Saturday, April 28, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR'S CAMPAIGN AGAIN TAKING CREDIT FOR AUTO COMPANY RESCUE

In another arrogant insult to everybody's intelligence, the head of Willard's campaign is AGAIN trying to push the BS lie that Mittens was the one who rescued the car companies because Obama did what Willard suggested. Here is the in-freaking-credible lie verbatim:


Top Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom claimed that President Obama's auto bailout was the GOP presidential hopeful's idea. 


Fehrnstrom said Obama followed Romney's course to help the auto industry during an appearance at a Saturday roundtable discussion hosted by the The Washington Post. 


“His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed,” Fehrnstrom said. "He said, 'If you want to save the auto industry, just don't write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.'" 


"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice," Fehrnstrom added.

Astonishing. Here is the truth of the matter, which I posted many weeks ago, from the UK's conservative business magazine The Economist:


The purpose of Mr Romney's [latest] op-ed is to clarify his position on the auto bail-out ahead of Michigan's primary on February 28th. And the piece rivals Cirque du Soleil in its display of contortions. Mr Romney seems loth to gush about the success of the bail-out, noting only the good news that "Chrysler and General Motors are still in business". He certainly doesn't mention that 2011 was the best year for America's carmakers since the financial crisis, with each of the big three turning a solid profit. But he does imply that this achievement is a result of his own advice. "The course I recommended was eventually followed", Mr Romney writes.


 ...But the course Mr Romney recommended in 2008 began with the government stepping back, and it is unlikely things would've turned out so well had this happened. [Emphasis added.]


Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position. "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.


 Haw! Then The Economist sticks the final knife in, reminding us of the key line in Willard's 2008 op-ed:


 "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." That's a difficult statement to walk back.


No Willard, YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH YOUR DAMNED LIES. You're NOT going to re-write history. You wanted to let the U.S. auto industry DIE. President Obama SAVED it.


And those are called "facts", Mittens. Just in case you've forgotten what they are.

Friday, April 27, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR CLAIMS THAT BUSH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN!

Sometimes the sheer magnitude of the Romney campaign's lies is almost breathtaking. You wouldn't think anybody could lie as brazenly, as insultingly, as infuriatingly, as arrogantly as these people do. But now, we are being told by Willard and his Head Toad that:


1. Bush, Cheney, and Rove had NOTHING to do with the economic crisis we were confronting on 20 January 2009.


2. It is 100% Barack Obama's fault that we are still in difficulty.


3. Obama gets no credit for ANYTHING positive that has happened economically.


Greg Sargent has the story here.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom rolled out a new argument: The Bush presidency bears none of the blame at all for the economic travails of the last three years; it’s all on Obama; the current President deserves not an iota of credit for the job gains that have occurred on his watch. 


Fehrnstrom noted that the economy’s struggle throughout the last three years is “not the fault of Barack Obama’s predecessor; it’s the fault of this administration and the failure of their policies to really get this economy going again.” Fehronstrom added: “This president cannot take credit for any success on the jobs front. None at all.” 


Romney and his supporters continue to argue that we know Obama’s policies made things worse because there’s been a net job loss during his presidency. But this factors in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the aftermath of the meltdown, before those policies went into effect. They continue making this argument in every conceivable forum, and no one outside of a few pointy-headed fact-checkers raises an eyebrow. 


Fehrnstrom’s latest takes this to a new extreme, and illustrates yet again (yes, I’m repeating myself here) that the Romney campaign’s whole argument is premised on the hope that the American public has developed mass amnesia about the scale of the mess Obama inherited.

Paul Krugman has said, along similar lines:


Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you've been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times...


For the Bush era didn’t just end in catastrophe; it started off badly, too. Yes, Mr. Obama’s jobs record has been disappointing — but it has been unambiguously better than Mr. Bush’s over the comparable period of his administration. 


This is especially true if you focus on private-sector jobs. Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office. 


Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.


Let's call a spade a spade here:


1.  The economic disaster that struck in August 2007 and accelerated to catastrophic proportions by September 2008 was the DIRECT result of the Bush Administration's policies.

2.  The Bush people inherited a peaceful, prosperous nation from Bill Clinton in January 2001. By January 2009 that nation was on its death bed.

