Fuck Ben Nelson!!!

This is EXACTLY the kind of BULLSHIT  Kendrick Meek should be calling out.  Do we want another fucking Ben Nelson in the Senate?

HELL NO!!!

And I Bet He STILL Gets Quoted By WingNuts On Waterboarding

Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency's intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA's application of the medieval confession technique.

The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou's claim.

snip

Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.

"What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence."

But never mind, he says now.

"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

foreignpolicy.com

"Waterboarding kept us safe" was, is, and always has been a load of bullshit meant to justify the indulgences of cowards. Sadly, no matter how many of these stories come out now, the wingnuts and many other people who just don't follow the news closely will never acknowledge and or realize just how opposite it was from the truth.

On Harry Reid's Comments

I am not about to go into a long ass post about Harry Reid's comments describing President Obama as a "light skinned" black person who doesn't speak with a "negro dialect" unless he wants to. For one, what he said is true. For two its all been said before, just with "nicer" words. Every time a political pundit last year said President Obama was "non threatening" because of his background and demeanor or anything close, they were saying the exact same thing that Harry Reid said in 2006. Want to take issue with "negro dialect"? Ok then explain to me what the hell ebonics is. I know some of us black folks don't like to admit that many of our people don't speak the King's English well, but its true and trying to act like it isn't is pretty damned disengenuous.

Was it racist? I guess the question I would have in response is who would it have been racist against? Every racist term or sentence or phrase that I know of is meant to demean a person based on their race. Harry Reid was actually speaking favorably of President Obama and talking about why he had a chance to be our first black President. And what do you know, he was right. I guess MAYBE you could try to make the case that it was racist against all black folks not named Barack Obama, bu then of course you would still have to show how its demeaning. As I pointed out before, just the existence of the word "ebonics" in our culture speaks to the fact that many people belive black folks and other minorities speak a different language. Is that a negative? Most of the time it is, especially if you are applying for a job. And wasn't there a story not too long ago about business not bringing people who "sounded black" over the phone in for interviews? But hey why let facts like that get in the way of a hysterical over reaction right?

In closing I will say this, if you ever have had the occasion to praise and or promote Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchannan, you shouldn't have a got damn thing to say about any of this. And if the mainstream media types were doing their job they would point this out at every turn.

P.S. One more thing, was I the only one who read Reid's comments and immediately thought, "Damn, I guess that means Michael Steele could never be President" lmaooooo

P.S. 2: This still doesn't change my position that Harry Reid is doing a shitty job as Majority Leader. Thanks, that is all.

The Public Option Compromise

I haven't posted much on health care reform or the public option lately because since the bill has been in the Senate I have had a running headache every day over all the bullshit. Well supposedly last night the gang of 10 asshole coalition of Senators came to some kind of compromise. I have no idea if this means the bill will now pass or if its just another case of Democrats negotiating away the best policies for nothing, but Ezra Klein has a write up about it so I figured I would link it. This whole process has me so pissed off that I can't see straight at times, but I can tell you this, there will be a fallout if Democrats pass a bullshit bill.

It is what it is.

Tweety Will NOT Let Facts Get In The Way

This is absolutely remarkable.

I meant to post this video yesterday when I saw it but I couldn't get the embed to work.

I am going to tell you what happened before you watch the video but I don't know if you will actually believe it until you see it.

This segment is what Chris Matthews calls his "Big Number" on his Hardball show. He starts off by pointing out that new polling in a Washington Post poll shows that 70% of respondents in Virginia say that their feelings about President Obama will have no bearing on their vote for governor. He repeats this for effect after noting that the Democrat in the governor's race, Creigh Deeds, is down by double digits in the same poll.

But Tweety just can't help himself. You see Republicans have been saying that this race is a referendum on President Obama and Tweety is the ultimate concern troll. So just before he cuts to commercial he basically says "Damn what that poll says, this race is ALL about Obama".

Seriously.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It makes you wonder why he brought up the poll in the first place.

Chris Matthews is one of the major reasons I get pissed off when folks try to make analogies between FoxNews and MSNBC. If there is one guy who goes out of his way every single day to prove he isn't a liberal or progressive its Tweety. He will carry every drop of water for Republicans even when all evidence points to them being full of shit. Hell just today he was STILL trying to make abortion rights a "big problem" in health care reform when not even most Republicans are telling that lie any more.

In closing, fuck that guy!

FoxNews Needs A WAMBALANCEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You know that story that has been floating around all day about the White House attempting to exclude FoxNews from an interview with the new Wall Street "pay czar"? And the other networks standing up for FoxNews?

