Study: Fox and WSJ overwhelmingly wrong about climate change

Remind me again what the common denominator is again between Fox News and the Wall Street Journal?

Rupert Murdoch may have bought his way into US nationality but he certainly doesn't understand traditional American values. Believing in science and facts used to be a matter of pride in America but Murdoch's distorted view has been a radical and unhealthy addition to the American way.

This trend of promoting lies by the Murdoch empire has to change. It's hurting America, but Murdoch's mission has nothing to do with helping the country. Much like Mitt Romney, Murdoch's mission is to make money. It's sick, but for him, the best way to accomplish that goal appears to be distorting reality.

Why does Rupert Murdoch hate America?

Primetime coverage of global warming at Fox News is overwhelmingly misleading, according to a new report that finds the same is true of climate change information in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.

Both outlets are owned by Rupert Murdoch's media company News Corporation. The analysis by the science-policy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) finds that 93 percent of primetime program discussions of global warming on Fox News are inaccurate, as are 81 percent of Wall Street Journal editorials on the subject.

"It's like they were writing and talking about some sort of bizarre world where climate change isn't happening," study author Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at UCS, told LiveScience.

Read the rest of this post...

Looks like Ryan's lying about his "6 percent body fat" too

Is anything this guy says true?

For a "numbers guy" he sure gets a lot of numbers wrong.

Slate has more on exactly what it means to have six percent body fat:

Here’s who else maintains 6 to 8 percent body fat: Olympic 100-meter sprinters, that’s who. Also, world-class boxers, wrestlers, and marathoners, according to this study of elite American athletes. Top collegiate swimmers look pretty fit, right? Well, they average out at a plump 9.5 percent, at least according to another study. Positively porky, compared to Ryan. (For some perspective, the average man has body fat of 17 to 24 percent, and most women a bit more.)

If his claim is to be believed—a Ryan spokesman did not respond to questions—he’s more along the lines of Tour de France cyclists who also get down around 8 or 9 percent to prepare for major races. According to Iñigo San Millan, a veteran cycling physiologist who has worked with numerous Tour de France teams, the lowest body fat he’s ever measured on a cyclist was 8.3 percent. That’s at peak fitness, racing shape.

Ryan’s claim, in other words, puts him squarely in the company of elite athletes. (And also, freakily, with these guys.) But while Ryan is definitely skinny—he told Allen that he’s 6-foot-2 and weighs 163 pounds, and his suits flutter like a Christo project gone wrong—that might be a stretch. At anything less than 10 percent body fat, says Martin Rooney, a well-known trainer who works with NFL and MMA athletes, “a man with his shirt off is lean and shredded. Veins everywhere and really cut up. This is the model and bodybuilder look. So if he is saying he is 6 percent, he is shredded with a six-pack and should have no reason not to do photo shoots everywhere.”

So far, he hasn’t. The only topless Ryan photo to surface is this grainy vacation shot on TMZ, from before he started P90X.

The photo isn't that grainy. Ryan is clearly in good shape. But six percent good shape?

If he lies about the little things... Read the rest of this post...

New 65 year study shows tax cuts do not lead to economic growth

This will be shocking news for the Republicans, though it shouldn't be. The US has had higher growth rates during times of much higher taxes but somehow that is always glossed over by the tax cut proponents.

Even Mitt Romney himself proves how little tax rates are connected to employment creation investments. The man hasn't worked in years and has paid no more than 14% in taxes yet we don't see him setting up new businesses with the extra income. He fails his own test on tax breaks.

Let the GOP tax spin begin.

Analysis of six decades of data found that top tax rates "have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth." However, the study found that reductions of capital gains taxes and top marginal rate taxes have led to greater income inequality. Past studies cited in the report have suggested that a broad-based tax rate reduction can have "a small to modest, positive effect on economic growth" or "no effect on economic growth."

Well into the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. Today it's 35%. But both real GDP and real per capita GDP were growing more than twice as fast in the 1950s as in the 2000s. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top tenth of a percent fell from about 50% to 25% in the last 60 years, while their share of income increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% before the recession.

