Skip to content

Liar’s Gallery

In the last debate, current leader for the Republican presidential nomination, Ben Carson, was asked about his involvement with Mannatech, a nutritional supplements company. Mannatech has been making outlandish claims about its products, including that they cure cancer and autism (even Down Syndrome, which is actually caused by having an extra chromosome). Mannatech paid $7 million to settle a lawsuit over their deceptive practices.

Carson’s response was to attack the question, calling it “total propaganda” and saying “I didn’t have an involvement with them.” But the facts show he had a lengthy (and profitable) relationship with them. In other words, Carson lied.

In the same debate, Donald Trump was asked about a statement of his, saying that Marco Rubio is (Facebook founder) Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator. Trump responded “I never said that. I never said that.”

Unfortunately for Trump, during the debate PolitiFact looked on Trump’s own website, which says “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.” (As I write this, it is still there.)

Paul Krugman points out that GOP political candidates seem to be going on the offensive about their lies, and seem to be getting away with it. When Carson was asked about his questionable associations, the Republican audience booed. When Trump was asked about his statement, the questioner apologized. As Krugman puts it:

But the Republican base doesn’t want to hear about it, and the candidate apparently believes, probably correctly, that he can simply brazen it out. These days, in his party, being an obvious grifter isn’t a liability, and may even be an asset.

And this doesn’t just go for outsider candidates like Mr. Carson and Donald Trump. Insider politicians like Marco Rubio are simply engaged in a different, classier kind of scam — and they are empowered in part by the way the grifters have defined respectability down.

Rubio claims that his proposed massive tax cuts will pay for themselves. I can’t believe anyone still believes that scam. But he’s squarely positioned as the most sensible GOP candidate. Ted Cruz claims that we should return to the gold standard, and his vocal backer Glenn Beck makes money promoting Goldline, a company that sells gold coins at highly inflated prices. Or Ron Paul (a former candidate and father of a current one), who spent decades warning about runaway inflation that never appeared, but he cashed in anyway selling books and videos telling you how to protect yourself from the coming financial disaster.

Probably the best examples of milking suckers are the Tea Party groups, the best of which (the Tea Party Leadership Fund) only spent 13% of the money they raised supporting political candidates, with the rest going to administrative costs and consultants’ fees (note that charities are expected to spend at least 75% on their mission). Sarah Palin’s “Sarah PAC” was a dismal 5%, and they weren’t even the worst. The worst was the Tea Party Express, with 4% going to candidates. More than half of that paltry amount went to a single candidate, who dropped out of the race. I wonder if that’s what their donors intended when they gave all that money to fight business-as-usual in Washington.

Unfortunately, the Age of Teflon, started by Ronald Reagan, now applies to all Republican politicians. The poor schmucks taken in by these swindlers won’t believe any news reports about how gullible they have been. As Krugman puts it:

You might think that such revelations would be politically devastating. But the targets of such schemes know, just know, that the liberal mainstream media can’t be trusted, that when it reports negative stories about conservative heroes it’s just out to suppress people who are telling the real truth. It’s a closed information loop, and can’t be broken.

Ironically, even blaming everything on the “liberal mainstream media” is a scam. Fox News has been the most popular news network for over a decade, beating MSNBC and CNN combined in total viewers.

Share

Late Night Political Humor

“Bernie Sanders praised Joe Biden’s decision not to run. Sanders said, ‘There’s only room for one goofy old dude.'” – Conan O’Brien

“After a lot of speculation, Vice President Joe Biden today announced that he is not running for president of the United States. He made the announcement this afternoon from the Rose Garden at the White House. It’s weird to hold a press conference to say you’re not doing something, right? Like announcing to your girlfriend that you won’t be proposing.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Joe Biden announced he is not running for president. And so, as promised, Hillary Clinton immediately released his dog.” – Conan O’Brien

“Biden said the window is closed on a presidential campaign, which is true. The election is only 13 months away. There’s barely enough time to put a suit on.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“I don’t know if anybody was watching the Benghazi hearings. They were going all day. There was one moment when a representative told Hillary Clinton he could wait while she read her notes. She said, ‘I can do more than one thing at a time.’ Then Bill Clinton said, ‘When I say that, I get in trouble.'” – Conan O’Brien

“At the White House the other day, President Obama sang to Usher. And because the president was singing, Usher went to the Situation Room and approved a drone strike in Syria.” – Conan O’Brien

Today is ‘Back to the Future’ Day. It’s the day Marty McFly traveled forward in time only to find out the most important thing to people in 2015 is movies from the ’80s.” – Conan O’Brien

Share

Dumping Trump?

