lying liars

It’s entirely possible that Mitch McConnell is a hypocrite

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July 1, 2011
By Joe Sonka

Remember when Mitch McConnell said this right after the election?

Yes, despite what Ezra Klein says, Mitch McConnell is most certainly a liar.

Bruce Bartlett does a survey of surveys showing what “the people” want on taxes, contrary to what Mitch McConnell is holding the American economy hostage over:

A June 9 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 61 percent of people believe higher taxes will be necessary to reduce the deficit.

A June 7 Pew poll found strong support for tax increases to reduce the deficit; 67 percent of people favor raising the wage cap for Social Security taxes, 66 percent raising income tax rates on those making more than $250,000, and 62 percent favor limiting tax deductions for large corporations. A plurality of people would also limit the mortgage interest deduction.

A May 26 Lake Research poll of Colorado voters found that they support higher taxes on the rich to shore-up Social Security’s finances by a 44 percent to 25 percent margin.

A May 13 Bloomberg poll found that only one third of people believe it is possible to substantially reduce the budget deficit without higher taxes; two thirds do not.

A May 12 Ipsos/Reuters poll found that three-fifths of people would support higher taxes to reduce the deficit.

A May 4 Quinnipiac poll found that people favor raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 to reduce the deficit by a 69 percent to 28 percent margin.

There are 13 more at the link, all from this year.

Just because Mitch McConnell is occasionally off his game and lets the truth slip out does not make him the most honest person in DC.

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Fact-checking Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation

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June 20, 2011
By Joe Sonka

Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution watched Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation yesterday morning, finding that the Senator’s pants were definitely on fire.

McConnell explained how Obama’s new army of federal regulators that he’s hired is crushing private investment.

And the survey says…

First, we should address McConnell’s claim that the government has added a quarter million employees under Obama. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, that’s an outright lie. Through last month, total federal employment had increased by 59,000 since President Obama took office, and most of that increase has been in national security fields, not government regulators.

Nope. Try again?

Now to the larger point: Can the lack of private investment in the American economy be explained by policies implemented by President Obama? Here’s a chart tracking private investment in the United States over the past 10 years (h/t Matt Yglesias):

fredgraph-1-11

Hmmm. Isn’t that interesting?

Gross private investment appears to have peaked at Point A, early in 2006, and began to decline almost a full three years before President Obama took office. It began a more steep decline early in 2007, more than two years before he took office.

In fact, by the time President Obama took office — Point B in the chart — the decline in private investment begun three years earlier had been astounding. The collapse bottomed out in early 2009 and then began to increase, rising 22 percent so far.

That’s what the facts show. The facts show that McConnell is trying to blame the greatest collapse in private investment since the Great Depression on policies that hadn’t been implemented yet by a president who hadn’t even been elected yet. Yet here in these United States of Amnesia, his version of events actually has its supporters.

Rather shocking that Mitch McConnell would try to deceive us to score political points against the Democrats, no?

Here’s Mitch’s full “performance”:

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Al Cross on the Great Republican Spin of 2011-12

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May 9, 2011
By Joe Sonka

This pretty much sums up Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party’s history revision effort of the next year and a half:

Our senior senator is not a compelling public speaker, but in a world where spin, messaging and prior belief increasingly trump the facts, McConnell’s message machine can make a difference. At the dinner, he referred to “the stimulus that didn’t stimulate,” a plainly false assertion, but one that most Americans seem to believe because they don’t understand that facet of economics. The stimulus was inefficient, as much government spending is, but it certainly stimulated the economy.

McConnell’s line may seem like yesterday’s news, but is rhetorical underpinning on which he and the rest of the GOP establishment can find common ground with Paul and the tea party: making people forget we incurred record deficits to head off a depression, and that most of the record national debt was amassed because Republicans cut taxes while fighting wars.

Thankfully for McConnell (and believe me, he knows this), most people either don’t pay attention or believe anything they hear if they hear it enough times.

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PI tracks down insurance defrauder and KY GOP candidate Wuchner

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May 8, 2011
By Joe Sonka

This John Cheves article from Friday night on the GOP candidates for KY State Auditor is the stuff of KY politics legend. He starts with what we already knew, that fiscal conservative Jon Kemper, who wants to be the bookkeeping watchdog for the state, is in bankruptcy.

But Cheves brings the true gold with this revelation about Kemper’s opponent, Addia Wuchner:

In June 2009, Wuchner sued Unum Life Insurance Co. in U.S. District Court in Covington and declared herself medically unfit to work a full-time job.

Unum had paid Wuchner long-term disability benefits from 1997 to 2006 as a result of injuries she sustained in a 1996 car crash, which forced her to leave her hospital job, according to the lawsuit. Wuchner said Unum erroneously ended her benefits after deciding that she could work, based in part on having a private investigator track her activities for eight days. She asked for her disability payments to be reinstated immediately.

*****

In response, Unum defended its decision as proper. It acknowledged that it had hired an investigator to follow Wuchner’s activities on the campaign trail in 2004 as she ran for the state House.

The case was assigned to Judge David Bunning — son of the former U.S. senator now backing Wuchner for auditor — and it ended in March 2010 with a private settlement.

