You may have heard that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) recently released a disastrous report which detailed that Obamacare was likely to result in 2.3 million fewer jobs.
But as fast as that news came out, the Democrats and their Media shills issued a counter narrative: “No, that’s not true!It’s not that Obamacare will kill jobs! It’s only that people will choose not to work (or work as much) so as to qualify for health care subsidies, and THAT means that there’ll be the equivalent of 2.3 million fewerpeople working.
See? It just kills employment, not jobs, which is TOTALLY different! Sorta…”
Of course, the casual news gatherer (which is way more than half the population) never heard the second half of that argument. They heard “No, that’s not true…”, and the rest faded into Miss Othmar’s voice from the Charlie Brown cartoons. No matter, they got the gist: those Republicans have obviously lied once again about King Barack the Beneficent and his glorious Health Care Machine. The details as to exactly if, how or why they lied are probably unimportant, anyway.
There is very little I can add to this video clip (below) without using four-letter words, but I’ll do my best.
I’m actually a little shocked that this guy is being allowed to run free by the Democrats, ’cause this level of high-handedness, belittling and raw condescension doesn’t play well with anyone, other than the most hardcore Leftists.
In his previous diatribe and throughout this interview, what Representative McDermott refused to acknowledge (as we pointed out yesterday) is Tea Party and Conservative groups were targeted due to their views and beliefs. Yet, liberal/progressive groups were not explicitly targeted by the IRS, which is probably why none were brought to testify before the Ways and Means committee.
For the record, if anyone out there thinks this was a clever or winning argument for this guy to make, I’d be curious to hear your explanation.
During today’s IRS hearings, Democrat Jim McDermott scolded representatives of groups who were victims of the IRS targeting scheme in the most condescending way possible, basically telling them: “Hey, if you guys hadn’t applied for tax exemption, the IRS wouldn’t have had to target you“.
Representative Jim “Patronizing Creep” McDermott
Which, to be fair, is a bit like telling a rape victim that “…if you’d just stayed home that day, or if you hadn’t insisted on walking through the park, nothing would have happened, now would it??…”
Last week in the initial presidential debate, Romney’s win over Obama more closely resembled a 90-minute video game, with Obama having been stuck with the broken controller. It became a rout almost immediately, and you stuck around only to see how bad the final tally would be.
In contrast, this week’s Vice-Presidential debate was more closely contested, but was still memorable for two big reasons: demeanorand facts.
First, the facts. Biden started the evening off by pulling a Bart Simpson (“it wasn’t me!!”), essentially blaming our Intelligence Community for the Administration’s repeated lies about Benghazi.
The vice president claimed that the story the administration put out about the terrorist attack on the consulate and the murder of the U.S. ambassador being part of the fallout from a controversial anti-Muslim video was the fault of the intelligence they were given. But rather than put the issue to bed, it raises even more troubling questions about not only about the security disaster but also about the lack of leadership shown by senior administration officials including the president. It also contradicts State Department testimony and other comments from intelligence officials that they knew it was a terror attack within 24 hours of it happening.
For Biden to put all of the blame for the lies about the videoand the denial of terrorism on intelligence officials says a lot about the complete breakdown of administration counter-terror policy. His denial that anyone in Washington knew that the story put forward Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations wasn’t true seems implausible. Even iftrue, it speaks to administration incompetence.
Vice President Joe Biden accused Rep. Paul Ryan of putting two wars on the “credit card,” and then suggested he voted against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“By the way, they talk about this great recession like it fell out of the sky–like, ‘Oh my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.”
“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.”
[Actually], Sen. Biden votedfor the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
Andon Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.
Further, if you re-read that quote, what the Beacon doesn’t single out is the “put a prescription drug plan on the credit card” part of Biden’s quote. His finding fault with that is curious, since he voted for it, too, along with many of its expansions.
Hey, maybe he forgot?
And now, and perhaps most importantly in the long run, the demeanor.
I have to assume that it was drilled into Biden’s semi-porous cranium that he had to attack, attack, attackthe entire night. Well, if that was his goal, he succeeded. However, he also succeeded in portraying himself as an overbearing, contemptuous, insufferable creep.
I promise you: that is a charitable description.
Biden's got the "arrogant know-nothing hard of hearing mathematically ignorant jerk" vote locked up.
I listen to Wallace every week, and he’s no partisan. He is, in fact, often much tougher on Republicans than anyone this side of MSNBC. His portrayal of Biden is accurate to a fault: Biden exhibited the manners of the drunk guy at your last office party, hectoring the bartender for “one more for the road”. I haven’t seen as epic an interruption (or in this case, a blizzard of them) since Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Virtually ever time Ryan spoke, Biden would begin yammering. The most recent tally that I’ve seen so far is Biden=82 interruptions, Ryan=6. If that’s even close to the official total (and I think it may be too low), that tells you all you need to know.