Matt Wuerker
© Matt Wuerker

Are voters finally getting tired of Donald Trump? It was fun while it lasted, but it might have just been a summer fling.

UPDATE: During Trump’s presidential announcement speech, he attacked the performance of the US economy under president Obama, saying, “The last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product — a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.”

Well, he got one thing right: The GDP is never below zero. Last quarter, as usual, it was in the trillions of dollars. What Trump meant to refer to was that the growth in GDP was below zero. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he simply misspoke.

Unfortunately for Trump, even then he lied. GDP goes up and down all the time. For example, it goes up for the Christmas holiday buying spurt and then goes down in the following winter quarter pretty much every year, which is why the government “seasonally adjusts” the figure (and Trump was talking about numbers for the first quarter). But even if you use the seasonally adjusted number, quarterly GDP growth has gone negative 15% of the time since they started tracking it in 1947.

Lately, the winters have been unusually harsh, causing the winter quarter to decline even more than normal, but it is hypocritical to blame this on a president who is fighting strong opposition from Republicans to fight climate change. Oh, and if you are going to be blaming economic cycles on the president, then you should note that of the 42 quarters of negative growth since WWII, 30 of them occurred under Republican presidents and only 12 under Democratic presidents.

By any measure, even giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, Trump lied. In fact, Trump has never received a “True” rating from PolitiFact.

Share

Late Night Political Humor

“Donald Trump is now trying to appeal to Southerners. Yeah, he’s been touring the South and pointing to his hair, saying ‘How y’all like my critter?'” – Conan O’Brien

“Donald Trump was supposed to be here tonight. Last night his people called, and canceled on us and were cryptic as to why he canceled. They said he had a major political commitment but wanted me to relay the message to you that if he had been here, he would have been great.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“I’m dying to find out what this major political commitment was. Usually that means he had to go on CNN and call someone an idiot.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Don’t worry. Tonight we’re going to give everyone in the audience basketball dipped in cologne so you can fully experience what it would have been like had Donald Trump been here.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, once put on a striptease show for charity. In Canada, a strip tease just means unzipping your outer layer of fleece.” – Conan O’Brien

“Canada elected a new Prime Minister named Justin Trudeau, and many consider the guy a heartthrob. The good news is, any Canadian heartthrob named Justin is sure to be popular forever.” – Conan O’Brien

Share

Speakers Come and Go

In an odd footnote to Republican Paul Ryan being approved as Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert pled guilty to evading federal banking laws. Hastert was the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House ever.

The guilty plea avoids subjecting Hastert to his day in court, where further details of his misconduct would have to come out. Hastert is guilty of structuring $1.7 million in cash withdrawals in order to avoid the notice of bank officials. The cash was apparently hush money used to pay off someone, to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student of of Hastert’s when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach. Hastert was not charged with any sex crimes because of the statute of limitations had run out.

Best of luck to Ryan, who said his nomination “begins a new day in the House of Representatives”.

Share

Clinton on Colbert

Steven Colbert, who played himself acting like a conservative for years, banters with Hillary Clinton, who once upon a time (in college) was president of the Young Republicans chapter.

Share

Late Night Political Humor

‘Donald Trump went on a rant about how horrible socialism is. But you know what, isn’t Trump’s hair socialism? It’s the richer hair covering the poorer hair for the good of the head.’ – Bill Maher

“Donald Trump is now saying that his immigration policies would have prevented 9/11. Trump is also claiming his hair would have kept the Titanic afloat.” – Conan O’Brien

“Jeb Bush’s campaign announced yesterday that it raised over $13 million last quarter, which means it’s doing better than most of the other major campaigns. Or as Jeb put it, ‘Crap. What do I gotta do to lose this thing?!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Jeb Bush’s campaign has a contest now where someone will be flown to Houston to meet him, his dad, and his brother. No word on what the winner gets.” – Conan O’Brien

