Better Pay, More Independent Workers -- No Wonder GOP Hates Obamacare

The bad news keeps coming for the anti-Obamacare right. Not only did a Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday detail how the Affordable Care Care would empower workers to work fewer hours if they chose, but further examination of the report finds even more good news for America's working people. Talking Points Memo's Dylan Scott is once again on the ball:

TPM spoke with... top economists who agreed with [this] analysis: People choosing to work less because of Obamacare, as CBO projects, would mean higher wages.

"That stands to reason. You get this sorting effect," Dean Baker, co-founder of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. "You have a lot of people working now who don't want to work. The only way they can get insurance is through their employer."

Those people retire or cut back their hours or otherwise lower their participation in the labor market -- a possibility that CBO raised itself -- reducing the labor supply. Over the long term, that drives up wages. Baker said that CBO said as much in its analysis: The report projected that total hours worked would drop by as much as 2 percent by 2024 because of Obamacare, but total compensation would fall only 1 percent.

Supply and demand: reality's greatest defender -- at least, in matters economic.

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Busting the Myth of the Victorious Gun Lobby

You're familiar with the narrative by now. One year after the Sandy Hook Massacre, where gunman Adam Lanza took the lives of twenty young children and six adults, Americans are no safer from gun violence than they were before. Worse, because conservatives are reactionaries and their first impulse is to respond to liberal arguments with contrarian dickishness, legislation has been passed in more Republican areas that actually loosen gun laws. The narrative is, as one Washington Post blogger put it, that "gun control is losing, badly."

But the chart above is from that very blogger's post. A Gallup poll shows that the appetite for stricter gun control is still there. It is, in fact, quite easily the most popular opinion, beating the "no change" crowd by more than 10 points and soaring over those who want to weaken gun laws by 36 points. Further, gun ownership is down from an all-time high of 51% of respondents to an anemic 37% -- with a particularly steep decline since Sandy Hook. If we could have a national referendum on gun safety right now, strengthening gun laws would win in a landslide.

Mitt Romney wishes he could've been "losing" like this. He would've been losing all the way to the White House.

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What We Know About Sandy Hook

The official police investigation into the killer behind the Sandy Hook massacre has closed and the final report offer frustratingly few answers. Authorities found no evidence that he'd ever spoken about any plans to commit the crime to anyone else, but that this crime was committed for reasons we'll never know. He'd had no contact with anyone at the school, so it couldn't have been some argument or feud. And the "violent video games" theory? Adam Lanza seemed obsessed with only one video game in particular, according to CNN.

But while many of his video games were violent, others were not. For months before the killings at Sandy Hook, he would go to a movie theater on weekends to play the dance game "Dance Dance Revolution" for hours, the report recounts.

Maybe he was playing violent video games at home. But so do plenty of other people. Only one went out and committed an unimaginably horrific crime. If a video game drove him to a murderous state of mind, there's more evidence that video game was "Dance Dance Revolution" than "Call of Duty."

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Getting Healthcare News from People Who Told You Second Hand Smoke was Harmless

Back in the '90s, one of Rush Limbaugh's big issues was the "junk science" that held that second hand tobacco smoke was bad for you. Never mind the obvious; that if first hand smoke was bad for you, the idea that second hand smoke was not is absurd. But Limbaugh was and is an expert in making endless gullible people believe patently ridiculous things, which made him the perfect propagandist to rile up dopes into thinking you had some sort of a right to smoke around the baby and that the liberal nanny state was taking that right away -- not because of health concerns, but because they're all commies who hate big business. Limbaugh continued the fight long after the battle was lost, insisting as recently as 2010 that "second hand smoke is harmless."

