No matter whether you fancy yourself to swing from the starboard or port side of the political ship, each of these viral themes suffers from fatal flaws, in both practical and political terms. Since we prefer to demonstrate that we can take it as well as dish it out, let us start with the right-wing propaganda.

When it comes to the 47% of people who pay no federal income tax at the end of each year, it’s difficult to think of a worse target to select. I’m not sure what Erick Erickson was thinking when he cooked this up, but a significant majority of these folks are either students, the infirm, or — to a vast degree — seniors on fixed incomes. If there is a worse demographic soup to pour political poison into, I’m at a loss to name it. This ignores the fact that these same voters enjoy these benefits largely because of initiatives primarily sponsored by the GOP to begin with. Further, pretty much all of those people pay other taxes at various levels. Nobody is getting off for free. The less said about this the better.

As to the liberal 99% argument, it’s difficult to even select a starting point to begin destroying this meme. By any sort of “We Are the World” measure, the rest of the planet would laugh at the majority of Wall Street protesters. If you have the free time required to go camp out for weeks on end near Wall Street… if you have clothes on your back sufficient to protect you from the elements… if you had two meals of more than 400 calories each in the last 48 hours of your protest… well, you’re probably in the top ten percent of the population of the planet in terms of actual wealth.