Explaining why she has avoided mainstream media outlets where she might have to explain herself and her strange policy views more fully, the grandmotherly Angle said, “We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer, so that they report the news the way we want it reported.” — Joe Conason
If you want something short’n’hard-hitting to forward in response to the lies, misapprehensions and phony statistics circulated by misguided relatives and facebook acquaintances, Dave Johnson at the Campaign for America’s Future put together a good, succinct, link-intensive list of rebuttals, Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day. No, Obama did not triple the deficit, raise taxes, or bail out the banks (that happened before the 2008 election). The stimulus did work (just not well enough), health care reform will not cost a trillion dollars, and Social Security is not a ‘Ponzi scheme’. Government spending does not “take money out of the economy”; and new hiring in the private sector depends on demand, not on tax cuts.
This stuff really matters.
__
If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.
__
If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn’t work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.
__
If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse.
david mizner
Pretty good except for the one about Obama not bailing out the banks. He whipped for the first TARP as a candidate a passed TARP II as president.
cleek
if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
David Dewhurst, here in Texas, has an ad out about “Obamacare” where he talks about it raising premiums, raising taxes, implying that it will not allow people to choose their own doctors. I wish I had a way to make an ad to counter that.
Punchy
OT:
Who’da suspected these theiving clowns would turn to their cult and demand more $$?
Translation: my Learjet doesn’t fly itself, bitches.
Svensker
Yuh, but the Campaign for America’s Future is not a right wing organization so everything they say is a lie. IOW la la la I can’t hear you.
/wingnut
Brighton
We’ve been Tricked Enough Already.
read “Put the klan back in the kloset.”
Brighton
We’ve been Tricked Enough Already.
read “Put the klan back in the kloset.”
James E. Powell
@Svensker:
I posted a link to “Eight False Things” on my facebook. My right-wing nephew immediately responded by attacking the source, including a claim that nothing could be believed from an organization that was supported by -gasp!- the steelworkers union. But, of course, he believes every single thing produced by banks and corporations.
Redshift
I would add the false “the high unemployment was caused by the Obama Administration.”
I was talking to an actual reasonable Republican I know (no, really! We both serve on a citizen board overseeing county anti-poverty programs) about a month ago, and he uncharacteristically was parroting the Republican line with “where are the jobs?”
It was all I could do not to yell “your guy lost them all! We were losing 700,000 jobs a month when Bush left office!”
Later, when I’d had time to think it through, I came up with a more nuanced version, though I haven’t seen him again to try it: “Imagine you had a company where the CEO was fired because it was losing $700,000 a month. The new CEO brings it back to profitability in under two years; would you think it was reasonable to call for bringing back the old guy because the company has too much debt?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Brighton: Nice post.
Redshift
@cleek: In a campaign ad or speech, perhaps, but I don’t think that’s true for dealing with people one-on-one.
someguy
@Redshift:
Blaming Obama for the Bush recession is about as smart as giving Bush credit for inheriting the Clinton prosperity (which he then squandered). Democrats build it up, Republicans destroy it. Pretty simple.
El Cid
I knew very well that the NYT’s version of the ‘Iran giving bags of cash to Afghan government aide’ was not credible in blaming one underling with excess ties to the Iranians — a blame game shifting the responsibility off Karzai, which was an utterly silly way for the NYT to spin it (other than their US foreign policy & military contacts preferred that story).
Bad Mr. Daudzai! How dare you interfere with Karzai’s role as the mayor of Kabul by allowing those nasty Iranians who merely share a border to influence your honest and open policies?
Now we have the admission that spin was entirely bullshit, within the NYT itself.
In one fucking day the story goes from the NYT accepting PR bullshit spin that an evil underling is corrupting the Karzai government due to his nefarious ties with Iran to Karzai admitting that his government accepts the Iranian money to pay for his own expenses, at his own direction.
There really must be times in which the US foreign policy establishment is surprised by how happily our billion dollar press agrees to print whatever spin it wants them to.
Fucking journalism — how does it work?
liberal
Of course the bailouts started under Bush. But Treasury is now run by Obama, and it’s very difficult to believe that they’re not undertaking policies which amount to hidden subsidies for the banks. Similarly decisions undertaken by Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA. And while the Fed has more nominal independence, Obama did reappoint Bernanke.
Joe Beese
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Isn’t it interesting how Democrats consider that word perjorative. You’d think they’d be proud to have him identified with such a great advance.
