Here’s today’s open line and video roundup.
ALSO:
* TOM COTTON: TIME TRAVELER OR LIAR: Tom Cotton is getting hooted all over the web for his dishonest TV ad that suggests President Obama added food stamps to the farm bill. As everybody knows (surely somebody as smart as Tom Cotton thinks he is knows), food stamps have been part of the farm bill since approximately forever. From a post on Daily Kos:
Unless Cotton is suggesting that Barack Obama traveled in time back to the 1930s, when nutrition assistance and farm subsidies were first linked, I don’t think he had anything to do with turning the farm bill into a food stamp bill. Every damn farm bill for decades has included nutrition programs, up to and including the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (see, we call it the farm bill, but food was actually in the name). In fact, food stamp eligibility was expanded under George W. Bush in 2002. And food stamp use is starting to decline as the economy improves.
This is just a blatant falsehood from Cotton. Either he’s getting desperate as he underperforms expectations in his Senate race, and figuring that some people won’t hear that this ad is based on a lie, or this is just the kind of shameless liar he is under normal, non-desperate circumstances. Either way, this ad provides a great reason to oppose Cotton, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with food stamps or farm bills.
AND ALSO: Steven Benen calls Cotton’s ad ‘plain dumb.’
AND ALSO: Huffington Post: “ridiculous.”
* SURVIVAL STRATEGY: I’m not sure Timothy Buffington, the escaped killer captured in Logan County today after three months on the run, is telling the truth or just has a sense of humor, but below is the Q & A he had with a TV reporter after his capture, courtesy of KARK (note that he managed to stay clean-shaven in the woods):