Fox News’ Brit Hume Praised On MSNBC For Exposing Paul Ryan

[frigidmagi]

Mediaite

On Tuesday, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien absolutely nailed Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu over the campaign’s outrageous lies about Medicare, then added a gratuitous double-tap today, and was called “biased” for her trouble. However, a Fox News anchor earned rare praise on MSNBC’s air for similarly nailing VP pick Paul Ryan, and no one is about to claim Brit Hume is in the tank for President Obama.

Even for the Romney campaign, their attack on President Obama for “cutting” $716 billion from Medicare is ballsier than the dumpster at a golf course. They have been accusing the President of alternately “raiding,” “cutting,” and “stealing” hundreds of billions from Medicare, when in reality, the President achieved savings in Medicare by eliminating subsidies and negotiating rate reductions from medical providers, while actually increasing benefits to Medicare recipients.

But that’s not the ballsiest part. Romney and Ryan (and Reince) have been going around making this charge even though the famous Paul Ryan budget plan uses those exact savings, or “cuts,” or “stuff Obama stole,” or whatever you want to call it. This attack is akin to slamming someone for taking candy from a baby, even as you roll out a plan to keep the candy, and cut the baby open to look for more candy.

Soledad O’Brien did a great job of dismantling this lie on Tuesday morning’s Starting Point, and was accused of bias by John Sununu (and by Noah Rothman on this site), but she backed it up with a fact-check and another several rounds with Romney campaign surrogate Tim Pawlenty. Despite having the facts on her side, though, blind partisans can still pretend the truth isn’t the truth by covering their eyes and ears, and chanting “bias!”

That’s a tougher trick to pull on Fox News’ Brit Hume, who drew praise from MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman on Tuesday night’s The Ed Show for his dogged questioning of Romney running mate Paul Ryan on the issue of the Medicare savings. Host Ed Schultz introduced the clip, in which Hume asks Ryan “Doesn’t your budget contemplate major savings on Medicare on something of the same amount (as the President’s)?”

Ryan tried his first bit of sophistry, responding (emphasis mine) “Only President Obama raids $716 billion from the Medicare program, cut $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for Obamacare. We don’t do that.”

See what he did there? The Ryan budget uses the same savings, but spends it on tax cuts for Mitt Romney and friends.

Hume was too sharp, though, and pressed him, asking “You make savings, how much?”

Ryan parried with The Subject Change. After a pause, he said “I joined the Romney ticket. What Mitt Romney is proposing to do is repeal all of Obamacare.”

Hume kept advancing on Ryan like a hockey-masked killer. “You’re not saying, though, that you don’t contemplate in your budget plan significant savings in Medicare, are you?”

Here’s Paul Ryan’s really long way of saying yes: “We can get into the complicated baseline issues, but that’s the current law. We keep with the current law in our budget.”

The exchange not only exposed the emptiness of the Romney Medicare lie, it exposed Paul Ryan as a really bad liar, and since Brit Hume isn’t on the conservative enemies list that includes every non-Fox journalist, it’s inescapable.

Schultz asked Fineman “Can he (Ryan) continue the dodge the question all the way to November on this?”

“No,” Fineman replied, “and I think Brit Hume is a terrific questioner, by the way, I’ll tip my hat to him there. Brit knew exactly what he was asking about, and Paul Ryan was dodging and filling like crazy. And the fact is that the Ryan/Romney budget proposal on health care does the same thing. It contemplates about the same amount of savings in more efficient programs and so forth that obama care does. It’s exactly the same thing. So they now have an ad — the Republicans have an ad out attacking the President for doing exactly what the Romney/Ryan budget does. And there’s no other way around it, and Brit had him dead to rights on that.”

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the Romney/Ryan ticket, except there’s a really simple way they could make this go away: stop running ads lying about Medicare.

There was a slightly ominous development later in the show. At the end of this segment, Schultz offered one of his patented text message polls, this one asking if the Romney/Ryan Medicare lies would work. While the results of Ed’s polls are usually in the 95%-5% range, this poll resulted in 82% of Ed Show viewers saying it wouldn’t work, and a whopping (relatively speaking) 18% saying it would. It appears that Ed Show viewers aren’t optimistic about the truth sinking in.

Video in the link.

[Dark Silver]

I just have to say this.

This past week, Soledad O'Brien has made me want to have her babies

All of them.

She's stuck to her guns, and brought out direct facts against people who are stating falsehoods and kept to her guns - not backing down even when one of them condesendingly asked if she spoke English.

Our babies will be beautiful, intelligent, articulate and have enough of them to populate a new planet. Once we terraform Mars.

[frigidmagi]

[youtube][/youtube]

Young Turks video.

[Josh]

This past week, Soledad O'Brien has made me want to have her babies

Our babies will be beautiful, intelligent, articulate and have enough of them to populate a new planet. Once we terraform Mars.

Okay I know we've all been busy and you get all embarrassed and stuff, but dude, we really need to have that talk.

[frigidmagi]

I could just send him some educational videos...

[Josh]

I could just send him some educational videos...

No no no we want him to have a normal healthy sex life that doesn't involve three hundred gallons of banana yogurt and MOPP gear.

Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, just that we have a chance to get this one right. Righter.

[frigidmagi]

No no no we want him to have a normal healthy sex life that doesn't involve three hundred gallons of banana yogurt and MOPP gear.

Look man, I told you that was just the one time! When a chick that hot asks for banana yogurt, you fucking get banana yogurt alright? And it wasn't MOPP gear! It was just a set of faded cammies, jerk.

[Josh]

Okay, I'll buy all that.

But was the camera crew and net livestream all her idea too, or some kind of vanity thing?

Also sending it to my email address with the title "CUTE KITTEN VIDEO!!!" was a dirty trick, too. You know I'm a sucker for cute kittens.

[frigidmagi]

That little bit you can thank one of your bastard offspring for. I'd suggest starting with the ones who are twisted enough to pull such things... You know, all the ones who are still breathing.