The latest ad: 'More than Wrong" and revisionist history

Jon Ralston offers up this analysis of Sharron Angle’s penchant for revisionist history on those rare occasions somebody can actually engage her to talk - she runs off whenever the media shows up.

Sharron Angle must believe in evolution, her stories keep changing faster than fruitfly DNA.

Note the way she rambles on - argument by verbosity - below. And remember, as you stumble over the goofy verb-subject agreement, this woman claims to have been a school teacher for more than 25 years.

Yikes! Her poor students.

Here’s the scary part: I’ve pointed these obvious inconsistencies out to some true believers. They don’t get it and they don’t care to. Nobody wants it pointed out that they’ve been made a fool of. Would that the Democratic party could give these folks a safe way to come back in from the intellectual cold of TeaNut land.

-maven

Angle: I never said I wanted to privatize the VA - but of course she did.

By Jon Ralston · September 28, 2010 · 3:38 PM

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GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle was asked at a private function Saturday evening in Reno hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition about privatizing the VA. And, as she has done before, she took the opportunity to rewrite history.

Here’s the exchange — audio at right:

Guest: Sharron I wanted to task you about one of the new ads that Harry has got running against you, and that concerns the VA hospitals. I’m really big on one that we have here, and I would like to hear a clarification about what your stand really is.

Angle: Well, first of all, when we talk about Harry Reid’s ads, let’s remember that a half-truth is no truth. And what you’re finding in his ads are these half truths. We were discussing, at the time that I made that remark, we were discussing Obamacare and Medicare. And how Harry Reid has taken a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, right out at a place where seniors have choices—Medicare Advantage, one of the programs that actually works. And I was talking about my father, who is 88 years old, he’s on Medicare, he’s on Social Security, and he’s a veteran. Not of just World War II, but also the Korean War. He had a Purple Heart. He has served this country, and yet he pays $800 a month in prescription drugs that are not covered by the VA and they’re not covered by Medicare. And, there is a lot of you that understand what I’m saying. And that was the context of those comments. I said that they could do a better job, that’s all I said, is the VA could do a better job for our veterans. And I believe that. I believe that our veterans fit in that A priority box. We should be supporting our military and their dependents (applause) and our veterans. We should be supporting them. We owe them. We owe them and we should be supporting them. And then of course he pulls out something that I said about my grandfather, and I’ll clear this up at the same time. My grandfather didn’t pay into Social Security. And so, when they sent his first Social Security check, he said “I’m not taking this. I don’t need this check. I saved for my retirement.” And that’s what that was, that was my grandfather. And of course he was quite, well he wasn’t too old, he wasn’t as old as I am now. But still he was a potato farmer, he worked in California, he raised a family, been through the Depression, and he saved for his retirement, and he had not paid into the Social Security system and so he refused to take his check (applause).

This is quite the revisionist history (again) by Angle. The context she claims is wrong, and so is her recollection of what she argued.

Here’s what she said on KNPR in May — note context and use of word “privatized” in this interview with Dave Becker:

Angle: … And my father did the same thing. He calls it his rocking chair pay but he doesn’t live on his social security, he has investments that he has made over the years in rental properties and things like that—that are actually paying for his retirement. He needs more and more supervised care. He’s 87 years old and has Parkinson’s and we have to pay more and more for his healthcare. I know he pays over 800 dollars a month in prescription drugs that we can’t get through his VA nor through Medicare—they just wont cover those things. And I know lots of seniors—

Becker: Should they cover those things?

Angle: No, not if you’re working towards a privatized system. And he can pay for them. That’s my whole point. Even with the system we’ve got, it’s broken, its not covering for every cost that he has. And if he were dependent upon that, he wouldn’t be getting the healthcare he needs and that’s why we need to fix the system.

Becker: As a senator, how would you fix that system if it’s not to say that you’re on your own? If VA is not going to cover then you have to cover it yourself. Over how long?

Angle: Well, I’m not the only person and I’m not the President. I can propose bills and then my job as a senator is to build a coalition that will get on board with my idea. And, of course, as you know that my idea may be a good idea, but the details of that idea will be worked out through that coalition. And you know there are smarter heads than mine on this and that’s what we’ll be doing.

