No, Obama is not the worst president ever: The Big Lie and Republican politics

The big lie of the Republican party is that Obama is the worst president ever. Anyone with any critical faculties left recognizes this would be difficult to prove, even if true. Yet Republicans keep repeating the lie over and over again, never giving any facts to back it up. Or, if they do give facts, they turn out to be minor failures to fulfill campaign promises, such as when he said that if you like your health insurance you can keep it. I'm sorry, but no politician has ever kept all his or her campaign promises. 

Obama has kept most of his promises, and most of the ones he hasn't kept have been blocked by the Republicans. But Republicans never admit their complicity. They practice the propaganda tactic known as the "Big Lie", which maintains that people will believe a big lie if they hear it over and over again.

There are other, similar tactics used by Republicans to get people to follow them mindlessly.

Wikipedia discusses these practices in its article on "Big lie".

The primary rules are: 

• never allow the public to cool off 

Keep on cooking up new scandals, or repeating the old ones. Don't let the public forget "Benghazi", even if they don't know what it is. Keep forming new committees and hold hearings to rehash the old accusations.

• never admit a fault or wrong;

Never admit that Congress could have passed an immigration bill if the Republicans had joined with the Democrats. The Senate passed a bill, but the Republicans refused to bring it to a vote. It would have passed had they done so. Yet the Republicans claim it was the Democrats, specifically President Obama, who failed to pass an immigration bill. They also claim that it is Senator Harry Reid who is blocking legislation in the Senate, even though it is the Republican House of Representatives that has been blocking every Obama initiative for 4 years. 

• never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;

Be sure you mention that Obama is the worst president ever as much as possible. Use name-calling whenever you can. Call the Democrats "socialists", or "race-baiters". Call Obama "weak" and say that he needs to "grow a pair". Recall that Obama's stimulus package didn't work, though most of the spending items in it had been included in Republican bills, including G.W. Bush's stimulus package of 2008. Recall that Obama refused to compromise on the Affordable Care Act, although its basic idea was a Republican idea proposed by the Heritage Foundation and passed in Massachusetts by a Republican governor, Mitt Romney.

• never leave room for alternatives;

There were several issues, like immigration and paycheck fairness, where compromise might have produced agreement. But Republicans would rather have government fail, even though the failure causes hardship for everyone except the very wealthy.

• never accept blame;

For example, when Romney was asked about the firing of workers by Bane Capital, he said it happened after he left the company so he had no responsibility for it. When it was discovered that he employed undocumented workers as gardeners, he denied knowing about the problem. He said he fired them as soon as he found out they were undocumented, but in fact he fired them when the press found out about them.

• concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong;

Republicans pretend that Obama can be blamed for everything, even things that took place during the Bush administration.

• people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one;

I'm not so sure this is true. It would appear the Republicans will believe any lie as long as it favors Republicans. Another definition of the Big Lie may be closer to the truth: During WWII it was claimed that 

The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

That sounds more like the way the Republicans practice the Big Lie than the original definition. 

• and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Yep. That's what Fox News and Republican talking points are for. 

And the winner is...BIG BIRD!!!

It's not easy being green. At the recent debate, Mitt Romney offered to cut just one tiny, useless, inexpensive government program... PBS. Unfortunately for him, it turns out to be a very popular one. Mittens wants to fire Big Bird?!? BAD idea. People will remember that.

Mitt has apparently turned over a new leaf, and rewritten every position he ever had. The day after the debate, he came out and said he was wrong about the 47 percent. He even apologized. But it was too late. Obama, who everyone says lost the debate, had been careful not to let him make his apology in front of 50 million people.

Larry O'Donnell had the best take on the debate, borrowing from a Denver Post writer, who wrote, “Like a bull to a matador, Romney time and again turned toward Obama to deliver attacks on the president's job performance, portraying him as clueless to his policies' impacts and hopeless in trying to turn the economy around."

That is a great description of the debate. Now, I've actually seen a bullfight and I can assure you that this is exactly what happens. The matador pretends not to see the bull. He turns his back on him. He taunts him, getting him to charge again and again, until... until the bull is so tired he can't stand up any longer. Then the matador takes out his sword, walks up to the bull, and plunges the sword into the bull's heart.

