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.

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.

Congratulations To Scott Brown (R-MS) For His Great Job of Deceiving Voters While Pretending To Be a "Nice guy"

Congratulations To Scott Brown (R-MS) For His Great Job of Deceiving Voters While Pretending To Be a "Nice guy"

Scott Brown has donated thousands of dollars to fellow Republican candidates after they sponsored legislation to redefine rape as “forcible rape”

As Rep. Todd Akin’s despicable comments on “legitimate rape” rightfully provoke outrage, the Massachusetts Democratic Party reminds voters that Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown has given thousands of dollars to other Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate who would redefine rape as “forcible rape” and threaten women’s rights if, with Brown, they gain control of the U.S. Senate.
 
Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan also supports the bill.
 
Brown’s PAC, SCOTTPAC, has made campaign contributions to four House members, including three U.S. Senate candidates, after they cosponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.
 
Scott Brown is supporting a Vice Presidential nominee and three of his fellow senate candidates who want to redefine rape, excluding protections to victims of violent sexual assaults. Brown donated to current Senate candidates Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), and Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), as well as Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA). The Republican nominee for Vice President, Paul Ryan, also cosponsored the bill.
 
“Scott Brown is supporting Republicans with a dangerous agenda for women throughout the Commonwealth and across the country,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party Executive Director Clare Kelly. “Brown is doling out his campaign cash to aid extreme conservatives who want to redefine ‘rape’ and roll back critical protections for women – and they will, if they gain control of the Senate and the White House.”
 
Scott Brown has made campaign contributions to the following supporters of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape:
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Jeff Flake for US Senate Inc[OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Montanans for Rehberg [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Berg for Senate [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Denham for Congress [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Many voters are just trusting people who take crafty con-men like brown for what they appear to be on the surface  - "nice". Most of histories scoundrels, thieves and con-men have had a pleasant persona, that is in fact part of what allowed them to get away with hurting so many people. Brown seems to have studied and mastered their techniques. Good for him, not so great for normal decent Americans.

Radical Republican Medicare Voucher Plan Remains Unpopular - Plurality Views Ryan VP Choice Negatively

Paul Ryan (R-WI) is not getting high marks for running an honorable campaign

Romney and Ryan Owe America An Apology For Their Immoral Medicare Lies

Romney and Ryan Owe America An Apology For Their Immoral Medicare Lies

Republican attacks on President Obama’s plans for Medicare are growing more heated and inaccurate by the day. Both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made statements last week implying that the Affordable Care Act would eviscerate Medicare when in fact the law should shore up the program’s finances.

Both men have also twisted themselves into knots to distance themselves from previous positions, so that voters can no longer believe anything they say. Last week, both insisted that they would save Medicare by pumping a huge amount of money into the program, a bizarre turnaround for supposed fiscal conservatives out to rein in federal spending.

The likelihood that they would stand by that irresponsible pledge after the election is close to zero. And the likelihood that they would be better able than Democrats to preserve Medicare for the future (through a risky voucher system that may not work well for many beneficiaries) is not much better. THE ALLEGED “RAID ON MEDICARE” A Republican attack ad says that the reform law has “cut” $716 billion from Medicare, with the money used to expand coverage to low-
income people who are currently uninsured. “So now the money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that’s not for you,” the ad warns.

What the Republicans fail to say is that the budget resolutions crafted by Paul Ryan and approved by the Republican-controlled House retained virtually the same cut in Medicare.

In reality, the $716 billion is not a “cut” in benefits but rather the savings in costs that the Congressional Budget Office projects over the next decade from wholly reasonable provisions in the reform law.

One big chunk of money will be saved by reducing unjustifiably high subsidies to private Medicare Advantage plans that enroll many beneficiaries at a higher average cost than traditional Medicare. Another will come from reducing the annual increases in federal reimbursements to health care providers — like hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies — to force the notoriously inefficient system to find ways to improve productivity.

And a further chunk will come from fees or taxes imposed on drug makers, device makers and insurers — fees that they can surely afford since expanded coverage for the uninsured will increase their markets and their revenues.

NO HARM TO SENIORS The Republicans imply that the $716 billion in cuts will harm older Americans, but almost none of the savings come from reducing the benefits available for people already on Medicare. But if Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan were able to repeal the reform law, as they have pledged to do, that would drive up costs for many seniors — namely those with high prescription drug costs, who are already receiving subsidies under the reform law, and those who are receiving preventive services, like colonoscopies, mammograms and immunizations, with no cost sharing.

