CNN's Ali Velshi calls out Republican Congressman ON THE AIR for misleading the American people.

Courtesy of Mediaite:

CNN’s Ali Velshi tore into GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KN) Monday night about his claim that a tax hike on small business would hurt job creation. Telling Huelskamp he didn’t “believe” his numbers to be true, Velshi mockingly asked, “The vast majority of those businesses are in fact not job creators. You understand that to be the case?” 

Huelskamp disputed Velshi’s claim and said that he had “seen research” that raising taxes would impact “41% of business income.” Velshi called him out on his language, saying “41% of business income is not 41% of business, that’s a very, very different and somewhat misleading statistic.” Again Velshi asked, “You understand the distinction, right?” 

Velshi then proceeded to silence Huelskamp from speaking any further, saying, “Sir, you put out information to our viewers, you’re on CNN right now. I would like the information to be accurate.” Huelskamp fought to answer, and when he was asked by Velshi whether he wanted to stand by his information, he said, “That’s our best guess. We’re still working on that.” 

“I think that’s a guess,” Velshi retorted. 

According to Huelskamp, part of the difficulty in obtaining accurate information is that the Obama administration won’t tell his team anything. Velshi slammed him for this misstatement, saying, “We actually don’t have any difficulty getting that information, sir. We don’t need it from the administration, that information is public.”

Yes! This is the kind of thing that we need to see MUCH more of from our journalists, ESPECIALLY after we saw jut how allergic to actual facts they were, and how determined they were to lie to the American people.

Having said that I think Velshi did an excellent job here and even followed it up later in the hour and reported this: 

VELSHI: Wolf, I just want to... I've been doing some research as I promised I would do in the conversation that we had with Congressman Tim Huelskamp, quoting what he said was a study by Montana State University. We're working our way through that study, but I'll tell you the facts that we have right now. 

If businesses... if everybody who earned more than $250 thousand saw an increase in the top tax rate from 36 percent to 39.6 percent, that would be 3.5 percent of all small businesses. That would be 940,000 businesses. That's I think a number that the Congressman was quoting. So at $450,000, it is nowhere near the number that the Congressman was quoting. 

But let's just be generous and say that it was that. Of that number, only a very small proportion are not hedge funds, partnerships, law firms, companies that don't employ a whole lot of other people. So the Congressman's facts are just incorrect on this. There is nowhere near a million businesses that will be affected by this increase of taxing people above $450,000.

And THAT my friends is how you do it!

You know now that Velshi has joined Soledad O'Brien with this whole "holding Republicans accountable for their bullshit thing," I am thinking of possibly tuning in to CNN once in awhile. You know, when MSNBC is once again broadcasting that stupid Lockup series perhaps.

Maybe since they have seen how quickly Fox is losing viewers they might be reconsidering this whole idea of becoming Fox-lite.

"Who needs an assault weapon to go hunting?" CNN's Don Lemon asks the obvious questions.

Courtesy of TPM:

"Who needs an assault rifle to go hunting?" Lemon said during a broadcast on the cable news network. "You can't even use the prey that you kill with an assault rifle if you indeed do it. No one needs an assault rifle to go out and shoot a deer. No one needs an assault rifle that's capable of shooting 10, 20, 30 rounds off at the same time to shoot a duck or to shoot quail. It does not make sense."

I really like Don Lemon. Both he, Anderson Cooper, and Soledad O'Brien almost make CNN watchable for me. Almost but not quite.

The questions and statements that Lemon make are dead on, and are ones that I would really like to see put to pro-gun members of Congress and NRA representatives.

Speaking of Seledad O'Brien, here is a link showing her grilling a moronic gun rights advocate on her program today.

Now THIS is how you deal with a lying Mitt Romney surrogate!

Courtesy of Mediaite:

“I understand that this is a Republican talking point because I’ve heard it repeated over and over again,” said O’Brien after Sununu insisted the Romney and Ryan plans were different. “And these numbers have been debunked, as you know, by the Congressional Budget Office.” 

“No they haven’t,” said Sununu. 

“Yes, they have,” answered O’Brien. 

“I have the Congressional Budget Office Budget report right here,” Sununu said, waving it on camera. “Go read page 13 and 14.” 

“I can tell you what it says, yes,” said O’Brien. “It cuts a reduction in the expected rate of growth, which you know. Not cutting benefits to the elderly. Benefits will be improved. The focus is on hospitals. The focus is on health insurance.” 

“He gutted the program by $711 million,” said Sununu of Obama. “And the fact is he reduces services to Medicare beneficiaries currently on the package. What the difference is, is that Romney says no impact to anybody 55 or over. It is clear in here that the reduction in services start on January 1, 2013 and Obama stole that money to put it into programs under Obamacare…” 

“The hospitals agreed to that,” O’Brien countered. “The drug providers agreed to that because their theory is that what they’re going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system. It doesn’t reduce or cut the benefits. Right….” 

“Soledad, stop this!” said Sununu. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there….” 

“I’m telling you what FactCheck.com tells you,” she insisted. “I’m telling you what the CBO tells you. I’m telling you what CNN’s independent analysis does.” 

“Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this,” Sununu shot back. 

“You know. Let me tell you something,” she continued. “There is independent analysis that details what this about and repeating a number–” 

“No there isn’t,” he interrupted. 

“Yes there is,” she replied. 

“No,” Sununu insisted. “There’s Democratic analysis.”

"There's Democratic analysis?"  Meaning I assume that any truth revealed by the media is immediately suspected to be a liberal concoction?

Hell this is the same damn thing that Sarah Palin said yesterday.

So this is where the line is now drawn in the sand? There are no more actual facts in the Republican point of view, just Conservative talking points vs Liberal evidence?

Holy crap! Well so much for having an open and honest dialogue on the issues!

By the way as you know I am not a big fan of CNN these days, but I think I might just be in love with a Soledad O'Brein. She has some fire, oh yes she does!

P.S. Just so you conservatives know, it just so happens that facts have a liberal bias. So clearly in order to stay conservatives you kind of HAVE to ignore them. Good luck educating your children for the future job markets.