Month: September 2012

Stephanie Cutter: The Woman Behind Obama’s Message – A Sean Hannity Malfunction

Posted by on September 24, 2012 at 8:48 pm. 5 Comments :

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother to post a video from the Sean Hannity program on Fox News. He is so utterly irrelevant and obsessed with the most ignorant conspiracy theories and slander, that taking the time to describe him as a waste of time would itself be a waste of time.

However, tonight Hannity produced a segment that purported to be an expose of President Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter. Setting aside his blatant lies and smarmy insults, the piece actually serves as more of a tribute to Ms. Cutter than anything else. Her resume as presented by Hannity reveals all the reasons why she is a brilliant and effective communications professional. Any politician would be lucky to have someone so intelligent and committed on their staff.

So I’d like to thank Hannity for being such a loser that he thinks that his hit piece reflects poorly on Cutter. Have a look for yourself:

I’d also like to thank Stephanie Cutter for being an awesome campaign staffer (and really darn cute).

The Takeaway: Mitt Romney And Barack Obama On 60 Minutes

Posted by on September 24, 2012 at 2:06 pm. 2 Comments :

Alright, so Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last night and were interviewed by Scott Pelley. Both interviews were pre-taped and edited to fit into a limited period of time. The questions were nearly identical for both candidates and covered the economy and foreign policy.

So what did the Romney camp choose to focus on the next day? “Bumps in the Road” as the headline on Fox News put it. The headline refers to a comment Obama made regarding the unrest in the Middle East. Here is what the President said:

“I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road.”

Obama was plainly describing the difficulties of transitioning to democracy for countries that have been under dictatorships for decades. Romney, however, extracted a few words and then asserted that they were directed specifically at the deaths of the diplomats in Libya. This is a recurring pattern in the Romney strategy which consists almost entirely of taking fragments of Obama’s comments out of context (see Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context). It sheds no light on any issue of substance and is nothing more than a purposeful distraction and smear.

On the other hand, Romney spoke with Pelley about health care and defended his opposition to individual mandates. He asserted that Health care is available to everyone in America and explained just how the uninsured should go about receiving it:

“We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.”

And then we charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars which results in them losing their homes, going bankrupt, being unable to send their kids to school, and not having the funds to pay for other medical needs or, for that matter, food. Where Romney gets the impression that free medical care is available as necessary at hospital emergency rooms is something he never reveals. What’s more, it directly contradicts his position on this issue from only five years ago when he assailed the use of emergency rooms as a health plan of last resort:

“When they show up at the hospital they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism I don’t know what is.”

Mitt Romney Flip Flop

I’m quite sure that he doesn’t know what socialism is, but that’s beside the point. He must know that he is contradicting himself and advocating a practice that he previously rejected in the strongest terms. It also happens that the practice of relying on ERs is substantially more expensive and has far worse outcomes for the patient than access to regular care from a doctor.

If the media comes out of this taking seriously Romney’s whining about Obama using a figure of speech to describe the “bumps” that will jostle the emerging democracies in the Middle East, while ignoring the far more consequential comments and contradictions by Romney that fail to grasp the the health care challenges our nation faces, then they will have demonstrated once again why the public holds the media in such low esteem.

As for the esteem with which the public holds Romney, it just keeps getting lower by the day.

Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context

Posted by on September 21, 2012 at 11:09 am. 3 Comments :

The GOP’s candidate of the of the one-percent, Mitt Romney, has built his campaign around a unique strategy: Take everything President Obama says out of context and then try to use it against him. This is a tactic that he has been employing repeatedly in lieu of actually telling voters what he would do were he elected.

The latest example is his feverishly grasping a snippet of something Obama said at the Univision forum yesterday. Here is what the President said:

“I think that I’ve learned some lessons over the last four years, and the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle-class families.

So something that I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people so that they can put pressure on Congress to help move some of these issues forward.”

