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

If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan had values They Would Stop Their Medicare Lies

If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan had values They Would Stop Their Medicare Lies

When formulating public policy, evidence should be accorded more weight than ideology, and facts should matter more than shibboleths. The Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare reform depends on assertions that are ideologically consistent. But the Republicans plan is not supported by the evidence and does not survive serious scrutiny.

Perhaps that's why the Romney campaign has been deliberately misrepresenting President Obama's Medicare record.

Mitt Romney characterizes the $716 billion of Medicare savings over the next 10 years, contained in the Affordable Care Act, as President Obama's "raid" on the Medicare program to pay for his health care program. This fear-mongering is simply untrue. These savings result from reforms to slow the growth of Medicare spending per enrollee - there are no cuts in Medicare benefits.

The reforms include both voluntary and mandatory changes in how providers deliver health care to promote better care coordination at lower cost, reward the quality and outcomes of services rather than their volume and reduce fraud and abuse.

For example, the law fosters the creation of accountable-care organizations, i.e., groups of providers willing to accept a flat fee for the integrated care provided to their Medicare patients. Accountable-care organizations represent a major step away from the unsustainable fee-for-service model that rewards the number of procedures rather than the quality of care.

Health experts believe that these organizations will significantly improve care and lower costs not just in Medicare but throughout the health care system. This belief is based on evidence, not ideology.

Medicare beneficiaries will also benefit from reforms that penalize hospitals for preventable re-admissions reflecting complications from previous procedures and that require hospitals to post their rates of medical errors, with penalties for those with the highest rates.

Both Governor Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan have promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and with it the reforms behind the $716 billion in Medicare savings (although Mr. Ryan duplicitously counts the savings from these reforms in his deficit-reduction plan). Medicare beneficiaries would be the losers. They would lose the benefits of better care at lower cost. They would lose the plan's expanded Medicare coverage for prevention benefits and prescription drugs, and they would be forced to pay higher premiums and co-pays as a result of faster growth in Medicare costs.

Same on Romney and Ryan for being yet more examples of the moral corruption and anti-Americanism of the Republican party.

There Are Many Big Conservative Lies. That Republicans Are For Small Government is One of Them

There Are Many Big Conservative Lies. That Republicans Are For Small Government is One of Them

What do you suppose a country that is only willing to pay (top dollar) for a far flung military empire, domestic policing, prisons and border security look like? If the Republicans get their we\'re way, it looks like we\'re going to find out:

    The House passed a defense budget Friday that exceeds the deal cut by Congress and President Barack Obama last summer, and that would have to be paid for with cash taken from poverty programs, health care and the federal workforce.

    The National Defense Authorization Act permits $642 billion in defense spending next year. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, citing more than 30 changes to the budget it was seeking.

    But the measure also adds $8 billion more than called for in the Budget Control Act that Congress agreed to last summer in exchange for raising the nation\'s debt limit.

    "We increase the spending for defense due to the priorities that we feel are most important and the constitutional requirement we have to provide for the common defense," Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said. "But we will cut in other areas of the budget so that we comply fully with the deficit reduction act."

    Those other areas were spelled out in the broader budget plan passed last week. Written by House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), it would cut more than $80 billion in federal retirement benefits, nearly $50 billion from Medicaid programs and more than $36 billion from programs to feed the poor.

I\'ve always thought of the Military Industrial Complex as welfare for white guys. This would back up that claim:

    Among other unasked for changes, the bill keeps aging aircraft and ships the military wants to phase out, keeps the Army and Marines at larger force levels and orders construction of missile defenses.

They don\'t want it, they don\'t need it, but the Republican donors want the profits and their conservative base voters want the very well paying, extremely high benefits jobs.

They like to say they hate Big Government, but that\'s a lie. They love it. It\'s just that they want to funnel the money to their own constituencies --- and they want to build a police state that will keep everyone else in line in case they decide to do something about it.
It is true that many Democrats back all those programs too. But I think they do have more pressure coming from constituents to spend money on domestic items as well, so they\'re forced to at least pay them lip service and offer token support. It\'s not much, but it\'s where we are these days in terms of choices.