“Actually, I saw that Jeb Bush’s campaign has been staying at cheaper hotels to save money. Which would make Jeb the first politician ever to book a room at a cheap motel just to sleep.” – Jimmy Fallon

“At the debate on Tuesday Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee bragged about the fact that in 30 years of public service, he’s never had one scandal. Well, it just came out that Chafee once used taxpayer money to buy frogs for his office aquarium. People said, ‘Well at least it wasn’t a sex scandal.’ And Chafee said, ‘Riiiight…'” – Jimmy Fallon

“A high school student hacked the AOL email account of John Brennan, the director of the CIA. In other words, the student correctly guessed that the password of anyone still using AOL is ‘password’.” – Conan O’Brien

“While accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Eddie Murphy did a Bill Cosby impression. Murphy’s Cosby impression was so accurate, nine women are suing him.” – Conan O’Brien

Share

Happy Hallowe’en!

Tom Tomorrow
© Tom Tomorrow

And just remember, the actual election is over a year away. We’re just getting started!

The horror! the horror!

Share

Late Night Political Humor

“A study found that one of the most popular searches during the debate was, ‘Is Bernie Sanders Jewish?’ While the most popular response on Google was, ‘Come on’.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was on ‘Ellen’ today. A lot of people, myself included, said Bernie Sanders doesn’t have the style or the charisma to be president. But he came out dancing on ‘Ellen’. I think we owe him an apology.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“CNN’s Wolf Blitzer told Democratic presidential hopeful Lincoln Chafee yesterday that he is going to wind up looking silly if he stays in the race. And let’s face it, also if he doesn’t. Chafee then told Blitzer that he’ll remain in the race as long as he can continue to raise important issues. And you know he’s got a point. I mean, literally, he’s got one point.” – Seth Meyers

“Analysts are saying that Joe Biden was actually the biggest loser in the debate, and that he missed his chance to enter the race. Yeah, they said entering now would be awkward and inappropriate – or as Biden put it, ‘Those are my two middle names! I’m in!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Now that the dust has settled from the Democratic debate, it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to remain the Democratic front-runner. And believe it or not over on the Republican side, Donald Trump is still in the lead. And now Trump is saying that he should be given Secret Service protection. As opposed to his current security: having Gary Busey follow him around with some nunchucks.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump is reportedly threatening to pull out of the next GOP debate unless CNBC reinstates opening and closing statements. And Lincoln Chafee is threatening to pull out of the next Democratic debate if there are going to be questions.” – Seth Meyers

“Donald Trump’s son said in an interview last night that everything his dad has ever touched has turned to gold. Well, not everything. Jeb’s still waiting to turn to gold.” – Seth Meyers

“New research shows that China has a bigger middle class than America, and more people in China are living what we would call the ‘American Dream’. That’s when you know things are bad – when even the American DREAM is made in China.” – Jimmy Fallon

Share

Electoral Vote

One of my favorite political websites, Electoral Vote, has been ramping up for the (still relatively distant) presidential election.

In the latest issue, they sum up an article from the NY Times that predicts that Marco Rubio will be the Republican nominee for president. First of all, they point out that exactly five years ago, Ross Douthat predicted that Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee. It was a bold prediction back then, but it was right. Of course, past luck doesn’t always guarantee future success, but it makes a good headline.

More interesting is Douthat’s reasons for predicting Marco Rubio will win the nomination. Regular readers may recall that over a month ago I predicted that Rubio would win the Republican nomination. But Douthat gives actual reasons why Rubio will get the nod, and it is intereating. Rubio will win because of process of elimination – every other candidate has a fatal flaw.

Donald Trump. No party has ever nominated a weirdo like him
Ben Carson. See Trump
Carly Fiorina. She is running for a cabinet position
Jeb Bush. He’s flailing in all directions and only the super-rich like him
John Kasich. He is too moderate and too ornery about it
Chris Christie. Too many cones
Ted Cruz. The party leaders despise him
Bobby Jindal. Carson and Cruz suck up his oxygen
Mike Huckabee. See Jindal
Rick Santorum. The voters are not the slightest bit interested
Lindsey Graham. See Santorum
George Pataki. See Graham

So Marco Rubio is the only man left standing. Douthat says that Rubio is close to the ideological center of the Republican Party, comes from a key swing state, is a good debater, has an impressive biography and personal style, and most important, nobody hates him.