That’s a pretty uncontroversial expression of respect for the American people and including them in the process of reforming government. And it’s something that Obama said since the beginning of his work in national politics. It is, in fact, what “Hope and Change” was all about when he told supporters that “you are the change.”

Mitt Romney latched onto just seven words from the hour-long event and is attempting to attach a meaning to them that bears no resemblance to their actual intent. Those words are “You can’t change Washington from the inside.” Romney has added that phrase to his stump speech along with his promise to affect change ONLY from the inside. That’s not surprising since he has already written off half of the American people as those who “it’s not my job to worry about.” It’s also not surprising that Romney is again exposing his raving hypocrisy, because he has previously said the very same thing about how to change Washington:

Mitt Romney Inside Outside

Let’s recap some of the other out-of-context moments that have become integral parts of the Romney campaign:

“You didn’t build that.” This is a deliberate misquoting of Obama who was actually referring to roads and bridges, not the private businesses that Romney has tried to imply were the subject of the remarks.

“The private sector is doing fine.” This is another misrepresentation where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector, which has grown over the past three years, to the public sector, which has been shrinking.

“We tried our plan and it worked.” Here Romney deliberately asserted that Obama was referencing his own record and implying that it had achieved complete success. In fact, Obama has consistently said that more needs to be done and this comment was plainly referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush’s policies.

“[Obama] removed the requirement of work from welfare.” Romney made this accusation that is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“I actually believe in redistribution.”This was purposefully clipped from a much longer statement wherein Obama was praising entrepreneurs and the free market, while also seeking to improve the parts of government that provide services like schools, roads, etc.

Those examples illustrate the only consistent component of Romney’s campaign strategy: Rip soundbites from Obama’s speeches and build dishonest explanations around them. He uses this tactic because he has concluded that it is better than trying to explain his unpopular and/or unworkable positions on the economy, jobs, Social Security, foreign affairs, etc. And he still refuses to release more than two years of his tax returns.

Look for more of the same in the next few weeks as Romney gets even more desperate for something to talk about that doesn’t result in his foot winding up in his mouth – again.

HA! NewsBusters Gets Blustered Over News Corpse Article

Posted by on September 20, 2012 at 11:10 pm. 1 Comments :

This is rich. NewsBusters, the uber-rightist attack dog for the conservative media, is very unhappy about my analysis of the cable news ratings earlier this week. I reported that MSNBC had scored a rare ratings victory over Fox News and that Rachel Maddow, in particular, had not only crushed her time period competition (Sean Hannity), but also beat Bill O’Reilly in the key 25-54 year old demographic. It was a newsworthy milestone and an important trend to keep an eye on.

Tim Graham, the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center, could not contain himself and penned a column that took issue with my fanciful speculation about adding a new program to the MSNBC schedule with former Rep. Anthony Weiner as the host. Never mind that I explicitly offered the suggestion as a “long shot” and a “curiosity,” Graham built his whole column around the musing. In the meantime, he had nothing whatsoever to say about the the principle subject of my article: the fact that Fox was getting its butt kicked.

Graham and his glassy-eyed followers at NewsBusters really think that Weiner would be a lousy choice to host a new program. Maybe so, but he has a lot more intelligence and personality than most of the Fox News lineup. What’s more, he isn’t even the biggest perv in this group. Bill O’Reilly paid a huge settlement to a former producer for sexual harassment. Dick Morris was caught with a hooker who he paid to suck his toes. And Charles Leaf, a correspondent who reported for Fox, was arrested for having sexually assaulted a four year old girl.

Weiner, of course, did nothing illegal. Although it wasn’t very smart to tweet risque pictures of himself amongst consenting adults, it was a lot less repulsive than assault, harassment, and solicitation. Yet Graham and the FoxPods have forgiven O’Reilly, Morris, et al, but still think Weiner should be banished from the airwaves and, perhaps, from all public life.

That’s so typical of the sanctimonious, judgmental, conservative mindset that claims to revere family values but who elevate deviant freaks like Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, John McCain, etc, whose multiple marriages are in stark contrast to the values they pretend to hold. They might want to hang on to their stones until they have vacated their glass houses.

