Desperate Measures

Never mind. On his web site, Rick Santorum (R-PA) put up a poll asking his constituents "Do you support the creation of voluntary Personal Retirement Accounts as a part of Social Security Reform?"

Only 11.7% chose "Yes, Social Security should be reformed to include Personal Retirement Accounts for individuals" while a whopping 88.3% said "No, Social Security should not be reformed to include Personal Retirement Accounts for individuals".

Mr. Santorum quickly took the poll off his site.

Political Hackery. Dependable right wing hack Robert Novak continues to mislead his audience by inaccurately quoting Howard Dean as saying that Social Security recipients would lose 80% of their benefits if nothing was done to improve the program.

What Dean actually said was, ""if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now".

Novak has since issued an on air retraction, but as always, what gets picked up is the spin, not the correction. The RNC ran away with the quote, sending it out as a press release and even putting up a video of Novak on their web site (later taken down without admitting any error). Rush Limbaugh and Club for Growth also picked it up without bothering to check for accuracy.

This only goes to show that if you want to know what Democrats are saying, listen to Democrats, not to Republicans and their apparatchiks.

Caught redhanded. When the gay couple whose photo was used in a homophobic USA Next ad attacking the AARP charged it was used illegally, USA Next CEO Charlie Jarvis called their complaint "silly" and a "diversionary tactic".

Now he's forced to eat crow. The Portland Tribune from whose site the photo was lifted confirmed they didn't give anyone the rights to use it for commercial purposes. Jarvis says "that’s stunning, absolutely stunning" and that he didn't know the photo was used without permission.

The couple, Rick Raymen and Steve Hansen of Portland, Oregon, still has to receive the public apology they demanded from USA Next and is planning to sue.

+Save/Share | |