Month: December 2014

Fox News Host Says Obama Administration Is Anti-Awesome

Buck Banks

The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome. We’ve closed the book on torture, and we’ve stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome.

— Fox News co-host Andrea Tantaros, quoted by Gawker.

Bush Administration Paid Torture Trainers $81 Million

Buck Banks

$81 million

Amount the Bush administration paid the CIA contractors who helped develop and operate the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the agency used on terror suspects, including waterboarding, NBC News reports. “The contract was for more than $180 million, but the contractors had only received $81 million when their contract was terminated in 2009.”

Turn the South Into a ‘Free-Market Jesus Paradise’

Buck Banks

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

— Michael Tomasky, writing in the Daily Beast.

Uninformed Majority Thinks Obama Has Deported Fewer Undocumented Immigrants

Buck Banks

53% to 29%

Margin by which Americans mistakenly believe that Obama has sent fewer undocumented immigrants home than were deported a decade earlier. “That’s a constant refrain of Obama’s immigration critics. It also isn’t true. Immigration agents removed 315,943 people in the last fiscal year. That’s down from 438,421 the year before but up 31 percent from the 240,665 deported in fiscal 2004,” according to Al Hunt.

Misled Majority Still Believe Deficit Has Increased Under Obama

Buck Banks

73% to 21%

Majority by which the public says the federal budget deficit has gotten bigger during the Obama presidency, according to Al Hunt. “Here are the facts: In fiscal 2009, during the first year of Obama’s presidency, the deficit was $1.413 trillion. In the current fiscal year, the congressional budget office projects the deficit will be $469 billion, down from $483 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30. The deficit has been cut by two-thirds during Obama’s six years.”

GOP Approval Reaches Five-Year High

Buck Banks

45%

Republican approval rating — a five-year peak after their wins in the midterm elections, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll, while President Obama struggles with his lowest job approval rating, at 39 percent. “The White House also is facing a backlash from independents who oppose his unilateral moves on immigration, and just 24 percent say the country is on the right track, the lowest rating since September 2011.”