The War On Women: Hammering Pelosi In The Head – Literally!

Posted by on September 20, 2012 at 1:49 pm. NO Comments :

The cretins at Fox News have once again revealed their innate hostility, in general, and toward women specifically. The joint appearance of John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi at a groundbreaking ceremony for next year’s inaugural stage produced a photograph that inspired an offensive attempt at humor by Boehner and a despicable reaction from the denizens at Fox Nation.

Fox Nation - Boehner Hammers Pelosi

The title, “Boehner Cocks Hammer At Pelosi,” sets the scene for the bloodlust that will follow. Directly below the photo, Fox News writes…

“Very funny on-cam moments at the ceremony on the West front of the Capitol this morning. […] As he walked up, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) immediately grabbed his hammer, made a funny face and acted like he was going to hit House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.”

Oh, such funny on-cam moments. I can hardly catch my breath. The GOP Speaker of the House of Representatives pretends to murder the Minority Leader by bashing her skull in with a hammer. Boehner certainly has a sharp wit. And it’s not the least bit disrespectful, nor a veiled sanction of violence against women. What will those scamps do next?

Well, actually, for a sense of how this news was received by the miscreants at Fox Nation, take a look at a sampling of the comments:

Fox Nation - Boehner Hammers Pelosi

This is the character of the Fox Nationalists. They encourage this behavior. As of this writing, they have not removed any of these comments that openly advocate the assassination of an elected American representative, who also happens to be the first woman Speaker of the House in our nation’s history.

It’s one thing for a bunch of ignorant weasels to spew their violent wet dreams on the Internet, but it’s another thing entirely when their platform is the web site of a national, mainstream “news” network. This is not an isolated incident. Violent, racist, and other hateful rhetoric is a regular feature at Fox Nation. And President Obama is frequently the target. Ironically, the Fox Nationalists are also the first to castigate even mild expressions of dislike by liberals.

It goes without saying that these sort of boorish ravings are not the equivalent of the violence we are presently seeing in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere. However, while the practical manifestation of these ideas is not the same, the mindset is identical. They both view their ideological enemies as subhuman and worthy of death. And they are both directing their anger at American representatives and policymakers. The right-wing in America behaves as if they hate this country as much as Al Qaeda does.

To make matters worse, they have Fox News to help them promulgate those views. It’s disgusting, divisive, and unpatriotic. And, unfortunately, it’s probably going to continue, and may even get worse, after Obama is reelected.

More GOP BS: Video Of Obama Praising Redistribution In 1998 Was Deceptively Edited

Posted by on September 20, 2012 at 9:21 am. 5 Comments :

It was inevitable. When Mitt Romney started hyping a fourteen year old audio clip that he thought made President Obama look bad, we should have known there would be more to the story. Now, NBC has found the actual video, and it proves that Obama was taken out of context – again. As I reported yesterday…

In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.

The new expanded video shows that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead people with the truncated clip pushed by Romney and his pals in the right-wing press. In the video Obama is seen clearly advancing the principles of free markets that conservatives pretend to support. Here is the full statement with the part previously edited out in bold:

“I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot. How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities.“

This more evidence that the right simply doesn’t care about being truthful. As Romney’s communications directer said, they will not let their campaign be run by fact-checkers. The GOP has already released an anti-Obama ad that includes the deceptive version of this video. And their official response to the discovery of the expanded version simply ingnores the new information:

“Barack Obama said he believes in redistributing wealth among Americans and his policies over the past three and a half years bear that out. Under Obama we have increased our dependency on government with 47 million Americans on food stamps, record levels added to our debt and gutting work requirements for welfare. Instead of pro-growth policies, the Obama administration says they are relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.”

This is their actual response to the long version of the 1998 video, but they merely repeat the short version and never even mention the corrected context. However, they do lie outright about Obama saying that they are “relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.” I defy them to document that charge, but I won’t hold my breath. I do, however, expect them to continue hammering Obama about this video as if the longer version never existed. It’s how they operate. Just lie, and keep lying, and when your lie has been discovered – lie harder.