Mr. Romney argued on Friday that the $716 billion in cuts will harm beneficiaries because those who get discounts or extra benefits in the heavily subsidized Medicare Advantage plans will lose them and because reduced payments to hospitals and other providers could cause some providers to stop accepting Medicare patients.

If he thinks that will be a major problem, Mr. Romney should leave the reform law in place: it has many provisions designed to make the delivery of health care more efficient and cheaper, so that hospitals and others will be better able to survive on smaller payments.

NO BANKRUPTCY LOOMING The Republicans also argue that the reform law will weaken Medicare and that by preventing the cuts and ultimately turning to vouchers they will enhance the program’s solvency. But Medicare is not in danger of going “bankrupt”; the issue is whether the trust fund that pays hospital bills will run out of money in 2024, as now projected, and require the program to live on the annual payroll tax revenues it receives.

The Affordable Care Act helped push back the insolvency date by eight years, so repealing the act would actually bring the trust fund closer to insolvency, perhaps in 2016.

DEFICIT REDUCTION Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan said last week that they would restore the entire $716 billion in cuts by repealing the law. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that repealing the law would raise the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years.

The Republicans gave no clue about how they would pay for restoring the Medicare cuts without increasing the deficit. It is hard to believe that, if faced with the necessity of fashioning a realistic budget, keeping Medicare spending high would be a top priority with a Romney-Ryan administration that also wants to spend very large sums on the military and on tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

Regardless of who wins the election, Medicare spending has to be reined in lest it squeeze out other priorities, like education. It is utterly irresponsible for the Republicans to promise not to trim Medicare spending in their desperate bid for votes.

THE DANGER IN MEDICARE VOUCHERS The reform law would help working-age people on modest incomes buy private policies with government subsidies on new insurance exchanges, starting in 2014. Federal oversight will ensure a reasonably comprehensive benefit package, and competition among the insurers could help keep costs down.

But it is one thing to provide these “premium support” subsidies for uninsured people who cannot get affordable coverage in the costly, dysfunctional markets that serve individuals and their families. It is quite another thing to use a similar strategy for older Americans who have generous coverage through Medicare and who might well end up worse off if their vouchers failed to keep pace with the cost of decent coverage.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan would allow beneficiaries to use vouchers to buy a version of traditional Medicare instead of a private plan, but it seems likely that the Medicare plan would attract the sickest patients, driving up Medicare premiums so that they would be unaffordable for many who wanted traditional coverage. Before disrupting the current Medicare program, it would be wise to see how well premium support worked in the new exchanges.

THE CHOICE This will be an election about big problems, and it will provide a clear choice between contrasting approaches to solve them. In the Medicare arena, the choice is between a Democratic approach that wants to retain Medicare as a guaranteed set of benefits with the government paying its share of the costs even if costs rise, and a Republican approach that wants to limit the government’s spending to a defined level, relying on untested market forces to drive down insurance costs.

The reform law is starting pilot programs to test ways to reduce Medicare costs without cutting benefits. Many health care experts have identified additional ways to shave hundreds of billions of dollars from projected spending over the next decade without harming beneficiaries.

It is much less likely that the Republicans, who have long wanted to privatize Medicare, can achieve these goals.

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.

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

Conservative Republicans and Mitt Romney Are Destroying Capitalism and Democracy

Conservative Republicans and Mitt Romney Are Destroying Capitalism and Democracy

Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for dec­ades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

....The “Rent Seeking” Problem

Here I need to resort to a bit of economic jargon. The word “rent” was originally used, and still is, to describe what someone received for the use of a piece of his land—it’s the return obtained by virtue of ownership, and not because of anything one actually does or produces. This stands in contrast to “wages,” for example, which connotes compensation for the labor that workers provide. The term “rent” was eventually extended to include monopoly profits—the income that one receives simply from the control of a monopoly. In time, the meaning was expanded still further to include the returns on other kinds of ownership claims. If the government gave a company the exclusive right to import a certain amount of a certain good, such as sugar, then the extra return was called a “quota rent.” The acquisition of rights to mine or drill produces a form of rent. So does preferential tax treatment for special interests. In a broad sense, “rent seeking” defines many of the ways by which our current political process helps the rich at the expense of everyone else, including transfers and subsidies from the government, laws that make the marketplace less competitive, laws that allow C.E.O.’s to take a disproportionate share of corporate revenue (though Dodd-Frank has made matters better by requiring a non-binding shareholder vote on compensation at least once every three years), and laws that permit corporations to make profits as they degrade the environment.

