Obamacare, Do Real Patriots Have Two Faces - Republicans To Back Bill Expanding Obamacare Program

Obamacare, Do Real Patriots Have Two Faces - Republicans To Back Bill Expanding Obamacare Program

House Republicans plan to vote on a bill on Wednesday that would shift money from the portion of Obamacare that invests in prevention and use it to expand a temporary initiative that has helped individuals and families with pre-existing medical conditions obtain coverage.

The Helping Sick Americans Now Act would move $4 billion from the Affordable Care Act’s $10 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund into the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a program of high-risk pools that has provided coverage to uninsured Americans who didn’t have an offer of insurance from an employer and couldn’t find a plan in the individual market. The PCIP was designed as a bridge to the exchanges, which will become operational in 2014, but the $5 billion program stopped accepting new enrollees in February.

“Like in so many other areas, the President’s health care legislation failed to adequately protect sick patients with pre-existing conditions, like those battling cancer,” Rory Cooper, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), told Talking Points Memo. “House Republicans are determined to do so by taking funding from a slush fund and moving it where it is critically needed.”

But while insuring high-cost individuals in separate pools has long been a staple of Republican health policy, the Prevention Fund also supports GOP-backed priorities. The Fund has invested in community and clinical prevention, research, public health infrastructure, immunizations and screenings, tobacco prevention and public health workforce and training — measures that Republicans touted as critical to lowering health care costs:

    – Former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) argued that “one of the things we did in the health care legislation was to provide a lot of different incentives for preventive care.” [7/12/2010]

    – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the law’s emphasis on preventive care is good “because it costs less to keep people well than to treat them when they’re sick.” [10/18/2010]

    – Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “Congress should be able to work together on our practical ideas that the American people support, such as reforming our medical liability laws to discourage junk lawsuits…encouraging wellness and prevention programs that have proved to be effective in cutting costs and improving care.” [8/26/2010]

    – Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “I am an original cosponsor of S. 1099, the “Patients’ Choice Act,” …. The legislation would make health care coverage accessible and affordable for all Americans through private insurance coverage, while also promoting prevention and wellness which can improve lives and lower long-term medical costs. [7/19/2009]

Now, the party is seeking to undermine one priority to fund the other, even after repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare and eliminate the PCIP and the Prevention Fund.

Conservatives are just spiteful venal children who never grow up. Republicans do not stand for American values. This is an excellent example of what they do stand for, glaringly wanton behavior. Not good government. In their fantasies all conservatives really want to live in Somalia rather than big-government Sweden. I'd suggest taking up a collection to buy them all a boat ticket, but they have stolen so much from American workers they can pay their own way.

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

Fox News has seized on what it believes is a new angle to continue making an issue of the Obama administration's response to the Libya terrorist attack. Discussing President Obama's news conference on Wednesday, Fox treated Obama's statement that the White House chose Ambassador Susan Rice to discuss the attack publicly as new and "significant," claiming Obama's admission is "one of the most important parts" of what he said during his press conference.

It's unclear why Fox believes Obama's statement is significant considering Rice's position as a top official in the Obama administration.

In her capacity as one of the United States' top diplomats -- she was nominated by President Obama as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in January 2009 -- Rice is a member of the Obama administration whose job is to speak for the White House on government decisions and policy.

Not only that, but the White House's reasons for why it specifically asked Rice to discuss the situation in Benghazi publicly have been known for at least a month. The Washington Post reported on October 15: "The White House has said that it turned to Rice to make the administration's case on the Benghazi attack because it made sense to have a top diplomat speak to the loss of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens."

On September 16, five days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Rice appeared on the Sunday talk shows to talk about what the administration knew about the attack. In the interviews, Rice made clear that definitive conclusions would only follow from an administration investigation, which she stressed was under way.

On Wednesday, during his first press conference since being re-elected, Obama addressed Republican criticism of Rice, saying:

    OBAMA: [L]et me say specifically about Susan Rice, she has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace. As I've said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.

    If Senator [John] McCain and Senator [Lindsay] Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.

Discussing his comments on Fox News' America Live, however, host Megyn Kelly and Fox contributor Kirsten Powers expressed surprise at Obama's statement that Rice's appearances on the Sunday talk shows were "at the request of the White House."

Powers claimed the admission was "probably one of the most important parts" of what Obama said, "which is admitting that the White House is the one who told her what to say and that this did come from the White House, which had been mostly been speculated upon."

Kelly went on to say that "the reason she's been taking such incoming fire is because now according to President Obama, he told her to. He's the one who put her in the line of fire."

And yet, a day ago, Kelly told viewers that the reason Rice has been repeatedly criticized is because "she's the one who went on all the Sunday talk shows and told us that everything that happened in Benghazi was linked to this video, which we now know was not the case."

Indeed, Fox has led a sustained campaign against Rice, alleging that she made inaccurate statements about the attack when in fact her remarks were in line with assessments from the intelligence community.

Later on America Live, Kelly again brought up Obama's statement about Rice, asking Fox senior White House correspondent Ed Henry his thoughts about this "explicit admission from the president." Henry replied that "it's significant" but "not surprising -- it just hadn't been said by the president yet perhaps."

He then seemed to undermine the significance of Obama's statement by saying: "But whenever a top official goes on the Sunday talk shows, they're being put out there by the White House."

The public is now well aware of the Benghazi time-line. While some details were slow to emerge - as is usually the case when facts still needed to be sorted out, the only people lying now are anti-American conservatives out to exploit those tragic deaths for political gain. Still more pathetic irony from the uber fake patriots, John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) Supported Condi Rice for Sec. of State After Massive Intelligence Failure. Concerned Americans should contact the Senate Ethics Committee and call for the impeachment or resignations of the sleazy lying senators McCain and Graham. McCain's bitterness at being defeated by president Obama in 2008 seems to be clouding the irreverent old fart's judgement.