Romney’s 47% Fiasco Fuels MSNBC Ratings Rout For Maddow, O’Donnell

Posted by on September 19, 2012 at 4:26 pm. 5 Comments :

Just like when the party conventions concluded and the DNC’s superior production boosted the audience for MSNBC’s primetime programming, the release of the crippling video of Mitt Romney dismissing half the nation as moochers is having a positive effect on MSNBC as well.

Rachel Maddow

On Monday, Rachel Maddow crushed Sean Hannity scoring 32% more viewers in the key advertiser demo of adults 25-54. Also, Chris Matthews’ Hardball beat Shepard Smith and Lawrence O’Donnell topped Greta Van Susteren.

Last night (Tuesday), Rachel again rolled over Hannity by an even larger margin (37%). And O’Donnell continued his dominance of Van Susteren. On both nights MSNBC took the total primetime time period from Fox News. These wins are significant in that they don’t occur very often. What’s more, they are routing Fox’s perennial winners without any special programming along the lines of a convention or debate. This is strictly news driven.

However, even more noteworthy is that Maddow’s demo numbers on Tuesday were the highest in all of the cable news primetime schedule. She even bested Bill O’Reilly by 3% despite the fact that O’Reilly’s guest was Jon Stewart who ought to have drawn in the younger viewers that ordinarily shun O’Reilly. With his devoted older-skewing viewers, plus the kids from Stewart’s heavily promoted guest appearance, O’Reilly should have run away with the night.

Maddow’s decisive victory suggests that there is something brewing in the cable news game. Viewers are responding to the editorial content of MSNBC and its most dynamic presenters. It’s still way too soon to make definitive statements or projections, but the gathering trends are promising.

Now all MSNBC has to do is capitalize on the new attention they are receiving and bring in new talent. Ed Schultz, who has not been contributing to this upswing, may be due for a makeover or a co-host. And there’s no need to repeat Hardball in the early evening when a new show could could broaden the audience. My long-shot pick: I’d give former Rep. Anthony Weiner a shot. If Eliot Spitzer can get a show on Current, Weiner should have a second chance too. He’s smart, experienced, and entertaining. And the publicity would help bring in a curious audience.

[Update] O’Donnell beat Van Susteren again on Wednesday.

EMULATING FAILURE: Mitt Romney Adopts The Campaign Strategy Of John McCain

Posted by on September 19, 2012 at 11:44 am. 1 Comments :

Poor Mitt Romney. The wealthy vulture capitalist who, along with his Super PAC pals has raised and spent more money than any candidate in history, finds his campaign in shambles after a series of embarrassing missteps: The atrocious Republican convention, jumping the gun on statements about Libya, getting caught telling the awful truth to a luncheon for fatcat donors, etc. Romney and his campaign advisers have taken a beating at the hands of the public and their own supporters.

Consequently, Romney has turned to the GOP’s tactical playbook desperately looking for a way to dig himself out of the sinkhole that threatens to engulf him. And he thinks he’s found the answer in a chapter titled, “What Would John McCain Do?”

Mitt Romney Recycles John McCain

That’s right. When you’re in political trouble the best thing to do is always to emulate the tactics of the just prior candidate who lost miserably to an inexperienced African-American senator whose middle name is Hussein. And that’s precisely what Romney is doing.

In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip (video below) of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.

However, the take that Romney has put on this has far more sinister implications of socialism and what Romney calls “a foreign concept.” The most obvious corollary would be the circus that surrounded the national joke known as Joe the Plumber. In that citizen encounter Obama uttered the phrase “spread the wealth around,” and created a tornado of right-wing outrage. Never mind that it wasn’t different in principle from Ronald Reagan saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It was an opportunity to miscast the President’s words and throw the mangled result back in his face. Which, by the way, Romney’s crew is also doing with nonsense like “you didn’t build that.”

