Foxnews

Sally Kohn rebutted by Barry Secrest

1. Dazzling

At least a quarter of Americans still don’t know who Paul Ryan is, and only about half who know and have an opinion of him view him favorably.

So, Ryan’s primary job tonight was to introduce himself and make himself seem likeable, and he did that well. The personal parts of the speech were very personally delivered, especially the touching parts where Ryan talked about his father and mother and their roles in his life. And at the end of the speech, when Ryan cheered the crowd to its feet, he showed an energy and enthusiasm that’s what voters want in leaders and what Republicans have been desperately lacking in this campaign.

To anyone watching Ryan’s speech who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality. On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.

Cr Note: Romney has been catastrophically struggling?

Last time I checked, Romney was leaving Obama in the dust when it comes to campaign contributions. Obama's campaign is, in fact, in the red.

If that's 'catastrophic' to Romney, we'll take more of it.

2. Deceiving

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was  Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

CR Note: Which is more jobs than Obama has created; however, when rebutting the words of politicians, Kohn's argument is devoid of any specific facts.

Even garden variety bloggers can at least make a salient point or two. Not so with these so-called journalists.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

CR Note:  Simply not true.

Professional credit rating agencies do not base their decisions on subjective  political perceptions, otherwise, they would be less than worthless and bound only by their respective ideologies.

These agencies do base their findings on cold, hard data, and we already know what the US finanical data looks like.

Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.

CR Note: Um, excuse us, but GM declared bankrutpcy under Obama, not Bush.

While you're at it Sally, why don't you explain where one 'closed GM plant' ended up under Obama's tutelage?

If you guessed Mexico, you get the gold star. Wonder how much Obama made from that deal?

Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.

CR Note: "If you started a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen."

Sounds pretty clear to me....

Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.

CR Note: Uh...say what? OMG How ridiculous!

$ 716 billion was cut from Medicare, period. You can try to spin that anyway you want, Sally, but trying to put lipstick on it is not going to change the simple fact.

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

3. Distracting

And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.

Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.

CR Note: Sorry, but 75% of all Americans don't want killing babies to be institutionalized by the central state.

Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.

CR Note: It's a choice, people get to choose, and as it stands, there is no money left in the trust fund. A fact that the Left never seems to want to bring up.

Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president.

Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.

CR Note: Not true, the tax cuts are across the board. The best way to help the poor is to provide them with economic opportunity, not redistribute other people's money to them.

These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance.

At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."

Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.

CR Note: That a Progessive Obama supporter can even talk to us about distractions is a joke unto itself.

What about Romney the "felon," "tax cheat," "enslaver," "murderer"; are those not over-the-top distractions proffered by Obama, which are then gobbled up by media mavens like yourself, Sally?

Pathetic.....

Sally Kohn is a writer and Fox News contributor.  You can find her online at http://sallykohn.com or on Twitter@sallykohn.

Conservative Refocus

Barry Secrest

It's now a granted, that President Obama's soaring abilities at artful prevarication may even surpass his legendarily singular abilities at teleprompted oral wizardry. We saw this recently when Obama came out in a speech and insisted that he has spent less than both the George Bush and Ronald Reagan Presidencies, despite his having run up more debt than all other Presidents in US History "combined." So, how does the one reconcile itself from the other?

It doesn't , ladies and Gentlemen, his utterances were nothing more nor less than certifiably loony, bald-faced lies.

However, as the American people and the Conservative Media learn more and more about the President and his mysterious past, we will get to see more and more of the vetting which was largely missing from the 2008 campaign. On that particular note, we recently were led to a Youtube video in which Obama, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, spoke of "his father 's" return home from WWII, unfortunately, this statement didn't pass the smell test either, his Father could only have been in grade school, at best, based upon his age at the time of WWII:

Obama: "My Father served in World War II"

Indeed, Mr. President? if Obama Sr, who is Obama's true father, did actually serve in WWII, then he could only have been anywhere from three to nine years old, being that he was born in 1936 and WWII started in 1939, quite a warrior, eh? That dog won't hunt? Ok, then let's do what the mainstream media does and see if we can help cover for Obama's being found out in yet another outrageous lie.

In fact, lets be generous and assume the Messiah was referring to his step father, Lolo Soetoro, who was one year older than Barack Senior, making him anywhere from four to eleven years old as a combat veteran? Hmmm...still doesn't pass the smell test.

Well, Ok , How about Michelle's father, Frasier Robinson III, surely he served in WWII? Umm...unfortunately, no, he was also born in 1935, making him far too young to conscript himself into service. So, who's left? Oh! How about Michelle's grandfather, Fraser Robinson Jr? Er...unfortunately, no couldn't have been him, he had only one arm according to news stories, making him a reject on the war front.

Stanley Dunham

Which leaves us with one other possible candidate, that being Obama's grandfather on his mother's side, Ann Dunham. Cross your fingers, surely we can find the Messiah some bit of salvation here! Aha! Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham served in WWII in the European theater in the ordinance division. So, there you have it, although it wasn't actually Obama's father, his maternal grandfather did serve in WWII.