Yeah, not so much...

Which proves they can't even do a news story even if they are personally involved.

It Is Time To Start Calling Bullshit, Bullshit!!!

From Laura Rozen:

The report said the U.N. fact-finding mission investigating Israel's conduct during the January 2009 war found evidence of Israeli war crimes. Israel has denied the allegations and said the report's mandate was biased -- an opinion echoed by U.S. officials.

The Obama administration is ready to use the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council to deal with any other "difficulties" arising out of the report, the White House official said Wednesday. The administration also has made clear to the Palestinian Authority that Washington is not pleased with a P.A. petition to bring the report's allegations against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Last week, the State Department said the U.S. had "serious concerns" about the report by the Gaza fact finding commission, which had been headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.

Now here is the deal, if our government is going to cover for Israel at the U.N. then we should never vote for not a single prosecution of war crimes EVER again with the ICC. If the inference here is that the UN is biased against Israel then we should also pull out of the UN. You simply can not have it both ways anymore.

A blind man can see that Israel's behavior was reprehensible in the Gaza strip earlier this year. By taking the posture that we will veto any action against Israel based on actual evidence collected by UN investigators we have cemented our legacy as enablers of Israel and as being biased against Arabs and Muslims. Can you imagine the US vetoing an action that the UN proposed taking against Palestinians or Lebanese or Syrians?

Hell no you can't.

We can keep saying that no man is above the law but it is now very apparent that at least one nation is. Thanks to us that is.

"Liberal" Mainstream Media My Ass

I am going to be busy for the next few days so blogging will be light, but I just had to link to this Glenn Greenwald post ripping the New York Times to shreds for their article yesterday about Department of Justice officials supposedly signing off on torture techniques as "legal". What the hell are we supposed to do when our media which is supposed to report the news to us instead just act as stenographers to paint a picture exactly opposite from the evidence in their possession? I know people are worried about some Newspapers going out of business but when they are misleading the public in the destructive ways that they have for at least the last 8 years now I can't help but cheer for their demise. Glenzilla's post should not only be read but also passed on to your friends and family members so every one can be informed just how shitty a job our "liberal" mainstream media is doing of reporting the facts especially when it comes to pushing Bush Administration propaganda.

They Are Who I Thought They Were

A couple of days ago the Daily Telegraph put out a report supposedly suggesting that the pictures President Obama kept from being released in connection with abuse at Abu Grhaib included instances of rape and other forms of sexual assault. The main selling point for the authenticity of the story was that they quoted a retired General Antonio Taguba as saying he had seen the pictures himself in the course of investigating abuses at the prison. Now because of the Telegraph's shady credibility in my opinion, I decided to hold back on weighing in. I figured I would wait to make sure what they were saying was actually credible before I flew into some kind of misguided rant. Yesterday Mike Scherer of Time Magazine pushed back on the story a little, but lets face it, nobody really respects the guy. Besides that he hadn't talked to Taguba to see whether he confirmed or denied the story. Well finally today Salon writer Mark Benjamin reached Gen. Taguba for comment and he debunked the story.

May 30, 2009 Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denied reports that he has seen the prisoner-abuse photos that President Obama is fighting to keep secret, in an exclusive interview with Salon Friday night.

On Thursday an article in the Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president's decision to fight their release. The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."

But Taguba says he wasn't talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit that Obama is fighting.

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

Now that still doesn't mean President Obama was right to oppose releasing the pictures but there just isn't any there there.

Its Not The Torture, Its The Pictures

FoxNews says we did not torture on the one hand, but on the other hand releasing pictures of us torturing is going to hurt our national security. One can only wonder what the color of the sky is on the planet they live on.

Daddy's Little Girl

Why in the hell has MSNBC put Liz Cheney on Tee Vee twice now? What does she bring to the discussion other than pushing propaganda to promote her father? She wasn't in any meetings or privy to any top secret information. She doesn't know what the hell she is talking about. Yet MSNBC has allowed her to bring her whitewashing act to their network for the second time today. Its telling that they didn't have Lawrence O'Donnell on with her today. They didn't want to see her evicerated on their network evidently. Eugene Robinson did ok on pushing back on her bullshit but he isn't the right person for that particular job. MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing her to use their pulpit to shape public opinion on the issue of torture. Something she nor her sorry ass daddy know a got damn thing about since they both declined military service.





Update: Here is a link to Eugene Robinson's op ed today in the Washington Post crushing Liz's daddy.