In addition to this new focus on an old and abridged snippet of audio, Romney has also been recycling Sarah Palin’s classic “palling around with terrorists.” After the tragic and deadly clash in Libya, Romney stepped out in front of the news (and the facts) to accuse Obama of siding with terrorists by saying that he “sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks.” That repugnant remark borders on charging the President with treason. So much for claims of running a civil campaign.

More than anything else, these recent moves by Romney are an admission that he has already lost the election. Resorting to this type of insane blathering demonstrates the depths of his desperation. He is now firmly committed to losing his race for the White House, while stirring up the mouth-foaming radicals of the Tea-publican Party so that they might prevent massive losses in the House and Senate as well. He’s aiming at pretty long odds with this approach. Ms. Palin and Mr. Plumber didn’t do much for McCain four years ago, and reaching back to salvage tactics that have been proven to fail is not likely to advance Romney’s campaign either.

The Roots Of Romney’s Rage: Where His 47% Fiasco Came From

Posted by on September 18, 2012 at 3:45 am. 39 Comments :

The Making of a Meme
Just in case anyone is wondering where Mitt Romney came up with the data behind the contemptuous affront he leveled at half of the population that he hopes to serve as president, it is a tenet of conservative philosophy that has been expressed repeatedly by pundits and politicians alike, although rarely with such disdain. Here is what Romney, a man who accuses President Obama of being divisive, told a roomful of wealthy donors:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

The erroneous charge concerning an alleged 47% of American freeloaders is one that has been exciting right-wingers for more than two years and has been notably championed by Fox News. To fill in the background of this story, I am re-posting an article I wrote in August of 2011 that describes the length and breadth of this fictitious political assault on the middle and working class of America. It illustrates explicitly the themes that Romney articulated to his wealthy supporters.

Debt Wish XI: The GOP/Tea Party Plan To Tax The Poor
(August 24, 2011) America’s Republican/Tea Party contingent, who are defined by their dogmatic devotion to lower taxes as a panacea for everything, have finally found a sector of society that they can comfortably saddle with a higher tax burden: The Poor.

That’s right. These anti-tax zealots have concluded that fairness cannot be achieved in the country’s tax code as long as there are disadvantaged freeloaders who are allegedly not paying into the system. While they fight tooth and nail to protect wealthy individuals and corporations from contributing even modest amounts to the nation’s recovery, the rightist brigade is marching lock-step in favor of soaking the poor in order to heal the malaise on Wall Street and the misery of long-suffering bankers. Their battle cry goes something like this: “Half of the Country Doesn’t Pay Any Taxes At All.” Fox News has been pushing that theme for quite a while. For the past two years they headlined it on Fox Nation right at tax time.

Fox News Tax Payers

This movement is not some scruffy assemblage of disorganized trust-funders seeking to upgrade their yachts. It is a coordinated campaign that has pulled together high profile proponents from politics and the press. Here is a sampling of the breadth and unity of the movement and the message:

  • Rick Perry (R-TX): We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.
  • Michele Bachmann (R-MN): A system in which 47% of Americans don’t pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy.
  • Sarah Palin (R-AK): The problem is more than 40% pay no income taxes at all.
  • Orrin Hatch (R-UT): 51 percent don’t pay anything.
  • Jim DeMint (R-SC): Over half of Americans pay no federal income tax.
  • Mitch McConnell (R-KY): In fact, about half of Americans don’t pay any income taxes at all.
  • John Boehner (R-OH): Fifty-one percent — that is, a majority of American households — paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada.
  • Eric Cantor (R-MD): We also have a situation in this country where you’re nearing 50 percent of people who don’t even pay income taxes.
  • Alan West (R-FL): Currently we have some 40-45% of Americans who are not paying any taxes.

We’re not through yet.

