Sarah Palin Gets Facts Wrong in Budget Critique
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Sarah Palin has turned to Facebook and Twitter to criticize President Obama's 2012 budget proposal. Here's what she wrote on Twitter: "Here's how minuscule the White House's $775 million a year cuts are: less than 1/10 of 1% of this year's budget deficit."
And on Facebook: "If you want to know how minuscule their proposed $775 million-a-year budget 'cuts' really are, please look at this chart. The proposed cuts are so insignificant - less than 1/10 of 1% of this year's $1.65 trillion budget deficit - that they are essentially invisible on the pie chart. That speaks volumes about today's budget."
Palin links in both places to a chart posted on The Blaze, Glenn Beck's website, five days ago - before the budget proposal came out. It uses an op-ed by White House Budget Director Jacob Lew to suggest that Mr. Obama was proposing to cut $775 million from the budget, and goes on to mock that amount as insignificant.
The problem? Lew wrote in his op-ed that he was only discussing "a small fraction of the scores of cuts" in the budget proposal, not the total proposed cuts, as a Democratic official pointed out to Ben Smith. Now, it's difficult to quantify the exact total of those first year cuts, and there is new spending that actually increases the deficit projection for 2012. But the cuts themselves are certainly more than Palin suggests: there are $2.5 billion in cuts to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program alone, for example. Smith writes that the proposed cuts, in total, add up to about $75 billion.
There is no problem with Palin criticizing the cuts as too small, of course. But the simple fact is that she is using an incorrect figure as the basis of her critique.
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I just dont get why anyone is paying attention to her. She was a laughing stock in 2008 and has done nothing to improve her image ever since. No party will back her, she has zero experience governing anything, especially since she quit the only political job she ever had two years in and one of those was spent on the campaign trail.
Again, why is this none issue being given press space? She had her 15 mintues, we were all entertained, now trot out the dancing dogs.
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Or dancing daughters.
People can make all the excuses they want to justify her actions but it doesn't change the simple fact that a person of integrity steps up to the plate, brings their best game and fights till their last breath when the going gets tough. That simple concept like a gentle breeze flies right over the heads of most people. That is a fact. It is not personal.
It is simply business and these values should apply to everyone. Those that feel the need to defend the people of that nature are in fact lacking in self esteem and just plain good common sense.
Now JV that's funny! And I didn't think you had a sense of humor. Please explain, though, why Katie Couric would need to "apologize" to Palin? You do realize that it was Sarah Palin who could not give sensible answers to Couric's questions, right? You know, the one about Supreme Court decisions for instance? Why should Couric apologize for Palin's incompetence?? Please explain.
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I can see Couric now: "Gee, Mrs. Palin, I am SO sorry for asking you simple questions, like what you read, and what your favorite SCOTUS ruling is. We'll stick to asking you which brand of applesauce you like, if you can handle that...."
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slappy_mcghee Yes, I'm aware of that but I'm also aware of many Republicans and conservatives who do!
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It's a minority. Most Repubs and conservatives want nothing to do with her.
That's just your opinion! You don't know that to be a fact! All you see is the polls. You won't know if it's a fact until the primaries are over if she decides to run!
Why does every single sentence have to end in an exclamation mark?!!!!!
You ARE aware that many many Repubs and conservatives want NOTHING to do with her, don't you?
That doesn't seem like a "quitter" to me!
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You have pretty low standards, then.
Also I'm going to remind you people who continue to call her a quitter that she is still around and standing after over two years of the worst verbal assaults that I've ever seen anyone take in all of my 58 years of living! A little over a month ago she was being called a murderer in these comment boards. She also received death threats by the hundreds!
Her children have been verbally attacked and ridiculed both in these boards and on twitter and facebook and by every late night "comedian" in the country. Sarah, herself, has been sued, threatened, accused, and called stupid, and an idiot and called every filthy name there is in the dictionary and some new ones that aren't in the dictionary yet.
She has withstood all of that for the last two years and hasn't disappeared back to Alaska yet! She could have just gone back to Alaska after the 2008 election never to be heard from again but she hasn't! That doesn't seem like a "quitter" to me!