Showing posts with label conservative media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservative media. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2013

This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots
















This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots

Good News: Gilberton Police Chief  and Neo-Confederate Conservative Mark Kessler Suspended Indefinitely

 GOP’s destructive grifter: Super Conservative America Hater Jim DeMint peddles political poison - Republicans are starting to realize that Jim DeMint's “Defund Obamacare” campaign is all about funding his empire

National Right to Kill Children member and draft dodging America hater Ted Nugent: Great Society "Responsible For More Destruction To Black America" Than Slavery, KKK
In fact, the President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative -- which included Medicare, Medicaid and a variety of other anti-poverty programs -- was responsible for significant and lasting reductions in poverty. As Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews noted, "the best evidence indicates that the War on Poverty made a real and lasting difference"
Health Insurance "Coverage Gap" Coming to a Red State Near You

Roughly 260 million Americans (roughly 85 percent) already have health insurance provided by their employers, the government or through individual policies they purchased. In places like Oregon, Colorado, New York, California and other, mostly Democratic states, governors and state legislators accepted the expansion of Medicaid to provide free health insurance for those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty (FPL). For those earning between 138 and 400 percent of the FPL, the Affordable Care Act's subsidies will help them purchase insurance in the private market. But in the states where Republicans said "no" to the expansion of Medicaid, the picture is much different. As the AP explained the coverage gap:

    Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured people who would qualify for health coverage under an expansion of Medicaid live in states which won't broaden the program or have not yet decided on expansion.

The resulting Republican body count is staggering. Thanks to the GOP's rejection of Medicaid expansion, 1.3 million people in Texas, 1 million in Florida, 534,000 in Georgia and 267,000 in Missouri will be ensnared in the coverage gap.

How can this be, the conservative movement claims to be pro-life. It truns out they mean they only care about clumps of cells.

National Public Radio, which the wacky conservative movement claims has a pro-American liberal bias, Pushes Myth That Raising Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs. These large corporations are making historic profits and paying their executives historically high wages and bonuses. They could pay themselves something reasonable for not doing much except seating at a desk and going to meetings, take the money saved and pay it to the people who do the actual work that makes these companies have a profit.

In Effort To Woo Female Voters, The UnAmerican plastic patriot from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell(R) Touts Women’s Law He Voted Against

Monday, August 12, 2013

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor




















RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor

On Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union invited Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus to offer what turned out to be little more than a dump of Republican talking points opposing the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is “European, socialist style-type health care,” Priebus told CNN. He even claimed that Republicans — who have now voted to repeal Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions 40 different times — are the true defenders of people who are unable to obtain health insurance without health reform. And then he dropped the death panels line — “what people don’t want are government panels deciding whether something’s medically necessary.” Watch it:

Priebus’ decision to drop this line without any context whatsoever represents an innovation in Republican messaging against providing health care to millions of Americans. The “death panel” smear originally emerged on former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) Facebook page, and was widely viewed at the time as an attack on a bipartisan proposal to enable Medicare to cover voluntary end-of-life counseling. After that proposal was dropped from the bill that ultimately became the Affordable Care Act, several Republicans — including Palin once again — retconned the term “death panels” to refer to a cost-cutting measure known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB.

Although the IPAB is empowered to take some measures to bring down Medicare costs if those costs grow faster than a certain rate, it is expressly forbidden to take any action that might qualify as rationing care. Under the Affordable Care Act, no proposal generated by the IPAB may include “any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the IPAB will do anything at all, because Medicare costs are currently not growing fast enough to trigger the IPAB’s authority.

So the first provision Republicans labeled as a “death panel” wasn’t actually a death panel, and it didn’t even make it into the law itself. The second provision they labeled a “death panel” also isn’t a death panel, and it may not actually do anything at all. Four years after Sarah Palin invented this canard, the Republican National Committee Chair is reduced to simply asserting, without context or explanation, that death panels exist — and hoping someone out there will still believe him.

It is difficult to say where Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus received his political education, from the old Soviet Communists or from read fascist literature. Either way disinformation campaigns like his, Sarah Palin and the Republican party are not American ideals. These radical conservatives will not be happy until they impose an Iranian style totalitarian theocracy on the USA. That is why they wear flag pins and talk about god and country so much, to cover their UnAmerican agenda. These wacko radicals believe that they can fool all the people all the time.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Video Proof That Sean Hannity Should Be Deported For Being a Shameless UnAmerican Hypocrite



Sean Hannity is warning that data mining and surveillance are "very clear violation[s] of the Fourth Amendment," a drastic change for the Fox News host, who was a loud defender of National Security Agency surveillance during the Bush administration. Media Matters offers a look at Hannity on NSA surveillance, then and now.
Patriotic Americans should demand that this Orwellian puppet of Roger Ailes and Proto-fascist Rupert Murdoch be stripped of his citizenship ( has anyone seen Hannity's birth certificate) and deported from the country. Sean would love living in his ideological homeland, China.

Monday, March 25, 2013

How Low Can Morally Corrupt Republicans Go, GOP Opposition Researcher Names Drudge As A Propaganda Model

























How Low Can Morally Corrupt Republicans Go, GOP Opposition Researcher Names Drudge As A Propaganda Model

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin interviewed Tim Miller, executive director of a new conservative political action committee centered on opposition research, who reminisced about how conservative operatives successfully used blogger Matt Drudge to push debunked or thinly-researched smears against Democrats in 2004, describing it as a "great model" that needs to be updated.

In a March 24 post at Rubin's "Right Turn" blog, Miller described his organization, America Rising, as being dedicated to the "collection, dissemination and deployment of opposition research against Democrats," and uses Drudge's DrudgeReport.com circa 2004 as a model to return to (emphasis added):

    Last week former Mitt Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades and two young Republican sharpshooters, Tim Miller and Joe Pounder, announced they would set up a new organization, America Rising, devoted to the collection, dissemination and deployment of opposition research against Democrats and a counterpart to the hugely successful American Bridge on the left. On Friday I sat down with Miller and Pounder at a Capitol Hill Starbucks to talk about their new venture.