Conservative Republicans give their word and it turns out is was a lie. Kind of reminds me about all those WMD Iraq never had. Or the promise that the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves by stimulating the economy and create jobs. Anyone seen those jobs? Conservatives are like the crazy uncle everyone ignores on holidays, yet the media and everyone else takes conservatives seriously. Since when did real Americans pay attention to venal crazy people.

Mitt’s favorite new dodge - Romney and the GOP insist the economy is more important than social issues. Why can't we address both?

Top Republican Group: Minority Births Are ‘Not A Good Thing’ Because They ‘Don’t Share American Values’

UPDATED: Will Fox News Correct Its False Report On Elizabeth Warren's Book?.Scott Brown(R-MA) and his friends are telling some desperate lies and peddling extreme distortions. For such a manly man he sure is acting like a sacred little wuss.

Anti-American Zealot Sean Hannity owes America an Apology For Lying About Women Who Face Insurance Discrimination In The Absence Of Health Care Reform

                                                                                                               
                 Anti-American Zealot Sean Hannity owes America an Apology For Lying About Women Who Face Insurance Discrimination In The Absence Of Health Care Reform

This week, Fox News host Sean Hannity scoffed at the idea that women face discriminatory practices from the health insurance industry, arguing that it is "disinformation" to claim that repeal of the health care reform law, which bans such practices, will again subject women to unfair and discriminatory treatment by insurers. In fact, the law bans insurance companies from its current practice of charging women higher premiums for the same coverage as men, and forbids insurers from listing pregnancy as a pre-existing condition, which was often used by some providers as an excuse to deny coverage.

DNC's Wasserman Schultz: Affordable Care Act Bans Discriminatory Health Insurance Practices Against Women

Rep. Wasserman Schultz: Mitt Romney Favors Going Back To "A Time When Insurance Companies Could Drop Us Or Deny Us Coverage Simply Because Of Our Gender." On MSNBC, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stated:

    WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's clear that Mitt Romney is dramatically out of touch with women on the issues and the priorities that matter to us. You know, wanting to take us back to a time when insurance companies could drop us or deny us coverage simply because of our gender being considered a pre-existing condition, charging us up to 50 percent more simply because we're women, focusing on not making sure that we can have access to affordable birth control and taking us back to a time when we had to worry about that.

    Those are things -- I have never been more concerned, Martin, in my life. In my generation of women has never been more concerned where my rights that I have accepted and taken for granted for far too long are in jeopardy if Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States -- as a woman.. [MNSBC, Martin Bashir, 4/23/12]

Fox Accuses Wasserman Schultz Of "Disinformation," "Demagoguery"

Hannity: Rep. Wasserman Schultz Spreading "Disinformation" On Health Care. After playing a clip of Rep. Wasserman Schultz's comments, Hannity said that "all this disinformation [is] an attempt to sway the opinions of the American people. But guess what, congresswoman? They're smart enough to figure this out." [Fox News, Hannity, 4/25/12]

Malkin Accused Wasserman Schultz Of "Demagoguery" And Of Being A Part Of "The Unreality-Based Community." Reacting to Wasserman Schultz's statement on health care, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin said: "I have to give Debbie Wasserman Schultz credit, she's the Energizer Bunny of Democratic demagoguery, and I think a card-carrying member of the unreality-based community." [Fox News, Hannity, 4/25/12]
In Fact, Women Routinely Face "Unfair And Discriminatory Practices" In Health Insurance Market

Congressional Investigation Found Major Health Insurance Companies Routinely Denied Coverage To Expectant Mothers. From an October 2010 House Energy and Commerce Committee memo on maternity coverage in the individual health insurance market:

    Women who are pregnant, expectant fathers, and families attempting to adopt children are generally unable to obtain health insurance in the individual market. The four largest for-profit health insurance companies, Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint, have each listed pregnancy as a medical condition that would result in an automatic denial of individual health insurance coverage. Health insurance companies also sometimes exclude from coverage expectant fathers, candidates for surrogacy whether they are the surrogate or recipient, and those in the process of adoption.

