Republican Lies category archive
Gun Nuttery 1
Out of ammo:
The scene at Gun City is playing out across the U.S. as record gun sales deplete stocks from ammunition makers Alliant Techsystems Inc. and Olin Corp. Demand for firearms is being driven in part by concern that U.S. President Barack Obama may impose new controls, said Matt Rice, a spokesman for Springfield, Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.
Where these folks got the notion that their precious warm guns are in danger is beyond the rational.
Dueling with Ghosts 0
The spirit of McCarthyism is alive and well in Wingnuttia:
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.
“Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists,” Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.
Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.
Have they no shame?
Fleeing 0
Some Republican is yammering away on Marconi’s Magic Box. It sent me fleeing to the porch to escape the lies and hypocrisy.
Doddering 0
From FactCheck dot org:
The public record shows Dodd authored an amendment that would have prevented “any bonus” being paid to top executives of firms getting bailout money. It was the White House and the Treasury Department that insisted Dodd’s amendment be watered down to apply only to bonuses paid under agreements signed in the past five weeks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken public responsibility for that.
We lay out the full story in our Analysis sectiom.
(Yeah, I know the category for the post is a redundancy.)
No Room at the End 0
The Sunday Breakfast Mission is overwhelmed by ReagoBushonomics (emphasis added):
But that capacity is far outstripped by the need. In January and February alone, the shelter had to turn away 103 men, 76 women and 73 children — more people than went through its doors in all of 2008.
It’s the only shelter in Sussex County that accepts children, said Program Director Michele Stewart.
The office gets 15 to 20 calls a day, and most get the same answer.
“We don’t have space,” Morole says flatly, and sadly. “The way the economy has turned, it has increased. The kind of help people want has changed.”
Please Stop the Lies 0
John Cole surveys a new batch.
Steve Disects the Spin 0
I’m not going to try to improve on this on how the same story gets spun in opposite ways.
Words matter. Words can hide or conceal reveal the truth.
Making Stuff Up 0
The Booman documents the facts.
The Cost of Perpetuating Ignorance 2
Steve sums up the successes of “abstinence only” sex education:
Later on, he has this quotation from the news story that prompted his post.
“Believe it or not, kids today get less information in schools about birth control than their parents did,” Columbia University professor Leslie M. Kantor said.
If they are getting less information than I did, they are truly in deep yoghurt. Or Jello. Or something.
Too Stupid for Words 0
And quite willing to pander.
Body Count 0
The Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq.
From the Left Shue:
Truth in Spending 0
Honest(er) accounting:
(snip)
“The president prefers to tell the truth,” he (Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget–ed.) said, “rather than make the numbers look better by pretending.”
You can’t deal with stuff that you can’t see.
Still Making Stuff Up 0
It’s a Republican thing. They dumped the country down the toilet, got nothing on their side, so they return to their tried-and-true tactic: Making stuff up.
From FactCheck dot org (emphasis added):
- Rep. Tom Price of Georgia says the measure creates “a national health care rationing board.” Not true. What it creates is a council to coordinate research into which treatments work best, and are most effective for the money. And in fact, the new law states quite specifically that the council has no power to “mandate coverage” and that its recommendations are not to be construed as “clinical guidelines for … treatment.
”
- Betsy McCaughey, a Republican former lieutenant governor of New York, claims that the bill creates a “new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.” Not true. The office was created in 2004 by President Bush. McCaughey also says the office “will monitor treatments” and ” ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions.” But that’s nothing new. Bush’s initiative called for creating a health IT system to transmit information to “guide medical decisions.”
Critics of comparative effectiveness research, which the government has been funding for decades, claim that it will lead to treatment being approved or denied based on costs. Proponents say it will improve the quality of care and can, in some cases, show that more costly treatments aren’t as effective as less expensive alternatives.
We can’t predict what will happen in the future, but we can say that several claims being made about the impact of the bill are simply opinions being passed off as facts.
“. . . opinions being passed off as facts.”
Yeah.
Right.
There’s a nice short pithy word for opinions passed off as facts.
How To Respond to a Lie (Updated) 3
Backstory: The Republican myth that autoworkers make $70.00 an hour was created by taking the full personnel costs of the United States unionized auto manufacturers, including all retiree costs (such as pensions and health care negotiated in good faith) and dividing it by the number of active non-exempt employees.
The actual take home pay of an autoworker is less than half that figure on an hourly basis or slightly more than $61,000 a year without overtime.
In other words, the $70.00 per hour thing is a lie.
The lie distracts persons from the vision of old folks losing the retirement homes and health care which they worked honestly to earn. Yes, earn. It pollutes policy discourse while demonizing working persons.
Like any good lie, it has a very Nixonian plausible deniability.
But it’s still a lie.
Here is how to respond to a lie:
And This Surprises Us How? 0
It’s a long report, worth the seven or eight minutes it takes to read it. From TPM Muckraker:
In large part because of that noncooperation, Justice Department officials sought criminal prosecutors in at least two cases so far to take over their investigations so that they can compel the testimony of many of those officials to testify through the use of a federal grand jury.
When All You Believe in Is Hammers 0
Everything is a nail.
Of course, there is other stuff in the tool kit besides a hammer. There’re pliers and wrenches and Allen keys and screwdrivers and splining tools and all sorts of neat things.
But Republicans don’t believe in them. Therefore those implements do not exist.
Harold Meyerson on the Republican Party’s belief that cutting taxes for the rich is The One True Faith (emphasis added):
Over There 0
Tom Ricks on Fresh Air discussing the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq:
Follow the link to listen to the interview.
“. . . they have failed” 0
The Republican motto seems to be “go wit’ what brung ya.” But look where it brung ya, for heaven’s sakes.
Failed war, homelessness, hopelessness, torture, unparalled greed, unmatched incompetence, and venality (I could go on).
No nitpicking. Cut to the chase.
Do you honestly want more of what we’ve had for the past eight years?
We’re not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that in eight short years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can’t embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face, while ignoring critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, the soaring cost of health care, failing schools and crumbling bridges, roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV – if you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction.
No one with any sense can expect anyone to be perfect.
But, Dear God, I would just settle for normal.
We haven’t seen that in national governance since the Republican Party put its contract on America (and, boy, did they ever!)
Addendum:
The Booman’s terminology is somewhat more temperate than mine.
Survival of the Fattest 3
Pay attention to their actions; ignore their words.
The Republican definition of “fiscal responsibility” is “make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
Colbert King:
Well, they are back with another howler — and a reminder why the GOP is no longer the nation’s dominant political party.
This week, House Republicans voted in lock step against President Obama’s economic stimulus package, using as one excuse their deep concern about the impact of government spending on the future debt burden of America’s “children and grandchildren.”
(snip)
In their slavish devotion to Hooverism, today’s Republicans are repeating the mistakes that banished their party to the political wilderness in the ’30s.
Boehner and his colleagues should worry less about what today’s children and grandchildren will inherit from an Obama administration and spend more time trying to undo the present-day lessons taught by business chieftains, to wit, that:
- Need and greed are synonymous. (How else do they give themselves $20 billion in bonuses as their companies sink in a sea of red ink?)
- Government bailouts trump creating and saving jobs.
- Business tax credits are superior to investment in programs that repair holes in the social safety net.