    They plan on instigating nothing less than a revolution in the way the right does and uses oppo research. They are keen on connecting research to communication and every other aspect of campaigns. Pounder tells me, "It must be responsive to the news cycle and polling." Miller jokes that "research has been people sitting in a dungeon or going through trash cans" and then funneling the information up to a press person to send out in a mass e-mail. Miller says, "Now you have to drive the news cycle."

    The Romney campaign was certainly hobbled by the Democrats' opposition machine, which cranked out information on everything from Bain to Cayman bank accounts, funneled it to friendly press outlets and the Obama super PAC, and kept the Romney team on perpetual defense. But the problem is not specific to the Romney campaign. Miller recalls, "We had a great model in 2004 -- research guys who fed to Drudge. Drudge drove the mainstream media." But, he says, "in a lot of ways we haven't done a good job of updating [that model]. Over time we rested on our laurels."

In 2006, ABC News highlighted Drudge's influence on media, particularly in the 2004 election cycle, saying, "Republican operatives keep an open line to Drudge, often using him to attack their opponents...And then the mainstream media often picks it up."

Drudge did help drive stories to Fox News, right-wing radio and other outlets during the 2004 presidential election, but much of the blogger's content -- which included discredited attacks on John Kerry's military service -- was thinly-researched, deceptively edited, or flat-out wrong.

What does it say about your radical political movement that it's single biggest weapon is not truth, not American values, not legal or economic justice, not liberty, not the Constitution, not progress and jobs, but smears from mentally unstable ideologues.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

How Do You Know The Washington Post is a Conservative Rag. Because They Will Not Fire Jennifer Rubin For Libel




















How Do You Know The Washington Post is a Conservative Rag. Because They Will Not Fire Jennifer Rubin For Libel

Since the summer of 2010, the right-wing media has been obsessively promoting the absurd non-scandal involving the New Black Panther Party, in which the Obama Justice Department was alleged to have dropped voter intimidation charges against the fringe group owing to racial and political solidarity. One of the primary movers of this farce has been Jennifer Rubin, who authored one of the first reports on the story for The Weekly Standard and continued to write at length about DOJ's alleged perfidy at her Washington Post blog.

This month, the Justice Department's inspector general released the results of their investigation into the New Black Panthers affair and confirmed what everyone already knew to be true: the allegations against DOJ were bunk. Rubin is excitedly waving this report around, claiming it reflects poorly on President Obama's reported Labor Secretary nominee, and determinedly ignoring the parts that show pretty much every word she wrote about the New Black Panther story was rooted in falsehood.

Since the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released its report, Rubin has written two Washington Post blog posts touting its findings to attack Perez. In a March 12 post, she wrote: "I won't revisit all the behavior of the Obama Justice Department but a nearly-300 page report has been released by the administration's own inspector general. The IG went out of the way to be even-handed, even when there was substantial evidence of politicization." The next day, she briefly referenced the OIG report's findings on the New Black Panther case, writing:

    The IG declined to find a racial or political motive for dismissing the New Black Panther case but found actions surrounding that action "risked undermining confidence in the non-ideological enforcement of the voting rights laws." In other words, it sure looked partisan.

Rubin's twisted construction of the IG "declin[ing] to find a racial or political motive" is fairly comical, given how invested Rubin was in the existence of those motives. Again, she was one of the main drivers of this story. She wrote a lengthy Weekly Standard article in June 2010 (before J. Christian Adams resigned from DOJ claiming racially charged "corruption" in the case, which blew up the story) alleging that the "Obama Justice Department went to bat for the New Black Panther party -- and then covered it up." As the story slowly fell to pieces, Rubin held firm, insisting the critics were wrong. "The issue is whether a meritorious claim of voter intimidation was dismissed under pressure from left-leaning civil rights groups," she wrote in January 2011, "and whether there is reason to believe there is a sentiment against a color-blind application of civil rights laws."

By March 2011, we knew affirmatively that the allegations of racial preference at DOJ were false. The department's Office of Professional Responsibility investigated the matter and released their findings. According to the report, OPR "found no evidence that the decision to dismiss the case against three of the four defendants was predicated on political considerations," and "no evidence that political considerations were a motivating factor in authorizing the civil action against the four defendants."

Rubin, however, was undeterred. She lashed out at OPR, calling it "as unprofessional as it is biased," and insisted that the report was wrong:

    Frankly, in reporting in my pre-Post days and in subsequent reporting by The Post, there is ample evidence that voting section attorneys objected to enforcing civil rights laws against minority defendants("my people," as Eric Holder infamously put it). Yet the crack team at OPR apparently didn't find any evidence of this. (Do they subscribe to The Post?) [Right Turn, 4/3/2011]

The OIG report, however, not only confirms OPR's finding, it flatly debunks Rubin:

    The OIG received allegations that Division leadership between 2009 and 2012 was hostile to "race neutral" enforcement of the voting rights laws and that the Voting Section would enforce Sections 2 and 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act only in "traditional" circumstances -- namely, to protect minorities as historical victims of discrimination -- and not against minority defendants or to protect White victims. We found insufficient evidence to conclude that Division leadership during this period had such a policy, or that the laws were enforced in a discriminatory manner to achieve that result.
The New Black Panthers case was a gigantic distraction, a manufactured controversy meant to stoke outrage and damage the Obama administration politically. We're only still talking about it because of adetermined effort on the part of conservative media figures, like Rubin, to force it into the news cycle. It's been debunked more times than should have been necessary, and the fact that Rubin is gingerly tip-toeing around the most recent dismantling of the fake story she helped will into existence is perhaps an indication that we're finally nearing the point of putting this nonsense to bed once and for all.

Conservative Republican Rubin has a long and dubious history of trying to convince the reading public that her wacko delusions are facts.