I agree. If anyone can come up with a counter-argument for why somebody else will win, I’d love to hear it.

Share

Late Night Political Humor

“After speculation that he may enter the Democratic debate at the last minute, Joe Biden ended up not coming. Biden said he thought about showing up, but at the end of the day, his head was stuck in a banister.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Sheryl Crow performed the National Anthem before last night’s debate, but many Twitter users were unhappy with her performance. Mostly because they thought the National Anthem was Uptown Funk.” – Seth Meyers

“Sheryl Crow performed the National Anthem at last night’s debate, but it looked like Martin O’Malley was the only one actually singing along. In fairness, there’s nothing more American than just PRETENDING you know the National Anthem.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Turned out it was the highest-rated debate for the Democrats ever. More than 15 million people tuned in to watch Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the three high school principals they invited to fill out the stage.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It was a big night for Bernie Sanders. He talked about his views on war, and said that he strongly opposed it when he was a young man. Even crazier, he was talking about the TROJAN War.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Sanders supporters pointed to the fact that Bernie was the most googled of all the candidates during the debate. Sounds like a big thing until you realize the top questions they googled included, ‘who is Bernie Sanders?’ and, ‘is Bernie Sanders Jewish?'” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Anderson Cooper tried to make a case that Bernie Sanders isn’t electable because he calls himself a socialist. I think that’s the least of his problems. I think he isn’t electable because he calls himself Bernie.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Lincoln Chafee why he switched parties from being a Republican, and Chafee called himself a ‘block of granite.’ When asked what he meant by that, Chafee said, ‘I meant that I’d make a better countertop than president.” – Jimmy Fallon

“During the debate, the candidates mentioned the middle class eleven times. Once for each remaining member of the middle class.” – Seth Meyers

“Most of the experts, they rate these things afterwards. Most of the experts thought Hillary won the debate, although some said Bernie Sanders won. No one said any of the others won, not even them.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Donald Trump was live tweeting the debate last night. This morning he told ABC News he thought Clinton got through it ‘fine’. Which is the highest compliment he can give a woman without marrying her.” – Jimmy Kimmel

Share

Hoarse Race

Brian McFadden
© Brian McFadden

It’s true, the upcoming Democratic debates are all scheduled on weekends. Even if you ignore claims that this was done on purpose, it is clear that this will benefit Hillary Clinton. But nobody should be the least bit surprised by this. The party primaries are one of the least democratic aspects of our elections. Political parties exist to do the best for the political parties, not for the candidates or even the country. If you ever doubt this, just watch any political convention.

Which brings us to the second ironic point of this comic – media exists to get ratings. The media loves Donald Trump, because he has given them lots of high ratings.

We are one (more) step along the path to turning our elections into huge, expensive, reality TV shows, with candidates getting voted off the island (or fired by Trump). Eventually, maybe the candidates will fight it out, Roman gladiator style, until one is declared Caesar. The ratings will be HUGE.

Share

Can You Hearing Me Now?

Lee Judge
© Lee Judge

After several Freudian slips confirming that the latest Benghazi Hearings are exactly what everyone expected – a partisan political witch hunt designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the committee stupidly went ahead with their 11-hour long grilling of Clinton, live on TV.

Various mainstream media outlets declared Clinton the winner. NBC News said “As a matter of pure political theater, yesterday’s Benghazi committee hearing was a victory for Hillary Clinton and an overwhelming defeat for House Republicans.” The Washington Post headline was “Hillary Clinton triumphed at the Benghazi hearing by not losing her cool.”

Amazingly enough, even Fox News – who have always been the major cheerleaders for investigating Benghazi – agreed. Apparently even they are tired of the endless hearings. Even before the hearing was over, Ed Henry said on Fox “In terms of the narrative on Benghazi, there was no major new development that rocked her side of the story, that changes this in some way. What you have here is another big test for Hillary Clinton, and another big test that she appears to have passed.” Henry also said that Clinton “looked presidential and was in command” and called the hearings a “total wipeout” for GOP members. Greta van Susteren agreed, and said that Clinton was acting more like the politician she had watched over the years than the tentative, stumbling Clinton of this campaign so far.