You are still trying to sell it as a great advance, aren’t you?
liberal
@someguy:
Yes, but a lot of the Clinton prosperity was based on the dot com bubble—i.e., temporary and illusory.
And some of the bad guys who created the bubble were in Clinton’s admin—e.g. Rubin. Clinton didn’t help anything when he signed off on that bill exempting a certain dollar amount of home gains from capital gains taxes. And Clinton reappointed the man who IMHO is the #1 public enemy in terms of the bastardization of the financial system, Greenspan.
Maude
@liberal:
When did Obama become Treasury Secretary?
liberal
@Redshift:
Would that it were so.
liberal
@Maude:
I suppose it’s too much to ask if I suggest that Obama is responsible for the actions of his Treasury Secretary?
Bubblegum Tate
The problem is that most of the people who “know” these things know them as emotionally held truths, not logically held ones, so arguing logic does no good at all.
BR
@david mizner:
Would you be able to provide me a govtrack link to this mythical TARP II entity?
Martin
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
“Everything this guy said is bullshit. Thank you.”
That’s about all you can do, really. You can say more lies in 30 seconds than you can refute in 30 minutes.
Martin
@Joe Beese: Let me guess, ACA discriminates against the gays too right?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Bubblegum Tate:
IIRC it is out of print, but if you can find a copy the book Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed by Felipe Fernández-Armesto is well worth the read. His chapter on the truth that we feel (i.e. in our guts) is subtitled: “A big hairy ball with teeth”.
Unfortunately big hairy balls with teeth tend to show up and vote in above-average numbers.
Uloborus
@Joe Beese:
Um… yes, actually, we’re pretty fucking delighted. As always, conservatives misunderstand our reactions to their insults. We find your use of phrases like ‘Obamacare’ weird because YOU think it’s an insult to either party. We’d also rather not use your terms for anything if we can help it.
@liberal:
…dude. This entire post is a conspiracy theory. You do realize that? Zero evidence but ‘they must be out to get us somehow!’ Leave that stuff for the conservatives, please.
MikeBoyScout
If the public votes in a new Congress pushing teabagger BS, the public is screwed.
While I can GOTV and while I can argue with stupidity, the public has to do its part and reason.
Sadly many in the teabagging universe are likely to be the most f-d by the people and policies they support.
Kryptik
Sigh…and quite tellingly, half the comments there are telling the poster how full of shit he is, and how it’s so blindingly OBVIOUS Obama is to blame for everything.
Fuck all…
Martin
@Kryptik: So more of the same “Sure, everything you say is true, but that doesn’t make Obama any less black and scary.”
Kryptik
@Martin:
More like ‘Everything you say is false, because Obama is black and scary and soshulizt, so there’.
maya
Instead of Obamacare we needs us some Newtneglect.
Uloborus
@Kryptik:
I do sometimes wonder if this blog, as a side effect of becoming somehow ‘popular’, is attracting deliberate trolls attempting to destroy it. But I suppose it’s just more reasonable to acknowledge that nihilists, like the Tea Party, bitch way, way louder than their actual numbers or influence would make reasonable.
david mizner
@BR:
Well, you half-right but your half-rightness doesn’t in any way lessen Obama’s support for a no-strings bailout of the banks/
There was no law called TARP II.
According to the original bill — for which, as I said, Obama whipped votes and even went so far as to promise that he would back cram down legislation in exchange for votes — the president would have the power to distribute the second $350 bill unless Congress blocked him. Congress tried and failed to block him.
Make no mistake, there was something called TARP II. But it wasn’t passed by Congress — somehow that makes it better?
mds
@cleek:
More to the point, if you’re explaining this stuff a week before the election, you’re losing big.
Zifnab
@liberal: If you consider “profitability” equivalent to “net jobs lost”, we’re hovering around 100-200k per year rather than over 1 million per year.
That’s not nothing.
But then, when you look at where we’re suffering the biggest job losses currently, it’s in the public sector. The states went bust and fired legions of teachers, police officers, and other public servants.
The only way you recover from that kind of loss is to give the states more money. And the only way to get that money is to A) raise taxes or B) get cash from the Feds. Both those options are off the table, because of state and federal tax-o-phobes.
So we have leveled out, and we can certainly thank Obama’s pro-growth policies when he was able to pass aid to the states. I mean, give credit where credit is due.
Uloborus
@david mizner:
Well, yes. It meant Obama did his very, very necessary job (seriously, letting those banks just fail = worldwide depression, which makes 10% unemployment look like funsies) with the structure that Bush legally passed. Obama does not get to go in afterwards and change the stipulations in the law to make them less banker friendly.
