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You are here: Home / If You’re Gonna Lie, Lie Big

If You’re Gonna Lie, Lie Big

by John Cole|  January 4, 20119:40 am| 31 Comments

This post is in: I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To

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For reasons that remain a mystery (masochism, maybe), I continue to check in on Hot Air to watch Captain Ed tap dance on his former integrity, and came across this gem:

There are two problems here, one short-term and one long-term. The national debt will rise above the limit increased last year by Democrats at the end of their spending spree in short order, and the question of defaulting on debt service becomes real and could create a lot of economic damage.

Yeah. It was the Democratic spending spree that rocketed up the national debt:

I’m sure everyone recalls how Hot Air was at the front of trying to make sure the Bush tax cuts were ended so that the national debt could be addressed. And remember how the Hot Air staff demanded that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq be paid for? LOL.

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    January 4, 2011 at 9:43 am

    Shhh! You are substituting reality for their surreality. Keep this up and Ed might cry.

    You wouldn’t want that, would you? ;)

  2. 2.

    MikeJ

    January 4, 2011 at 9:47 am

    You should really try to be more civil. Citing facts is exactly like calling him a motherfucker.

  3. 3.

    General Stuck

    January 4, 2011 at 9:54 am

    This video clip of Rep Weiner and Wasserman Schultz on Face the Nation this past Sunday was a thing of beauty, if we could clone these two dems for all media events, life would be must easier for dems in general.

    how to demolish a wingnut on national teevee by revealing their hypocritical bullshit on economic matters.

  4. 4.

    Ash Can

    January 4, 2011 at 9:55 am

    Ed and his audience have to build their own reality because facing facts would make them crack up. Poor things.

  5. 5.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    January 4, 2011 at 9:55 am

    “You know, (John), Reagan proved deficits don’t matter“

  6. 6.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    January 4, 2011 at 9:58 am

    @General Stuck:

    Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of the finest Democrats out there. The way she transitioned from Hillary Clinton supporter to Obama supporter after the 2008 primaries was spectacular. Mark Green, too. If I had to choose two Democrats to present the Democratic argument in any debate it’d probably be these two.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    January 4, 2011 at 9:59 am

    Hell, you don’t have to go back so far as last month to find a staggering example of GOP hypocrisy on the subject of deficit reduction. Yesterday will work just as well (Politico link, the gist of which is that the GOP has decided that their attempt to repeal the deficit-reducing health care reform bill doesn’t count towards increasing the deficit. Because, shut up, that’s why).

    dms

  8. 8.

    Silver Owl

    January 4, 2011 at 10:01 am

    Conservatives, especially the men, are never ever ever wrong on anything. They are always totally awesome on everything.

    Perfect creatures in everyone and about everything. All problems are everyone’s else fault. Never is the conservative man responsible for anything but the uber good stuff.

  9. 9.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    January 4, 2011 at 10:02 am

    Tax cuts always increase revenue. Sheesh. Every moran knows that.

  10. 10.

    Uloborus

    January 4, 2011 at 10:02 am

    @MikeJ:
    It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  11. 11.

    jrg

    January 4, 2011 at 10:05 am

    The best way to solve a problem is to prevent taking responsibility for it. That’s just common sense from the heartland.

    I’d add that if Obama leaves office after a second term with a balanced budget, principled conservatives like Ed will love him for it – they will not criticize him for cutting services or raising taxes, nor will they spread deranged seekretmusimvincefostershowmethebirthcertificateblowjob bullshit.

  12. 12.

    DBrown

    January 4, 2011 at 10:06 am

    It worked for Lee! (see past thread)

  13. 13.

    cleek

    January 4, 2011 at 10:07 am

    that’s a hell of an epistemic closure they’ve got going on there. they have a nearly-completely separate reality! now if they could find a way to seal it off completely – so that not only could no information get in (which they’ve almost achieved) , but that no information could get out – the rest of us could live in peace.

  14. 14.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    January 4, 2011 at 10:17 am

    John Cole:

    If you’re gonna lie, lie big.

    Robert Reich:

    The Big Lie.

    Republicans are telling Americans a big lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is that our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

    The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity.

    The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall by spending more, not less. The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely…

    If the Democrats would actually say this, and you know, forcefully, and better yet also do it in the style that conservatives have mastered, repeated day and night from a million little megaphones, then they, and we, might have a chance of having it filter into the conversation at least somewhat.

    The Wingnuts have used this trick to great effect of having one, concise talking point be repeated so it’s coming at the average consumer from seemingly all directions, and thus seems true. Of course it’s really all one direction, but in a trick worthy of “Flatland”, it’s made to seem as if it came from inside the listener’s own brain.

  15. 15.

    slag

    January 4, 2011 at 10:30 am

    That’s a good graphic.

  16. 16.

    Tom65

    January 4, 2011 at 10:36 am

    @Bill E Pilgrim: SOSHULISIM!
    rinse, repeat, etc.

  17. 17.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    January 4, 2011 at 10:41 am

    @Tom65: Exactly. And the amount that the general public hears “Soçialism!” when these claims are made, they need to hear just as many times and coming from as many quarters, “Oh, bullshit!”.

    If anyone really thinks that things will change for the better before that happens, dream on. Of course, things will most likely just keep getting worse, but just saying.

  18. 18.

    DJShay

    January 4, 2011 at 10:54 am

    More GOP asshattery. They are now for Deem and Pass

    As soon as those rules are adopted on Wednesday, Ryan’s spending levels will be considered — or “deemed” — adopted by the full House as if they’d passed a budget with a floor vote. The legislative language in the rules package holds that Ryan’s spending limits, “shall be considered as contained in a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011 and the submission thereof into the Congressional Record shall be considered as the completion of congressional action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011.”

