Category Archives: The Right

Deceptive New Romney Ad Is Key Test For Media

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The Romney campaign has released an astonishingly deceptive new ad, containing a blatant, flat-out lie. The new ad actually edits together snippets of words and sentences to make it sound as if President Obama said something he did not say, and then attacks him for saying it. How will America’s news media respond? Will the public be informed that they are being lied to? And if not, what comes next — “photos” of the President robbing a bank?

The New Romney Ad

This is the new Romney ad, intended to shock opinion leaders enough to move public scrutiny away from the problems of his tax returns, conflicting statements about when he was or was not at Bain Capital, and possible possible illegal conduct.

Here is what the President actually said: (from Monday’s post, The Latest Lie: “You Didn’t Build That”)
President Obama pointed out that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets. He said that in the United States we succeed together. Here is the full quote:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Media MUST Take Sides On This

What is the purpose and function of our news media? This country was once a self-respecting democracy and the purpose of the news media was to provide needed information to the public so We, the People could make informed decisions. And people who entered the journalism profession did so to serve as watchdogs of the public interest.
That was then. Today, many say that the purpose of the media — and everything else — is to make money for those who own it. And that means respecting and never, ever going against those with the most money. And today the ambition of many in the profession is to follow a corporate career path, maybe eventually land a major-media gig. Going down that path means playing ball, not making waves, and most of all not being branded as “anti-business.” And all that means, of course, never, ever going against those with the most money.
This new journalistic model — never, ever going against those with the most money — is what the Romney campaign is counting on today.
In this model news is supposed to be “objective” and “not take sides” as long as you take a side against those who are not “business friendly.” The new standard for news reporting is to follow a “he said, she said” storyline. And always throw in a dose of “both sides do it” false equivalence.
So what about when a big, flat-out, blatant lie — a knowing fraud with clear intent to deceive people — comes down the pike? What should journalists and news organizations do then? Should they pass the buck over to snarky “two pinnochio” pretend-fact checkers, or should they take it on and warn the public?
This ad is a key test of the direction of our national news media.
The media can’t just take the usual “one side said, the other side said” approach, because we can see what “one side” actually said and it isn’t at all what “the other side” says was said. This ad is just a lie. It is a fraud against the public and democracy for a campaign for President of the United States to do this.
So, news media, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to warn the public? Or are you going to claim that “both sides do it”?

Questions For Comments

Leave a comment, what do you think?
How should the news media respond when something like this — so far out of the boundaries of conduct for American Presidential campaigns — comes along? How should the media handle blatant lies?
Is this the most deceptive ad in Presidential campaign history?
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Need More Jobs And Less Sabotage

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Another lackluster jobs report with 80K new jobs and an unchanged 8.2% unemployment, Keep in mind that we lost 815,000 jobs in Bush’s last month, but this still is not good enough. Republicans are intentionally sabotaging job-creation efforts thinking it will help them in the coming election. How do we stop this and get things moving?
In the chart below, the red lines on the left are the Bush years. On the right are the Obama years. Those red lines just keep going down, with a job loss above 800,000 as Obama takes office. Then you see the lines shooting up — the effect of the “stimulus.” The leveling off is the effect of the program’s end — the period of Republican job sabotage.

Romney In 2006

Watch Mitt Romney in 2006 explaining why a recovery takes time:

“I came in and the jobs had been just falling right off a cliff, I came in and they kept falling for 11 months. And if you are going to suggest to me that somehow the day I got elected, somehow jobs should have immediately turned around, well that would be silly. It takes awhile to get things turned around. We were in a recession, we were losing jobs every month.”

Jobs Report

The U.S. economy has added more than 4.3 Million private sector jobs in the last 28 months, while losing
Dean Baker, writing at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Job Growth Remains Weak in June, Unemployment Steady at 8.2 Percent,

Restaurant employment grew at an average rate of 29,000 in the winter months; it has grown by just 13,000 a month over the last four months. Retail employment grew by 22,000 a month in October through January. Since January, employment has fallen by a bit more than 1,000 jobs a month.
Construction employment grew by an average of 48,000 a month from November to February. In the last four months it has fallen at an average rate of 14,000 a month. This drop is difficult to reconcile with Census data that show construction spending up 1.1 percent from February to May.
While the overall picture in the establishment data was weak, there were some positive signs. The local government sector added 4,000 jobs in June indicating that employment may be leveling off. Manufacturing added 11,000 jobs, maintaining its modest rate of growth. The health sector added just 13,000 jobs, about half the normal pace. This is likely an anomaly, but if not, it would imply a slower rate of growth of health costs.