This campaign wasn't exactly Limbaugh's idea. Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds enlisted him and others in a big PR push that included the arguments that nicotine was "NOT addictive,"  to "point out 'victimhood' of smokers--outside in wind and cold--as pariahs." The idea was to "create fear of loss of liberty" and to "incite smokers to rebel and spread that rebellion to nonsmokers now!" Who would be more perfect than Limbaugh's audience of "dittoheads"  -- a group of constantly whining conservatives completely convinced of their perpetual victimhood? Always quick to reactionary rage and never prone to deep thinking, the far right talk radio base has always been a herd of buffalo that corporations could panic into a stampede and send to trample (or try to anyway) anyone they wanted. They became the "town hall mobs," which in turn became the Tea Party.

This, I believe, is essential background in understand the furor around this:

Talking Points Memo: Donna received the letter canceling her insurance plan on Sept. 16. Her insurance company, LifeWise of Washington, told her that they'd identified a new plan for her. If she did nothing, she'd be covered.

A 56-year-old Seattle resident with a 57-year-old husband and 15-year-old daughter, Donna had been looking forward to the savings that the Affordable Care Act had to offer.

But that's not what she found. Instead, she'd be paying an additional $300 a month for coverage. The letter made no mention of the health insurance marketplace that would soon open in Washington, where she could shop for competitive plans, and only an oblique reference to financial help that she might qualify for, if she made the effort to call and find out.

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Unable to Fool Anyone Else, Republicans Resort to Scamming Each Other

The government shutdown drags on. And from the nation's rightwing media, Republicans are getting some really lousy advice.

"I think the worst outcome, though, for the Republicans in the House at this point -- as they have been reasonable and the president totally unreasonable, Reid unreasonable -- is to cave," says Sean Hannity. "I don't think they should give in at all. And if that means that they're going to sit this out for a month or two months, or however long the president wants to be arrogant and not talk to anybody, then just sit it out."

"Media lies only have so much traction, eventually people will ask: 'Why won't Obama/Dems offer anything.'" advises Breitbart.com's Jon Nolte. "Hang in there, GOP!"

Other brilliant strategists urging a "stick to your guns" approach are Sarah Palin, Erick Erickson, and Newt Gingrich -- the latter apparently having learned nothing from his own government shutdown fiasco. For the most part (Gingrich now sadly included) these are all rightwing media types. They'd probably prefer that Republicans win elections, but not nearly as much as they'd prefer not to lose their audience. The GOP base are emotionally-driven and poorly informed, so they really do think that if Republicans just hold out long enough, shout loud enough, and wish with all their little hearts, they'll do away with Obamacare.

A rally the troops message brings in the dopes. A "hey look, we have to face reality..." approach is a fast ticket to HasBeentown, by way of RiNOville. The base doesn't tune into rightwing media to hear reality -- that much should be obvious to anyone. They tune in to have their prejudices and misconceptions reinforced. They want to be lied to and if you level with them, you're outta here. So the wingnut punditry are going to be a chorus singing the praises of self-destruction.

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Are Selective Reading, Social Media Driving Partisanship?

On the bright side, it's good evidence that rightwing complaints of "liberal media bias" are baloney. A new Gallup poll tracks public confidence in the media and finds that confidence down across the board. Confidence in newspapers is now at 15% for conservatives, 25% for moderates, and 31% for liberals. In television news, it's 18% conservative, 24% moderate, and 26% liberal. Sure, conservatives trust media the least, but if there were any hint of liberal bias, liberals would be pleased as punch with these news outlets.

According to Gallup, the trust in newspapers peaked in 1979 at 51% and has been rocky since. Trust in television, on the other hand, has never been very high -- it topped out at 46% in 1993. The reason for this drop in confidence is fairly clear, according to Gallup:

Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news has been slowly eroding for many years, worsening further since 2007. By that point, newspapers and television news had been struggling for years to figure out how to adjust their strategy for a growing Internet audience.

It was also around that time that social networking sites truly began to proliferate, causing news outlets and journalists to work to find their place on them and serving to expand the role of citizen media and user-generated content. Twitter had launched in 2006, and by 2007-2008 was growing its audience rapidly. Facebook had reached 30 million users by mid-2007 and more than 100 million by the end of 2008.