Read the rest of this post...

Birther Romney adviser in Kansas may remove Obama from ballot in state

The fact that a Romney adviser is considering removing President Obama from the ballot in Kansas should give everyone pause.  Not simply because the reason for removing the President is the racist "birther" theory that Mitt Romney himself gave a push two just a few weeks ago.  But more importantly, the Republicans, and via his adviser, Mitt Romney, are once again considering whether they can steal an election.

What's amazing is that the Republicans talk a good talk about stealing elections, but when it comes down to it, they always seem to be the only ones making a serious effort at doing just that.  It's called a "tell" in poker, and we've talked about it a number of times here on AMERICAblog.  Republicans accuse Democrats of doing what Republicans are already doing.

It's not just a tell, it's also a way to inoculate themselves.  If you're going to attempt to steal an election, what better way to cover yourself than accuse the guy you're stealing it from of being a thief, first.

Of course, this issue is about more than stealing elections.  It's about the rank racism now permeates the upper levels of the GOP.  Even RNC chair Reince Priebus was called out two weeks ago for pushing racist theories about the President.  Not that they can't also be subtle in their extremism.

The extremism, sadly, goes to the highest reaches of the Republican party.  These are not nice people. They lie about the little things, they lie about the big things, and they can't even get their story right when they try to tell the truth about benign facts like the capital of Libya.  And if you call them out on it, they simply amplify the lie with more voices and an even more outrageous story in the hopes of distracting you from their other lies, and the truth.

When will sane Republicans take back their party from the nutjobs running it at the RNC, in the Congress and in the Romney campaign. Read the rest of this post...

More conservative lies about Libya/Egypt - Romney must be seriously in trouble

Judging by the level of vitriol from every propaganda organ, and politician, in the Republican party today, Mitt Romney must be losing the election badly.

They're in full panic mode.  Coming out with a lie a minute.   I wrote about one earlier tonight.  And another this morning.  But this one is particularly egregious.

According to a British tabloid - and this has already been debunked - everyone knew that the attacks in Libya and Egypt were going to happen and no one did a thing!

Uh right.  So now the "9/11 truthers" are after Obama too.

In fact, according to a spokesman for the head of the entire US intelligence establishment, there wasn't zip.

Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, emailed: “This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”

But GOP propagandist Matt Drudge was happy to push the story, as will GOP partisan tomorrow.

Anything to change the story from how Mitt Romney pulled and Al Haig and apparently thought he was the head of the US government the other day in the middle of a national security crisis. Romney was roundly rebuked for his arrogance, and the danger he posed to US foreign policy by involving himself in an ongoing crisis. But in GOP-land, that means you find another even bigger lie in order to take attention off of the one you got caught saying earlier.

They are seriously panicking over in Romney-land.

How long until the Republicans bring up Obama's birth certificate again? Read the rest of this post...

Liars

I watched former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer on Anderson Cooper's show last night, talking about Mitt Romney's utter #FAIL on the Libya/Egypt crisis, and he really is a Republican. In the way that he's an utter liar, I mean.

Fleischer said that Romney criticizing Obama in the middle of a foreign policy crisis, that had only started hours before, and in which at least one America was already dead, is just like candidate Obama criticizing candidate McCain who wasn't president, who wasn't running American foreign policy, and who wasn't in the middle of a national security crisis where American lives were at risk. Amazing.

Then Fleischer goes on to say that John Kerry criticized George Bush on Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2004 campaign - two ongoing wars that Bush started and that were a disaster - and Fleischer said that that is the same thing as Romney commenting on the Egypt/Libya crisis only hours after it began, when we had no idea what was going on, other than that Americans were dead.

No, Ari, it's not the same thing.

You're just a liar, like most of your party leadership, and the natural thing for you to do is, well, lie and just assume that no one will notice.  Well, we noticed.

We're not idiots, Ari.  I know you assume a lot of your voters are. But we're not. There's a difference between undercutting the President only hours into a deadly national security crisis, and criticizing a war that's been going on for years.