I am beginning to wonder about this seemingly pathological habit Angle has of saying she never said something when it is on tape and so easily retrieved. Does she really not remember, or does she think this is a “Mission Impossible” world where all tapes self-destruct after five seconds?

Angle makes it onto Countdown, confuses Olberman and nation

This is great! Uh, unless you actually care about Nevada’s reputation and how we are perceived around the country.

The Angle gaffe of the day is playing out to a national audience today. She seems to be terribly confused about the differences between Hispanics and Asians, oh and Canadians too. It seems that the Canadian ambassador is asking her for an apology …

According to Politico:

“There have been no terrorist attacks on the United States coming from Canada,” the letter stated, according to a report in the Vancouver Sun. “None of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States from or through Canada.”

The ambassador asked Angle to “set the record straight.” Angle hasn’t replied to the letter, an embassy representative told the Sun.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43810.html#ixzz12mAExn9f

Watch:

Ralston actually almost redeems himself here.

Here are some of the reader comments after this story:

“See I want to see her get elected. She is so obviously mentally-ill, she’ll be a laugh a minute in the Senate and then will completely implode. If Nevadans are this stupid to support her in the numbers they are doing, they deserve EXACTLY what they get.”

“She’s a moron, but apparently about half of Nevada voters are, too.
And she IS decisive, whereas Harry Reid is just a run-of-the-mill Wimpocrat.”

“And the dumb assed krackas in Nevada take this bitch seriously!”

“Someone get Sharron Angle a map! Harry Reid is supposed to protect the border? Nevada borders Oregon, Utah, California, Nevada, Idaho. Which of these foreign countries doesn’t she like?”

Monday Musings: July 18, 2010

Is the world abuzz over the Sharron Angle feature in Sunday’s Reno Gazette-Journal? I’d be deeply concerned if it was, but I at least hope Nevadans are abuzz - atwitter - all shook up.

This was as fine a piece of recent political journalism as the RGJ has done for a while, and I commend them for their efforts. It may be too little, too late to pull print back from the precipice of irrelevance, but I’d like to think they’ll all go down fighting the good fight. This type of in-depth reporting is where print journalism shines a big bright light. This you can take out in the hammock under a tree and peruse, mull it over good and hard.

This is where I’d normally give you the link to the RGJ story. If I could. If the RGJ could put the big story on the website for all to see - since it was important enough to emblazon the front page with -  without my fiddling around with passwords or a useless ‘search’. A boss of mine in the advertising agency back in the day, used to tell me “never put barriers in the way of a customer getting to the product.”

Okay. Now I’ll quit ranting.

If this story doesn’t give you - the rational person - pause, then nothing will. But the RGJ makes the good point that we’d all be very unwise to underestimate the grandmother from Tonopah, as she goes door to door selling grandmother-hood, the flag, a dash of Second Amendment hysteria and a pinch of that old timey delusional religious fever thrown in. When even the most stalwart of GOP, pro-business types can’t sign on to her wagon train, that should tell everybody sumpthin’.

Unfortunately, it only tells the true believers that guys like Mayor Bob Cashell have been converted to the dark side of the Harry Reid force, and soon, Che Guevera’s likeness will be up at City Hall.

Sheesh. The lunatics are loose.

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How can the GOP be serious about Sharron Angle?

Mr. Maven and I watched Jon Ralston’s interview with Sharron Angle this evening.

Oh, my.

If gawd really had a plan for my life, as Angle says, then I would hope he/she would spare me from Sharron Angle and her simple-minded platitudes, Tea Party catch-phrases and gross mis-interpretations of history, the Constitution and life in general.

This woman is living in an alternate reality.

Manders: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle: Not in my book.

Manders: “So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?”

Angle: “You know, I’m a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.”

Yup. Tell that to a young girl who’s been traumatized by Mom’s latest boyfriend. Angle is giving christians a bad name.

Ralston had great fun with Angle - simply trying to keep her on message. If the GOP has been fluffing and prepping Angle, they’ve done a miserable job of it. All she had to do was have three rational bullet points for each hot button issue. Instead, she flipped and flopped back and forth between her well documented positions in the not so distant past, and a more moderated (but not well thought out) current position.

You almost have to applaud her delusional persistence on the ‘Lock Box’  idea of social security funding.  A college course in economics might have saved this woman from saying stuff this incredibly silly.

