Republican Lies category archive

Chris Busby reflects of the media’s inability to dig out from under Donald Trump’s blizzard of lies. A snippet:

Trump’s endless parade of lies, half-truths and slander put the media in an awkward position. Writing in The New Yorker this week, Adam Gopnik observed that “Trump’s lies arrive with such rapidity that before one can be refuted a new one comes to take its place. … The media eventually moves on, shrugging helplessly, to the next lie. … If the lies are bizarre enough and frequent enough, they provoke little more than a nervous giggle and a cry of ‘Well, guess he’s changed the rules!’”

From where I sit, the broadcast media doesn’t even try to keep up. Print media is a little better.

They don’t report, not any more. They just repeat.

Republican Voter ID laws were a con from the git-go (we knew that, of course), and the Republicans supporting them knew they were a con (we were certain of that also, and now certainty becomes knowledge). From AmericaBLOG:

Todd Albaugh, former chief of staff to a Republican state senator in Wisconsin, testified in federal court yesterday that his state’s voter ID law was passed in order to make it more difficult for Democrats to win elections.

According to Allbaugh, as reported by the Wisconsin State Journal, “State Sen. Mary Lazich, urging fellow Republican senators to enact a voter ID requirement in a closed-door meeting in 2011, told her colleagues to consider its impact in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and the state’s college campuses” and “Congressman Glenn Grothman, serving at that time as a state senator, said in the same meeting that he supported voter ID because it would help Republicans win elections.” Allbaugh also quoted Grothman as saying in a closed-door meeting with his Republican colleagues that “What I’m concerned about here is winning,” with respect to his justification for voting in favor of the law.

I’m not so certain as Wasserman is about the “flip,” gaming electronic voter machines, but we have already seen that Republican find no trick is too low. The “strip” is well precedented.

Actually, no, it’s not.

TPM reports that a disillusioned ex-GOP staffer has confirmed that voter ID is a con and a fraud. An excerpt (emphasis added):

While Schultz, Allbaugh’s former boss, has notably spoken out against more recent restrictions on voting, he voted for the 2011 bill. According to Allbaugh, at this point in the point of meeting, Schultz brought up his own concerns with the voter ID legislation.

“He was immediately shot down by another senator who said, ‘What I am interested in is getting results here and using the power while we have it, because if the Democrats were in control they would do they same thing to us, so I want to use it while we have it,’” Allbaugh said.

Allbaugh said Schultz left the meeting in frustration after that, while he stayed behind to continue taking notes.

“It left a pit in my stomach to think that a party that I had worked for for years and years and years was literally talking and plotting to deny someone, a fellow citizen, their constitutional right,” Allbaugh said.

That, of course, surprises no one who has been paying attention. What is notable is that Republicans are starting to admit it, some inadvertently and some, as in this case, shamefacedly.

Addendum, the Next Morning:

Speaking of voter fraudsters . . . .

Via Raw Story.

Amy Fried explains that the Republican gut-out-the-vote effort is working as intended. Here’s a bit:

Take 74-year-old Johnny Randle, an African-American from Mississippi who, after he fell ill, moved to Wisconsin to live with his daughter. He has been trying to get the ID Wisconsin requires since 2011. After being denied a waiver from the birth certificate requirement and then tracking one down to provide to the state, Randle was blocked again because the middle name on his birth certificate is “Marton” but he has used “Martin” through his lifetime. His only resort is to petition Social Security to change his name or to go through a costly court proceeding to have a legal name change.

Stuff like this happens in all innocence.

All his life, my Granddaddy, who was born in the 1880s, was known as “Bailey A.” He went through life thinking that his middle names was “Ames”; indeed, we were related to an Ames family. Only when he died did we find that the middle name on his birth certificate was “Alford.”

Shorter John Romano: Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

Remember, the Clintons have been the targets of a quarter-century-long campaign of Republican disinformation, propaganda, and lies, faithfully echoed by a media which has abandoned fact-checking for “he-said-she-said” under the guise of “objectivity.” The next time you find yourself thinking, “I don’t trust Hillary,” ask yourself, “Is my conclusion based on something she has done or on something Republicans have said?”

And remember, I don’t “like” Hillary and I certainly don’t want to have a beer with her–a Scotch maybe, not a beer. Furthermore, as my two or three regular readers know, I was not a fan of her tactics in the 2008 campaign for the nomination, but I think that, in her conduct since, she has redeemed herself. I find her competent, capable, trustworthy, and electable.

(I also like Bernie. I think he is competent, capable, trustworthy, and unelectable. An avowed socialist is not electable in this country, full stop, however benign his socialism may be.)

I like to vote in the real world. Electability matters.

Image via Job’s Anger.