Maddowblog - "The spending surge that didn't happen" - RW Talking Point Refuted

It is a travesty that the media repeatedly allows Republicans to push this false talking point. Worse, the corporate media portrays a false equivalency that treats facts as partisan opinions that are equally worthy of acceptance. The only reason why the Republican party manages to hold on is because the corporate media repeatedly allows them to spread their lies without any accountability.

Paul Krugman - "The Big Deal" - Amazing How The Media Missed All This

The corporate media, which pushed a false equivalency that elevated climate change deniars, birthers, death panel propagandists into the mainstream news, surprisingly missed or minimized the accomplishments of President Obama. This same corporate media shielded Republicans from scrutiny for their threats to default on the Nation's debt by blaming both sides. Thus, it is refreshing when stories that put the President's accomplishments into context are published.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/opinion/krugman-the-big-deal.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&

On the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, an exuberant Vice President Biden famously pronounced the reform a “big something deal” — except that he didn’t use the word “something.” And he was right.

In fact, I’d suggest using this phrase to describe the Obama administration as a whole. F.D.R. had his New Deal; well, Mr. Obama has his Big Deal. He hasn’t delivered everything his supporters wanted, and at times the survival of his achievements seemed very much in doubt. But if progressives look at where we are as the second term begins, they’ll find grounds for a lot of (qualified) satisfaction.

* * *

Mr. Obama overcame the biggest threat to his legacy simply by winning re-election. But George W. Bush also won re-election, a victory widely heralded as signaling the coming of a permanent conservative majority. So will Mr. Obama’s moment of glory prove equally fleeting? I don’t think so.

For one thing, the Big Deal’s main policy initiatives are already law. This is a contrast with Mr. Bush, who didn’t try to privatize Social Security until his second term — and it turned out that a “khaki” election won by posing as the nation’s defender against terrorists didn’t give him a mandate to dismantle a highly popular program.

HuffPo - "Sandy Hook Hero, Harassed By Conspiracy Theorists Who Claim He's An Actor"

I guess we should not be surprised that Republican Senator Ted Cruz aggressively attacked President Obama for advocating gun control on the grounds that President Obama was "explouting dead children." Afterall, the extreme right that the GOP panders to has already been pushing the theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax:

http://www.sandyhookhoax.com/

Afterall, if millions of Republicans believe that the President was actually born in Kenya, I guess it is not a stretch to believe that the Sandy Hook was a purposeful hoax designed to justify gun control. This latest bit of conspiracy mongering has lead to the victims of Sandy Hook being harassed by these right wing crazies:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/gene-rosen-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theory_n_2481912.html

"The disturbing rise of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories" Blaming Obama and Gun Control

I guess we should not be surprised that with the NRA fanning the flames about the federal government is about take your guns that the extreme right has been spreading conspiracy theories suggesting that the Sandy Hook massacre was either a hoax or that it was planned by gun control advocates.

http://theweek.com/article/index/239012/the-disturbing-rise-of-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theories

The Nation - "Banned From TV on Conventional Wisdom's Holy Day, Ornstein and Mann Briefly Return"

Here is a nice article on the Nation noting how Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann have been declared non-entities for pointing out that the corporate media has been protecting Republicans by portraying a false equivalence between Democrats and the modern extreme right Republicans:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172166/banned-tv-conventional-wisdoms-holy-day-ornstein-and-mann-briefly-return

It was a small victory in the battle against false equivalency in the media: pundits Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann were on a Sunday morning talk show.

That may not sound like a big deal—after all, Ornstein used to be a Beltway media fixture, and he and Mann have for years been among the “most quotable” sources for media on the Hill. But last weekend CNN’s Reliable Sources became the first mainstream Sunday news program the two have appeared on since their op-ed “Let’s Admit It: The Republicans Are to Blame” was published nine months ago in The Wash Post. Their crime? They “came out” from years of straight-down-the-middle political opining to point out that not only are Republicans threatening the economy and democracy itself, but the mainstream media enable them by refusing to notice.

Despite hoots and hollers from the sidelines, the MSM continue to pretend that the GOP emperor wears the finest of clothes, even as his parade of reality-denying, gun-toting, hostage-taking supporters do a striptease for the nation every filibusterin’ day. In the name of “balance” (and keeping advertisers), the media blame the country’s problems on a generic “Congress” or “Washington.” Or they cry, as Ornstein and Mann write, “’Both sides do it’ or ‘There is plenty of blame to go around,’?” mantras that “are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias.”

