Fakes, Fakers and Fakery

Drowning our politics and culture in a "firehose of falsehood" has been the modus operandi of the reactionary Republican right for decades, and it knows no end. The pollution is unrelenting, a daily toxic shower of lies, misdirection and slander. Here's a brief roundup of some recent examples, with some of the usual suspects =cough= GOP-TV =cough= Lyin' Ryan =cough= :

The Sprint/ Softbank gambit

... Trump announced that Sprint was bringing 5,000 jobs back to America. "I just spoke with the head person," Trump told Bloomberg. "He said because of me they're doing 5,000 jobs in this country."  

... Trump did indeed desperately try to take credit for this, and you will be unsurprised to learn that he was lying. First of all, Sprint announced these jobs back in April. Here's the Kansas City Star: "Sprint Corp. is launching a nationwide service to hand-deliver new phones to customers in their homes. The Direct 2 You service, which first rolled out in a Kansas City pilot, will lead to the hiring of about 5,000 mostly full-time employees as it spreads nationwide." 

Second, the Japanese owner of Sprint, Softbank, announced in October that it was creating a huge tech investment fund. 

Third, in December, Softbank's CEO announced the fund again after a meeting with Trump, and said that one part of the whole package was the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Today, Sprint reluctantly conceded that its 5,000 jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000 jobs. 

And finally, these jobs were announced yet again today. 

That makes four times these jobs have been announced. Donald Trump was responsible for none of them.  (our emphasis)

Are you wondering if our trusted media will blow the whistle on the fakery?  Surely you jest.

The Food Stamp "fraud" fakery

It’s widely assumed that congressional Republicans, working with a Republican White House, will go after social-insurance programs with a vengeance next year, and the most economically vulnerable Americans are likely to face new hardships. GOP allies know that the public might be more tolerant of drastic cuts if the public distrusts the public programs themselves. 

And with that in mind, Fox News ran a curious report this week.

Food stamp fraud is at an all-time high, with cases this year including a state lawmaker and even a millionaire. 

According to the USDA, $70 million of taxpayer money was wasted in 2016 due to food stamp fraud. [snip]

Taking the report at face value, the question is bizarre. The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, generally known as food stamps, is a nearly $71 billion program. If $70 million helps provide food for people who shouldn’t receive assistance, that’s 0.09% of the overall budget. In other words, according to Fox’s report, 99.91% of the money Washington spends on food stamps is spent appropriately. That’s an amazingly successful program. 

What’s more, if we continue to take Fox’s report at face value, since when do we “end” public programs in reaction to tiny amounts of fraud? If someone found 0.09% of misspent money in the Pentagon budget, wouldn’t it be silly to say we should scrap the Defense Department? 

But here’s the best part: there’s no reason at all to take Fox’s report at face value. 

As Ari Melber noted on last night’s show, Fox sourced the Agriculture Department, but the Agriculture Department hasn’t put out any new information about fraud. When we called the agency yesterday, department officials said they didn’t know where Fox came up with the figure. (our emphasis) 

We're guessing it came right out of this fella's ↓ ass --

Obamacare's "damage"

House Speaker Paul Ryan has vowed a quick repeal of Obamacare in order to “stop the damage” and because “things are only getting worse.”   

Meanwhile, here is a selection of news reports from the past two weeks: 

The Obama administration announced that the number of people signing up for insurance through HealthCare.gov, the federal website that 39 states use to administer Obamacare plans, is even higher than last year. State-run sites such as Covered California are reporting similar surges. 

An independent think tank, The Commonwealth Fund, published a study showing that fewer people are skipping medical care because of cost ― most likely because, thanks to the health care law, so many more people have health insurance. 

Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings reported that insurers selling Obamacare plans are seeing better financial results this year, suggesting that premiums are finally coming into line with the actual medical expenses of their customers ― and that this year’s big rate hikes may be a “one-time pricing correction.” 

It’s possible that Ryan thinks these and similarly positive news items are irrelevant ― that the Wisconsin Republican has deluded himself into thinking Obamacare really is an unmitigated policy disaster, rather than a fairly typical government program full of pluses and minuses and the inevitable implementation complications that large reform efforts usually overcome. 

It’s also possible that Ryan’s crusade to pass repeal in January has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with politics ― that he wants Congress to vote before the rest of the country, and maybe even the president-elect, wakes up to the real-life changes such a vote would unleash.  (our emphasis)

Russians hacking the election

Trump was asked about possible economic sanctions against Russia in general. He replied:

“I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind the security that we need.”

