Tuesday, February 28, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING, EVEN HIS OWN MEMORIES

Willard was waxing emotional in Michigan recently, recalling the jubilee celebration in Detroit on the 50th anniversary of the American car. Only one problem: He wasn't born yet.

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.


“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.


The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford. 


And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born. 

And how was this preposterous story greeted? 

ABC News online described how the Tea Party audience melted as Romney found his emotional groove, “nodding approvingly, even wiping away tears.”

If these people get into power this year, we're screwed. It's that simple.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR SAYS HE WAS NEVER "PRO-CHOICE", BUT THE RECORD SAYS OTHERWISE

Ah, that Willard! He has such a wonderful penchant for reflexive lying. In his fervent quest to ingratiate himself with the hard, lunatic Right, he has been busy trying to rewrite history. But, ahem, the past has this way of catching up with him:

What’s significant about Romney’s history through 1994 is how little it resembles his later descriptions of his pro-choice years. Since 2006, Romney has been running as a pro-lifer in the Republican presidential primaries. He has made three claims about his past: that he never called himself pro-choice, that his defense of abortion rights was philosophical rather than political, and that until 2004, the issue was just an abstraction to him. None of these claims is true.


The highlight of Romney’s 1994 campaign was his Oct. 25 debate with Kennedy. Ten minutes into the debate, a panelist asked Romney how he could reconcile his defense of abortion rights with his personal opposition to abortion. Romney gave the abstract answer: Personal beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others. Kennedy then used his rebuttal to call Romney “multiple choice.” The moderator was ready to move on. But Romney asked for extra time, and he used that time to tell Ann Keenan’s story:


Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.


This was no soundbite. It was a poignant, personal story, and Romney was telling it to connect with pro-choice voters on a gut level. He was showing them that choice wasn’t just an abstraction to him, that he had felt the pain of criminalized abortion and for that reason could be trusted to keep abortion legal. He looked completely sincere. You can watch the video here.


Now watch the video of Romney 13 years later, appearing on Meet the Press as a pro-life presidential candidate. “It was quite theoretical and philosophical to consider what the role of government should be in this regard,” he tells Tim Russert. “And then I became governor, and the theoretical became reality.” In the interview, Romney describes how, after being elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he came face to face for the first time with the reality of taking unborn life. In other interviews, Romney has dismissed his pre-2004 acquaintance with these issues as “abstract.” 


... Was Romney telling the truth in 1994 when he described how Ann Keenan’s death had shaken his family? Or was he telling the truth in 2007 when he told Tim Russert that abortion was only theoretical to him until he became governor? How can you forget or minimize something you portrayed as so wrenching? How can one man be real unless the other is acting?


Nothing in Romney’s evolving autobiography is more misleading than his claim that he never called himself pro-choice. During the 2008 presidential race, Romney told Fox News: “I never called myself pro-choice. I never allowed myself to use the word pro-choice because I didn't feel I was pro-choice. I would protect the law, I said, as it was, but I wasn't pro-choice.” Romney has even dared his doubters to “go back to YouTube and look at what I said in 1994.”


Do you really want us to, Willard? Do you REALLY want us to see what a lying scuzzball you actually are?  You see, to me, it isn't that Romney changed his position. People do that.


It's him LYING RIGHT TO OUR FACES and saying that he was NEVER Pro-Choice that angers me. Seriously, this man's sheer ARROGANCE alone should be a disqualification for public office. 


Remember folks: when Romney discusses his public record, there's only one thing you can be sure of:


HE'S LYING.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR'S ACCOUNT OF HIS TIME IN MASSACHUSETTS: A WORK OF FICTION

The wonderful Charles Pierce has posted this excellent piece about the various lies and myths uttered by Willard in regard to his time as governor of Massachusetts. Unsurprisingly, the tenure of Mittens the First as Mittens tells it is largely unrelated to what actually happened. 

...if you listen to Willard, he inherited a debt-ridden hellhole and left us all with a golden little slice of Utah to call our own. He stood tall against the forces of feminism, gay people who wanted to get married, and cloning. He's proud of Massachusetts's public schools, but he'd rather if you didn't mention that whole health-care business, even though it's immensely popular back here, what with its mandates and all. (Thanks, Willard!) If you listen to him, it's lucky the poor man came out of it all alive. 