Job Sabotage

Isaiah Poole writes in, Jobs Report: Challenge Congress To Act, Obama To Fight,

As we’ve repeated time and again, the corruption of the Obama agenda by the corporatists and anti-government ideologues in both political parties began when the 2009 Recovery Act emerged as a $787 billion program, more than half of which was tax cuts, instead of the more than $1 trillion in additional spending that was needed to begin adequately repairing the damage of the 2008 financial crash.
Since then, Republicans have assaulted the economy at every opportunity, forcing an austerity agenda of budget-cutting at the very time that the federal government should have been stepping up its spending in key areas, both to bring our infrastructure up to 21st-century needs and to prevent layoffs of teachers, first responders and other essential public workers by cash-strapped state and local governments. From June 2009 to May 2012, 605,000 state and local public sector jobs were cut. If public sector jobs had instead grown at the same pace as the three previous economic recoveries, there would be an extra 1.2 million jobs, and that level of additional employment would have supported the creation of an additional 500,000 jobs…
When the White House and Democrats in Congress tried several times to pass elements of the American Jobs Act, $450 billion worth of job-creation initiatives, Republicans in the House voted as a solid bloc against the efforts, and Senate Republicans filibustered the legislation. The 2 percentage-point reduction in worker payroll taxes was the only major component that survived. Among the opponents is Romney, who has argued that cutting government spending at all levels is necessary to “help the American people” even though, as Tyson said, the teachers, firemen, and police who are being laid off “are American people who help other American people.”
Late last month, Congress pat itself on the back for passing a two-year surface transportation funding bill that is at best a status-quo stop-gap… The obstacle in the way was once again House Republicans, who refused to support the longer-term funding commitment needed by state and local transportation planners without numerous “poison pills,” including provisions that would have authorized construction of the Keystone XL pipeline without robust environmental review and would have ended federal regulation of hazardous coal waste disposal from power plants.
If it were not for congressional Republicans’ repeated obstruction or dilution of virtually every significant job-creation proposal sent to Congress since 2009, unemployment today would likely be under 7 percent instead of stubbornly persisting at around 8 percent. [emphasis added]

The Scariest Chart

Here is the chart of jobs doring this recession compared to previous recessions:

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Is A Flat Tax Fair?

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Conservatives are always pushing for a “flat tax.” It sounds so simple: One easy rate, so we all pay the same, easy to calculate… Get rid of deductions and lower the tax rates. So simple, but it turns out it is a simple trick, a scam to enrich the 1%, like so much else that conservatives are selling. Don’t fall for it — it means taxes will go up for the 99% of us who aren’t really, really rich. See if you can guess what happens if you are in the top 1%. Or, just scroll down and see the chart.
What We Have Now
We have what’s called a “progressive’ tax system. This means as you make more you pay more taxes. The first “bracket” of $XX dollars you make is taxed at a low rate. The next $XX dollars are taxed at a higher rate, and so on. Many people think if you “go into a higher bracket” you pay more on all the money you make, but that is not how it works. If a bracket starts at $1 million, and you make $1 million plus $1 you only pay the higher rate on the $1 that is in that bracket. Yes, that means that a 5% increase on taxes over $1 million would mean that person pays a nickel. Yes, all that screaming by Republicans is over a nickel. Screaming is what they do best.
The reason we have a progressive tax system is because we have a democracy. People who make more do so because of the investment in governent that We, the People make. We, the People pool our money collectively and use it to build the infrastructure that lets people make so much money. That’s the roads, schools, police, courts, etc. — they whole system — that provides the foundation for our businesses to go out an compete in the world. And when our businesses do well, we ask them to pay back a dividend to the rest of us for enabling that to happen.
No Deductions
Conservatives always call for getting rid of deductions, because they are complicated. Get rid of deductions, they say, simplify the system, and you can lower tax rates. Here is the game they are playing. Suppose you have a small businesses, a grocery store. Suppose you buy $100,000 inventory and sell it for $130,000. If you get rid of deductions that means the small-grocery-owner pays taxes on $130,000 because that is the income of the store.
If you say the business owner should be allowed to “deduct” the amount paid for inventory we’re back to deciding which deductions to allow. So we are right back where we started, except now the conservatives have lowered tax rates (at the top) and their big corporate sponsors will be gaming the system to give themselves more and more and more deductions just like they already do.
What Happens With A Flat Tax?
Conservatives object to the idea of the rich paying back more. They say that taxes are theft — government confiscating money that people have earned, ignoring that our democracy enabled them to earn it in the first place. They call taxation “redistribution” of wealth. Of course, as AlterNet’s Joshua Holland points out, redistribution is the core job of government. He points out that when government collects taxes and builds a sidewalk that everyone can walk on — or homeless people can sleep on — that is redistribution. Courts, schools, police, ports, airports — all of it is redistribution of wealth.
So conservatives call for a “flat tax.” Most notably Republican Presidential candidates Rick Perry and Herman are calling for various forms of this. Cain This means everyone pays the same tax rate as everyone else, regardless of income. Because this is about scrapping democracy’s progressive tax system this necessarily means that the rich will pay a lot less. Guess who pays more to make up for that? A good example of this effect is the 9-9-9 tax plan.
The 9-9-9 Plan
The Tax Policy Center takes a look at Repubican candidate Herman Cain’s “9-9-9″ tax plan, in a post titled, Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Tax Plan

