Breitbart.com Runs With Satirical Story About Krugman Filing For Bankruptcy
OK, I’m an evil person — and my scheming has paid off.
On Friday I started hearing from friends about a fake story making the rounds about my allegedly filing for personal bankruptcy; I even got asked about the story by a reporter from Russian television, who was very embarrassed when I told him it was fake. But I decided not to post anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax.
(via randomactsofchaos)
![Dumb Wisconsin Senator tells dumb lies.
Truthdig:
Memo to congressional Republicans: You might want to stray from GOP talking points and stick to the facts when facing off against a Nobel Prize-winning economist unless you want to be called out for falsehoods.
Tea party-backed Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson learned that the hard way Sunday during a heated panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in which he was accused by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of getting the facts wrong on Social Security.
The debate began when Johnson said Social Security was in danger of “going broke” unless action was taken. “When I hear people saying Social Security is solvent to the year 2035, it’s not,” Johnson said.
Krugman replied, “You said ‘let’s start with the facts,’ but we’ve just run aground right there. Your facts are false. The Social Security thing—Social Security, it has a dedicated revenue base, it has a trust fund based on that dedicated revenue base. You can’t change the rules midstream and say, ‘Oh well, suddenly the trust fund doesn’t count.’ ”
Johnson countered that “the trust fund is a fiction. It doesn’t … it has no value in the federal government.”
Maybe someday Ron Johnson will realize it’s his job to govern, not to sound like a talk radio bullshit artist on TV talking head programs. He seems to believe being a Senator is a shortcut to being a pundit, not an actual job with actual responsibilities. Whether he’s just stupid or lying or some combination of the two (this is where my money is), it’s clear that Ron Johnson is an embarrassment to his state.
[photo via Gage Skidmore]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/e864f51d02aab3c568ea283371087385/tumblr_mji8anTWF31qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Dumb Wisconsin Senator tells dumb lies.
Memo to congressional Republicans: You might want to stray from GOP talking points and stick to the facts when facing off against a Nobel Prize-winning economist unless you want to be called out for falsehoods.
Tea party-backed Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson learned that the hard way Sunday during a heated panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in which he was accused by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of getting the facts wrong on Social Security.
The debate began when Johnson said Social Security was in danger of “going broke” unless action was taken. “When I hear people saying Social Security is solvent to the year 2035, it’s not,” Johnson said.
Krugman replied, “You said ‘let’s start with the facts,’ but we’ve just run aground right there. Your facts are false. The Social Security thing—Social Security, it has a dedicated revenue base, it has a trust fund based on that dedicated revenue base. You can’t change the rules midstream and say, ‘Oh well, suddenly the trust fund doesn’t count.’ ”
Johnson countered that “the trust fund is a fiction. It doesn’t … it has no value in the federal government.”
Maybe someday Ron Johnson will realize it’s his job to govern, not to sound like a talk radio bullshit artist on TV talking head programs. He seems to believe being a Senator is a shortcut to being a pundit, not an actual job with actual responsibilities. Whether he’s just stupid or lying or some combination of the two (this is where my money is), it’s clear that Ron Johnson is an embarrassment to his state.
I am not ‘prickly’: I’m aggressive and annoying. But that’s by design, and I only do it when the situation calls for it.
People like me have been saying for five years, ‘don’t worry about these deficit things for the time being; they’re a nonissue.’ Other people have been saying, ‘imminent crisis, imminent crisis!’ How many times do they have to be wrong and do people like me have to be right before people start to believe this?
![Paul Krugman endorses minting trillion-dollar coin as debt-ceiling fallback.
[image source]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/3a91ebd77fb6b966952fb2a2fbf1aebf/tumblr_mg9jqlrQK41qfengno1_1280.jpg)
So the Supreme Court — defying many expectations — upheld the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. There will, no doubt, be many headlines declaring this a big victory for President Obama, which it is. But the real winners are ordinary Americans — people like you.
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is not a big fan of Paul Krugman.
Or even the lightest of criticisms combined with undeniable facts, I guess. The post that set him off is here and — despite what Ilves says in his fairly unhinged Twitter tirade — the word “wasteland” doesn’t come up.
Still, with popular sentiment turning harshly against them, I suppose European austerians are a little spooky these days.
Think about it: you approach what is, in the end, a somewhat technical subject in a format in which no data can be presented, in which there’s no opportunity to check facts (everything Paul said about growth after World War II was wrong, but who will ever call him on it?). So people react based on their prejudices. If Ron Paul got on TV and said “Gah gah goo goo debasement! theft!” — which is a rough summary of what he actually did say — his supporters would say that he won the debate hands down; I don’t think my supporters are quite the same, but opinions may differ.
If you think about it, presidential debates are just as bad. They aren’t really debates, they’re more of group interviews with vaguely debate-ish rules. The moderator asks questions, the candidates answer with crazy lies, and we’re supposed to get something out of it. If we rules similar to high school debate team debates, things would be a lot different. Candidates would have to cite sources and prove what they say.