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Mitt Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Mitt Romney’s past comments about dismantling FEMA and privatizing disaster relief have come back to haunt him as Hurricane Sandy begins to wreak havoc on the East Coast. Still, one Republican strategist, Ron Bonjean, agrees with him. On CNN Monday morning, Bonjean, a private consultant who advises GOP congressional leaders, defended Romney, suggesting that even talking about federal disaster relief is politically toxic:

    Most people don’t have a positive impression of FEMA and I think Mitt Romney was right on the button. But I don’t think anybody cares about that right now. I think people care about whether or not their power’s on, whether or not their basement’s going to be flooded. And I think that if the president gets too far in front of this and something goes wrong, people are going to remember, hey, my power’s not out, and the president’s talking about FEMA. I’m not a real big fan of FEMA. That could sway their vote.


Sandy has already caused severe flooding in the Northeast, hours before the worst of the storm is projected to hit. President Obama has declared a state of emergency in 7 states and DC after several governors’ urgent requests for federal aid to combat the storm. Though Bonjean fails to make the connection between FEMA’s services and people worrying about their power going out, the agency has already dispatched emergency power teams to try to reinforce vulnerable power grids before the storm hits and provided hundreds of generators and other back-up power sources. Americans are unfortunately well-acquainted with the agency, despite Bonjean’s insistence that they “don’t care” about it; a recent study of FEMA data found that, since 2006, 4 out of 5 Americans have been affected by weather-related disasters.

No one wants government that is too big, that is just common sense. Conservative Republicans have take that to the wacko extreme, they just plain do not want government to work. Like Exxon, BP, chemical, mining and insurance companies always do the right thing and are never unethical or inefficient. To be a conservative takes tremendous powers of denial about reality.

Morally Corrupt Romney campaign falsely training Wisc. poll watchers that IDs ‘must include photo’

Never let a tragedy go unexploited: Sleazebag Romney playing campaign videos at ‘storm relief events’

How Did Romney Supposedly Win The Debate? By Being Himself, One of the Most Morally Corrupt Liars in Politics

How Did Romney Supposedly Win The Debate? By Being Himself, One of the Most Morally Corrupt Liars in Politics

Political reporters and pundits lean heavily on the horse race method of coverage, which has badly hurt Mitt Romney for most of the campaign. Last night it helped him. Romney was forceful and articulate and dodged his association with almost all the most unpopular aspects of his platform. But his success at doing so was built upon two demonstrable untruths.

The most important was taxes. Romney asserted, “I cannot reduce the burden paid by high-income Americans.” Let me explain how this is untrue even by his own campaign’s accounting.

Obama badly flubbed this topic by allowing Romney to change the baseline of the discussion. Romney is promising to extend all the Bush tax cuts and refuses to accept even slightly higher revenue as part of a deficit deal. On top of that, he is proposing a huge, regressive income tax rate cut that would reduce revenue by an additional $5 trillion, but promises to make up for it by closing tax deductions. Obama directed his fire almost entirely at the additional tax cut, leaving mostly untouched, until the end, Romney’s pledge to never bargain away any of the Bush tax cuts.

Obama’s case was sound. The Tax Policy Center has shown that the stated parameters of Romney’s plan don’t add up — even under favorable assumptions, there are not enough tax deductions for the rich to close to pay for the rate cuts. Romney has disputed this and cited a series of studies that, in various ways, change the parameters of the Tax Policy Center study. Some of these studies find that it could be theoretically possible that Romney could cut rates and, by closing loopholes, do so without losing revenue or raising taxes on the middle class — if you lower the bar on who is middle class from $250,000 to $100,000, or count the repeal of Obamacare to help pay for the tax cuts, or use really wildly optimistic growth assumptions.

None of these studies back up Romney’s claim that he won’t reduce taxes on the rich. They confirm that he will reduce taxes on the rich. They merely suggest that he could make up the revenue some other way than taxing the middle class or increasing the deficit — that the economic growth will help the tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves, or that some of the lost revenue can be made up for by cutting off subsidies for the uninsured. Romney flat-out misstated his position.

The other issue was health care. Romney has promised to protect health insurance for people with preexisting conditions who maintain continuous coverage. That caveat is vital, because that right has existed since 1996. It’s a very minor protection. Phrasing his promise this way has allowed Romney to make a promise that sounds like he would keep Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting coverage without committing himself to anything at all (except, I suppose, keeping in place a 1996 law that didn’t do much).

At the debate last night, Romney didn’t phrase his promise in this misleading-but-true fashion. He promised, “preexisting conditions are covered under my plan.” That is not true. He dropped the legalistic mumbo-jumbo that renders his promise meaningless and promised something. But his plan doesn’t do that. And his adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, asked after the debate if Romney was really promising to cover people with preexisting conditions, admitted that he isn’t. (“With respect to pre-existing conditions, what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage.”)

Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies.

More here, Debate fact check

10:20 — Romney left his heart in Zurich: Romney tells Obama, “The place you put your money is a pretty good indication of where your heart is.” The obvious rejoinder, ready-made for a DNC attack, is that Romney’s heart must be in the Cayman Island, Bermuda or Switzerland, where Romney has put his money.

10:10 — “The same f*cking bill”: Romney says his healthcare plan in Massachusetts is very different from Obamacare. The guy who designed both the plans calls them “the same f*cking bill.”

10:00 — Romney sees death panels: Romney comes dangerously close to invoking death panels, saying Obamacare has “a board that will tell people what kind of treatment they’re going to get.” He’s referring to IPAB, a board of doctors, hospital officials and government officials who try to find best practices to reduce the cost of Medicare (and only Medicare — no one else’s healthcare — which is already a government plan). IPAB does not decide on individual cases, is subject to congressional oversight and is legally prohibited from rationing care. In August, Paul Ryan told Florida seniors Obamacare has a “rationing board.”

9:45 — Obamacare still doesn’t cut Medicare: Romney revived one of the most repeated falsehoods of the campaign – that Obamacare cut over $700 billion from Medicare. It’s not true, and Paul Ryan’s budget included the same cuts; Ryan and almost every other Republican in the House voted for them. Obamacare did cut funds from Medicare, but from providers, not beneficiaries. The actuaries in charge of the program say the savings will actually extend the life of the program and experts say the cuts won’t affect benefits.

9:40 — NFIB fib:  Romney uses as a cudgel against Obama’s tax plan a study from the National Federation of Independent Business. The NFIB sounds like an anodyne business group, but like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce it is actually a very partisan Republican group funded mostly by large corporations, not small businesses.

