Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Chris McMurray, who owns Crumb and Get It Cookie Company is a lying UnAmerican Scumbag and Proud Of It

Chris McMurray, who owns Crumb and Get It Cookie Company is a lying UnAmerican Scumbag and Proud Of It

The Republican ticket has embraced a new small-business hero. On Wednesday, the owner of a bakery who last week turned away Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. introduced Representative Paul D. Ryan at a rally in this city where President Obama uttered his “You didn’t build that” remark.

Chris McMurray, the owner of Crumb and Get It Cookie Company with his wife, told a crowd at another small business, a hardware store, “We are gathered here today to send a message to the Obama-Biden team that we did build it.’’

Mr. McMurray said the Biden campaign approached him to ask if the vice president could drop by his cookie shop while campaigning, and he replied, “Nothing personal, but I just happened to disagree with the president and the vice president on a few things.”

The story vaulted from local news to the Drudge Report and conservative blogs, and voilà, Mr. McMurray became the latest small-business owner spotlighted by the Romney-Ryan campaign in a monthlong hammering of Mr. Obama for supposed anti-business attitudes and policies.

Fact-checkers and the Obama campaign complain that Republicans are willfully twisting the president’s remark – he was referring to government investment in infrastructure, not denying entrepreneurs credit for their companies – but the line become just one of many yanked from context in an intensely heated political season.

Mr. Ryan’s account of Mr. Obama’s remarks continued the misrepresentation of what the president said on July 13 in front of a Roanoke firehouse. “He did say if you have a small business, you did not build that, someone else did,” Mr. Ryan said, after thanking Mr. McMurray for his spirited introduction, which had the crowd chanting “We built it! We built it!”

So McMurray and Ryan, both of whom lack the integrity of the common cockroach use a lie to advance their radical anti-American agenda and their crowd of like-minded fans cheer them on. On wonders what it like to live one's life without integrity and honor, without regard for the truth and common decency, but on the other hand who wants any insights into living that nightmare. President Obama never said people did not build there own businesses. never said it. he said that businesses use infrastructure paid for by taxes, infrastructure that McMurray took for granted when he started his business - unless he built the roads that lead to his business. Did he put up the street lights. Does he have his own personal fire fighting crew on standby. Did he teach his employees to do basic math and read or did public schools do that.  McMurray owes President Obam and the nation that made any success he is having an apology. Don't hold your breath waiting for it. To apologize McMurray would have to have enough humility and common decency to admit he is a wrong and a radical zealot.

The Real Romney Captured on Tape Turns Out to Be a Sneering Plutocrat

Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes

Well Known America Hating Rep. Peter King (R-NY) Tells CNN ‘I Don’t Care What Fact Check Says,’ Tax payers pay King, an anti-American nut case, $179,000 a year to spout this crap. Why is King not being deported to Russia where he belongs.

If The Media is Liberal How Come So Many Americans Believe These Tax Myths, Including Mitt Romney

If The Media is Liberal How Come So Many Americans Believe These Tax Myths, Including Mitt Romney

On Saturday, the Obama administration unveiled the "Buffett Rule," a proposed tax on millionaires and billionaires named after celebrity investor Warren Buffett, who has long argued that the federal government should demand more of the wealthy. The millionaires tax is certain to become a major point of contention in the 2012 presidential campaign, and Republicans have wasted no time in heaping it with calumnies. Here are the six most popular conservative arguments against a progressive tax code, and why they're wrong:

It's class warfare!
Yeah right. Three decades of laissez-faire economic polices have allowed the rich to double their share of the national income while paying tax rates a fifth lower than before. The result, notes Kevin Drum, was "wage stagnation for everyone else, a massive financial collapse that ravaged the middle class, an enormous deficits that they'll be asked to pay off eventually." If the millionaires tax is the only blowback, the wealthy should count their blessings.

It's a tax on small business
"Don't forget that most small businesses file taxes as individuals," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Fox News Sunday. "So when you are raising top tax rates, you are raising taxes on these job creators." Except when you aren't. ThinkProgress's Pat Garofalo points out that fewer than 2 percent of the nation's small businesses fall into either of the top two tax brackets. Plus, many of the small business filers in the upper brackets are merely investors who have nothing to do with running the business. And if small businesses don't want to pay taxes as individuals, they can file as corporations.

It reduces incentives to work and invest
Experience shows otherwise. As Nancy Folbre points out over at Economix, "average annual rates of growth in gross domestic product in the high tax era between 1950 and 1980 exceeded those of the last 30 years. Increases in the top tax rate under President Bill Clinton were followed by robust economic expansion."

It's an unstable source of revenue
A recent essay in the Wall Street Journal argued that the high volatility of upper-level income makes it impractical to rely on taxing it. But this concern is vastly overblown and can be easily dealt with by establishing rainy day funds.

It's unfair
In the libertarian view, the rich are entitled to their gains because they worked for them. But this ignores how structural changes in the economy such as globalization, financial deregulation, and the rise of the knowledge-based economy have disproportionately rewarded the wealthy. At the same time, we've failed to reinvest in government programs that once leveled the playing field, such as financing for community colleges and public universities.

The rich will leave the country
Good riddance, writes Don Peck in a recent Atlantic essay on how to save the middle class: "America remains a magnet for talent, for reasons that go beyond the tax code; and by international standards, none of the tax changes recommended here would create an excessive tax burden on high earners. If a few financiers choose to decamp for some small island-state in search of the smallest possible tax bill, we should wish them good luck."

