bracket when from $0 to only $2000 and was at 22.2%. Everyone in the nation was paying to fund the cost of our war and our debt, as a nation should do, but everyone was paying according the amount of money they earned. Just to give you a little idea of how much $300,000 was in the ‘50’s it would be equivalent to $6,390,000 (using a nominal GDP per capita calculation, you can find it here).The Dog has to ask is there anyone out there who does not think people who make 6.3 million a year of more should not pay something above 50% on the money over that level?

Today we have only five tax brackets and they top out at 35% at 372,000.

Those who would accept a society’s benefits without paying their fair share–oh, never mind.

What Digby said:

Liberals who follow politics closely are no doubt disoriented to see someone as accomplished as Sonia Sotomayor attacked for being a bullying racist by a bunch of racist bullies, but I think we should probably get a grip and understand that this is what racism looks like in 2009. The assertion of white male privilege through whining victimization is one of the main ways it will be manifested going forward. And it’s quite effective — it appeals to people’s own hidden prejudices in a way that doesn’t socially embarrass them and allows them to use fairness as a weapon, which is a great relief to bigots who have been on the defensive for decades.

But it’s important to remind good people who are possible recruits to the reverse discrimination claims that the world is still overwhelmingly run by wealthy white men and any protestation that they need affirmative action is laughable. The day that they become a minority in positions of leadership to the same extent that women are today, despite being half the population, is the day I will become sympathetic to the cries of unfairness coming from wealthy, white conservatives. Until then, all this rending of garments over a Latina being “biased” sounds suspiciously like Scarlett O’Hara’s lady friends chattering nervously about the slaves getting uppity.

There’s more at the link.

Media Matters:

In covering the Ricci case, reversing Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s decision, media should not promote the myth that the reversal represents a “historic rebuke” or that Sotomayor’s Supreme Court reversal rate is “high.”

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court does not accept cases unless it thinks there is a legal issue worthy of consideration. This means that any case it accepts has a good chance of being reversed.

Further down the page, see the bottom line (emphasis added):

. . . it also would not be unprecedented for the court to reverse a ruling reached by a justice before his or her elevation to the Supreme Court. As an appeals court judge, Chief Justice John Roberts was a member of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which, in its July 2005 unanimous ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, alBaswed a military commission to try Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantánamo Bay detainee.

Roberts was confirmed as chief justice several months later, in September 2005. Then, in 2006, the Supreme Court reversed the circuit court’s decision on a 5-3 ruling.

Moreover, contrary to the myth that it is unusual for the Supreme Court to reverse federal appellate court decisions, data compiled by SCOTUSblog since 2004 show that the Supreme Court has reversed more than 67 percent of the federal appeals court cases it considered each year, except 2007, when it reversed federal appeals court cases 61 percent of the time.

The United States can, from time to time, influence events in other countries, though the Bush Reign of Error has greatly weakened that influence.

One of the delusions of wingnut thinking is that the United States can somehow control–not influence, control–the world and every little thing that happens therein.

It can’t.

Winguttery is as absurb as Communism in its faith that Utopia will come simply because its theory says that Utopia will come. It is absurd as my asserting that a flower will grow out of my head simply because I believe a flower will grow out of my head. Even granting that my head my be full of manure, it still ain’t growing no flowers (at least not while I am alive to see them). For the very theory is flowed, being based on postulates that just ain’t so.

Witnesseth the delusion (follow the link for video):

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused Barack Obama on Tuesday of allowing violence in Iran to get out of hand by not speaking out against the country’s leadership earlier.

What is happening in Iran is internal to Iran.

My first boss, Denny, who was a good boss, used to say that his own first boss was the best teacher he ever had.

Whenever Denny faced a quandary, he considered what his first boss would have done and did the exact opposite, leading to this analogy:

Republican Party:Decisions::Denny’s First Boss:Denny

Aside: I know what it feels like to be wrong; I’ve been wrong many times. But to know what it feels like to be wrong all the time and still be certain you’re right? Ask a wingnut.

Read it here.

The clowns continue to parade.

Paul Krugman misplet “conservative media.” It’s “conservative Medea”:

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren’t very different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the “main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” putting him in a three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh peddles conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that fears over swine flu were being hyped “to get people to respond to government orders” — that’s a case of the conservative media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe.

See scary black man. Shoot country in foot.

Via Susie.

Receivers of the decorative wingnut tassels:

Via the Great Orange Satan.

In reponse to wingnut ignorance, TPM is compiling a list of successful unionized US companies.

Check it out.

The Laffable Curve:

Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

But, remember, the rich got richer. All the social issue stuff was a cover for making that happen.

Not that I’m cynical or anything. No, I’m just observant.

Skippy explains.

“Scott sought to turn Columbia into the McDonalds of the health care industry.”

Now he is spokesperson for the status quo. Wonder why?

Listen up.

Via the Great Orange Satan.

John Cole on Republican political strategy:

It kills me that anyone looking back at the wreckage of the last eight years who says “Wow. That didn’t work out too well” is considered a liberal. Not in favor of torture? LIBERAL! Not in favor of disastrous foreign policy? LIBERAL! Not in favor of the unitary executive? LIBERAL!

And I’m serious. Looking at the silly commercials the RNC keeps releasing, the idiotic motions to rename the Democratic party, and the rest of the nonsense they are doing, they don’t seem content to sit back and watch the world go by or build the base. They seem intent on doing whatever they can to piss off “liberals,” which includes everyone on the planet who may or may not have had Dijon mustard on a sandwich.

A friend of mine today, whose disdain for contemporary Republican ideology, if anything, exceeds mine, asked me (this is a paraphrase), “What happened to the Republican Party of our youth? Why has the Republican Party become so full of hate?”

The only answer I could hazard was,

Fear. Fear of change. Fear of black folks. Fear of Mexicans. Fear of Guatemalans. Fear of homosexuals. Fear of anything that’s not whitebread Ozzie and Harriet made-for-TV America.

Fear of the Big Wide World.