Normally, I don’t like Ralston, but at least he made a valiant attempt to hold Angle accountable for statements that ‘want it both ways’ such as condemning Harry Reid for not providing jobs for Nevada and in the same breath saying it’s not the job of a senator to provide jobs.

It’s also obvious that Angle is completely out of touch with the same working class Nevadans that support her. She really thinks that extending unemployment benefits is wrong, stating that Nevadans would rather collect unemployment benefits instead of getting a job. Angle says that out of work Nevadans are afraid to go get jobs, and so stay on unemployment. Is she crazy? And, she probably still believes the urban legend of the high living welfare queen.

Watch her try to weasel around Ralston’s questioning on her bizarre remarks about Nevadans being spoiled - too spoiled to go pick tomatoes in California’s fields is probably what she meant.

Then it goes on with nutty talk about separation of church and state, the Second Amendment and more. You’d think she would be embarrassed. I know I was just watching her get caught out on each issue with actual documented audio and video of her baseless claims, insane positions and radical remarks. It was almost painful to watch. Don’t you love how she has completely new information from Thomas Jefferson - who she’s maybe channeling, about church and state?

At the end of the day, Sharron Angle is exactly what you get from a candidate who has no intellectual foundation for any of her positions, relying instead on empty slogans designed to thrill idiots like the following who left comments on the KRNV site:

From Al B: “Never watched your program face to face before but who is the individual getting so tough with angle… I did not vote for her and she will never get elected but …..I am rancher who has a small 40 acre spread and guy who is acting so tough with angle would be flat on the ground with me….. respect is something you or he do not know anything about.It’s pretty obvious he is a far left democrat….. me I only need the government to do two thing… take care of the infrastructure and keep Obdul from bombing me… is that racist??? too bad as I beleave in truth.. pragmatic truth not ideology.. but tell your man not to act like an ass…it doesn’t work with hard asses like me… certainly does nothing for your network. oh yeah you are and NBC network …..NOW I KNOW WHY HE IS AN ASS”

From Steve M.: “Bravo to Sharron Angle for putting the dufus host in his place. He deserved to be talked over based on his biased questions and endless babble. Ms. Angle is a very tough woman, and will be a breath of fresh air in D.C.”

From Melissa P.: “I think Sharon did a great job considering what an a$$ Jon Ralston is. He is an obvious left wing wacho who trys to control any conversation. Good for Sharon for trying to finish what she was trying to say without that idiot interrupting her. I wanted to hear about serious issues concerning Nevada, not whether or not separation of church and state is in the Constitution - which it is not. Nonetheless, rather than listening to this idiot who only likes put words in people’s mouths, takes things out of context and who LOVES to hear himself talk unless he is interviewing a Democrat; I would rather be something more productive…”

Monday Musings: May 3, 2010

“Ironically, that reversal of the New Deal regulations that had operated successfully for 60 years, the Glass-Steagall Act, was referenced by Blankfein in his Tuesday testimony explaining how Goldman and other firms spun out of control.

When asked by Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., how Goldman had morphed from a traditional investment bank backing sound business ventures to a market gambler in fanciful products, Blankfein attributed it, somewhat forlornly, to “a change in the sociology of the business that took place over the last 15 to 20 years.” He added, “I’m not sure that it was precipitated by the fall of Glass-Steagall or it caused Glass-Steagall to fall. …” 

Of course there was nothing inevitable about the fall of Glass-Steagall in 1999, since it was the result of decades of lobbying by the financial industry. That change was followed by the total deregulation of financial derivatives by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Rubin had pushed and which President Clinton signed into law.” Robert Scheer column, ‘What a Piece of Crap’

Yes, there was nothing ‘inevitable’ about the fall of Glass-Steagall - beyond what you would expect from nearly 20 years of brainwashing that said any and all government regulation is bad, bad, bad … for business.

Starting with the GOM (Grand Old Man) of the GOP, Ronald Reagan and his witless jokes about government, leading through the Clinton years and ending with Bush, all the hard fought and hard won regulatory gains meant to protect ‘We the People’ were shredded and tossed. The country has been thoroughly sold on the idea that government is necessarily bad, unions are unnecessary and that the only thing that needs to be BIG is the military-industrial complex.