There is more at the link. Conservatives and the conservative movement is based on the Big Lie so of course they are thrilled with Romney's performance. And that is what it was, Mitt the snake oil salesman conning America into believing falsehoods that are easily checked. Republicans learned nothing from the economic collapse their policies caused or the Iraq debacle. Romney plans to increase the too big too fail economic pyramid and his foreign policy team is stacked for former Bush advisers. Some people - conservative Republicans - just get a thrill from abusing America and they'll keep doing so until Americans wise up and call them out on their dangerous agenda. 

Mitt Romney's top economic adviser Greg Mankiw said the "offshoring" of American jobs was a good thing.

Mitt Romney, who lambasts the "failures" of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, profits from investments in the firms.

Mitt Romney said that catching bin Laden would be "insignificant" and it's "not worth moving heaven and earth."

Mitt Romney pledged to expand a Bush-Era policy of permitting doctors to deny women access to contraceptives.

Mitt Romney said he supported the Ryan Republican budget plan that would effectively end Medicare.

Paul Ryan embraces the extreme philosophy of sex cultist Ayn Rand.

Paul Ryan wants to raises taxes on the middle class, cut them for millionaires

Paul Ryan thinks Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.”

Paul Ryan supports $40 billion in coporate welfare subsides for big oil.

First Romney Exploited The Deaths of U.S. Diplomats, Now He Is Exploiting Veterans: Falsely Claims Pentagon Cuts Will Impact Veterans

First Romney Exploited The Deaths of U.S. Diplomats, Now He Is Exploiting Veterans: Falsely Claims Pentagon Cuts Will Impact Veterans

In a speech to the American Legion today, Mitt Romney leveled fresh criticism against President Obama, accusing his administration of cutting the benefits of veterans who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and going so far as to call plans to cut the Veterans Affairs Department budget a “crisis.”:

    Romney charged that the defense budget cuts would affect services for veterans, including the men and women returning from conflict overseas who need psychological counseling. Romney invoked the rising number of suicides – “This is a crisis,” he declared – as he sharpened his attack on the Obama administration’s proposed spending cuts.

But Romney’s claim — that veterans’ care will be negatively impacted by sequestration — is not grounded in reality. Earlier this month, the White House announced that virtually all of the Veterans Affairs Department budget will be exempt from mandatory cuts if and when sequestration goes into effect in January 2013. The only exception, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, would be possible cuts to administrative costs. That means health care, vocational, and education services will remain fully funded while cuts are made elsewhere within the Department of Defense, despite Mitt Romney’s claims to the contrary.

Of course, if Romney were actually concerned about the possibility of losing funding for the Veterans Affairs Department, he probably wouldn’t have embraced Paul Ryan or his budget, which could lead to reductions in veterans’ benefits.

Previously the morally corrupt and defiantly unpatriotic Romney exploited the deaths of U.S. diplomats to score political points. Is there no sleazy depths to which sleazy scumbag Mitt Romney will not sink to become king of America.

Funny how lazy no good liberals have to pay to feed fake-patriot red-staters, Red States Outpace Blue States in Income Growth — Thanks to Food Stamps

Romnesia: The Ability of the Very Rich to Forget the Context in Which They Made Their Money

How the Media Enables Paul Ryan's Pants On Fire Lies

How the Media Enables Paul Ryan's Pants On Fire Lies

The myth of “Paul Ryan, serious budget wonk” has a history that dates since the 2010 Tea Party sweep of the elections, at least into the Bush administration. It's been untrue [3] for at least that long.

There were magazine stories [4] of the Young Guns of the GOP—Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy. They even chose that title [5] to brand themselves [6], comparisons to the 1980s cowboy movies notwithstanding. If they were in a boy band, Ryan would've been the Serious One while Cantor was the Wisecracking One, and McCarthy, well, he was the One Everyone Forgets About. Other Serious Young Men gave Paul Ryan gravitas--even those ostensibly across the aisle, like Ezra Klein [7], who wrote in 2011, “Ryan is the kind of politician I fundamentally like. He’s smart, policy-oriented and willing to take political risks.” In 2010 Klein titled a blog post “The virtues of Ryan's roadmap [7],” calling Ryan's plan (the one that gutted Medicare) “a more honest entry into the debate.”

Klein at least has come around to become one of the stronger voices arguing that Ryan isn't a deficit [8] hawk but an ideologue bent on privatization [9]. But plenty of others are still pretending that the vice-presidential nominee is willing to have a serious debate on policy. It's no secret that Fox News is letting Romney and Ryan get away with anything, but it's commentators in the mainstream media that do the most damage. Reporters love a ready-made narrative. Writing on a deadline, it's easy to slot in conventional descriptors and fit politicians into stock roles. We've been told Ryan is a serious budget nerd, and the more it gets echoed, the more it will continue to be echoed. Here we bring you seven media enablers of the Paul Ryan myth.

1. Howard Kurtz, Daily Beast

Howard Kurtz [10] is supposed to be a media critic, which makes it even more grating that he's fallen into the same trap as most of the rest of the mainstream media when it comes to Ryan's bona fides.

“True to his reputation as one of the GOP’s leading intellectuals,” Kurtz wrote of Ryan's RNC appearance, “it was something of a wonky speech sprinkled with folksy references—such as one to his hometown of Janesville, Wisc., where 'a lot of guys I went to high school with' worked at a GM plant that shut down.”

That's not the only time Kurtz alludes to Ryan's wonkiness without actually mentioning any of Ryan's policy points—aside from pointing out that Ryan's misleading everyone by beating up on Obama's Medicare cuts without mentioning his own slash-and-burn plan for healthcare for the elderly. He also mentions the Janesville line without pointing out that it too was one of Ryan's biggest whoppers of the night, trying to blame the president for closing a plant that shut down in 2008 [11].

He wrote that Ryan delivered a policy-based attack on Obama but the example he gives is Ryan's attack on Obamacare, which Ryan said has no place in “a free country.” Serious policy analysis, indeed!