    [...]

    Women who are pregnant cannot obtain individual health insurance from the four largest for-profit health insurance companies, Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint. All four insurance companies refuse to provide coverage to applicants who have "pre-existing conditions." Each of the health insurance companies considers pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition that results in an automatic denial of health insurance coverage. [House Energy and Commerce Committee, 10/12/10, emphasis in original]

PolitiFact: Pregnancy Was Considered A "Pre-Existing Condition" In Individual Insurance Market In 39 States. In an August 18, 2009, article titled, "Pregnancy a 'pre-existing condition'? Yes, for some," PolitiFact wrote:

    In 39 states, listed here, insurers can turn down anyone for virtually any reason. It can be because you have a pre-existing condition, like cancer or diabetes. And pregnancy almost always counts too, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents the state government officials who regulate insurance sold within their borders. So if you're pregnant and living in one of these 39 states, you're very likely out of luck in securing individual health coverage. You'll have to pay for your care out of your own pocket or seek out charitable assistance.

    And the coverage isn't much better in the remaining 11 states. These states have "guaranteed issue" laws that say insurers cannot turn applicants down based on their health or risk status. But there's a caveat: Even if an insurer must offer you a plan, it can place exclusions on what the plan covers. Typically, the NAIC says, these exclusions last from six to 12 months, which rules out most or all maternity coverage. (After the exclusion expires, the insurer does have to cover those conditions, meaning that a subsequent pregnancy could be covered.)

    [...]

    Health care reform legislation under consideration in Congress would, if enacted, improve the situation for pregnant women seeking health insurance by prohibiting restrictions based on pre-existing conditions. But for now ... pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and prevents many women from getting coverage if they seek insurance on the individual market. [PolitiFact, 8/19/09]

National Women's Law Center: Women Still Face "Unfair And Discriminatory Practices" In Individual Health Insurance Market. In its March 2012 report "Turning to Fairness: Insurance discrimination against women today and the Affordable Care Act," the National Women's Law Center found that women "continue to face unfair and discriminatory practices when obtaining health insurance in the individual market -- as well as in the group health insurance market. Women are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women, and individual market health plans often exclude coverage for services that only women need, like maternity care. Furthermore, insurance companies -- despite being aware of these discriminatory practices -- have not voluntarily taken steps to eliminate the inequities." The report showed:

    Gender rating, the practice of charging women different premiums than men, results in significantly higher rates charged to women throughout the country. In states that have not banned the practice, the vast majority, 92%, of best-selling plans gender rate, for example, charging 40-year-old women more than 40-year-old men for coverage. Only 3% of these plans cover maternity services.

 Hannity, Malkin and millions of other conservatives are typical cowardly conservatives. If they cannot win the argument based on reality, they make up a fairy tale. They possess all the rhetorical and ideological hallmarks of every anti-freedom authoritarian movement in modern history. They are the shrill voice of tyranny. You can wrap conservatism in all the red, white and blue they like it is still fundamentally an anti-American movement trying to pass itself off as patriotic. What a sad joke.

Romney bashes Obama for "making us like Europe." But he's the one pushing failed European austerity measures

Criminal Rick Scott(R) and Florida Conservatives Are Wasting Tax Dollars and Trampling Liberty

Criminal Rick Scott(R) and Florida Conservatives Are Wasting Tax Dollars and Trampling Liberty

Required drug tests for people seeking welfare benefits ended up costing taxpayers more than it saved and failed to curb the number of prospective applicants, data used against the state in an ongoing legal battle shows.

The findings — that only 108 of the 4,086 people who took a drug test failed — are additional ammunition for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which sued the state and won a temporary ban on the drug-testing program in October, said ACLU spokesman Derek Newton.

Attorneys for the state immediately appealed the ban, and will face off against the ACLU again at the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta and the U.S. District Court in Orlando in coming months.

The costs and benefits of the law — and the outcome of the court case — could reverberate nationwide. This week, Georgia passed its own drug welfare law.

