[h/t John Aravosis]

This is a great mashup of Paul Ryan fearmongering to his fans and paymasters. By far the best line is the one he repeats everywhere, which goes like this:

“Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes,” Ryan said. “So we’re going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. They’ll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.”

This isn't a surprise to anyone who has ever had to listen to Paul Ryan bloviate about his imagined "crises" with regard to the debt and his endless need to try and spark intergenerational wars over Medicare and Social Security. But in light of Mitt Romney's Etch-a-Sketching of his "47 percent" remarks yesterday, it seems relevant to highlight, because that's all it is.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan sincerely believe that people who pay into social insurance for their entire lives and expect to receive the benefit of that compact when eligible are "takers." I wonder if he includes all the zillionaires out there who receive Social Security benefits as "takers," since there is no distinction between those who pay in as rich people and those who pay in as middle class or poor people, after all. Are they takers?

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After explaining that Mitt Romney's so-called "reboot" this week was thrown off by the leak of the tapes of him trashing half of the country as a bunch of lazy, mooching freeloaders at a wealthy donor's fundraiser earlier this year, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart explained that it set off a "firestorm everywhere, but nowhere more acutely than at Romney campaign headquarters," otherwise known as Fox "News."

As Stewart noted, it triggered something he likes to call "Chaos on Bulls#%t Mountain."

Which was followed by one of the better smack-downs of ClusterFox for their propaganda machine going into high gear trying to give cover to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and for repeating his talking points about all those "welfare queens" that make up 47 percent of the country. As Stewart pointed out, the real welfare queens are the likes of ExxonMobil, AT&T, Wall Street, wealthy farmers, and their poster child, Mitt Romney.

Part two below the fold.

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As Media Matters reported, Fox's John Stossell went on Fox & Friends to discuss his special Rich Man, Poor Man which aired on both of their networks, and made some dubious claims about what's happened to income growth for those who are living in poverty:

Fox Mangles Data To Claim "The Poor" Are Getting "Richer":

Fox's John Stossel claimed that it's a "myth" that "the poor are getting poorer" and that they are actually getting "richer." In fact, incomes for the bottom fifth have shown almost no growth in recent decades, and the numbers Stossel used to support his argument were cherry-picked.

Incomes At The Bottom Have Shown Almost No Growth In Decades; Stossel Calls It "Getting Richer"

Stossel: "The Rich Have Gotten Richer, But So Have The Poor." From Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STOSSEL: There are just two myths. One is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And the truth is yes, over time the rich have gotten richer, but so have the poor -- 20 percent richer since I was in college. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/24/12]

CBPP: "The Era Of Shared Prosperity Ended In The 1970s." From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report:

Census family income data show that the era of shared prosperity ended in the 1970s and illustrate the divergence in income that has emerged since that time. CBO data allow us to look at what has happened to comprehensive income since 1979 -- both before and after taxes -- and offer a better view of what has happened at the top of the distribution.

As Figure 2 shows, between 1979 and 2007, average income after taxes in the top 1 percent of the distribution rose 277 percent, meaning that it nearly quadrupled. That compares with increases of about 40 percent in the middle 60 percent of the distribution and 18 percent in the bottom fifth.

The report included this graph:

[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/5/12]

Media Matters has a lot more charts and information in their post along with debunking more of what Stossel said on the air.

Here's the promo for Stossel's special which you can watch the very beginning of in the clip above from Fox Business Channel where it originally aired this week: Rich Man, Poor Man:

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