Memo to Politifact: This is why your stupid characterization of the truth as a lie drives me crazy. You bent over to appease the whacked-out, crazy right-wing and guess what! Fox News took that and ran with it.
Neil Cavuto just could not wait to crow today over it, and in the process, take a few pot shots at Democrats' framing of other issues. In Fox News-land, a Satan sandwich is a tasty morsel meant to be savored.
CAVUTO: Well it's official. It's a lie. And apparently a whopper of a lie. I am talking “Lie of the Year” whopper of a lie. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan source, every politician, Democrat and Republican, trusts, has just released its choice for the lie of 2011, the ad about granny's a big time doozie.
They know it and I've warned you about it.
(Video May 18, 2011)
CAVUTO: This is why we're not moving the ball. Big government fans are having a ball, by lying and exaggerating and insisting everything's fine, while folks who want to reign in these entitlements are not.
Let's just establish that Politifact is no longer nonpartisan nor trustworthy. Now that we agree on that, let's move on to the next Cavuto Crazy moment: Democrats cast the guy in the wheelchair commercial to look like Paul Ryan. Now I don't know if they did or they didn't. But if they did, they should have.
The intellectual dishonesty of Cavuto's take on this commercial really emerges when he starts going on about how granny wasn't going to be thrown off the cliff, because maybe today's granny wasn't, but the one who turns 65 in 10 years surely was.
WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Many seniors in America will be forced into poverty and worse, some seniors will end up dying.
CAVUTO: It just gets worse. I want you to look at this ad again. It is very well done. But look at the guy pushing grandma. Does he look familiar to you? You think they wanted to make him look like Paul Ryan, the head of the Budget Committee? Came up with the Medicare plan? I do.
So now the guy who had the guts to address Medicare costs, that are slowly killing us, well now, he's killing us. I think it's nuts.
(End video)
CAVUTO: Okay, that was seven months ago. I told you then no one was throwing grannie off the cliff, is trying to fix Medicare. More like throwing all us off the cliff if we don't.
And now we get to the truly rich part of Cavuto's little rant, where he takes the truth and lies through his teeth about it.
But the only thing scarier my friends than making Paul Ryan look like a murderer is butchering the facts like your ad, like saying Ryan was out to cut Medicare when at best he was only slowing the growth in Medicare.
Or later saying that draconian cuts in a debt deal spread out over ten years, while conveniently leaving out the reality we still have $9 trillion in more debt after those ten years.
Those are the same folks who brought you strategic investments because it sounded better than stimulus, or revenue enhancements, because they sounded better than taxes. The truth, words matter. Lies matter too. I know their words and I know the truth. Right here we distinguish, you decide.
Only slowing the growth in Medicare? How exactly was it only slowing the growth in Medicare to change it from a single payer efficient plan into a voucher plan for private insurance? Let's call it what it was: Wealth redistribution. Redistribution of wealth from grannies to wealthy doctors, insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, device manufacturers, insurance agents and other assorted players, not to mention the fact that Ryan proposed partial privatization of Social Security in that budget AND even more tax cuts for the rich. It wasn't slowing growth; it was simply lining the pockets of Paul Ryan's overlords.
As for the last line, excuse my loud and prolonged paroxysm of laughter.
