It's a conspiracy!

By Capt. Fogg

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he.
"I never died," says he.

No sooner does something happen in this world, but that it didn't and in a strange quantum physical way, nothing itself is reason to believe something. The bomb wasn't a bomb, the flight never flew, Saudi terrorists didn't hijack those airplanes and neither Jesus nor Mohammad's nephew nor Elvis nor Joe Hill actually died. There are many reasons for it, but Humans being creatures for whom faith is always tempting, need something to anchor it, a substrate to mount it upon like a plaque on the wall. Every article of faith, every statement of belief requires a denial.

The anguish of grief, the horror of circumstances, the shock of sudden change; these things cause us to deny, at least for a time that the beloved leader and voice of God has been murdered and his mission has come to nothing. We see them in our dreams, even when we're awake. But as with any human weakness, the inability to accept invites explanations of why reality isn't real for the purposes of exploitation. We want your support so Joe hill lives on in spirit. Jesus came to Jerusalem to restore the divine dynasty and throw out Rome, he was about mystical forgiveness of sin. The Hidden Imam is just around the corner and will come back to bring justice, or was that Jesus or was that Tammuz? Denial is power, but power over us by someone else.

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Liberterrorism?

By Capt. Fogg

The notion that the Government is cracking down on freedom in general and preparing to freeze our accounts and restrict movement of money because of that elusive financial apocalypse the right wing has been predicting since Obama was elected, is the bread and butter of such opinion sources as the Daily Paul, Natural News, and Alex Jones' Infowars.com who amongst too many others to count are celebrating the false report that Chase Bank is limiting cash withdrawals and outgoing international wire transfers. 

The story lacks only truth to be shocking. You can read a more honest appraisal at Forbes. True, Chase is upping fees on certain kinds of business checking accounts, but pace the Liberterrorists, no one in Government is forcing them to do it and what we're seeing is Capitalism at work. Chase simply wants to make more money. Don't we all?

According to an e-mail from PT Shamrock.com, a Libertarian organization dedicated to misleading people about the need to get their money out of the country before the Liberals confiscate it and give it to "the takers," Chase customers have received the following letter:

Dear Business Customer, Starting November 17, 2013: - You will no longer be able to send international wire transfers.

You will still be able to send domestic wires and receive both domestic and international wires. We'll cancel any international wire transfers, including reccurring [sic] ones, you scheduled to be sent after this date. - Your cash activity limit for these accounts(s) will be $50,000 per statement cycle, per account. Cash activity is the combined total of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash withdrawals made at branches (including purchases of money orders) and ATMs. These changes will help us more effectively manage the risks involved with these types of transactions.

No they haven't. Unfortunately devotees of Paul and Jones and all the other panic profiteers will take it at face value without taking a moment to check the facts. Some won't even notice the misspelling and poor wording, the urge to believe being as strong as it is. The confusion between the artifacts of free market capitalism and Federal authoritarianism continues to be the medium in which the fungus of Right Wing politics is grown -- and grown in the dark, of course.

(Cross posted from Human Voices.)

Behind the Ad: The man has no shame

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Michigan and Ohio

What's going on: So much has been said about Mitt Romney's willingness to lie his ass off about nearly anything if he thinks it will help him win the election.  His campaign has said that they would not allow themselves to be influenced by fact checkers. He might as well have said he would not allow his campaign to be influenced by the truth.

Romney knows he needs Ohio to win the election, He knows Michigan would be a major victory, so he simply starting telling people that because of Barack Obama's efforts to save the auto industry, Chrysler would be shipping jobs to China for the production of its Jeep line. Not a word of it is true and Chrysler has said so.

Steve Benen talked about this today, citing a couple of newspaper pieces:

The New York Times editorialized today, "It's bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it." What's more, the Toledo Blade chastised Romney today for "conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign."

The Obama campaign has an ad calling Romney out on his latest lie: "Cynical." I'd say this is what desperation looks like, but Romney has run his whole campaign like this.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Quote of the Day: The Times on Romney's lies

By Mustang Bobby

From the New York Times editorial on Mitt Romney's ad campaign about the auto industry bailout:

It's bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.

Behind the Ad: Mitt Romney is a big fat lying liar

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Ohio.

What's going on: Mitt Romney has a shiny new lie to share with voters. This time it's the untrue claim that Chrysler is exporting jobs manufacturing Jeeps to China, and that it's all Obama's fault.

