Top Ten Pieces of Bullshit

This Week’s Top Ten Myths, Untruths, and Flat Out Lies That Get Diggaduh Diggapissed.
10. Players do not have sophomore slumps and they don’t make rookie mistakes.  The sophomore slump is a statistical correction called regression to the mean.  And rookies make the same mistakes they made in college and they make the same mistakes as veterans.
9. Republicans insist on calling millionaires Small Business Owners and that they are job creators.  Problem is the millionaire surtax is a marginal rate increase for income over $1million if filing as a person.  If you file as a business, you get taxed on earnings not income.  Not the same thing.
8. Millionaires are job creators.  Hedge fund managers and private equity executives create jobs?  If that is the case can someone tell me how many jobs John Paulson and Mitt Romney (while at Bain Capital) created?  Didn’t think so.
7. Mitt Romney insisting that corporations are people. This week Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase all booked 3rd quarter profits by utilizing some accounting shenanigans.  The banks were able to book a profit on the falling value of their own debt.  I don’t know many real people that can do that.  Perhaps I should look into Diggabonds.
6. Republicans continued claims that the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank are the reasons why companies are not hiring.  The most recent survey by the Bureau of Labor showed that insufficient demand was cited as the primary reason for initial claimants for unemployment insurance 101,907 times  while Government Regulation was chosen 538 times.  A 20X factor.
5. Government shouldn’t pick winners and losers.  Really, how the hell do you think the Department of Defense works?
4. Theo Epstein is a genius because he was Red Sox General Manager when the team won two World Series Titles.  With a perennial payroll in the top 3 of all MLB clubs, winning two World Series does not make you a genius.  In fact signing John Lackey, Carl Crawford, Edgar Renteria, Julio Lugo, Eric Gagne, and Mike Cameron would signify anything BUT genius.
3. Obama’s foreign policy has weakened the U.S.’s standing around the globe.  In fact the opposite has happened.  Tough talk with Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey will lead to a more stable region in the long run.  As for China, have you seen the regional confederation of Southeast Asian nations rallying around the U.S. as a counterweight to Chinese imperial objectives?  Finally, ask Bin Laden, Gadhafi, al-Awlaki what happens when the Obama Administration eschews Bushesque chest thumping rhetoric for precise planning and violent execution.
2. Cherry picker: Evangelicals who pick specific bible passages to make some homophobic point and Libertarians who claim that case law is moot because if something isn’t specifically called out in the Constitution it isn’t legal.  They get so caught up looking for little pieces to make a point they cannot see the forest through the trees and miss the big picture.
1. Obama is an antibusiness socialist.  Socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.   Because a President fights for the rights of workers, that does not mean he is for state takeover of industry.  If you think Mr. Obama is a socialist for saving the auto industry then Mr. Bush is a socialist for bailing out the banks.  At the end of the day, Mr. Obama is a corporatist not a socialist.

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