Americans expect a presidential candidate to offer his views on an ongoing war.  They do not expect a presidential candidate to jump on a podium, with bunting and flags intended to make it look like he's speaking to the nation as president from the White House (yeah, we noticed), and start offering his opinions, and undermining the President, on a crisis that's just started, and about which the candidate has no idea what was even going on.

I'm surprised Romney didn't grab the mic and declare himself in charge of the entire federal government, a la Al Haig.

At that moment in time, when American lives were on the line in Libya and Egypt, no one in America gave a damn about what Mitt Romney was thinking.  But there he was, smirking like an idiot, getting his facts wrong, and treating the death of an American diplomat as "an opportunity."

Not very presidential.  But oh so Republican. Read the rest of this post...

Runner who called out Ryan's marathon time: It's a "verifiable lie"

As he says himself, it speaks to his character. Paul Ryan has looked bad since being chosen as Romney's running mate. He has not been able to provide policy details, he's talking a different story than Romney on many issues and he consistently has problems with telling the truth about his personal life and in his speeches.

LetsRun.com:

LRC: Are you surprised with how much attention the matter has received? One little post on a message board has generated a lot of attention. Do many people know that you are the guy who kicked this whole thing off?

Bill Walker: No. A Vice-Presidential nominee telling a verifiable lie about himself should attract a lot of attention. It speaks to his character, and that's relevant to the issue of whether someone should vote for Romney/Ryan in November.

It was one little post, but every story has a starting point. The credit goes to the letsrun.com posters who jumped on the question and pointed out repeatedly that they could not find any proof of Ryan's claim -- which attracted the attention of Scott Douglas at Runner's World, who called the Congressman's campaign office and got the truth.

My family, my running friends, and some of my law partners know about my starting the thread. My five minutes of fame.

LRC: So what's your take on Paul Ryan's explanation on the discrepancy?

Bill Walker: I don't believe him. I think he knew the truth about his one marathon when he gave the interview, and he just didn't care if he stretched the truth if it made him look better to potential voters.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush repeatedly warned of "imminent" 9/11 attack, neo-cons told him to ignore it

Seriously? We always knew the neocons were a bunch of frauds but it doesn't say much about the rest of the Bush team who fell for their stupidity. NY Times:

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

Read the rest of this post...

Did Paul Ryan even lie about his marathon time?

Does Paul Ryan even know what the truth is about anything? Runner's World is calling BS on Ryan.

It turns out Paul Ryan has not run a marathon in less than three hours—or even less than four hours.

A spokesman confirmed late Friday that the Republican vice presidential candidate has run one marathon. That was the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where Ryan, then 20, is listed as having finished in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.

Ryan had said in a radio interview last week that his personal best was "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."

Read the rest of this post...

Video: Paul Ryan's top lies

This is a quite well done video from the Obama folks. Note how they even include Fox's Mike Wallace accusing Ryan of not telling the truth during his keynote address at the GOP convention.

Read the rest of this post...

Eastwood shows how clever those GOP spin doctors are

The best that can be said for Eastwood's speech is that while it was a disaster, it nowhere near as bad as the planned video of Donald Trump firing an Obama impersonator.

Showing the Trump video would have been an unsubtle dog whistle to the racism (Trump is an infamous birther) that is rarely beneath the surface of the GOP these days, especially after Romney's birther 'joke' a week ago. The 2012 RNC convention would have been remembered as the convention ruined by a racist conspiracy theory.

The RNC may have started looking for a replacement for the Trump spot after Salon's Alex Pareene ruined the surprise.  But losing Trump left them with a hole in their schedule.  Enter Eastwood.

The transcript of the Eastwood speech strongly suggests that the hole in the schedule was filled by replacing the Obama impersonator with an empty chair and calling Charlton Heston's agent to see if he would be willing to berate it. After discovering that Heston was unable to attend due to a bad case of being dead, Clint Eastwood stepped up to the plate.