Um, what? 

There’s evidence that a foreign adversary attacked an American election, stole American materials, and launched an espionage operation to help elect their preferred, allied candidate. The beneficiary of foreign intervention has a new position: “I think we ought to get on with our lives” because computers “have complicated lives.”

Translation of Trump's traitorous weaselspeak: "Homina homina."

We will, in less than a month, have a government of, by and for the deplorable.  Sic transit gloria, America.

BONUS:  Tom Sullivan tells Democrats what they need to do to get on track.

Today's Cartoon And Retrospect On SCOTUS Obamacare Oral Arguments

(click on image to enlarge)

(Jack Ohman, The Sacramento Bee)

The four deciding words, in fact, are "established by the State," as in exchanges. In oral arguments before the Court in King v. Burwell yesterday, there were some surprises, as well as the usual malicious input from "justices" Scalia and Alito.  Here's Ian Millhiser's take on the somewhat positive turn things took yesterday:

The most important moment in the argument, however, was probably a concern raised by Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of five Republicans that the Justice Department needs at least one of in order to win its case. If tax credits are cut off in states with federally run exchanges, premiums will spike, and healthy people will likely drop insurance that they can no longer afford. Once that happens, however, the insurance companies will no longer have enough revenue to pay for sick peoples’ costs, so they will have to raise premiums even further. That, in turn, will cause more healthy people to drop care. The result is a “death spiral” where higher premiums beget fewer customers, which beget higher premiums, which beget fewer customers. 

This threat of a death spiral raises constitutional concerns, because the Supreme Court’s first Obamacare decision forbids Congress from coercing states into taking certain actions. If states are forced to choose between setting up their own exchange or watching their individual insurance markets collapse, that could amount to unconstitutional coercion. 

Justice Kennedy appeared to believe that it did. There’s “something very powerful” to this coercion argument, Kennedy said, adding that Carvin’s interpretation of the law raises a “serious constitutional problem.” Later in the argument, he indicated that the Court may have an obligation, under something known as the “constitutional avoidance doctrine,” to read the law in a way that does not raise constitutional doubts.  [snip] 

Obamacare is not out of the woods yet, and neither are the millions of people who will lose coverage or the thousands who will die if this case goes badly for the government. After Wednesday’s argument, however, those individuals have good reason to be optimistic. At least one of the Court’s Republicans appears to have come to work wearing his judicial robe, and not his partisan hat.  (our emphasis)

As for Scalia and Alito?

Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito were the only certain votes to strike down the credits, but their arguments at times painted them as political naifs. Alito, at one point, harped on the fact that only six states that refused to set up their own exchanges joined a brief urging the Court to uphold the tax credits — a fact that can be explained largely by partisan politics. Scalia asked: “won’t Congress fix” the problem if the Court breaks the law? 

Verrilli had a sharp response to that later question: “This Congress, your honor?” 

Verrilli's response was greeted with laughter in the chamber, a sign that whatever the partisan right-wingers on the Court might have thought, people were probably on to the "we'll fix Obamacare" charade Republicans were floating to give cover to a fatal blow to affordable health insurance.

"Zombie Lies:" Republican Lies That Refuse To Die

Bill Maher on Republican lies that refuse to die ("like a plastic bag in a tree"):

The Republican War On The Truth: Obamacare Edition

While more popular perceptions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare!) may be slowly changing the political narrative, Paul Krugman writes that Republicans haven't given up -- not by a long shot -- in their attempt to reinvent it as a failure:

[We] can be fairly sure that Republican leaders know perfectly well that Obamacare has failed to fail. But the party faithful don’t. Like anyone who writes about these issues, I get vast amounts of mail from people who know, just know, that insurance premiums are skyrocketing, that far more people have lost insurance because of Obummercare than have gained it, that all the horror stories are real, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal shill. 

Beyond that, the constant harping on alleged failure works as innuendo even if each individual claim collapses in the face of evidence. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans know that more than eight million people enrolled in health exchanges; but it also found a majority of respondents believing that this was below expectations, and that the law was working badly.  (our emphasis)

Left unsaid is the truth that there's another culprit at work helping Republicans and their plutocrat backers =cough= Koch brothers =cough= catapult their lies into the public arena.  You guessed it:  the "mainstream media."  If the media spent as much time debunking-- if not deflecting in the first place -- those Republican lies, we might have a more informed public that would see that the law is succeeding despite a bungled launch, and that millions of Americans now and in the future will benefit from it. But as long as we have "the Chuck Todd maxim" operating, we shouldn't expect enlightenment from these Republican-wired stenographers.