Since Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law last year, 25 states have considered similar legislation, Newton said.

Data about the law’s cost may impact the court of public opinion, but Jenn Meale, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said it won’t play a role in the legal proceedings.

That’s because ACLU’s case rests on whether the law violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against "unreasonable searches" by the government.

"Any costs associated with the program are irrelevant to the analysis of whether the statute is constitutional," Meale said.

Of the 4,086 applicants who scheduled drug tests while the law was enforced, 108 people, or 2.6 percent, failed, most often testing positive for marijuana. About 40 people scheduled tests but canceled them, according to the Department of Children and Families, which oversees Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as the TANF program.

The numbers, confirming previous estimates, show that taxpayers spent $118,140 to reimburse people for drug test costs, at an average of $35 per screening.

The state’s net loss? $45,780.

"That’s not counting attorneys and court fees and the thousands of hours of staff time it took to implement this policy," Newton said.

The law also didn’t impact the number of people who applied for benefits.

Conservatives are for small government? One of the biggest scams ever perpetuated on the American people. Thanks to conservatives every American has less freedom today than they had 15 years ago. And everyday they think of new legislation to intrude government into people's personal lives.

Conservatives should know about redistributing income, their policies make sure the nation's financial capital is redistributed from workers to lazy corporate executives - CEOs at top companies earned 380 times the average worker's income in 2011

What is CISPA and why it is the newest threat to internet access and privacy

Every major economic downturn in the USA has been due to conservative supply side economics. Yet they keep thinking the public has such a short term memory they can try them again every few years. Time to stop the conservative fantasy Ferris wheel and move on.

Conservative Republican John Raese Cannot Tell The Difference Between Regulated Smoking Areas and The Holocaust

Conservative Republican John Raese Cannot Tell The Difference Between Regulated Smoking Areas and The Holocaust

 

John Raese, a very wealthy Republican who may or may not live in West Virginia, was one of the most colorful Senate candidates of 2010 when he ran against now-Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). This year, he wants a rematch against Manchin (Raese has already lost three Senate races and one for governor), and Raese appears to have lost none of the qualities that led the Manchin campaign to call him “crazy” two years ago.

Speaking at the Putnam County Lincoln Day dinner recently, Raese compared his county’s smoking regulations to when “Hitler used to put [a] Star of David” on Jews:

    RAESE: I don’t want government telling me what I can do and what I can’t do because I’m an American. But in Monongalia County you can’t smoke a cigarette, you can’t smoke a cigar, you can’t do anything. And I oppose that. … I have to put a huge sticker on my buildings to say this is a smoke free environment. This is brought to you by the government of Monongalia County. OK?

    Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody’s lapel, remember that? Same thing.



In his last bid, Raese said the minimum wage was unconstitutional, said he wanted to take capitalism back to the days before child labor laws, blamed volcanoes for global warming, made fun of Chinese last names, and proudly proclaimed, “I made my money the old-fashioned way — I inherited it.” Perhaps most famously, one of Raese’s biggest ideas from 2010 was demanding “1,000 laser systems put in the sky” for missile defense. “And need it right now,” he added to demonstrate his seriousness. 

Pictured are USA hating Conservatives Raese, Palin, Nugent

Actually the laws in Putnam are like they are in most places. You cannot smoke in public buildings like schools and courthouses because of the second hand smoke.

In America, financial inequality has soared over the past few decades thanks to conservative policies that punish work and reward wealth.

Mitt Romney's Bain Represents Crony Capitalism's Worst. Conservatives caused the recession of the 1980s. They caused the recession of 2008. But hey forget all that and vote for them in 2012. Maybe they'll get it right this time.

I've Heard That Rep. Allen West(R-FL) Has Sex With Animals

I've Heard That Rep. Allen West(R-FL) Has Sex With Animals - Allen West: I’ve ‘Heard’ That 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members

Flamboyant Tea Party Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said at town hall meeting last night that “he’s heard” of up to 80 Democratic congressmen who are members of the Communist Party. The entire House Democratic Caucus is 190 members, so West is claiming that almost half are card-carrying Communists. Not surprisingly, he would not name names. (HT: Jenn Bendery)

I've heard a lot of things about West. Since we're playing by conservative rules, what I have heard is the truth even if I do not have any evidence until West proves me wrong. Since West has proved to be a total wacko it is far more possible that I am right and West is having another moment where he has embraced pure evil in the cause of Anti-American conservatism.