I don't understand why Paul Ryan (R-WI) hates America so much. He has a cushy job ($179k per year) where he doesn't do anything - because he wants to do his part to make sure government doesn't work - Paul Ryan's $5.7 Trillion Magic Trick - yet here he is trying to take money from seniors, the working poor and the middle-class to pay for tax cuts for wealthy moochers who keep complaining about how hard they have it.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel





















Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel

Since Glenn Beck left Fox News in 2011 and founded his own web channel, TheBlaze, the former right-wing sensation has been less prevalent in the mainstream political conversation. Still, Beck has cultivated a substantial audience for his subscription-only programming, and is now using that following to pressure cable networks into carrying his channel.

Beck started promoting GetTheBlaze.com on Monday, asking fans to demonstrate to their television provider that there is wider demand for the libertarian channel. If his channel does get picked up by cable television providers, anyone who pays for cable will subsidize Beck’s channel, regardless of whether or not they watch it. As The New York Times explains, TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch.

Beck argues that carrying TheBlaze would be no different from supposedly ideological cable channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. But since leaving Fox, Beck’s radical libertarianism has gone even further fringe. In the past few months, Beck has promoted multiple conspiracy theories via the channel he is now trying to push on cable subscribers:

    1. Cop killer Chris Dorner was supported by liberals. As Los Angeles was turned upside down in the manhunt for Chris Dorner in February, the former police officer who killed 4 people, Beck claimed “the American left” was supporting Chris Dorner. His evidence was a Facebook page with “thousands of likes.”

    2. Obama secretly tried to release the “blind sheikh” bomber. Relying on a single anonymous source “close to the Obama administration,” TheBlaze accused President Obama of plotting to secretly release a 1993 World Trade Center bomber. The conspiracy theory quickly took hold in Tea Party circles, even prompting top House Republicans to parrot the false theory.

    3. The Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated the US government. Beck hosted Rep. Michele Backmann (R-MN) to defend her widely denounced anti-Muslim witch hunt. On Beck’s show, Bachmann once again accused Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, of being a Muslim Brotherhood spy, a ludicrous charge vehemently condemned by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Scott Brown (R-MA).

    4. The Petraeus scandal was orchestrated by the White House. Like most of the right-wing blogosphere, Beck was obsessed with a purported cover-up of the Benghazi consulate attack. When CIA Director David Petraeus was caught in an affair with his biographer, Beck claimed the White House deliberately orchestrated the scandal in order to discredit the military and distract from the Benghazi attacks. In Beck’s mind, the White House was also behind last year’s Secret Service prostitution scandal, another supposed attempt to undermine trust in law enforcement.

Beck and his anti-American friends are so self obsessed they really think all cable subscribers should be forced to swallow their cancerous lunacy. If Beck has such a great product why not do the capitalistic thing and make it a premium channel that people can pay for by subscription, like HBO.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Desperation of the Austerity Parade

















Gratifying Signs of Desperation
On both sides of the Atlantic, the austerians seem to be freaking out. And that has to be good news, an indication that they realize, at some level, that they’re losing the debate.

First up, the sad story of Joe Scarborough, whose response to my anti-austerian appearance on his show has been a bizarre campaign to convince the world that absolutely nobody of consequence shares my views. Why is this bizarre? Because while I could be wrong about macroeconomics (although I’m not), it’s just not true, provably not true, that I’m alone in arguing that the current and near-future deficit aren’t problems. (Among others, there’s this guy you may have heard of).

So in the latest twist, JoScar is citing my Princeton colleague Alan Blinder, who he claims is totally at odds with my position. Hmm. The article he’s citing (which is in the Atlantic, not the New Yorker)), bears the following headline:

Not so different from me.

Meanwhile, Olli Rehn of the European Commission, a firm advocate of austerity, responds to the disastrous economic news in Europe, which has confirmed the warnings of austerity critics and led to a widespread reassessment of fiscal multipliers; it seems that they are large in a liquidity trap, just as some of us predicted. Rehn’s answer? We need to stop putting out these economic studies, because they’re undermining confidence in austerity!

As I said, these signs of desperation are gratifying. Unfortunately, these people have already done immense damage, and still retain the power to do a lot more.
 If you want to swim in a deep pool of stupid, listen to Joe Scarborough, or Paul Ryan or any other conservative knuckle dragger talk about economics.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

CNN, The Conservative News Network Gives Republican Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones A Platform















CNN, The Conservative News Network Gives Republican Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones A Platform

CNN's Piers Morgan hosted noted radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to discuss his petition to deport Morgan because of his views on gun control. Jones is a 9/11 truther who has a history of inflammatory and baseless remarks.

On Monday's edition of Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan asked Jones to explain his "Deport Piers Morgan" petition. Jones responded with a lengthy tirade that filled two segments. His comments included pushing the debunked myth that "more guns means less crime," claiming that "1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms," referring to antidepressants as "mass murder pills" that cause people to commit violence, and claiming that "megabanks" have "taken everybody's guns but the Swiss and the American people, and when they get our guns, they can have their world tyranny."

Jones is one of the country's leading conspiracy theorists. Here are just a few examples of conspiracy theories Jones has promoted:

    The Oklahoma City Bombing was "carried out by intelligence agencies" with "Bill Clinton's involvement."
    The government is using products like juice boxes to "encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don't have children."
    The U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. Jones describes himself as being on "the front lines of the growing global information war from ground zero to the occult playgrounds of the power-mad elite. Jones predicted the attacks on September 11th, 2001 and is considered one of the very first founding fathers of the 9-11 Truth Movement."
    The government has set up FEMA concentration camps in America, and "the military-industrial complex is transforming our once free nation into a giant prison camp."
    President Obama is transforming the United States into "something that resembles Nazi Germany, with forced National Service, domestic civilian spies, warrantless wiretaps, the destruction of the Second Amendment, FEMA camps and Martial Law."
    The BP oil spill "could have been manufactured."

Jones has also pushed numerous conspiracy theories about weather control, mass sterilization, and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. In June 2012, Jones' Infowars.com promoted the myth that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was using drones to spy on Midwestern ranchers. Finally, the radio host has declared that Obama's birth certificate is a fraud.