Ladies and Gentleman of Kentucky, this is your tea party. The fiscally irresponsible freeloading off of the government tea party.

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"Climategate" debunking 101

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May 2, 2011
By Joe Sonka

I assume you know this by now, but in case you don’t, this is a nice 17-minute thorough debunking. You know, for the next time a Paulbot regurgitates Rand Paul’s dishonest spin in front of you:

(h/t PZ)

In the meantime, get off our backs, coal today, coal tomorrow, coal forever, etc…

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Ken Ham still has a big ole crush on me

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April 25, 2011
By Joe Sonka

It’s been over two months since Ken Ham’s ship passed mine in the night, and he still can’t get my flamboyant lifestyle of sin out of his head.

Yes, Ken Ham decided to devote 1,000 words to yours truly in his fundraising pitch today, raising money for his giant landlocked boat with T-Rexes on it. He decided to quote some of my best work again, also adding in quite a few of his own best lies about his Great Gay Panic of February 2011.

I will say this about Ken Ham: even though his entire life and career revolves around breaking the the 9th commandment (bearing false witness), he appears to do a decent job of following the other nine. Unless you count Ken Ham using his false witness (humans riding saddled dinosaurs) in order to con children and their weak-minded parents out of their money, in which case he is a habitual violator of both 9 and 10. I’m not an expert in “Hell”, nor do I believe in it, so I can’t really expand on the spiritual consequences of such violations.

Nevertheless, my bond with Ken Ham remains “unspoken” in a way, as he dares not ever mention my name whenever my words cross his lips or his delicate touch on the keyboard. It’s OK, Ken. I too know what it feels like to long for the taste of forbidden fruit. You long for it, yet know that society will cast its judgmental upon you. Therefore you either avoid mentioning it, or even lash out against it, thinking this will shield you from such unsavory thoughts. But your passion simply doesn’t fade away. It’s OK Ken, because I’m willing to forgive you and wait for you. Whenever you’re ready, just call my name.

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Rand Paul spinning black-lung disease for King Coal (VIDEO)

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April 7, 2011
By Joe Sonka

By now I’m sure you’ve all read about Rand Paul trying to deceive America about how black-lung disease is on the decline and we don’t need to revamp our regulations to combat it. Well, here’s the video of Rand Paul shilling for King Coal:

As Jim Carroll first pointed out last week, while black lung significantly declined after the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, it has shot up over the last 15 years.

But this is pretty much standard operating procedure for Rand Paul. When he can’t win an argument for his Mad Max policies, he’ll simply make stuff up in order to prop it up. Lives of Kentuckians be damned.

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O’Donnell not letting up on Rand Paul’s Libya spin

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April 3, 2011
By Joe Sonka

I guess it’s hard to tell whether Rand Paul is lying more about not objecting to the Libya resolution, or lying about how he’s always going to “read the bills”.

Either way, you can be sure that Rand Paul is never going to say “I was wrong, and I’m sorry for being such a hypocrite”.

Here’s Larry O having more fun with Liberty Christ:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Modern day Marjoe visits Lexington

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March 14, 2011
By Joe Sonka

You can say a lot about Ken Ham (like “he is a con man who exploits stupid people and impressionable children in order to make himself rich”). But at least he doesn’t exploit his own children, brainwashing them in order to make himself rich. He prefers to do that to other children.

But not Pastor Todd Burpo of Imperial, Nebraska. He prefers to brainwash his own child into “performing” so that he can make his millions.

What Colton calls his face-to-face meeting with Jesus is documented in the book Heaven Is for Real, written by his father, Pastor Todd Burpo, and published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian publishing company in Nashville.

Since hitting shelves in November, Heaven Is for Real has found national recognition, mostly through word of mouth. The book is No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list in paperback non-fiction and has been for 10 weeks. Todd Burpo said his publisher has printed 1.5 million copies to meet demand.

The Burpos flew to Lexington from Imperial, Neb., on Sunday to speak at The Bridge Church, a congregation that worships in a former storefront on Dennis Drive.

Colton nervously sang an inspirational hymn before departing to the Sunday school class. His parents, Todd and Sonja, sat down with The Bridge’s pastor, Lee Claypoole, for a roundtable discussion.

You can read the entire sad and nauseating story here.

It just goes to show you that you can never underestimate adults’ willingness to brainwash and exploit children for their own financial gain.

Here’s the version of Colton Burpo from 50 years ago, for those who haven’t seen it:

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HL catches Rand Paul in yet another lie

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March 11, 2011
By Joe Sonka

Rand Paul’s been saying plenty of falsehoods during his recent whirlwind media tour. Like how those spoiled Wisconsin teachers are making $89,000 a year (false) and how the coal industry employs 100,000 people in Kentucky (very false). And he even decided to share with America (while on the clock) his conspiracy theory that Obama is going to have you arrested it you try to buy the light bulbs and toilets that he and his “busybodies” banned (very, very false).

The Herald Leader catches one more from his Daily Show appearance, here. At least the “bankrupt the coal industry” lie didn’t talk about his massive Liberty Dumps.

Sure, Rand Paul could stop lying, but what would he lose in terms of Liberty? Women are allowed to kill their babies, but Rand can’t choose to lie? Damn you hypocrites and your double standards!

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