Why Poorer States Aren't Buying What Romney's Selling - The Wacky Republican party appears to be increasingly divided among class lines.

Why Does Conservative Scam-artist Rick Warren Hate What Jesus and America Stand For

The Buffett Rule is Nothing Compared to the Romney Windfall

Watch the video and guess what planet Romney is from.

Herman Cain and Friends Typify The Moral Rot of Conservatism

Herman Cain and Friends Typify The Moral Rot of Conservatism

Federal authorities have opened an investigation into two Wisconsin-based corporations founded and run by Mark Block, a veteran political operative who ran Herman Cain's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

"They are very interested in Mark and these groups," said a source familiar with the probe. "It is not my sense, right now, that Cain is a target."

In recent weeks, FBI agents have been talking to donors and other individuals connected with Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Prosperity Network. Block and Linda Hansen, Cain's deputy chief of staff, were the two primary people running those groups.

No Quarter reported last year that Prosperity USA helped Cain get his fledgling campaign off the ground by originally footing the bill for such items as iPads, chartered flights and travel to Iowa and Las Vegas, according to internal records.

Expenses totaling nearly $40,000 are listed in Prosperity USA's internal documents as "due from FOH," a reference to Friends of Herman Cain, the name of his campaign committee.

A number of election law experts have said these payments for campaign events appeared to cross the line.

Prosperity USA also borrowed as much as $150,000 from two unnamed individuals and then gave the bulk of those funds to the Con gress of Racial Equality , a conservative civil rights group, in January 2011. Shortly after that payment was made, Cain - who had just entered the presidential race - was a featured speaker at the group's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Celebration dinner.

Sources said the loans, which don't appear to have been repaid, were obtained under questionable circumstances.

In addition, it does not appear that either organization was granted tax-exempt status, even though contributors were told they could write off their donations. Both groups received substantial support from major conservatives in the state.

Block did not return texts, emails or calls asking for comment on Thursday. He is now working for Cain's Solutions Revolution, a group promoting the former candidate's 9-9-9 tax plan.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling, who is spearheading the probe, also declined to comment, refusing even to acknowledge that there is an investigation.

Last year, several liberal advocacy groups filed complaints with federal election and tax regulators urging them to investigate Block and the two Wisconsin corporations. The Cain campaign responded by saying it had retained two law firms to look into the allegations.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has never disclosed the results of the internal investigation. He dropped out of the race in early December after being pummeled by allegations of infidelity.

Block was asked last month at a public forum if the Federal Election Commission was investigating the Cain campaign and the questionable donations from Block's private organizations.

"Not to my knowledge," he said.

The question, interestingly, came from Milwaukee attorney Walt Kelly, who was at the center of the last major controversy involving Block.

In 1997, Block was the campaign manager for then-Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox in a hotly contested race against Kelly. After the race was over, state regulators accused Block of election-law violations, including coordinating a mass mailing with an outside group.

Block settled his part of the case by agreeing to stay out of Wisconsin politics for three years and to pay a $15,000 fine.

More recently, Block ran the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit cofounded by the conservative Koch brothers that helped organize the tea party movement in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

It was through Americans for Prosperity that Block met Cain and encouraged him to run for national office. Block's role with the Cain campaign became a point of national interest late last year when the campaign released a bizarre online ad featuring the chain-smoking Wisconsin operative.

Records show Block was paid more than $182,000 in total compensation during his year running Cain's failed campaign. He pulled down $84,605 in the final three months of 2011, even though his candidate dropped out of the race in early December.

Hansen, Block's political and business sidekick, received a little less than $88,000 in total compensation in 2011. Like Block, she deposited her biggest paychecks during the final three months of the year, taking in $56,430 during that span.