Jones' lengthy history of pushing absurd conspiracy theories should disqualify him from being mainstreamed on media outlets such as CNN.

Jones should be on TV more, not less. He gives America a true picture of the underbelly of conservatism and the kind of evil zealots who compose it's base.

The Republican conspiracy game is very profitable so they have no reason to stop, The conservative movement is still an elaborate moneymaking venture - The story of FreedomWorks' big Glenn Beck payout encapsulates the right-wing media

The owner of a Wendy’s franchise in Omaha, Nebraska Franchise Cuts Employee Hours To Part-Time To Avoid Obamacare

Sunday, January 6, 2013

6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013




























6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013

Readers, I recommend you do likewise. Herewith, a barrel of horribles who ought to be jettisoned, exuberantly flung from civilization. They are boils on the ass of the media beast, and it is my well-considered opinion, they should be ruthlessly lanced. With one exception, these offenders were not chosen simply on the basis of awful election-year prognostications, though all were indeed guilty. No, this is a lifetime achievement award. These folks (with one exception) have been awful for a very long time; I propose that in the new year we stand athwart their shitty track records and yell “Enough!”

1. Dick Morris.Regrettably, the Big Dog’s coattails are impossibly long (see Penn, Mark). If Morris couldn’t put “former Clinton adviser” in front of his name, he would be just another toe-sucking mercenary with a gift for impossibly goofy [3] predictions. What’s remarkable -- indeed, an achievement -- is Morris’ ability to continually find suckers willing to compensate him. This includes The Hill, that respected Washington rag, where he still collects a check. The staffers are suitably embarrassed [4] by Morris’ weekly dross. But I do not include Morris for his predictive failures [5]. Stupidity is forgivable, but his sin, operating in bad faith, is not. Morris confessed to Father Sean Hannity a week after Mitt Romney lost the election that he, Dick Morris, projected a Romney victory because [6] “the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic” and “nobody thought there was a chance of victory.” There is no value in a man willing to tell you what you want to hear.

2. Niall Ferguson.In America a Scottish brogue, a nice build and good hair can get you pretty far. These attributes go a long way, I assume, toward explaining why Ferguson hasn’t been run out of Harvard Square on a rail. A review of Paul Krugman’s clips are instructive; if he’s not racist [7], he’s brutally stupid -- ignorant of borrowing costs [8] and willing to lie [9] to his audience about the cost of healthcare reform. Ferguson really showed his ass in the week before the presidential election: in a single Daily Beastcolumn, he argued [10] that Barack Obama still needed to win over undecided voters (he didn’t [11]), that polls were “scar[y] for the incumbent” (they weren’t, which accounts for the War on Nate Silver), and that Obama, on the cusp of the election, would support an Israeli attack on Iran. So: Ferguson was, in the words of Meat Loaf, doubly blessed: ill-equipped to adequately comment on economics -- his area of “expertise” -- and politics. Since he’s also a two-time loser (an adviser to McCain ‘n’ Mittens, respectively), there is no compelling reason to give him the time of day.

3.Peggy Noonan.Mary Ellen Noonan has been around so long it is assumed she must have been, in the supply-sider universe far, far away, talented. Her reputations rests on “a thousand points of light,” a meaningless, ambrosia salad phrase made funny by Dana Carvey, and “Read my lips: no new taxes,” a lie. But that’s enough for a lifetime Journalsinecure, apparently. Noonan’s prose, turgid and purple, is at its worst when evoking the name of Ronald Reagan, which is always. The irony: Her relationship to the 40th president was tenuous. As a former Reagan adviser pointed out [12], after Noonan trashed [13] her fellow speechwriters in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Noonan was “never part of the team” and her gifts, such as they were, were limited to self-promotion. And yet Noonan, like the execrable Mr. Morris, has dined out on this skimpy presidential connection well past the sell-by date.

4. Michael Barone. There are rumors Barone was once a reason-based, intelligent lifeform. I have heard nice thing about The Almanac of American Politics. He continues to be revered by conservatives, who treat him like a combination of Nate Silver and Jesus. But there has been no trace of this supposedly erudite, analytical man for a very long time. In March 2003, Barone wrote [14] that “Quick success in Iraq, followed by success as soon as possible in Syria and Iran, will help us deal with” the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. (To recap: An invasion of two countries that hadn’t attacked us, so quickly on the heels of an invasion of yet another country that hadn’t attacked us.) Indeed, this is in keeping with a fellow who, in 2005, e-mailed Glenn Reynolds (below) to say [15] “there might be something to Intelligent Design.” That same year, he predicted [16] “the end” of political polarization. In 2006, he wrote [17] that a McCain-Lieberman presidential ticket “would probably win easily.” By the time Barone said journalists didn’t care for Sarah Palin because "she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," it wasn’t really a surprise.

5. Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer once argued [18], in the pages of America’s second-most-influential newspaper, that torture was okay under “the ticking time bomb” scenario, which does not exist and has never existed in real life. For reasons that escape me, the New Republic keeps on its masthead [19] a man who lets a "24" wet-dream dictate his views on foreign policy. I hope it’s simply a matter of priorities -- the magazine has undergone a redesign -- but perhaps they believe, as does Politico, that he is “sophisticated [20].” Krauthammer certainly fooled the Pulitzer committee, which must be so proud to have honored a man so addled he hates [21] the Berenstain Bears and believes Obama blackmailed [22] David Petraeus. In any case, by Krauthammer’s own metric, he ought to be put out to pasture. On April 22, 2003, he told [23] an American Enterprise Institute audience, “Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.” And here we are.