3.  The congressional Republicans have done EVERYTHING they could to sabotage the recovery. They have embraced ultra-right wing extremist policies based solely on unbending hatred for Barack Obama. They have put the interests of the American people DEAD LAST.

4. Mitt Romney's so-called "solution" to our problems--ANOTHER MASSIVE TAX CUT FOR PEOPLE LIKE HIM--would blast a monstrous hole in the nation's finances, and put this country in an economic death spiral.

5.  It is REPUBLICANS in the state governments that are helping to strangle the economy as well.

Willard wants you to forget the past. He wants to put all blame for everything on the man who's tried earnestly to repair the damage left by the Republicans and their allies. He's just following the typical right-wing pattern: Everything is the fault of the Evil Librulz. Conservatives are never to blame for ANYTHING--even when they're in charge!

As Mr. K said, how stupid do they think we are?





Thursday, April 26, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR, FOREIGN POLICY EDITION

Really, can Willard tell the truth about anything?

ROMNEY THE LIAR'S OUTRAGEOUS LIE ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE LAW

I swear, just when you think Willard can't lie any more brazenly, he tops himself. This time my least favorite sociopath is claiming that "Obamacare" will allow President Obama to do shocking things. To wit:

With Obamacare fully installed, government would have control of almost half of the economy, and we would have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society. This president is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He's asking us to accept that Washington knows best, and can provide all. 


Jed Lewison knows flaming BS when he smells it:


Health care isn't half the economy, nor is it projected to be. According to the most recent report from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, health care spending is currently 17.6 percent of GDP and will rise to 19.8 percent in 2020. Even if government controlled all health care spending, that's still nowhere near half the economy. 

But government isn't responsible for all health care spending. According to the CMS report, by 2020 the government will be responsible for 49 percent of health care spending. That's not 49 percent of the economy, it's 49 percent of 19.8 percent of the economy. And that translates to a little less than 10 percent of the overall economy. One-tenth of the economy is nowhere near Mitt Romney's claim, but some people might think it sounds like a lot. Today, however, government is responsible for 45 percent of health care spending (up from 44 percent in Bush's last year in office), so 49 percent isn't a huge shift. 

But as I said above, 49 percent represents one-tenth of the economy, not one-half. Still, at least it's one-half of something, and if I had to guess where Romney's false claim came from, I would guess that he (or someone on his staff) saw that number when it first came out, and over time it metastasized into the falsehood he delivered last night. That's just a guess, though. Maybe there's another story. Whatever it is, the ludicrous nature of Romney's claim betrayed his reckless disregard for the truth and underscored his willingness to say anything in order to make an argument for why he should be elected.

Damn straight, Jed. Damn straight. Romney has no moral center, no ethics, no integrity, no character, no decency. He will continue to lie with impunity if no one calls him on it. Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars gathered from this nation's worst right-wing corporate radicals by head Republican Scumbag Karl Rove, and supported by a torrent of lies regurgitated by Fox "News" and right-wing hate radio, Romney is a dangerous threat to America. The time to define him is NOW

There may not be enough time later.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

A SUMMARY OF ROMNEY'S LIES--SO FAR

Hey folks. I regularly post a diary on Daily Kos listing all of Willard's lies with handy-dandy links to the posts on this blog. The most recent example is right here. Hope you enjoy it--AND SPREAD IT TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

A TRIO OF LIES FROM ROMNEY THE LIAR

Hello again! Been out of the loop for a few days! Back to callin' Willard on his non-stop damned lies. Let's see, what do we have:


1.  This week, Willard stopped at a factory in Ohio that was closed in 2008--when BUSH WAS PRESIDENT--and blamed the plant's closure on President Obama! (A CNN reporter tweeted it here.) And wouldn't ya know it, the guy who closed the plant originally is a big Romney donor


In fact, [Owner Thomas]Nelson is a major Republican donor, having given at least $96,600 to Republican federal candidates and committees since 2007, according to our analysis of data downloaded from the Sunlight Foundation. Aside from Romney and a dozen or so donations to candidates, Nelson made a $30,800 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee last October and $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2007.


So one of Romney's contributors closes a plant when Bush was in office and Mittens blames it on Obama. Expect this kind of BS on a daily basis this year.


