How ‘Mittens’ gets away with his lying – a complicit corporate media

May 16, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Yesterday, Willard "Mittens" Romney gave a big speech in which he accused President Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt.” Apparently Mittens is unaware that "Prarie Fire" is the name of the progressive movement in the Great Plains, but whatever. Prairie Fire – The Progressive Voice of the Great Plains.

Mittens' speech has been fact checked by the Associated Press and dissected by Jonathan Chait and Steve Benen. As Greg Sargent notes at the Plum Line, How Mitt Romney Gets Away With His Lying:

They note that it’s entirely at odds with conventional understanding of how deficits work, and utterly disconnected from context, rendering it almost unquantifiably misleading.

But I wanted to make another point. If you scan through all the media attention Romney’s speech received, you are hard-pressed to find any news accounts that tell readers the following rather relevant points:

1) Nonpartisan experts believe Romney’s plans would increase the deficit far more than Obama’s would.

2) George W. Bush’s policies arguably are more responsible for increasing the deficit than Obama's are.

Oh, sure, many of the news accounts contain the Obama campaign’s response to Romney’s speech; the Obama campaign put out a widely-reprinted statement arguing that Romney’s plans would increase the deficit and that he’d return to policies that created it in the first place.

How about a Star Barber/Kelly Fact Check on Medicare and Social Security?

May 16, 2012

by David Safier The Star has an AP Fact Check in today's paper looking at Romney's claims about Obama's responsibility for the national debt. I'm pleased to say, it doesn't indulge in false equivalence. It basically says Romney's accusations against Obama are incorrect without creating a weak, on-the-other-hand "balance" to muddy the waters. Obviously, I … Read more

Day of Action – May 19th – Walking for Arizona’s Democratic Future!

May 16, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Announcement from the Pima County Democratic Party: Day of Action – May 19th – Walking for Arizona's Democratic Future! Saturday, May 19th, 2012 It is time to finish collecting those last signatures for our Democratic Candidates! Join Democrats and candidates from all over Southern Arizona as we complete the last bits of … Read more

CD 8 Special Election: Watch the debate tonight, Vote early tomorrow!

May 16, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The first of two debates is tonight — a prerecorded televised debate on Arizona Public Media's Arizona Illustrated, PBS-HD Channel 6, simulcast on the radio NPR 89.1 FM. at 6:00 p.m. If you have any questions for the candidates for the AZPM forum, submit them by going to this link, and give … Read more

The main drivers of our national debt – yep, still Bushonomics

May 15, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

If you listen to Willard "Mittens" Romney tell the story, the history of the world only began on January 20, 2009 — the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. All of human history which preceded that event does not exist in "Romney world." There is a reason for this framing — If the world began on January 20, 2009, Tea-Publicans are not responsible for the economic catastrophe they left to President Obama; they are miraculously absolved of all their sins. Hallelujah!

This is how Romney and the GOP "push forward" onto President Obama the consequences of Bushonomics, a lost decade of job growth, Repost: The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade, and the worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression with the Bush Great Recession (which began in December 2007). "See! It's all Obama's fault." As crazy as this sounds, it actually works with low information and highly partisan voters. Like Agent Fox Mulder from the X Files, they "want to believe."

We are still living with the consequences of Bushonomics. Bush's massive tax cuts are still in place and were actually expanded with President Obama's middle-class tax cuts.

We are still incurring huge expenses for the War in Afghanistan and, despite the end of the War in Iraq, we still have advisors and a massive diplomatic presence there. Bush's "War on Terrorism" has actually been expanded under President Obama into Pakistan and Yemen, and the U.S. has has to deal with the consequences that followed from the Arab Spring uprising in the Muslim world.

The economic recovery from the Bush Great Recession has been slow largely due to Tea-Publican opposition to what we know works — Keynesian stimulus spending — and their demands to follow what we know doesn't work, conservative economics "austerity" at the state and local government level, depressing public sector employment.

All of this was put on the nation's credit card. Bush not only squandered a massive budget surplus but added $5 trillion to the national debt, and left a $1.3 trillion deficit for President Obama and an economy in free fall to deal with on January 20, 2009. No one has been asked to sacrifice, other than our military families, and no one has been asked to pay a little bit more through higher taxes. We are still living with the lasting consequences of Bushenomics.

But don't bother Tea-Publicans and Mittens with the facts.

Americans Elect – An Epic Failure

May 15, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The brainchild of hedge fund operators, the shadowy 501(c)(4) Americans Elect (not a political party) promised to select a bipartisan ticket for president and vice president through online voting in a virtual convention. Yeah, that fraud ain't gonna happen. Ed Kilgore writes today at the Politcal Animal blog Americans Unelect: As you … Read more