Oh, by the way, Obamacare is working and is here to stay.

Saturday Reading: A Treasure House Of Republican Derangement

As always, please read these in their entirety.

Michael Hiltzik in the L.A. Times, who cites the positive Affordable Care Act (Obamacare!) news and the debunked Republican lies:

Positive news reports about insurance enrollments under Affordable Care Act have been coming out so steadily that they barely make headlines anymore. Still searching for a way to depict Obamacare as a "train wreck," GOP critics of the law have no option but to make up the bad news. 

The Republican war on the truth was so laughable even Republican staffers wouldn't defend the latest lies about Obamacare.

David Freedlander has the tale of the Republican nut tree bearing more fruit in Wisconsin:

[A]t the Sixth Congressional Republican Caucus in the northeastern part of the state, delegates in April passed a resolution reaffirming Wisconsin’s right to secede from the union should it choose to do so.  The measure passed through the GOP convention’s Resolution Committee last week, and is set to be voted on (up or down) at the Republican State Convention this weekend.

Once again, some Republicans are shocked (shocked!) that this resolution made it to the State Convention, and now they're furiously disavowing it.  But some tea bagger faithful (a.k.a., The Republican Base) aren't so ready to give up the right to secede or nullify Federal laws they don't like:

“I do believe that a state has the right to secede if the voters wish. I just believe it is necessary at this time. We are not at the point. We are talking about nullification,” said Lewis. “We are led to believe that the Civil War ended that debate [on secession], but it didn’t. The Civil War was a war; one side won, one side lost, and because of that they didn’t secede, but we can still have the debate. 

“We are not saying we need to colonize the moon or anything crazy like that,” he added. “We are fighting for our constitution.”

"Lewis," who is not further identified in the article needs to be hit upside the head with a 2x4 reminded that Wisconsin blood already decided the issue of secession, losing 12,301 Union troops out of 91,327 furnished for the cause.  Asswhistle.

Finally, Paul Rosenberg has a psychoanalysis of what passes for an intellect in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party:  Beltway media favorite Rep. Paul Ryan (R- Galt's Gulch):

A flim-flam artist is a specific kind of con-man, and a con-man, in turn, is often enough a specific kind of psychopath. Although it’s impossible to clinically diagnose someone from a distance, I believe a good case can be made that Ryan has exhibited classic signs of psychopathic traits, especially in two closely related dimensions, the interpersonal dimension: glibness/superficial charm (just look at how the Beltway press falls for him), grandiose sense of self-worth (it never bothers Ryan however wrong he may be about anything), cunning/manipulative (see how effortlessly he got a positive-looking photo-op with the Congressional Black Caucus, without giving up a single thing), and pathological lying (calling his decades-long devotion to Ayn Rand “an urban legend”), as well as the affective dimension: lack of remorse or guilt, and failure to accept responsibility for own actions (failure to apologize for his racist remarks about “inner-city culture,” brushing it off as merely being “inarticulate”), emotionally shallow and callous/lack of empathy (his draconian budget cuts, which would take us back to Dickensian England).

Happy reading!

Hobby Lobby: "Jesus Christ Superstore"

Jon Stewart and his crew let you know all you need to know about Hobby Lobby's legal beef with Obamacare (in two parts):

The Daily Show
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Part II:

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Some Things To Keep Your Eye On

(click to enlarge)

While many of us are focused on the Obamacare contraception cases (Hobby Lobby and Conestoga) being argued in the Supreme Court, there's another case that's bubbled up to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that could cause serious problems for Obamacare and the health insurance markets, due to the extreme views of one judge:

On Tuesday, while most court-watchers were fixated on the high profile Hobby Lobby litigation, a panel of three judges just a few miles away heard a much more sweeping attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Should this lawsuit succeed, however, much more will fall than a single contentious law. If it succeeds, it could completely destroy much of the health insurance market and throw millions of Americans’ health care into chaos — and at least one judge who heard the case, Judge Raymond Randolph, appears poised to make this chaos a reality. 

The plaintiff's argument (which was rejected twice already at the trial level) involves whether Congress intended subsidies for people to purchase health insurance to be limited to State-run exchanges, or applied to the Federally-run exchange as well.  It would take a perverse, ideological reading by a perverse, ideological judge to rule that subsidies only applied to State-run exchanges -- but, did we mention Judge Randolph was appointed by Republican President "Poppy" Bush?