As an aside, the GOP can't seem to decide whether it loves or hates the auto bailout—at once beating up on Obama for bailing out GM and Chrysler and then, as Ryan does here, complaining that Obama didn't save a plant in his own district. Apparently auto plants are like military bases—they should be propped up by the government as “job creators” when it's convenient for members of Congress. Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal joked on Twitter [12], “Romney should announce a Works Progress Administration/Civilian Conservation Corps tonight, but one where everyone in it works in Janesville.”

In other words, here's the same man lauded as being “serious” for being willing to slice and dice social programs, apparently calling for government to bail out manufacturing. Will that be in his next budget proposal, you think?

2. Dan Balz, Washington Post

According to Balz [13], Romney and Ryan “share an essential geekiness.” He doesn't mean that they're both white men who can't dance—no, he's talking about, you guessed it, policy. “Ryan, like Romney, is a numbers person who likes to break down problems and solve them after digesting reams of data,” he writes.

Funny, I thought the only data Romney liked to digest was how many workers he could lay off [14]. And Ryan's publicly admitted that neither of them have “run the numbers [15]” on Romney's budget plan even while they trumpet their supposed deficit reductions.

As Peter Hart at FAIR [16] notes, Balz actually does source some of the comments about the choice of Paul Ryan—to an anonymous Romney adviser, who spoke anonymously in order to affirm that other people had called the Ryan pick “bold” and that Romney was “confident.” Because one really needs anonymity to assert the feelings of the candidate. Another anonymous source makes the same comment later in the piece that Balz makes on his own--“Romney and Ryan are both data-driven guys, and there’s no question they will win the intellectual argument about whether we need to reform Medicare.”

Why he needs anonymous sources to say things that he seems perfectly comfortable repeating as conventional wisdom, I can't quite figure out.

3. Michael Crowley, Time Magazine

Possibly the most gratuitous fluffing of Paul Ryan's reputation comes from Time, where senior correspondent Crowley [17] opens the piece with the assertion that “Paul Ryan may be America's most famous budget wonk.”

The reasons? Because Ryan likes to quote his many “intellectual idols.” Including, you guessed it, Ayn Rand!

But as Peter Hart points out at FAIR [18], where this article really gets weird is when it starts getting excited about Ryan's religion. Catholicism, you see, is where Ryan gets his ideas on “social issues”--which is, as is usual in the mainstream media, code for “gay marriage, abortion, and those pesky rights women and LGBTQ folks keep going on about.” But wait! It's not just social issues Ryan learned about from the church. No, his budget cuts are all Christlike too. Or at least drawn from the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI.

    But Ryan says Catholic doctrine informs more than his views on social issues. His mission to reduce spending is partly inspired, he said in April, by the Vatican. "The Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has charged that governments, communities and individuals running up high debt levels are 'living at the expense of future generations' and 'living in untruth,'" he said. In which case the Ryan budget could be interpreted as a play for fairness and honesty, at least in the eyes of its maker.

Right. Except that as we've noted, Ryan's budget—to say nothing of Romney's plans for the economy—doesn't actually reduce the deficit, and Ryan's cuts to Pell Grants [19] would explicitly be at the expense of future generations, saddling college students with massive debt even as earnings for college grads are sinking [20].

And what do you think the Pope say about the lies in Ryan's convention speech [21]?

4. Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times

This short LA Times piece [22] is a near-perfect example of a reporter sticking to the narrative she's heard, using the descriptions of the candidate that his party would most like to believe are true without ever questioning whether they hold up. “The vice presidential pick has breathed new vigor into the campaign, as conservatives who had expressed lackluster support for Mitt Romney [23] embraced the budget wonk for the No. 2 spot,” Mascaro writes. And then, “Ryan is among the party's sharpest fiscal thinkers and the architect of the GOP's approach to steep budget cuts and the Medicare overhaul that has been attacked by Democrats as ending the social safety net.”

Balance! Too bad there's no “Republicans say” in front of “budget wonk” or “among the party's sharpest fiscal thinkers.” Those are givens, whereas the cuts that Ryan's Medicare overhaul would make to the beloved program are portrayed as things that Democrats made up rather than actual policy proposals made by the “wonk.”

As Simon Maloy at Media Matters [15] noted: “In the span of two weeks, Paul Ryan the 'wonk' has said he doesn't know when his campaign's budget will balance because they haven't done the math, and he can't give tax details until after the election. So the question for the media now becomes: Why keep hyping Paul Ryan's wonkiness when he keeps giving you reasons not to?”

5. Patrick O'Connor, Wall Street Journal

For O'Connor [24], Ryan's budget wonkery stems from the fact that he once was a policy aide in Congress and that other Tea Party Republicans are attached to his wildly unpopular budget ideas. Admitting that Ryan had only a few pages on the budget in Young Guns, the book he co-wrote with Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, and that Ryan's commitment to deficit-reduction never seems to include a willingness to go after the military yet always targets social programs, O'Connor nevertheless repeats the popular narrative that Ryan is a “wonk.” What he doesn't do is question, in his rather extensive history of Ryan's career, why the budget hawk voted repeatedly to blow holes in the budget with massive tax cuts [25].

He does raise one tantalizing question, after hundreds of words listing Paul Ryan's appeal as a serious intellectual heavyweight on fiscal issues: if Ryan's budget plan is so appealing, why doesn't Mitt Romney want to use it?

While not the first time a conservative got a reputation for being a serious thinker on economics, Ryan might represent the height of that false advertising. he went around preaching the doctrine of Ayn Rand until oops, everyone found out that Rand was an atheist, can little sex cult and died collecting Social Security and medicare - two programs that Ryan would like to put under the knife. More here - Flip side of Sarah PalinThe past two weeks have shown us that Paul Ryan isn't so different from the GOP's last pick for vice president

And yet Ryan’s reputation for true wonkishness seems to be vastly overstated. He’s less a wonk than a policy naif’s idea of a wonk – just enough “baselines” and “percent of GDP” and charts to make it all look nice, but very little under the hood. As Paul Krugman said recently:

    Look, Ryan hasn’t “crunched the numbers”; he has just scribbled some stuff down, without checking at all to see if it makes sense. He asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work. This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal.

Krugman is concerned in that post with how Ryan dupes self-proclaimed budget hawks, but Ryan is duping Republicans, too.