The script is not that bad as a script, in fact it is exactly the sort of thing that a Democrat challenging Obama in a primary might say: unemployment is too high, the troops are still stuck in Afghanistan, the Guantanamo gulag is still open (though Republicans want it open), Obama has promised much but delivered little.

What killed the speech is that it was totally the wrong speech for Eastwood. An 82 year old is expected to be the wise elder statesman, not engage in bombastic personal attacks - that's Trump's shtick. The Eastwood we all remember is the one from the 1970s who said little and let his actions speak for him.

It isn't just Eastwood, it's the whole Republican party. This is not the GOP of Richard Nixon, it is a party of sad hacks trying to repeat their heyday with a remake of the Atwater/Nixon hits from the 1970s and 80s. The swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004 was really Willie Horton 3.  And then Romney tried it again with the birther fiasco.

So next time that Republican party spin doctors make what appears to be a mistake, can we at least concede the possibility that it is just a mistake, rather than some weird intentional jujitsu move? The Eastwood blunder shows just how clever those spin doctors really are, which is almost exactly as clever as their politicians, which is not very clever at all. Read the rest of this post...

NYT Fact-checker: Romney and Ryan lied (and Obama sometimes kind of does too, sort of)

This false equivalency, that the media has to always hide behind, lest they admit that one side tends to lie more than the other, is annoying.

Why must we believe that "everyone does it," and "everyone does it the same amount"?  Even the NYT fact checker, when pushed to find an example of "Obama doing it," found a seemingly factual statement from the President that was misleading - meaning, he was right about Romney having supported a draconian anti-abortion bill, but Romney now is slightly less bad.  But in the Republican case, they just make stuff up.

Why must we believe that "everyone does it," and "everyone does it the same amount"?

The Republicans dedicated their entire convention to the "We built it" lie, a quote they took out of context in order to manipulate it into saying something the President never said.  Funny, but I watched most of the GOP convention and I don't recall anyone in the media every mentioning that fact when the various speakers got up and spouted the "and I built it" lie to thunderous applause.

If the Democrats devote their entire convention to the notion that Mitt Romney is a pedophile, then yes, maybe we'll be even. In fact, the theme of the Democratic convention is "Americans coming together." Quite a difference in tone, and honesty.  Funny the NYT fact-checker didn't bother mentioning that. Read the rest of this post...

Bloomberg News all but calls Paul Ryan's speech a total lie

Devastating analysis from Bloomberg News of Paul Ryan's speech last night.  None of the main points were true.  Not what he said about the stimulus, Medicare, the budget, nothing. Read the rest of this post...

Romney, Ryan and the post-truth age

I used to rent an old boat for the day and explore the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.

Once the rental guy warned me the anchor on the boat wasn't quite right- but said just to call him if I had any trouble. I soon found out for myself when I became stuck near the banks of a forested island. The river was high and fast moving. I couldn't get a signal to call the marina, but finally a call went though. Expecting the owner to come out and help, he instead suggested I dive down and free the anchor - then the call was dropped. Nice.

A sense of calm determination fell over me when I realized I was on my own. I wasn't about to dive to the bottom of that deadly river but using my own strength eventually I freed the anchor.

A similar feeling has fallen over me as I've witnessed the Republican Party come completely untethered from the truth.

Watching my countrymen gleefully repeat lies without shame, and when called out for the lies, in the case of the Romney campaign, defiantly proclaim: "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

What we're seeing is disturbing and radical. Sure Karl Rove was a master of deception during the Bush years, but his game was manipulating the gullible base. Now the base, once thought of as sheltered church ladies, are as calloused and cynical as a lineup of old hookers. They need no manipulation - they're joyful co-conspirators.

The morally righteous party of "values" has officially and without shame said to hell with truth.

Seasoned journalists and political observers alike are watching this election cycle with jaws agape. Romney, Ryan, and Boehner all keep repeating the lie about Obama removing the work requirement from welfare recipients. Paul Ryan outrageously continues to blame Obama for the 2008 closure of a GM plant, when of course George W. Bush was still in office.

