# 11: RYAN...RIAN...RIAR...LIAR

The follow is a Yahoo! op-ed piece of an interview with Jeff Greenfield.  It's a short but representative fact-check argument with two points: (1) Ryan made up and/or repeated a whole bunch of inaccuracies in his VP acceptance speech yesterday (Aug 29), and (2) nobody who needs to care actually does.  Those who think the media is a leftist, pinko, liberal front will ignore Ryan's inaccuracies; those who understand Greenfield's concerns were already aware of the problem and are frustrated that others ignore proveable facts...or choose to accept false "facts."

[from an interview with Jeff Greenfield:]
There was once a time when lying in a political speech--and getting called out on it by the media--was shameful or embarrassing.

Not anymore.

Now, says Jeff Greenfield, the veteran political analyst and Yahoo! News columnist, the media is held in such low regard by Americans that getting called out for lying merely serves to confirm a widespread belief that the "liberal media" has an axe to grind against conservative politicians.

As a result, the whoppers that dominated Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan's convention speech last night will likely not hurt the candidate's standing with Republican voters, says Greenfield. Rather, they'll reinforce the right-wing view that the media is "in the tank" for President Obama.

What facts in particular were observers and fact-checkers up in arms about?

Well, for starters, there were once again the claims that Obamacare cuts $716 billion of benefits from Medicare and that Paul Ryan wants to preserve Medicare. The truth is that Obamacare reduces payments to hospitals and doctors by $716 billion, not benefits. Also, far from preserving Medicare, after a 10-year grace period, Romney and Ryan want to radically change it.

Then Ryan blamed S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt on Obama, when S&P explained explicitly that its downgrade was the result of Congressional Republicans--Ryan included--threatening to cause the country to default.

Then Ryan accused Obama of lying to voters in his home state by promising to keep a GM plant open for "hundreds of years" after he was elected, only to have it closed in the first year. The truth is that GM closed the plant before Obama took office.

And so on.

Jeff Greenfield says that none of this will matter to voters, who will just blame the media and its silly "fact-checkers." And he's presumably right.

# 10 Faux News: Lice, Lies, and VideoLies

I'm sharing this particular article from a facebook blogsite by Liam Bean, who is bending over backwards to try not to badmouth the GOP.  I'm not so nice.  Many of the pro-Rmoney ads I've seen on TV just flat out lie, particularly about Medicare's costs going up for the middle-class ("Thank You Mike Huckabee!"--not). These lies have been debunked by investigative reporters and by campaign officials, but that hasn't stopped GOP supporters from repeating them.  Constantly.  And some of the most recent polls have shown that the lies may be working: Rmoney's numbers have been rising, not so much because Obama supporters are shifting allegiance as that some independents are moving into the Rmoney camp.  I find that incredible given the facts; but the GOP isn't using the facts, just the lies.

And, no, there's no discussion of lice.  I just thought it might catch your eye. Enjoy

by LiamBean
654 Followers

Republicans Say "He Hasn't Done Anything"

According to many right-wing sources, most notably Fox News, Barack Obama, as president hasn't done anything notable or positive for the country. In actuality what is consistently being said is "he hasn't done anything." This declaration is considerably different than saying he's done nothing positive.
In fact there have been many wild accusations from the right. Including of indoctrination, attempts to turn the country into a socialist state, or worse. Even that he's not even an American, having been born in Africa of all places.
This hub will attempt to clear the air, first and foremost, by pointing out that his administration has indeed done something. Most notably attempting to keep campaign promises made during the election process.
Of course I will list the positive steps first, then those that are in the works, and finally those campaign promises that he's broken.
As you read this hub, I hope you bear in mind that by constitutional law he president cannot create law; he can only enforce it.

 

Official White House photo

Barack Obama (and Congressional) Successes

• Foreclosure Prevention Fund: Created a 10 billion dollar fund to help homeowners refinance or sell their homes. The fund does not allow speculators, second home purchasers, or those who falsely represent their incomes from benefiting.
• Establish a credit card bill of rights: This "bill of rights" bans unilateral changes to extending credit, bans changing interest rates to past purchases, prevent accruing interest on fees and prohibits one credit lender to raise rates based on late payments to a another lender. This bill passed, but does not take effect until February 2010. Worse the bill is not retroactive, so banks appear to be jacking up rates (some as high as 30%) before the law takes effect. Congress is now trying to amend the bill to put it into effect as soon as Obama signs it.
• Expand Loan Programs to Small Business: Allows "The Small Business Administration" to extend and expand it's loan and micro-loan programs to small businesses which have unable to secure such loans from banks.
• Extend the Alternative Minimum Tax Patch: Extend and index the temporary fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax that was passed in 2007.