But then, why didn't Obama simply tell the whole truth and say "Grandfather, especially after dedicating an entire book to his Kenyan father, Namely, "Dreams From My Father?"  The true point of this story being that while our premise is totally accurate, when you read our researched facts, done on the fly, and in order and in real time, we come up with a plausible explanation, that exonerates Obama, at least to a point, while also leaving the core meaning of the headline intact and totally truthful.

Which is often how the Mainstream Media treats most damaging facts to members of the Right-Wing  in their political stories. Well, except for the last part, where we give a plausible explanation--something that the Media rarely extends to our politico's on the Right.

But, this is the essential difference between the Conservative Media, in large part, and the Mainstream Media, for the most part.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

However, this also leads us into a recent Mainstream media article written by Jake Tapper of ABC News, in which he referred to the President's birth certificate problems as "nonsense" while disparaging Donald Trump for making reference to Obama's birth certificates issues.

Below is the story's headline:

"Romney Surrogate Donald Trump Doubles-Down on Birther Nonsense While Romney Campaign Stays Mum"

So, rather than make simple passing reference to Jake Tapper's dazzling display of unquestioning comradeship with the Obama White House, why not take Tapper to issue on the subject?  Below is our counter-arguments to Tapper's biased assertions, as we would pointedly maintain that the only actual journalistic questioning Of the birth certificate issue has come from anywhere other than the mainstream media:

Jake Tapper: In an interview with The Daily Beast Friday, real estate mogul and Mitt Romney surrogate Donald Trump doubled-down on his fact-challenged claim that President Obama was not born in the U.S. — a claim that the Romney presidential campaign, currently raffling off a dinner with Trump and Romney to raise money for the campaign, made no effort to condemn.

Conservative Refocus Response:  Indeed, we understand that YOU would expect Mitt to condemn the Trumpster; however, dear Jake, I suppose it would fall upon us to tepidly remind you dizzy denizens of the Media and the Left that Romney is running against Obama, not for him, as shocking as this may seem.  It is our hope that Mr. Romney will continue to refuse to carry Obama's water, unlike you within the Axis Press, and even Sen. John McCain during his presidential run. You see, time after time, we observe you pinheads in the media repeatedly affirm, amongst yourselves, how ridiculous it all is regarding the premise of Obama's ineligibility, which, as I recall, was also the first response of the Right-Wing when the Nixon allegations on Watergate first came out....Uh-Huh, you following maybe just a little?

Now, we do understand how terribly difficult to imagine  for you that it is, and for the Media as a whole, that someone can somehow actually refuse to worship at the alter of Obama. Believe me, I know how you must feel Jake, because in many ways, we of the Right can't believe how you  of the Left can effectively manage not to somehow see through all of the mistruths and failures that is the nadir of Obama's Presidency. Yet here we both stand completely at odds, while one denies a preponderance of the evidence and another insists that we should not discount what's on the table.

And yet here, also, when it comes to YOUR MAN, rather than to actually initiate some meaningful journalistic digging around, where you would have to eventually admit that the smoke is seeping out from everywhere, you would rather condemn such talk and tell everyone, once again, how ridiculous it all is, despite the mountains of evidence going against the President at this point.

JT: “A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book, he said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. His mother never spent a day in the hospital,” Trump told The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove.

As Grove pointed out, that’s not even an accurate re-telling of the latest birther “evidence,” in which Obama’s literary agency two decades ago published a catalogue of clients that included the false information that he had been born in Kenya. A woman named Miriam Goderich has since come forward and said the error was hers.

Conservative Refocus Response: Oh, well then, there we are; we, thou sordid mass of pitchfork bundling Knaves that we remain! Who, we must now ask, died and made this woman, Miriam Goderich, the Queen of the literal truth, Jake?

Miriam Goderich

In fact, it's amazing how you Obama disciples actually meander around the edges of the truth and then have the gall to call it professional journalism. You have now actually flaunted a woman around on the political stage, who is a verified contributor to Obama, as we can clearly see below, and insist that she is being credible, while failing to disclose that she is indeed an Obama supporter (not unlike yourself):

Download CSV

So, despite the actual facts as displayed above, we should all still fall to our knees and grovel around at how simply pitiful we were to have heretically doubted the ignominious Messiah and the publishing- proof which he had signed off on twenty years ago, stating that he was from Kenya. Now, please don't make me explain what a publishing proof is Jake.

But you know, in another vein, the question which simply must be asked is:  Why was it that Kenya, of all places, somehow managed to appear as the error in the brochure?  Especially when we look back at all of the past allegations stating that Obama was born in Kenya.  Our planet actually has about 200 countries in existence, 52 of which are in the massive continent of Africa. So, how is it that the very ridiculous error we have all been accused of making can now be found in a publishing brochure of over two decades ago? What are the freaking odds?  1 in 200 would be the approximate answer, and yet why not Somalia, Zimbabwe, or even Italy, for Heaven's sake?   Why do these mistakes keep pointing to Kenya?

