Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Biggest Lie?


Well, it's hard to order the lies when you have Kenyan Nazi Socialist terrorist Muslim America-hater, and there are surely more coming. But the one about Obama's spending spree is right up there. So says The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a source of liberal apologia):

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s...

Now, I suppose you could claim that there's a certain amount of mathematical shenanigans here, but it's also reality. If it's the case that Obama has maintained spending at the rate extant when he took office, it's NOT the case that he increased it:

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget. What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year...

The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.


It's safe to say The Rominee wouldn't stop claiming otherwise if the truth were carved on disappearing stones and someone gave him magic glasses to read them. But it's more evidence that Rs know if they were to make the campaign about what President Obama actually has and hasn't done, versus what they actually propose to do instead (which, you'd think, is exactly what campaigns ought to be about), they'd lose like the Washington Generals.



8 comments:

  1. Is this the Bizarro Sid???
    Cause I'll take your logic and spit it back at you, Ptooie!!!
    So.... since you just Looooovvvvveeeeee Spending so much, shouldn't "W" be YOUR favorite Prez, and "O" be mine???
    And since we're switchin places, just a few tips, ya gotta shift around on the stool every so often, prevents decubiti, and once in a while move the vaporizer dial, damn things stick if you don't, and when you come back in the room, its like a Grateful Dead Concert, and that "I:E" knob? don't touch it, makes the ventilator go crazy, and if you do, just say you have to go take a dump, and let the CRNA figure it out...
    And in my nearly 1/2 a century on this Moral Coil I've voted for several DemoKKKrats, lets see, Zell Miller 4 times, Al Sharpton in 04', Hilary in 08', and if it had been almost anybody except that block head AlGore with Lieberman in 2000' I'd probably have voted "D" then, which might have put Florida in the "D" column...
    Ironic, Dontcha think?
    Be honest, who's the last RepubicKKKlan you voted for??

    namkcarD KnarF

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  2. After taking one large bipartisan step forward by tentatively supporting a VAT or some other way to raise revenues for entitlements, the fact that this report is taken seriously by well read Dems such as you makes me want to climb into a Tea Party bunker.

    Most objective people could tell this (as with many right-leaning reports, which you dissect effortlessly for inaccuracies) is just election year propaganda and brush it off as such.

    Regards,
    PT

    p.s. You should add Mark Levin to your list of RWS. Listening to him will require adding at least one anti-hypertensive to your regimen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fair question, Frank, even if it has nothing to do with the topic du jour.

    I can't remember if I was old enough to vote for Tom McCall (Oregon governor) or Mark Hatfield (Oregon senator), but if I was, I did.

    Nowadays, it's a dilemma. In WA elections, when there's an idiot on the D side, rather than voting R, I don't vote. Because the problem is the craziness of the R party. To vote R, even for a decent one (oxymoron alert) is potentially to hand power to crazy in legislatures, state or federal.

    But I congratulate you for voting for Zell Miller, possibly the craziest D there ever was, before he switched to R, which immediately made him the sanest on that side, even as he got crazier than ever.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good point about Levin, PT. I will.

    And I stand by my final sentence, which is non-propagandally true.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your main reply didn't post.
    Pt

    ReplyDelete
  6. Frank: my wife reminds me that I voted for Dan Evans, too: R governor of WA.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Sid,
    Your Wife fills out your ballots too???
    Thats why I like to vote Absentee AND in Person...
    I mean no way she'd let me throw a vote away on that Racist New York Politican with the bad Hair*...
    And she didn't like Al Sharpton either! Whoa!!!!!!!
    Get it? I said "Racist New York Politician with Bad Hair" and you thought I meant Al Sharpton...

    Frank

    *Hilary Clinton 2008 campaign leaked those rediculous photos of EICOTUS in a Dashiki

    ReplyDelete
  8. PT: I'd like to add that it's not propaganda to point out accurate facts. It's relevant because The Liar goes around the country claiming that under Obama spending has accelerated at an unprecedented pace, and that is not true. It's a lie, like everything he says. So which is the propaganda? What The Rominee claims, or a statement of why it's false. There are things he could say about deficits that are true. As usual, he prefers to lie.

    ReplyDelete

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