The magnitude of “rent seeking” in our economy, while hard to quantify, is clearly enormous. Individuals and corporations that excel at rent seeking are handsomely rewarded. The financial industry, which now largely functions as a market in speculation rather than a tool for promoting true economic productivity, is the rent-seeking sector par excellence. Rent seeking goes beyond speculation. The financial sector also gets rents out of its domination of the means of payment—the exorbitant credit- and debit-card fees and also the less well-known fees charged to merchants and passed on, eventually, to consumers. The money it siphons from poor and middle-class Americans through predatory lending practices can be thought of as rents. In recent years, the financial sector has accounted for some 40 percent of all corporate profits. This does not mean that its social contribution sneaks into the plus column, or comes even close. The crisis showed how it could wreak havoc on the economy. In a rent-seeking economy such as ours has become, private returns and social returns are badly out of whack.

In their simplest form, rents are nothing more than re-distributions from one part of society to the rent seekers. Much of the inequality in our economy has been the result of rent seeking, because, to a significant degree, rent seeking re-distributes money from those at the bottom to those at the top.

But there is a broader economic consequence: the fight to acquire rents is at best a zero-sum activity. Rent seeking makes nothing grow. Efforts are directed toward getting a larger share of the pie rather than increasing the size of the pie. But it’s worse than that: rent seeking distorts resource allocations and makes the economy weaker. It is a centripetal force: the rewards of rent seeking become so outsize that more and more energy is directed toward it, at the expense of everything else. Countries rich in natural resources are infamous for rent-seeking activities. It’s far easier to get rich in these places by getting access to resources at favorable terms than by producing goods or services that benefit people and increase productivity. That’s why these economies have done so badly, in spite of their seeming wealth. It’s easy to scoff and say: We’re not Nigeria, we’re not Congo. But the rent-seeking dynamic is the same.

The Fairness Problem

People are not machines. They have to be motivated to work hard. If they feel that they are being treated unfairly, it can be difficult to motivate them. This is one of the central tenets of modern labor economics, encapsulated in the so-called efficiency-wage theory, which argues that how firms treat their workers—including how much they pay them—affects productivity. It was, in fact, a theory elaborated nearly a century ago by the great economist Alfred Marshall, who observed that “highly paid labour is generally efficient and therefore not dear labour.” In truth, it’s wrong to think of this proposition as just a theory: it has been borne out by countless economic experiments.

While people will always disagree over the precise meaning of what constitutes “fair,” there is a growing sense in America that the current disparity in income, and the way wealth is allocated in general, is profoundly unfair. There’s no begrudging the wealth accrued by those who have transformed our economy—the inventors of the computer, the pioneers of biotechnology. But, for the most part, these are not the people at the top of our economic pyramid. Rather, to a too large extent, it’s people who have excelled at rent seeking in one form or another. And, to most Americans, that seems unfair.

It is important to understand that Mitt Romney and people like him have never done an honest days work. They have never had a great idea for a product. They have never invented a new technology. They have never made a new discovery in medical research. They have never created a great product or provided a useful service for the masses of people. What I have just described are the basic components of capitalism. products and labor. Labor creates value by producing the product for other workers to buy. All Romney and his very wealthy friends have done is act like vultures, swopping down to pick up the capital created by the labor of others ( labor is not just sweat work. Programmers, nurses, janitors, dentists, etc all do labor). This is a good example of what Romney does and what Republicans call "capitalism" and "success":

Thanks to leverage, 10 of roughly 67 major deals by Bain Capital during Romney’s watch produced about 70 percent of the firm’s profits. Four of those 10 deals, as well as others, later wound up in bankruptcy. It’s worth examining some of them to understand Romney’s investment style at Bain Capital.

