According to the Financial Times, in 2008, during the height of the presidential campaign and after Bush had publicly endorsed John McCain, George W Bush told a group of British dignitaries including the British Prime Minister that he didn’t like McCain.
I probably won’t even vote for the guy. I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.
[I love the commentaries that Ed Stein provides to go with his excellent comics:]
I wonder if the sour, off-key comments by House Speaker-to-be John Boehner and still Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after the election might have given the voters who placed renewed confidence in the Republican Party buyer’s remorse. Boehner gave no indication whatsoever that he was willing to work with Democrats, and McConnell repeated his claim that his agenda for the next two years is to defeat Obama. Wait. I thought solving America’s problems -– like creating jobs and ending this prolonged slump -– might be closer to the top of the list.
I can’t help thinking back to a time when American political leaders had big dreams, and audacious plans. No, we didn’t eliminate poverty or drugs or cancer or terrorism, but we had presidents who tried, who created Medicare and Social Security, who built the interstate highway system, cleaned up our air and water, and we had Congresses that worked with them to make this country the wonder of the world. Now we have permanent campaigns waged by politicos who dream only of taking power. The party of “No” won this round, and its agenda for America’s future? Consolidate power. By continuing to prevent any progress on any front that a Democratic president might be able to claim credit for.
I’m getting tired of the media noting things like that the majority of Americans think Obama raised their taxes (instead of what he really did, which was cut them) and then concluding that it is Obama’s fault because he hasn’t been very good at messaging. Isn’t it the media’s job to report news like this?
Not only are the media blaming Obama for something that is their own fault, but they are choosing to ignore the fact that Obama has been the subject of a relentless and well funded right-wing propaganda campaign to discredit everything he does.
Conservative Andrew Sullivan has an excellent example of just one of the “Big Lie” propaganda campaigns being waged against our president. In Sullivan’s example, Jonah Goldberg takes one sentence from a statement by Obama out of context, reverses its meaning, and claims that Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. Even though if you read the full quote, he clearly believes in American exceptionalism and actively defends and promotes it.
Never mind that your average Tea Party member probably can’t even tell you what American exceptionalism is, but I guess if Obama doesn’t believe in it then he must be anti-American.
Then the National Review picks it up and broadcasts the lie.
Forbes magazine then publishes an unabashed hit piece on Obama, and in it they repeat the lie, claiming that Obama himself said he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. Forbes then takes an interesting step, and doubles down on the lie in a separate article, stating “Obama may be the first U.S. president to lack faith in our special history, our special spirit and our special mission in the world.”
Then The Washington Times repeats the same lie, taking it one step further by (unfavorably) comparing Obama to (the sainted) Reagan.
The list grows longer, all taking the same exact sentence out of context. The National Review repeats the lie again. The Washington Examiner repeats the lie verbatim. Then conservative Charles Krauthammer “Blasts Obama for Rejecting American Exceptionalism“.
What’s especially remarkable about this hackery – and there are numerous other examples – is that these conservative authors don’t just egregiously misrepresent the president’s actual position. It’s that all of them actually cite, as evidence, an out of context line from the very speech that proves their analysis is wrong.
How can you fight an intense propaganda campaign like this? You can’t. If you try to deny the lie, it just keeps it in the public mind and makes even more people believe it. And besides, if that smear doesn’t work, then they will just come up with another smear and repeat it, and another one, ad nauseum …
For example, take conservatives who scream about out-of-control government spending on social programs like Medicare. But if you actually pass reform that attempts to cut Medicare costs, then they scream about “death panels”. It doesn’t matter if there are no death panels; if you repeat propaganda often enough some people will believe it. They are still talking about death panels, even though PolitiFact rated it their “Lie of the Year“.
Here’s an even simpler and more graphic example of how this works. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh spent his entire show talking about the “Twinkie diet” where a nutrition professor, as an experiment, lost 27 pounds while still eating junk food (including Twinkies). Even in a simple case like this, Limbaugh can’t keep to reality. He says “A nutrition professor lost 27 pounds eating nothing but Twinkies.” and “All he did was eat Twinkies. When he got tired of Twinkies he went and got some Little Debbie stuff and then some other Hostess Cakes. He ate nothing but desert essentially and lost 27 pounds”.