2.  No one can choose his birth family, and no one blames Willard for anything his ancestors did. But Willard will lie about it anyway. When the Governor of Montana stated that Willard's grandfather was a polygamist, Mittens denied it emphatically. The facts speak otherwise: 


Romney's father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1907 to American citizens living in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints colony. The Romney family had left the U.S. to avoid being prosecuted for polygamy after laws against the practice were enforced, and returned to the U.S. after the Mexican Revolution broke out. Some family members stayed in Mexico and Mitt Romney has about 40 relatives still living south of the border. 


D'oh! Again, no one is saying Willard is pro-polygamy. But this is just another example of how Willard will lie almost as a reflex action. Ask him anything, and he'll lie through his teeth about it.


3.  Finally, Willard claims he was in Fenway Park to see the Boston Red Sox win the clinching game of the 2004 World Series. But alas

Mitt Romney’s visit to Fenway Park earlier this week has prompted renewed focus on a 2006 comment in which he reportedly told an Air Force pilot he was in Fenway Park when the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years.


If he was, it was by himself. 


The team won the clinching Game 4 of the 2004 World Series not in Boston but at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, home of the St. Louis Cardinals.


He'll lie about Obama, he'll lie about his own family, he'll lie about his experiences. Look, I know all politicians bend the truth on occasion, but Willard just ignores the truth altogether. You literally cannot trust ANYTHING he says. 


Ever. 


And he MUST be stopped from lying his way into the White House.








Tuesday, April 17, 2012

WILLARD: A TRUE STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS LIAR

Dana Milbank catalogues the truly shocking number of lies that pour out of Willard's mouth on every occasion. If it weren't so repulsive, it would hold a sort of weird fascination. Here's a sample:

PolitiFact has awarded Romney its “Pants on Fire” or “False” ratings for 32 claims. Among them are these: that Obama “didn’t even mention the deficit or debt” in his State of the Union address, that “our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917,” that Obama “never worked in the private sector,” that Obama “gave” the automakers “to the UAW,” and that “we’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy.” 


Wednesday’s speech alone had more than a dozen distortions, including allegations that: Obama “has failed to even pass a budget” (Congress passes budget resolutions, which the president doesn’t sign); Obama created a panel empowered to deny treatments under Medicare (the board can only make recommendations, and only if Congress fails to find Medicare cuts), Obama “has added regulations at a staggering rate” (the Business Roundtable just said it “lauded” the administration’s attempt at regulatory reform).


No fewer than three Romney claims in that one speech merited PolitiFact’s “Pants on Fire” rating: that Obama led “a government takeover of health care,” has been “apologizing for America abroad” and is ending “Medicare as we know it.” Romney’s assertions that Obama “is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare” and that eliminating Obamacare saves “about $100 billion” were rated false.


Disgusting. Repellent. Appalling. If we let this S.O.B. lie his way into the White House, the future of this country will be grim. Not only has Willard adopted the most ultra-radical right-wing positions to placate the lunatic, howling-at-the-Moon Republican base, he intends to vomit out lies about Obama so fast that they can't all be refuted in time. Anyone who doesn't think the 2012 election matters needs to start paying attention--and start nailing Willard on his non-stop lies EVERY time.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

ONCE AGAIN, ROMNEY THE LIAR ON VIDEO, DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST--LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH

Man, the Ron Paul campaign was BRINGING it against Willard. Whew! Sterling job!

ROMNEY THE LIAR SUCKING UP TO NRA LUNACY AND PARANOIA

America's #1 political prostitute (who really should charge by the hour) was speaking to the National Rifle Association's gathered members recently, and he told another BRAZEN LIE about President Obama. Let Charles Pierce elaborate for us:

"In a second term, he would be unrestrained by the demands of re-election," Romney told a crowd estimated at 6,000 in the cavernous Edward Jones Dome. "As he told the Russian president last month when he thought no one else was listening, after a re-election he'll have a lot more, quote, 'flexibility' to do what he wants. I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that, but looking at his first three years, I have a very good idea." Referring specifically to the right to bear arms, Romney said: "If we are going to safeguard our Second Amendment, it is time to elect a president who will defend the rights President Obama ignores or minimizes. I will."