Paul Ryan (R-WI) Has The Values Of A Sleazy Conman - Tell Ryan To Tell The Truth About GM's Janesville Plant

Paul Ryan (R-WI) Has The Values Of A Sleazy Conman - Tell Ryan To Tell The Truth About GM's Janesville Plant

The list of falsehoods Paul Ryan told at the Republican National Convention last night isn't short, but there's one, in particular, that seems to be generating the most attention.

    "My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

    "A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008.

    "Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."

For regular readers, the anecdote may have sounded familiar -- Ryan has incorporated the anecdote into his speeches before, I took it apart two weeks ago.

To their credit, plenty of campaign reporters immediately recognized one of the major flaws in Ryan's attack -- the GM plant in Janesville was shut down before Obama took office. Take a look at that photo included above, and then notice the date on the banner. GM's press release announcing the closing of the plant was issued in June 2008. One of the local papers ran this headline in December 2008, the month before Obama's inauguration: "Hugs, tears as GM workers leave Janesville plant for last time."

Republicans are going to great lengths to argue that Ryan didn't actually mislead the country. They're wrong; Ryan's argument was obviously and deliberately deceptive. The truth matters, and Ryan's version of reality isn't it.

But the closer one looks at Ryan's attack, the more bizarre it appears.

At the surface, there's just no reason to suggest Obama is responsible for a plant closing initiated under Bush. But even beyond the surface-level lie, the ideological disconnect is almost as striking.

President Obama, as you may have heard, rescued the American auto industry in 2009, over Republican objections. In the process, Obama not only saved GM, he rescued plants, workers, and communities.

Ryan, unwilling to respect Americans enough to talk to us like adults, is trying to make a child-like appeal: the plant is closed, Obama is president, ergo blame Obama for the plant closing.

But that's ridiculous. If it weren't for the president's policy, the Janesville plant wouldn't have been the only one closed. Indeed, Ryan's running mate would have allowed all the GM plants to close as part of his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" policy.

Obama did visit the plant while running for president saying he supported the GM government sponsored bankruptcy so they could reorganize and stay in business. part of GM's decision was to close that plant. Ryan says that Obama uses too much big gov'mint power, so Ryan is being dishonest and hypocritical by saying that Obama should have intervened and micromanaged GM's business decisions. The Janesville plant was making SUV's whose sales had bottomed out during the 2007-2008 financial collapse. I guess Ryan wanted Obama to force people to buy a car model no one wanted as well.

The GOP’s tough-love approach, heavy on the tough. Funny how the GOP version of tough love always means working class Americans making more sacrifices and the wealthy getting yet another tax cut.

The 5 Weirdest Bits in the 2012 GOP Platform. Conservative Republicans may have a simple medical problem, their tin foil hats are on way too tight.

Mitt Romney's Double Backflip Medicare Lie

Mitt Immoral Elitist Romney's Double Backflip Medicare Lie. Romney Lies About His Medicare Plans Than Lies About Obama. Where Is Your Honor Mr. Romney?

Fact checkers call Mitt Romney's claim that the duo will preserve Medicare 'eye-popping' considering that Ryan calls for reworking it from the ground up.

    Romney vowed the duo would "preserve" Medicare, an eye-popping claim considering Ryan wants to transform the program from the ground up.

As to the predictable charge that President Obama will take $700 billion out of Medicare, they not only dispute this but say that "you could fill an arena with the facts this statement leaves out". It is shocking to see someone finally calling them out for what they are.

    ROMNEY: "Unlike the current president, who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security and keep them there for future generations."

    THE FACTS: You could fill an arena with all the details left out in this statement. Ryan's reputation as a fiscal conservative is built on a budget plan that would overhaul the Medicare program and introduce a voucher-like plan that future retirees could use to buy private health insurance. Whether that results in a better or worse situation for Medicare recipients is a matter of debate. But under Ryan's plan, traditional Medicare would no longer be the health insurance mainstay, just one of many competing options.

They go on to give a hypothetical example of a senior under President Obama's plan and conclude that slowing the growth of spending is tantamount to a spending cut in Washington. They add the detail about the 'cuts' coming from Medicare Advantage. (How The Romney/Ryan Medicare Plan Would Affect Today’s Seniors)
They next criticize Romney's statement that he will 'preserve' Social Security leaves out the fact that he proposes changes such as increasing the retirement age and means testing the wealthy.

On Romney's bipartisan record as Governor of MA:

    THE FACTS: For a Massachusetts governor, balancing a budget is a requirement of state law.

    Ryan's claim that Romney didn't raise taxes to comply with Massachusetts' yearly balanced budget requirement is also misleading.

    And while Romney himself didn't raise income taxes, he benefited from a huge $1.1 billion tax hike passed by Democrats the year before he took office. It was responsible for roughly half of the deficit Romney helped cut in his first year in office.

They add that Romney, working with the Democratic Legislature,  raised hundreds of millions of dollars through new fees, but doesn't call that 'tax increases'.

On Romney/Ryan claims that they have provided specific, 'bold' solutions that don't duck the truth:

    THE FACTS: So far, vital specifics are missing from Romney as he pledges broad cuts in federal spending, but more money for the armed forces, and significant tax cuts. He proposes to cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by the end of a first term, an ambitious goal that is not fleshed out with the painful choices that will be necessary for that to happen.

On Ryan's claims of President Obama's failures in his first 3 1/2 years in office:

    THE FACTS: Obama succeeded in achieving a stimulus plan, the automakers' bailout, his health care law, new rules in the financial services sector and more. But he had failures, too, a promised immigration overhaul and climate change legislation among them. Ryan's assertion that the Obama agenda "didn't make things better" is primarily a political judgment call. But no one seriously argues that the stimulus plan or the auto bailout made no difference at all. The question is whether such spending was worth the gains that were made.

    Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus, enacted in February 2009, created both public-sector and private-sector jobs, even if not as many as its sponsors had hoped. The director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, estimated that the stimulus saved or created more than 3 million jobs. Princeton University economist Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, estimated that the stimulus, together with the bank bailout started by President George W. Bush and continued by Obama, saved or created more than 10 million jobs. An earlier CBO analysis estimated that stimulus trimmed the unemployment rate by 0.7 to 1.8 percentage points.

On Romney's claim that Ryan has shown an ability to work with members of both parties: Not exactly.