After their op-ed and the book it’s adapted from, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, came out in April, Ornstein (of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) and Mann (of the centrist Brookings Institution) went missing from Big Media.

TIME - "The Trillion Dollar Coin Fantasy: GOP Extremism Can’t Be Wished Away"

I think the last sentence hits the nail on the head: "If you don’t like it when Obama negotiates with terrorists, vote out the terrorists in 2014." This is why it drives me crazy when the media, including many liberals, give Republicans a free pass because they are insane, and focus their attacks on Democrats, because they are the only ones who are responsive to such pressure. Even worse, the media often pushes a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans that effectively immunizes the Republicans from any accountability for their most bizarre stances.

http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/15/the-trillion-dollar-coin-fantasy-republican-extremism-cant-be-wished-away/

After I spent the last two weeks explaining that the Treasury would mint a second Joe Biden before it minted a trillion-dollar platinum coin, that President Obama would make Kim Kardashian his chief of staff before making the coin fantasy a reality, it would be easy for me to gloat. So I will! The coin was a self-evidently wackadoodle idea, and the pundits who fell in love with it should have remembered Obama isn’t in vaudeville. But there’s more to say about the coin farce than my four favorite words. (Count ‘em: I…told…you…so.) The debt ceiling disaster that the coin was supposed to avoid through metallic magic still looms. And the understandable impulses that led otherwise smart coiners to crusade for a WTF policy are producing equally muddled thinking about the next round of fiscal negotiations.

The idea of a trillion-dollar platinum coin was not quite as insane as it sounded. It was a response to the insanity of congressional Republicans, who have refused to raise the debt ceiling and let the U.S. pay its bills unless Democrats agree to massive cuts in Democratic priorities. The GOP is holding the economy hostage, using the threat of a confidence-destroying default to try to extract a policy ransom. The coin would have been an accounting trick designed to allow Obama to ignore the debt ceiling and keep fulfilling obligations Congress had already incurred. I could explain how, but it’s complex, which is why it was such a lousy idea; no politician wanted to explain why his response to a tough fiscal situation was to create a magic trillion-dollar coin out of thin air. Fortunately, now that the Obama Administration has officially rejected the coin, I don’t need to explain it.

It was always unrealistic to imagine that Obama could sidestep Republican extremism and obstructionism through a kooky loophole in monetary regulations. Big ideological battles don’t get settled through technicalities. But especially on the left, there is still a powerful urge to believe that Republican extremism and obstructionism can be sidestepped. If only Obama sticks to his guns and refuses to negotiate with the hostage-takers over the debt ceiling, the argument goes, there will be a righteous public backlash against GOP political terrorism, and eventually Republicans will be forced to cave.

In my taxonomy of lefty Obama-bashing, these pipe dreams constitute a mixture of Heighten The Contradictions Liberalism and Choose Your Own Adventure Liberalism. In fact, current polls suggest that refusing to raise the debt limit is pretty popular, especially in the heavily Republican districts that Republicans tend to represent. Maybe a catastrophic default would change that, but Obama recognizes that a catastrophe for which Republicans were blamed would still be a catastrophe. Those of us who believe the modern GOP is an extraordinarily irresponsible party, remarkably brazen in its rejection of reality and consistency, still have to acknowledge that Republicans control the House of Representatives and can filibuster legislation in the Senate. They cannot be sidestepped or ignored or wished away. Congressional elections have consequences, too.

Atlantic - "How Low Are U.S. Taxes Compared to Other Countries?"

Democrats are asking for a balanced approach and fairly modest increases in taxes, yet the corporate media gives Republicans a free pass on their threats to crash the world economy if Democrats do not propose and agree to drastic cuts in Medicare and Social Security without any increases in taxes to mitigate such impacts. Of course, the corporate media neglects to point out that the U.S. is far away from anything approaching high tax burden, let alone socialism. Instead, the corporate media portrays a false equivalency that blames both sides.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/how-low-are-us-taxes-compared-to-other-countries/267148/?google_editors_picks=true

Unlike most advanced economies, the U.S. don't supplement personal income taxes with a national sales tax, or value-added tax (VAT). Consumption taxes accounted for about a fifth of total U.S. revenue in 2008 (mostly at the state and local level) compared to an OECD average of 32 percent. In other words, the U.S. relies uniquely on personal tax rates to raise revenue -- and we have relatively low personal tax rates.