The hatred of [insert Democratic president here] has convinced Republicans to sell their souls en masse in order to win. It's an amazing and historic spectacle. The problem for them is that the Devil is not known for keeping promises. The problem for the rest of us is how to function in a post-truth environment when occasionally the crazy people are going to win the election.

I've never voted Republican and was unlikely to start, but it was comforting to think that, however extreme, they at least believed in something.  Not any more.

The past six months have revealed how cheap and empty their leaders and institutions are. Serial adulterer Newt "Open Marriage" Gingrich is their "family values" guy. Churches tell their flocks to not worry about the poor and instead focus on Republican politics. Their political discourse has been further monetized.  And, appropriately, the greasy fast food bag has become the celebrated symbol of their moral compass.

Deserved or not, there's often been the perception that the Republicans were the extreme-but-responsible grown-ups in the room. While we're out exploring, they could be counted on to hold down the marina.

This campaign has put that notion finally to rest.

When the anchor gets stuck, they're not going to help, even though they're the ones who got it stuck in the first place.

We're the only adults here. It's up to us, and us alone, to lead.

@EmperorAndoe Read the rest of this post...

GOP platform promotes national security pork for GOP Rep. Mica

GOP Platform
pork promoter
Cong. John Mica

Smooth one, GOP.

Not only are they promoting pork for their own, but they're building it right into the Republican platform.

Even better, it's at the expense of our national security.

The Republican platform includes a plank promoting the pork of influential GOP Congressman John Mica, who's been trying to privatize the TSA for a while now on behalf of a corporate campaign contributor in his district.

Attacking federal workers is nothing new for the GOP, but they have yet to explain how a privatized TSA workforce will do anything other than shovel money into the campaign coffers of Congressman Mica and his well-to-do corporate constituent.

A lot of Americans are frustrated or fed up with the TSA policies, but none of those policies change if the TSA is privatized. If anything, the problem gets worse because instead of being (somewhat) accountable to the public via our elected representatives, under the Republican plan the TSA will only be accountable to its shareholders and business owners.  And as bad as government can sometimes be, the private sector is usually worse (e.g., you can complain about Medicare problems to your congressman, who do you complain about Blue Cross to?)

Again, how does privatizing help address the problems that annoy Americans about the TSA?  It doesn't.  It simply helps Republican Congressman John Mica get pork for a constituent at the potential expense of our safety.

The platform calls for the privatization of airport security screening, a role now undertaken by the Transportation Security Administration.

The platform characterizes the TSA as a "massive bureaucracy" made up of employees "who seem to be accountable to no one for the way they treat travelers."

The agency, created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has long drawn the ire of lawmakers, both for mismanagement of agency programs as well as the often inconvenient screening process.

A massive bureaucracy that would only answers to a Congressman Mica is not very comforting.  Cong. Mica apparently agrees with Mitt Romney that corporations are people too.  Too bad Mica and Romney don't have the same respect for actual people.

Treat the Republican party platform as one big pork opportunity is no way to treat something as serious as national security.  Then again, when were the Republicans ever serious about national security?  Only one President actual caught Osama bin Laden - actually tried - and that's the Democratic President Barack Obama. Read the rest of this post...

Fox analyst blasts Ryan for "world record for the greatest number of blatant lies"

UPDATE: Fox's Web site calls Ryan out for his lies.  Wow.  In an article titled "Paul Ryan's speech in 3 words," word number 2 is "deceiving."

Deceiving

On the other hand, 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 and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Paul Ryan gave his keynote address at the GOP convention last night, and the fact-checkers are finding that some of the only times that Ryan told the truth were when he was NOT attacking President Obama.  When Ryan DID attack Obama, his biggest anti-Obama zingers were all lies.

Don't take my word for it.  The title of the Associated Press article on Ryan's speech is the following:

FACT CHECK: RYAN TAKES FACTUAL SHORTCUTS IN SPEECH

All caps, even.  Factcheck.org concurs.

Next, let's hear from Politifact - note how the truths are about things that aren't attacks, but the lies are from direct attacks against Democrats:

First the innocuous truths....