In 1986, in one of its earliest deals, Bain Capital acquired Accuride Corp., a manufacturer of aluminum truck wheels. The purchase was 97.5 percent financed by debt, a high level of leverage under any circumstances. It was especially burdensome for a company that was exposed to aluminum-price volatility and cyclical automotive production.
Casino Capitalism

Forty-to-one leverage is casino capitalism that hugely magnifies gains and losses. Bain Capital wisely chose to flip the company fast: After 18 months, it sold Accuride, converting its $2.6 million sliver of equity into a $61 million capital gain. That deal, which yielded a 1,123 percent annualized return, was critical to Bain Capital’s early success and led the firm to keep maximizing the use of leverage.

In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends.

As a result, the company’s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995. The $14 million in annual interest expense on this debt dwarfed the company’s $4.7 million operating cash flow. The proceeds of an initial public offering in July 1996 were used to pay Bain Capital $48 million for part of its stake and to reduce the company’s debt to $270 million.

The people who do this are not capitalists. They are lazy sleazy plutocrats, they are leaches who live off average Americans. Romney and radical conservatives say this is an election about capitlist versus what Obama stands for. The problem with that is Romney is trying to convince the public that his cronyism, his deep moral corruption, his greed, his elitism, his total disconnection with the real lives of real Americans, is not capitalism. Like capitalism? Think it can be a good, if imperfect system in the right hands? Than no American in good conscience can vote for Romney or any Republican in 2012. A vote for conservatism is a vote against democracy and capitalism, simple as that.

If you cash a paycheck. If you do actual work for a living. Conservative have nothing but contempt for you.

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.

Mitt Romney is So Patriotic he Won't Burden American Banks With His Deposits

Mitt Romney is So Patriotic he Won't Burden American Banks With His Deposits

§ What is in Romney’s offshore accounts? He has sheltered much of his wealth in tax havens such as Bermuda, but he has not disclosed anything about those investments. For instance, Shaxson writes, “There is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as ‘a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.’ He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor…. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an ‘excepted investment fund’ that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates.”

§ Why is Romney still being paid by Bain Capital? He left the firm more than ten years ago. Given its varied investments, could the fact that he is still being paid by them create a conflict of interest in office? Shaxson writes, “Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers.”

§ Why has Romney opened foreign bank accounts, such as a Swiss account with $3 million that appeared on his 2010 returns but not his 2011 returns? How much has kept in offshore accounts in the past? Was he betting against the strength of the US dollar? How might such financial interests affect his policies as president?

§ Are Romney’s blind trusts really blind? Their trustee is Bradford Malt, his personal lawyer. Malt invested $10 million of Romney’s money in the Solamere Founders Fund, co-founded by his son Tagg and Spencer Zwick, a Romney campaign fundraiser. Malt’s and Romney’s claims that this is coincidental and Romney knew nothing of it strains credulity. If Romney knows what his blind trusts invest in, how might his investments influence his political decisions?

§ How much has Romney invested with Elliot Associates? Shaxson reports, “Elliott buys up cheap debt, often at cents on the dollar, from lenders to deeply troubled nations such as Congo-Brazzaville, then attacks the debtor states with lawsuits to squeeze maximum repayment. Elliott is run by the secretive hedge-fund billionaire and G.O.P. super-donor Paul Singer, whom Fortune recently dubbed Mitt Romney’s ‘Hedge Fund Kingmaker.’ (Singer has given $1 million to Romney’s super-pac Restore Our Future.) It is hard to know the size of these investments. Romney’s financial disclosure form lists 25 of them in an open-ended category, ‘Over $1 million,’ including So­lamere and Elliott, and they are not broken down further.”

§ How did Romney build a $102 million Individual Retirement Account (IRA)? Did he avoid paying taxes in doing so?

Romney has never had the pleasure or responsibility for doing work, producing a quality product or service, or earning money like most Americans. Nope, Mitt Romney is a vulture in the financial industry. He picks off the earnings of the work produced by others. Mitt is a vulture. One could call him a vulture capitalist, a corporate socialist, a lazy two faced elitist, a crooked con-man, a leach capitalist or a delusional exploiter of the working class. One thing Mitt Romney is not is a good moral American patriot.It is not just time to reject Mitt Romney, it is time to reject the radical conservative movement and its goal of returning the USA back to the glory days when the royalty living up on the hill dictated to the serfs below.


10 Reasons Most People Like Obamacare Once They Know What's Really In It
Some people are suspicious of Obamacare in the abstract, but when it gets to the specifics they tend to like it a lot better.