Herman Cain’s plan would eliminate the current individual income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax, and estate and gift tax and substitute three taxes imposed at a 9 percent rate: 1) a 9 percent “national sales tax” 2) a 9 percent “business flat tax”, and 3) a 9 percent “individual flat tax.”

They have a table here that shows how people’s taxes would change under the 9-9-9 plan. Jared Bernstein made a chart illustrating these numbers in his post 9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph.

So here you have it: the change in tax liabilities, compared to current tax policy, under 9-9-9, for different income groups, in one incredibly unsettling graph.

In the following chart the blue lines that are above zero illustrate how much more most of us will pay. The red lines below zero show how much less the rich and really rich will pay. The blue lines — representing taxes on most of us — go up. The red lines — representing taxes on the top few — go … well, see for yourself.
Average-tax-change-from-9-9-9-plan-10-18-2011-OPT.jpg
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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They Just Lie

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Lots of people are talking about Kevin Drum’s post about last night’s Republican debate, and the flat-out lies told all over the right’s disinformation engine. In honor of the discussion, and for all of those who are so surprised, let me trot out a piece I wrote in 2004, They Just Lie: (click through for the links…) (PS right now the lie machine is telling lies about Solyndra.)
They Just Lie
Hesiod spots a big fat Bush lie. Someone has changed a story in order to smear Kerry as weak on terrorism, when it is actually Bush who did the bad deed. He’s outraged. He counters with the truth.
Kash spots that decisions in the bush admin. are made “according to political calculations instead of according to the advice of specialists.” He is shocked.
Bush is making stuff up and lying, and everyone is surprised and shocked and outraged. And everyone counters with the truth and argues the finer points and tries to disprove each claim.
But what is happening is that while we’re all chasing down each and every particular of each and every lie, the general public is hearing over and over again a much broader theme. They’re hearing that they should be suspicious of Kerry. For example, today they are hearing the lie that Kerry “voted against American troops,” and “did not support bills that would have ensured troops had body armor and earned higher combat pay, and would have given reservists and their families better health care” and all kinds of just the nastiest stuff.
Listen, there is something we all need to get through our heads. They just lie.
If the Bush people did a focus group and found out that people would vote against him because he owns a miniature green Chinese monkey with an earring, THEN WE WOULD BE HEARING THAT KERRY HAS A MINIATURE GREEN CHINESE MONKEY WITH AN EARRING! They are making it up, they are lying, they are going to say and do ANYTHING. OK? They just lie. Get used to it.
They just lie. So don’t be surprised and don’t be shocked. And most of all, don’t start responding by trying to disprove their charges and going through all the points and specifics and particulars! YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT THE CHARGES THEY WILL MAKE TOMORROW AND NEXT WEEK ARE FALSE. OK?
They just lie. What have I been telling you since day one of Seeing the forest? THEY JUST LIE. See the forest, don’t get bogged down with trees. See the bigger picture. If you get all bogged down trying to argue each point or disprove each lie you are going to be 100 lies behind by the time you refute the first point of the very first lie.
They just lie. Remember the lead-up to Iraq, all nicely timed for the 2002 election? They just lie. Remember what they said about why we need tax cuts? They just lie. Remember what they said about Al Gore? They just lie. Remember what they said about Clinton?
They just lie. We know it. So when do we figure out that they just lie? When we do figure it out, THEN maybe we can start responding effectively, instead of getting all bogged down in the lies each and every time. The public needs to understand that they just lie, and the things they say should just be ignored. THAT is where we should be spending our time.
(Does repetition work? Tell me what they do.)