Now the lies:

ABC on the plant that shut down - it actually shut down in December of 2008, before Obama was sworn in as President.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office

This one is particularly egregious since the Romney people have been using this example for days and already got fact checked on it - but they didn't care, they still included it as Paul Ryan's top zinger. A total lie.

AP has even more on the GM plant lie.  You see, Obama's eventual auto bailout, that Paul Ryan opposed, saved GM.  So Paul Ryan is criticizing President Obama for something Obama didn't do, and something that Paul Ryan would have done - i.e., let the plant die.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants - though not the Janesville facility - to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.

ABC on the Medicare lie:

Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.

In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made.

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee

ABC has more, this time on Ryan's lies about the stimulus:

RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan

What's more - not only did Ryan try to carve out some of the stimulus for his own constituents, but the notion that the stimulus only went to the political cronies is interesting since one of those political cronies spoke right before Ryan at the convention - the Republican convention speaker received over $200,000 in stimulus monies.

And another from ABC:

RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."

THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.

Ryan has a long history of criticizing Obama for things he did. Such as Medicare - Ryan's budget includes the same savings from Medicare that he is attacking Obama for.

ThinkProgress catches two more lies in their live blog of the speech:

10:44: Obama hasn’t amassed more debt than all past presidents combined, as Ryan claimed. The New York Times beaks down the math: “The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.”

10:42: Ryan just brought up a “downgraded America.” It was his party that held the debt ceiling hostage, causing America’s creditors to lose faith and downgrade the country. In fact, the ratings agency repeatedly blamed Republicans for refusing to raise taxes.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP convention speaker says "I did build this" - he took stimulus money and $2m in govt contracts

The jokes just write themselves at this point. "We did build it" - the guy says - uh no you didn't. He took $2m in government contracts and over $200,000 in stimulus money to "build" his company. So in fact, WE did build it - we the people, we the taxpayers, built this guy's firm. And he's on stage mocking President Obama, claiming he got no government help to build his business, and now we find out he did.

They really are pathetic.

Another small business owner featured at the Republican National Convention undercuts the Fox-fueled "We Built It" narrative surrounding the event.

Steven Cohen, president of Ohio-based manufacturing company Screen Machine Industries, is scheduled to speak tonight at the convention. According to a press release from his company announcing the speaking appearance, Cohen will speak on "political issues important to manufacturing." Much like Sher Valenzuela, the Delaware small business owner that was featured on "We Built It" day at the convention, Cohen's business has also received help from the government.

Screen Machine has received more than $2 million in government contracts, including nearly $220,000 in stimulus funds, and claims a "long and proud history of supplying heavy-duty American Made equipment to government agencies and the US Military."

Read the rest of this post...

GOP "We Built It" speaker got millions from feds, gives speeches on fed aid

In other words, she didn't build it, WE BUILT IT.  We, the taxpayers who subsidized yet another Republican small business that's now out there dissing the very government help she got to put her on the map.

Seriously, this is getting embarrassing at this point.

Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed has her powerpoint on how to get rich at the government trough, here's a sample image:

Media Matters has another presentation she also gave on feeding at the government trough,  including the fact that her company received millions in federal loans and contracts.

The experience of a small business owner who will be promoted at the Republican National Convention sharply diverges from the right-wing media myth her speech is intended to promote.

On the day that the GOP convention will tout Fox-fueled myth "We Built It" as its primary theme, Delaware Lt. Gov. candidate and small business owner Sher Valenzuela is slated to deliver a speech about small business issues. But contrary to the evening's theme, Valenzuela's company, First State Manufacturing, has received millions of dollars in federal loans and contracts. Valenzuela has not only attributed her success in part to this outside assistance, but urged other small business owners to follow the same strategy of seeking government funds.

But the RNC isn't lying. When it comes to Valenzuela's company, in fact, we the taxpayers did built it. Read the rest of this post...

Comrade Jindal now demanding MORE fed disaster aid than states normally get

We know what you are,
Comrade Jindal, we're simply
haggling over the price.

