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Click here to view this media You’ve just got to love what passes for “straight news” over at the Fox/Republican cable channel. During one of their “breaking news” segments after the news that Standard and Poor’s decided to downgrade the AAA credit rating of the Unites States, who did they bring in to do some “objective” analysis? The American Spectator and Wall Street Journal ‘s resident hack, John Fund . And what was Fund’s reaction to the downgrade? More austerity measures naturally. And what did Fund completely ignore? This tidbit from the report issued by Standard and Poor’s on their decision for making the downgrade. (h/t Jamie) Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Fund naturally thinks we should be taking it out on the hides of everyday working Americans to do something about our budget deficit. Ignoring completely that the Republicans have been the ones being absolutely rigid in their position that there will be no tax increases since they’re all afraid their Uncle Grover will primary them. I think we just got a preview here of what we’re going to see from Fox 24/7 over the next week as they try to explain what happened with this downgrade. No questioning of whether we should even trust the ratings agency that got it all so wrong before the meltdown of the financial industries and more demands that we go after Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid or these vultures will never be satisfied. UPDATE: And right on cue, one of our newly elected TeaBircher Republicans in the Senate, Mike Lee was chiming some of the same talking points in another “breaking news” segment following the one with Fund. Not only was he calling for austerity measures, but he was also still touting their ridiculous balanced budget amendment as well. And of course the problem in Lee’s mind with protecting his rich campaign donors is that Washington is spending too much (code for they’re doing things to help out working people and not corporate welfare or funding our military industrial complex) and they’re borrowing too much. And of course with him also ignoring that the wealthiest 1% are being taxed at the lowest rates in ages and that we have a revenue problem they refuse to fix. I’m just wondering how much worse things have to get in the United States before the majority of the public starts to get wise to these liars because they actually start paying attention to what’s going on and how ridiculous these talking points from the GOP are that do not match up to reality in any way, shape or form. Click here to view this media