A Deficit Pitch Without Social Security–The Only Chance of Winning

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Josh Rosenblum
This past Friday night in Washington, a New York Mets pitcher threw the type of pitch President Obama must use in his march to stop any new proposals to cut Social Security if he plans to make it through the game of the deficit talks and his reelection. In the recent past the President and his teams have pitched a slew of failed curveballs that would cut our Social Security. The number 43 Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey helped beat the Nationals 7-3 with his slow velocity, highly unpredictable knuckleball. The 44th President and his multitude of committees have taken an approach to cutting the deficit that replicates a tied baseball game, with no end in sight. Could knuckle balls from a President battling to win the game, save the economy, and win reelection save the tied ball game called the deficit debate? Let’s take a look at the tape.

R.A. Dickey has been pitching great this season, and has the best earned run average of the starters on the Mets but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his record of 7-11, which reflects injuries on the Mets but also the poorest run support from hitters out of all the Mets starting pitchers. It’s unclear to Mets fans why Dickey hasn’t gotten the run support he so deserves, just as it’s unclear to the general public why we haven’t gotten the support Social Security deserves from the administration.
If the President throws a Social Security curveball that cuts our benefits to the GOP team trying to beat him, he ought to get ready not to receive any run support, not just from Democrats and the left, but also from the independents and moderate Republicans his advisers are so intent on courting again. By attempting a pitch that doesn’t appeal to his base, independent voters, and moderate Republicans, he may lose the game, the season, and ultimately his Presidency.
But President Obama can still throw an amazing Dickey-like pitch to the GOP’s deficit, defeat the nonsense, not cut Social Security benefits, and win reelection. If Obama fights for Social Security, America’s fans will cheer for him and we’ll give him all the run support he needs to win in 2012.
Social Security has remained one of America’s most successful programs for 76 years. Before it existed and since it’s existed, Wall Street and right-wing conservatives have been telling us how much it stinks, hoping we might one day believe such lies through repetition. Even popular Republican President Dwight Eisenhower recognized how cutting it would be plain “stupid.” But that’s exactly what each of the deficit groups have attempted to do, each throwing their own curveball that would lead to Social Security cuts.
The President started his deficit pitching rotation with the grizzled, often irrelevant old-timers Bowles and Simpson, who proposed to cut Social Security with the indifference of players who knew their time had passed. He then hoped the journeymen Gang of 6 could take on the deficit, but the bipartisan group of men never seemed to materialize on the playing field. Obama’s team, “America,” never got far in the batting order without loading the bases against the “GOP Deficit” team, which lead up to another call to the bullpen. An enthusiastic reliever, Vice President Biden came charging on to the field to lead his bipartisan “gang of dudes” with every intention to save the game, and no ability to corral the Republicans who calmly watched every one of his pitches thrown for balls float by and hit every strike for an intentional foul ball, upping the pitch count until Biden’s arm had vanished.

Then came the President himself, rolling up his sleeves and bringing back the long vanished player-coach, determined to get the save for America, but giving the GOP a few hits and intentional walks in the process so he could get the job done. He’s out on the field and he appears determined to win for America, at any cost to his future as a pitcher and as our President, but the fans are hopeful he’ll win for his future and ours.
The President even told us about his curveball to the GOP, who seem determined to fight against America, 1 minute in to this video, when he acknowledges that he’d offered the Republican Speaker a deal to cut Social Security, which suggests he may throw the same bad curve again if the Supercommittee wants to take it up.