In the meantime, Alec MacGillis has more on this case as well as other Obamacare-sabotaging cases currently working their way through the judicial system.

(Cartoon:  Matt Davies, via gocomics.com)

Matt Drudge Is Now Officially A Moocher

Right-wing media nitwit manure-spreader Matt "Sludge" Drudge would like us to know not "getting covered" is all about "liberty":

While it would be utterly no surprise if Drudge is lying, his false bravado reveals something more to the point, as Karoli over at C & L puts it:

The mandate penalty isn't a "liberty tax." It's a small contribution to the Matt Drudge and Followers Moochers' Fund to help defray the costs for those people who decide they're just going to be a burden on the rest of us and not hold up their individual responsibility to get covered.

Freedumb!

Americans for Prosperity's Phony Obamacare Ads Get the Colbert/ Stewart Treatment

Mr. Colbert and Patrick Stewart take on Americans for Plutocrat Prosperity's phony Obamacare ads (Parts I and II):

The Colbert Report
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Part II:

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Lies and the Lying Liars*

As enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) reaches 4 million, there are signs that getting the uninsured to view it favorably, much less sign up, is proving a tough sell:

Fifty-six percent of those who identified as uninsured in a new poll conducted in February by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a research institution, had an unfavorable view of the health care reform law, compared to just 22 percent who said they view it favorably. The uninsured now see Obamacare less favorably than they did when the enrollment period began in October. As recently as September, more uninsured approved of the law than disapproved.  (our emphasis)

There's no question the bollixed rollout of Obamacare in October has contributed to the reluctance of many of the uninsured to take a closer look at how they would benefit from the coverage.  There are many other reasons individuals might mistrust health care reform or the government or whatever.  But the ceaseless, false drumbeat of the far right, magnified by its media outlets and often segued into the "mainstream media," has doubtless had a negative effect on public perception and, therefore, enrollment.

As the 2014 elections approach, Republicans are aiming to make Obamacare the main cudgel with which to beat vulnerable Democrats.  The Koch brothers' Americans for Plutocrat Prosperity have been aggressively running false ads around the country about "victims" of Obamacare:

Some eight months before the midterm elections, the airwaves are being flooded with the sad tales of Obamacare victims. The tales all fall into the same predictable rut. First, the poor victim steps forward to share his (or, more frequently, her) tale of deprivation. Then reporters discover the putative victim is either a non-victim, or possibly a beneficiary, of Obamacare. Then conservatives get angry.**

(**Conservatives like Byron York, who writes for the driveway-cluttering Washington Examiner, who want you to believe that fact-checking a Koch brothers lie story like cancer victim Julie Boonstra's amounts to attacking the victim -- please go f**k yourself, Mr. York.)

The Koch brothers' propagandists have gotten so desperate to find "stories" that they've even resorted to hiring actors and Republican activists to tell their lies  tales of faux woe.  So, tens of millions will be spent in a desperate campaign to discredit and derail a signal Obama Administration achievement, to fire up the sheeple in the Republican base for the off-year election, and to win back the Senate.   But in the process, remember one thing:  the bottom line is that they just don't want "those people" =cough= "The Moochers" =cough= from having health insurance.  Think of that for a moment.

For that reason, we can't think of viler people than the Koch brothers and their pants-on-fire ideological cave-mates.

Apparently, Harry Reid thinks the same way:

*Apologies to Sen. Al Franken.

Today's Cartoons - Obamacare Three-fer

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(Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press)

(Jim Morin, The Miami Herald)

(Matt Wuerker, Politico)

Congressional Budget Office Obamacare Report - What You Should Know

Summary courtesy of Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with its latest report on the Affordable Care Act, and here are a few bottom lines:  

— The ACA is cheaper than it expected.  

— It will “markedly increase” the number of Americans with health insurance.  

— The risk-adjustment provisions, which Congressional Republicans want to overturn as a “bailout” of the insurance industry, will actually turn a profit to the U.S. Treasury. 

The CBO report also shows the federal deficit falling to $514 billion - the lowest since President Obama took office 5 years ago.