• Expand eligibility for State Children's Health Fund: Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs. Ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety function for uninsured children.
• Close the "do-nut hole" in Medicare prescription drug plan This will take effect September 21, 2010.
• Create a small business tax credit to help with health premiums. This will take effect January 1, 2014
• Give tax credits to those who need help to pay health premiums. This will take effect January 1, 2014
• Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions This will take effect January 1, 2014
• Create a National Health Insurance Exchange. This will take effect January 1, 2014
• Implement and fund proven health intervention programs. This will take effect September 21, 2010
  
• Eliminate the higher subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans. This will take effect January 1, 2014
• Expand funding to train health care & public health: Expand funding to ensure a strong health-care workforce that will champion prevention and public health activities
• Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs:Increase funding to expanded community based preventive interventions. The aim is to enable Americans make better health choices.
• Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Barack Obama will reassert America's leadership by making the United States a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is the first human rights treaty promoted by the U.N. in this new century.
• Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is a 'must-pass' legislation: Barack Obama will meet yearly in the budgeting process with senators and congressional leaders to insure that the V.A. budget is always given a "must pass" status.
• Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women: This adviser will ensure that his agenda is coordinated across federal agencies and fully addresses prevention, programs, and the legal aspects of gender based violence.
• Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq: Appoint a direct military leader in Iraq with the mission of ending the war.
• Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan: As troops are drawn-down in Iraq two additional brigades have been sent to Afghanistan to help quell a resurgent Taliban. He provided our armed forces with the reset capability that they need. Essential equipment has been replaced and ensure that military personnel get the care and support they need.
• U.S. military aid to Pakistan is conditional on anti-terror efforts: Military aid to Pakistan is conditional upon that country closing down training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a base. When these conditions are met Obama also will increase aid to Pakistan to aid in their development and secular education to counter extremists
• Speak at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration: Obama has personally lead diplomacy efforts with Islam by speaking at an Islamic forum in the first 100 days in office.The speech stressed that the United States is not at war with Muslims.
• Give Americans unrestricted access to families in Cuba: Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are a basic human right. This access is also the best tool in fostering a grass-roots democratic movement on the island nation. Obama has therefore, granted Cuban-Americans unrestricted access to visit families in Cuba and send money.
• Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas: Barack Obama established the "Energy Partnership for the Americas." The partnership increases research and development funding in clean coal technology, and next-gen research in bio-fuels, wind, solar, & nuclear energy. This initiative will also aid ways to coordinate green energy across national borders. It will also help Latin American and Caribbean nations become more energy independent. The partnership also will create additional markets for American biofuels and American-made green energy technology.
• Release presidential records: Nullifies the Bush administration attempts to make the timely release of presidential records more difficult.
• Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions: Issued an executive order asking all new hires at the agencies to sign a form affirming that no political appointee offered them the job solely on the basis of political affiliation or contribution.
• Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund: Supports "increased funding" for The Land and Water Conservation Fund.
• Remove more brush and trees near homes in fire prone areas:
• Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act:This act expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors.
• Created a White House Office on Urban Policy: Creates a White House Office of Urban Policy to develop a strategy for metropolitan America. The act ensures that all federal dollars targeted to urban areas are effectively spent on the highest-impact programs. The Director of Urban Policy reports directly to the president.
• Support increased funding for the NEA: Supports increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the support of which enriches schools and neighborhoods all across the nation and helps to promote the economic development of countless communities. This is a reversal of Bush era policies toward funding the arts.