However, if you actually read the article, the professor says that in addition to junk food, he took a multi-vitamin pill, drank a protein shake, avoided meat, drank diet sodas, and ate vegetables every day. Hardly “nothing but Twinkies”. What he was trying to demonstrate is that the kind of calories you consume is less important than the simple math of consuming less calories than you burn though physical activity.
But not only does Limbaugh get the story wrong, but he turns it into an attack on liberals and Michelle Obama:
What have I told you about diet and exercise? Exercise is irrelevant. … “How do you know all this?” One of the reasons I know what I know is that I know liberals, and I know liberals lie, and if Michelle Obama’s gonna be out there ripping into “food desserts” and saying, “This is why people are fat,” I know it’s not true. “Rush, do you really believe that? It’s that simple to you, liberals lie?” Yes, it is, folks. Once you learn that, once you come to grips with that, once you accept that, the rest is easy. Very, very simple.
Limbaugh lies about the facts, jumps to unrelated conclusions (“exercise is irrelevant”), and then attacks the first lady and tries to use his lie to prove that liberals lie.
If you still don’t believe that there are concerted efforts to influence public opinion, I have one last example. A former head of communications for a major health insurance company is releasing a book today that explains in detail “how the insurance industry relied on professional public relations firms and a wide network of news outlets and conservative think tanks to move public opinion against progressive reforms like the public option and ensure that the health law did not interfere with its profits.”
If you have enough money it is easy to buy public opinion and the media. But somehow, not getting the truth out is Obama’s fault because he has a “messaging problem”. There is no messaging problem — you are hearing exactly the message that the corporate-owned media wants you to hear.
“What do you think of the Republican landslide victory on election night? No one’s laughing at my John Boehner tattoo now.” – David Letterman
“Ohio Republican John Boehner will take over for Nancy Pelosi. Those are some big eyes to fill.” – Jay Leno
“Everyone is talking about the unemployment rate. This week it went up by about 65 Democrats.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Obama lost 66 Democrats — and not one of them was Joe Biden.” – Jay Leno
“Tuesday was bad for President Obama. Voters threw away the hope and just went for the change.” – Jay Leno
“The president is going to India. He’ll be traveling on Air Force One-Term.” – David Letterman
“President Obama is getting ready to leave Washington. Not leaving for good — he’ll do that in a couple years.” – Craig Ferguson
“President Obama will be traveling to India. After Tuesday’s election, he decided to move there.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“India is famous for its Darjeeling tea, but President Obama won’t be interested in tea parties of any kind.” – Craig Ferguson
“Sarah Palin says she wants limited government. Does she mean fewer elected officials or more officials who resign in the middle of their terms? I think limited government will be perfect for her limited abilities.” – David Letterman
“Tuesday night Americans completely rejected the efforts of a charismatic African American who was trying to do the best he could. Rick Fox was voted off ‘Dancing with the Stars.'” – Jay Leno
“Prop 19, the California proposition to legalize marijuana lost. The proponents are all so sad today. If only there were some substance that could make them laugh again.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The government will pump an additional $600 billion into the economy. I guess they have to make up for what Meg Whitman isn’t spending anymore.” – Jay Leno
“In his new book George W. Bush reveals that he considered dropping Dick Cheney in 2002 to show he was in charge. But then Cheney nixed the idea.” – Jimmy Fallon
“A court has reinstated the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy even though another court struck it down a few weeks ago, which means it’s time for some soldiers to implement a policy called Just Kidding. Gay soldiers are going, ‘What’s going on? I haven’t been this confused since high school.'” – Jimmy Fallon
Why is it that even though the economy grows more under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents, businesses seem to favor Republicans? If you look at the years 1948 to 2007, with Republican presidents, the gross national product grew by an average of 1.64% per capita, while under Democratic presidents, the GNP grew by 2.78% per capita. That’s a difference of 1.14%. Over eight years, that means that the average person will be earning 9.33% more, which is WAY more money that you would get from any possible tax cut.
Not only that, but income inequality grew substantially during Republican administrations — the rich got richer while the poor got poorer — but under Democratic administrations income inequality actually went down slightly. And on top of that, historically the national debt has grown substantially more under Republican presidents than Democratic presidents.