We wrote earlier about "conservative" Governor Bobby Jindal of the People's Republic of Louisiana complaining that he wanted the Obama administration to give him more federal disaster aid than he was already getting.

We noted that it was, well, odd that proud red-stater Jindal, who famously turned down stimulus funds for unemployed Louisianans and for a high-speed rail, is now such a fan of all that tainted socialist "welfare" from Washington.

But now we learn that Jinda is even a bigger hypocrite than we thought.

You see, Comrade Jindal is now demanding more from the federal teet than states normally get during these "disasters."

He wants the federal government to reimburse him for state money spent on preparing for the hurricane.  That's not something FEMA normally covers because, you know, this is America, not the Soviet Union, and states like Louisiana, and governors like Jindal, are supposed to prepare for things like bad storms on their own.

Oh but it gets even better: Jindal had no such complaint when George Bush didn't offer to pay state preparations for a hurricane in 2008.  So either Jindal is playing politics with his state's impending hurricane, or he blew off the welfare of his own state in 2008 so as not to embarrass a Republican president.

Which one is it, tovarisch?

From Brian Beutler:

Asked today to respond to Jindal’s push for further assistance, FEMA administrator Craig Fugate explained, “primary responsibility for evacuations really [falls to] state and local governments and when it’s extraordinary the federal government can support that with financial assistance. What the President said yesterday was if you have a request for specific federal assistance, we’re ready to provide that life safety issues. We’re not going to hold anything up. But we’ll look at the impacts and determine, does this really exceed the state’s capability that require federal tax dollars to support that response and particularly if they start having damages. So, early on the request was direct federal assistance. If the financial impacts are greater than the state of Louisiana can manage, we assess that and we’ll make recommendations again looking at what the governor has requested.”

That’s the same approach the Bush administration took when Gustav was bearing down on Louisiana in 2008.

According to the Louisiana Times-Picayune, “Though Jindal called on the federal government to shoulder the full cost of the federal, state and local efforts, he did not publicly make the same criticisms when former President George W. Bush issued a similar declaration that included a cost ceiling as Hurricane Gustav approached the state…though as the storm was trailing off, the state and the Bush administration fought over exactly who would pay for what portion of the federal response.”

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Romney aide: We won't let our ads be dictated by facts

A Romney aide just admitted that their campaign ads aren't true.  That they know they're not true.  And they don't care."  From Ben Smith at Buzzfeed:

Mitt Romney's aides explained with unusual political bluntness today why they are spending heavily — and ignoring media criticism — to air an add accusing President Barack Obama of "gutting" the work requirement for welfare, a marginal political issue since the mid-1990s that Romney pushed back to center stage.

"Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," he said. The fact-checkers — whose institutional rise has been a feature of the cycle — have "jumped the shark," he added after the panel.

It's not just fact checkers like:

* The Washington Post ("Four pinocchios");

* CNN ("Fact check: Romney's welfare claims wrong");

* FactCheck.org ("It's simply not true"); and

* Politifact ("The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!").

Even MSNBC's conservative host Joe Scarborough, who was a former uber-Republican congressman, concluded: "I've been looking for a week-and-a-half to try to figure out the basis of this welfare reform ad," Scarborough said. "I've scoured the Wall Street Journal editorial pages … the ad's completely false. It's just completely false."

What does it say about your candidate when his entire campaign is based up on a lie? Not just the welfare ad - but the candidate himself?

Mitt Romney isn't running for president. Some guy, who isn't Mitt Romney at all, is running.

The guy who's running is a social conservative who's against the Massachusetts health care reform law, who isn't more pro-gay and pro-abortion than Ted Kennedy, who loves guns and Ronald Reagan, and who now is apparently very concerned that President Obama "gutted" welfare reform when everyone agrees that President Obama did no such thing.

What does it say about Mitt Romney when his team admits that "Our most effective ad is our welfare ad"?  It means that the truth about Mitt Romney must be pretty bad, and the truth about President Obama must be darn good, if the best argument Team Romney has for why Mitt should be president is a lie. Read the rest of this post...