Chrysler called the claim "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."

According to CBS News:

"Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China," said a spokesman. "It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation."

But the most disgusting part of this is the response by the Romney campaign to what even the company in question says is a lie. Amanda Henneberg of the Romney campaign emailed this response to the Obama ad:

"It appears the Obama campaign is less concerned with engaging in a meaningful conversation about President Obama's failed policies and more concerned with arguing against facts about their record they dislike," she said. "The American people will see their desperate arguments for what they are."

Yeah. Right. "Arguing against facts?" What the hell does that even mean? I'm becoming very depressed at the thought that anyone running for the presidency could lie so openly. Unbelievable. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Vice President Biden on Romney's auto industry lies: "This guy pirouettes more than a ballerina."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

By now you've hopefully heard about what Jonathan Cohn calls Romney's "desperate, deceptive gambit" in Ohio.

Basically, conservative outlets were pushing a completely false story about Chrysler moving its Jeep production to China. Romney then "scared the bejeezus out of Ohio autoworkers" at a rally in Toledo last Thursday by pushing the story himself. Alas:

The story turns out to be wrong. As Chrysler made clear the very next day, in a tartly worded blog post on the company website, officials have discussed opening plants in China in order to meet rising demand for vehicles there.

But instead of backing down, the Romney campaign doubled down (as it usually does when it gets caught lying). Because it already had an ad in place repeating the lie -- an ad targeting Ohio -- an ad, needless to say, blaming President Obama for destroying the domestic auto industry: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."

This is completely insane, of course, but par for the course for Romney. Everything in that sentence is either misleading or outright false. Read Cohn's entire piece for an explanation, but basically: Far from, and indeed the opposite of, destroying the auto industry, President Obama rescued it, saving "at least a million jobs," including many in Ohio.

Finally, though, it appears that even the media are treating this as a lie too far. As Brian Beutler writes: "In news articles, tweets, and other media, members of the national press, usually reluctant to criticize campaigns directly, have taken Romney to task for running a misleading TV ad creating the false impression that Jeep will ship jobs to China because of President Obama's auto rescue."

And the Obama campaign is firing back as well, including with a new ad and this from Vice President Biden: 

This guy pirouettes more than a ballerina. Now he says -- seriously, think of what he's saying within two weeks. I find -- I've never seen this in public. I've served with eight Presidents. I have never seen this in my public life. Within two weeks, he's running an ad in this state saying that President Obama made the companies go bankrupt; is now -- gave the industry the Italians, who are selling it to the Chinese. Whoa. As we say in my faith, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I mean, what are you talking about? I have never seen anything like that. It's an absolutely patently false assertion. It's such an outrageous assertion that one of the few times in my memory a major American corporation, Chrysler, has felt obliged to go public and say, there is no truth. They said, Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. Chrysler Corporation, which is highly unusual, said, a careful and unbiased reading would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.

Ladies and gentlemen, have they no shame?

Romney will say anything, absolutely anything, to win, it seems. But he can't run from the truth. 

Here, watch it... Romney is desperate to win Ohio, and as we've seen throughout this campaign, just as we saw during the Republican primaries, he's willing to do or say anything for votes.

It's all part of what I've been calling his relentless deluge of dishonesty.

Romney's relentless deluge of dishonesty

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It was more of the same on Tuesday:

During the first presidential debate in Denver, Colorado Romney managed to tell 27 myths in his 38 minutes of speaking time. But at his second encounter with Obama in New York, the GOP presidential candidate — who has run a post-truth campaign from day one — outdid himself and crammed 31 myths in 41 minutes.

ThinkProgress helpfully debunks them all.

Even Newt Gingrich says Romney's a liar

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Okay, he may not have said it outright, but it was nice to see The Newt admitting today that Romney was, oh, something other than honest about his tax plan during last Wednesday's debate:

This morning on Meet The Press, Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs confronted Newt Gingrich on a fundamental inconsistency in Romney's description of his tax plan. During the primary debates, Romney insisted that everyone in America would get a 20% tax cut, including the 1%. But last week's during his debate with Obama, Romney insisted that his tax cut would not reduce taxes at all for wealthy Americans.

Gingrich acknowledged the clear inconsistency, saying "I think it's clear he changed." He described the change as "good politics."