On the 'You Didn't Build That' meme:

    THE FACTS: Ryan, like Romney and scores of Republicans in recent weeks, has used comments Obama made at July 13 campaign appearance in Virginia against him. But the rhetorical jab takes Obama out of context. Republicans have seized on only part of Obama's quote — "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" — but the full quote makes clear Obama is talking about the conditions that help businesses and individuals succeed, such as teachers and infrastructure.

There is a lot more detail that fair use prevents me from repeating. The media rarely does such a thorough job of debunking falsehoods promoted by those running for office.  I urge everyone to go to the link, recopy in its entirety and paste it into an email to every rightwinger you know making these arguments, every on the fence family member and coworker,  retweet, and share as widely as possible. 

Drive-by Bigot Mitt Romney Calls Kettle Black

So it's come to this. Less 24 hours after airing his latest demonstrably false, racially-driven ad about welfare, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused President Obama of waging a "campaign of division and anger and hate." By any measure, Romney's is an amazing--and cynically conscious--case of projection. After all, with a wink and nod Romney has coddled, aided and abetted his Republican Party's birthers and bigots, its union-busters and gay-bashers, its Muslim-haters and misogynists and more. He's insulted people his backers proudly hate as well as many whose support they claim to seek.

Speaking at a rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, Governor Romney informed his audience that it is in fact Barack Obama who is "dividing us all in groups":

    "He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces. If an American president wins that way, we all lose," Romney said. "So, Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago, and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America."

That was an unfortunate choice of words. After all, Mitt Romney didn't just refuse to repudiate his Obama birth certificate fabulist Donald Trump. Cobbling together a majority, Romney announced, was what his candidacy was all about:

    "You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in," Romney said. "But I need to get 50.1% or more and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people."

No doubt, many of the people Trump claims "are screaming, 'Please don't give that up'" attended Romney's "Dine with the Donald" fundraiser. And if they missed that shindig, they might have joined Trump and Romney at the New York City birthday bash for Mitt's wife, Ann.

It is Ann Romney, by the way, who her husband says "regularly reports to me" about what American women care about. But when one of those women, Sandra Fluke, testified in March to Congress about contraception policy, right-wing storm-trooper Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut." But with a Republican nomination to win, Romney was too cowardly to cross his party's kingmaker:

    "I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used. I'm focusing on the issues I think are significant in the country today, and that's why I'm here talking about jobs and Ohio."

Five months later, Romney used the same dodge to avoid risking the ire of the Tea Party Islamophobes who dominate today's Republican Party.

 If Mitt Romney has values than so does every other scumbag on the face of the earth. Shame on Romney, Ryan and the radical anti-American conservative Republican movement for defining values as something base and repulsive to normal Americans.

Washington Post Columnist Charles Lane Thinks the Elderly Are Wealthy Because They Can Afford to Pay Off Their Mortgage. Conservatives suck at math as well.

Mitt Romney is George Bush Redux. Romney's Policies Are So Anti-American That Americans Can't Believe Someone Could Be So Anti-American

Mitt Romney is George Bush Redux. Romney's Policies Are So Anti-American That Americans Can't Believe Someone Could Be So Anti-American

Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion.

The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless.

Incredulity may complement what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd dubbed Romney’s strategy of “hiding in plain sight.” Romney refuses to release his tax returns, scrubbed the records and e-mails of his time as governor and as head of the Olympics, keeps secret details of his Bain dealings and covers up the names of his bundlers. And then, he’s able to announce extremely cruel policy positions with impunity, because the voters just can’t believe that’s what he is for.

This is what comes to mind with the publication of a study on the effects of the Romney tax policy by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institution.

Real life is like the movies. At the beginning of the movie the clean cut guy with a white shirt and tie appears. he seems nice enough. About two thirds of the way through people are running for their lives from the guy who appears normal. You would have thought America learned its lesson with George Bush who sent Americans off to literally die for a bunch of lies. Nope, here we are again with an Anti-American radical wrapping himself in the flag, claiming his deeply Anti-American policies are good for the country. 

Scott Brown (R-MS) is Competent At One Thing, Whining Like a Little Wuss,  Decries Legally Mandated Voter Registration Effort, Says It’s A Conspiracy To Elect His Opponent

Steve Doocy is a lazy incompetent jerk who gets paid millions to babble nonsense. One would think he would love America and American values, yet he spews more Anti-American bile than anyone can keep track of. His Latest is an attack on women's rights and religious freedom, Fox's Doocy Hides Religious Accommodation For Reproductive Health Mandate.

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

On Wednesday, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center released a study showing that guests and topics discussed during "The Rush Limbaugh Show," "The Sean Hannity Show," "The Glenn Beck Program," The Savage Nation" and "The John and Ken Show" overwhelmingly marginalized minority groups.

As the study explains:

    The findings reveal that the hosts promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media.

These viewpoints have far reaching consequences. NHMC President and CEO Alex Nogales told Fox News Latino that the social network surrounding conservative talk radio and Fox News has spread to social media websites resulting in "an echo-chamber of voices, both online and off, that promotes hatred against ethnic, racial and religious groups and the LGBT community on social media web sites."

Using hateful rhetoric, these hosts have cast immigrants as disease ridden, equated pro-immigrant organizations with neo-Nazis, called Islam an "evil religion," claimed the Obama administration is promoting "race riots" and made fun of the ethnicity of Asian-American politicians.

Yet is a descent American with a conscience objects to their fair mongering, ethnocentrism and greatly oversimplified rhetoric, that descent individual(s) is labeled intolerant. You have to hand the Anti-American Republican movement credit for their twisted logic along with their twisted values.

Romney cannot run on his record at Bail where he was a leach who exported American jobs, made a profit even when the businesses themselves went down the toilet. he can't run on his economic ideas because they are just a rehash of the Dubya Bush and Republican policies that caused the financial collapse he is trying to hold Obama responsible for. So what can he run on. The same radical right-wing crap that you hear on the proto-fascist conservative radio shows, Romney Smears Obama, Falsely Claims He Filed Lawsuit To Restrict Military Voting In Ohio

Today on Facebook, Mitt Romney claims that the Obama campaign is trying to “undermine” the ability of members of the military to vote in Ohio:

    President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.