The banks acting like assholes about TARP did not make it any less necessary.
EDIT – And incidentally, to the extent he had the authority he DID add extra stipulations. I do recall the banks whining about things like pay caps and rushing to give back the money.
Zifnab
@david mizner:
We existing in a financial system that uses privately run banks. If the private system collapses, that’s bad for the economy as a whole. There’s no escaping that.
You can be pissed at the TARP implementation. But you can’t really be pissed at the simple existence of the TARP program without just being generically pissed at the private banking industry as a whole. And we signed up for a private banking system some time back in the early 19th century. It’s a little late to be blaming either Republicans OR Democrats for that one.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Joe Beese: My reason for the quotes is that it’s what Dewhurst kept using over and over in the ad. I happen to find the term meh.
@Martin: Thanks. You’re right, but it’s still annoying. Maybe that’s what the ad should be though: “David Dewhurst is trying to set a record for the number of lies he can state in 30 seconds.”
stuckinred
@Joe Beese: Isn’t it interesting how dickheads like you wander in here?
General Stuck
@Uloborus:
I have thought this for a while now, as at least partly why they come, day after day, regurgitating the same ole shit. And day after day myself and others slinging it back. Like blog groundhog day from hell. I’ve decided these folks are the pol equivalent being vexations to the spirit, and am working to escape that particular squirrel cage. It’s only words typed anonymously and can do no more harm than a moderately windy day.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Uloborus: Were you around in 2006-2007 time frame? BJ had a couple of great trolls back then, the current crop are a big yawn in comparison.
stuckinred
@General Stuck: Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.
Zifnab
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’ve got a friend who just got a new job. One of the forms he got as he was completing the sign-up process involved listing all the changes to health care rules going forward. No maximum limits on coverage, kids age 26 and younger can join their parents’ policies, some other stuff I’m not familiar with… At any rate, the list was all good stuff.
If that’s all the stuff that gets tagged as “Obamacare”, I’m all for the term. In fact, I’m looking forward to watching Republicans campaign for rescission and against unlimited coverage limits in 2012.
When the Republicans fought like hell to own the Iraq War back in ’03, it bite them in the ass in ’06. I think all this campaigning against Health Reform in ’10 is going to turn around on them in ’12 and ’14.
Let’m call it “Obamacare” and wave around their witch doctor posters today. They’ll be scrambling hard to take credit tomorrow.
cleek
@Uloborus:
these trolls ain’t nothing like Yglesias’ trolls. MY’s got stone-cold racists and anarchist nutjobs, full-on wingnuts, and plain old crazy-ass lunatics, and they make up close to half of all his regulars (or, they post with such frequency that it seems that way).
Uloborus
@The Grand Panjandrum: and @cleek:
You make good points. I’ve only been here the last year, really. Context is always crucial.
DanF
You think trivial things like “facts” are going to change my crazy, right-wing relatives’ opinion on anything? No fucking way. They “know” what they “know” and that’s that. Maybe if Zombie Reagan, Karl Rove, Bush 41&43, Dole, Gingrich, Sean Hannity and every other host of Fox News gang-banged a school bus full of elementary kids with a rusty crucifix they *might* consider voting for a Democrat – but I wouldn’t hold my breathe. This shit is tribal – not rational.
Martin
@david mizner: TARP is only authorized to spend $475B. The Finreg bill removed authorization for $225B from the total. There’s $72B left of what’s been authorized that hasn’t been used. Treasury is using that money slowly, but generally only in the thousands and millions. There haven’t been any large disbursements in some time.
$148B went to Freddie/Fannie as a separate effort, along with AIG and the TARP money that was used for auto makers, which were all used in the justification by FinReg to reduce the TARP total.
http://bailout.propublica.org/main/summary
cleek
@DanF:
100% ditto. this. win.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Is it next Wednesday yet?
@DanF: Yes (as cleek so appropriately put it), yet no one is really talking about those people. Everyone is talking about the (let’s say) 16.5% of people who are not tribal. That’s who we’re all fighting over, all the time. The folks who are genuinely (for whatever reason) in the middle and might be swayed by argument (good argument or bad argument – they’re swayable).
Elections are won by a) all of your people showing up b) some of their people not showing up and c) 51% of the (metaphorical) 16.5% voting for you.
patroclus
My view is that if the country elects a bunch of lying smearing Republicans to Congress, then what we’re going to see is a lot more lying and smearing.
david mizner
@Uloborus:
That’s an entirely different discussion.
