TOP REPUBLICAN LIES

It would take the rest of my life to list the lies the Republican Party has been promulgating for the past several decades. So I’m going to resort to my favorite trinity lists.

TOP THREE LIES REPUBLICANS TELL ABOUT THEIR PARTY

1. LIE: The Republican Party stands for reducing the size of the federal government.

FACT: Under Reagan, Bush senior and Bush junior, the federal government grew, all three left (and are leaving) behind them a vastly enlarged government than the one that existed when they became presidents. The only administration to reduce the size of the federal government since Reagan expanded it, was, you guessed it, Bill Clinton’s.

2. LIE: The Republican Party stands for fiscal responsibility (or sometimes stated as they are “fiscally conservative” or that they will “cut spending”).

FACT: Under Reagan and Bush senior, spending increased and the federal deficit grew to the largest in history—larger in fact than all previous deficits throughout our history combined! But that was outdone by Bush junior, who has exceeded even that excess in spending and fiscal irresponsibility, especially considering that he inherited the largest surplus in history from the most fiscally responsible administration in recent decades, Bill Clinton’s.

(Oh, and the much touted “experience” of Palin as a mayor of a “city” (population slightly over 5,000 when she was elected) at the Republican convention also includes a record of inheriting a surplus and leaving behind the largest deficit her hometown has ever had.)

3.

LIE: The Republican Party stands for national security.

FACT: The worst attack on U. S. soil by foreign agents occurred under a white house and congress controlled by Republicans, who were warned that the attacks were imminent but chose to ignore those warnings while Bush junior took a month-long vacation and his subordinates drew up a plan for attacking Iraq before terrorists from Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11 led by a Saudi living in Afghanistan who retreated to Pakistan.

The Republican response to their lapse in judgment and lack of preparedness—after an initially successful and widely supported defeat of the Taliban running Afghanistan—was to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and meanwhile to increase support of Saudi Arabia, many of whose leaders financially back Bin Laden and Al Queda and whose government supports the spread of a radical jihadist fundamentalist branch of Islam, and on top of that to increase support of Pakistan, where Bin Laden was hiding and where the Taliban was regrouping and is now operating out of to take back much of what we “liberated” from them in Afghanistan.

All that is a result of the party that talks about “supporting the troops” but ignored the military leaders and experts (or had them fired or forced them to resign) who pointed out that the job wasn’t finished in Afghanistan and that an invasion of Iraq not only went against all the beliefs of the Founding Fathers and American tradition and the Constitution, but would be a diversion from the main goal of capturing or killing Bin Laden and destroying Al Queada, but if Junior and his Republican team insisted on invading Iraq then more troops would be needed to do the job or the result would be chaos and civil strife.

Not only did the Republican leaders ignore the advice of their own military experts and leaders and send too few troops to Iraq guaranteeing more death and destruction and hardship than was necessary, let alone the complete collapse of the country’s capacity to self govern etc., but they sent them without proper armor for the troops or their vehicles leading to even more death and destruction, not to mention more tax payer money going to waste.

I could go on with examples for this one for years (e.g. the only two wars the USA “lost”—Viet Nam and Korea—were “lost” under Republican administrations), but I have a life to live.

THREE TOP LIES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TELLS ABOUT MCCAIN

1. LIE: McCain is a “maverick” who goes against the Republican powers that be.

FACT: McCain has occasionally taken a stand against the most outrageous offenses committed by Bush junior’s administration—torture, tax cuts for the wealthiest while everyone else pays more, etc.—but, since beginning his presidential campaign he has flip flopped on every major issue he had a difference with Bush-Cheney on, including torture, tax cuts for the wealthiest while the rest of us pay more etc. until, as the record shows, he now has voted over ninety percent of the time in favor of Bush-Cheney policies, and otherwise his stated positions are in line not only with the Republican Party but with the most conservative factions in it, promising, for instance, to appoint justices in the mold of “Scalia” to ensure the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, etc.

2. LIE: McCain stands up for the troops and veterans.

FACT: He did not support the recent G.I. Bill for Iraqi veterans that the Democrats had been trying to get passed and finally did because too many Republican Senators were afraid to have it on their record that they voted against veterans benefits. McCain has it on his record though, among other votes against measures to better protect the troops and, especially, to get them out of harm’s way and let the Iraqi government, which has an almost eighty billion dollar surplus, take care of its own security.

3. LIE: McCain tells it like it is (the so-called “straight talk”).

FACT: McCain has been caught in many lies, some of the more recent ones seeming (worryingly, remember Reagan’s later years) more like confusion than lies, but just one example was his famous “stroll” through an open market in Baghdad after which he claimed he had not warn armor and that it was safe and back to normal, when video showed he was wearing armor and surrounded by dozens of security guards and armed troops as well as armed vehicles with helicopter gun ships hovering overhead.

THREE TOP LIES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TELLS ABOUT OBAMA

1. LIE: Obama, and his wife, are part of a privileged elite who are “out of touch” with “normal Americans” and their lives.

Obama and Michelle both were scholarship students from working-class—and at times impoverished—family situations, who through discipline and hard work were able to study at the best colleges in the U. S. and then instead of turning those educations into opportunities to make themselves wealthy, chose to work with the needy and the powerless to help them learn ways to empower themselves and improve their communities.
While McCain and his wife (who inherited such extreme wealth she is worth over a hundred million dollars) flew around in their private jets to their excess of houses (so many McCain can’t remember the number) and who both come from wealth and privilege and have always been part of an elite sector of America that has never had to worry about money and never will.

2. LIE: Obama plans on raising the taxes of “middle-class” citizens, and struggling working families.

FACT: Obama plans on cutting taxes on the poor and “middle class” but restoring the tax rates on the wealthiest citizens that Bush junior cut and McCain opposed saying it was bad policy and bad economics, until he needed Bush supporters in his campaign and then he changed his position and now wants to make those tax cuts for the wealthiest permanent, which will increase the burden on the actual middle class not what McCain considers “middle class” (i.e. anyone making less than $5 million a year as he stated!).

3. LIE: Obama has never done anything other than “organize” (which the Republican strategists have cleverly turned into a pejorative).

FACT: Well yes, he has proven himself to be one of the greatest “organizers” in our history, beginning with neglected neighborhoods in Chicago where he helped residents win much needed services, to millions of young people and internet users who he has turned on to the political process for the first time etc.
But, he has also initiated, sponsored and gotten enacted through bi-partisan cooperation laws that provide healthcare for uninsured children, ethics reform laws for elected officials and elections themselves, lower taxes for working families, G. I. Bill benefits for veterans of Iraq (who were sorely neglected and even spurned except for photo opportunities by many in the Bush junior administration etc.) and many other laws that have benefited those without the corporate lobbyist connections.

And here’s a bonus LIE and FACT, pointed out to me by a fellow veteran: McCain is touted by himself and the Republican Party as someone who would never use the suffering of our troops for personal political gain. But McCain often points out the wristband he wears to commemorate one of our troops killed in Iraq and given to him by his family (I think it was his family, that detail I don’t remember but will check). He points it out to crowds he talks to, and to gatherings of fellow Republicans, like at this convention.

Obama has a wristband just like it, given to him under the same circumstances, which he wears always, but has never pointed out to any crowd or reporter etc. because he doesn’t take advantage of this personal connection to a fallen troop for his personal political gain.