In this case, of course, "good politics" means... lying to the American people.

Because Romney is still proposing a massive tax cut for the rich. (It's pretty much the centerpiece of the entire Romney-Ryan campaign, just as it's the centerpiece of Republicanism generally -- shift the tax burden even more unfairly down onto everyone else.)

There hasn't been a change of policy, just a change of rhetoric.

It was just one of many lies Romney spewed on Wednesday, and no doubt there will be many more to come.

The deluge of dishonesty -- the only hope Mitt has -- will continue.

Obama back on the horse after Romney's deluge of dishonesty

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

President Obama did what he needed to do yesterday following his not-as-dismal-as-everyone-thinks-but-still-not-all-that-good debate performance Wednesday night, and that not so much to put the event behind him, although that was part of it, but to build a positive narrative coming out of the debate, not just to counter the "Romney won" CW but to provide an honest perspective focused on substance, on the facts, as opposed to the style points favored by the ever-shallow media.

We can agree, perhaps, that Romney "won" the debate based on the degraded standards we (or rather the "experts") use to decide such things, but on the substance, with respect to the truth, it was pretty clear that Romney failed miserably.

Attacking the president, and defining himself ever more deeply, with a relentless deluge of dishonesty, Romney supposedly looked and sounded confident and passionate, Obama's "equal" up on stage, all in stark contrast to Obama's supposed detachment. There is some truth to that, if you're basing it all on image and perception, but as it recedes further and further into the mists of time, we can look on it -- and must look on it -- with a seriousness of purpose that was seriously lacking among pundits, their knees jerking wildly, in its immediate aftermath.

Let's take a quick look at some of these more serious -- and for Romney, ominous -- assessments:

-- Igor Volsky, Think Progress: "At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes";

-- Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone: "The First Debate: Mitt Romney's Five Biggest Lies";

-- Greg Sargent, The Washington Post: "Romney's policies are still deeply unpopular, which is why he relentlessly obfuscated about them";
 
-- Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post: "Romney strong on performance, weak on policy in sluggish debate";

-- Mark Memmott and Scott Montgomery, NPR: " Romney Goes On Offense, Pays For It In First Wave Of Fact Checks";

-- Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog: "The triumph of style over substance"; and

-- Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly: "Mitt Gets Away With It -- For Now."

And three from New York's Jonathan Chait: "The Return of Massachusetts Mitt," "Romney's Successful Debate Plan: Lying," and "Would a Republican Candidate Lie About Taxes?" (The answer to that question: Yes. Shamelessly.)

Paul Krugman summed it all up rather nicely:

OK, so Obama did a terrible job in the debate, and Romney did well. But in the end, this isn't or shouldn't be about theater criticism, it should be about substance. And the fact is that everything Obama said was basically true, while much of what Romney said was either outright false or so misleading as to be the moral equivalent of a lie.

And this is why the Obama campaign has a new post-debate plan, reports Benjy Sarlin of TPM: " Expose 'Serial Evader' Romney."


And to get back to the beginning of this post, President Obama himself was on the case during a speech in Colorado:

Now, the reason I was in Denver obviously is to see all of you, and it’s always pretty, but we also had our first debate last night. And when I got on to the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney.

Whereupon he proceeds to go through the ways in which the Romney of the debate was so different from the Romney we've come to know so well during the campaign, to contrast his policies with those of the real Romney, and to present a clear vision for the future, articulating, in stark contrast to Mitt's refusal to provide specifics, what he would do if re-elected.

Watch the clip. Obama may have struggled somewhat during the debate, at least in terms of style, but he was back on form the next day, and it's this sort of leadership that we need to see much more of in the two debates to come, not to mention on the campaign trail the rest of the way.

I realize that dealing with Romney's relentless lying isn't an easy task, but President Obama must stand firm.

"Trust" -- Countering Romney's lies

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(See also our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

President Obama may have "lost" the debate the other night -- more on that in a few posts to come today (stay tuned) -- but already he and his campaign are pivoting off what was admittedly a less-than-stellar performance and going after Romney on the substance (as opposed to the style that obsesses the pundits), and specifically on Romney's relentless deluge of dishonesty.

