Romney 2012?

CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings 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.

The right-wing media either doesn't understand the ACA's effect on Medicare, or is blatantly misleading about it. Either way, O'Brien was correct to challenge this false claim, and it's time for the rest of the media to follow suit.

It is so hard to fight blatant falsehoods in the easy way they are spread. No one listens to the explanations but stay fixed on the one liners.

In any event, Romney and his surrogates are being dishonest in their claims of Obama gutting Medicare.

Republicans are working on voter suppression; and they call themselves Americans. Hypocrites.

Jon Stewart Blasts Republicans For Divisive Hypocrisy

On Wednesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart was a little confused by the growing trend of "positivity" in Mitt Romney's campaign. In a speech on Tuesday, the GOP candidate made a call for Americans to come together in the same sentence that he instructed the current President to "take [his] campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago."

"As a general rule, I find it helps not to frame a plea for national unity by insulting a major city within that nation," Stewart joked.

But the hypocrisy wasn't limited to that one comment. The last few months alone are a veritable treasure trove of divisive language from Mitt's side of the aisle, and Stewart has the footage to prove it.

It's almost as if bipartisan politics pits people against each other in an election year.