Unfortunately, a lot of this social media information is complete BS. Your crazy uncle Howard's Facebook links about Barack Obama's secret terr'ist background and his fake birth certificate are not reliable news sources. Yet a Pew study on the state of the media finds that, while TV is still the king (likely driven by local news), online sources are now a close second when it comes to the places where people get their news. Granted, a lot of that online news is still newspaper and TV reporting, but even that old school news reporting is commented on by partisans right there on the page. Further, the links to many of these stories are supplied by people with an ax to grind -- stories that back up their point of view get shared around, those that don't get ignored. Stories about snow storms and cold snaps get passed around by global warming deniers, while stories about steadily rising temperatures, heat waves, and droughts don't.

This selective sharing would result in the appearance of partisanship by the sources shared. In other words, if crazy uncle Howard keeps linking to AP articles about poll numbers and faux scandals, then someone who's not on Howard's side of the divide may begin to wonder how reliable Howard's favorite wire service can be. You never see the stories he ignores; all you get are the "Sarah Palin says Pres. Obama kicked her dog" headlines and never the "Factcheck: Sarah Palin full of crap" ones.

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Poll Shows Guns, Immigration 'Top Priorities' for Voters -- Queue the Rightwing Spin

 

It's a poll that sure to get a lot off attention -- and spin -- from the right. A new Gallup poll shows that most voters rate "reducing gun violence" and "reforming immigration" as top priorities. The problem is that this percentage is on the lower end of the scale from economic issues.

Part of the problem is that Gallup gives their analysis of the poll the completely inaccurate title of "Americans Give Guns, Immigration Reform Low Priority." The poll shows that 55% of Americans rate gun violence and 50% rate immigration reform as "top priorities" and 20% and 32% think that the respective issues are of medium priority. It's hard to see how those numbers are bad news for people advocating for either issue. It's just that fewer are rating those issues as priorities over economic issues. People don't think immigration and gun violence are "low priority," as Gallup's headline would make it seem. Majorities think they're high priority. In fact, Gallup specifically asked in they were low priority and the response was overwhelming. Only 13% believe that immigration reform is a low priority, while 17% believe the same about gun violence.

Gallup even admits to comparing specific apples to very broad oranges:

"Creating jobs" and "helping the economy grow" are of course broad and diffuse goals that do not easily translate into specific legislation. And even though there is significant consensus across party lines that these two issues should be given high priority, there are fundamental party disagreements on the broad approach that can be taken to achieve these goals. These disagreements no doubt have kept the Congress and the president from moving forward on these issues -- but to the degree that these elected representatives feel it is their duty to follow the wishes of those they represent, they would renew their focus on efforts to come to consensus on reaching these goals."

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Overlooked Earth Day

Given the awful week we just went through, it might be easy to overlook Earth Day. After all, terrorist bombings and exploding fertilizer plants and a congress more interested in saving gun manufacturers' profits than in saving American lives aren't problems to be solved by reducing carbon emissions. But the truth is that we need to remember Earth Day now more than ever. If we don't have a survivable environment, none of these other problems will matter. Earth Day comes at a perfect time -- just when we start to lose sight of the importance of the environment, we're reminded that all other problems are of secondary importance.

Fortunately, we're able to walk and chew gum at the same time -- i.e., we don't have to solve problems one at a time, in order of importance. We can deal with terrorism and corporate anarchy and gun fetishism and the environment at once. It's really not that hard. Or, at least, it shouldn't be. But our media makes it more difficult. It's not that the media can't walk and chew gum at the same time -- newspapers prove the opposite. We don't get a big log of paper devoted to one, single subject  on our doorsteps every day. But the electronic media; now there's an example of a one-track mind. The explosion in West, Texas proves that. In any normal circumstance, it would be the story of the year -- but it was unfortunately overshadowed by another tragedy.

