Tag: Conservative Agenda

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Pat Robertson, Fresh Off the Campaign Trail with Mitt, Advises a Man to Beat His Wife

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Keep in mind as you watch Pat Robertson advise a man whose wife insults him that he needs to move to Saudi Arabia so he can “become a Muslim and beat her,” that Mitt campaigned this weekend with Pat at his side. Make no mistake about the “conservative” attitude toward women: we are to submit to male authority and if we don’t, well a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

Nice try by the CBN host to save Pat from saying more, and to laugh off his comments, but we get it. It’s called the Republican War on Women, and it just keeps escalating.

Update: Someone on Facebook reminded us that Vice Pres. Joe Biden was the author of the Violence Against Women Act, and that our choice in November couldn’t be clearer.

H/T to MBH

AP Mixes Up Facts and Opinions, Even As AP Reporters Get President’s Name Wrong

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Meanwhile, it looks like the AP could stand to do more fact checking of its own.

“It would be more appropriate to make its complaint against CBO than against President Obama’s speech.”

— Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a post titled, “AP Factcheck Should be Billed to Romney Campaign.” Baker takes issue with Associated Press “fact checkers” who claim there would be no peace dividend from winding down the war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is working off a baseline set by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that assumes war spending continues over the next decade. If he doesn’t intend to continue this spending then he is freeing up money relative to this baseline. AP may not like this method of scoring, but it is absolutely standard in Washington policy debates. Changes are measured against a baseline.

Baker joins others who suggest that the AP’s analysis might have been more correctly classified as an editorial than as fact checking.

H/T to The Nation

Buzz Over FOX News’ “Resident Liberal” Using L-Word to Describe Paul Ryan’s Speech

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FOX News' Sally Kohn

Who knew FOX News even had a “resident liberal?” Apparently they do, and the internets are afire over Sally Kohn’s description of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Republican National convention speech titled, Paul Ryan’s Speech in 3 Words: Dazzling, Deceiving, and Distracting.

Two things set apart the column from the others from fact-checkers who dispute almost every word uttered by Ryan and Romney. First, Kohn uses the L-word, something most mainstream outlets bar.

…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies [emphasis added] and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

Second, the column appears on the FOX News website’s opinion page.

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Rush Limbaugh: Obama, Acting Through the National Hurricane Center, Tried to Ruin Republican Convention

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Flooding in Plaquemines Parish, La. is eerily reminiscent of that other storm that Rush Limbaugh doesn't want us to talk about but the seventh anniversary of it is today

Rush Limbaugh has to be thinking that now would be as good a time as any to retire. His recent assertion that the National Hurricane Center (NHC) is conspiring to re-elect the president is all the evidence anyone needs that Rush would probably be happier at home, out of the reach of microphones.

Here’s what Rush said on his show earlier this week:

The hurricane center is the regime. The hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama.

And as Obama, the NHC obviously wanted to disrupt the Republican National Convention by forecasting, while Isaac was still a tropical storm south of Haiti, that it could strengthen and threaten the gulf coast of Florida, including Tampa. Just listen to Rush’s version:

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Of Course Romney and Ryan are Lying. That’s Nicer Than the Truth

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ThumbsUpConstructionGuyCropWebRepublicans have a core problem, and Michael Tomasky brilliantly uncovered it. They have to lie, he says, because the truth is that they don’t care about people like us. They know their policies won’t work for us but if they convince us they will, we will let them keep on feeding on us.

Tomasky begins by saying you couldn’t write a novel where someone like Romney picks as his running mate someone like Ryan, who comes from a prominent family in the road construction business that made most of its money from government contracts.

A fiction editor would say, “Come on, Tomasky, this is just too heavy-handed.”

It’s tricky business to trick us. You have to lie.

Especially if the same candidate and his running mate were attacking the other guy with a lie that specifically distorted what he’d said about, of all things, roads and bridges! (“You didn’t build that.”) Grandpappy Ryan did exactly what Obama says other people did to help small businesses thrive. He built the roads. And he was paid to do so by government road contracts. Forget fiction. That’s even too pat for Hollywood.

Even George W. Bush needed help from strategist Paul O’Neill with his talking points, running as he was, on the same trickle-down voodoo economics that failed to win re-election for his father, George H.W. Bush. It’s tricky business to trick us. You have to parse your words carefully. Or to put it another way, you have to lie.

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Van Jones: Don’t Underestimate Paul Ryan

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Ryan is THE most effective weapon the other side has. He makes the argument for austerity with passion, poise and skill. He is a true believer. Vice President Biden better eat his Wheaties before the debate.

— Van Jones, former Green Energy Czar in the Obama administration, who was targeted by Glenn Beck after publicly referring to Republicans as “assholes.” Jones has since taken a lead role at MoveOn.org’s Rebuild the Dream initiative, and is launching a campaign to personalize and energize progressive election efforts through works by artists and musicians, along with narratives from people on the receiving end of failed Republican policies.

Mormons are Killing the Boy Scouts

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Percentage of Boy Scouts who are Mormon, compared to 2 percent of the American population. Mormons, who also largely bankrolled the reversal of same-sex marriage in California, are taking over the Boy Scouts even as the group’s numbers have shrunk in the face of anti-gay activism by the group. In the 1970s, the Boy Scouts had 4.8 million members; today the figure is 2.7 million.