Fact Check

McSally ad lies to denigrate the First Amendment rights of Americans

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We have all seen, ad nauseam, the political attack ads from Martha McSally against Kirsten Sinema. The message of the ad is not as important as the imagery it seeks to convey in the ads. McSally wants to portray Sinema as some “lefty looney” in a pink tutu in contrast to her bad-ass “woman warrior” in a flight suit.

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If a male candidate were running these ads against Sinema it would be pilloried as sexist and misogynist … because it is. A woman running this ad against another woman should not get a pass just because she is a woman.

There is also the subtext of the McSally ad objecting to Sinema having exercised her constitutional First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly to petition the government in opposition to the Iraq War — an unnecessary and illegal war sold by the Bush administration with falsified intelligence of “weapons of mass destruction” and war fever propaganda from the Bush administration.

Millions of Americans, and millions of people around the world, marched in protest and opposition to the Iraq War. McSally wants to convey the Bush administration view that “You are either with us, or you are against us,” i.e.,  you either support this unnecessary and illegal war, or you support “the enemy,” a false dichotomy designed to question the loyalty and patriotism of Americans who opposed the Iraq War, as it turned out, quite rightly so.

Apparently McSally is still bitter and resentful  of Americans’ opposition to the Iraq War. Too bad. Get over it, lady.

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House GOP tax scam exposed

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The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved the House Republicans’ bill to rewrite the tax code on a party-line vote. GOP tax bill clears hurdle, heads to House floor:

The measure — which reduces the number of individual tax rates, slashes the corporate tax rate and eliminates many deductions and credits — was approved on a party-line vote of 24-16.

The only changes made to the bill during the markup were from amendments offered by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas).

Thursday afternoon, Brady made a number of changes to the bill which included restoring the adoption tax credit, additional tax relief for pass-through businesses and higher tax rates on repatriated foreign earnings.

Republicans and Democrats argued during the markup over whether the bill would help the middle class. GOP lawmakers pointed to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation that showed that on average every income group would get a tax cut in 2019.

“It was established over and over again that the Joint Committee on Taxation says taxpayers at every quintile will pay less taxes under this plan,” said Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.).

But Democrats cited Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that showed some middle-class taxpayers would still see their taxes go up, particularly in later years.

“This bill will raise taxes on the middle class. It will raise taxes on the middle class. It will raise taxes on the middle class,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.).

So who is right? As one should surmise, it’s not the GOP bait-and-switch tax scammers. Paul Waldman of the Washington Post reports, The GOP tax plan will raise taxes on lots of people. A new analysis shows how many.

Republicans have always been good at spin, but right now they’re facing one of the most extraordinary PR challenges they’ve ever confronted: Can they sell a bill that raises taxes on tens of millions of Americans as a glorious tax cut for everyone?

It would be an extraordinary trick if they managed to pull it off, but distracting from the facts will be no easy task.

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Paul Ryan’s bait-and-switch sales campaign for the GOP tax bill

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Last week the GOP’s alleged boy genius and Ayn Rand fan boy, Paul Ryan, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin,” rolled out the GOP’s tax bill with this sales campaign: that a typical family of four will save $1,182 under the GOP tax bill.

“I don’t envy the partisans tasked with messaging against giving middle income families (family of four making $59K) $1,182 back,” AshLee Strong, Ryan’s press secretary wrote on Twitter, adding the hashtag #1182more …

… said the shameless GOPropagandist. Well defenders of truth, justice and the American way have no fear of soulless GOPropagandists, lady.

Dylan Matthews at Vox.com explains how Ryan’s example is a bait-and-switch campaign that will actually raise taxes on middle-class families. Paul Ryan’s poster family for middle-class tax cuts would ultimately get a tax hike:

The problem with selling the bill this way is that the claim is only partially true.

It is true that the average household in 2016, which the Census Bureau estimates makes made $59,039, would get a tax cut worth about $1,100 in the first year. (A more technical quibble with the claim is that many households aren’t families, and the average household size is 2.53, not 4.)

But after the first year, that claim looks much shakier. As NYU tax law professor and former Obama adviser David Kamin explains in a Medium post, the plan would actually result in a sizable tax increase for such a household over time:

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Latest GOPropaganda talking point (defense) for Trump-Russia collusion falls apart under scrutiny

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The Trump administration’s Minister of Propaganda at FAUX News, Sean Hannity, tried to distract his intellectually challenged audience from Donald Trump Jr.’s public admission that he sought to collude with the Russians through the Russian mafia’s lawyer for dirt on Hillary Clinton — look, squirrel! — with their favorite opiate, another unfounded Clinton conspiracy theory.

This latest GOPropaganda talking point falls apart under scrutiny. Philip Bump of the Washington Post reports, Exploring Sean Hannity’s defense of Donald Trump Jr.: Clinton and Ukraine did it, too:

Sean Hannity’s defense of Donald Trump Jr. during his Fox News interview on Tuesday evening began with a lengthy and muddled pastiche of ways in which the Democrats — and Hillary Clinton in particular — had behaved just as badly. Or, maybe, worse.

Trump Jr. was there, you’ll recall, to respond to questions about his having accepted a meeting with an individual who explicitly promised negative information about Clinton offered by the Russian government. That Hannity was his first interlocutor on the subject is hardly surprising; the Fox News host has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to gloss over negative news about the administration. And as the show began, he made that clear.

Hannity revisited one of the points from his introduction later in the show — a point that Trump Jr. himself had made on Twitter on Tuesday morning. What about a Politico report from January, Hannity asked, suggesting that Ukraine was colluding with the Clinton campaign to help her candidacy?

After loosely describing that Politico report, Hannity suggested that the media was ignoring it at their peril. (Was this accompanied by creepy organ music?)

“I pose this question to everybody in the media that’s forced to tune in tonight,” he asked. “Which is worse?”

The Russia-Trump Jr. issue is worse. Allow us to explain.

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Lies, damned lies, and Trump

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The Washington Post provided editorial space to Donald Trump on Sunday for his alternative facts propaganda and egomaniacal self-aggrandizement. President Trump: In my first 100 days, I kept my promise to Americans.

This is no way close to being true.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post again provides an annotated version of Trump’s op-ed to provide context and a healthy dose of reality. Trump’s glowing op-ed about his first 100 days, with some badly needed context. Click on the yellow highlight’s for Blake’s annotations.

The Washington Post fact checkers write, President Trump’s first 100 days: The fact check tally:

President Trump is the most fact-challenged politician that The Fact Checker has ever encountered. He earned 59 Four-Pinocchio ratings during his campaign as president. Since then, he’s earned 16 more Four-Pinocchio ratings.

But those numbers obscure the fact that the pace and volume of the president’s misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up. The president’s speeches and interviews are so chock full of false and misleading claims that The Fact Checker often must resort to roundups that offer a brief summary of the facts that the president has gotten wrong.

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