JT:It was an error. “That’s what he told the literary agent,” Trump told Grove. “That’s the way life works… He didn’t know he was running for president, so he told the truth. The literary agent wrote down what he said… He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”

One might think, given the ample evidence that the president was born in Hawaii — long-form birth certificate, contemporaneous newspaper accounts — and the ugly side of the zeitgeist that “birther” claims uncover, that the Romney campaign would be quick to distance the candidate from Mr. Trump – especially given how quickly the Romney campaign jumped on the remarks of Democratic activist Hilary Rosen when she seemed to belittle stay-at-home mothers.

Conservative Refocus Response: Indeed, is that all you've got Jake? A proven to be forged long-form birth certificate? One that, despite being a poorly contrived fake, proves Obama's father was not natural born, making the President ineligible? A newspaper account about a birth? That's evidence enough?

The ugly side of zeitgeist?  Huh?

Well, now that's certainly proof! You have given two actual instances of "your Proof," both of which are tenuous at best, while we have numerous videos, numerous documents, Obama's own grandmother, some of these even displaying both the President and first lady stating that Obama was born in Kenya, and yet your two items are the be all end all, Jake? Give us a break.

And now, to bring up the Hilary Rosen incident, in which Rosen stated that Romney's wife "hadn't worked a day in her life" and you think Romney should have kept his mouth shut and let Mrs. Romney and millions of stay-at-home moms twist in the wind?  Jake, what color is the sky in your world, and what true bearing does this have on the subject you are meekly preaching about, anyway?

Simply fascinating! Best describes your pathetic offense, at this point.

JT:One might think that given how much the Romney campaign was quick to demand that then-rival, Texas Governor Rick Perry, distance himself from a pastor who called Mormonism a “cult” – and the concerns of Romney campaign officials that Democrats will attempt to use bigotry against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints against Romney — they would be sensitive to this issue.

But one would be wrong.

Conservative Refocus Response: And you, Sir Jake, are at this point floating in a sea of wrong. Quick question, however: What do the questions of Obama's ineligibility have to do with Romney's religion? Did you guys edit out something that we missed? Is there some sort of similarity here between birth certificates and religion that we don't know about?  Or have you somehow misplaced your belief in Obama as a religion? Now that makes perfect sense, in the face of everything you have written up to this point. Word of advice: Stop kneeling at the altar of Obama; it's quite undignified and probably not very good for your career as an objective journalist.

I'm just sayin'....

JT: In addition to the dinner with Romney and Trump later in June, Romney will appear on Tuesday with Trump at his hotel in Las Vegas. And the campaign made no effort to distance itself from Trump when asked if the association wasn’t “embarrassing” for Romney by CNN’s Gloria Borger on Friday afternoon.

Senior Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said, “I can’t speak for Donald Trump, Gloria, but I can tell you that Mitt Romney accepts that President Obama was born in the United States. He doesn’t view the place of his birth as an issue in this campaign. We have many serious challenges facing this country dealing with jobs and the economy. That’s where we should center our- the discussion. And as I said, you know, Mitt Romney has made it clear that this is not an issue for him.

Conservative Refocus Response: Well, "duh," just as Obama lets you "journalists" do his dirty work in the media, Romney will allow bulldogs like Trump, and the unadulterated Conservative media, do his dirty work for him on the Right. It's not rocket science, it's simply hardcore opposition research and activism, and we believe that we have something here. You, within the opposition, do as well or you would have completely ignored this story altogether, so there we are.

JT: Fehrnstrom, asked about the campaign’s association with Trump, said, “Well, you know, not too long ago, Jay Carney, the spokesman for the White House made a statement which I think is correct, and that statement was that a candidate can’t be responsible for everything that their supporters say.”

That’s a reference to the “Hoffa Standard,” from Labor Day 2011, when White House press secretary Jay Carney refused to condemn incendiary remarks made by a labor leader attacking members of the Tea Party at an event where the president spoke.

“Donald Trump has become the birther-in-chief,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said on MSNBC. “I could put the President’s birth certificate on my forehead and Mr. Trump wouldn’t accept that the President was born here in the United States. And it raises a question that’s come up before during this campaign as to whether Governor Romney will embrace the extreme voices in his party or stand up to them.”

Conservative Refocus Response: Interesting, it is, that the only folks who find these questions of Obama's eligibility "ridiculous" are largely the ones on the extreme Left and the Establishment class, such as you within the media, Jake. It reminds me of the Catholic Churches recent admission that the world is round. Like it or not, the doubts will persist until we see some actual evidence that disproves everything we have on file up to this point.  And, by the way, it will take a lot more than a poorly forged birth certificate that was finally found after a difficult two year search.

Pinhead....

Catch Recent Barry Secrest radio Interviews:

Barry Secrest on the Radio: Interviews of May 28th and 29th

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