America Hating Senator Mitch McConnell(R-KY) : I’m ‘Not Convinced’ Congress Should Prohibit Insurers From Discriminating Against The Sick. In the 20th century one of the most prominent features of fascism was social-Darwinism. Long time America hater McConnell is a poster boy for social-Darwinism.

Romney Caught in Two More Lies - When He Left Bain and His Ownership of Medical Waste Company

Romney Caught in Two More Lies - When He Left Bain and His Ownership of Medical Waste Company

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999.

All politicians hedge on the truth a bit. We all expect that. Mitt Romney - Mr Values Mr. Stand-up Guy - Mr Morals seems to think this election cycle is a contest to see how many and often he can tell big lies. If Romney is the moral standard of Republican conservatism that say a lot about how far down in the stinking gutter conservatism has sunk. Many American seem to have learned nothing from the Bush-Cheney years - that when conservatives say they stand for values - they mean deeply repugnant values.

Crazy Conservative Carly Fiorina — a Mitt Romney surrogate Falsely Claims That Obamacare Would Harm Breast Cancer Patients. Carly studied truth telling at the Soviet Politburo when she was growing up.


Is there some wealth redistribution going on in the USA. Yes there is. Corporate America is taking all the profits from worker productivity. Can we call it class war yet? Corporate profits are at an all time high; wages are at an all time low

Based on The Number of Shameless Lies, Mitt Romney May Be The Most Immoral Presidential Candidate In Modern History

Based on The Number of Shameless Lies, Mitt Romney May Be The Most Immoral Presidential Candidate In Modern History

Not everything Mitt Romney says is on the level.

For those who are watching the 2012 presidential race closely, Mitt Romney's penchant for falsehoods is hard to miss. Michael Cohen summarized the issue nicely this week in a piece for The Guardian:

    Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it's pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.

    Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying -- they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney's repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot.

If there are any lingering doubts about the accuracy of this observation, consider the 23rd installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity. (I've been at this for several months now, and this week's list is the longest to date.)

1. In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Romney claimed it's fiscally responsible to eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: "It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of it."

That's the opposite of the truth. According to the CBO and other nonpartisan budget estimates, killing the law would make the deficit go up, not down, and would cost, not save, the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.

2. In the same interview, Romney said, "I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that's cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama."

Romney says this a lot. He's not telling the truth.

3. Romney also said, "I see people holding up signs, 'Don't touch my Medicare.' It's like, hey, I'm not touching your Medicare."

Romney endorsed Paul Ryan's House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.

4. In the same interview, Romney said President Obama has "never had the experience of working in the private sector."

Actually, that's not true. Obama worked at a private-sector law firm before entering public service.

5. Romney also told Hannity Obama went on "an apology tour" in his first year.

As Romney surely knows by now, he's lying.

6. Romney, trying to talk about foreign policy, said Syria is Iran's "route to the sea."

Iran doesn't share a border with Syria, and Iran already borders two bodies of water.

7. At a campaign event in Stratham, New Hampshire, Romney claimed, "Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country."

In reality, Bill Clinton supports the president's re-election and recently said a Romney presidency would be "calamitous for our country and the world."

8. At an event in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, shared an anecdote about a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a "33-page" change-of-address form -- several times -- at the post office.

There is no such change-of-address form.

9. At the same event, Romney said Obama is "taking away" scholarships and charter schools for "kids in Washington, D.C."

This has become a line in Romney's stump speech, but it isn't in any way true.

10. Romney also claimed, "This president has put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined."

That's a lie.

11. Romney went on to say, "It's immoral in my view for my generation to pass on to these kids the burden of our generation. I think it's wrong. It's got to stop. And if I'm president of the United States I will get us on track to have a balanced budget."

That's plainly false. Romney says his plan "can't be scored," but independent budget analysts have found his agenda would make the deficit bigger, not smaller, and add trillions to the national debt.

12. At a campaign stop in Weatherly, Pennsylvania, Romney said the president's "trillion- dollar stimulus" failed to "create jobs."

That's the opposite of the truth.

13. At the same event, Romney said about Obama, "He was told that one small business was having a hard time dealing with Obamacare. He said he hadn't heard that."

That's not what happened. In fact, the small business wasn't having a hard time dealing with Obamacare, and was hurt by policies Romney wants to pursue.

14. Romney went on say, "I was in Las Vegas and met a woman who was worried. She has a business renting furniture to casinos and to conventioners that come to Las Vegas. And when the president said, don't bother coming to Las Vegas for your company meetings a few years ago, her business dove."