6. Jennifer Rubin. Rubin’s descent into outright hackery (see this Drudge-sirened “EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW [24]” with, ugh, Ed Gillespie) wasn’t precipitous, even though she wrote for Commentary, a journal of sub-basement quality. Her columns filed during the previous election cycle for the New York Observer were relatively clear-eyed. Romney, she wrote [25], was “the least adept politician in the field.” She criticized his “manicured appearance and cautious language [ibid].” In another column, she noted [26] that “Americans don’t like it one bit when candidates adopt positions (or entire platforms, for that matter) for political expediency.” (You don’t say!) It’s unclear what transpired between that election and the most recent, but this time around she functioned not as a reporter but as an unpaid spokeslady for the Romney campaign. Her advocacy [27] was breathtaking brazen; she often resembled those fixtures [28] of pre-Giuliani Times Square, cleaning up after each Romney flub. To Rubin’s credit, she admitted [29] as much.
Actually there are four more at the link. These are people who have huge megaphones via media like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, AM radio and some are syndicated to newspapers across the country. Why? They lie a lot, they always spin, they hate logic and science, they say they're for freedom and yet are always advocating laws that infringe on freedom.   And speaking of Charles Krauthammer, he really knows how to make a insulting analogy, Larger Sandy Relief Bill Was 'Rape Of The Treasury' (VIDEO).

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Urban Myths: How Conservative Neo-Nazi Dinesh D'Souza's Lies in "About 2016: Obama's America"


Urban Myths: How Conservative Neo-Nazi Dinesh D'Souza's Lies in "About 2016: Obama's America"

The marketing materials for the upcoming film 2016: Obama's America claim that it "takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world's most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years." If the movie is anything like its source material, we can expect it will be a mostly fraudulent journey.

The movie is based on Dinesh D'Souza's book The Roots Of Obama's Rage, which received high praise from people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom have shown any qualms about promoting outright lies, distortions, and outlandish claims in the past.

The New York Times reports that the film is partially financed by billionaire investor Joe Ricketts, who previously considered financing a multimillion dollar political ad campaign linking the racially charged rhetoric of Rev. Jeremiah Wright to President Obama.

The central thesis of the book is that Obama has some sort of anti-colonial world view, handed down to him by his ancestors, that acts as the motivation behind his actions and policies as president. It is just another form of birtherism, albeit a more highbrow variety of the ongoing conservative conspiracy theory. Appearing on Beck's Fox show, D'Souza explained:

    Obama is not anti-American in that he wishes ill on America. He wants what's best for America. He thinks it's really bad for us to be a colonial power. And therefore, in his view, he is doing right for America by pulling us out, by knocking us off our pedestal, by in a sense taking us from being the world's arrogant superpower. He wants us to share the wealth. He thinks he's gonna get a better America. The problem is, he's stuck in this theory, he's frozen in this time machine. In a sense, he's a captive of the ideology of a Luo tribesman from the 1950s. It's an incredible idea.

D'Souza boosts this ludicrous premise (Obama ran for the presidency because he hates colonialism ... just like America's founders!) using several claims that are simply not rooted in reality. A few examples:

    D'Souza claims that TARP and the federal bailout were programs that "Obama launched." Both programs began under the Bush administration.

    D'Souza claims Obama went by the name Barack to adopt his father's "African identity," but Obama has explicitly said his name change "was not some assertion of my African roots."

    D'Souza insists that references in Obama speeches to a "nuclear-free world" are evidence of "anti-colonialism," but Ronald Reagan made multiple references to the same concept.

    D'Souza claimed that Obama supported the release of the Lockerbie bomber because he sometimes "supports the release of terrorists who claim to be fighting wars of liberation against American aggression." But the Obama administration formally opposed the release in an official letter from the State Department.

    D'Souza claimed that Obama referred to BP as "British Petroleum" in a May 2010 speech. He never did.

And D'Souza just goes on and on, inventing incidents that never happened, making historical claims that don't match up to the facts, shoehorning these made-up stories into a false narrative of racial resentment.

It doesn't appear that D'Souza has corrected or amended his flawed premise. 2016: Obama's America is just repeating the same falsehoods with moving pictures.

Conservative Republicans are literally organizing bus tours to go see this movie, because conservatives think if you repeat lies on film that magically makes them true.

 As head of the investment company Bain Capital, Mitt Romney laid off thousands of workers.

 Mitt Romney's advice on the foreclosure crisis: "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process."

 The former Bain Capital managing director said of Mitt Romney's tenure: "We had a scheme where the rich got richer." [Los Angeles Times,  12/16/2007]

 Mitt Romney set up shell companies in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda to avoid U.S. taxes.[Los Angeles Times,  12/19/2007]

 Mitt Romney calls Obama's payroll tax cut that would save middle class/lower income families $1,500 a year "temporary little band aids."

 Mitt Romney's first budget as governor included $240 million in fee increases.

Mitt Romney has proposed tax cuts for the rich and corporations that would cost $7.8 trillion over 10 years.

Mitt Romney's top economic adviser Greg Mankiw said the "offshoring" of American jobs was a good thing.

Mitt Romney, who lambasts the "failures" of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, profits from investments in the firms.

Mitt Romney said that catching bin Laden would be "insignificant" and it's "not worth moving heaven and earth."

Mitt Romney pledged to expand a Bush-Era policy of permitting doctors to deny women access to contraceptives.

Mitt Romney said he supported the Ryan Republican budget plan that would effectively end Medicare.

Paul Ryan embraces the extreme philosophy of sex cultist Ayn Rand.

Paul Ryan wants to raises taxes on the middle class, cut them for millionaires

Paul Ryan thinks Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.”

Paul Ryan supports $40 billion in corporate welfare subsides for big oil.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Media Bias - Is The Media Pushing For Mitt Romney




















Media Bias - Is The Media Pushing For Mitt Romney

Not once in the past twelve months has President Obama logged a seven-day stretch where his positive press coverage outweighed the negative, according to Pew Research analysis. And based on recent media trends, that streak is in no danger of being broken as the Beltway press continues to pile on the Democratic president with routinely negative and increasingly misleading coverage, while at the same time giving his Republican rival a pass.

Whether it's in response to the right wing's incessant whining about unfair campaign coverage, or the product of the media's innate desire to create a close, competitive (and marketable) presidential contest to market, the resulting  storyline is clear:  Obama's faltering!

