Posts filed under “Podium Spin”
Trying To Reach, Over and Over Again
Somewhere in between calling Shirley Sherrod while she was on her way to work, and telling her to pull over to the side of the road, right now, and resign, and deciding that they owed her an apology, the Agriculture Department seems to have managed to lose her phone number. This is Robert Gibbs at [...]
Unemployment Benefits: Fictions, Facts And Figures
Republicans in Congress have continued to hawk the myth of the fat lazy unemployed, living high on the hog off their extended unemployment benefits instead of lifting a finger to actually seek work, despite all the jobs out there. Here’s a random sampling: Sen. Richard Burr: The wrong thing to do is to automatically today [...]
AP’s Thoroughly Misconceived PR Considerations Insinuation
AP, yesterday: With the newly installed cap keeping oil from BP’s fractured well out of the Gulf during a trial run, this weekend offered a chance for the oil company and government to gloat over their shared success — the first real victory in fighting the spill. Instead, the two sides have spent the past [...]
The Party of No Agenda
Originally, the derisive “Party of No” label the Republican Party earned for itself referred to the spectacularly determined display of no-fucking-way obstructionism they have put on since Obama was elected President. But it’s looking more and more like by the time the midterm elections are over — and the Republicans have gained much fewer seats [...]
Greenspan Throws A Curveball
Over the last week, various Republicans in Congress have distinguished themselves by arguing that the Bush tax cuts desperately need to be extended — without any effort to pay for them — because that’s what the economy oh-so-desperately needs. Forget job creation, forget any form of stimulus; the magic potion is tax cuts. And they [...]
Coburn On Taxes: An Instant Classic
Yesterday, I wrote about Senator Tom Coburn saying that “if we wanted to do new tax cuts, I think we ought to cut spending to pay for them” but it really wasn’t necessary to cut spending to pay for extending Bush‘s tax cuts. Since his original statement wasn’t entirely clear, yesterday on C-SPAN, he returned [...]
Delusionality And Mendacity: Republicans On The Bush Tax Cuts
Republicans of every stripe continue to spout utterly incoherent gobbledygook on the subject of George “Tax Cuts” Bush‘s tax cuts, the budget deficit and the national debt. Carly Fiorina — who used to be CEO of HP, was fired for incompetence, and decided that she was now qualified to be a Republican candidate for the [...]
Good Deficit, Bad Deficit
Republicans in Congress have been repeatedly ridiculed over the last several months for their new-found outrage over our truly humongous budget deficit. Ridiculed mostly for what can be delicately described as the time-inconsistency of their beliefs. When Republicans were last in power, they cheerfully operated under the what-me-worry philosophy that nothing had to be paid [...]
The Corporate Mind Of Employee Benefits Administrators
Companies in the employee benefits administration business must have a monthly contest to see who can get caught trying to pull the meanest-and-dumbest denial of coverage stunt. It’s early days still, but this month all the smart money is likely to be on North-Dakota-based Discovery Benefits. According to them, Discovery Benefits is not only “a [...]
We-a Culpa! We-a Minima Culpa!
Back in May, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published an interesting little study of media dishonesty. It examined how four major newspapers — the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today — have covered the topic of waterboarding [...]