Tag: GOP Lies

Let’s Do Math! Republicans, Please Grab a Pencil

Trish
Former Pres. George W. Bush on one of his many breaks, which often involved falling off a mountain bike, falling off a Segway, strumming a guitar while New Orleans drowned, and choking on pretzels.

The Obama family is on vacation. That means it’s time for Republicans and tea partiers to take a break from obstructing legislation, nomination approvals, and any other work in Congress (including suing the president for taking appropriate executive action to counter their inaction) to express ginned-up outrage that the people’s business won’t be done if the president takes a few days off.

It’s also time for the rest of us to do some math, based on figures researched by Politifact’s Truthometer:

  • Number of vacation days, in whole or part, enjoyed by Pres. Obama at this point in his term, which on July 20, 2014 happened to be exactly six years and seven months: 92
  • Number of vacation days, in whole or part, enjoyed by Pres. George W. Bush at the same point in his term: 367

Let’s put these numbers in context.

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Trish

To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

— Greg Sargent, Washington Post columnist, in a splendid piece titled, “How Much Does Right-Wing Rhetoric Contribute to Right-Wing Terrorism?“

Prominent Republican Propagandist Indicted for Voter Fraud

Jon Ponder

D’Souza
One of the conservative movement’s most polished and successful propagandists was indicted yesterday for voter fraud:

Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator and best-selling author, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for arranging excessive campaign contributions to a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

According to an indictment made public on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, D’Souza around August 2012 reimbursed people who he had directed to contribute $20,000 to the candidate’s campaign. The candidate was not named in the indictment…

D’Souza was charged in the indictment with one count of making illegal contributions in the names of others, and one count of causing false statements to be made.

Federal law in 2012 limited primary and general election campaign contributions to $2,500 each, for a total of $5,000, from any individual to any one candidate.

The Senate candidate was Republican Wendy Long, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012.
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Romneycare Architect: 3% of Americans Will Lose Their Junk Health Insurance Plans

Jon Ponder

Talking Points Memo:

University of Michigan professor and senior Brookings fellow Justin Wolfers on Thursday created a chart depicting the “winners and losers” under the Affordable Care Act, sourced to a Ryan Lizza article that used estimates from M.I.T. economist Jon Gruber, a former adviser to Mitt Romney.

The chart portrays the degree to which Republicans and critics of Obamacare have amplified the media’s coverage around the relatively small percentage of Americans who have received cancellation notices for stripped-down individual market plans that failed to meet the benefit requirements of the ACA.

Gruber, called the architect of Romney’s successful health care plan in Massachusetts, argues that of the six percent of Americans who buy their own health care on the individual market, three percent would have negligible change to their policies.

Blame Game? Ignore the GOP Spin That Democrats Shut the Government Down – Six Quotes from Giddy Republicans about Their Shutdown

Jon Ponder

Kansas tea party Rep. Tim Huelskamp
It is no surprise that Republicans are trying to have it both ways when it comes to who’s responsible for shutting down the government. One minute they are high-fivin’ each other as they take credit for it, while in the next minute they’re blaming the shutdown on Democrats in the Senate. It’s also no surprise, as Trish noted earlier this week, that the “liberal” media is enabling them to have it both ways. Meanwhile, in reality, polls show that most voters see what’s really going on.

To underscore who is really to blame for shutting down the government, here are six quotes from Republicans owning the shutdown:

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Good News for America, Bad News for the GOP – CBO Says Deficit Is Shrinking Faster Than at Any Time Since Post-World War II

Jon Ponder
Chart based on figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showing the federal deficit for each year since the economy crashed at the end of the Bush administration

Good news, America. The federal deficit is shrinking faster than it has since the end of World War II, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Oddly enough, however, this good news for the country — this sure sign that the United States is finally recovering from the economic crash at the end of the Bush administration — is actually horrible news for the Republican Party, which for the past five years has pinned its hopes on defeating Pres. Obama and the Democrats by deliberately hobbling the recovery with the hope that a weak economy would benefit them politically.

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Keeping Score: Bush Had Taken 399 Days Off by the Fifth Summer of His Presidency – Obama Has Taken 87 Days Off

Jon Ponder

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

As August approaches, and President Obama schedules a little r-and-r at Martha’s Vineyard, there are apparently some predictable gripes on the right about his time off. The AP provides some context: “Obama has taken far less time away from the White House than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who spent weeks at a time at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Obama has taken 87 days off, compared with 399 days for Bush at a similar period in his presidency, according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller, who keeps detailed records of presidential travel…

A lot of folks forget this, but Ronald Reagan set the record for most vacation days for a sitting president — a record that stood until George W. Bush passed Reagan’s seemingly unbreakable benchmark.

Watch the Earth Get Hotter Before Your Very Eyes

Trish

This video is posted by climatecentral.org, but was produced by NASA. It begins in 1880, the first year of the modern record of global temperatures, and shows how the world has heated up in the past nearly century and a half. Note though, how fast the change comes at end, as greenhouse conditions begin to take hold. Bluer shading indicates below normal temperatures while red tones indicate higher ones.