Now, I want you to consider how TV coverage of the Boston bomb attacks went. Think back. When you tuned into your favorite cable news network, you spent one helluva lot of time watching talking heads say nothing. They'd learn something new, take the few minutes it took to report that, then yack and yack and yack about nothing. In fact, if you remember correctly, you'll remember that TV media mostly talked about their own coverage; "We're hearing a lot of conflicting reports, so we'll keep you up-to-date when things get clearer." It's an oddity that cable news won't cut away from a story -- even when they have nothing to say -- but the purpose of that is to keep eyes on screens. If you turn on CNN to get news about The Big Story and they're talking about something else, you're switching over to MSNBC. Ratings bias kicks in and we all wind up watching big piles of nothing.

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The Pointlessness of Spinning an Event Like the Boston Bombings

I saw the article yesterday, but I kind of set it aside. In it, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Marathon bombing has all the earmarks of a domestic terror attack.  I bookmarked it and tagged it for later, thinking that maybe it would be better reference from a historical standpoint than from a predictive one. After all, rightwing bloggers have been using baseless speculation to cover themselves in clown paint and I wasn't eager to emulate their failures. I thought the article would better serve as a "clues were there" reference (or "clues were misleading," as the case might be). The article describes the bombs as "crudely made" and suggest that the death toll indicates they weren't as effective as the bomber would've hoped, "making it unlikely that they were the work of a foreign government or global terrorist group, such as Al ­Qaeda." Besides, Islamic terrorist organizations always claim credit for bombings -- that is, after all, the point: to spread terror -- and we're now approaching the end of the 72 hour window in which those claims usually are issued. In incidents of attacks by lone domestic terrorists, it's generally the case that no one takes credit, because the perpetrator doesn't want to risk providing more evidence. In these cases, the purpose of the attack isn't to spread terror, but to "strike a blow" against a perceived enemy from the perspective of their own lives (i.e., the DC Sniper, the Olympic Park bombing, or Oklahoma City). Sophisticated terrorists try to perceive their attacks from the eyes of the media and the populace. From the Globe article:

Juliette N. Kayyem, a Globe columnist and lecturer at ­Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who has spent years working on counter­terrorism and homeland security, said she thought the bombing was probably the work of a terrorist in the ­Boston area who would appreciate the race’s importance to the local culture.

“It is probably home-grown, someone with a political cause from the right or the left,” said Kayyem, “someone who knows how appealing the Boston ­Marathon is to citizens here.”

“Even though it’s an international event, it is still a local event,” she said.

Of course, none of this is to say it isn't an Islamic terror attack -- which was why I approached the piece with a healthy amount of caution and a grain of salt. What people surmise and what people know are two entirely different things.

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It's All Just a Game: How the Political Media Make Heroes Out of Jerks

Hey, want to see some journalistic malpractice? Then head over to Buzzfeed and take a look at Evan McMorris-Santoro's latest steaming pile of fly food.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put on a clinic in crisis communications Tuesday, turning a potentially explosive secret recording of his campaign's strategy session into a political bludgeon to beat Democrats — and the campaign cash bushes.

"Last week they were attacking my wife's ethnicity and apparently also bugging my headquarters, much like Nixon and Watergate," McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. "That's what the political left does these days."

If the press conference were an episode of the camp-era "Batman" that's where the "biff!" titlecard would show up. McConnell had gone from a man on his heels after a recording of an oppo research session on Ashley Judd was published by Mother Jones to the master politician driving the story to his own benefit.

It doesn't get any better. But you don't have to trust me on that, Buzzfeed left it right out there in the open, like they're not ashamed of it at all. Mitch McConnell was planning on attacking a woman for speaking openly about depression, thoughts of suicide, and her religious beliefs. But instead of manning up and taking responsibility for his actions when they were made public, McConnell released a blizzard of whining over likely-imaginary wiretaps. Suddenly, the villain is the victim and McMorris-Santoro responds with wild applause. "Masterful politics! Brilliant dishonesty! Behold the amazing shamelessness!"

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Rightwing Media's Distant Relationship with Truth

If you take a swing through the rightwing news media, one thing jumps out at you immediately -- what you find there is virtually indistinguishable from what you find on talk radio. It's a collection of scandal pimps, outrage manufacturers, spinmeisters, and out-and-out propagandists. What you won't find is a lot of factual reporting.