The truth, need I say, is somewhat at variance with the story that Willard's telling.

Read the whole thing, as we say in Blogland. And marvel again at Willard's resolute determination to tell ANY lie about ANYTHING--as long as it advances his career. Oh, and one more brief excerpt:

[When Romney's attempt to gain additional Republican seats in the state legislature failed] is about when Willard decided he'd stop being governor and start trying to be president. The [Boston] Globe series quotes him memorably telling the newspaper's editorial board, not long after his reform effort went under the waves, "From now on it's me-me-me." 


 Well put.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR LIES ABOUT SANCTIONS ON IRAN

Or as Andrew Sullivan put it in live-blogging the stench that was the Republican debate in Arizona:


Romney then buys into the Santorum line that Iran wants to use a nuke against the US. He then lies about Obama "opposing" crippling sanctions. Does Romney believe that if he simply says that Obama hasn't placed sanctions on Iran, it will somehow become true? 


So that's another bald-faced lie.


Willard really can do this without blinking. He can stand there and simply lie right to everyone's faces. BTW, if you feel like wading through all of it, here is a report from the conservative AEI on the sanctions against Iran.


As I've said, does he think we're too stupid to notice, or is it simply the arrogance of a pathological liar manifesting itself again?

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR UTTERS WHAT IS PERHAPS HIS MOST VILE LIE YET: OBAMA "HAS FOUGHT AGAINST RELIGION"

Willard is currently locked in a life-or-death struggle with the clinically insane Rick "Frothy Lube" Santorum to see who can be the biggest, ugliest religious idiot/fanatic/psychotic in the Republican race. It's tough to keep up with someone as vicious, hate-filled, and demented as "Frothy", but Mittens is givin' it the Old College Try

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Tuesday that President Barack Obama's administration has "fought against religion" and sought to substitute a "secular" agenda for one grounded in faith. 


Obama's campaign seized on the characterization, calling Romney's comments "disgraceful."


Romney rarely ventures into social issues in his campaign speeches, but people participating in a town hall-style meeting one week before the Michigan primary asked how he would protect religious liberty. 


"Unfortunately, possibly because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda – they have fought against religion," Romney said.


Sickening. Absolutely sickening. Just when you thought this sleazy, sociopathic dirtbag had sunk as low as he could go, he surprises you by whipping out an entrenching tool and digging deeper. This UTTERLY FALSE accusation that President Obama has "fought religion", one with NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER TO BACK IT UP, may be the lowest point Willard has reached yet. He is pandering to the same twisted, demented freaks that are running after Pope Little Ricky I. You know, my attitude before I read this item in HuffPo was "kick Willard's ass".


IT'S TWICE KICK WILLARD'S ASS NOW.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR SWITCHED HIS POSITION ON IMMIGRATION, THEN LIED AND SAID HE NEVER DID!

I don't know how I missed this! Willard was in full, all-out liar mode back in November when talking about immigration. But what else is new? Bloomberg has the story here

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who charged Republican presidential primary rival Newt Gingrich with proposing “amnesty” for certain illegal immigrants, took a nearly identical position in a 2006 Bloomberg interview, saying some foreigners who entered the U.S. illegally should be allowed to remain and gain legal status.


Romney, who at the time hadn’t yet declared his first presidential candidacy for 2008, told reporters and editors in Bloomberg News’s Washington bureau that the 11 million immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally “are not going to be rounded up and box-carred out.” Law-abiding people who pay taxes, learn English and don’t rely on government benefits should be allowed to “get in line” to apply for citizenship, he said.


“We need to begin a process of registering those people, some being returned, and some beginning the process of applying for citizenship and establishing legal status,” Romney said during the March 29, 2006, session.


The comments contrast with the position Romney took last week when he challenged Gingrich’s assertion during a televised debate that the U.S. should have a “humane” immigration policy that allows some people who entered the country illegally long ago, have no criminal record, and have family, civic and religious ties to stay and get legal status. Romney called the approach “amnesty” and a magnet for illegality.


And why did Willard do his patented flip-flop move? 

