8 Things People Shouldn't Know

This is awesome. I'm simply quoting in full:

There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.

Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and beganbefore the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

This stuff really matters.

If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.

If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.

If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

GOP Blows Up the Deficit

From the GOP's Pledge to America: "We offer a plan to stop out-of-control spending and reduce the size of the government."

You can read their unimpeachable methodology here.

Right Wing Terrorists, part 26

There was another right wing terrorist arrested this week after a shootout with the cops. He had loaded a mini arsenal into a pickup truck, and was heading to the ACLU and the Tides Foundation to "start a revolution."  Where have you heard of the Tides Foundation, you ask? Well, Hannity has mentioned it twice, but the only other person in the media to have mentioned it is Glenn Beck, who flogs it constantly.

Here's Dana Milbank, doing good work:

Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid." Most every broadcast has some violent imagery: "The clock is ticking. . . . The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun to America's head. . . . Hold these people responsible."

Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching "a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out." One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. "If you're a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children," he said. "And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?"

Here's one idea: Stop encouraging them.

Those quotes are shocking. Of course, when someone does exactly what he constantly advocates, he throws his hands up and says he had nothing to do with it.

A Liar Freaks Out

Ahhhh, good old Breitbart. Can we stop paying him any attention now?

CNBC on the Jones Act

Wow.  You don't see this every day, but I wish to god we did:



What a beatdown.

Rep Inglis(R) Is Now Free To Speak

Republican Representative Bob Inglis has been making a splash lately.  He lost his GOP primary because he had the gall to try to lead his constituents away from the fever swamps by telling them to "Turn turn the television off when Glenn Beck comes on."  Remember, Inglis was a 1994 Republican Revolutionary, and no moderate.  Of course, Rep. Inglis lost to his Tea Partying opponent.  There is no room in the Republican Party for anything but the most hard core conservatives.

Luckily for us, now that he's not beholden to his crazy-ass voters he's giving "straight-talk" to the AP:

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Racism. It's the Teapartiers, my friends.  When your spiritual leader is someone that's convinced Obama is ruining the economy on purpose in order to give him the chance to make reparations to the blacks for slavery, then Racism is par for the course.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

Ahhh, honesty. Refreshing.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Very nice, Rep Inglis. Way to Lead.  Better late than never.

Datamining Snopes

Mr. Bell runs the numbers:

After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.

Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

Interesting, eh?  Not surprising, but interesting.

Hannity Screws the Troops

Conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel finds a HUGE nut about Sean Hannity's Freedom Alliance - the charity that puts on Hannity's Freedom Concerts for the Troops:

According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10,822,785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.

On the other hand, 62% of the money went to “expenses,” including $979,485 for “consultants” and an “advisor.” Yes, consultant/advisors got more than double what injured troops and the kids of fallen troops got. The tax forms show that “New World Aviation” got paid $60,601 for “air travel.” Was that for Hannity’s G5? Like I said, neither the charity nor Hannity is talking. And finally, that year, Freedom Alliance spent $1,730,816 on postage and shipping and $1,414,215 on printing, for a total of $3,145,031, nearly half the revenue the charity spent that year and about eight times what the injured troops and the children of fallen ones received.

And I thought I hated Hannity before. She hasn't been able to find a year where more than 20% of the donations to the "charity" went to the troops.

What an asshole.

GOP Alternative Budget - Tax Cuts for the Rich and (Almost) No Safety Net

Ryan's Budget - the GOP alternative - is an atrocious, Randian document. If you believe that the market allocates income morally by definition, then I guess this sort of thing makes sense, but some of us remember the history of revolutions on this planet.

Here's the nonpartisan takedown of Ryan's response to his budget problems:

We are quite disappointed that, in responding to our analysis of his budget plan, Rep. Paul Ryan accuses the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of “partisan demagoguery” as well as “factual errors and misleading statements.” Quite the contrary, we applied the same rigorous analytical process to Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future that we do to every issue we study. We worked for more than a month on our analysis, and we believe that, if anything, we bent over backwards to make sure we were fair to the Congressman and his plan. Frankly, based on the attack on our analysis that Rep. Ryan issued yesterday, we took his plan far more seriously than he took our analysis of it.

Rep. Ryan accuses us of partisanship, but we relied on the best nonpartisan sources available. The Tax Policy Center, on whose revenue estimates we relied heavily, is a highly respected, nonpartisan institution whose codirector, Rosanne Altshuler, was senior economist for President George W. Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005. Our other key sources of information included the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration. Rep. Ryan says that we made errors and misleading statements, but it is he — not we — who has done so. He ignores what we wrote and accuses us of writing things that we did not. In fact, he even selectively deletes words from a sentence that he quotes from one of our earlier reports to change the clear meaning of what we wrote. He also inaccurately represents some important aspects of CBO’s analysis of his plan.