And this leaves conservative news consumers open to a lot of big surprises. Conor Friedersdorf uses the Hagel confirmation to illustrate the problem.

The Atlantic:

...Americans who get their news from anti-Hagel conservatives discovered Tuesday that much of the analysis they've long been fed on this subject left them as misinformed about the likely course of events as they were about Mitt Romney's prospects for victory during Election 2012. Of course, a single nomination battle isn't nearly so consequential as a presidential election. This is nevertheless another reminder for the rank-and-file on the right: Demand better from the journalists whose work you patronize, or remain at an information disadvantage relative to consumers of a "mainstream media" that is regularly outperforming conservative journalists.

Rightwing punditry and blogs lost it when Hagel was confirmed and twitter lit up with condemnations of Sen. Rand Paul, who cast a surprise vote for Hagel. But Hagel didn't win by one vote. He cruised to easy confirmation with eight votes to spare. The small, hundred vote electorate that is the Senate makes the math very easy -- Hagel was confirmed in an 58% landslide. Instead of blaming the media sources that had steered them so wrong, conservative news consumers blamed Paul.

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The War on Facts, Televised

A week long illness is now receding and I can wear my glasses again without wanting to hurl. Sinus pressure must realign your eyeballs or something, I don't know. But it sucked.

Another thing that sucks and makes me want to hurl is a video up at Politico, which I'll spare you. You don't have to actually watch it to get my point. And since the attached article is titled, "Paul Krugman riles fellow pundits," Politico owes the man an apology. Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a professor at Princeton University, in addition to his column and blog in the New York Times, while "pundit" has become mostly synonymous with "hack." The days of a punditry populated largely with people who actually know what the hell they're talking about have long since passed -- if they ever existed at all. Today, the vast majority of pundits are partisan propagandists. And their hackery is insufferable.

After all, in what world would Mary Matalin -- a professional Republican operative -- be considered a "pundit?" Unfortunately, the answer to that is "the one we live in." She was one of the "fellow pundits" Krugman riled on ABC's This Week. The other was this tool:

After Krugman called House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget a "fake document" and the columnist said he was "amazed that people haven't gotten that," [George] Will unsheathed his verbal sword and went at Krugman.

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The Other Way the Media Got the Election Wrong

The hackiness of much of the American punditry was exposed by last week's election results. Both Dick Morris and George Will predicted a Romney landslide. But it was Dan Rather who demonstrated the talking heads' weakness best, by citing his "gut" in predicting "a good day for Romney." Never has it been so clear that a lot of news personalities have no idea what the hell they're talking about and are just making it up as they go along -- or worse, are spinning what they do know to reflect their biases.

But calling a Romney landslide, based on absolutely nothing but ideological optimism and wishful thinking, wasn't the only way to make a bad call on election night. The idea of a popular vote/electoral college vote split -- a la 2000 -- was a lot more prevalent in the media. Just about every news outlet going ran the story at one point. And just every news outlet going was just making up news.

Yes, an electoral college/popular vote split was possible, mostly by virtue of not being impossible. But Nate Silver's last forecast before the election gave that result a 5.3% possibility. There's a difference between a real possibility and a realistic possibility. When there's a 94.7% chance that your prediction is going to be wrong, you aren't courting the realistic.

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Reality Does Not Care for Your 'Momentum' Narrative

I guess my physics are a little rusty. Can momentum be the same as downward velocity? If so, Mitt Romney has plenty of momentum. It's just not the kind I'd spend a lot of time bragging about, if I were a Romney-ite. Because that red line in the FiveThirtyEight forecast? That's Mitt. And you'll notice that the trend there isn't the sort of momentum that screams, "Behold our coming electoral triumph!"

Yet "momentum" is the newest aspect of poll trutherism. I've already written about Silver trutherism, which would demand you deny that FiveThirtyEight graphic's validity. Now we have backers of what Ed Kilgore calls "the Big Mo" claiming -- without any evidence whatsoever -- that Mitt Romney has momentum and is poised to crush Barack Obama any minute now. And it's that lack of evidence that I find most disturbing.