Common Sense

For most of this morning Vice President Joe Biden has been villified for a supposed "gaffe" he committed on the Today Show. Here is the video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now this is how the story is being framed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden says he's advising his own family to stay off commercial airlines and even subways because of the new swine flu.

Biden said Thursday if one person sneezes on a confined aircraft, "it goes all the way through the aircraft." Going beyond official advice from the federal government, Biden said of his family's personal precautions: "That's me."

Now this is the framing even on liberal and progressive blogs and I for one am calling BULLSHIT. What VP Biden said was unquestionably reasonable in the context of advice he was giving to his family on how to avoid getting infected with swine flu and with the caveat he included that he was advocating not taking public transportation if you have an alternate means to get around. I don't think the WHO has raised the threat level to 5 out of 6 just for shits and giggles and in light of that how can it be wrong to say you are telling your family to avoid public transportation where the likelihood of contracting swine flu is much higher? I know I for one wouldn't be advising any family members of mine to take a flight or get on a subway right now. Its a shame that now every time Joe Biden says something that should be common sense for most folks the media rushes to call it a gaffe. I realize the White House made him walk back the statement but that says more about our chattering classes than it does about Joe Biden.

Ezra Klein has a post up similarly dismissing this "gaffe".

But here's the thing: Biden may be right to induce a bit of panic. The United States Travel Association won't think so. It's their profit stream on the line, after all. But epidemiologists are probably quietly relieved by the Vice President's comments.

Last night, I spent some time with Arin Dutta's "The Effectiveness of Policies to Control a Human Influenza Pandemic: A Literature Review." The overview was prepared for the World Bank. In it, Dutta argues that the key variable in determining the spread of an infection is the "base reproduction rate," defined as the number of secondary infections produced by a primary infection. In other words, if one person has the flu, then on average, the base reproduction rate measures how many people will catch the flu from him. Lowering that rate is the key to pandemic response. And lowering that rate requires things like "forcing or urging people to limit contacts, encouraging hand washing or other personal hygiene, or promoting the use of facemasks." Some of it sounds trivial. But it matters. If the reproduction rate falls beneath 1, "the epidemic usually dies out."

snip

Which is why the absolute best case is that Joe Biden did something that's so effective that he looks really stupid. If people actually reduce social contact and cut down on air travel and stay home in response to a single cough, then it's much likelier that swine flu will quickly die out. If it does, we'll all feel a bit foolish over having taken those precautions and late night comics will make fun of Joe Biden and everyone will move on. If we don't, and R jumps up, then we could be dealing with a full blown pandemic and Biden's warning will come to be seen as, if anything, insufficiently alarmist.

This is much ado about nothing and I am dissappointed that some on the liberal and progressive side are getting sucked into playing up this story.

Joe Klein Slaughters K Hamm

All I can say is go read the whole thing or just enjoy the excerpt.

Charles Krauthammer, the ultimate bleating-heart neoconservative, is all atwitter over Barack Obama's foreign trip. Where most rational observers saw a significant U.S. triumph, the beginning of our reconciliation with the rest of the world after eight years of stupid bellicosity, destructive threats and empty bluster, Krauthammer sees decline and weakness. Obama admitted past U.S. misbehavior! That is surely a sign of weakness...or maybe, perhaps, a sign of renewed strength? Or maybe, it's just being honest, a quality the Bush Administration eschewed. The Euros chose not to play on Afghanistan? Perhaps that had something to do with the Bush Administration's myopic avoidance of that theater of battle for the past seven years--the Euros, not the heartiest of allies when it comes to warmaking, were left to fend for themselves without any U.S. leadership or much U.S. support and they are aching to leave now. Over the next year, we'll see what effect a renewed US good-faith effort in Afghanistan has when it comes to stiffening the spines of our allies.

snip

And there was--oh. my. God.--the failed North Korean rocket launch. The Gates Defense budget is cutting anti-missile defense systems in Alaska. More Obama wimposity! Except that Gates has decided not to spend tens of billions on an anti-missile system (that doesn't work) to counter a North Korean rockets (that don't work) carrying North Korean atomic bombs (that have, so far, fizzled when tested). The real North Korean threat, created by George W. Bush's first-term ineptness, is the nuclear fuel that was produced in the past six years--fuel that the wildly impoverished North Koreans could sell to terrorists or rogue states (as they sold their nuclear plant design to the Syrians).

snip

The point is that Krauthammer's nonsense--the whole neoconservative project--proved an utter failure during the Bush years and now exists well outside a vast, stable, liberal-moderate consensus on foreign policy that includes most Democrats, the Bush 41 realists and the leading strategists of the U.S. military.