As outlined below, we examined every one of Rep. Ryan’s complaints about our work, and not a single one withstands scrutiny.

It's all great. They nail him.

"You Lie!"

Joe Wilson, this morning:

On the good side, The Hill today reports, front page, the Senate bill provides for citizenship verification to buy insurance.

That's right. It's the same bill. Oy.

I just can't help but see significance in the historic nature of heckling the President as he gave a SotU. Things have changed.

CIA "Errors"

In these same CIA documents that are said to damn Nancy Pelosi, the CIA identifies Porter Goss as a Congress Member receiving a briefing at the time that he was the Director of the CIA.

Oy.

Video of Graham CIA Beatdown

Senator Graham makes his case. There is little doubt left that the CIA's pronouncements of who was briefed on what when cannot be taken as gospel.

MSNBC not Liberal Like Fox is Conservative / Falsehoods about Torture

Joe Scarborough falsely claimed that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah "were not asked" by the CIA about a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. In fact, according to a Senate report, the CIA questioned both about an Iraq/Al Qaeda relationship.

Of course, multiple sources confirm that both KSM and Abu Zubaida were interrogated with the Al-Qaeda/Iraq Link being a key area of interest. Remind me, when you torture someone to give you information that doesn't actually exist, what are the odds that you'll get an answer that's useful in any way other than politically?

Good old Media Matters. So useful.

Bob Graham Proves CIA Misleads

I think there's enough evidence to call it proven. Graham has been taking crap for keeping that diary for decades. It's nice for it to finally come in handy:

Graham told Greg Sargent this afternoon: "I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them."

Greg adds that Graham denied being told about EITs, and argued that the presence of two staff members at the meeting (as indicated in the records) would have made it "highly unusual" for the briefers to divulge such sensitive info. "I don't recall having had one of those kinds of briefings with staff present," he said. "That would defeat the purpose of keeping a tight hold" on the info.

The pattern is established, I think.

Rockefeller Finds Errors in CIA Info

Senator Rockefeller, referring to a document released by the CIA covering the briefings they provided to Congress on interrogation:

We are not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of the document. We can tell you that in the particular entry stating that Senator Rockefeller was briefed on February 4th of 2003 with an asterisk also noting him as later individually briefed -- that is not correct, or at least is not being reported correctly by people reading the document. The Democratic staff director attended a briefing on Feb. 4, but Senator Rockefeller was not present and was not later briefed individually by anyone in the intelligence community. He was first personally briefed by the intelligence community on Sept 4th, 2003.

Chalk up another for Pelosi.

Critical Reading Exercise

So, there's a little brouhaha regarding Nancy Pelosi and the veracity of the CIA's claims about its briefings to Congress. Perhaps you've noticed.

Republicans seem to think Panetta slammed Pelosi today, but let's do a little critical reading exercise here, shall we?

Message from the Director: Turning Down the Volume
There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I'm gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing "the enhanced techniques that had been employed." Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

My advice--indeed, my direction--to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.

We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is--even if that's not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.

Did he actually deny that the CIA had mislead Pelosi? No.

DailyShow Nails Cheney/Bush - Was Bush President?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Excuse Me Your Dick Is Out
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Cheney quote they provide at the end makes the case that Dick Cheney was the acting President when it came to matters of National Security. Let us never again elect such a lightweight.

KO Takes Down Bill-O on Torture

Once again, Keith-O catches Bill-O wrongfully turning our friends into War Criminals. If you recall, he did the same thing with our own soldiers in WWII, when it was in fact the Nazi's that perpetrated the crimes at Malmedy he accused our boys of committing.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Once again, Keith is indispensable.

Reagan Prosecuted Waterboarding

If the Bush Lawyers had as their intention a good faith legal analysis of waterboarding and other EITs, then they would have found this:

George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near-drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.

"To take one example, there was a court-martial addressing the practice of waterboarding from 1903, a state court case from the Twenties, a series of prosecutions at the [post-World War II] Tokyo Tribunal (in many of which the death penalty was sought) and another court-martial in 1968," Horton said. "These precedents could have been revealed in just a few minutes of computerized research using the right search engines. It's hard to imagine that Yoo and Bybee didn't know them.

...

The failure to cite the earlier waterboarding case and a half-dozen other precedents that dealt with torture is reportedly one of the critical findings of a Justice Department watchdog report that legal sources say faults former Bush administration lawyers -- Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury -- for violating "professional standards."

Notice that Reagan's prosecution is just the last in a long line of historical legal precedents.  The fact that their legal examination of this issue didn't reveal these precedents goes a long way towards proving that the reviews were conducted in bad faith - that the White House told the DOJ lawyers what they wanted, and the DOJ produced.  This system is uncomfortably close to "if the President does it, then it is not illegal."

Torture Lies From the Past

Kudos to the NYTS for revisiting these lies:

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”

His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Suck on that America!