  • Donald Trump (R-HisOwnEgo): You do have a problem because half of the people don’t pay any tax.
  • Bill O’Reilly (Fox News): 50 percent of Americans don’t pay any federal income tax now.
  • Stuart Varney (Fox News): About half the people who work in America, half the households, actually, pay any federal income tax at all.
  • Dave Briggs (Fox News): [A]lmost half of this country pays no income tax whatsoever.
  • Gretchen Carlson (Fox News): But what does that mean when you factor in that 50 percent of the nation doesn’t even pay federal income tax? Is that fair?
  • [Idiot Award Winner] Steve Doocy (Fox News): With 47% of Americans not paying taxes – 47% – should those who don’t pay be allowed to vote?
  • Sean Hannity (Fox News): 50 percent of Americans no longer pay taxes.
  • Neil Cavuto (Fox News): I’ve discovered nearly half of this country’s households don’t pay any taxes at all.

Oh yes, there’s more.

  • Dave Ramsey (Fox News): This idea that 42% of Americans don’t pay anything…that’s just morally wrong.
  • Brian Kilmeade (Fox News): Fifty-one percent of the country isn’t paying any taxes at all.
  • Eric Bolling (Fox News): 43 percent of households don’t pay any federal tax.
  • Glenn Beck (Right-Wing Radio): There was like 48 percent say they pay their right amount of taxes and 49 percent don’t pay any tax.
  • Rush Limbaugh (Right-Wing Radio): Meanwhile, 45% of Americans pay nothing.
  • Gary Bauer (Right-Wing Evangelist): But the reality is that nearly half of Americans don’t pay any income tax.
  • Rick Warren (Right-Wing Evangelist): HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero.
  • Ted Nugent (Right-Wing Douchebag): This, of course, will not apply to those 50 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes.

Is there anyone who could seriously argue that this is not a coordinated effort aimed at demonizing low-income and working class citizens? The conformity and ubiquity of the identical messaging from such a broad spectrum of players is audacious and disturbing. And what’s worse, it is deliberately misleading and/or false.

First of all, claims that half the population pay no taxes at all are factually wrong. (See the chart at the left from the Wall Street Journal). There are about 46% who do not pay federal income taxes, but most of them do pay many other taxes including Social Security, state and local, sales, property, gas, etc. Secondly, it should come as no surprise that those with little or no tax liability have little or no income. The majority of this group is comprised of senior citizens, students, the disabled, and the unemployed. Those are the folks that the right wants to tap for new revenue rather than the rich who they have taken to calling “job creators” despite the fact that they haven’t created any jobs since they got the Bush tax cuts a decade ago.

To put this into perspective, federal income taxes account for just 20% of all taxes. When you include all the other sources of tax revenue, people making $20,000 a year pay approximately the same effective tax rate as people making $500,000, give or take 5 percent. However, those earning a half-million have seen their rate decline almost 50% since 1980, while the rate for the 20K earners barely budged.

What’s more, corporate taxes as a percentage of federal revenue dropped from 27.3% in 1955, to 8.9% in 2010. During that same time period individual income/payrolls as a percentage of federal revenue skyrocketed from 58% to 81.5%. Thus the burden of paying for our government shifted broadly from corporations to ordinary people (notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people). These facts prove that the whole faux controversy over the tax liability of low income Americans is, in technical terms, a crazy zombie lie.

Also worthy of note is that one of the main reasons that many Americans owe no federal income tax is due to the earned-income tax credit that was introduced by Republican President Gerald Ford and expanded by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And now the GOP is threatening to impose a tax hike on working people by opposing the extension of President Obama’s Payroll Tax reduction. This relief was passed as a temporary measure and is set to expire at the end of this year. Obama has proposed extending it for another year, but House Republicans are balking, saying that “not all tax relief is created equal” (Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX), and that tax reductions, “no matter how well-intended,” will push the deficit higher (Rep. David Camp, R-MI). Camp is a member of the deficit reduction seeking Super Committee. A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), says the legislator “has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy.”