Stay Classy Michele Bachmann

Still more fearmongering from Michele Bachmann and allusions to Nazi facism this weekend on a radio show when talking abou the bipartisan approval of the expansion of Americorps.

It’s under the guise of — quote — volunteerism. But it’s not volunteers at all. It’s paying people to do work on behalf of government. …

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

Steve Benen fisks this dreck

Now, I feel kind of awkward fact-checking obvious madness, but I suppose it's worth noting two quick points. First, there's nothing in the legislation requiring public service. It's about expanding service opportunities for those who choose to pursue them.

Second, support for the expanded community service programs was bipartisan. The bill passed the Senate with 79 votes, and passed the House with 321 275 votes. Bachmann apparently believes some of her own conservative Republican colleagues backed an initiative to mandate public service and force young people into re-education camps that only exist in her twisted imagination.

Stepping back, though, this reminds me of a great post Kevin Drum had over the weekend in which he pondered why, exactly, so many on the far-right are feeling besieged and panicky.

"Who, exactly, is their enemy these days?" Kevin asked. "I'm not sure they know themselves. But maybe that makes it worse.... Like a horror movie where you're surrounded on all sides by something you can never quite make out, I guess it seems to them like there's something horrible going on, but it's something so insidious that they're only allowed to catch occasional foggy glimpses of it."

Right. And to take this one step further, I think this also helps explain why truly batty conservatives like Bachmann and Glenn Beck fabricate dire threats that don't exist in our reality. They're struggling to deal with legitimate progressive policy ideas, so they're stuck manufacturing make-believe policy ideas that suit their worldview. Obama wants to adopt a global currency! He wants young people in government-sponsored re-education camps! He wants to take medical decisions away from doctors and give them to bureaucrats! He's going to impose a tax on every time we flip a light switch!

These ideas are clearly delusional, but for those who need to see a political apocalypse, they apparently don't have a choice. Debating real ideas on the merits is proving too difficult, so they're creating their own reality and hoping their supporters play along

Now the overriding question is WHEN WILL THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA CALL THIS BULLSHIT OUT? Some journalists evidently think its not their job to do so or that they would be irresponsible to link events to right wing rhetoric. And in the next breath they wonder why they are working in a dying industry.

Go figure.

Mike Pence Is A Supreme Parser

Someone please explain to me how if President Obama's economic policies fail, the country won't by extention fail. Seriously, I am willing to be convinced.

Mainstream Media Inventing Earmark Promises

Andrea Mitchell just said that President Obama made a campaign pledge to ban all earmarks. When in the hell did that happen? Seriously, can anybody back up her statement because from what I remember it was John McCain who kept harping on earmarks, not then Senator Obama. In point of fact it was Obama who pointed out how little earmarks are when you consider the universe of government spending. And Andrea Mitchell isn't alone with running with this theme. Man this kills me. The mainstream media makes shit like this up just so they can bash President Obama for backing out of a campaign pledge that he never actually made. Is anybody going to correct the record?

Republicans LOVE Earmarks

The GOP, with the help of some sorry assed lazy journalists, is now trying to sell the omninbus spending bill which passed the House yesterday as a porkladen spending bill full of earmarks. But you see there is an interesting fact about that omnibus bill, the Republicans contributed 40% of the earmarks. When you think about it thats almost precisely their ration in both the House and the Senate. Its also of note that all of the earmarks combined make up only about 1% of the whole bill. Another little fact that you won't hear much is that 153 Republicans members of the House that voted against President Obama's stimulus bill, voted FOR the omnibus bill. Let that sink in for a minute. The House Republicans who claimed they were voting against the stimulus bill meant to get our economy going because of "fiscal responsiblity", just voted en masse to vote FOR a bill that they claim is full of pork and earmarks. Hypocrisy is too nice a word for these idiots.

As an aside, this particular jackass in the media decided to link to this other particular dickhead's story purporting that President Obama had an earmark in the omnibus bill. There is only one eensy weensie wittle problem. Its simply not true. President Obama was just a co sponsor of a bill included in the omnibus bill which did not direct money to his home state of Illinois but to Indian lands inside the US for vocational education. But hey why use facts when it is so much more fun to just make up shit, right?

The Light Is Breaking Through

More people are starting to wake up to the reality that the Republicans are not negotiating in good faith. The latest is Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times.

What in heaven's name does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have against honeybees?

That question haunted my days after I saw the Kentucky Republican on TV fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for "honeybee insurance."

"This is nonsense," he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda.

So I resolved to get to the bottom of this scandalous expenditure.

I guess better that than investigating the condom provisions lol.

