"Intolerant Liberals" and Other Alternate Realities

Examples of anti-liberal conservative memes with little sting to actual liberals. Source: Medium

Writing this blog has taken a backseat to a lot of things lately, but part of my problem is I feel like I've been hit by some kind of reality prism, something that makes it impossible to focus on just one thing. My mind shoots in a hundred different tangents on any subject. Succinct debate on just about anything lately is impossible. There is so much askew, so much off-track, linear arguments are next to impossible to make. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on our new President for having parentheticals inside parentheticals in virtually each and every utterance? No, not going there.

Another strange meme in a world where the president
and his followers are hyper-sensitive to virtually
any criticism or slur.

But part of what I'm getting at is the absolute gaping divide between right and left. People pretend we were divided by Obama in some Machiavellian plan to destroy America. Nope. He had nothing to do with the vastly different way conservatives and liberals see the world, see each other, see virtually everything. And I know I'm biased, but I think--I'm pretty sure--the left (not the uber-left, just the left) is more securely moored to objective facts, to reality as it is. Conservatives (of most flavors) tend to see the world as a) they want it to be, b) they feel it to be or c) how they perceive it to be despite all evidence. Oh, and d) elements of all of the above.

I'm not trying to slander here, I'm talking about a group of people who look at something that happened, and either believe it to have happened differently, or even more bizarrely, have remembrance of it that is almost a complete invention. It happens with things big and small. An obvious example, is hearing and seeing Donald Trump say something completely untrue, easily disprovable, and then call him a "truth teller," a straight-shooter who "tells it like it is," and "says what I'm thinking." Further, they can look to Trump as "one of us," while seeing, say, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as "elites."

Another common one, that starts with the non-"fact"
that liberals want to take away all guns.

I think this very strange dichotomy is responsible for why conservative humor (or rather Conservative with a capital C, politically-motivated attempts at humor) fails so badly. It starts with misconceptions about liberals, exaggerates them, and then adds a layer of meanness. The result is rarely funny because it has so little truth to it. On the other hand, conservatives themselves--who believe the misconception to start with--roar with laughter. Oddly, even if it's the ten thousandth time they've seen "Rachel MadCow." You see more evidence of this in memes, like those featured here from the excerpted article. And even more in the current short-list of alt-right insults (cuck, beta, snowflake, buttercup, safe space, etc.). It takes a perceived notion of "how liberals are," exaggerates it, and then paints every contrary opinion with the same brush.

Anyway, all of that is a convoluted way of me saying: the twain will never meet between right and left, until something unifies them enough to see the same basic thing as the same thing. So long as Trump looks like an absurd, buffoonish clown to one side, and a strong dynamic leader to the other, we're not going to understand each other. Frankly, seeing Trump the liberal way used to be fairly standard for him, even part of the way through 2016. Seeing him the conservative way is actually a fairly recent invention. Dare I say,

artificial. It's a conservative prism, I can't think of anything else to explain it.

[Excerpt]

Intolerant Liberals

. . .I have some difficult news for everyone: Progressives aren’t interested in diversity. We aren’t interested in inclusion. We aren’t interested in tolerance. The progressives I know give exactly zero shits about those things. We have no interest in everyone getting treated the same. We have no interest in giving all ideas equal airtime. We have no interest in “tolerating” all beliefs. I don’t know where this fairy tale comes from, but it’s completely disconnected from every experience I’ve had with progressive liberal folks in my lifetime. . .

Read more at: Medium

More Reports on the Dishonesty of the Trump White House, and Calling a Lie a Lie

Watch out, girl, your face might just freeze like that. . .
Image from source, NYT.

It can't be said often enough. For a candidate and campaign that tried to use "liar" as the main criticism of their opponent, and "truth teller" as a description of their own candidate, Donald Trump and Company continue to show themselves as the gang who can't go a day without lying. It's endless and blatant. They lie about things that don't matter. They lie about hugely important things. They lie about things that are easily and instantly disproven. They even lie about things that have already been admitted to be untrue. That's actually a hallmark of the far right, the resurrection of lies that have been long debunked. It was one of the biggest tools used against Hillary Clinton in the campaign, the Zombie Lie, as Bill Maher has called it.

But this many lies don't come without consequence. I mean just look at Kellyanne Conway's face, if you don't believe the toll it can take. And only a week in, we already have the press being more and more willing to call lies for what they are. Here's a story that goes into how these things are talked about and why. I've got to think that the more heat that Trump puts into demonizing "the media," the more willing they're going to be to say, "screw access," and just start calling his lies lies.