UPDATE: If you had invested $100,000 in the stock market (using an index fund based on the Dow) the day Obama was sworn in to office, it would be worth $180,000 today. If you had invested $100,000 in the stock market the day Dubya took office, it would have been worth $65,000 the day he left office.
Rand Paul, the newly elected Republican/libertarian/Tea Party candidate from Kentucky just came out and said what no other Republican will dare say — that in order to balance the budget he would be willing to cut military spending.
It is such an obvious thing, really. We currently spend more money on our military than the rest of the world put together. We spend ten times more than any other country. Has this made us any safer? Has it brought peace and stability to the world?
Hardly.
I’m not a pacifist, but our military budget is way beyond out of control and threatens more harm to our country than our enemies could ever do.
The only question is, will any other Republicans figure this out? Or will they shut him up?
The dust hasn’t even settled after the election, which saw significant gains for Republicans, but already at least one of them is calling for yet another war. Senator Lindsay Graham sees going to war with Iran “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime.”
Not content with one more physical war, Graham also seemed to be calling for a trade war with China, criticizing them for their “cheating” currency manipulation. Meanwhile, NY City mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized Congresscritters who want to blame everything on China:
If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read. I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is.
I think in America, we’ve got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else and take a look at ourselves … There’s a country on the other side of the world that is taking their taxpayers’ dollars, and trying to sell subsidized things so we can buy them cheaper, and have better products, and we’re going to criticize that?
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is investing $15 billion to create an electric vehicle industry there, to move China off of oil. They are also furiously building airports and high speed rail, and just placed an order for 128 DNA sequencers to create the largest institute in the world for doing stem cell and genetics research. What are we doing with our money? We spend 10 times as much money as China on our military. Oh, and there’s all the interest we have to pay China for the money they have lent us to finance our national debt so we can give tax breaks to billionaires.
Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor and Nameless Enemy has announced his plans to become the new figurehead of the US Tea Party movement, ousting Sarah Palin from her unofficial role.
In a statement released from the Dark Tower yesterday, he said he will abandon his frankly childish vendetta against anyone named Baggins and instead encourage his supporters – mostly orcs – to get behind him in supporting the Tea Party cause of small government.
‘I, your imperial master and Lord of Mordor, have long been opposed to the imposition of a large, distant bureaucratic state that governs the affairs of ordinary American citizens to their detriment.’
With the support of former wizard Saruman, the self-proclaimed Lord of the Rings is considered to be a shoo-in for the next Republican candidate for North Carolina.
“2014 – or 77352 in the year of Ealendil as I like to think of it – will be our year!” the Witch-King of Angmar, Sauron’s media coordinator told a group of journalists and trolls.
“Oh, and please let me clear up one point: just because Lord Sauron has a backgound in laying waste huge areas, burning homesteads and ruling with an iron fist and with fear as his ally, that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t also a Republican, a churchgoer and a family man, God Bless America!”
William Saletan has a thoughtful article that takes the media to task for obsessing about politics as a sport, where the only thing that matters is whether you win or lose, and nobody cares how you actually play the game.
After all, we keep saying that we want our politicians to be less partisan, and to be more concerned about doing the right thing than only about being reelected. Well, we have a prime example right in front of us. A number of politicians voted for health care reform, knowing full well that not only was it the right thing to do, but that it would likely cost them politically.
Of course, two short years ago, after two successive Democratic election sweeps, the same media was writing off the Republicans as a failed party. As Saletan puts it “A party that loses a House seat can win it back two years later, as Republicans just proved. But a party that loses a legislative fight against a middle-class health care entitlement never restores the old order. Pretty soon, Republicans will be claiming the program as their own.” Just like they are now trying to claim the title of defenders of Medicare. “In 30 years, they’ll be accusing Democrats of defunding Obamacare.”
If the only battle that matters is the election results, then the Democrats lost. But the more important battle was fixing a sadly dysfunctional health care system, which they accomplished, along with financial regulation, economic stimulus, saving our auto industry, college lending reform, and many other bills they got passed. If these are the battles that matter, then the Democrats didn’t lose the battle of 2010, they won it. We should be grateful for their sacrifice.
