It’s my theory that Sarah Palin is just George Bush in a skirt and weird S&M librarian glasses. Like Bush, she is both meagerly gifted and proud of her ignorance and, like Bush, if her lips are moving, she’s lying — or, in Palin’s case, if it appears in her Facebook blog, you should assume it is GOP disinformation and spin.
So it shouldn’t be news that both the leading non-partisan news analyst organizations — Factcheck.org and Politifact — examined her statements about the Bush tax cuts and found that she was blatantly and unabashedly lying, just as Bush himself would do if he weren’t in exile.
The reason it is news when Palin lies is that the atrocities must be documented because, in the hands of a team of Karl Rove Svengalis, it is within the realm of possibilities that at least 51 percent of Americans could be convinced to vote for her for president. If that happens, the GOP will complete the job they started in 1994 of finishing off the American middle class, once and for all.
Sarah Palin misrepresented the Democratic position on extending the expiring Bush tax cuts. Echoing a recent GOP talking point, the former Alaska governor said on “Fox News Sunday”:
Palin: Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history. It’s a tax increase of $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, and it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax.
That’s not true; Democrats are “poised” to do no such thing. President Obama and the Democratic leaders in Congress have long proposed extending the bulk of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003…
President Obama campaigned on a promise to extend all the Bush cuts for persons making under $200,000 a year (and families earning $250,000), and his proposed budget for next year would deliver on that. Democratic House and Senate leaders have taken generally the same line. Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated that Sunday on another weekend public affairs program, in fact.
Furthermore, the $3.8 trillion figure that Palin referred to (and wrote down on the palm of her hand, “so I didn’t say 3.7 and then get dinged, you know, by the — by the liberals”) is far too high…
The [Alternative Minimum Tax] would raise taxes for millions of middle-income Americans because it was never indexed for inflation on a permanent basis. Obama now proposes to do just that, while Bush merely extended temporary, year-to-year “patches.”
Sarah Palin disagreed with the Pants on Fire rating we gave her for the statement, “Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history.” [Politifact said one of Reagan’s seven tax increases was larger.] So she let us have it, via a note on her Facebook page…
We’re not trying to antagonize Gov. Palin, but President Barack Obama has indeed published his proposals in some detail — at least twice, in the annual budget documents that the White House releases.
The president’s 2011 budget, for example, says on page 39, “Allow the Bush Tax Cuts for Households Earning More Than $250,000 to Expire.”
“In the last Administration, those at the very top enjoyed large tax breaks and income gains while almost everyone else struggled and real income for the middle class declined. Our Nation cannot afford to continue these tax cuts, which is why the President supports allowing those tax cuts that affect families earning more than $250,000 a year to expire and committing these resources to reducing the deficit instead. This step will have no effect on the 98 percent of all households who make less than $250,000.”
Lest you think that’s too general and vague, there are detailed estimates in the budget summary tables, starting on page 164, for provisions such as, “Upper-income tax provisions devoted to deficit reduction: Expand the 28-percent rate and reinstate the 36-percent and 39.6-percent rates for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single) … Reinstate the personal exemption phaseout and limitation on itemized deductions for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single) … Impose 20-percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends for those taxpayers with income over $250,000 (married) and $200,000 (single).”
Stupid is as stupid does!
She is currently involved in a back and forth Facebook battle with Politifact. After Politifact rated her comments “Pants on Fire,” she wouldn’t back down and resorted to FB to rebut the charge. She feels she always has to be right, even when she’s wrong. You can read about the nut’s reaction to Politifact from an Alaska blogger here:
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/
Sarah Palin, the pet rock of the decade.