Really? Is this the same Eric Cantor who fought so fiercely for the temporary tax relief produced by Bush’s tax cuts for the rich? Cantor, and the rest of the Tea-publicans, are putting their deficit cutting necks on the line to raise the 120 billion dollars that would be restored to the treasury by letting the Payroll tax relief expire, but they will take the fight to Hell and back before considering the recovery of 800 billion dollars from the expiration of Bush’s gift to taxpayers earning more $250,000 a year. Apparently Republicans are opposed to temporary tax relief when it benefits the middle and working classes, but they are wildly in favor of it when it benefits the wealthy.

How can the GOP get away with portraying themselves as tax-cutters while advancing an agenda that would increase taxes for most Americans who happen not to be rich? How can the Tea Party assert through their acronym that they have been “Taxed Enough Already” when they view seniors, and other low-income Americans as not taxed enough? And when will the media expose this brazen hypocrisy?

So it’s clear that Romney was not speaking off the cuff in this newly released video. He merely reiterated what has been a mainstay of the conservative agenda for some time. If he tries to explain this away as a mistake or a gaffe, he is going to have to provide explanations for all of the identical statements itemized above. There is nothing out of character in the remarks he gave at his fundraiser. He is, after all, the same guy who said “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” He’s the same guy who said “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy.” His denigration of Americans struggling during hard time is entirely on message, just as RNC chairman Reince Preibus said following the release of the video.

The condescending tone of Romney’s comments is what is likely to cause the most damage to his campaign. But let us not forget that the substance of his remarks is consistent with Republican ideology, and it is woven intricately into the fabric of the party’s structure. It reflects the views of their congressmen and senators and state officeholders. And it flows through the airwaves of their PR division, Fox News, and down the media food chain from there.

[Update] Romney may want to do some research into those 47 percenters he is writing off. Of the ten states with the highest percentage of residents who pay no federal income tax, ten are solid red, Republican states.

Fox & Friends Gets Punked – But That’s Not The Real Story

Posted by on September 17, 2012 at 5:09 pm. 2 Comments :

This morning on Fox & Friends (the stupidest ensemble, pseudo-news team on American TV), a prankster convinced the show’s producers that he was a college graduate who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but who is now disappointed and intends to vote for Mitt Romney this November. The video of this train wreck appears to be the work of a stoned slacker who got a kick out of outsmarting the bigwig TV producers. And that may be true.

However, It was not my intention address this prank at first because it doesn’t really appear to be particularly well thought out or executed. What’s more, Gretchen Carlson seemed to quickly pick up on the fact that something was amiss. However, new information has emerged that is far more interesting than the event itself.

It seems that Fox News was determined to invent a story about disillusioned young people who were abandoning the President. This was not a “fair and balanced” study of attitudes among recent college grads, it was a deliberately biased piece of propaganda that jettisoned all journalistic principles in order to deliver their preconceived result.

Max Rice, the aforementioned prankster, spoke with various reporters after the fact and revealed the shoddy quality (or lack thereof) of Fox’s research. Rice told the bookers that he was a college graduate, but that could easily have been debunked by a Google search that would have found a video from his high school graduation only two years ago. Rice also gave contradictory answers to biographical questions, telling them at first that he was an English major, and later that he majored in Engineering.

Fox News let all of this go by because Rice fit the profile of a disaffected former Obama supporter. That was all they cared about. But even worse, Rice says that Fox coached him on what to say during the interview.

“They gave me a paragraph full of bullshit talking points. … They basically gave me a speech and they thought I was supposed to have it memorized.”

Rice is not a very good prankster, but his antics have allowed us to peer into the Fox machinery and see how their phony sausage is made. And that’s worth something all by itself. The news emanating from this episode should have less to do with the stunt that was pulled on the Fox & Friends crew, than with their dishonest attempt to fabricate a story with the intent of damaging Obama’s reputation.

Fox’s determination to manipulate their viewers and spread false information was clearly more important to them than doing proper research and fact-checking. And when all is said and done, this was not a story about a news team getting punked. It’s a story about a news network punking their audience.