This certainly sounds outrageous, but it is not true. Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military. The Obama lawsuit is attempting to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not restrict them for the military or any other group. From the Obama lawsuit, filed in federal court:

    Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to restore in-person early voting for all Ohioans during the three days prior to Election Day – a right exercised by an estimated 93,000 Ohioans in the last presidential election. Ohio election law, as currently enacted by the State of Ohio and administered by Defendant Ohio Secretary of State, arbitrarily eliminates early voting during the three days prior to Election Day for most Ohio voters, a right previously available to all Ohio voters.

The Obama campaign’s request for a preliminary injunction does not seek to restrict military voting. Rather, it simply is asking that the full early voting period be open to all citizens, as it was under the law before this year.

Even Fox News acknowledges the purpose of the suit, noting “the lawsuit does not restrict the ability of military personnel to cast their ballots early.”


The Romney campaign is totally unable to back up their candidate’s claim:

    Romney’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, in an interview Saturday could point to no place in Obama’s lawsuit that seeks to restrict the rights of military voters…

Mitt Romney has values? When can America expect to see him display some of those.
…

Mitt Romney - The Weirdest, Richest and Most Clueless Clown To Ever Run For King of The Anglo-Saxons

Mitt Romney - The Weirdest, Richest and Most Clueless Clown To Ever Run For King of The Anglo-Saxons

Something is wrong with Middle Easterners, Muslims, people with Muslim names, dark-skinned immigrants and their children, and other non-whites, according to the narrative established by the right, particularly after September 11, 2001.

When President George W. Bush addressed the nation in the days following the attacks, and said “They hate our freedoms,” he was talking about the terrorists responsible for 9-11. But somehow that phrase became part of a rallying cry and general inquisition against innocent brown-skin citizens wrongly suspected of terror.

Now a policy advisor to Mitt Romney has another diagnosis of what’s wrong in America: President Barack Obama, b.k.a. the Foreigner-in-Chief, fails to appreciate the white man’s America’s mythical Anglo-Saxon heritage.

The anonymous advisor reportedly told the Daily Telegraph:

    “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Mr Romney, adding: “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”

Way to rally the Ku Klux Klan base.

Romney’s camp told the Washington Post this conversation never occurred. “It’s not true,” Romney spokeswoman, Amanda Hennenberg, said in a statement. “If anyone said that, they weren’t reflecting the views of Governor Romney or anyone inside the campaign.”

But the Daily Telegraph insists that it’s true, the Post reported. And one of Romney’s European advisors, who says he isn’t the culprit, is particularly fond of the phrase Anglo-Saxon.

Look: I know some people are still harboring suspicions and nursing dreams that Obama’s birth certificate is fake. But let’s assume for a moment that some random black man hasn’t used a fake birth certificate to pull off the greatest conspiracy to usurp power in American history. Let’s assume that Obama is qualified by his birth in Hawaii to be president and won his election by campaigning better than his opponent and by being — gasp — favored by voters. Then we start to see how ridiculous it is to accuse him of not ‘fully appreciating’ America’s “Anglo-Saxon heritage.” Obama’s just as Anglo-Saxon as the rest of America, which fortunately, isn’t very much.

Like most of us, he inherited English — the biggest legacy of Anglo-Saxon culture — as his first language and I would venture to guess that he’s  studied more than a little English literature and history. Maybe he didn’t do it every school year that he lived abroad, but how many years do you need to do it get the picture? Or does Obama need to be born in England itself to be president?

The ludicrousness of challenging Obama’s bonafides as an Anglophile — or is it Anglo-Saxon-phile – is underscored by America’s bloody severance of its ties to its European overlords in 1776. Wasn’t Mitt Romney just celebrating his independence July 4th?
Who Were the Anglo-Saxons Anyway?

The myth that America is an Anglo-Saxon country is dangerous and un-democratic. Whites only came to think of America that way in the decades before the Civil War and continued to perpetuate the myth because it justified white supremacy and slavery.

Deep, right?

Angles and Saxons were two of three barbarous Germanic tribes who began invading Britain in the 5th century A.D., when it was under Roman rule. They colonized it and the Saxons set up England. For obvious reasons — like the non-English ancestry of many white colonists and settlers and the bloody overthrow of English rule during the American Revolution – white Americans didn’t think of themselves as Anglo-Saxons for their first 200 years here. That idea started to catch on in the middle of the 19th century after three white American historians — William H. Prescott, Francis Parkman, and John Lathrop Motley — wrote books suggesting it. According to the late Stanford University historian George Frederickson, the books credited the Anglo-Saxon ancestry of the English for helping  the English to push the French, Spanish and Dutch out of north America:

The Anglo-Saxon was represented as carrying in his blood a love of liberty, a spirit of individual enterprise and resourcefulness, and a capacity for practical and reasonable behavior, none of which his rivals possessed. – The Black Image in the White Mind

Almost immediately, America’s mythical Anglo-Saxon heritage took hold as an alternate justification for slavery and basis for white superiority, Frederickson wrote. Even critics of slavery, including prominent abolitionists of the day such as Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, believed it.

The early settlers of Massachusetts Bay, [Parker] announced in 1854, “had in them the ethnologic idiosyncrasy of Anglo-Saxon — his restless disposition to invade and conquer other lands; his haughty contempt of humbler tribes which leads him to subvert, enslave, kill and exterminate; his fondness of material things, preferring these to beauty; his love of personal liberty, coupled with his most profound respect for peaceful and established law; his inborn skill to organize things to a mill, men to a company, a community, tribes to a federated state; and his slow, solemn, inflexible, industrious and unconquerable will.” Only in America, he continued, “did the peculiar characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon” come to full development. – The Black Image in the White Mind

First of all, this mythical Anglo-Saxon sounds like a rapist. Second of all, ew. Is this the heritage that Mitt Romney’s policy advisor appreciates?

I don’t know how Obama constructs his identity relative to England and I’m pretty sure that loyalty to the crown shouldn’t be a presidential litmus test. But for my part, I’ll just say it. “Appreciate” is not the word I’d use to describe the mythical Anglo-Saxon identity. “Regret” is more like it.