Here's the first Obama ad following the debate, and it's extremely effective:

Paul Ryan tries to scare seniors shitless with the old "death panel" routine

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

At a town hall in Orlando yesterday, Paul Ryan continued his Romneyesque effort to lie his way to the vice presidency, specifically by fearmongering about those mythical "death panels" Republicans use to smear the Affordable Care Act. He was asked the following question:

We love you Paul. But I'm getting long in years. Will you address the death panels that we're going to have?

Of course, there aren't going to be any death panels, but that didn't stop Ryan from trying to scare the elderly shitless:

The death panels, well! That's not the word I'd choose to use to describe it. It's actually called. It's actually called, so in Medicare, what I refer to as this board of 15 bureaucrats. It's called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. It sounds fairly innocuous. 

See, there won't be death panels, but there really will be, just called something else. So, yes, there will be death panels. Obama wants to kill you. (I invite the Romney campaign to take this completely out of context: "Democratic bloggers agree: Obama wants to kill you!")

This has been standard Republican fare the past couple of years, particularly from the likes of Sarah Palin, and here goes Ryan, twisting it a bit to make it seem less like a blatant lie but lying nonetheless. Because the IPAB is anything but a death panel, as Think Progress notes:

The Board, or IPAB — a provision included in the Affordable Care Act — is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending, should Medicare costs exceed a target growth rate. Congress can accept the savings proposal or implement its own ideas through a super majority.

The panel's plan will modify payments to providers but despite Ryan's claims, it cannot "include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums... increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria" (Section 3403 of the ACA). The IPAB will consist of 15 members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and will include a broad spectrum of experts and consumer advocates, like physicians, employers, economists, representatives of consumers and the elderly.

Oh, and it's not nearly as controversial as Ryan suggests:

In fact, relying on health care experts rather than politicians to control health care costs has previously attracted bipartisan support and even Ryan himself proposed two IPAB-like structures in a 2009 health plan.

That was then, this is now, and obviously Ryan thinks that the only way he and Mitt can get elected is to lie, lie, and lie some more, scaring voters, including seniors, into ignorant submission.

He may be right. Which is why he's been doing so much of it, and why he'll be doing much more of it the rest of the way.

Welfare check

By Mustang Bobby 

The Romney campaign ran a few ads last month perpetrating the lie the President Obama wanted to roll back the work requirements in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Just about everybody called them out on it, including the major fact-checkers. They still ran with it, though.

But it turns out it wasn't the Democrats in Congress or President Obama who wanted to gut the work requirements. It was the Republicans:

The legislation — H.R. 4297, The Workforce Investment Improvement Act — was unveiled in March by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and cosponsored by six Republican colleagues. Among them was Education & Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN), who passed the bill through his committee in June.

The measure is aimed at streamlining workforce training by letting states slash redundant programs and consolidate them with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare program — into one Workforce Investment Fund (WIF). States would be given so much flexibility that the restrictions in the 1996 welfare law need no longer apply, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Oops. I guess the Romney campaign didn’t check with their answering service. But why let a good dog-whistle go to waste?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

GOP exists in alternate universe at bizarre, lie-filled convention

By Marc McDonald

Recently, I had a political discussion with a right-wing acquaintance. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. During the argument, my acquaintance called Obama an "idiot." When I asked for some proof of this, he replied, "Well, Obama said 'Internets' in an interview. He thinks it's called 'Internets.' That's really stupid."

Having grown weary of the discussion, I didn't even bother to challenge my acquaintance's contention. I did, though, think it was a bit odd. After all, the use of the term "Internets" was a well-known Bush blunder. Bush made the blunder during a debate with Al Gore in 2000. Amazingly, Bush made the mistake again in 2004, during a debate with John Kerry. It was the second screw-up that was widely ridiculed in the media.

"Was Rush now trying to somehow make the claim to his audience that this was in fact Obama's mistake?" I wondered.

Doing a little research on the Internet revealed that Obama once indeed did say "Internets." However, there was a big, big difference between the screwups made by Obama and Bush.

After all, when Obama said "Internets," he quickly corrected himself a few words later in the same sentence.

Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent speakers I've ever heard. But the fact is, like all modern U.S. presidents, he has an array of video cameras recording his words for hours every day. Given the grueling demands of his job and the stress that comes with it, it really shouldn't be surprising that he (or any president) might have an occasional verbal stumble. I mean, the only reason we don't have evidence of verbal stumbles by the likes of Washington and Jefferson is that there were no video cameras around in the 18th century.