In the next couple of weeks President Obama may let loose with another Social Security curveballl, telling us we need a COLA cut for Social Security. But America isn’t certain whether player-coach Obama would put the important program on the chopping block again for the Supercommittee and the GOP Deficit. This pitch to the GOP Deficit leads to one place—a lost game for the President, and a lost future for Democrats. But a well-placed knuckleball that leaves Social Security out of the ball game and out of the deficit talks would help America and Obama win. If the President throws a slow, hanging knuckleball that’s tough for Republicans to hit but that his own team can cheer for, he’ll win the hearts of Americans including Democrats, independents and reasonable Republicans, whether the Washington Republicans try to screw over America again or not with attempted cuts to Social Security.

For Jobs Obama Must Bypass Congress

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Here is a fact about bipartisanship and civility in Washington: the Republicans in Congress will obstruct anything President Obama proposes to create jobs and help the economy, period. A bad economy helps them in the coming elections, and that is that. Deal with it. If you want to see results on jobs and economic growth you are going to have to get around a Republican House of Representatives intent on blocking jobs and growth. The President can and should “go big” and make dramatic proposals to Congress for job-creation. Doing so will draw contrasts so the public has a clear choice in the coming elections. Fortunately there are things the President can do right now, without the approval of Congress, that will have a big impact on job-creation now and in the future.
China Currency
China doesn’t buy from us nearly as much as it sells to us and this has cost us dearly. China manipulates its currency to give Chinese-manufactured goods a competitive advantage in world markets. In effect this subsidizes their products so they have a cost advantage of as much as 30-40% coming out the gate, even before other competitive factors come into play. This has created huge imbalances not just with us but across the world.
The biggest thing the President could do right now is declare China to be a currency manipulator. Doing so enables the administration to impose sanctions, including tariffs, that would remove any cost advantage China gains from their manipulation. This would have an effect on reversing the loss of American jobs, factories and industries to Chinese imports, and would be supported by the public.
The President should officially declare China to be the currency manipulator that it is, and impose tariffs as a remedy. That takes care of China’s advantage in US markets, and encourages other countries to take action, too.
With a level playing field our manufacturers can compete in world markets. Our government can take steps to help bring about such a level playing field, or to help our own companies against countries that do not play fair. This would tell companies that it is safe to manufacture here again, and our government will back them up.
But, But ,But…
There is concern about angering China when “we owe them so much money.” It is important to remember why we “owe them” money. We owe them money because we thought we had a trade deal with them. By definition a trade deal involves actual trade, which involves buying and selling. We bought from them and they were supposed to use the dollars we spent there to buy things from us. But they didn’t. The huge amount we “owe them” by definition means they didn’t live up to their part of the bargain. We should insist that they use those treasury notes they have accumulated to purchase US-made goods.
Other Actions That Don’t Require Congress
Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing wrote in The Hill last month that there are things the President can do without needing Congress’ approval:

There is plenty that President Obama could do on his own right now:
• Expedite small business loans through the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department to help firms expand, retool and hire.
• Convene a multilateral meeting to address global imbalances and in particular Chinese mercantilism. If China doesn’t agree to participate, designate it a currency manipulator. (China ships fully one-third of its exports to the U.S. and finances less than 10 percent of our public debt, so we have more leverage than some might suggest.)
• On the heels of the landmark agreement with automakers on fuel economy standards, secure an additional agreement from all foreign and domestic car companies to increase their levels of domestic content by at least 10 percent over the next three years.
• Direct the Department of Defense to leverage existing procurement to contractors that commit to increasing their domestic content of our military equipment, technology and supplies.
• Approve additional applications for renewable and traditional energy projects, contingent on the use of American materials in construction.
• Kick any CEO off of federal advisory boards or jobs councils who has: (1) not created net new American jobs over the past five years, or (2) is expanding the company’s foreign workforce at a faster rate than its domestic workforce. Replace them with CEOs who are committed to investing in America. Shame is a good motivator.