It's not surprising that they were paid the most at the end of last year.

That's also when the campaign had the most money.

Riding a short-lived wave of publicity and popularity, Cain received $11.3 million in donations between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31. But the GOP candidate spent all of that, plus $500,000 more, over the same period.

Not much of a surprise: conservatives+money+right-wing sugar daddies+violation of campaign finance laws+failure to fail correct statements about where money came from or how it was spent+campaign staffers using campaign money to enrich themselves+the general conservative tendency towards corruption and immoral behavior while also being sanctimonious hypocrites. Just another day. They will wave the flag and quote from the Bible to make it all sound like patriotism.

Thank Goodness For The American People, Families and The Common Good That Health care Reform is Constitutional

Thank Goodness For The American People, Families and The Common Good That Health care Reform is Constitutional

What is at stake in the case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), scheduled for oral argument in the Supreme Court in March? The challengers maintain that the case is about fundamental liberty, specifically our freedom not to be compelled to purchase things we don’t want. But that frame, while undoubtedly appealing to the radical libertarian strain in the Tea Party, is misleading. In fact, the only “liberty” that would be protected by a victory for the challengers is the freedom of insurance companies to discriminate against sick people.

The case is principally focused on the “individual mandate,” the law’s requirement that people who are not insured and can afford health insurance must buy it or pay a tax penalty. The federal government is a government of limited powers, and although Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, the challengers concede, if it can force people to “enter into commerce” in order to regulate them, then its powers are in effect unlimited. The reason Congress has never imposed such a mandate, they maintain, is that the power does not properly exist.

The Supreme Court deems the issue sufficiently serious to schedule an almost unprecedented five and a half hours of oral argument (it usually schedules a single hour). But the argument against the law is remarkably flimsy. Two of the country’s most conservative judges, Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit and Laurence Silberman of the DC Circuit, were unable to find a valid argument against the law and voted to uphold it. Harvard law professor Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general, has also said the law is plainly constitutional. It’s always dangerous to predict Supreme Court rulings on controversial cases, but if the Court applies its precedents faithfully, it should be a victory for the administration.

Although the challengers focus their attack on the individual mandate, that provision cannot be separated from the act’s prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher rates based on “pre-existing” medical conditions. No one contests Congress’s constitutional authority to enact that overwhelmingly popular protection from dubious insurance practices. But without the individual mandate, the nondiscrimination protection would be unworkable. People would have a powerful incentive to wait until they get sick before they buy insurance, because they could not be penalized for doing so. Such “free-riding” would defeat insurance’s purpose of spreading risk. As one expert told Congress, health insurance cannot work if people can delay buying it until they are on the way to the hospital. Several states have tried to prohibit discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, but the reforms have failed everywhere they have been enacted without an individual mandate. (Only in Massachusetts, where the protection is coupled with a mandate, has the reform been sustainable.)

Conservatives are fond of reminding us that society involves not just rights but responsibilities. Yet here, they don’t seem to get it—the right afforded by the ACA will work only if it comes with the responsibility to purchase insurance if you can afford it. In the end, the challenge to “Obamacare” is not conservative at all; it’s radically libertarian.

We’ve seen this kind of libertarian constitutional argument before. In the early twentieth century, after the Industrial Revolution had concentrated economic power in employers’ hands, Congress and the states passed many laws designed to protect workers from exploitation. Time and again, the Supreme Court invalidated these statutes. It deemed the federal laws beyond Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce because they were said to regulate the terms of production, manufacture or mining, all of which were said to precede interstate commerce. And it invalidated state labor laws as infringements on the “freedom of contract” protected by the due process clause.

In the wake of the Depression and the New Deal, however, the Court overruled both lines of precedent. It abandoned altogether the due process notion that economic regulation infringes on “freedom of contract”; it has never since invalidated any law on that ground.