Anyway, this whole episode got me to thinking. The right wing in this country has built up such a formidable propaganda network that wingnuts can happily dwell within it and never be exposed to the real world of actual facts, science, logic, reason, and truth. It's clear that my right-wing acquaintance got his "Obama said 'Internets'" quote from the likes of Drudge and that he has never even heard about Bush's far more famous (and uncorrected) blunder.

So Obama must be stupid, right? After all, Rush says so.

Such is the mind of the right-winger these days.

Which brings me to my main point. Politicians in America have historically never been the most honest class of people in the nation. But today's Republicans have set a new record for outrageous and blatant lies. It's gotten so bad that even the drowsy mainstream media has awoken from its usual slumber and started pointing out these outrageous lies.

For example, at the GOP convention, Paul Ryan trotted out his outrageous lie that Obama had supposedly promised to save a Wisconsin GM plant that later closed. Ryan no doubt thought that this latest lie wouldn't be scrutinized by a media establishment that has allowed so many other GOP lies to pass unchallenged.

No doubt, Ryan was stunned when numerous mainstream media outlets across the nation picked apart his GM fable and exposed it for the lie that it was. (As it turns out, the Wisconsin GM plant closed before Obama even took office).

Other GOP convention lies were similarly exposed by the media: "Obama has slashed Medicare!" "Obama is responsible for the U.S. credit downgrade!"

I'm sure that the GOP is stunned by the recent fact-checking by a newly-vigilant media. (And frankly, I'm as stunned as the GOP is, after watching the media let Republicans lie through their teeth for many years).

I guess the question now is this: why, in this election cycle, does the GOP have such contempt for the truth (especially when it can no longer get away with it)?

The answer to that question is simple. Because the GOP knows that, in fact, it can get away with it. This post's opening anecdote is proof positive of that. As that anecdote demonstrated, there are still many, many right-wingers out who get all of their news and info from the Fox/Drudge/Rush GOP Propaganda Network.

My right-wing acquaintance has never even heard that it was in fact Bush who made a fool of himself with his infamous "Internets" remarks. And my right-wing acquaintance will never even hear the mainstream media's debunking of Ryan's claims about the Wisconsin GM plant's closure. After all, he sure as hell isn't going to ever hear about it on Rush's show.

Such is the power of today's Great Right-Wing Propaganda Network. It is all-powerful, it is massive, it is everywhere, and it is 24 hours a day. If you are a wingnut getting your "news" from it, you'll never even feel the need to venture out in the real world and expose yourself to any other news outlet. And you'll happily continue to live in an alternate universe, where Obama will always be a Socialist Muslim Kenyan whose birth certificate is a fraud. 

(Cross-posted at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.)

Marathon Man: The fraudulence of Paul Ryan

By Mustang Bobby

Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan's marathon run and how he's giving America the run-around.

Remember Rosie Ruiz? In 1980 she was the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon — except it turned out that she hadn't actually run most of the race, that she sneaked onto the course around a mile from the end. Ever since, she has symbolized a particular kind of fraud, in which people claim credit for achieving things they have not, in fact, achieved.

And these days Paul Ryan is the Rosie Ruiz of American politics.

[...]

Obviously nobody cares how fast Mr. Ryan can run, and even his strange marathon misstatement wouldn't be worth talking about in isolation. What makes this incident so striking is, instead, the way it resonates with the essential Rosie-Ruizness of Mr. Ryan's whole political persona, which is built around big boasts about accomplishments he hasn't accomplished.

[...]

So what is this election about? To be sure, it's about different visions of society — about Medicare versus Vouchercare, about preserving the safety net versus destroying it. But it's also a test of how far politicians can bend the truth. This is surely the first time one of our major parties has run a campaign so completely fraudulent, making claims so at odds with the reality of its policy proposals. But if the Romney/Ryan ticket wins, it won't be the last.

The irony is that the Republicans are always the ones to shed crocodile tears -- and impeach a president -- over lapses in morality unless it's one of their own, and run an ad campaign on a "misstatement" by an opponent but laugh off or ignore a demonstrable lie as just one of those things. The news media craps out on this with their hands-off reasonable-people-can-disagree line, which explains why it took the out-and-out lies of Mr. Ryan in Tampa to finally get them to lift their heads off the pillow and pay attention. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Romney's race card and the GOP's new Southern Strategy

By Richard K. Barry

Chris Matthews can sometimes make me crazy, but I was proud of the man yesterday on Morning Joe when he called out RNC Chair Reince Priebus for the particular variant of the Southern Strategy being played out by the GOP with their lies about Obama's supposed changes to welfare rules and equally untrue statements about the reallocation of Medicare funding to Obamacare.