 Some have suggested that the Anglo-Saxon reference was a dog whistle to the white southern political strategy used by Saint Ronnie Reagan. That might be why having sen the reaction to the comments of his spokesperson, Romney has denied anyone said anything. Too late now, the dog whistle has rallied the radical anti-American base of conservatives - those who hang on every word racists like Rush Limbaugh says.


Romney camp features Tampa govt. contractors who say they don't need... government. One has to be capable of the deepest self delusions to be a Republican. Conservatives, whose businesses rely n government contracts for the majority of their business ( government contracts are by definition contracts paid for out of public tax funds) swear they don't need gov'mint.

Because the last Republican president did not break the economy good enough, Romney Struggles To Distinguish His Economic Policies From Bush’s

Mitt Romney Cannot See Past His Supreme Arrogance To Apologize To President Obama and The American People

Mitt Romney Cannot See Past His Supreme Arrogance To Apologize To President Obama and The American People

It was hidden in plain sight as a Bain press release in July 1999. Here's how it described Romney's position at Bain when he says he had no responsibility whatever, despite remaining CEO, Chairman and Sole Owner as far as forms filed with SEC testify:

    Bain Capital CEO W. Mitt Romney, currently on a part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee for the 2002 Games said ...

So Bain now contradicts Romney. And one of the men mentioned in the press release, Marc Wolpow, described his relationship with Romney when Romney was on a previous part time leave in 1994 when running for Senate (while remaining CEO of Bain):

    “I reported directly to Mitt Romney . . . You can’t be CEO of Bain Capital and say, `I really don’t know what my guys were doing,’” Mr. Wolpow said of Mr. Romney role at the company during his leave.

So this much is now obvious.

1. Romney didn't quit Bain in 1999 for good, as he claims. He remained the CEO throughout, as SEC files show, and as the Boston Globe reported back in 2002.

2. He stayed active in Bain, but at a much reduced level, the entire time.

3. In any case, everything that occurred at Bain up to 2002 is completely fair game for criticism, since he was the formal CEO at the time and therefore responsible for the whole company. The SEC filings are dispositive. He has been lying about this in order to deflect some very dangerous stories about Bain in that period which shows it is knee deep in outsourcing and off-shoring, and because his signature is on a filing with respect to a company that Bain owned that disposed of aborted babies.

Romney basically said what was the most convenient for his self-interest at every juncture - and finally all the contradictions and changing stories caught up with him.

This SEC filing list Romney as "As member of the Management Committee of each of BCIP and BCIP Trust". How does one get to be on a management committee and have absolutely no knowledge of what is going in in a company in which Romney is the sole owner. Now we have Romney playing liar's bluff - calling out President Obama for an apology. Romney owes Obama and the America people for dumping a truckload of deeply deceptive and immoral lies. Exactly who or what country is Romney loyal to - Unanswered questions about Romney’s UnAmerican offshore finances - he seems have set himself up to avoid paying his fair share of America's infrastructure ( multimillionaire conservatives always think they're too good to pay their way. They're VIPs and should get everything for free). Mitt might have a good excuse - he has the mental temperament of a bratty 8 year old - Romney’s Top Six ‘I Know I Am But So Are You’ Moments. Romney clearly does not have the moral backbone or maturity to be president.

How A Radical Conservative Republican Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and factcheck.org Are Wrong. Romney Lied About His Tenure at Bain

Portrait of evil - Florida Criminal Gov Rick Scott

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and factcheck.org Are Wrong. Romney Lied About His Tenure at Bain

After weeks and weeks of being pummeled by the Obama campaign for his business record, Mitt Romney is finally releasing response ads today. The response is that Obama is lying. ("How can we trust him to lead?" etc.) The ad cites articles by media “fact-checkers”: Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and factcheck.org.

In an incredibly inconvenient piece of timing, the Boston Globe today also reports that Romney has been lying about when he left Bain Capital. This is utterly crucial. Both the fact-checking columns base their conclusions on Romney’s claim that he left Bain in 1999. Obama’s ads are misleading, both say, because they hold Romney accountable for things Bain did after 1999. The revelation that Romney was actively managing Bain renders both those judgments moot.

Here is the core of the Globe’s finding:

    Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

    Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

Romney has sworn he is telling the truth. Documents that he filed and signed prove he is lying. The issue now moves forward as something symptomatic of Romney's mental state and/or his moral sensibilities. Even without these revelations Romney has no real qualifications to be president. Now it seems that he lacks the moral integrity that was supposed to be one of his great character traits.

Proof that the Right is FREAKING OUT over "Swiss Bank Account" attacks [UPDATED]. When Mitt Romney is not telling insulting lies to the American public, he has plenty of mindless fake patriots do it for him.

The American Jobs Act and Who is Working to Sabotage The Recovery

The Tea Party Caucus waged an all-out propaganda campaign against the AJA, decrying it as more stimulus and an example of big government. House Republicans obstructed the Jobs Act, refusing to allow it even to come to a vote. Senate Republicans used the much-abused filibuster to defeat it. But polls continued to favor the president, and as a result, Obama was able to force Boehner & Co. to pass a one-third cut in employees' payroll taxes and an extension of unemployment benefits.

And herein lies the rub: The GOP is touting a flailing economy, saying that Obama's policies are the cause of the malaise -- but it is Republicans who have deliberately orchestrated these outcomes by refusing to pass a signature, jobs-focused piece of legislation.

What is worse is that their destructive tactics disproportionately fall on the backs of African Americans, Hispanics, low-income earners and the poor. The GOP does not care -- since it calculates that disheartened citizens will be less motivated to go to the polls come November. And with new voter-id laws in place, the black and brown vote will be subject to a perfect storm of suppression that spells a win for Romney.

Republicans are betting on a premise that white working-class voters will become so frustrated with the economic slowdown that they will vote against the first African-American president and instead elect a rich white guy and private-equity magnate -- who notoriously destroyed companies while profiting enormously.

Fox News Inflates Impact Of Bush Tax Cuts. This story is related to the charts above. If tax cuts created jobs we should have more job opening than there are unemployed, but we do not. Tax cuts just put more money in the pockets of the wealthy. How many $75,000 cars do these wealthy slackers need? Not enough to keep the economy going for the middle-class.