You can argue that the some kind of banks bailiouts were necessary and that the ones we did were successful (I would probably disagree with the former and definitely disagree with the latter)
In any case, what you can’t argue is that Obama didn’t bailout the banks.
cleek
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
NPR told me this morning that all those people are leaning GOP.
Hunter Gathers
Mitch McConnell, wannabe Senate Majority Leader
Just call him a nigger and get it over with , Mitch.
david mizner
@Martin:
So?
gene108
@liberal:
I disagree with the dot.com bubble=Clinton prosperity notion.
I put the dot.com boom as starting around 1998 or maybe 1999. Prior to 1998 the stock market doubled or tripled in value, from where it was in 1990. Investors had made a lot of money, ordinary people had made a lot of money, if they were investing in stocks and people needed to put it somewhere. Investors began putting money into start-ups, hoping to hit it big and find the next Intel or Microsoft.
No one attributes the turn around, from the 1991 recession, which kept picking up steam up until 1998 as based on the dot.com bubble or asset inflation.
There was some very sound things done in those days to efficiently manage the government and the economy, such as reducing the deficit, putting money towards the “information Superhighway”, at the start of Clinton’s administration, reducing the military from Cold War levels, etc. All of this was prior to the dot.com boom.
The reason the dot.com boom and bust weighs so heavily with people is because Bush & Co. were so incompetent, they basically took what was a mild recession, concentrated in one or two segments of the economy – IT and telecom – and did nothing to benefit ordinary Americans.
I really think of Gore had been President, people wouldn’t be looking at the dot.com boom as some sort of albatross to hang around Clinton’s neck, but rather as an aberration, which led to a mild recession and set the stage for renewed prosperity.
Uloborus
@david mizner:
Well… yes, you can. Bush bailed them out. Obama only oversaw the last part of the bailout that had been handed to him. It’s not that far different from the jobs thing. There have been huge job losses in Obama’s presidency as he tried to deal with an economy bleeding from the stab wounds Bush gave it. Saying Obama bailed out the banks is about like calling this Obama’s economy. It’s only true in the most technical sense that ignores all context.
Uloborus
@cleek:
I assume due to polling data about independents, because the media still hasn’t figured out that ‘moderate swing voters’ =/= ‘independents’ in this cycle.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@cleek: I still think (and if I’m wrong, next Wednesday you can all tell me I was wrong and I’ll buy the first round) that — NPR and Nate Silver and all that aside — the losses on the Democratic (which there will be) are not going to be as massive as we fear.
“Leaning” doesn’t mean “voting,” first of all, and second of all, I think a lot of the 16.5%-ers are just plain going to stay home, out of sheer disgust (if you’re in the middle, you’re less likely to be wooed by a Angle). I also think that our side of the fence is scared shitless, so more of us are going to make the effort than might otherwise (“enthusiasm gap” or not). And I further think that much as the hard-core right wing has been making a lot of noise, they don’t really represent a change in numbers, just a change in tone (the whole “the tea party = the GOP” idea), so I honestly think that they are not going to turn out the big numbers that they need in order to make a huge change.
Mid-terms are always a loss for the party in power, if I recall, and I don’t expect the Democrats to not lose seats. I just do not think that it will be a bloodbath, by any stretch.
Again: First round’s on me if I’m wrong, and I’ll even join you in the drinking.
kay
@Hunter Gathers:
Of course it is. Can you imagine the media outrage if a Democrat had said this about Bush in 2002?
If Pelosi had said this about Bush in 2006?
That her single most important goal was to elect a Democrat in 2008?
You know what Pelosi was talking about when Democrats were poised to take Congress? Student loans and health care for children.
That, all by itself, uttered by a Democrat about George W Bush would provoke days of anguish by media and pundits.
You won’t hear squat.
david mizner
@Uloborus:
And as I said, Obama — as the candidate for pres — was the most important Democratic supporter of the Bush-Paulson bailout, so any attempt to distance himself from it is dishonest.
And he had a free reign to do what he wanted with the remaining funds. He largely continued the Bush-Paulson approach, putting only mild restrictions on the money.
Hunter Gathers
@kay: When Democrats do it, they’re traitors. When GOPers do it, they are principled, bipartisan patriots. David Broder told me so.
I can’t help but get the feeling that the MSM and the GOP really, really want a race war.
stuckinred
@Hunter Gathers: Mornin Joe was absolutely livid at the NYT article that Obama didn’t have a face-to-face meeting with this fucking pipsqueak for 18 months after taking office.