After years of being being hurt in auto accidents by people with no insurance all states mandated insurance or paying into an uninsured motorist fund ( a type of insurance for the lazy and responsible). Health care insurance is not fundamentally different from that. Requiring people to have basic driving skills, knowledge of road rules, and getting a driver's license is also similar. Not letting people have the individual right to kick their dog could be -according to the way conservatives think - an infringement on the rights of animal abusers. Conservationism is a noxious and fundamentally anti-American movement whose goal is to create an authoritarian plutocracy. Always beware of its toxic agenda and laughable reasoning. 

What Will It Take For The Press To Call Out Romney and Conservatives for Lying About Obama and Israel

What liberal media? What Will It Take For The Press To Call Out Romney and Conservatives for Lying About Obama and Israel

Two days ago, Barack Obama went before AIPAC (which is commonly known as "the Israel Lobby" but would be better understood as the Likud lobby, since it advocates not Israel's interests per se but the perspective of the right wing of Israeli politics, but that's a topic for another day), and said, among other things, the following:

    "I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power: A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency. Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

This didn't surprise anyone, because it's the same thing Obama has been saying for a while, in scripted and unscripted remarks alike, in both speeches and interviews. Yet later that day, Mitt Romney went out and said the following:

    "This is a president who has failed to put in place crippling sanctions against Iran. He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

So here's my question: Just what will it take for reporters to start writing about the question of whether Mitt Romney is, deep within his heart, a liar?

Because he does this kind of thing frequently, very frequently. Sometimes the lies he tells are about himself (often when he's trying to explain away things he has said or done in the past if today they displease his party's base, as he's now doing with his prior support for an individual mandate for health insurance), but most often it's Barack Obama he lies about. And I use the word "lie" very purposefully. There are lots of things Romney says about Obama that are distortions, just plain ridiculous, or unfalsifiable but obviously false, as when he often climbs into Obama's head to tell you what Obama really desires, like turning America into a militarily weak, economically crippled shadow of Europe (not the actual Europe, but Europe as conservatives imagine it to be, which is something like Poland circa 1978). But there are other occasions, like this one, where Romney simply lies, plainly and obviously. In this case, there are only two possibilities for Romney's statement: Either he knew what Obama has said on this topic and decided he'd just lie about it, or he didn't know what Obama has said, but decided he'd just make up something about what Obama said regardless of whether it was true. In either case, he was lying.

The "Who is he, really?" question is one that consumes campaign coverage, but in Romney's case the question has been about phoniness, not dishonesty, and the two are very different things. What that means is that when Romney makes a statement like this one, reporters don't run to their laptops to write stories that begin, "Raising new questions about his candor, today Mitt Romney falsely accused President Obama..." The result is that he gets a pass: there's no punishment for lying, because reporters hear the lie and decide that there are other, more important things to write about.

To get a sense of what it's like when reporters are on the lookout for lies, remember what Al Gore went through in 2000. To take just one story, when Gore jokingly told a union audience that as a baby his parents would rock him to sleep to the strains of "Look for the Union Label," everyone in attendance laughed, but reporters shouted "To the Internet!" and discovered that the song wasn't written until Gore was an adult. They then wrote entire stories about the remark, with those "Raising new questions..." ledes, barely entertaining the possibility that Gore was joking. Why not? Because it was Al Gore, and they all knew he was a liar, so obviously if he said something that wasn't literally true it could only have been an intentional falsehood.

That is not yet the presumption when it comes to Mitt Romney. There's another factor at play as well, which is that reporters, for reasons I've never completely understood, consider it a greater sin to lie about yourself, particularly about your personal life, than to lie about your opponent or about policy (I wrote about the different kinds of lies and how the press treats them differently here). Because Romney is lying about his opponent and about a policy matter, reporters just aren't as interested. But at some point, these things begin to pile up, and they really ought to start asking whether this dishonesty is something fundamental in Romney's character that might be worth exploring.

One reason the media will not call conservatives liars is because conservatives have been pretty good at intimidating the press. So much so the media in general, even when they know Romney or Gingrich or Santorum or Ron Paul are lying they report it as conservatives say the earth is flat but others disagree. Some facts are not open to disagreement, they are facts, the earth is not flat no matter how often conservatives claim otherwise.