Tag: GOP Lies

Republicans, a Rock, a Hard Place and Obamacare

Jon Ponder

screenshot-obamacare-free-birth-control

The Republican gambit of demonizing Obamacare is starting to backfire — as well it should. The strategy is based on a lie.

In 2009, Pres. Obama opted to use the individual mandate model as the basis of health-insurance reform — rather than the single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach his supporters preferred — in part because he hoped to strike a deal with Republicans. His quest for bipartisanship seems ridiculous now (as it did then to many people), but it was, in fact, grounded in reality.

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Seven or Eight Errors Deleted by Murdoch-Owned Publisher of ‘Clinton Cash’

Jon Ponder

7 or 8Number of erroneous statements deleted from the text of “Clinton Cash” in the Kindle version published by HarperCollins, a company owned by Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, according to right-leaning Politico. The book’s author, right-wing propagandist and former Sarah Palin adviser Peter Schweizer, has a reputation for publishing books and articles that have proven to be riddled with errors and misstatements of facts.

McCain All But Calls Cruz a Liar

Buck Banks

I was fascinated to hear that, since I haven’t heard a thing about it from him, nor has my staff heard from his staff.

— Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ), denying reports that “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing him to hold hearings exploring whether soldiers should be able to carry concealed guns on military bases,” the Huffington Post reports.

Republicans Continue to Lie About the Economy

Buck Banks

For years Republicans have been spewing doomsday rhetoric about the president’s policies, but the stock market is booming, the deficit shrinking, the economy adding lots of jobs and the dollar robust. … Virtually everything GOP critics have told us would follow from the policies put in place has not come to pass. You would think that this would occasion a few mea culpas, some rethinking, an admission of poor prognostication. But, alas, it continues. Rep. Paul Ryan is now warning in a column that Obamacare ‘is weighing down our economy and discouraging hiring’ and will ultimately ‘collapse under its own weight.’

— Daniel Gross, writing in the Daily Beast.

Party of ‘Death Panels’ Feigns Outrage Over Insider Claim That Obamacare Passage Relied on ‘Stupidity of the American Voter’

Jon Ponder
T4 refers to the Nazi's euthanisia program
T4 refers to the Nazi’s euthanasia program

Four years ago, the Republican Party launched a relentless propaganda campaign to convince their low-info, Fox-befuddled followers that the coming of Obamacare was a harbinger of the Apocalypse. The motive behind the propaganda campaign had nothing to do with the substance of the reform — Pres. Obama had based the Affordable Care Act on the Republicans’ own individual mandate system that Mitt Romney had successfully rolled out when he was governor of Massachusetts — and GOPers knew that, if passed, the ACA would provide health and financial security to their own working-class and self-employed constituents, many of whom would be insured for the first time in their lives.

To Republican pols, the bankruptcies, foreclosures and untreated illnesses of their constituents were just collateral damage in their campaign to destroy Pres. Obama by killing his signature law. And so was the truth. Remember these patently ridiculous lies they floated on Fox and right-wing radio and inserted into the Congressional Record?

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Breitbart.com Confuses Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch with Country Star Loretta Lynn

Jon Ponder
Left, Attorney General nominee with Pres. Obama; right: country star Loretta Lynn
Left, Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch with Pres. Obama; right: country star Loretta Lynn

In the world of the late racist provocateur Andrew Breitbart, facts did not matter. As spreaders of lies and smears targeting liberals and progressive organizations, Breitbart, along with his federally convicted Mini-Me, James O’Keefe, deserve a great deal of credit for poisoning the well of American politics.

The beauty part about operating in a fact-free world is that fact-checking does not matter, either. In that regard, Breitbart may be dead but his spirit lives at his website, which continues to publish the same sort of right-wing smears, lies and provocations that comprises Breitbart’s legacy.

The mistake published by Breitbart.com this week, however, was a real doozy: In a story criticizing Pres. Obama’s choice for attorney general, the editors confused Obama’s nominee, Loretta Lynch, the 55-year-old U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with 82-year-old country star Loretta Lynn.

Given that fact-checking is not a thing in the fact-free right-wing media universe, the mistake is understandable The names are very similar.

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In Hearing, GOP Chairman Issa Misnames African Country, Repeatedly Mispronounces ‘Ebola’

Jon Ponder

Congress is out of session, of course, but yesterday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa hastily called his committee into session in order to fan public hysteria about Ebola after a physician in New York was found to have contracted the disease while tending patients in Africa. In his opening statement, however, Issa mistakenly referred to the African nation of Guinea as Guiana, a country in South America, and then repeatedly mispronounced “Ebola” so that it rhymed with “e coli.”

Here’s a rough transcript of the highlights of Issa’s statement:

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Pew Study Confirms That Fox Is Dominant Source of ‘News’ on the Right – Liberals Rely on Many Sources

Jon Ponder

graph-pew-differences-in-liberal-conservative-news-sourcesThe PewResearch Journalism Project has released a study that confirms what is already clear: The American right gets most of its information about politics from Fox News, while the left relies on multiple sources, including CNN, NPR, MSNBC and the New York Times.

According to the study, consistent conservatives:

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Jon Stewart to FOX on the Coffee Salute: ‘You’re Just Trying to Score Points in a Game No Else is Playing’

Trish

First, I am not opposed to the United States and other countries trying to wipe out ISIL. Whether they are an immediate threat to us is not the only concern. That Americans, including and especially journalists, can move around the world freely is a huge concern.

Second, I can’t agree more about the disgusting hypocrisy, hostility, and pettiness shown the president of the country these people claim to love. He was elected by more than half of us, and those are the rules under which your “beloved” country operates so please suck it up, like we did when the moron was in power and we were under threat from abroad. Put your country, not your hatreds, first.