Other conservative media said similar things. For example, Erick Erickson of Red State:

The hearings are a waste of time because everything about it is politicized and nothing is going to happen. There will be no scalp collection.

Columnist Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

A hearing billed as an epic, High Noon-style confrontation—granted, the hype came from the media, not Republican committee members themselves—instead turned out to be a somewhat interesting look at a few limited aspects of the Benghazi affair. In other words, no big deal. And that is very, very good news for Hillary Clinton.

Stephen Hayes in The Weekly Standard:

The coverage of the hearings—from the earliest tweets to the final page-one wraps—focused almost entirely on the style of Clinton’s performance rather than the substance of her testimony. And it must be said: She was impressive.

The cover of the Boston Herald: “HILLARY SKATES THROUGH MARATHON BENGHAZI HEARING”.

Even Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, who is in charge of the hearings, admitted “I don’t know that she testified that much differently today than she has the previous time she testified.” What is that saying about doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results?

Share

Late Night Political Humor

“Tonight was the first Democratic debate on CNN. And get this, they actually had an extra podium ready in case Joe Biden decided he’d join the race. Which backfired when before the debate even started people were like, ‘Could we just vote for the empty podium?'” – Jimmy Fallon

“They were keeping a spare podium open for Joe Biden in case he decided to enter the race at the last minute, as if he’s going to walk in and shock everyone like a Spanish soap opera or something.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“CNN kept an extra podium set aside at tonight’s Democratic debate in case Vice President Joe Biden had decided to announce his candidacy, and now the empty podium is pulling ahead of Martin O’Malley.” – Seth Meyers

“Tonight on CNN was the mildly anticipated first debate between the Democratic candidates. If you were in Vegas tonight you get to see Elton John, Donny and Marie, the Judds, or you can go and see the presidential debate. There’s really something for everyone.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“CNN has been running a countdown clock to this debate for days now. They got a huge audience for the Republican debate because of Donald Trump but this one doesn’t have a Donald Trump. This one has Bernie Sanders who looks like he’s on the verge of being alive. So they had to find a way to drum up excitement.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“I’m sure many of you watched the first Democratic presidential debate over on CNN. CNN released where the candidates would be standing on the stage. Hillary Clinton was in the center. Bernie Sanders was on her right, making it the first time in history he’s been to the right of anyone.” – Stephen Colbert

“One of Bernie Sanders’ campaign advisers said they wanted him to tone down his yelling at tonight’s debate. You could tell he was yelling too much because I had to keep turning the volume UP to hear the commercials.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Then there are the three other candidates: Governor Martin O’Malley, Senator Jim Webb and Governor Lincoln Chafee. Little-known fact about Lincoln Chafee: Anything.” – Stephen Colbert

“Trump didn’t have too many nice things to say about the Democratic debate. In fact, he said he thinks people would turn on the Democratic debate for a few minutes and then fall asleep. Then CNN was like, ‘Hey, that still counts! Ratings are ratings! Just leave it on! We don’t care.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump asked a young man who appeared to be Asian-American if he was from South Korea, to which the man replied, ‘I was born in Texas.’ Trump was so embarrassed that his face turned red 20 years ago.” – Seth Meyers

“Trump also said yesterday that as a politician, you have to get along with everybody. And then he retired from politics.” – Seth Meyers

“A new analysis of recent political speeches found that George W. Bush actually used longer and more complex words in his speeches than President Obama does. Granted none of those words were actually in the dictionary. ‘Don’t be condescencious. My vocablulation is completely misunderestimated.'” – Jimmy Fallon

Share

The Revenge of the Market!

Last month, Turing Pharmaceuticals caused widespread outrage when it raised the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750. Daraprim is a critical life-saving drug that is decades old, but was only available from Turing.

The good news is that all the publicity attracted the attention of another drug company, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals. Imprimis has just announced an alternative to Daraprim, which they have priced at a much more reasonable $1 a pill.

Imprimis also said it has plans to produce more cheap alternative drugs. Their goal is to come out with more affordable versions of the 7,800 generic FDA-approved drugs.

It remains to be seen whether this is just a clever marketing ploy, or if Imprimis is really serious about creating more competition for prescription drugs. But it is a good start.

Share