While Romney and his campaign say there has been no change in his position on immigration, [LIE! ABSOLUTE, OUT-AND-OUT LIE!] some strategists close to him say Romney did switch stances in 2007, after traveling to Iowa and hearing the depth of anti-immigration sentiment there. The chief of Romney’s 2008 Iowa campaign, Doug Gross, called the shift a direct result of Romney grasping the “political implications” of his immigration stance.

Yes, Willard heard how much the Neanderthal Republican base HATES HATES HATES illegals, so he switched his position--AND HE SAYS THAT HE NEVER SWITCHED IT!!

He'll do anything.

He'll say anything.

He'll tell any lie.

He'll switch any position.

This guy is dangerous. Period.

WHAT IS YOUR "FAVORITE" ROMNEY LIE?

Attach a comment to this post and tell me which ugly, arrogant lie it is, and tell us why you picked that one!! You can look at my archives for January and February for DOZENS of examples!! Humorous, rude, and mildly profane comments are especially welcome!!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR CONTINUES TO LIE ABOUT OBAMA, DEFENSE, AND THE NAVY

Willard, who is utterly incapable of making a statement on public policy without uttering a lie (or more often, multiple lies) is really pushing his "Obama is weak on defense" mythology. In a piece written for The Wall Street Journal (where else?), Willard lays the falsehoods on thick and fast. Spencer Ackerman has the story here:


...this is where Romney really goes off the rails: 

[Obama] plans to cut back on naval shipbuilding, shrink our Air Force, and slash our ground forces. Because of his policies and failed leadership, our military is facing nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade. 

The ground forces will indeed get slashed. The Air Force “shrink” equals the loss of about 200 mostly old aircraft out of a fleet of about 4000 planes. Shipbuilding I’ll return to in a second. It’s the “nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade” claim that deserves scrutiny. 


How does Romney get to such a whopping figure? First, by adding the scheduled cuts to future defense spending over ten years, $487 billion/decade in the Pentagon’s estimate, to the prospective $600 billion +/decade in cuts imposed by sequestration under the Budget Control Act starting next year. You’ll notice: these cuts haven’t taken effect yet. Which leads to point number two: these are “cuts” in the sense that they’re reductions from previously anticipated defense spending...


On shipbuilding: this just ain’t true. Don’t take my word for it, take Adm. Jonathan Greenert’s. Greenert is the Chief of Naval Operations. He says that the fleet will be the same size in 2017 as it is today under his Navy’s planning, even though shipbuilding does get cut in this current budget, and there are a spate of retirements coming up. How’s he square the difference? This is what Greenert told a small group of reporters aboard the U.S.S. Wasp a week ago Saturday:


"Simply put, if you have ships I retire today — if I take ships out of the shipbuilding plan, they’re not gone yet, they haven’t been built. We have a lot of ships under construction during [inaudible], this period of time, such that that the fleet looks a lot like — numbers — about the same today as it does in 2017. OK, you say, you’ve got the numbers, but what about the details? Eleven carriers, as you all know, that’s already been announced. The Destroyers size is about the same. A lot of our reductions are such that, in the near term, it’s a trade off. A balance. Cruisers, destroyers — you’ll see in the budget, when we release the numbers, you’ve got to look at the class of ships, the classes that are being retired…"


No, Willard, President Obama is not "weakening" the nation--and you know it. You're simply lying to advance your own cause. It's too bad for you that the Chief of Naval Operations himself has contradicted you on your navy scare-mongering.


But then again, lying and scare-mongering are the things you're best at. I guess that's why you engage in them non-stop.

Friday, February 17, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR TRIES TO REWRITE HISTORY ON THE AUTO BAIL-OUT

Britain's The Economist has the latest on Willard's attempts to play fast and loose with the truth. The story:


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.

Yeah, I would guess so, too.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

WATCH OUT, FROTHY! ROMNEY THE LIAR HAS YOU IN HIS SIGHTS! [UPDATED!]

Well, it looks like do-or-die time for Willard. The Michigan primary is in a couple of weeks, and the bad news for Mittens is that he's ACTUALLY FALLEN BEHIND RICK "FROTHY LUBE" SANTORUM IN THE STATE!! (Take a look here.)