[Excerpt]

In a Swirl of ‘Untruths’ and ‘Falsehoods,’ Calling a Lie a Lie

Words matter.

And from the moment he became president, Donald J. Trump has unleashed so many of consequence that the public has barely had time to parse their full implication. Words about the dishonest media, the end of Obamacare, the construction of that border wall with Mexico — this is an abbreviated list, and he hasn’t even completed his first week in office. . .

Read more at: New York Times

Donald Trump's Lies in His First Week As President

Surreality, thy name is Trump. Image from source, Boston Globe.

Before we get to the meat of this story, I want yo to look at this picture. This is the picture that would accompany a news report in a sci-fi story about time travel gone horribly wrong. Or about a parallel Earth "over there," where things are not quite as they are "over here." It's an image you might expect if a crucial historical figure died (or lived) when they weren't supposed to, causing a ripple-effect in the time stream, resulting in bizarre news reports where the Nazis won World War II or New York City was bombed in the Cuban Missile Crisis. You could even expect it in a self-contained fictional universe, like Marvel's Cinematic Universe, or the DC Comics "Arrowverse." But we somehow ended up here, and I'm frankly still a bit outside myself wondering how.

How indeed. The man is clearly--especially now, having witnessed his first complete week--unfit to be President of the United States. He's still "candidate Trump," still bleating asinine statements on Twitter, still floating ridiculous policy statements and retracting them. Still making enemies of other countries and world leaders. Still lying his ass off on a daily basis. But now, it matters.  It's horrific, it's alarming, and it's basically unsustainable at this rate. I quite simply can't imagine this going on unabated for four years without huge damage to our country and to the world. And we thought Barack Obama had a lot to mop up. Who is going to want to come in after Donnie, and squeegee up the mess?

[Excerpt]

Fact checking Trump’s inaccurate statements

Regular readers know that candidate Donald Trump had difficulty with facts. Now that Trump is president, he continues to make misleading statements, based on incomplete information, inaccurate statistics or flights of fancy. Here’s an accounting of his public statements in the first seven days as president, not counting his error-plagued inauguration speech (which had eight problematic claims). . .


Read more at: Boston Globe

Donald Trump Lies Blatantly about Russia Hacking Report

We know Donald Trump lies, and does so when it is easily debunked. He lies for no good reason, about things people know are untrue. He lies about things he's lied about! His "truth teller" status during the election was and remains baffling, because he's known to be a worse liar than even the most dishonest politician. Hillary Clinton, long tarred with that brush, actually comes out close to the top of the heap of most honest politicians. So, go figure.

But with this Russia thing? He lied about something rather enormous. And still hasn't come clean. What did he know, and when did he know it? This will haunt his entire presidency, however (hopefully) short it is.

Trumpgasm in Ohio: Details, Facts Don't Matter

I'm greatly distressed by the state of our politics, particularly as it applies to the GOP race for the presidency. The continued success of carnival barker Donald J. Trump has just beaten me down. As bad as Trump himself is, I'm actually more concerned about his true believers. I'm somewhat bolstered by the fact that he has a 25% hold on the portion of primary voters of a portion of the electorate that boils down to a significantly smaller number of people than it appears on the surface. But I'm worried that America has become enough of an Idiocracy that he'll convert enough xenophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-liberal, anti-Hillary people to actually do damage.

Trump is a buffoon, and always has been. He's played fast and loose with the truth* to his own advantage in business and celebrity, since we've known who he was. He has roughly a third-grader's vocabulary and oratory style. And a third-grade bully's at that. His vocabulary is so stunted, that even after one of his huge applause lines, rather than expounding on what he's said, he just repeats the same words again and again, with his limited set of bombastic adjectives. But worse than his relentlessly negative and abrasive style, is his tenuous grasp of basic facts.

In just the last couple of days, Trump has unleashed a stream of easily disproven statements. Sometimes badly conflated and distorted memories, sometimes wildly exaggerated claims, sometimes just stream-of-consciousness lies. And none of it matters. None of it shakes off his true believers. Not the open racism, not the untruth of his claims, not the vagueness of his promises, not the true horror of having this reactionary, thin-skinned bully in control of the nuclear football. The same people who decried President Obama's "lack of experience" and "celebrity," are eating up every horrifying utterance of this braying egotist.