From a late-May Politico campaign analysis piece ("Obama Stumbles Out of the Gate") that read like it had been cribbed from a Karl Rove column the previous week ("Obama's Campaign Is Off to a Rocky Start"),  to the recent congestion of sound-alike refrains, the "liberal media's" narrative has become set in stone and conservatives must be pleased since it echoes their own anti-Obama message.

There's nothing wrong with chronicling the ups and downs of campaigns. And nobody's suggesting the Obama re-election run hasn't had stumbles. All of them do. (Although note, Obama's Gallup approval rating has remained constant in the high-40s for a few months now, and even climbed to 50 percent last week.) But the feverish, one-sided coverage in recent weeks signals that a clear, GOP-leaning script  has been adopted by the Beltway media.  And yes, it makes a mockery out of the tired chant of a left-wing newsroom bias.

No surprisingly, the current wave of coverage is cresting on some shoddy journalism. (See fabricated oral sex jokes and botched Bill Clinton reporting.) Just look at the remarkably lazy and dishonest handling of Obama's comment about private sector job growth being "fine." The coverage represents a sterling example of how the press has had its thumb on the scale this spring.

The Obama quote:

    The truth of the matter is that, as I've said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government.

As Slates's David Weigel noted, "This isn't even particularly clumsy phrasing." That's why CNN media critic Howard Kurtz stressed there wasn't "a journalist in the country" who heard Obama's "fine" comment and didn't know exactly what he was talking about. That's because Obama explained exactly what he was talking about at the time; job growth.

Yet reporters rushed out ahead of Republicans and seized on the Obama phrase and announced that "fine"  (when ripped out of context) was going to be a problem for the White House and a "gift" for Romney. But since when are campaign reporters supposed to act as opposition research scouts for the GOP, tipping them off to potentially embarrassing comments by Democrats? Aren't they supposed to report on and fact-check GOP attacks, not initiate them?

One week removed from the kerfuffle and the press has stopped making even the slightest attempt to report the "fine" comment in the context it was used. Instead, the press now routinely uses the truncated version of the quote circulated by the Romney campaign. Here's the Wall Street Journal doing it, and here's the Washington Post doing it twice on two days. The examples are boundless. It's now a Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama announced unequivocally that the private sector is doing  "fine."

He did not.

Note that that same day, June 6, while responding to Obama's "fine" comment about public-sector job losses, Romney mocked the president, claiming "he wants to add more to government." Said Romney: "He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message in Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people."

A presidential candidate suggesting more first responders and schoolteachers are a bad thing? Doesn't that qualify as a buzz-worthy gaffe?

Apparently not.

Between June 8 and June 13, a search on TVeyes.com for on-air discussions that include the key words "Obama private sector" produced nearly 260 matches on the three all-news cable channels, plus ABC, CBS and NBC. A  search over that same time period for "Romney firefighters" produced less than half the mentions; 120. (Half of those references appeared on MSNBC.)

Obama saying private sector job growth is "fine" became a very, very big news story, in part because excited journalists announced it would become a very big news story once Republicans spun it. By contrast, Romney saying the country doesn't need more cops and firefighters and teachers was mostly greeted with a muted response on TV. 

Romney, who made his money by using complex leverage buyouts of corporations - where he paid his company a guaranteed profits regardless of how well he did( Romney is said to be worth over $225 million) - once joked that he related to average folks because he was "unemployed" too. He and his wife had the gull to claim what a rough start they had it life - if starting out half way up the ladder before everyone else is a rough start. Romney is so clueless and out of touch with the average American he cannot even fathom how out of touch he is.

Republicans, Immigration, Presidential Executive Orders and Hypocrisy


Someone might want to throw a net over Taliban Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Since when has America allowed criminals to run law enforcement agencies.

Dark Ages Redux: American Politics and the End of the Enlightenment. Conservatives are pushing America back to the Dark Age.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Today in Race Baiting Smears: Proto-fascist Conservative Lou Dobbs Suggests New Black Panthers Party Is Obama's "Base"



















Today in Race Baiting Smears: Proto-fascist Conservative Lou Dobbs Suggests New Black Panthers Party Is Obama's "Base"

On his Fox Business show, Lou Dobbs suggested that the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group, constitutes Obama's base. Dobbs quoted criticisms of Obama by the NBPP and then said: "I mean, what is going on here? This president is starting to get, at the very least, friction, if not outright attacks coming from his base."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams responded by noting that the NBPP is a "fringe-group."

During the segment, Dobbs also falsely claimed that "Holder says [the NBPP] can't be prosecuted for intimidating white voters," a reference to a phony scandal relentlessly hyped by Fox News.

In fact, it was the Bush administration, not the Obama administration, that decided not to prosecute the NBPP criminally for an incident in which an NBPP member carried a nightstick outside a Philadelphia polling place. The Bush administration chose to file a civil case in the matter instead.

The Obama Justice Department pursued the civil case against the defendant who carried the nighstick and obtained an injunction against him. Obama later decided to drop the civil case against the other defendants.

Furthermore, conservatives including to the Republican vice chair of the Civil Rights Commission investigating the case have agreed that the attacks against the Justice Department are meritless.

Moreover, the DOJ's ethics office found that senior career lawyers at the DOJ "did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately" in their handling of the NBPP case.

But such facts would get in the way of Dobbs' race baiting.

Conservatives generally hate the Southern Poverty Law Center because they have designated some conservative organizations as hate groups, yet they ignore the fact that the SPLC has designated the "new Black Panthers" as a hate group as well. What is wrong with Mr. Dobbs? he typifies the hateful radical ideology of conservatism. he wraps his wacky ideology in the flag and calls is patriotism. Dobbs is no way represents the freedom and egalitarian ideals spelled out in the liberal tenets of the Constitution.

Spending By Obama Administration At Slowest Pace in Decades

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.
The big surge in federal spending happened in fiscal 2009, before Obama took office. Since then, spending growth has been relatively flat.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

Facts seem to have a bias. A bias against the constant lies and distortions of the anti-American conservative Republican movement.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

There Are Many Big Conservative Lies. That Republicans Are For Small Government is One of Them


















There Are Many Big Conservative Lies. That Republicans Are For Small Government is One of Them

What do you suppose a country that is only willing to pay (top dollar) for a far flung military empire, domestic policing, prisons and border security look like? If the Republicans get their we\'re way, it looks like we\'re going to find out:

    The House passed a defense budget Friday that exceeds the deal cut by Congress and President Barack Obama last summer, and that would have to be paid for with cash taken from poverty programs, health care and the federal workforce.