Nothing else is working for Romney, which is why he is playing the "race card," as Matthews correctly pointed out.

There is an excellent piece at The Atlantic Wire by Elspeth Reeve on this shift in strategy.

According to Reeve:

Romney's advisers believe Romney "needs a more combative footing against President Obama in order to appeal to white, working-class voters and to persuade them that he is the best answer to their economic frustrations," The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg reported. And as we pointed out on Friday, if Romney gets 61 percent of the white vote, he wins. If you have any doubt that Romney is playing the race card, check out his YouTube page. There are five ads falsely accusing Obama of gutting welfare reform. The Republican National Committee has put out its own welfare ad. And another three Romney ads say Obama is raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare. The latter ads show white faces and say "you paid in" but now health care is going to somebody else.

Here's Matthews's exchange with Priebus:

(Cross-posted at Lippmann`s Ghost.)

The legitimate rape of freedom

By Capt. Fogg

I went to bed ruminating about the predicted course of Tropical Storm Isaac, which had it ravaging the West coast of Florida from Fort Meyers to Tampa next week. Am I a bad person for dreaming that a random raging force of nature might do what our miserable excuse for a righteous God never seems to do and tear the Tampa Convention Center to pieces, rending flesh from barbarian bone and yet somehow leave the Tampa General Hospital just across the channel intact to tend to any decent folk who got caught out in the storm? Perhaps I am, but the teeth and claws of the GOP are as visible to anyone with eyes to see as if they were painted red with gore -- as indeed they are -- and who will be there to rescue us when the wolf has eaten Grandma (and blamed it on Obama)? Sadly, today's National Hurricane Center prediction shows Hurricane Isaac passing to the west of Tampa, leaving only some wind and rain to drown out the demented cries of a dying country.

It won't be quite loud enough, of course, to obscure the lies and libels, the slanders, the fabrications, and the calls for armed insurrection against the decent, the humane, and the lovers of freedom  -- nor wet enough to wash away the tea. But don't bring your guns to Tampa. It was OK for the toothless Tea Whores to bring firearms to Democratic meetings and threaten to use them, but the GOP has banned guns at their sabbath.

There will be and there already are howls about spending and taxes and budgets, but put in the form of a passion play that has more to do with reversing the guilt for having started a war on invented information -- the most expensive war in our history -- and proposed that it would cost nothing if only we relieved the richest of us of a few more percent in taxes. They'll go on pretending that a middle class tax cut was a tax hike, that no additional gun control was somehow a "gun grab," and that restoring Ronald Reagan's tax relief for the richest Americans, many of whom like Mitt Romney paid nothing and are still paying almost nothing was "the largest tax hike in history" and a flirtation with Marxism.

They'll continue the tradition of posing pornography, legal birth control, the "personhood" of fertilized eggs, and abortion as the great issues of the day, and the same people who claim that the universe is only a few years older than the pyramids will howl like idiots about how 14-year-old girls won't get pregnant if the rape wasn't forceful enough and how women with hydrocephalic babies can't actually die in childbirth. They'll stand on the bloodstained platform or their vampire religion and call for the subjugation of women, the abandonment of the old and sick and weak, and claim we simply can't survive if we do what everyone else in the free, modern world does. They'll suggest a country with a double standard of morality, where the government sleeps in your bed but not in theirs and where they pay nothing and obey no rules. 

No, sorry, Messrs. Romney and Ryan, I'd like you and your numbered accounts in Bermuda and Luxembourg and Liechtenstein washed out into the Gulf, never to be seen again and soon to be forgotten by the madmen, the congenitally stupid, the misogynists, the sexual perverts who support all the silly, stupid, racist rhetoric. I'd like to drown the contempt for facts, for science, for mathematics, for history, and of course your contempt for anyone who didn't lie, cheat, and steal their way to wealth and power, but of course I can't.