You're not likely to hear much about this on your news programs or newspapers, but what you will hear is Republican talking points regurgitated as misinformation  =cough=ChuckTodd=cough= , because the right-wing wurlitzer has been doing a fantastic job of spinning the CBO's report into... Obamacare is a job-killer.  While the report estimates that there will be a decline in the number of full time equivalent workers of about 2.5 million by 2024, what's behind that number is what Republicans and their handmaidens in the media are choosing to ignore:

Because of Obamacare, the national labor force could shrink by the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time workers, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday. While that may seem like a dire prediction, it would largely be the result of Americans having more choices for how they get health coverage -- not the result of businesses hiring less. [snip]

As the White House noted in a statement Tuesday, the people most likely to reduce their hours or stop working are those who have a job mainly to get affordable health coverage -- people like second wage earners in a household, potential entrepreneurs or workers close to retirement. 

"Individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families," the statement reads. 

This phenomenon of workers sticking in a gig just to get insurance is called “job lock,” and economists consider it a labor market inefficiency, Gould said. 

So keep that in mind in the coming days and weeks as you see this issue "reported" and distorted.

UPDATE:  Here we go.

UPDATE II:  Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has a good reading of the phenomenon.

The Obamacare Horror Story That Wasn't, Cont.

Here's more background on yesterday's blog on the Obamacare horror story told by Republican grifter Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Liar) in her State of the Union address response, courtesy of Paul Krugman:

Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.” 

Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.

So was this the best story Ms. McMorris Rodgers could come up with? The answer, probably, is yes, since just about every tale of health reform horror the G.O.P. has tried to peddle has similarly fallen apart once the details were revealed. The truth is that the campaign against Obamacare relies on misleading stories at best, and often on outright deceit.  (our emphasis)

Not only will Republicans shamelessly lie about Obamacare, they will lie about immigration reform, they will lie about BENGHAZI!!!, they will lie about who was responsible for the government shutdown, they will lie about gun control, they will lie about the economy and income inequality -- in short, they will lie about anything and everything to advance their cynical, social Darwinist, nativist, plutocratic agenda.  If anyone is still surprised or shocked by this at this late date, please welcome them back to planet Earth for us.

UPDATE:  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is asking McMorris Rodgers to apologize for lying about the "Bette" story.  A positive response is not expected.

(Photo:  Rep. McMorris Rodgers - so many lies, so little time!)

The Obamacare Horror Story That Wasn't

Brian Beutler has some thoughts on "Bette," the woman cited by Rethuglican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Liar-Wingnuttia) as an Obamacare horror story in her response to the State of the Union address:

Take Bette: The reason she didn’t visit the Washington state health exchange was basically #OBUMMER. “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website at all,” she said. This didn’t start with her cancelation. This started years ago. Republicans told Bette, and others inclined to distrust Obamacare, that they’d face death panels and rationing boards. That their options would be unaffordable, and irredeemable. That the exchange sites would make their personal information vulnerable to hackers and that creepy Uncle Sam would sexually violate them. They said all this in the hope that people like Bette wouldn’t give the law a fair shake, then turned around and feigned outrage on their behalf when the plan worked. 

Republicans aren’t sincerely distressed about the things they hear from people like Bette. People like Bette are the goal.

Read the rest of Brian's piece because it really frames the position of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party extremely well.  They're not interested in the general welfare of the American public. They're interested in perpetuating their successful, decades-long grift of low-information people like "Bette," to keep the distance between the "makers" and the "takers" for as long as they can get away with it.  Because FREEDUMB!

(Photo:  McMorris Rodgers - she's lying when her lips are moving.)

Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept. - Obamacare Edition

From today's once great Washington Post  Bezos Bugle:

Regarding the Nov. 12 news article “HealthCare.gov tally: 40,000 are signed up”:

Many opponents of the Affordable Care Act seemed almost gleeful that only about 40,000 Americans signed up through the law’s federal health insurance marketplace in the six weeks since enrollment began. But it feels like good news to some of us.

With all the problems HealthCare.gov has had, tens of thousands of people still signed up, and that doesn’t include people who have been able to get reasonable insurance policies on the cooperating state exchanges. If we add in those hundreds of thousands who are benefiting from the expansion of Medicaid, I would have to say that things are looking pretty darn good. We mustn’t forget that only 123 people signed up in the first month of Romneycare. Can we please give the president a break?

 
Joanne Clark, Alexandria

That's right.  123 people in the first month of Romneycare in Massachusetts.

To whom it may concern:  Please to get your panties out of a bunch.

Today's Cartoons - Dustbin of History Edition

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(Tom Toles, Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

(Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle)

Your Spooky Halloween Cartoon

Ooooooo.   Be afraid, be very afraid!

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(Steve Benson, via gocomics.com)