Mike E
Dunno ’bout y’all, but I’m working a phone bank to GOTV here in Mayberry. Some of ’em actually believe that if you don’t “renew” your registration, it will lapse. And early voting is only for the handicapped/absentees (students). Teh Stoopid iz infeckshuss…
Lurked
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Perhaps it’s a straw to which I cling, but I believe that the “likely voter” screens are wildly off this year. Perhaps the pollsters themselves have all bought into the “enthusiasm gap” narrative.
Except for the fanatics, Republican turnout wasn’t actually all that great during their own primaries.
Hunter Gathers
@stuckinred: Joe “Pay no attention to the dead intern I was fucking” Scarborough is always bitching about something. Usually how Obama is dissing our GOPer overlords, or not paying enough respect to Real Murika. Him and Mika “I’m doing a shitty Gretchen Carlson impression” Brzezinski are the poster children for why abortion should be mandatory.
Bubblegum Tate
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Sounds like my kind of reading–thanks for the tip!
kay
@Hunter Gathers:
It’s just so silly. Republicans have made their intentions clear, again and again, and media go out of their way to ignore what they say, and report on what they hope it means.
It doesn’t mean anything different than what they say. The objectives are to undo the legislation that passed, start the usual conservative round of investigations, and prepare the field to either remove Obama prior to 2012 or make him unelectable.
We know that because they keep telling us. I think my favorite flight of fancy is the media delusion that they’re going to do anything on climate change. They’ve been running against cap and trade in every district in the country, for months. I mean, seriously, WTF? What possible place are we getting “compromise” from?
kay
@Hunter Gathers:
And then compare that deference to how any question about Obama was treated as absolutely legit:
“will Obama actually institute death panels?”
Hmmm. I wonder. Does the President of the United States plan on slaughtering senior citizens? Perhaps! Opinions differ! Let’s discuss it for three months, and never reach any conclusions. Maybe!
We discussed that question like it was a good faith question for months.
But Republicans make a public vow to focus exclusively on removing Obama and the assumption by media is they don’t really mean it.
Tax Analyst
@kay:
Well, but wouldn’t it be wrong not to speculate?
OT slightly, but on Saturday L.A. Times reader’s got treated to a front page article about how loyal and wonderful Carly Fiorina was with “her friends”, as opposed to the “cold, calculating image” that has “developed” in the campaign. WTF? I’m personally blown away that a politician’s personality(any politician)might somehow vary or differ from the stick-figure media/pundit analysis that gets tagged to them around the beginning of any political campaign.
In other deeply revealing CA electoral news, Democratic Party Gubinatorial candidate Jerry Brown is still bald.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Well here is a false thing that everybody thinks they know:
Republicans can repeal the healthcare reforms.
They can’t. And won’t. Can’t be done and won’t be done in the near term, and by the time it is actually possible, taking it apart will not have political viability. Governments and business, even the ones that don’t like it, are already building their next ten years’ planning around these reforms. Once those reforms are taking hold, it won’t be possible to unwrap them without huge political turmoil and great cost. HCR is not a new parking ordinance. You can’t just put up a new sign with the new parking hours and walk away.
Patrick
@Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I saw that Dewhurst ad this weekend, and I was shocked to learn that “Obamacare’ is running for Lt. Gov.
Had I known, I would have considered a write-in (in lieu of the DEM who stands no chance in a statewide in 2010 Texas).
Ron
@James E. Powell: I also put up a link to the “Eight False Things” on facebook. I immediately had some of my right-wing friends post sarcastic comments saying “Wait, which one of those is the false one?” and similar ones. On the other hand I actually had one or two real conservatives (as opposed to wingnuts) comment essentially willing to actually discuss what was accurate and what wasn’t. It was helpful that the actual source for the deficit numbers worked back to the Cato institute. But the reality is sadly that people that already believe these myths aren’t going to be swayed by this. I just don’t know enough mushy middle people well enough to discuss politics with them (and most mushy middle people aren’t that interested in discussing it anyway).
Ron
I really do wonder what the people whining about TARP (both from the right and the left) think would have been the result of letting the banks fail. Granted, I’m not an expert, but the general consensus seems to be that it would have led to a total and complete financial and economic crash that would have made the recession we had look like nothing.
Sentient Puddle
@Ron: We don’t need to wonder. We let Lehman fail, and that was the “Oh fucking shit” moment that triggered TARP. So not bailing out the banks would’ve been something like Lehman multiplied by ten.
Or put another way, “total and complete financial and economic crash” is understating it.