• Add another Space Shuttle flight: Supports congressional efforts to add at least one more Space Shuttle flight to help keep the workforce engaged.
• Use the private sector to improve spaceflight: Stimulates efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities.
• Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station:Enlist other federal agencies, industry and academia to develop innovative scientific and technological research projects on the International Space Station.
• Use the International Space Station for fundamental research: Make use the ISS for fundamental biological and physical research. The thrust of this research to understand the effects of long-term space travel on human health. Additionally, to test emerging technologies to enable such travel.
• Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016: Reconsider options to extend ISS operations beyond 2016. After investing so much in developing the ISS, it would be in the best interests of the country to utilize it to the fullest possible extent.
• Enhance earth mapping: Support for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, which allows study of the earth's land surfaces and provides valuable data for agricultural, educational, scientific, and government use.
• Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy: Appoint an Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy. This position will report directly to the president. The post will be deeply involved in establishing research priorities that reflect the nation's needs.
• Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area: Finish rebuilding the region's criminal justice system. This will relieve the National Guard of street patrols.
• Will establish a special "COPS for Katrina" program to allow communities impacted by the storm to hire and retain new officers and community prosecutors, develop community-based crime fighting strategies, and rebuild their lost infrastructure.
• Rebuild schools in New Orleans: Help communities in the Gulf make necessary school infrastructure investments.
• AmeriCorps Expansion: Expand and fund AmeriCorps from 75,000 slots to 250,000 and focus this expansion on addressing the great challenges facing the nation.
  
  Additional slots will enable AmeriCorps to establish five new Corps:
  Classroom Corps to help teachers and students, with a priority placed on high-need and underserved schools;
  Health Corps to improve public health information and outreach to areas with inadequate health systems such as rural areas and inner cities;
  Clean Energy Corps to promote energy independence through efforts like weatherization, renewable energy projects and educational outreach;
  Veterans Corps to help keep America's sacred trust with its veterans;
  Homeland Security Corps to help communities plan, prepare for and respond to emergencies.
• Appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer: Appointed the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.
• Attempt to Overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear: Overturn the Supreme Court's recent ruling that curtails racial minorities' and women's ability to challenge pay discrimination.
• Appoint an American Indian policy adviser: Appointed an American Indian policy adviser to my senior White House staff to work with tribes.
• Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees: Issued an executive order banning registered lobbyists or lobbying firms from giving gifts in any amount or any form to executive branch employees.
• Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud: Crack down on mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud by increasing enforcement and creating new criminal penalties.
• Weatherize 1 million homes per year: Implemented a national commitment to weatherize at least 1 million low-income homes each year for the next decade, which can reduce energy usage across the economy and help moderate energy prices for all.
• Invest in all types of alternative energy: Invest in research and development of every form of alternative energy - solar, wind, biofuels.
• Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars: Leverages private sector funding to bring these cars directly to American consumers. We'll give consumers a $7,000 tax credit to buy these vehicles.
• Support high-speed rail: Support development of high-speed rail networks across the country.
• Invest in public transportation: Re-commit federal resources to public mass transportation projects across the country.
• Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes: Create a competitive grant program to award those states and localities that take the first steps in implementing new building codes that prioritize energy efficiency. The program provides a federal match for those states with leading-edge public benefits funds that support energy efficiency retrofits of existing buildings.
• Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency: Greater funding for the EPA to ensure that it's responsibilities are carried out.
• Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet: Robert Gates (stated that he is independent, but has always served during a Republican administration) has been retained as secretary of defense. Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman from Illinois, now serves as his secretary of transportation.
• Raise the small business expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009: This provides "temporary business tax incentives" through 2009. The February 2008 stimulus bill increased maximum Section 179 expenses to $250,000 but this expires in December 2009.
• Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits: Congress extended unemployment insurance for an additional 14 weeks to help families that are being hit hardest by this downturn.
• Reverse restrictions on stem cell research: Lifted the current ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order.

# 9: What Hath God Wrought

Post # 9: What Hath God Wrought

I go away for half a month and all hell breaks loose:
(1) Paul Ryan became the GOP VP nominee, and almost immediately indicated that Rape is a method of conception (with no indication whether it was a "legitimate rape" or not, and certainly with no recognition of the emotional and physical toll that it takes on women and the rest of society);
(2) Texas is still alternating hail and drought, is on fire from the heat, and has locusts throughout much of the state.  Well, okay, they're only West Nile-carrying mosquitoes, but that's bad enough.
(3) Louisiana and the states all around it have been hit by Hurricane Isaac, whose outer edges provided enough rain and wind in southeastern Florida to cause the GOP to reschedule some of its convention events;
(3) the Missouri Senate candidate got an Akin-Breaky-Heart, and still needs the Wizard to give him a brain;
(4) Yesterday Ron Paul's delegates tried to outshout Mitt Rmoney's delegates;
(5) Some Texas delegates threatened to leave the convention, and were forced to accept a compromise on Romney-Rules that they opposed;
(6) Several Maine delegates did leave, because of the way their fellow/sister delegates from Texas were treated;
(7) And I missed Ann Romney's pro-husband speech (which several commentators indicated was actually...not bad), and I missed as well any rebroadcast of her comments weeks ago indicating that, in college, she and Mitt also had financial troubles, and even began discussing which stocks they might have to sell.