Even Ben Carson--once thought to be supplanting Trump as front-runner (a horror in itself)--briefly jumped aboard Trump's recent big lie about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, as the buildings fell. He quickly had to issue a "my bad!" retraction, which I suppose should be heartening. After all, Carson has had his own string of easily disproven statements recently. And they initially didn't seem to matter to his own base. But Carson has been slipping since then. Maybe that should cheer me up?

But I come back around to distress. How can such a large group of Americans be so vaguely pissed off, so ready to win, that they'll gladly make this cult-of-personality, reality TV star made of pure id the most powerful man in the world? Can the GOP really let this happen?

*Perhaps the most baffling claim in all of this, is the Trump supporters' claim that "Trump speaks the truth." He doesn't. He speaks what ever crosses his mind, often changing direction mid-sentence, often several times. He speaks in parentheticals--sometimes within parentheticals--wherein he more than occasionally contradicts the point he started out making. He is the embodiment of "truthiness," Stephen Colbert's "gut feel" explanation for believing something that feels right, even if the details are all wrong. And his supporters--who are almost to a person, Hillary haters who love to throw out that she's a "liar"--simply don't care. Yes. I'm distressed.

[Excerpt]

Trump wastes no time bashing Kasich during Columbus speech



The day began and ended in a fight over Donald Trump’s incursion into the home turf of 2016 presidential rival John Katich. In between, Trump tweeted that the Ohio governor is a “dummy” and “one of the worst presidential candidates in history.” And in a speech before 14,000 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, Trump pointed to polls showing the billionaire re-establishing his lead both nationally and in early voting states — with Kasich far behind. . .

Read more at: The Columbus Dispatch

The Ben Carson West Point Story, Fact or Fiction?

Image from source, Esquire

I love deductive reasoning, puzzle games, investigative journalism, forensic evidence gathering, the lot. If the CBS slate of programming can be used as evidence, most Americans do as well. But it doesn't seem to be applied to much more than procedural dramas, certainly not much in real life.

That's why I love it when someone actually puts brain to task, and puzzles out, what is true and what is not true in a given story. You get at that by finding out what can't possibly be true, what is undeniably true, and then fitting in the plausible connective tissue, and disregard the fantastic and the dubious. When this is done, the Ben Carson West Point story comes down to this: Ben Carson lied.

Did Politico do a bit of shoddy journalism? Looks that way. But they weren't wrong.

Don't believe me (ahem, Dan)? Check it out.

[Excerpt]

Ben Carson Debunked: Inside His Made-Up West Point Story

Let's re-cap what has happened in the last few days since that first explosive story came out in Politico…and was observed here by our own Charlie Pierce on Friday. To wit, the Tale of Cadet Ben Carson. On Friday, Politico posted a sensational, but sadly incomplete, evaluation of some of Dr. Carson's claims about his past. Specifically their story asserted that Carson had not been given a "scholarship" to West Point, as he claimed in his book(s) and in multiple accounts of his past in speeches and interviews since 1990, when his first co-written autobiography appeared. . .

Read more at: Esquire

Right Wing World: Ben Carson Caught an Unspinnable Lie, Now What?

Ben Carson has told a series of whoppers that had little effect on his sudden rise past longtime, improbable juggernaut Donald Trump. But just as Trump could seemingly say or do nothing to dent his support, Carson shrugged most of them off, in that borderline narcoleptic way he's got. The base didn't care. But this latest one? They care. I checked.

Some choice quotes from FreeRepublic.com, Right Wing World's bell weather.

 

"This is the end for Carson. Where will his white guilt GOP supporters go?"

 

"This ones bad for Carson... We have 'rights' to our own opinions, but NOT to 'our own' facts."

"This will be his undoing."

 

Image from source, Poltico

"You lie, you wither and die. Bye bye Ben."

Before you give them too much credit, realize that it's not the fact that he lied, so much. He's done that before. It's that he lied about a core section of his biography. And there wasn't a nifty way to spin it.

Now, the question is, who will reap the spoils? Back to Trump, or onto the next hot thing?

[Excerpt]
 
Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship
 
Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. . .

Read more at: Politico

Carly Fiorina: Strong and Wrong!