The best way to answer the question "Are U.S. taxes high or low compared to other countries?" is to look at taxes as a share of the economy. Here's how the U.S. stacks up to other OECD countries in a graph from the Tax Policy Center. (We're at the bottom of the stack, 25 percent below the average.)



For the next few years, there's no particular reason to expect there will be another major tax increase, but after 2020 the government's health care bill will start to make our spending levels look, for lack of a better term, European. There are any number of ways to stop the trend, from the extreme -- turning Medicare into a voucher-support program -- to the incremental -- tweaking Medicare and hoping that medical inflation slows down on its own. But either way, the U.S. won't have historically low interest rates forever, and it's probable that the third-lowest tax/GDP ratio in the developed world is a good deal for now, but not a sustainable deal for the long run.

NY Mag - GOP Rather Kill Hostage Than Agree To Slightly Higher Revenue

I think one thing that the corporate media ignores is that the GOP does not really care about the deficit. If it did, then Democrats and Republicans could fairly easily reach a compromise to reduce the deficit with the GOP agreeing to some fairly modest increases in revenues. However, the GOP is hell bent on using the deficit and the debt limit to try to extort trillions in cuts to Medicare and Social Security without any additional revenues.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/obama-dares-gop-to-kill-the-hostage.html?mid=google&google_editors_picks=true

The contention of the rightists is that, dangerous though it may be to fail to lift the debt ceiling, it would be more dangerous not to let them impose massive cuts to domestic spending:

To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government. …

That will be a tough sell, says Chris Chocola, president of the conservative Club for Growth. “What’s more irresponsible: continuing on this path to fiscal ruin, or changing the path?” he said. “There is a high level of frustration, and a willingness to do something dramatic. They think this is the only way to get Obama’s attention.”

So that’s the plan — “do something dramatic” to “get Obama’s attention.” House Republicans have officially adopted the strategic posture of public shooters and unbalanced breakup notes.

* * *
It’s also noteworthy, though not noteworthy enough to be noted by Allen and VandeHei, that Republicans consider the budget deficit so massive and urgent as to be worth provoking economic disaster, but not urgent enough to consider accepting higher revenue as part of a compromise. The fiscal status quo is worse than a potential global meltdown, but even slightly higher revenue is worse than both.

NRA Gun Control Crusade Reflects Firearms Industry Financial Ties

Source: Huffington Post

The NRA’s deep ties to the gun industry dismays some lawmakers who have introduced gun control bills responding to the mass shootings.

“The NRA is basically helping to make sure the gun industry can increase sales,” Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat and longtime gun control advocate, told The Huffington Post. McCarthy last week proposed a bill that would ban new sales of new large ammunition clips that increase the lethality of weapons like those used in mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

“No one is challenging NRA members' right to own guns,” McCarthy said. "We’ve had large mass shootings which have [involved] large mass assault weapons clips. These clips aren’t used for hunting.”

McCarthy’s husband and five other people were shot dead in a brutal assault in 1993 on a New York commuter train by a man wielding a gun with a large-capacity ammunition clip.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/nra-gun-control-firearms-industry-ties_n_2434142.html

Reality versus GOP Talking Points -"Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower?" Obama

It just amazes me how during the Sunday News shows interviewers quietly sit and listen to Republicans accuse President Obama as being a big spending Democrat who has not cut spending. Not only have trillions already been cut, but the fact of the matter is that President Obama is the smallest government spending since Eisenhower. The President, Nancy Pelosi, and Democrats have pointed this out, but the media continues to push a false equivalency as if this fact were merely a matter of political opinion.

Yet, here is Forbes of all magazines, confirming that President Obama is hardly a big spender. True, President Obama would like to fund more programs, but the fact of the matter is that we are spending less than ever in modern history.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/

It’s enough to make even the most ardent Obama cynic scratch his head in confusion.

Amidst all the cries of Barack Obama being the most prolific big government spender the nation has ever suffered, Marketwatch is reporting that our president has actually been tighter with a buck than any United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Who knew?



* * *
No doubt, many will wish to give the credit to the efforts of the GOP controlled House of Representatives. That’s fine if that’s what works for you.

However, you don’t get to have it both ways. Credit whom you will, but if you are truly interested in a fair analysis of the Obama years to date—at least when it comes to spending—you’re going to have to acknowledge that under the Obama watch, even President Reagan would have to give our current president a thumbs up when it comes to his record for stretching a dollar.