Uh-oh. We know what THAT means. It means that Willard's slime machine is about to be turned on Frothy--FULL BLAST.

I saw today where Willard's TV budget in Michigan is outpacing Little Ricky's by 29-1. Yes, 29-1. It will get ugly. 


As TPM notes


Based on past experience, much of the ad spending will be negative. Romney’s super PAC is already up with a negative spot aimed at Santorum in Michigan, though the surrogates on the Romney [conference] call were not buying into the proposition that Romney’s going to win by trashing his opponents once again. 


“What makes you assume that the ads are going to be trashing and negative? I heard Romney this morning on Fox News make the point….I have no reason to doubt him, nor should you. He said, ‘I have not yet run a negative ad against Santorum, but there is an ad against me shooting mud balls at Santorum,’” said Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive. “In this campaign, certainly in Michigan, I have not seen the negative ads. I’m not so sure that I’m buying into the major premise here of your question that this is going to be 29-to-1 all negative.”  HA HA HA HA HA HA!! [Cynical laughter added.]


AND WILLARD IS ALREADY LYING ABOUT IT! His SuperPac has already gone negative and Romney said TODAY that he has yet to run a negative ad against Santorum. My God, this guy is just priceless!


You see, if Willard loses Michigan he's in real trouble, and he knows it. Little Ricky is between Willard and something Willard wants. That means there will be a firestorm descending on Santorum's head.

Ask Gingrich what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of those.


UPDATE! Little Ricky has made a big media buy in Michigan. This could get REAL interesting REAL fast.

ROMNEY THE LIAR CONTINUES HIS BRAZEN MEDICARE LIES

A quote from Paul Krugman's short column in The New York Times for 14 February:


“This week, President Obama will release a budget that won’t take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis,” Romney said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “The president has failed to offer a single serious idea to save Social Security and is the only president in modern history to cut Medicare benefits for seniors”. 


Yep, Obama has failed to resolve the problem of excessive entitlement spending; furthermore, he’s cutting entitlement spending!


But not only is Willard contradicting himself. As usual, he's also LYING. Here's how (from Joan McCarter):


The Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. Here's what it does do: It expands Medicare coverage by making preventive services free, including adding a yearly wellness visit; it limits some cost-sharing in private Medicare plans, meaning the costs seniors pay are lower; and it closes the Part D "Donut Hole," saving many seniors a lot of money on prescriptions.


The cuts Romney is talking about, the cuts that Republicans have been harping about since 2010, are not benefit cuts. They are cuts in overpayments to supplemental Medicare Advantage plans. Overpayments by the government that were reduced, thereby saving the government—and taxpayers—money. 


 Not only were no Medicare recipients benefits cut, the changes have actually succeeded in increasing enrollments in Medicare Advantage, while reducing the costs to seniors.


And remember: Willard endorses Paul Ryan's plan to DESTROY (not "save", not "modify", not "alter") MEDICARE by replacing it with a voucher system that will drastically reduce the ability of the elderly to pay for healthcare (planned to affect those 55 and under). 

So we have another WILLARD TRIFECTA!

1.  He contradicts himself in the SAME PARAGRAPH.
2. He lies about the so-called "cuts in Medicare"
3. He fails to mention that he intends to smash the health care system that has helped tens of millions of Americans, while hypocritically posing as a "defender" of Medicare.

Yeah, I trust this guy.

About as far as I could throw him.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

"IS MITT ROMNEY A SERIAL LIAR?" AND THE CROWD SAYS "YES!!"

This excellent post by Leonard Steinhorn on Pundit Wire answers the question quite definitely. Excerpts:

What we don’t yet want to admit is a more discomfiting idea: that the man our country may elect as President seems to have no problem lying to us, that he is accumulating a record of lies and misrepresentations on the campaign trail that goes far beyond the exaggerated rhetoric characteristic of most candidates. Yes, politicians might fudge a statistic, mitigate a failure, embellish a story, or take a little extra credit for success, and because of that most pundits and journalists have folded Romney’s lies and misrepresentations into the big tent of exaggerated political rhetoric that reporters now take for granted even if they roll their eyes when hearing it. No big deal, we’re led to believe.

