Liars, filthy, nasty, UnAmerican liars

In expression of my masochistic tendencies I’ve been listening to Sean Hannity for the past week and this guy is some piece of work. If he ever tells the truth, it’s by accident. (Disclaimer: I actually heard him do something I actually respected. I put it here, because if I put it at the bottom, no one will likely see it.) But the biggest lie he tells is that Obama has expanded the federal deficit by $6 trillion and then claims he’s raised the budget more than all the other presidents combined.

Hannity’s lies resulted in Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison trying to take him to task on FoxNews Tuesday night, calling Hannity a lying immoral yellow journalist. But when Hannity asked him how he had lied, Ellison, a Democrat, couldn’t answer the question even though he was right.

Here’s the answer.

When Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009 the federal deficit was $10.6 trillion. When Bush took over, the deficit was $5.7 trillion. In other words Bush doubled the federal deficit and that doesn’t account for the fact that his policies affected the deficit well into 2009. Bush policies were still in effect through the fiscal year which was October 2008 until September 2009. The Congressional Budget Office had predicted that the 2009 fiscal year, which was still a result of Bush policies, increased the deficit another $1.3 trillion in 2009. So Bush was actually responsible for $11.9 trillion in debt when he left.

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41753

But shrub’s responsibility goes even further. Republicans are always eager to compare the average family budget with the federal budget. But somehow these dimwits forget to understand that the average family has to pay interest on their debt. The point: a conservative estimate for the interest on the debt Bush left puts us at about $350 billion a year in interest alone. Or for the four plus years of Obama’s presidency, we’ve paid another $1.2 trillion plus in interest bringing Bush’s responsibility to a conservative $13.2 trillion.

At the worst, Obama has increased the deficit by no more than $3 trillion. And even that is stretching it because we were still paying for the wars Bush started.

As to Hannity, no fact supports the statement that Obama has increased the deficit more than any other president. That distinction belongs to George W. Bush. And given that Bush’s policies destroyed the entire world economy and put the entire human society in jeopardy of failure, $3 trillion seems a paltry sum to avert complete system failure.

Ellison doesn’t get off the hook though. He’s a congressman for God’s sake. If you’re going to go on TV and challenge a guy on his own show on his own network, you damn well better be able to defend your position. All Ellison did was look like an ass and make the rest of the world think Democrats don’t know anything.

Now that I’ve called Hannity a dirty rotten liar, I will say this. I heard his show last week when a poverty stricken woman called in to whine about how broke she was and Hannity offered to give her $1,000 for supplies to start her own business and she wouldn’t accept it. He offered this woman a hand up and she turned it away. I will admit some grudging respect for Hannity’s offer.

As wrong as Republicans are on almost everything, they do have one idea that has merit. Work has merit and work building up your own business has the greatest merit of all. Unfortunately, most of America can’t be bothered to take responsibility for their own lives and this woman demonstrated that. None of us can hide from our responsibility and if we would all work a little harder and laze a little less, our deficits would be a thing of the past.