Let us begin briefly by noting, as we always must do after every Romney oration, what a whopping big lie this is. There is nothing in the first three years of the Obama Administration that indicates that he's going to embark on a wildassed gun-grabbing spree as soon as they put away the Bible next January. (Romney can ask some liberals, if he doesn't want to believe me.) What gun rights, precisely, has the president ignored or minimized? And, if all he does is ignore them or minimize them, isn't that what these people want, as long as he doesn't curtail the fundamental American freedom to open up with an AK if the gardener looks at you crosswise? He's given up on having his lies make sense.


Indeed. Romney will spew any lie he thinks will advance the only cause he really believes: his own advancement. President Obama has NOT attacked gun rights in his first term. Check the record. Romney is simply feeding the ugly, hate-filled, ranting fantasies of the hard-right fanatics. Never has there been a more shameless, more unprincipled candidate for the presidency. The more Romney lies, the more we have to keep calling him on it. 


It's a challenge to keep up.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR CLAIMS OBAMA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL JOB LOSSES AMONG WOMEN

You gotta hand it to Willard, folks. When he lies, he lies BIG. Now we are to understand that EVERY job lost by a woman since noon on 20 January 2009 is Barack Obama's fault. The story is here:

Bay Buchanan, a longtime GOP activist and surrogate for the former Massachusetts governor, made the most audacious charge, arguing that the White House had set back women in the workplace several decades. 


"One million women have lost their jobs under this administration, nearly one million have become unemployed as a result of Obama's policies," Buchanan declared. "That is 92 percent of the jobs lost while Barack Obama has been president. ... This is frightening, because you know these women are often single women, they are taking care of themselves, they are trying to do their best to do that. ... And many of them are single women who are solely responsible for caring for those kids. And to have this kind of unsettling in the work place is an outrage. It is clear his policies have failed women miserably. It has set women in the workplace back 20 years and we certainly can't afford it. Nor can the children of these women."

All of the usual right-wing propaganda monkeys are flinging this particular feces, and Romney the Liar himself plans to make this a major line of attack. Just one problem, though:


It's a crock.


It would be rude of me to point out, I suppose, that the RomneyBots are blaming Barack Obama for not immediately stopping the bleeding CAUSED BY RIGHT-WING ECONOMIC POLICIES from 2001 to 2009. It was these conservative policies that CAUSED the economic meltdown. In 2001, the Republicans inherited a peaceful and prosperous country that was on its way to paying down its debts. Eight years later, they had put our country on its death bed. The FACT of the matter is this: women have been seriously hurt by reductions of jobs in the public sector, reductions mostly driven by Republican governors. Oh, and about those one million jobs supposedly punted away by Obama? From the same article as above:

Pulling out the public sector data and adjusting the time frame, the picture looks less dire. In January 2009, there were 288,000 jobs lost by women in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The next month, there were 201,000. In March, there were 240,000. In April, it was 276,000. That's more than 1 million private sector jobs lost by women in the first 3.5 months of Obama's presidency.


In other words, virtually all the major women's job losses under Obama happened in the first three months of his administration, BEFORE anything he was doing had had time to have any effect. The RomneyBots are blaming Obama for something that was manifestly not his fault.  


Oh, and here's something to think about right here


Since the recovery from the Great Recession officially began in June 2009, private-sector jobs are up by 2.8 million, [Emphasis added] but public-sector jobs (the combined employment in federal, state, and local governments) are down by 584,000. The figure below compares trends in public-sector employment in the last four recoveries. The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months. 


If public-sector employment had grown since June 2009 by the average amount it grew in the three previous recoveries (2.8 percent) instead of shrinking by 2.5 percent, there would be 1.2 million more public-sector jobs in the U.S. economy today. In addition, these extra public-sector jobs would have helped preserve about 500,000 private-sector jobs.


And to see it in graphic form (click to enlarge):




Women have been disproportionately hurt by losses in public sector jobs. These losses are a direct result, in most cases, of right-wing Republican policies. It says something about the utter mendacity of the Romney campaign and the Republicans in general that--


their policies caused the economic collapse


they have fought against EVERY measure President Obama has proposed to rectify the situation


they have gutted public sector jobs


AND THEY BLAME OBAMA!