But Romney is different from the others. He seems to make claims that he knows are not true. This is a very smart man, a maven for details and a stickler for precision known for his data-driven business decisions, yet he looks us in the eyes and makes statements and claims that he knows to be misleading or false...


On January 25, less than a week before the Florida primary, Romney told a Univision audience that even though his father was born in Mexico, he was born to American citizens who were living in an American Mormon colony in Mexico at the time (originally created to escape U.S. laws against polygamy).


Therefore, he said, it would be “disingenuous on my part” to claim he was Mexican-American even though that might be popular with Latino voters. “I don’t think people would think I was being honest with them if I said I was Mexican-American.”


Then, at a nationally televised debate a few days later, a debate considered decisive for the Florida primary, Romney angrily responded to a Newt Gingrich accusation that he was anti-immigrant.


“I’m not anti-immigrant,” he snapped at Gingrich. “My father was born in Mexico. My wife’s father was born in Wales. They came to this country. The idea that I’m anti-immigrant is repulsive.”


Clearly he was implying that because his father was born in Mexico and he “came to this country,” that he himself has immigrant roots. Didn’t he just say a couple days before that it would be “disingenuous on my part” and not “honest” to make that claim? Isn’t that misleading if not lying?


********


In 1994, during his Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, Romney claimed that his company, Bain Capital, helped to create about 10,000 jobs. He qualified that, insisting that his firm didn’t create the jobs but simply helped in their creation.


“That’s why I’m always very careful to use the words ‘help create,’” he said at the time. “Bain Capital, or Mitt Romney, ‘helped create’ over 10,000 jobs. I don’t take credit for the jobs at Staples. I helped create the jobs at Staples.”


Now Romney trots out a much higher job creation number, which the Associated Press says is “unsupported.” But even if we trust his new math, look at how he phrases it: “We created over 100,000 jobs,” he said in one interview, and in a debate he claimed “we created something over 100,000 jobs.” Unlike what he said in 1994, he seems to be taking full credit for whatever jobs his company may have helped to create.


********


Think what you wish about Newt Gingrich, but we should take his warning about Mitt Romney seriously: “Somebody who will lie to you to get to be president, will lie to you when they are president.”


As I have said repeatedly--you have been warned.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR DOES THE OLD SWITCHEROO ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Ah, that Willard. He's so thoughtful. If he thinks you can help him get what he wants, he'll tell you anything he thinks you want to hear. Today's lie/flip-flop concerns climate change. Here's Willard all the way back in June:

"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he said at a town hall this June. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors." 

 Now here's Willard this past week: 

"My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet," he said at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pa. "And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us. My view with regards to energy policy is pretty straightforward: I want us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels."


You see, the rabid right-wingers think all this talk of humans contributing to climate change is all a bunch of hippie, tree-hugger nonsense. And since they control the nominating process in the Republican Party, Willard is more than happy to say whatever they want to hear.


Now my question is this:


1. Was he lying in June?
2. Or is he lying now?

Saturday, February 11, 2012

SOMETIMES, ROMNEY'S LIES ARE JUST PATHETIC AND LAUGHABLE

Willard, speaking at that orgy of foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing hatred called CPAC, characterized himself as having been "severely conservative"--his term--when he was governor of Massachusetts. (Severely? Isn't that a medical condition?) Left out was any mention of his only positive achievement, his healthcare law. Left out was any mention of his "pro-gay rights" position. And left out was this little tidbit of "ancient" history:


"I'm not a partisan Republican,  I'm someone who is moderate, my views are progressive." Damn, Willard, if  you become any more of a prostitute, you're gonna have to start charging by the hour.


He. Will. Say. Anything. He. Will. Tell. Any. Lie.

Severely.

Friday, February 10, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR CONTINUES TO TELL THE "OBAMA MADE THE RECESSION WORSE" LIE

Willard is nothing if not a persistent liar, as I have noted. He continues to mouth the falsehood, "Obama did not cause the recession, but he made it worse". Well, you might say there are people who beg to differ:

In the most extensive analysis of the government response, in mid-2010, the economists Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandi used a Moody’s Analytics simulation of the economy and concluded that the effects on economic growth, job creation and inflation [of the stimulus and the Fed's actions] “are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.”