Poll trutherism at least has some tether to reality. If you'll recall, poll truthers look at polling that shows Mitt Romney down, assume the demographics are way off, then "fix" the sampling to favor Romney. Presto-chango, Mitt's winning by huge margins. Backers of the Big Mo narrative aren't even doing that. They're looking at polling that under the most charitable interpretation shows Mitt Romney's numbers flattening out and they're declare a long rise in his numbers that simply is not there.

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Joe Biden and a Possible Coming Poll Correction

Well, that was quite a debate. Check out Taegan Goddard's post-debate reaction: "The vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan was one of the best debates I can remember. It was a great service to all Americans." I could've done without all the lying (#LyinRyan was trending on supposedly conservative dominated Twitter last night), but close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades. The consensus among the punditry is that Biden won. A CBS flash poll of undecided voters backs that up. But the consensus is also that it probably won't move polling in Obama's direction. "Biden stemmed the bleeding," seems to be the most overused metaphor of last night and this morning.

But can a vice presidential debate change the dynamics? The consensus seems to be no, but the fact is that anything's possible.

Nate Silver:

Vice-presidential debates rarely move head-to-head numbers between the presidential candidates – even when there is a much clearer verdict in instant-reaction polls. So one should err on the side of caution in assuming that the debate had much influence either way.

There is a plausible hypothesis, however, that some of Mr. Romney’s recent surge in the polls reflects a growing “enthusiasm gap” between Democrats and Republicans. To the extent that Mr. Biden’s performance re-energized Democratic partisans, he may have left President Obama in a slightly better position than where he started the night.

And polling-wise, we'll probably see the president's numbers improve -- which likely would've happened anyway. But it's possible that they may improve dramatically. And that's where things get interesting.

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Post-Debate Bounce Not as Big a Story as Everyone's Pretending

I was pretty busy last week and didn't get a chance to write anything substantial about the first presidential debate. By now, it's old news and I won't bore you with yet another rehashing of a debacle; suffice it to say that Mitt Romney flung the BS fast and furious and this is enough to get you declared a winner of a debate these days. When I was in high school, debaters had to cite facts. Apparently adults running for office get to be much more creative and the media will actually applaud lying.

So what's the damage here? Reports have it that Romney is climbing in the polls, momentum's behind him, and the world is his oyster. He's definitely going to be the next president of the United States and, if you check FiveThirtyEight, you'll see that he's now projected to have a 78.4% of winning to President Obama's 21.6%.

Oh wait, that's all backwards and wrong; Obama's 78.4% and Romney's 21.6%. Further it's starting to look like Romney's topped out, so his chances aren't going to get any better. According to FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver, "polls released on Sunday did not tell quite as optimistic a story for him as those in the debate’s immediate aftermath." He also calls Romney's current polling a "bounce."

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The Savvy Idiots of Political Journalism

My view is that there’s nothing that’s secret in campaigns anymore — but that doesn’t mean everything is understandable in a campaign. The ability of campaigns to run circles around journalists in some places is strong, and it’s not healthy.
-Terry Nelson, John McCain's 2008 campaign manager.

It isn't getting much coverage -- and it's easy to understand why. In a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, journalist and author Sasha Issenberg informs us that nearly everything journalists think they know about political campaigns is wrong and those misconceptions are reflected in reporting.

I covered the 2008 election for The Boston Globe, filing articles that I hoped would rise above the superficial and ephemeral poll-driven reporting that I had been trained to disdain. But after spending the last two years reporting on the scientific revolution that is quietly reshaping politics, I realized how much of the story my colleagues and I had missed.

Over the last decade, almost entirely out of view, campaigns have modernized their techniques in such a way that nearly every member of the political press now lacks the specialized expertise to interpret what’s going on. Campaign professionals have developed a new conceptual framework for understanding what moves votes. It’s as if restaurant critics remained oblivious to a generation’s worth of new chefs’ tools and techniques and persisted in describing every dish that came out of the kitchen as either “grilled” or “broiled.”