Image from source, Esquire

Well, Carly Fiorina did well the other night, didn't she? She kicked and screamed enough to get removed from the kiddie table debate, and into the proper (though "adult" doesn't sound right) one, making a nice. . .even?. . .eleven candidates. Or contestants. Whatever. But, she did it, she got in, and by all accounts, she actually won the thing.

But if you paid attention to what she said, she was just wrong all over the place. It won't matter. Why? Well, it's that whole, Republicans prefer strong and wrong over weak and right. So long as you believe what you're saying to your core--or at least express yourself as though you do--and espouse a few hard right ideas, you're golden baby. Attention Jeb!, Bobby and the rest: Get confident, stupid!

So, Carly can make stuff up about Hillary Clinton (ironically while accusing her of lying), or she can invent a fake--but horrific!--Planned Parenthood video, but if she stares at the camera like a cobra about to strike, while delivering the lie in a resolute, confident voice? Pure. Conservative. Gold.

It shouldn't surprise me, from a group that absolutely gobbles up "truthiness," fact-like nuggets that feel true, rather than are necessarily actually true. It explains perfectly the whole phenomenon of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and "sincerely held beliefs" that require no doctrine and no evidence.

And it contrasts rather sharply with Donald Trump's much coarser version of the same thing. Fiorina is the refined version, Trump the larval stage. Where he's got pure id, with a child's penchant for tantrums and flair with vocabulary, Fiorina is polished and refined. But don't mistake her strength and confidence for accuracy or honesty.

[Excerpt]

Carly Fiorina: Strong, Crisp, and Effective if You Ignore the Facts

Let us take one more tour of the battlefield before we retire to the gift shoppe at Ronnieworld to pick up some Fawn Hall Authorized Confetti (Guaranteed 100 percent Genuine Secret Government Documents!) or, perhaps, for the kids, a Junior TOW Missile Commander suit complete with Iranian flags on the sleeves. What we saw last night, and I stayed awake for the whole damn thing so I now know all I care to know about Chris Christie's secret crush on Abigail Adams, was the triumph of fiction over fact, of fantasy over reality. In other words, what we saw was the most fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan ever produced. Congratulations, one and all. The final fealty of the Republican Party to total and complete bullshit has been sworn. . .

Read more at: Esquire

The Gay Thing: "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" Story Built on Lies (Update: Minus One Lie)

UPDATE: This story has been updated by its source, RawStory. Update is below.

Because of the way court cases wend their way through processes and appeals, this moldy old case, Sweet Cakes by Melissa keeps coming around. It's a case about an Oregon bakery that ran afoul of public accommodation laws by refusing to sell a cake to a lesbian couple. I've written about it, and related other cases, several times before, here, for one instance.

Image from source, Raw Story

Let me start this time, by saying that the entire tactic being used by the religious right regarding wedding vendors, civil clerks and magistrates in resistance to same-sex marriage is 100% bullshit. Not just in places, or in some cases, but complete bullshit in every case. It's so wrongheaded, and wrong in so many places, that it's rather difficult to write about, because the list of wrongs--and the tangents it takes you down--are so extensive. But the short version is, we're talking about civil marriage, which is a contract, not a religious sacrament. Civil marriage has coexisted with "holy matrimony" for eons, without causing a religious crisis for vendors, businesses, magistrates and clerks. A lengthy list of examples of past civil marriages that do not comport with mainstream religious beliefs can be hastily brought to mind, and yet there was no flurry of RFRA laws and other attempts to skirt around the rights of Americans to get civilly married. Shorter still: atheists don't have problems buying wedding cakes.

That only happened when gay people started the quest to get the right to marry. Suddenly, religiously delicate wedding vendors were coming out of the woodwork claiming that these civil marriages conflicted with their "sincerely held beliefs." Apparently, only The Gay Thing is "sinful" enough to warrant this brand new understanding of "religious freedom," meaning the right to be exempted from certain laws (or to ignore them), and to trample and trump the empirical rights of gay customers. Oddly enough, they rarely even try to define which "sincerely held belief" prevents them from selling their wares to gay couples, or how these beliefs enter into a typical business transaction in the first place. There's lots of bogus talk about them having to "participate in," "celebrate" or "condone" the ceremony by selling their product or service, all claims that are either in extreme dispute, or flatly disprovable.



Apparently, this is either "Sweet Cakes," or "Melissa."

