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.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
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. 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'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.
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.
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