“When I went to work for my first campaign, in 1994, I was actually surprised at how journalists tended to think one step ahead where campaigns are four steps ahead,” says Joel Benenson, a former newspaper reporter who now serves as President Obama’s chief pollster. “Think of it as a level-five player in chess and a level-eight player in chess. You had people covering campaigns who are at the mercy of the grandmasters of politics.”

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Romney's Campaign of Lies Meets Honest-to-Goodness Journalism

How long can the media avoid reporting that Mitt Romney's campaign is built on lies? Apparently, for the period of time beginning with Romney's campaign launch to just about now. Check out the opening paragraphs of the Associated Press piece, out today:

Mitt Romney claims he's got a winner with his criticism that President Barack Obama is giving welfare recipients a free ride. Never mind that aspects of his argument against the Democrat are factually inaccurate.

Those flaws aside, Romney's team is pressing on with the charge that the president ended a provision requiring welfare recipients to work. Romney aides insist the argument is helping them gain ground with middle-class voters anxious about the economy and independents who see Obama's welfare changes as an indication that he is a typical liberal, not a moderate. But the campaign offers little evidence to back up those assertions.

Obama's team, in turn, says Romney's welfare charges are dishonest. Numerous independent fact-checkers, including The Associated Press, have determined that Romney and his surrogates are distorting the facts.

This looks suspiciously like journalism. The average media outlet tends to avoid calling liars liars, instead reducing truth to a "he said/she said" matter of opinion; "Mitt Romney says Pres. Obama's giving welfare recipients a free ride. The president disagrees. Big debate! Controversy! Perhaps harsh words! Who's right? Who cares?"

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Selection of Ryan Has Many on the Right Almost as Worried as They Should Be

Part of the media consensus on Mitt Romney's choice of running mate seems to be that conservatives just love Paul Ryan to pieces. And that's true, up to a point. The Tea Party types think he's great, but they're reactionaries who measure a politician by the responses of liberals -- lefties hate him, so he must be OK. And, of course, the rightwing punditry likes him for similar reasons; liberals will fight this guy tooth and nail and conflict equals ratings.

But there's one group on the right who don't like Mitt Romney's choice at all. We'll call them "people who know what the hell they're talking about" or PWKWTHTTAs.

Politico:

Away from the cameras, and with all the usual assurances that people aren’t being quoted by name, there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington: Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong.

In more than three dozen interviews with Republican strategists and campaign operatives — old hands and rising next-generation conservatives alike — the most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election.

While many of these PWKWTHTTAs are genuinely excited to see someone as hard-right as on the ticket, Politico reports that "the more pessimistic strategists... think the Ryan pick is a disaster for the GOP. Many of these people don’t care that much about Romney -- they always felt he faced an improbable path to victory -- but are worried that Ryan’s vocal views about overhauling Medicare will be a millstone for other GOP candidates in critical House and Senate races."

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And the Presidential Campaign Goes Straight to Stupid...

I watched Newt Gingrich's movie on Mitt Romney last night. When Mitt Romney Came to Town may be a stinging indictment of Romney's slash-and-burn style of capitalism, but it's not a very good movie. It's more of an attack ad than a documentary, filled with clichéd negative ad tropes -- slow motion clips, ominous and growly square wave tones, etc. No Oscar buzz here.

Still, the message is pretty clear and pretty accurate; when Romney claims to be a "job creator," he's not being 100% honest. But this is Newt Gingrich, which means there has to be at least one completely insane note in the movie. When I saw that Steve Benen wrote about "oblique xenophobic slights" in the movie, I'd expected to see jobs moving to China or undocumented workers stealing American jobs.

What I saw instead was Mittens speaking French.

And apparently Team Newt thinks that speaking French is a horrible, horrible thing. Because I woke up this morning, turned on the news, and saw this:

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