While intervention in the financial markets by the independent Fed and the Treasury – including the much vilified banking bailout that Mr. Romney also condemns – had the bigger positive impact, the effects of Mr. Obama’s fiscal stimulus package of spending and tax cuts “appear very substantial,” the economists wrote.

For example, they said, economic growth in 2010 was raised about 3.4 percent, the unemployment rate was about 1.5 percentage points lower and almost 2.7 million more jobs were created, compared with what would have happened without the stimulus. 

Mr. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton University, is a former vice chairman of the Fed and a former economics adviser to President Bill Clinton. Mr. Zandi is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and has advised members of Congress in the Democratic and Republican Parties, including Senator John McCain in his bid for president.


Did you see that, Willard? Actual economists have determined that President Obama acted in a timely manner to help stave off disaster.

Willard would have done nothing. 

Except let the U.S. auto industry die, of course.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR USING GUTTER-LEVEL RIGHT-WING HITMAN TO MAKE HIS ADS

Willard is waging one of the dirtiest, ugliest campaigns in American history. The candidate himself regurgitates every preposterous lie imaginable. If anything, his ad campaign is even worse, a phenomenal river of filth. Incapable of giving any real rationale for his candidacy, Willard relies on ads that stick the knife in his opponents in a variety of nasty ways. And who does Oh-So-Pure Mittens have working for him? The most notorious right-wing smear merchant in America

Romney, unlike the remaining Republican candidates, has served no time in Washington. Yet he’s relying on a media offensive managed by operatives who have long been at the heart of Washington’s Republican attack machine. One of the leaders of this advertising war is Larry McCarthy, a veteran media consultant best known for creating the racially charged “Willie Horton ad,” which, in 1988, helped sink Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for President.


McCarthy, who is fifty-nine, helps direct the pro-Romney group Restore Our Future, one of the hundreds of new Super PACs—technically independent political-action committees set up by supporters of the candidates—that are dramatically reshaping the Presidential election. PACs have existed since the nineteen-forties, but for decades an individual donation was limited to five thousand dollars. The power of PACs increased exponentially in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals could spend without limit—and pool their money in PACs—to influence elections, as long as they didn’t fund candidates directly. Super PACs have already injected fifty-six million dollars into the 2012 race, most of it going to negative advertising. Restore Our Future has spent seventeen million dollars—more than any other PAC—and fifteen million of that has gone to producing and airing ads made by McCarthy’s firm, McCarthy Hennings Media. By contrast, Romney’s official campaign has spent only eleven million on ads. The Super PAC is technically fighting a proxy battle on behalf of Romney, but in practice it has become the head warrior.


**********


[From an attack ad against Gingrich]: At least one of the ad’s accusations was demonstrably false. As a closeup of a Chinese flag saturated the screen with red, the narrator claimed that Gingrich and Pelosi had “co-sponsored a bill that gave sixty million dollars a year to a U.N. program supporting China’s brutal one-child policy.” Politifact, the nonpartisan fact-checking organization, assessed the bill in question, the Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989, and found that it barred any U.S. funds from being used to pay for “the performance of involuntary sterilization or abortion or to coerce any person to accept family planning.” The claim earned Politifact’s lowest rating: Pants on Fire.


**********


[About McCarthy's work in the 2010 campaign]: In the summer of 2010, the American Future Fund aired an ad, created by McCarthy, that Geoff Garin describes as perhaps “the most egregious” of the year. The ad accused Representative Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat and a lawyer, of supporting a proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, which it called a “mosque at Ground Zero.” As footage of the destroyed World Trade Center rolled, a narrator said, “For centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories.” Now a mosque celebrating 9/11 was to be built on the very spot “where Islamic terrorists killed three thousand Americans”—it was, the narrator suggested, as if the Japanese were to build a triumphal monument at Pearl Harbor. The ad then accused Braley of supporting the mosque.