You’re looking at the wreckage of this ‘thinking’ in the Wall Street mess, the toxic oil sludge that is about to flow inexorably across the sensitive wetlands and valuable fishing grounds of Louisiana - thanks to BP and a Tea Party chant of ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’- and miners dying in one lousy, unsafe mine after another.

So far as I can see, very few business below the dizzying heights of Goldman Sachs, are doing very well sans the government regulatory environment of old.

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Monday Musings: March 29, 2010

Today was simply the most awesome day of skiing that I’ve had in years. I am a happy woman, and learned something useful.

Mt. Rose, where I have a season pass, is where I normally ski. It’s economical and close. Mt. Rose doesn’t have the most terrain or the fanciest of posh hotels, bistros, high end trinket shops and such. It’s a basic locals place.

The skiing at Mt. Rose can be very challenging however.

I’ve really worked at my skiing this year, and sometimes bemoaned how hard it was at Mt. Rose. So today, we went to Northstar. Very Euro, very Vail, very big, and very expensive. It has a huge area of beautiful runs.

I’ve never skied better. Because, compared to Mt. Rose, Northstar is easy. It’s a nice intermediate ski area for skiers who don’t particularly want to be challenged.

I’ll go back to Mt. Rose and be glad to be there. I’ll know that when I ski well there, it’s because I’m good and not because I’ve been fooled by fancy.

Sort of like life.

Now the Tea Party folks, and Republican pols are backing away from simply hating health care reform legislation on it’s face as health, care and reform. Now, it’s about taxes. I get it. Tea Partiers and the GOP don’t like taxes.

It just occurred to me that had the GOP not been on such an irresponsible spending spree over the last decade, launched two horribly expensive and unnecessary wars abroad, gutted regulation over the financial services industry leading to near collapse of state and local governments - leaving them to tax their way out of the very deep hole - had they not done this, there would probably not be a bunch of tax increases looming everywhere we look.

The Tea Party bunch needs to look in the goddamn mirror.

In the ever shrinking Reno Gazette-Journal op-ed page, there was a letter the editor by a local nitwit. This person was blown away - I mean REALLY BLOWN AWAY - having met America’s craziest Governor, Jim Gibbons of Nevada in WalMart.

Whoa! The Guv in WalMart!

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Friday Fish Wrap: March 26, 2010

First, I want to begin by thanking all the people who have, apparently, become fairly regular readers of this blog. My latest analytics continue to surprise me. This blog is a labor of love, being worked in ahead of housework and a lot of other things I should be doing when not working, skiing or taking care of Mr. Maven.

A friend of a friend said, in response to looking at the maven&meddler a while back, something to the effect “some of us (snarky tone) have a life.”

True.

Mine’s really hectic, but I still can’t put down the blogging. It’s a curse. It’s also great mental health.

All for a hosting fee of $17.00 a month.

I’ve watched bloggers come and go. I hope that I can stay the course.

Watching Face to Face with Jon Ralston tonight was a hoot.

The two Tea Partiers went out of their way to prove everything I believe about them: loud and disruptive, impressed with their own ‘wink, wink’ cute-ness, and completely able to ‘debate’ in a factual vacuum. Facts do not get in the way of making their point … whatever it is. On their hyper bizarro Planet Delusional.

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Nevada: ET and Batshit Crazy Teaparty types abounding

The question, gentle reader, has Nevada become ground zero for crazy? Synonymous for nutty? A stand-in for irrational thinking?

Do Extra-Terrestials walk amongst us. Could the Tea Party candidates who yearn to be free of Harry Reid actually be rational human flesh that has been possessed by daffy aliens?

BlueLyon and others are on point to news coming from Jon Ralston that another Tea Party type is chomping at the bit to get in the race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Jon Scott Ashjian, only the second (!) Armenian to declare himself a contender in this years contest - Danny Tarkanian being the first - is reportedly waiting for The Tea Party of Nevada to be declared almost sane enough to qualify as a legitimate political party by the Secretary of State’s office.

You have to hand it to Nevadan’s. We are an inclusive bunch, especially when it comes to looney quasi political parties and their batshit crazy quasi candidates.

Beating a path out of Utah and the clutches of the Mormon Cult some twenty plus years ago, I thought that Nevada had to be a safer bet. Now I realize how misguided I was.

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