“Election day is so over. We are going to have divided government now. The Senate and the House have become Dina and Michael Lohan, and we’re all Lindsay.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Finally, the 2010 elections are over and we can get started on the campaign for 2012.” – Craig Ferguson
The Republicans won by a mudslide.” – Jay Leno
“In Washington today volunteers were washing the mud off Democrats and releasing them back into the wild.” – David Letterman
“You can tell it’s winter. The Democrats have gone into hibernation.” – David Letterman
“Voters didn’t like how President Obama was handling the economy. Wait a minute — he was handling the economy?” – David Letterman
“All year long, the Democrats were telling people to ‘get out and vote.’ Then people told the Democrats, ‘We voted, now get out!'” – Jay Leno
“The election was horrible for Democrats but wonderful for moving companies in the D.C. area.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Republicans won big on election day. They say their two big priorities are cutting taxes and reducing the debt. Which is sort of like wanting to lose weight and win ‘Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.'” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Republicans are in charge now. We all remember how well that worked last time.” – David Letterman
“I loved how the different news networks covered the elections. On MSNBC, it was called ‘Election Night 2010: What Went Wrong?’ At Fox News, it was ‘Election Night 2010: Party!'” – Jay Leno
“Christine O’Donnell lost her election by 20 percent. In a brief concession speech, she said ‘I’m melting.'” – Craig Ferguson
“Christine O’Donnell, after losing her election in Delaware, said ‘Our voices were heard.’ In your head, lady.” – David Letterman
“Christine O’Donnell lost her election by 20 percent. She’s planning to retire to her house in the country where she’ll lure children with candy and gingerbread.” – Craig Ferguson
“Pundits say Christine O’Donnell’s political career may be over, but she still has six months as a punchline.” – David Letterman
“Not only did Meg Whitman lose, now she can’t find anybody to clean her house.” –Jay Leno
“Despite being caught paying $300 for a prostitute David Vitter easily won reelection. Voters respected his fiscal conservatism, paying only $300, compared to liberal Eliot Spitzer who paid $5,000. That’s a $4,700 savings to the taxpayers right there.” – Jay Leno
“Thousands of marijuana enthusiasts went to the polls this morning in California to support Prop 19. Unfortunately, the election was the day before.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Supporters of Prop 19 believed the new law would have raised billions of dollars in tax revenue and created thousands of jobs for people to be too stoned to show up to.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“On the bright side, at least now there will be some leftovers at Thanksgiving.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The CNN election coverage was constantly being interrupted by text messages from Brett Favre. Then the commentator would say,’ There’s a big swing to the right in Minnesota.'” – Craig Ferguson
“The Tea Party needs to pick a tougher name. ‘Tea Party’ sounds like something I do with my ferrets every Sunday.” – Craig Ferguson
Fox News host Chris Wallace appeared on The Daily Show on the Wednesday after the election, and Wallace half-joked about how the 2012 Republican presidential primary could be produced as a reality TV show on Fox News. Like “American Idol” or “Dancing with the Stars”, they could call it “The GOP Presidential Primary”. After all “so may of them work at Fox now as Fox News contributors”. Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum are all contributors for Fox News, or as Wallace put it, they “own” most of the candidates.
Maybe he wasn’t joking. On Thursday, Wallace told Fox Business Network’s Imus in the Morning “The Republican primaries will be a production of Fox News”. He was serious. Indeed, Fox is already starting the marketing of Republican presidential candidates with a new special where they will profile twelve GOP presidential candidates in twelve days. They already have interviews with eleven of the twelve (so far, Romney has declined).
I, for one, am really looking forward to the Republicans actually coming up with some ideas.
