For a long time now, reporters writing a story on some national news get a quote from the Republicans, get a quote from the Democrats and call it a day. Most readers will assume that reality lies somewhere in between. In the 90's, the Republicans figured out that you can say the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese and the press will print it. Consequently, when readers split the difference between "a major cause of the deficit is Bush's tax cuts" and "tax cuts can't cause deficits", the Republicans shift the perception way over to their side.
I have noticed a trend lately that the press is starting putting facts along with quotes from the Republicans that reveal that the Republicans statements are a bunch of lies.
For a long time now, reporters writing a story on some national news get a quote from the Republicans, get a quote from the Democrats and call it a day. Most readers will assume that reality lies somewhere in between. In the 90's, the Republicans figured out that you can say the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese and the press will print it. Consequently, when readers split the difference between "a major cause of the deficit is Bush's tax cuts" and "tax cuts can't cause deficits", the Republicans shift the perception way over to their side.
I have noticed a trend lately that the press is starting putting facts along with quotes from the Republicans that reveal that the Republicans statements are a bunch of lies. You have this AP story on Dubya's latest fund raiser:
President Bush charged Thursday that Democratic rival John Kerry's approach to recent tax cuts would be to "take them away" and use the money to expand the federal government.
:
In fact, the Massachusetts senator and Bush both would keep in place key tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year: an increase in the child tax credit; tax reductions for some married couples who would pay more than they would as individuals; and an expansion of the bottom 10 percent tax bracket. Virtually the only area where they disagree on this issue is on Kerry's call to end tax cuts Bush signed into law for those earning more than $200,000 a year.
Or this story from a
Lousiana paper:
Mehlman offered a sample of the likely GOP campaign criticism Kerry will face for the next eight months in Louisiana and elsewhere, suggesting that Kerry, in his two decades in the Senate, has shown a tendency to flip-flop on issues. As examples, Mehlman cited Kerry's support for the Patriot Act and now his declared intention to make modifications, his support for the No Child Left Behind legislation that he now criticizes and his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he now suggests is responsible for job losses.
Kerry has said that though he voted for the No Child Left Behind school legislation, it is being shortchanged because the Bush administration isn't financing it at adequate levels and that school districts will be left without the resources to comply with the legislation's mandates. And he said the major change he would make in the Patriot Act is replacing Attorney General John Ashcroft, who he said has acted recklessly and often without regard to constitutional rights.
And though he has insisted that he won't wait for United Nations approval before acting to deal with a foreign crisis, he said he will do a better job than Bush did in working to get as many foreign allies to work with the United States as possible.
Today's
Washington Post:
A new Bush campaign ad released this week proclaims: "January 2001. The challenge: an economy in recession." This backs up the claim often made by Bush and top aides that they "inherited" an economic recession.
The only trouble with this assertion is the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, which does the official dating of recessions, says the downturn began in March 2001 -- early in Bush's presidency. NBER is examining revised economic statistics to see if the official date should be moved earlier, but spokeswoman Donna Zerwitz said there is "nothing imminent."
This inconvenience, however, did not stop the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In their annual report last month, the president's economists argued that "revisions since the NBER made its decision for the most recent recession strongly suggest that the business-cycle peak was before March 2001." As a result, the CEA decided to "use the fourth quarter of 2000 as the peak of economic activity and the start of the recession."
Evidence since the CEA made its claim has been mixed; the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said employment peaked in March 2001, not February, as it has previously thought. And the CEA's credibility has since been undermined by Bush's refusal to endorse the council's hugely optimistic claim that the economy will add 2.6 million jobs this year.
Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said the ad was not suggesting that the recession had begun by January, but that many economic troubles greeted the president shortly after he took office. But Vice President Cheney, on Fox News this week, said: "We inherited a recession, a recession that began either shortly before or about the same time that we got into office."
The Reuters press release on the
latest employment figures:
Democrats have repeatedly criticized Bush for presiding over the weakest period of jobs creation for any president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. Since he took office, 2.2 million jobs have vanished.
The Bush administration released a forecast last month that looked for average growth of about 300,000 jobs a month this year -- well above most private forecasts. But with each disappointing employment report, that projection looks increasingly pie-in-the-sky.
Administration officials said Kerry's economic prescription of rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy was wrong-headed, contending that the weak labor market made it all the more vital to cut business costs and keep tax cuts from expiring.
If the media keeps up this steady stream of Watch-the-Bush-Administration-lie stories, people are going to realize that they can't trust Dubya and the Republicans.