Yet the Republicans seem to have trouble coming up with more than irrelevant or trivial arguments. Appearing on ABC on Sunday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), for instance, owned up to calling the stimulus plan the "worst plan since the 16th Amendment paved the way for the income tax."

Because the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, this rather dated DeMint's mind-set. In any event, he didn't offer a proposal on how to fund the government, including his paycheck, without an income tax. He just complained that the stimulus plan involved a lot of spending. He would prefer that it all be in tax cuts,apparently on the grounds that the tax cuts enacted under the Bush administration in 2001 bequeathed to us an economy that has performed so well.

Ooops did somebody drop some reality and fact? Oh noez.

On NBC, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), said she wanted the bill to have more spending on infrastructure, but she wanted it to be on military infrastructure, even though much of that winds up as scrap metal in Iraq and Afghanistan, not bridges and schoolhouses in the United States.

She said she would strip from the bill all the "social spending that is not going to create jobs," but when pressed by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), her on-air debating partner, she agreed to preserve some social spending, such as unemployment benefits. The effect of this exchange was to leave Hutchison sounding as though she made up her position as she went along.

The GOP, clueless? Say it ain't so....

This isn't radical thinking. It's endorsed by, among others, Martin Feldstein, who was Ronald Reagan's chief economic advisor and is consistently voted by his peers as the Economist Least Likely to be Mistaken for a Democrat. Feldstein opposes most of the tax cuts favored by the GOP, especially business tax cuts. To be fair, he isn't entirely enamored of President Obama's proposal -- he thinks it should spend more on programs that will produce more short-term employment and less on open-ended programs.

Yet the plan before the Senate includes hundreds of billions of dollars in near-term programs and projects. There's $90 billion for school construction and renovation and educational grants and $79 billion for state educational programs, most of which would be spent within two years. Of the $27 billion for highway construction, most would be spent within four years.

Again truth instead of propaganda. Ain't it refreshing?

That brings us to McConnell and his problem with "honeybee insurance." It turns out that the Senate minority leader took his cue from Neil Cavuto of Fox News, who has been carrying on about the topic for more than a week. Their campaign was joined Tuesday by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who stood on the floor of the chamber challenging "any member to come and explain what that provision was."

I'm no senator, but I'm pleased to inform Vitter that it is, in fact, a disaster insurance program for all livestock producers. Beekeepers obviously would be minor beneficiaries next to, say, cattle ranchers, so it's a tad bit dishonest to label the whole program "honeybee insurance."

The provision simply continues a program enacted by Congress last year, overriding a veto by President Bush. In other words, the Senate voted on it twice in 2008 -- once to enact and once to override. Connoisseurs of political comedy will see the punch line coming: McConnell and Vitter voted yea both times.

So it turns out that McConnell isn't really against honeybees. He's only using them to pretend that he's got a principled objection to a stimulus plan aimed at pulling the country out of the most severe recession in decades.

The honeybees, and the rest of us, are merely collateral damage.

And until more big time MSM journos like Michael Hiltzik decide to expose these fools we will continue to be "collateral damage"

Now if only the "libruls" on Tee Vee like Tweety would start paying attention.

More Of The Same

What's that you say? Conservatives caught lying again? Say it ain't so.

And Everybody Would Get A Pony Too...

I am pretty sure that nobody was buying John Boehner's bullshit about the GOP economic proposal creating twice as many jobs for half the money as the Democratic plan. But just in case anybody was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has some news for you:

But where did the Republicans get that number? By drawing some fuzzy conclusions from a 2007 paper by Dr. Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers

snip

In fact, a year before being tapped to serve as the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Romer co-authored a report echoing the view that tax cuts can have a very large economic stimulus effect. As the authors noted at the time, 'tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.' ... Using different assumptions and different sample periods, they estimated that a change in taxes equal to 1 percent of GDP resulted in a 2.2 percent to 3 percent change in GDP, with tax cuts increasing GDP.

We find Dr. Romer's previous conclusions on the economic impact of change in tax policy as an appropriate multiplier for examining the impact of stimulus proposals.

Except that the Romer analysis used by the GOP (linked to in the third paragraph of this page) never examined the effects of tax cuts on a deflationary economy -- it looked at the effects of tax increases on the economy as a whole and found a negative effect of 2.2% - 3% on GDP.

The Republican analysis simply flipped those numbers to positive and applied them to the GOP-backed tax cuts, then multiplied the result by a broad job creation estimate used in a recent paper from Romer and Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to the vice president.

Like my Momma always told me, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Especially if its a Wing Nut's voice you are hearing.