The right wing has to lie because, if it didn’t only white supremacists, the KKK, neocons, neoliberals, and the Kleptocrats would support it. That’s no more and probably less than 20% of the population.

If it told the truth, it wouldn’t win any elections.

Yep.

But all the lies are aided and abetted by the faux “balance” that has become seemingly mandatory in the TradMed.

I do remember a time when newspapers and such would not print lies just to create a fake balance in the stories but they’ve gotten seriously scared over the years at the wingnut noise machine.

Godwin incoming.

Bob Corker has never struck me as particularly bright — and, yet, he beat Harold Ford, Jr, in a fair fight.

Kind of amazing, ain’t it?

Hard to tell which one is worse.

Yes. I hear it every damned day. The budget numbers are always ignore the fact that the biggest single discretionary spending item is defense, and we spend more than the next 28 countries combined.

But noooo…we can’t afford that expensive commie health care, should be putting the elderly on catfood diets, and starve off the little ones in the hot lunch crowd.

Corker’s a character out of a bloody Dickens’ novel — “You want MORE?!?!”

And as someone pointed out recently, progressives don’t have a clue as to what the percentage of GDP the Federal Government spends as we simply don’t care! Government needs to spend what it needs to spend, what percentage of GDP it spends is completely meaningless. We don’t celebrate when the number goes up, we don’t get bummed out when the number goes down, it’s a number of no intrinsic importance. Only right-wingers can tell you off the bat what the current number is.

Spot on!

It’s lunacy to take either Corker or Bowles seriously.

If unemployment is over 5% then we need to spend more.

If inflation is rising too fast then we need to tax more.

I think government shoud spend about 40% of the GNP. Maybe we can find a middle ground.

… Once that decision is made — I might say 18 percent. Erskine may say 21 percent. Maybe the right number is someplace in between. But after that decision is made, what is the appropriate tax policy to generate economic growth?

And all this time the Republicans have been telling us they know exactly how to set the tax rate and that it’s private business rather than gov’t which creates jobs.

Now he says nobody knows, so we’ll just guess. That’s not the leadership America needs.

America has succeeded with a lot of different tax rates, so clearly no one number is perfect. The tax policy we need depends upon many factors.

Recently the Bush tax cuts didn’t help us generate ANY new jobs, so it isn’t solely reduced rates. Setting the rules for an economy to function well and ensuring the populace have money to spend (especially in a consumer-driven economy) are very important and the Republicans have opposed those every time.

If only there was a democrat who knew how to buy a car. So Bowles shit number becomes the high bid. Reminds of Obama’s stimulus “negotiation” and everything else, for that matter.

Truth is meaningless in the current corporate infotaintment media environment. The comfortable lie will always beat the uncomfortable truth as long as both are presented as equally valid by uncritical journalists more concerned with ratings and access than truth and accuracy.

How about appealing to the electorate articulately and with an economy of words. The right wing grabs a phrase or a slogan. The left gives a 20 minute poorly framed response. We have spent almost a decade trying to win the hearts and minds of foreigners. How about the HEARTS AND MINDS of American. Start with their hearts appealing to their moral center about what is just, fair and enriches the commons for everyone. Then appeal to their minds and concisely frame the argument with the truth. Policy that benefits the struggling is usually cheaper in the long to everyone. Then hit back at the lies, smear and failed policies still being touted by the right. Take them off at the knees when they deceive. Also, it doesn’t hurt to call out the media everytime they allow a lie to slip by. Do it enough and they will stop it or look like fools.

I’m not as well-informed as some others here, but when I watched the interview, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) reminded me, “Either he’s full shit. Or it’s really sad for a voter to fool himself into thinking our elected congressional politicians are aware of what they’re talking about and/or doing with the issues.”

None of this made me feel encouraged.

Many thanks for your thoughts. Have been in a discussion about choosing a theme and pressing it over and over, somewhat as the right wing does. I come out still thinking that it’s not a One Size Fits All operation, though. A Sharron Angle is a different lunatic from a Corker. Fighting a Social Security privatization effort is not the same as the living wage issue. They have in common the effort by the right to turn this into a third world country. But I think the right by hammering all of its pegs into round holes of the leadership’s making dooms them all as the lies turn up again, over and over. I still think that the electorate will not make the error of returning the country into the disaster they created; all the media insistence in 2007, that McAyn was a shoo-in and the Dems were losing, did not work.

And we know the left wing nevers lies and is always corrrect. There is lying on both sides and there is not – perhaps it’s just differences of opinions or people were mistaken. Either way, you all keep up your absoluteness and you’ll keep your label as left wingnuts.

They lie repeatedly and effectively for one fundamental reason: the voting public is profoundly stupid and will believe any outrageous Bullshit over the truth most of the time.

One of the advantages the right currently holds is that they have told so many lies for so many years that many people now believe nothing any politician says. The impression that both sides lie was solidified by years of shows like Crossfire, in which the two sides would argue back and forth loudly and apparently to no purpose. The overall impression was that both facts and opinions were equally variable. I have to sympathize with the public: how were they supposed to figure out what was true?

VORE, under the assumption that both sides lie all the time, you would have to assume I’m lying right at this very moment.

If you believe that, it’s useless for me to say anything at all.

Nevertheless, and regardless of what you believe, it’s possible to document that Republicans tell a lot more lies in public than Democrats.

Well, Jon Stewart figured it out. He even went on the show and told them specifically that what they were doing was bad for America! I was glad to see the show fold within weeks after that.