    The National Defense Authorization Act permits $642 billion in defense spending next year. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, citing more than 30 changes to the budget it was seeking.

    But the measure also adds $8 billion more than called for in the Budget Control Act that Congress agreed to last summer in exchange for raising the nation\'s debt limit.

    "We increase the spending for defense due to the priorities that we feel are most important and the constitutional requirement we have to provide for the common defense," Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said. "But we will cut in other areas of the budget so that we comply fully with the deficit reduction act."

    Those other areas were spelled out in the broader budget plan passed last week. Written by House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), it would cut more than $80 billion in federal retirement benefits, nearly $50 billion from Medicaid programs and more than $36 billion from programs to feed the poor.

I\'ve always thought of the Military Industrial Complex as welfare for white guys. This would back up that claim:

    Among other unasked for changes, the bill keeps aging aircraft and ships the military wants to phase out, keeps the Army and Marines at larger force levels and orders construction of missile defenses.

They don\'t want it, they don\'t need it, but the Republican donors want the profits and their conservative base voters want the very well paying, extremely high benefits jobs.

They like to say they hate Big Government, but that\'s a lie. They love it. It\'s just that they want to funnel the money to their own constituencies --- and they want to build a police state that will keep everyone else in line in case they decide to do something about it.
It is true that many Democrats back all those programs too. But I think they do have more pressure coming from constituents to spend money on domestic items as well, so they\'re forced to at least pay them lip service and offer token support. It\'s not much, but it\'s where we are these days in terms of choices.
Conservative Republicans give their word and it turns out is was a lie. Kind of reminds me about all those WMD Iraq never had. Or the promise that the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves by stimulating the economy and create jobs. Anyone seen those jobs? Conservatives are like the crazy uncle everyone ignores on holidays, yet the media and everyone else takes conservatives seriously. Since when did real Americans pay attention to venal crazy people.

Mitt’s favorite new dodge - Romney and the GOP insist the economy is more important than social issues. Why can't we address both?

Top Republican Group: Minority Births Are ‘Not A Good Thing’ Because They ‘Don’t Share American Values’

UPDATED: Will Fox News Correct Its False Report On Elizabeth Warren's Book?.Scott Brown(R-MA) and his friends are telling some desperate lies and peddling extreme distortions. For such a manly man he sure is acting like a sacred little wuss.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Cost of Anti-American Conservative Republican Ideology Is More Than America Can Afford























The Cost of Anti-American Conservative Republican Ideology Is More Than America Can Afford

For more than a year, House Republicans have energetically worked to demolish vital social programs that have made this country both stronger and fairer over the last half-century. At the same time, they have insisted on preserving bloated military spending and unjustifiably low tax rates for the rich. That effort reached a nadir on Thursday when the House voted to prevent $55 billion in automatic cuts imposed on the Pentagon as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, choosing instead to make all those cuts, and much more, from domestic programs.

If this bill were enacted, estimates suggest that nearly two million Americans would lose food stamps and 44 million others would find them reduced. The bill would eliminate a program that allows disabled older people to live at home and out of institutions. It cuts money that helps low-income families buy health insurance. At the same time, the House bill actually adds more than $8 billion to the Pentagon budget.

In all, the bill would cut $310 billion from domestic programs; a third of that comes out of programs that serve low- and moderate-income people. Other provisions would slash by half the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up after the financial meltdown to protect consumers from predatory lending and other abuses, and reduce the pay of federal workers.

Fortunately, it will never be taken up in the Senate, where the majority leader, Harry Reid, has said it would “shred the social safety net in order to protect tax breaks for the rich and inflate defense spending.”

House Republicans are already claiming that this bill, along with the equally inhumane overall 2013 budget written by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, shows their seriousness in reducing the deficit and why they should keep control of the House in November. In fact, it does the opposite on both accounts — and serves as a reminder of their destructive priorities.

As a resolution to the debt-ceiling crisis, Republicans had already agreed to $109 billion a year in automatic spending cuts — half from defense, half from the domestic side — if lawmakers failed to agree to lower the deficit in more reasonable ways such as mixing targeted cuts with tax increases on the rich. Even Democrats who supported big defense cuts wanted them chosen carefully, not with the sequester’s cleaver. But Republicans refused to take that path when the supercommittee deliberated and now are trying to make all of the cuts on the domestic side.

In just one particularly destructive example, the bill would eliminate the social services block grant, a $1.7 billion fund that is given to the states to help people struggling the hardest. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the fund provides services to 23 million people, including Meals on Wheels and other programs that help older Americans. It also helps pay for child care assistance, foster care and juvenile justice at a time when states are cutting back these programs.

House Democrats offered an alternative bill that would replace the $109 billion sequester by raising taxes on the wealthy, ending oil company tax loopholes and cutting farm subsidies, but it was rejected. Republicans are determined to protect millionaires and defense contractors, no matter the costs to the country.

Conservatives said they were insulted when President Obama implied the conservative agenda was based on social-Darwinism, otherwise known as having a dog-eat-dog culture. Maybe that is because what the president said is so true. Conservatives would literally prefer that seniors and children suffer, even die, than rise taxes on the wealthy.