It is the height of arrogance for the wealthy and their woefully ignorant apologist among blue collar workers to think the USA would somehow be lost if the top 10% in income left to live on their perfect conservative libertarian island. Not only would the average American be better lose nothing, but they would have these leaches off their backs. Workers up through middle-management create the goods, services and value that constitute the capital that makes the rich wealthy. Without workers the rich are just empty headed elitist. If raising taxes to what they were during the Clinton administration makes them want to leave, if they think it means the end of America, well, good by, have fun in that no tax paradise.

Romney Claims Waivers He Used To Support Will ‘Gut Welfare Reform’

Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a full-on attack on Tuesday accusing President Obama of gutting welfare reform. In a new ad, policy memo, and press release, Romney claims that the administration’s decision to offer waivers to states that develop innovative ways to meet the law’s work requirements is actually an attempt to “remove work participation rate requirements all together.”

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” the ad’s narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

The ad is blatantly false — the administration’s plan specifically maintains the work requirement, but allows states to experiment with other methods of transitioning recipients from welfare to work. This is a policy that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says will make Temporary Assistance for Needy Families a more effective program.

Two and a half months until election day and there have yet to be any sightings of Mitt Romney having any actual moral values.

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.

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.

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

“Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government.”

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan wrote earlier this month in an exclusive commentary for Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. This week, he revealed exactly where his laser-like focus on dignity would lead this nation. He released his budget proposal, as clear a statement of one’s principles and priorities as there is in politics.

Here are the results, and they’re not pretty. Nation readers with young children should probably ask them to leave the room before reading onward.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means a cut in food stamps of $133 billion over ten years, even though 76 percent of participating households include a child, senior or disabled person, nearly half of all recipients are children and 40 percent of single mothers use food stamps to help feed their families.  A $13.4 billion cut in one year translates to as many as 8.2 billion meals lost for low-income people, more kids at risk of being underweight or developmentally delayed, worse educational outcomes and more stressed-out parents.

The congressman would also block-grant the program so it would no longer be able to respond to rising need during times like these—in 2010 alone food stamps kept 3.9 million people out of poverty. If you liked the cash assistance for poor families (TANF) block grant—which resulted in a free-fall from 68 of every 100 poor families receiving help to 27 of every 100—then you will absolutely love the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Feed You block grant.

All told, Ryan hands out about $4.4 trillion in tax cuts that primarily benefit the very best off, and pays for it with $4.15 trillion in spending cuts to programs that primarily benefit the poor and middle class.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and attacking Medicaid with his block-granting light saber. The repeal results in at least 33 million people losing their healthcare, and the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Heal You block grant shifts costs of covering poor people to the states (because their budgets are in such great shape)—cutting federal funding by approximately 20 percent over the next decade and adding “tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured,” according the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Worth noting too is that two out of every three Medicaid dollars currently goes to care for people in nursing homes, victims of catastrophic accidents and disabled children, according to the Center for American Progress.

“The inherent dignity of all people is the foundational principle of Catholic social teaching because we’re all created in the image of God,” Father Thomas Kelly, a constituent of Representative Ryan’s, told me after a conference call with Half in Ten. “A budget that cuts nutrition programs for poor children and tells working families they must sacrifice even more so the wealthy can have bigger tax cuts offends bedrock Catholic values. It’s hard to square Representative Ryan’s moral rhetoric with the cruel reality of this budget.”

“A budget that diminishes what we provide for the one in six Americans who are struggling with hunger is not a budget befitting a moral country,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “A plan reflective of our national priorities should seek to lift up our neighbors in a time of high unemployment and poverty; instead, this demands the most from those with the least, and flies in the face of the common dignity of all Americans.”

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means that the man is in desperate need of LASIK surgery. Better hurry, before he’s forced to rely on his proposed Don’t Worry Ryan Will Give You A Voucher healthcare system for seniors.

Ryan is like most modern conservatives. If given their way, for all their dire warnings about America becoming socialist, Ryan's conservative America will look a lot like the poverty ridden, food deprived Soviet Union of the 1960s. We'll have mothers, children and the disabled looking through trash cans for food. All this while corporate America is already making per-recession level profits - if they are being taxed or regulated too much you sure cannot tell by the bottom line. If Ryan and his immoral elite conservative pals want to punish work and reward wealth there is a way for them to do that, they can move somewhere and start their own 16th century monarchy.

Mindless Conservative Puppet of the Week - Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) For Big Oil, But Against Government For and By the People

Mindless Conservative Puppet of the Week - Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) For Big Oil, But Against Government For and By the People

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has launched a new ad asking Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to end subsidies for big oil. Brown has received $152,100 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, including $8,500 from Chevron, Conoco Phillips, and Exxon in the two weeks before his May 17 vote against S. 940, which would have killed some oil industry subsidies. The advertisement portrays a Brown-lookalike in his campaign gear of a Carhardt jacket, leaving oily marks as he wanders through Boston:

    Scott Brown said he’s one of us. But there’s a growing stain on his record. Senator Brown’s taken over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from big oil. And while Americans have been struggling at the pump, Senator Brown voted to keep giving oil companies billions in special government handouts. Sticking us with the bill, and a really big mess. Tell Senator Brown to vote to end tax breaks for Big Oil.

A new Public Policy Polling survey, conducted on behalf of LCV, finds that that 71 percent of those polled in Massachusetts think that tax breaks for oil companies should be eliminated, with only 18 percent in support of maintaining them.

Funny how politics and government works. We the people try to think about our future. If we know we're going to run out of bread or milk we make plans to deal with that. brown is taking big oil money to make sure the USA does not plan ahead. Brown wants a weaker, dependent USA. A USA crippled by short term thinking. many Americans think government does not work or cannot solve problems. Well, corrupt cronies like little Scottie Brown are in Washington to make sure government does not work for the people.

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.