The Republicans will keep repeating this lie about women's job losses again and again, hoping people are uninformed and hoping to distract them with this lie. It will be our job to nail Willard and his Flying Monkeys every time they trot it out.


And you know I will.

Monday, April 9, 2012

SOMETIMES ROMNEY THE LIAR IS JUST PATHETIC

In Willard's never ending quest to define President Obama as an "elitist", he sometimes stoops to levels that are just laughable. Check this out here:

Speaking in Harrisburg, Pa., Romney told an audience that Obama may have spent “too much time at Harvard,” according to NBC. Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard, spent three years there. Romney, who earned both a Harvard law degree and business degree, spent four years at the university and was by all accounts a motivated student who was happy with the institution during his time there.


Despite frequently mocking Obama for taking advice from the “Harvard faculty lounge” and spending too much time at the university, Romney has shown little indication that he regrets his own experience. Three of his sons attended Harvard and he has donated over $50,000 to the university. His campaign lists over a dozen advisers with Harvard ties, including Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw and international affairs professor Meghan O’Sullivan.


[And has it ever struck you as odd that the guy who grew up in a wealthy family and never knew a day of hardship says that the guy who was raised by a single mother  in decidedly modest circumstances doesn't know about the real world?]


Poor Willard. He does try so hard.


If he weren't such a lying sociopath, I'd almost feel sorry for him.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR SKEWERED PERFECTLY ON SNL

America's highest level political prostitute and liar is captured to perfection:

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR THINKS HE CAN GET AWAY WITH TELLING THE SAME MEDICARE LIE OVER AND OVER

Willard slogs ever onward, spewing the same noxious lies repeatedly. He recently asserted--FALSELY--that President Obama is trying to "end Medicare". As Willard put it

"He has taken a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it," Romney said Wednesday, referring to Obama. "He is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare. And, as a result, more than half of doctors say they will cut back on treating seniors."

Again, here is the truth of the matter:

As for the president, Obama's health care law does cut Medicare by $500 billion over 10 years. The largest reduction comes from a program called Medicare Advantage, which has had trouble controlling costs. All the money cut from Medicare is shifted to providing insurance to people who do not have it, by strengthening Medicaid -- a government health insurance program for poor families -- and by helping others purchase private insurance plans. [Emphasis added]

Oh, and then there's this:


Medicare Advantage enrollment has risen 10 percent over the last year while average premiums have fallen by 7 percent, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also pointed out that similar improvements were seen the previous year.


The figures bolster President Obama’s defense of his signature achievement, and for Democrats it has the added bonus of refuting earlier Republican warnings that “Obamacare” would gravely undermine the choice provisions in Medicare.


 “At the time the Affordable Care Act was passed, Republicans in Congress said the bill would virtually end the Medicare Advantage program,” declared senior White House staffer Nancy-Ann DeParle. “Those predictions turned out to be wrong. Medicare Advantage is stronger than ever — offering more seniors better benefits, higher quality care and lower costs.”


Oh, and there's also this, from a major player in health care.:


While the planned federal payment reductions will affect all Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare will reward high-quality health plans for the first time in its history. The health reform legislation (and a subsequent expanded pilot program) includes incentives in the bidding and marketing rules for Medicare Advantage plans that achieve high-quality performance ratings. It’s an important first step in fixing a health care system that has long rewarded the provision of more care instead of better care. Kaiser Permanente is committed to delivering high quality health care and qualifying for these incentives, allowing us to continue providing attractive benefit packages to our members.

Oh, and just as a reminder:


WILLARD HAS ENDORSED THE SHOCKINGLY CRUEL PLAN BY RIGHT-WING FANATIC PAUL RYAN TO ACTUALLY DESTROY MEDICARE.


You see, what he's doing is classical, deliberate, cynical, dishonest political jujitsu: accuse your opponent of doing something you actually intend to do. President Obama is the DEFENDER of the ideal of health care for all. Mitt Romney is the sworn enemy of that idea.


And that's the REAL truth.

ROMNEY THE LIAR NAILED ON HIS UNRELENTING FLIP-FLOPS

And remember, folks, it's not just the wild inconsistencies, the blatant "I'll say anything" pandering, or the flat out contradictions. It's this:


ROMNEY ALWAYS CLAIMS THAT HE NEVER CHANGED HIS POSITION.


You can't trust this guy!