I can't because this is a stupid country -- a petty, angry, prejudiced, bigoted, selfish, and deluded country that thinks it would be better off and safer with no government at all. We're the country that elected George Bush twice and Richard Nixon twice and Spiro Agnew and savaged everyone that spoke up. This is the party that was outraged at anyone who said the economy was unsustainable and now sneers and snarks about how the economy is unsustainable. This is the country that cheered at the biggest borrow-and-spend spree and now looks at the spendthrift culprits as saviors. Perhaps we deserve our fate. Perhaps we deserve even worse. Perhaps a better nation might some day emerge from the stinking wreckage, but probably not and probably some other power will come to dominate the world -- a power that cares less for the kind of country we pretended to be and insisted we were while we danced around a bonfire chanting as America died.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Mitt Romney and the Nine Commandments

By Richard K. Barry

Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast made the same point recently that I have been making for a while, which is that most of the lying in politics is simply about stretching the truth, not smashing it to bits. So, when Obama's campaign tries to connect Mitt Romney to Bain-related layoffs that happened after 2002, it's not exactly the same as a lie even though Romney left the company after that time, because Romney built Bain Capital and gave it its character.

As Tomasky writes:

There is some little grain of truth there, that "Mitt Romney's company" oversaw such-and-such layoffs, as there usually is in attack ads, even the most vicious ones. The Willie Horton ads were, after all, true. Racist, but true.

We are all used to this kind of campaigning. It's what we think of when we think about the dirtiness of politics. But then Mitt Romney came along and took everything to a whole 'nuther level.

Mitt says things, a lot of things, that are clearly and demonstrably untrue, and that actually takes a little getting used to. Most of us are still able to work up some real annoyance when we know someone is saying something that even they understand is not true. It's human nature. At least, it used to be.

What I'm trying to say is that this is not politics as usual. This is not normal. This is not simply the old saw about all politicians lying. This is a different animal and it should piss us off, all of us, no matter what our political leanings. Is it really a good thing if someone vying for the top political job in the land isn't even going to pretend to care about the truth? Does anyone really want a person like that in that job? Don't answer that.

But this is where we are.

The most recent example is Romney's claim about Obama's changes to welfare rules, which have been presented in new ads.

As Tomasky writes:

The Romney ad campaign says exactly the opposite of what the new rule stipulates. PolitiFact called the first Romney ad “Pants on Fire,” and Glenn Kessler gave it four Pinocchios. But now here they come with a second ad saying that Obama “ended the work requirement.” Plainly and provably not true.

This is part of what the ad says:

Since 1996, welfare recipients were required to work. This bipartisan reform successfully reduced welfare rolls. On July 12th, President Obama quietly ended the work requirement, gutting welfare reform.

These ads make use of images of Bill Clinton signing into law work requirements for people on welfare, and even he says the claims of the Romney campaign that Obama has undone those requirements are untrue.

There is no nuance. This is no stretching the truth. This is a lie. Again.

Here's one of the ads. No, Mitt Romney is not normal, and I do shudder to think what someone who lies so easily would do with the kind of power a president has.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Will Paul Ryan have any integrity left when Mitt Romney is done with him?

By Richard K. Barry

Last week Sam Stein had a piece at Huffington Post in which he discussed the fact that GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan has enthusiastically accepted the Romney team's approach of lying about everything, hoping, apparently, to court the support of what are euphemistically called "low-information voters."

In this case, Ryan blasted President Obama for "failing to rescue a General Motors factory in his Wisconsin congressional district, calling it 'one more broken promise' on the Democratic administration's record."

According to Stein, Ryan said this during a campaign stop:

I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs.

Stein added that this claim has been seriously ridiculed for the fact that the Janesville, Wisconsin plant actually closed during the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. Stein then goes on to show that it was obvious Ryan knew this but made the charge anyway.

You can and should follow Stein's well-argued case, but the bottom line is that if something as important as an auto manufacturing plant is threatening to close in anyone's congressional district, that Rep. would know everything about the plans, when it was slated to close, and do anything possible to stop the closure, as Ryan did.

Many have commented that the Romney campaign has hit upon a fairly novel campaign strategy, which is to lie consistently knowing that much of the mainstream press will simply treat clear untruths as a different perspective rather than bothering to challenge the lies. Similarly, a lot of well-meaning voters have neither the time nor inclination to fully understand when lies are being told. Funny thing is that it might just work.