Obama actually said, in reference to Wall Street recklessness, "You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility." To blame the failure of some random business in Nevada on this is ridiculous.

15. Romney added, "If we stay on the road we're on, we're going to become like Europe.... I don't believe Europe works in Europe. I don't want it here."

The irony is, Europe is trying to grow through austerity, just as Romney intends to do here. He's lying in a self-refuting sort of way.

16. In his "Face the Nation" interview, Romney said of Obama's new immigration policy, "If he really wanted to make a solution that dealt with these kids or with the illegal immigration in America, then this is something he would have taken up in his first three and a half years, not in his last few months."

That's remarkably misleading. Obama has pushed for the DREAM Act for years, and would have signed it into law in 2010 had it not been blocked by a Republican filibuster.

17. In the same interview, Romney said about health care, "I will continue to describe the plan that I would provide, which is, number one, to make sure that people don't have to worry about losing their insurance if they have a preexisting condition, and change jobs."

This is the kind of answer that's clearly intended to deceive. Under Romney's approach, millions of people with pre-existing conditions would be denied coverage -- and occasionally his campaign even admits it.

18. Also on health care, Romney said the president "jammed through a bill" and "didn't really try and work for a Republican vote."

This is laughably untrue. Obama worked for months to find someone -- anyone -- in the Republican Party who would work with him in good faith, including delaying progress while the "Gang of Six" engaged in pointless talks.

19. Romney also said, "I'm not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest."

Either Romney hasn't read his own tax plan, or he's lying.

20. Appearing via video at the "Faith and Freedom Coalition" annual event, Romney applauded the far-right group's leader: "Ralph Reed has been a real champion in fighting for the fundamental values that have made America the nation that it is."

You've got to be kidding me.

21. In the same speech, Romney said, "When you put in place a bill like Obamacare, you attack the freedom of people to make a choice about their own insurance and what kind of coverage they want to have."

That's not true. Under the Affordable Care Act, consumers would choose from competing plans as part of a health care exchange. Romney knows this -- it was part of his own plan.

22. Romney went on to say, "[M]edian income in this nation has dropped by 10 percent over the last four years."

That only makes sense if we count Obama's first year in office, which relies on a standard Romney believes is fundamentally unfair.

23. He also argued, "Government at all levels is about 37 percent of the economy today -- 37 percent. And if Obamacare were allowed to stand, government would control about half of the economy of America."

That's demonstrably ridiculous.

24. At the same event, Romney said that Obama "insists" that "Israel return to the '67 borders -- indefensible borders."

He's lying.

25. At a campaign event in Brunswick, Ohio, Romney claimed that Obama said "if you let him borrow all that money, he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent."

As Romney surely knows by now, that's simply not true.

26. At the same event, Romney said under Obamacare, we'll get "a healthcare system run by the government."

There is no universe in which this is true.

27. At a campaign event in Janesville, Wisconsin, Romney argued, "[T]he path we're on, spending $1 trillion more every year than we take in, is leading us to Greece."

That's painfully untrue.

28. At a campaign event in Holland, Michigan, Romney claimed that, as a result of the Dodd-Frank reforms, "small banks and community banks are finding it harder and harder to make loans to small businesses."

According to community banks, this is false. These banks have actually gotten stronger after Dodd-Frank, and the president of Independent Community Bankers Of America recently said, "I am sick of Wall Street using community banks as their shills to scare community bankers into stampeding Congress into undoing provisions of law that finally attempt to deal with too big to fail and Wall Street overreach."

29. In a speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials yesterday, Romney argued that President Obama "has not completed a single new trade agreement with Latin America."

Romney does realize that Panama is part of Latin America, right?

30. Romney went on to argue, "Unfortunately, despite his promises, President Obama has failed to address immigration reform."

Actually, Obama has addressed it quite a bit, taking executive action where the law allows, and pushing Congress to pursue comprehensive reform based on a bipartisan plan he presented last year.

Mitt Romney should not be allowed near the White House, he should be in a psychiatric hospital under medication and having regular therapy sessions. The other possibility is that Romney is as venal and malicious as a person can be. And because he is so wealthy he can get away with being radical, anti-middle-class, anti-American worker agenda; he is a crony capitalist who believes in government by and for the elite.