“Although many of her Republican colleagues were elected to the House, Christine O’Donnell ended up underneath it, with her feet curled up.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Our forefathers fought and died for our right to choose, and to honor them, today almost 12% of us went out and voted.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“In Jackson County, WV, machines have actually changed votes, which would explain why candidate Error 404 Page Not Found is headed to the House of Representatives.” – Stephen Colbert
“John Boehner will be the new speaker unless, out of habit, he blocks his own confirmation.” – Stephen Colbert
“All his life people have called John Boehner ‘Boner,’ and now America is going to pay. It’s the reason his brother Dick stayed out of politics altogether.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“John Boehner will be the new Speaker of the House. It is the highest elected office ever to be reached by an Orange-American.” – Olivia Munn
“The Democrats lost the House. Big deal, a lot of Americans lost their houses. Why shouldn’t they?” –Jimmy Kimmel
“Tonight, we will be riding a gnarly GOP barrel all the way to tax cut beach!” – Stephen Colbert
“All we know for sure is that, if the past is any indication, one of these two men will be our nation’s next first black president.” – Stephen Colbert (on the race for Barack Obama’s old Senate seat)
“In the Kentucky Senate race, Rand Paul has been declared the victor. Rand Paul is a libertarian and a staunch opponent of regulation of any kind. So congratulations, Kentucky, your state bird is now a can of lead paint.” – Stephen Colbert
“Don’t get too bummed out, you can still use your ‘I Voted’ sticker to roll tiny little joints.” – Jimmy Kimmel (on the defeat of Prop 19 in California)
“What she should have done with the 142 million was make a ‘Terminator’ movie. That’s how our current Governor did it!” –Jimmy Kimmel (on Meg Whitman’s expensive loss)
“Russ Feingold was defeated for having progressive values. In Louisiana, David Vitter has absolutely destroyed his challenger by going out with hookers.” – Jon Stewart
“We are calling the West Virginia Senate race for Democrat Joe Manchin in a landslide. Now, technically, it’s only 11 points, but given West Virginia’s rich tradition of mining coal by blowing the tops off of mountains, pretty much everything that happens in that state is a landslide.” – Stephen Colbert
“The San Francisco Giants beat the Texas Rangers to win the World Series for the first time in 56 years. The fans back home celebrated with riots, overturning Priuses, throwing bottles of bio-dynamically farmed zinfandel and building huge clean-burning bonfires.” – Jimmy Kimmel
Well, actually, no.
Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely without pay from his job on MSNBC for donating money to political candidates.
Well, actually no, again. Although I’ve seen plenty of headlines saying this.
If truth be told, MSNBC does not prohibit employees from donating to political candidates, but it does require them to obtain prior approval from NBC News executives before doing so. This is the first time Olbermann has violated this rule. Actually, it is the first time he has ever donated money to any political campaign, ever.
So, where is the outrage? Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that money is protected speech? Isn’t MSNBC stomping on Olbermann’s first amendment rights?
Well, actually no, but that didn’t stop people from saying the same thing about Juan Williams when he was fired from NPR for repeatedly violating the terms of his contract with them. Even supporters of NPR said the firing was poorly handled. Where are the same comments about MSNBC and Olbermann? After all, MSNBC didn’t even give Olbermann a warning.
Seriously! Fox News is Fair and Balanced. They told me so themselves. Shouldn’t they offer a job to Keith Olbermann? Just like they did to Juan Williams? Isn’t that fair?
Isn’t that balanced?
In fact, not only does Fox News allow its journalists to contribute money to political causes, they have allowed Republican candidates to do fundraising on their programs. Heck, they even gave over a million dollars to Republicans themselves!
When NPR fired Williams, conservatives kept pointing out that George Soros had just donated money to NPR. If Fox News doesn’t offer Keith Olbermann a job, shouldn’t we keep pointing out that the second largest owner of Fox News is a Saudi prince, terrorist-sympathizer who has bragged about getting Fox News to change stories for him?
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow on the suspension of Keith Olbermann:
UPDATE 2: In 2006, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough donated $4,200 to a Republican candidate without permission. MSNBC ignored it, because Scarborough “hosts an opinion program and is not a news reporter”. Even though Olbermann also hosts an opinion program, MSNBC seems to hold him to a different standard, or is it because Olbermann donated to the wrong party?
Abortion Bush Campaign Finance Cheney Climate Clinton Congress Conservatives Corporations Corruption Deficits Democrats Drugs Economy Education Election Elections Energy Environment Fox News Gays Guns Health Immigration Lies McCain Media Middle East Obama Palin Protests Racism Religion Republicans Romney Spying Supreme Court Taxes Tea Party Terrorism Terrorists Torture Trump Unemployment War