What makes the Sweet Cakes by Melissa story even more of a lie, is that it started out before there was legal gay marriage in Oregon. This was a story about a couple, the Kleins, who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple's commitment ceremony reception. Not a sacred and/or legal ceremony. The Kleins broke the law doing this, since there is a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against sexual orientation, along with the standard list of gender, religion, race, and what have you. Yet, whenever the Kleins' story is recounted, you will be told (usually by the Kleins or by some of the loudly religious groups that have helped martyr them) that this had to do with the legalization of same-sex marriage. The Kleins' legal drama is consistently touted as a consequence. It wasn't.

[Excerpt]

Oregon bakers weren’t fined over cake — they were punished for sharing lesbian couple’s home address [See correction below]

The anti-LGBT owners of an Oregon bakery were not fined simply for refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple – they were ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for intentionally causing their would-be customers emotional distress. e case has attracted widespread media attentiothe couple first filed their complaint in Januay 2013, and that is largely through the efforts of Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa.

Read more at: RawStory

"Correction: An earlier version of this article contained a significant error that resulted from failure to distinguish the difference between the agency’s recommendation and the commissioner’s final ruling. The bakers were not, as previously reported, punished for threats by others against the couple, as the agency had recommended. They were ordered by the commissioner to pay damages to the couple for emotional harm caused by their unlawful discrimination. We regret the error, and we would like to thank Eugene Volokh for clarifying the distinction." --RawStory 07/12/15

50 FOX "News" Lies in 6 Seconds

This is the Vine video mentioned by Jon Stewart in the previous Daily Show post. 50 lies in 6 seconds, with annotations (click the image to pause it at any point). It's rather illustrative of a point made here over the entire eight year existence of this blog. In fact, if you go back to my very first post, you'll see that indeed FOX "News" (I only leave off the quotes around "news" when it makes punctuation confusing) was one of my motivations in creating the blog in the first place.
 

Mitch McConnell: Kill ObamaCare! Keep Kentucky's Part of it! (WTF?)

Mitch McConnell is talking out his ass again, this time at his debate with Alison Lundergan Grimes. Yes, Yertle seems to think we should eliminate every "root and branch" of the Affordable Care Act, and yet leave Kentucky's Kynect (or just its web site?) intact. The problem, of course, is that Kynect is ObamaCare, it's what it was always supposed to be, one of 50 state-run exchanges. And it worked! And it's popular! So, it puts Mitch in this trick bag.

If Grimes is smart, she'll play this up big time: "Kentuckians, Mitch McConnell thinks you're stupid. He thinks you're so stupid, that you don't know that Kynect is part of the Affordable Care Act. He's hoping you're so stupid, that you'll vote for him, and let him take away your insurance."

I'm not particularly a fan of Grimes. I think she's a calculating, politics first, talking points-based candidate. I think she's hoping that Kentuckians are stupid enough to think she's anti-Obama, because they are stupid enough to vote against her for being an Obama supporter. I think there are better ways to play this, than posturing and fake-outs. But very nearly anyone would be better than Mitch McConnell. The fact that this is even close tells you that the "Kentuckians are stupid" gambit could very well work for either side.

[Excerpt]

McConnell Wants To Keep Obamacare 'Website' But Repeal Obamacare

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Monday night he wants to repeal Obamacare "root and branch" but keep the law's state-based insurance exchange in Kentucky, called Kynect. "I think it's fine to have a website. Yeah," he said during the first and only scheduled Kentucky Senate debate with Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, pressed on whether he wants to keep Kynect. . .

Read more at: Talking Points Memo

What Happens in NEAR Vegas : Cliven Bundy' Claims to "Ancestral Land" Bunk

1800s, huh? Sure, dude, whatever. The longer this story goes on, and the more I learn, the more I think the supporters of Cliven Bundy are just mental cases. What exactly is the claim of "freedom" here?

Tell us another one, Clive. Image from source,
8NewsNow

[Excerpt]

I-Team: Bundy's 'ancestral rights' come under scrutiny

Federal authorities remain silent about their next plans to confront Cliven Bundy at his Bunkerville ranch. Both sides are fighting over history, with federal courts denying Bundy's claims of "ancestral rights" on the Virgin River valley. The I-Team dug into century-old records to examine Bundy's claims. . .