What Capitalists Don't Know: Without Democracy, Capitalism Dies

What You Need To Know About Anti-American Nut Ed Klein, Author Of New Book Smearing Obama

Fox filled the airwaves with a lot of economic misinformation leading up the the Great Recession. How can patriotic Americans trust Fox News and their foreign owners Rupert Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed to help America have an informed debate. Fox Forgets Its Role Downplaying Magnitude Of Recession

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Rupert Murdoch's Fox 'News' Uses Misleading Numbers To Attack Obama Economic Progress



















Rupert Murdoch's Fox 'News' Uses Misleading Numbers To Attack Obama Economic Progress

But Fox Misleads On All Four Attacks
CLAIM: "The Debt Was $10 Trillion, Now It's $15.6 Trillion."
WHY IT'S MISLEADING: The Debt And Deficit Increase Under Obama Is Largely Due To Bush-Era Policies (see chart above)

Ezra Klein: Bush Policies Responsible For Vast Majority Of Debt Increase Under Obama Administration. In a January 31 Washington Post column, Ezra Klein estimated that Obama's policies are responsible for $983 billion of the nearly $5 trillion increase in public debt over the course of his administration, while the remainder of the debt increase is attributable to Bush-era policies. From The Washington Post:

    [I]f you're a deficit-obsessed voter, the clock doesn't answer the key question: How much has Obama added to the debt, anyway?

    There are two answers: more than $4 trillion, or about $983 billion. The first answer is simple and wrong. The second answer is more complicated but a lot closer to being right.

    When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10.5 trillion. Today, it's about $15.2 trillion. Simple subtraction gets you the answer preferred by most of Obama's opponents: $4.7 trillion.

    But ask yourself: Which of Obama's policies added $4.7 trillion to the debt? The stimulus? That was just a bit more than $800 billion. TARP? That passed under George W. Bush, and most of it has been repaid.

    There is a way to tally the effects Obama has had on the deficit. Look at every piece of legislation he has signed into law. Every time Congress passes a bill, either the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the effect it will have on the budget over the next 10 years. And then they continue to estimate changes to those bills. If you know how to read their numbers, you can come up with an estimate that zeros in on the laws Obama has had a hand in.


CLAIM: "The Jobless Rate Is Now Up To 8.2 [Percent]" But "Was 7.8 [Percent]" When Obama Took Over
WHY IT'S MISLEADING: After Continuing The Upward Trend From The Bush Administration, Unemployment Has Dropped Under Obama

CBPP: "The Pace Of Monthly Job Losses Slowed Dramatically Soon After President Obama And Congress Enacted The Recovery Act." As CBPP noted in an April 27 report, the trend of job losses at the end of the Bush administration "slowed dramatically soon after President Obama and Congress enacted the Recovery Act in 2009." The report included a chart showing that unemployment continued its upward trend immediately after Obama took office, then began dropping.

When are conservatives going to take responsibility for the economic ditch they drove the USA into. Never. That is because conservatives would actually have to have some traditional American values that include integrity and responsibility. Conservatism is just a way to go through life without taking responsibility for any errors in judgement or malicious behavior. Conservatism is the ball and chain on American progress, keeping us from living up to our ideals.

Sen. Scott Brown  thinks everyone in Massachusetts is an dumb as he is, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Brushes Off Charges Of Hypocrisy By Misrepresenting His Health Care Plan . Credit where due, brown has mastered the art of conservative doublespeak.


Friday, April 27, 2012

How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

































How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

I just read the Glenn Hubbard editorial in the WSJ claiming thatthe President's budget is really a secret plan to raise everyone's taxes by11%.
Glenn and I have been friends for pushing 20 years but onthis one, Glenn seems to have jumped the shark.
Basically Hubbard says he has looked at the Obama budgetand, according to his calculation, after subtracting off the revenue projected from returning to the Clinton rates for high income people plus adding aBuffett rule, Obama's budget will raise everyone's taxes by 11% to stabilize things as a share of GDP.
Two things stuck out to me here:
1) Hubbard's numbers seem in pretty serious danger of violating the league's substance abuse policy.
His claim that the President's budget requires large tax increases on the middle class to stabilize the debt is just factually  wrong.  Just go look at the Congressional Budget Office's numbers.  They examined the President's budget and directly refute the central claim of the op-ed: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-16-APB1.pdf
Figure 2 on page 6 shows their forecast of debt as a share of GDP with the President's budget--and it's stabilized and falling without any taxes on the middle class.  Figure 1shows similar stability on the deficit.
I can understand the argument of some people when they say that Republicans will never allow the Obama budget to pass so it would be better to debate the right approach to reaching a grand bargain rather than arguing about the administration budget. That's probably true but unlikely in the election season.  I can also understand the people who think that we shouldn't raise revenue only from high income people but to spread it around.  But Hubbard isn't saying either of those.  He's saying something that looks to me (and the CBO) like it just fundamentally isn't true.
2) Using Hubbard's logic, an alternative title for would be HOW MITT ROMNEY'S BUDGET WILL CUT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BY 26% AND THEN RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS BY $3 TRILLION
Sadly, I'm being only slightly flip about it.  Hubbard imputes future policy based on the implications of the budget plan.  So what happens if you do that for Romney's budget promises?  Well, he has proposed a multi-trillion dollartax cut, a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and a cap on government spending at 20%.
The cap forces a cut of social security and medicare (and everything else) of 26% (you can see the numbers for yourself at http://www.cbpp.org/files/1-23-12bud.pdf).
But his tax cut reduces revenue by an additional $3 trillion or so.  Using Mr. Hubbard's argument then,the Romney budget will raise taxes on everyone earning less than $200,000 per year to cover it (and since the deductions Romney says he will limit don't come  remotely close to paying for the cost of the tax cuts, it's a bit like having your cousin take all the money from your wallet but offer to let you rummage through the couch for coins as repayment).

If Romney's silly and dangerous notions about taxes and revenue ring a bell, if you having one of those deja vu moments its because these are warmed over George Bush policies that every conservative in Congress supported. Conservatism does not work. Never has and never will. In the short term it makes a few people very wealthy. In the long term it turns the USA into some dystopian nightmare. These policies will destroy an already weakened middle-class..

FACT CHECK: Americans For Prosperity Announces $6.1 Million Ad Buy To Push Totally False Green Jobs Claims

Fox Won't Let Go Of Ridiculous Myth That Obama "Apologized" For America. When will Fox News apologize to America for its daily truckload of lies. True patriots have honor, Fox news has none.