I kid you not. The Rmoneys are so out of touch with folks like thee and me that I wonder how he can have any support from the middle class.  Not to mention the white males.  Or the elderly.  That last is amazing.  The polls have shown that more elderly prospective voters prefer Rmoney's proposed handling of Medicare than they prefer Obama's.  And this view comes after Obamacare has already made more preventive procedures and insurance coverage available to all Americans.

The Republicans are attempting to lay all blame on Obama, but neglect to indicate the role they played in the too-slow-growing economy, the joblessness, the budget deficit (how DID it change from a Clinton surplus to a Dubya deficit anyway?), the price of oil, and probably the weather. Their role: to attempt to block all legislative progress that didn't extend the Bush tax cuts for the uber-wealthy; and to ignore the middle and lower economic classes.  They're also ignoring the facts, even while those facts are pointed out time and time again.

The Democrats have the logic on their side, but they are not explaining clearly enough--perhaps not slowly enough to some people--what they have accomplished, and why they have not been able to implement more of what they proposed. They need to play and replay Mitch McConnell's 2010 promise to make Obama a one-term president. They need to address perhaps only a very few issues at a time, and hammer those home so that the false information still being perpetrated by the GOP (despite the facts showing the unsoundness of such information) does not maintain its hold on apparently significant numbers of the voting public.

I had hoped to make this post a little more positive, and I will make subsequent posts so, but I was pretty much out of touch with daily events for more than two weeks, and was surprised at the ferocity of some of the events of the past half a month or so.

Let us see what the polls show for a Rmoney bump, to be expected after a "wildly successful" convention.  What's that you say?  It may not be a wildly successful convention?  Let's see also then what the Republican spin will be come late Thursday August 30. 

# 8 Don't Gore My Ox!

Post # 8: Possibly a new problem in the Rmoney campaign: Green Energy.  Or...Don't Gore My Ox. [#8 headline and this title line are RPW's, not Holly Bailey's.]

From an article by Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News

• DES MOINES—

When Mitt Romney arrives  for a fundraiser with local Republicans Tuesday evening, one topic sure to come up could put his efforts to win Iowa this November at serious risk.

Last week, as Romney was winding up a rocky overseas tour, his campaign made front-page news when a spokesman for the GOP candidate told the Des Moines Register Romney opposes a renewal of a tax credit for wind energy suppliers, which is set to expire at the end of this year.

"He will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits," Romney spokesman Shawn McCoy told the Register. "Wind energy will thrive wherever it is economically competitive, and wherever private sector competitors with far more experience than the president believe the investment will produce results."

It's a stance that isn't surprising, given that Romney regularly mocks President Barack Obama's investments in green energy as a waste of time and money when the nation faces both an energy and fiscal crisis.

But McCoy's comments immediately caused a stir in Iowa, which is home to more wind energy jobs than any other state in the country. And it unsettled many of Romney's top Iowa supporters, who publicly complained they had been caught off guard by his campaign's policy decision.

On Capitol Hill, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley trashed the former Massachusetts governor's campaign for not talking to him first. "Nobody consulted us on this," Grassley told Roll Call.

Meanwhile, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad suggested in an interview with Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson that "a bunch of east coast people" were behind Romney's position. Like Grassley, Branstad said he wanted to speak to Romney directly so that he could be "educated" on wind energy, which he noted has strong bipartisan support in the state.

"I understand why they are very critical of the whole thing that was done by the Obama administration with regard to the stimulus and some of the money that was wasted on Solyndra, and some of these green energy projects didn't make sense," Branstad told Radio Iowa. "The tax credit, however, is a much different thing, and it way preceded Obama, and it was actually something that Sen. Grassley authored and has made a real difference over time."