Read more at: 8NewsNow

CBO Report on ObamaCare Continues to be Misconstrued

Over the last couple of weeks, I'll admit to being a little less engaged than usual. I have paid a little less attention to the changing of the news cycle, having my attention pulled in other directions here at home. Even so, I caught that the CBO report on ObamaCare was initially (gleefully) reported by conservatives as a JOB KILLER!!! And almost immediately, the author of the thing said, no, Right Wing World had gotten it wrong. Again.

But here we were on Sunday morning, with the political shows all acting like the original storyline was the correct one. David Gregory used it in one of his "balanced" setups, as though the wrong conclusion was as equally likely as the real, intended one. Chris Wallace on FOX "News" Sunday lead with it, painting it as conclusively true, by the way he phrased it. I didn't have the stomach for the other networks' offerings.

But it looks like CNN may have gotten it right.

[Excerpt]

CNN breaks mold and tells truth about CBO report


 
It is a forgone conclusion that Fox News would misrepresent the latest CBO report. Sadly even Chuck Todd at MSNBC was less than clear in interpreting the report. He was more concerned with how it would be interpreted. He should have been more concerned with his free press journalistic duty. Inform the population objectively. . .

Read more at: DailyKos

Another FOX "News" ObamaCare Horror Debunked

Does the FOX "News" fan base even know that many (if not most) of the ObamaCare horror stories that have been presented on the "news" channel have been debunked? In fact, if they're outraged about it on Hannity, the Factor or Greta Van Whatsername, it's almost always trumped up in some way. And I'm not sure if their viewers ever figure out they've been lied to, or if they simply don't care.

 

The Fake, Annual, War on Christmas

I've written on this subject many times in the seven holiday seasons I've been blogging. And I'll continue to, considering how it keeps cropping up as though it's a legitimate "problem." In reality, the "War on Christmas" is a manufactured outrage, a complete nonsense story that has been an unlikely success story for Bill O'Reilly, FOX "News," Sarah Palin, and others in Right Wing World.

Contrary to the claims, there is no organized effort to shunt Christmas to the sidelines, and if there were it would likely be a) by Christians, offended by the crass commercialization of the holiday, and b) considered a complete failure by now. With the backward creep of "Black Friday," and the appearance of Christmas trimmings starting to appear in August in some places, Christmas is more visible than it ever has been.

In my opinion, the success of this faux crisis came about in a perfect storm of a number of elements:
- Conservative outrage over challenges to religious displays on public property.
- Conservative paranoia toward the ACLU, atheism, "secularism," and diversity.
- Conservative antipathy toward anything deemed to be more "inclusive" or sensitive to other beliefs.
- Occasional overboard actions or reactions by individual school administrators or jurisdictions. A declaration that the word "Christmas" be struck or replaced from a musical program, and the like. Outliers depicted as a trend, in other words.
- The tendency of conservatives to feel like a victimized minority, even though they're statistically part of the majority (read: heavily white and Christian).
- A strange confluence between the "Put the Christ back in Christmas/reason-for-the-season" sort, and the prosperity gospel, "greed-is-good" modern-day conservative base, resulting in an orgy of consumerism that must be labeled CHRISTmas!
- A populace with a limited memory, and the difficult-to-pin-down origins of the perennial "Seasons' Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" phrases.

O'Reilly claims that those two phrases were a plot, in the last 10 years or so, to supplant the word, the concept, the holiday of Christmas. This is of course, preposterous. I'm 47, and have a good memory. I know for certain that both phrases were being used in the early 70s. I'm positive they go further back. Back then, the only controversial wording was "X-Mas," and even that is misunderstood (the "X" is actually a cross, folks). So right off the bat, we know that O'Reilly is blowing smoke: the phrases have been on greeting cards and in ads for decades now. I have a program from our school winter musical, in festive, snow-capped letters, reading: "1978 Winter Holiday Concert!" That's 35 years, Bill, and it included Hava Nagila.  [Story continues below]



So, we should be able to conclude that there is no conspiracy, and if there were, it isn't working. But let's flip it, shall we? Why should we take O'Reilly's side, and be forced to say "Merry Christmas" from late November until (presumably) New Year's? Why "merry" and not "happy," "festive," "joyous" or "groovy?" Why does the Christmas holiday--one day, incidentally--get to override every other holiday (and holiday party, and gift exchange, and work gathering, and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa and New Year's Eve), with the insistence that "Merry Christmas" is the only proper and legitimate greeting? It's preposterous, as well as a little too precise when you want to wish someone a happy holiday season, rather than just the one day.