National Industrial Policy
Even long-term things like promising the development of a national industrial policy could have an immediate effect on jobs here and now. If companies know that the US government is going to stand behind them if they manufacture here, and enforce trade agreements, and aggressively push for balanced trade where our trading partners don’t just sell to us but also buy from us, they’ll put the US back into their manufacturing plans. If they know that the government understands and intends to assist key industries with tax policies, education and training policies, energy policies, infrastructure modernization,key research and development initiatives, and the other components of national strategy — which is what other governments do — they will know they are no longer going out to international markets alone, up against national systems.
By making it clear that our government is going to stand up for American manufacturers — and their employees — and won’t pull the rug out from under them again, companies will have a reason to change their strategies and start bringing these jobs back home.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Typical Blatant Republican Racism

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Did you see “Fertile Ground”: White Nationalists Organize Within Tea Party the other day?
On a very, very related note: Fox News leads the racist way today with Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs … just go see the pic they posted. Fox seems to have closed their comments section.
Republican websites follow suit, Everyone Must Sacrifice… Hollywood Hip-Hoppers Dance Barefoot in the Rose Garden at Obama’s B-Day Bash | The Gateway Pundit
In case it isn’t clear that they meant to send a certain racist message here, from the comments we see that the readers “get it”:
“There went the neighborhood.”
The Jefferson’s have indeed “moved on up….”
“Looks more like a street fest in the slums of Rio or some kind of pre-hunt jig on the COngo…what a disgrace…we have definatley sunk to 3rd world status in every respect.”
“My kids and I make sacrifice after sacrifice just to make ends meet while Barry-boy and Moose-chelle party like there is no tomorrow.”
“Can I come to the States and make a sacrifice? I’d sacrifice a pig on Obama’s lawn. “Soil” it with pig’s blood. Ha! Then again, pigs are smarter than the average commie, so maybe I should sacrifice a commie instead.”
“…a few headlines from Drudge: ‘Mob’ beatings at WI state fair… ‘Hundreds of young black people beating white people’… Fairgoers ‘pulled out of cars’… ‘They were just going after white people’…”
“That turd polisher extraordinaire is on the way out, and he knows it. I just hope everyone is keeping their eye on how many curtains are in the White House – that skank Michelle loves to sew them into dresses to drape her fat butt.”
From another site, the comments:
“Check out the pimp shoes. And Mooch is wearing the chenille bedspread look again.”
“Today….birthday thanks, stock market tanks, went home with skank.”
“Note ghetto boys shoes………….”
“Pull yo miniature heyd out yo bloated commie ass ya ignorant POS.”
“Good to see they included the token white, Tom hanks.”
“Was Hanks the token whitey? Sounds like all the other ‘stars’ were ‘people of color’”
Note, if you think this is not really serious, go see: White Supremacist site Stormfront: A Technique For Recruiting “Tea Party Conservatives” To White Nationalism

Golden Oldie: Did Bush Leave Us Bankrupt, Corrupt, Ungovernable?

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Feb. 2010: Did Bush Leave Us Bankrupt, Corrupt, Ungovernable?

When you sell the farm, the farm’s gone.

Is it already too late for America? I’m starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite — and we’re only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that coming back to roost now.

Reagan left us with massive debt and ever-increasing interest payments. Bush left us with $1.3 trillion deficits and a destroyed economy that would force further increases in the borrowing for years – to be blamed on Obama. The “free marketers” gave away our manufacturing base that will take decades and massive capital investment to recover. Obama can try, but it may just be too late to do anything about the borrowing. We need massive investment in jobs and infrastructure, and a national economic/industrial plan. But, with their own Reagan/Bush debt as ammunition, conservative ideologues continue to block every effort at investment to get out of the mess we are in.

And with the country on the very edge of defaulting on the Reagan/Bush debt, Senate Republicans are FILIBUSTERING the very debt-ceiling deal they were for just a few weeks ago…

There is much more at that old post, go read.

Marketing Works

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Marketing works – especially when it has a very big budget, is repeated endlessly and goes unanswered. 46% of voters think the media has a liberal bias.
The Hill Poll: Most voters see media as biased and unethical – TheHill.com

A full 68 percent of voters consider the news media biased, the poll found. Most, 46 percent, believe the media generally favor Democrats, while 22 percent said they believe Republicans are favored,,,