Given the frequency of Romney's lies, it would seem to be a considered strategy rather than the normal kind of political truth-bending. And given Ryan's willingness to apply the strategy when he could be so easily caught out, it must mean he got the briefing and accepts this way of campaigning.

In a way, I suspect even those who support Romney know he wants the presidency so badly he will reverse any position previously held. They know his integrity is in doubt. As for Ryan, I'm sure some people view him as a straight-talking mid-western dude who tells it like it is - that he's a truth teller. Let's see how that plays itself out as Ryan spends more time with Romney.

I just finished reading Larry McMurtry's wonderful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove. In it, one of the characters places a bit of Latin on a sign heading into a ranch. It reads: "Uva Uvam Videndo Varia Fit," which seems to have something to do with grapes. I read no Latin but one commentator believes the figurative translation is "We are changed by the lives around us."

It's going to be interesting to see if Paul Ryan, the supposedly straight-talking mid-western dude, has any integrity left by the time he spends three months with Mitt Romney, a man who never met a useful lie he didn't like.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

OPSie: The lies and hypocrisies of Obama's "patriot" attackers

By Mustang Bobby

A group of former Special Ops personnel are coming after President Obama, accusing him of taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden for himself and leaking national security secrets for political gain. Small problem: according to the Los Angeles Times, they've been leaking secrets themselves:

In politics, the story line rarely changes: Do as I say, not as I do.

Thus several former U.S. intelligence and special operations personnel who have accused President Obama of leaking and "politicizing" national security information have themselves talked publicly about sensitive security matters.

They are members of a new nonprofit group called Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund. Known as OPSEC, military shorthand for operational security, the group says it has raised about $1 million for TV ads and a short film called "Dishonorable Disclosures," which criticizes the Obama administration for alleged national security leaks.

The organizers say they don't intend to release a list of their donors or their members. Neither is required by law.

"It's time for President Obama and other administration officials to stop jeopardizing national security operations for political gain," said Fred Rustmann, an OPSEC member, who worked at the CIA for 24 years before he retired in 1990.

Rustmann and two other key members of the group, all self-described Republicans, have a history of talking openly to the media about national security, a review of articles and transcripts shows.

Rustmann appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" in 2005 to discuss Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA operations officer who was outed in July 2003 by members of the George W. Bush administration. A federal jury convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, of four felony counts for his role in the crime.

There's another group of like-minded patriots called SOS that bases its opposition to Mr. Obama on the fact that he's Not One of Us:

President Barack Obama is a socialist, was raised by communists, and wasn't born in the United States, according to the former Navy SEAL who founded the group Special Operations Speaks (SOS), which aims to portray Obama as anti-military in this election season.

[...]

"I have to admit that I'm a Birther," said SOS founder Larry Bailey, a retired 27-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, in an interview. "If there were a jury of 12 good men and women and the evidence were placed before them, there would be absolutely no question Barack Obama was not born where he said he was and is not who he says he is."

Do the Republicans really want to have a group going around reminding the voters of who got Osama bid Laden when the last guy they had in office couldn't be bothered? And it really doesn't help when they're as loose-lipped with national security secrets as they claim the president has been.

As for the other group, the general consensus is that as soon as you come out with the birther line, you're nothing but a racist asshole and therefore not worth listening to.

Sighted Swiftboat; sank same.

H/T to mistermix at Balloon Juice.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

It's pathological

By Mustang Bobby

Last week the Romney campaign put out an ad that claimed President Obama wanted to remove work requirements from welfare reform. Not only was it a gross distortion of reality -- gee, no surprise there -- it got panned by every reputable fact check group out there, and even PolitiFact, which has a rotten reputation for weasling, called it "Pants on Fire."

So what did they do? Take a wild guess:

Mitt Romney's campaign continued to attack President Barack Obama over welfare reform with the release of a new ad on Monday, once again falsely stating that the president dropped work requirements from welfare.

The ad, titled "Long History," is the second ad from the Romney campaign to claim that Obama has "gutted" welfare. The campaign's previous ad on welfare, released just last week, was widely criticized as inaccurate and debunked by numerous fact checkers.

It's not just a campaign strategy in hopes that the pigeons will fall for it; even when they're called out on it they keep doing it.

No one expects a political campaign to be about the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but come on; this is beyond strategy. It's unreal. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)