Biden wasn’t done. As Wallace intimated, even during the times that Ryan could string three sentences together without Joe “My turn! My turn!” Biden butting in, he amused himself by laughing. Snickering. Smirking. Openly guffawing. Rolling his eyes. And generally behaving like your 9-year-old when they argue with a sibling.
It was pathetic.
Feel free to watch all or part of it below. I’m warning you, though: within the first 30 minutes, you will have lost whatever remaining respect you had for our current VP. And the next 30 minutes is worse.
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Ryan was solid throughout, and presented himself as smart (we knew that), and in control of the facts (knew that, too). Ryan didn’t outright win the evening so much as Biden discredited himself from consideration with his churlish, clownish behavior. Among Independents especially, I think that will count against Biden far more than any policy points he may have scored.
Before the debate, I had initially decided against including this cartoon. Now it’s more than appropriate.
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UPDATE: Ed over at HotAir.com has video of Biden claiming to have voted against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, citing them both as the reason for the massive deficits we now face. As I mentioned, this is a complete and total lie.
Check out his post, and you won’t have to sift through the entire debate video (above) to see it.
You’ve gotta hand it to the Libs: they show world-class commitment to their lies.
The mantra from the Left regarding the General Motors plant in Janesville, WI which Paul Ryan referenced in speech his RNC speech has basically been, “Paul Ryan lied, Lied, LIED”. Over and over, and over again, this has been repeated ad nauseam. They simply will. Not. Let. It. Go.
In this day of politicians rolling over at the first hint of push back, it’s impressive and admirable that Ryan hasn’t so much as flinched in the face of this contemptible slander. And, of course, Ryan has something going for him in this argument: he’s telling the truth.
We discussed this last week, and since this has been proven incontrovertibly false, you’d think the Left would just lick their wounds on this and move on.
“There are some people who are claiming that you played a little fast and loose with the truth on certain key elements. And I’m not just talking about Democratic analysts, I’m talking about some independent fact checkers. Would you concede that while many of the things you said were effective, some were not completely accurate?”
Ryan responded patiently yet firmly, as if he was explaining to his 10-year-old why running with scissors really wasn’t such a hot idea:
“No, not in the least, actually. What they’re trying to suggest is that I said that Barack Obama was responsible for our plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying. Read the speech. What I was saying is the President ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After our plant was shut down he said that he would lead an effort to retool plants like the Janesville plant to get people back to work. It’s still idle, people are still not working there.”
You can see the whole Today Show clip here. By the by, I’ve found that when I’m watching Lauer, keeping an airsickness bag near-by often comes in handy.
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Now I’m just a guy with a blog, but if Icould do the 5 seconds of research to find the video (below), then presumably Matt has an intern or six that he could dispatch to bring this same video to him. The only reason he wouldn’t is that he already knew the truth, he didn’t want to know it, ….or Lauer was simply lying.
Here’s the video; you decide:
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UPDATE: From Newsbusters, this will come as a shock to exactly …nobody.
Although the press has decided that every statement of Paul Ryan’s, no matter how provably true, is cause for days of dissection, when it’s one of their darlings like Elizabeth Warren, they can let wild assertions go unchallenged…even when the statements are cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs level crazy.
Ever since the formal announcement on Saturday morning that Paul Ryan would be Mitt Romney’s VP, the web and the TV talking heads have been on fire with articles and opinions about Ryan’s selection, alternately praising and castigating it. The Left seems to be acting especially happy, which I am taking as the political equivalent of “whistling past the graveyard”.
As soon as I heard the news, I had the immediate flash in my brain of Wyatt Earp on the train platform in ‘Tombstone‘: “You called down the thunder!…..“, and it seems that it occurred to more folks than just me.
I think I know why, too.
Ryan has already made Obama look foolish on national TV, while coming across as the non-threatening-yet-brainy boy-next-door. The Left responded as they always do, telling lie after lie about Ryan, which after three years has had zero effect …other than to make them look shrill and desperate.
With the addition of Ryan, the choices are more stark than ever:
The free market Capitalist, cut spending so we can grow the economy and reduce the deficit guys in onecorner, and
the Statist and quasi-Socialist, spend-like-a-five-year-old-with-his-very-first-nickel guys in the othercorner.
Oh, yeah: I’m gonna definitely need more popcorn for this.
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UPDATE: For those of you who are coming late to this party, here are some links for you that pertain to or include Mr. Ryan:
Admittedly, we’ve been on Ryan’s bandwagon for a long time now. He’s not a perfect man, just a good one …but he’s just about perfect for this particular place and time.
Jack Nicholson didn’t really mean that. What he meant was that the truth would make him look really bad, and probably cost him his job. That’s often the case when obfuscation is claimed to be a concession to the other guy’s weakness.
But what about when a brave truth-teller, like Paul Ryan (see my brother’s recent posts), is lambasted for telling it like it is? Saying that he lacks compassion for the poor, that cutting government-subsidy programs like Food Stamps is condemning a hefty share of our population to starvation, may or may not be true.
Two Heads are Better Than One 