In fact, Braley had taken no position on the issue until an unidentified cameraman came up to him at the Iowa State Fair and asked him about it. He said that he regarded the matter as a local zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide. In general, he said, he valued America’s tradition of religious diversity. Soon afterward, he told me, the attack ad “dropped on me like the house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ” Braley, who won his seat by a margin of thirty per cent in 2008, barely held on in 2010. The American Future Fund’s effort against Braley was the most expensive campaign that year by an independent group. 


Braley said of McCarthy, “He doesn’t have the courage to put his own name on a ballot and run for office, or even to put his own name on his ads. Instead, he’d rather make tons of money by anonymously demonizing people. He’s profiting from Citizens United in the lowest way.” He went on, “The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a good investment for them. And the consultants are making tons of money. They’re the winners. The losers are the American people, and the truth.”


And this is the lying SCUMBAG that Willard is coordinating with illegally--do you really doubt it?--to bring down his opponents. Democrats, beware: Romney the Liar has an utterly amoral professional liar working for him.


Expect the worst.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR LYING ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL RULING

Willard, never wanting to be out-demagogued or out-crazied by anyone, has launched an ugly attack on the Obama Administration's decision on hospitals and contraception. He is deliberately distorting the issue, calling some contraceptives "abortive pills".  The story is here:

Republicans are supposed to pretend science and biology and stuff is all a matter of interpretation, but for the record, contraception is not abortion, even emergency contraception. Romney's not an idiot. He knows this. What he's doing right there, he's lying, deliberately. 

The new rule simply requires employers and insurers to include prescription contraceptives without cost-sharing, carving out an exemption for religious institutions. It exempts churches that are actually functioning houses of worship... It exempts religious non-profit organizations whose primary mission is to serve people of faith. Twenty-eight states already have this insurance requirement. It's just smart policy that makes the lives of millions of Americans just a little bit simpler. 

But for a tiny sliver of the population whose primary goal in life is seeing women punished for having sex, it's the end of the world. And Mitt Romney wants their votes! He's gonna have a bit of a problem with that, because as with everything else, there's a moderate Mitt in the wings. When he was governor, he "required all Massachusetts hospitals, including Catholic ones, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims." That's not forgotten. [Emphasis added]

D'oh! Willard is attacking President Obama for something that Mittens himself personally signed on to just a few years ago. And now he's lying about the policy itself. Flip-flops, hypocrisy, dishonesty--it's a Mittens trifecta!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR PLEDGES TO SAVE PROGRAMS HE INTENDS TO DESTROY OR CRIPPLE

Those programs would be SOCIAL SECURITY and MEDICARE. Willard is planning to do grievous damage to both. And yet, in Florida, he was all about reassuring everyone that he'll do everything that's needed to keep them going smoothly. The truth of the matter is here

Mitt Romney has lied day after day on the campaign trail, but yesterday he topped himself when he pledged to preserve Medicare and Social Security at an event in the Sunshine State. The truth is exactly the opposite: Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to eliminate Medicare and Social Security as we know them and hand them over to Wall Street with a reckless privatization scheme. 


Romney is a staunch supporter of Congressman Paul Ryan's radical budget plan to end Medicare and Medicaid and dramatically increase health care costs for seniors struggling to make ends meet. Ryan wants to put Medicare beneficiaries at the mercy of profit-mad private health insurance companies and force seniors to fork over at least $6,400 more per year on health care while letting billionaires and corporations skip out on their taxes. Romney and the Republicans want to strip seniors of new drug benefits and preventive care provided by the Affordable Care Act.


The Ryan Plan to DESTROY--not "reform"--Medicare would be a catastrophe. Those under 55 would, upon reaching Medicare age, be devastated by appalling health care costs. Willard plans to do this AND GIVE HIMSELF A HUGE TAX CUT. (See my item about Willard's plan to do that, right here.) This is the kind of damage he's planning to do to this country if  (God forbid!) he attains power. 


Willard is planning to ruin the basic programs that TENS OF MILLIONS of people rely on (or were hoping to rely on). And when he says he wants to "preserve" them, remember this simple fact:


HE'S LYING.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR IS LYING ABOUT HIS "BLIND TRUST"




Willard, who never shies away from telling any lie that will help him get what he wants, is trying to sell the fiction that he had no investments in Freddie or Fannie, the troubled mortgage giants, and his investments are all in a blind trust anyway so he doesn't control them. Hmmm. Check out the video above of him saying exactly that on 25 January. And then take a look at this:

On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, [August 2011] Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Over the previous year, he had reported earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.