I'm no longer Christian, but I was raised one. I still celebrate Christmas, and when I can, take off the whole week. I'm not offended by the phrase "Merry Christmas," and believe me, most people aren't. Not even Jewish, Muslim or atheist people. People taking offense are almost entirely fabricated, part of this phony-baloney "war." You might find a nutty activist, trying to ban the word in some Podunk school system in Backwater, Pennsyltucky.  But not a movement. FOX "News" is fighting a straw man. . .snow man?


 

How to Spot a Fake ObamaCare™ Story

Image from source, Think Progress

There have been a lot of very upset people on the radio and tv machines telling ObamaCare™ horror stories. But one by one--if they're not picked apart by hosts like Stephanie Miller and Randi Rhodes--the stories are being debunked as a) deliberate lies, b) misinformed or c) confused people who sometimes haven't even tried to find out what the health care exchange can do for them.

 

So, how can you tell if the complaints have any merit at all? Well, you can wait for the inevitable debunking, or you can read the article below.

 

[Excerpt]

 

How To Spot A Fake Obamacare Horror Story

Since insurers have begun informing beneficiaries that their health care plans do not meet the new federal requirements of Obamacare, and will be either cancelled or significantly altered, the media has profiled countless middle class Americans who claim that the new health care law will force them to pay more for coverage. . .

 

Read more at: Think Progress

Sorting Out the ObamaCare Scares

At least this lady has been retired from the site.
Image from ThinkProgress

So far, virtually every bad story I've heard about ObamaCare's implementation (beyond the admittedly glitchy website) has been fraught with errors, misleading statistics and in some cases, lies. And if the source is from Right Wing World, you can almost guarantee that there's very little about the story that is correct. One of the most annoying aspects of all the reporting, is that it would seem the entire mainstream media has turned the whole thing into a game, "let's see if we can crash the system!" Very little effort has been put into actually checking out if peoples' stories actually check out.
So, though I was never a particular fan of what the ACA finally became (I think a single-payer, "Medicare for all" plan would have made a lot more sense), I feel like I've got to wave my arms and say, HEY! Don't go in for the easy story, dig a little deeper. It may not all be great, but it's not that bad either.

[Excerpt]

Here Is What’s Wrong With That Story About Obama Knowing That Your Health Care Policy Would Get Cancelled
 
The NBC News investigations unit is reporting that “50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law” — a fact administration officials knew but kept from the public. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Hannity's ObamaCare Disaster Couples' Stories Disproven

Much of the problem for me understanding or identifying with people who are against the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare")--beyond obvious, blatant falsehoods--is that the stories told about it are so suspicious sounding. Forget that they're usually being told on shows like Hannity, which is automatically hostile to the subject matter. But often the stories sound hinky, with imprecise language, clearly misleading statements (like companies "being forced" to cut hours, etc.), and other antennae-raising clues that the stories may not be true.

A favorite of mine occurred with a caller (self-identified as apolitical, naturally) to the liberal Stephanie Miller Show, in which the caller claimed his doctor had gotten a letter that day, "from" ObamaCare, with horrifying news about restrictions and extremely costly price hikes. The caller couldn't identify who the letter was from (beyond "ObamaCare"), or the specifics of the letter, but alleged it to have just happened. Clearly, somebody was encouraging (paying?) people to call unfriendly outlets, posing as independent "concerned citizens." The problem being, these are not professionals, and cannot speak extemporaneously beyond their script.

The same is true with this Hannity grouping of people. This FOX "News" program has unlimited resources, and motivation to paint the ACA as flawed or worse. And yet, they come up with three couples who all have flimsy stories that are unsupported by facts? That and the fact of the company they are keeping makes me deeply suspicious that ObamaCare is the "disaster" they are making it out to be.

[Excerpt]

Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare

I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants. . .

Read more at: Salon

"Pants on Fire" Myths About ObamaCare

There's a bunch of 'em. . .

Source: The fantastic NewsCorpse.com

Mitt Romney Claims He Didn't Make "47%" Comment

By now, we're not surprised by a politician who denies saying what he plainly said. Meet the Press not to mention The Daily Show have long made hay pulling old speeches out to prove a candidate is wrong or has lied. But when the statement in question is one of the most glaring, most obvious pivot points of the race? What point is there in lying about it now? I mean, I know that Mitt Romney had a truth-telling problem (especially for a Mormon), but this one really takes the cake.
 

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