    Emphasis added. Back in March 2010, House Democrats were toying with using a similar process to pass health care reform. They were considering the Senate health care package, which they hated, and a package of amendments to that bill, which they liked. To square those views, they wanted to set up a procedural vote, which, if agreed to, would “deem” both bills passed at once. “Deem” and “pass.”

    This quickly became known as “Demon Pass,” or the “Slaughter Solution,” named after House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter. Republicans rebelled, and conservatives went off the deep end. Radio talk show host Mark Levin called it “100 times worse than Watergate.”

    And I’m sure the media will hold their feet to the fire over this. Dumbasses.

  19. 19.

    cleek

    January 4, 2011 at 11:04 am

    @DJShay:
    nice!

    check out how AmSpec fumed at the prospect of D&P:

    In watching House Democrats maintain their acme of arrogance, by defying the American people and shredding the U.S. Constitution, the irony of it all staggers:
    …
    First, using the “Slaughter House Rules” to skirt a substantive vote and “deem as passed” the Senate’s government-run health care bill would violate constitutionally prescribed procedures for duly passing and enacting federal legislation. Obviously, this dysfunctional legislative branch’s Leftist majority cares little about this pesky “supreme law of the land.”
    …
    Second, though, the separate, equal judicial branch of the federal government will care, and herein Democrats may finally be able to take credit for “new jobs created,” because listen closely and you will hear the sound of every conservative organization hiring a retinue of lawyers to queue up to take any health care bill passed under the “Slaughter House Rules” straight to federal court.

    the author is a House member from Michigan.

  20. 20.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    January 4, 2011 at 11:20 am

    When Ed and the rest of the Palin panty sniffers make paying for Medicare Part D a top priority I’ll take them serious. Until then, Ed who?

  21. 21.

    gnomedad

    January 4, 2011 at 11:25 am

    @General Stuck:
    At the CBS site, there’s a clip titled “Rep. Issa Set to Save Americans Money.” Thanks, liberal media!

  22. 22.

    DJShay

    January 4, 2011 at 11:28 am

    @cleek: It’s just unreal to me that the GOP has the balls to do this. I think that’s why they get so much more favorable coverage in the media. It may be hypocritical, but they won’t back down from it. Ever. The media sees this as the embodiment of the quintessential American. The party of “John Wayne” so to speak.

  23. 23.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    January 4, 2011 at 11:40 am

    @DJShay:

    They don’t have the balls to do anything, stupid people don’t need balls when a non-functioning brain will do quite nicely. John Wayne my ass, more like John Wilkes Booth.

    Maybe even John Wayne Gacy.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    January 4, 2011 at 11:43 am

    @cleek:

    I’m hearing a bit of a dogwhistle in there, I think. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that I first read it as Cider House Rules and wondered, “Wait, what does this have to do with abortion?”

  25. 25.

    azlib

    January 4, 2011 at 11:44 am

    Dick Cheney was right when he said deficits do not matter. The Dems should have taken him at his word. The Republicans are getting away convincing people that deficits are only created by spending and not by reducing revenues.

  26. 26.

    Laughingriver

    January 4, 2011 at 11:46 am

    Why these clowns continue to think that we’re going to default when we could easily raise the tax rates to the 50%-60% range for the top 10% and be in surpluses is beyond me.

    Heck if we did that, in 10 years the entire debt to the public would be paid off, how about a 10 year expiring tax increase to eliminate our deficit and debt, bet you never hear that from Andrew Sullivan when he is getting all serious about nations fiscal problems eh?

  27. 27.

    feebog

    January 4, 2011 at 12:11 pm

    It is going to be a wild and bumpy ride for sure. One thing that may get accomplished is to start paring down the military budget. There may be some bi-partisan support to eliminate some programs and close a few overseas bases.

  28. 28.

    cleek

    January 4, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    @feebog:

    There may be some bi-partisan support to eliminate some programs and close a few overseas bases.

    i doubt it

  29. 29.

    Woodrowfan

    January 4, 2011 at 12:23 pm

    there’s a reason why they call him ‘Special Ed.”

  30. 30.

    Nellcote

    January 4, 2011 at 2:53 pm

    @feebog:

    Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to announce as early as Thursday about $100 billion in savings for the Pentagon and cuts to some weapons programs, sources said on Monday

    linky

  31. 31.

    Kmeyer the lurker

    January 4, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    We’re so totally disfucntional, we need to coin a phrase that is the opposite of Occam’s razor. Here’s what I mean: we have a problem, the deficit, that could be remedied in short order by fixing another problem, which is our unconscionably low top margin tax rates on high earners. Easy fix, right? Not in America. Turns out that here, that’s the one thing we absolutely cannot do. Instead, we call up ALAN FUCKING SIMPSON and say “hey, can you come up with a way to reduce the deficit?” He, being ALAN FUCKING SIMPSON says “Sure, let’s start by reducing the top marginal tax rate by a third and making all the people who are really struggling eat shit to pay for it!”

    The opposite of Occam’s razor.

    That CBS poll was a thing of wonder, though. Seems to me that in all national polls, there are about 25% of Americans who do not live in reality. The hard core Bush dead-enders, the UFO/lizard people/young earth/vampire believers (I believe this blog refers to them as ‘people who voted for Alan Keyes in Illinois’). Yet this poll had 81% supporting the correct solutions to our deficit problem, and only 7% voting for the abjectly insane solutions. This poll cracked the tin-hat people! We got a quarter of them, and less than a third went for the reliably insane ideas! Of course, our government will go for the insanity because …. it’s not our government any more.

    Here’s how America died. We did it not for any noble or good reason, or in defense of any altruistic cause. We did it because we decided the most important thing to do was to make people who are already very well off even richer.

    Sorry for the long rant. Back to lurking.

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