And unlike most of Romney’s financial holdings, which are held in a blind trust that is overseen by a trustee and not known to Romney, this particular investment was among those that would have been known to Romney. 


The investment was also not on Romney’s 2007 financial disclosure form. A Romney aide said the investments were made in the latter half of 2007, after he had filed the earlier disclosure form. That was around the time that the scale of the housing crisis was coming into focus. 


The campaign declined to comment on the record.


So even though this was exposed as a lie back in September of last year, Mittens is sticking to his bullsh*t story. I gotta give him one thing:


He's a PERSISTENT pathological liar.

ROMNEY THE LIAR: ZERO TAXES ON $100,000,000 IN GIFTS TO HIS FAMILY


Romney and his buddies have RIGGED THE TAX SYSTEM TO THEIR OWN BENEFIT. Remember that the next time Willard proposes gutting protections for the poor and unemployed. It's disgusting--and it's how Romney gets away with paying very little on a great deal of income.

But he's "middle class".  Just ask him.


And he says the poor have a safety net to help them. The same safety net he intends to shred to pieces.

Friday, February 3, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR LIES ABOUT AID TO THE POOR

Willard "Stay away from me, you wretched peon" Romney says he doesn't worry about the poor because they have a social safety net to protect them. Then he brazenly lies about how much aid from the safety net programs actually gets to the poor. Paul Krugman has the truth of the matter:

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.” 


This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. [Emphasis added] But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare? 


Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?


Romney has ZERO CREDIBILITY in this matter, just as he has no credibility on any other matter of public policy. This guy intends to lie his way into power, helped by a cabal of powerful right-wing interests who will spend UNLIMITED amounts of money to push his constant river of lies onto an often unsuspecting public. This is a battle for the heart and soul of America. Do we preserve what is best in our country, what is best for our people, best for our future, and best for the world?

Or do we let this lying scumbag Romney win?

Thursday, February 2, 2012

WHAT'S YOUR "FAVORITE" ROMNEY LIE?

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion. Check out the archives on the right, (37 in January!) and let me know in the comments. Tell me your "favorite" lie uttered by the most shameless pathological liar since Nixon, Willard "Mittens" Romney!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

ROMNEY THE LIAR CONTINUES TO LIE ABOUT OUR "REGULATORY BURDEN"

Sometimes when Willard gets caught lying and is questioned about it, his campaign will call it a "mistake". But Willard has this habit of repeating these "mistakes" again and again. The inimitable Steve Benen has the story here:  

In September, Mitt Romney claimed that the federal regulatory burden had increased four-fold since President Obama was elected. When NPR asked Romney’s campaign to back that up, aides said the former governor “misspoke” when he made the bogus claim.


[In December] as Pat Garofalo noted, Romney repeated the same lie his campaign had already walked back months ago. 


It’s problematic enough when major presidential candidates say things that aren’t true on the campaign trail. But when a candidate says something untrue, then the campaign acknowledges it was a mistake, only to have the candidate repeat it all over again points to a campaign that doesn't take the truth seriously.


Obama’s White House has approved fewer regulations than his predecessor George W. Bush at this same point in their tenures, and the estimated costs of those rules haven’t reached the annual peak set in fiscal 1992 under Bush’s father, according to government data reviewed by Bloomberg News. […] Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg. 


As for why Romney would repeat a falsehood his own campaign already admitted wasn’t true, we know why — because to Romney and his boosters, the truth is largely irrelevant, campaign messages necessarily constitute “propaganda” that need not be accurate, and there’s nothing especially wrong with sociopathic standards for honesty in the public discourse.

Yes, not only is it a lie, it's a lie of GROTESQUE proportions. Romney is claiming a four-fold increase where there has actually been a REDUCTION. Amazing, brazen, incredible arrogance. And he keeps repeating the same damned, grotesque lies again and again.


YOU CAN'T TRUST A WORD HE SAYS. WE'VE GOT TO GET THE WORD OUT ON THIS GUY NOW.