The BIG LIE in Politics, From The Democratic Side [125]

I THOUGHT IT ABOUT time to bring the other side, the Democrats into the hot seat now that I have taken a few potshots at the Conservatives. Most of the examples will be coming from President Obama, but, I will present other Democrats as I find them.

President Obama has now had almost five years to accumulate misstatements, deceptions, and outright lies. Politifact, of course, has been keeping track and publishing what they find, which, in turn, gives me plenty of fodder to write hubs about.

1. On Friday, February 10th, 2012, in a briefing at the White House, President Obama repeated a familiar theme ... "Preventive care … saves money, for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody." This is something I absolutely believed to be true ... until a couple of days ago when I read Politifacts analysis. It turns out this claim is a LIE.

What is true is that Preventive Care does save Lives, but not necessarily money; in fact, it may cost more money in the long run. The question, of course, revolves around whether ObamaCare should insure that preventative care be part of the required health care offered with no co-pay; the theory being that preventative care would save money. Unfortunately, all it does is save lives and therefore becomes a debating point. If it actually saved money, there would be no debate at all.

2. On the Re-elect Obama-Biden website, the following was reported: "Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich all say they would cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero." This is a LIE.

While all three candidates did mention "zeroing out" foreign aid to all countries, the Obama campaign took it way out of context. What they really said, in a debate on foreign policy, was that they would assess foreign aid needs by first zeroing out each country's foreign aid budgets and rebuilding it from the ground up; that is a far cry from what is implied by the words "... cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero."

3. I have heard President Obama say something like the following many times, during his speeches, "What I have done -- and this is unprecedented ... is I've said to each agency ... 'look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them.'" It isn't the part about the review that is the problem, he is actually doing that, it is the "unprecedented" claim that is a LIE. He has also said words like "No other administration before me ...", etc. The problem, of course, is other administrations have done similar reviews, the Clinton administration being the last one.

SINCE PRESIDENT OBAMA is running unopposed, I have to search elsewhere to find Democratic examples of, he he, "Untruths". Senator Reid, ranks right up with Senator McConnell in fabricating so-called facts, my personal opinion, however, is he doesn't match McConnell's volume of them.

On Aug 2, 2011, during a floor speech, Senator Reid said, "There was a "loss of eight million jobs during the Bush eight years." That is akin to McConnell saying President Obama promised to keep unemployment under 8%, both are pants-on-fire-falsehoods which misrepresents an actual number. In other words, it is a BIG FAT LIE.

The truth of the matter is that during Bush's eight years, he only lost .7 million private sector jobs, although State and Federal jobs grew by 1.8 million, leaving a net gain of 1.1 million. Don't feel too good yet, Conservatives. What Reid is quoting is the number of jobs lost from the zenith of employment in Jan 2008 to its nadir in Feb of 2010; in that time, 8.8 million jobs were lost as a result of the Great 2008 Recession (not Obama's policies). However, Senator Reid was almost right; from the beginning of Jan 2008 to the end of Jan 2009, when Bush left office, 6.2 million of those 8.8 million had lost their jobs. Another 700,000 went by the way-side in the next month, before Obama's stimulus program even got started! So, while Senator Reid was technically wrong, because the 6.2 million loss in Bush's last one year and one month, was off-set by a 7.3 million gain the previous 7 years, BTW, in the same period, Reid correctly pointed out, President Clinton presided over a 23 million growth in jobs during his eight years.

PROBABLY ONE OF THE MORE vociferous contributors to the art of political lying are the various political committees. I will start with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

1. In an April 18, 2011 web ad, the DCCC offered that "Seniors will have to find $12,500 for health care because Republicans voted to end Medicare." Well, not really. As much as I hate to say it, LIAR, LIAR, PANTS-ON-FIRE. First of all, seniors will have to find only $6,350, according to the CBO, the difference would have been paid anyway under Medicare as it is today. Next, they forgot to add the caveat, "as we know it." to their claim the "... Republicans voted to end Medicare." This is an important disclaimer since the Republican plan is not ending Medicare at all, just changing it a lot.

IN A 2010 INTERVIEW, Senator Boxer says Condoleezza Rice didn't know how many troops had died in Iraq. On Aug 31, 2010, she was quoted as saying, regarding a 2007 Senate hearing where Ms. Rice was testifying, "I asked her how many people had died and she did not know the answer to that question...." The problem with that statement is that she NEVER asked Condoleezza Rice that question in 2007; Boxer is living in a world of revisionist history. BIG LIE!

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