During the debate, Obama pretended to be taking notes, just like John Stewart pretends to take notes. Obama acted as if he had an important meeting somewhere else. He scowled. But he never reacted to anything that Romney was actually saying, even when Romney said the most preposterous things. Romney flatly denied that he had a plan to lower taxes by five trillion dollars; he also stated that he had no idea how corporations could avoid paying taxes by using loopholes and overseas accounts. Both of those statements were jaw droppers, which would have prompted an ordinary person to exclaim, "Say, wha?"

Obama didn't bite. But he was taking notes all right-- notes about how best to turn Romney's outrageous statements against him.

Romney has already walked back a couple of his claims. If he truly intends to abandon his tax cut “plan” (now that he has denied that he ever HAD it, on national TV), he has less than a month to explain what, exactly, he will be doing instead. It will be interesting to hear what he comes up with, because that tax cut was the way he proposed to revitalize the economy.

The clock is ticking.

Checking the Factcheckers (Part Two)

Seventy-seven percent is not enough

Factcheck accuses Lilly Ledbetter and Laura DeLauro of exaggeration when they stated that women earn 77% of what men earn. The figure is an official one, published by the Bureau of the Census, so Factcheck is wrong to single out this figure for special analysis. Factcheck claims that the gap between what men and women earn for the same job is much less.

The situation for women is far worse than what the single figure 77% represents. This figure compares the earnings of full-time, year-round wage earners. Other figures show women in a much more desperate plight. Families headed by women have incomes only 65% of those headed by men. Both figures are medians; half of women earn more than 77%, but half earn less.

The disparity between the sexes becomes even greater when measured over longer periods of time. A 2004 study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research found that women between the ages of 26 and 59 made only 38% of their male counterparts over a 15-year period. More than 50% of women between those ages had a full calendar year without earnings, while only 16% of men did.

Not only did Factcheck's researchers call the 77% claim false, they also discovered sources who claimed that women were better off than the figure implies. They should have investigated further and they would have found the gender gap is just the tip of the iceberg that is the gender gap.

The Bain Bailout 

The story of the Bain & Company bailout was related in an article in the Rolling Stone. The article leaves out some important details, such as how much money Romney received personally from the federal bailout, because the article was based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from which most of the dollar sums had been deleted. Romney, true to form, refuses to release the information, but it is fair to assume he made millions from the deal. 

Factcheck explains that the federal bailout of Bain was a routine settlement with bank regulators that involved no taxpayer money. It defines the FDIC as an independent federal agency, but the FDIC is backed up by the full faith and credit of the US government. Factcheck says the settlement resulted in no loss to taxpayers, because the FDIC is funded by fees paid by banks. Factcheck would have us believe that taking $14 million from the FDIC as part of a bankruptcy settlement harms no one.

The FDIC is funded by fees, but whether they are called fees or taxes they are paid by taxpayers. The $14 million taken by Romney and Bain & Company came out of taxpayer pockets. The rates paid by depositors are higher because of deals like this one. 

Factcheck only muddies the waters

A fact is just a fact. Its understanding does not require a dissertation on whether the facts underlying assumptions are correct. When Democratic speakers used the figure of 77% to describe the gender gap, they took the figure from the US Census Bureau. That's the fact, not the wealth of quibbles unearthed by Factcheck. When Democratic speakers stated that Romney went to the US government to get a bailout for his company, that's a fact. The FDIC is a federal agency. Romney arranged a deal for his company with the FDIC.

Claiming that facts are false because of details obscures the issues involved here. It doesn't matter whether Romney owned Bain & Company when he negotiated the bailout. The important part of the Bain story is that Romney went to the federal government, asked for and got $14 million for Bain & Company, and profited richly from the deal. 

Romney opposes federal aid to poor people, however, because, one might say, suffering builds character. But he favors federal aid to the rich, including the undisclosed amount of federal funds he received from the FDIC for arranging a bailout. One of the aspects of the bankruptcy revealed by the Rolling Stone was that Romney inserted a clause in the bankruptcy agreement that distributed $5 million in bonuses to the executives of the company if creditors challenged it.  The wealthy financiers of this country have developed some very shoddy business practices by taking advantage of tax loopholes and federal agencies. That is the story of Bain & Company, and that is the story of Mitt Romney.