A collage of words used by fact-checkers to describe Romney's claims.
At a campaign event on Monday, a Republican voter asked Mitt Romney about falsehoods pushed by "leftists" and what he intended to do about it. The candidate replied, "It seems that the first victim of an Obama campaign is the truth."
As it turns out, the first victim is actually irony.
Michael Tomasky had a good piece this week, explaining what many have been reluctant to acknowledge: "The distinguishing fact of the Romney-Ryan campaign thus far is the extent to which it is built on outright lies in a desperate attempt to avoid honest debate at all costs." The GOP ticket, Tomasky argued, "lies as much as possible."
Just making stuff up about the other guy is bad enough. But it is in terms of past and future positions that what Romney-Ryan are doing really plows new and dishonorable earth. [...]
They know that the truth would crush them electorally. And so it follows that they know they must lie. They must lie about their Medicare plans. They must lie about the effects of their tax plans on average people and rich people. And they must tell a number of lies about Obama, all the better if they involve race, as the welfare lie does.
So this will be the entire point of the Romney-Ryan campaign. Lie lie lie. Muddy the waters. Turn day to night, fire to water, champagne to piss. Peddle themselves as the precise opposite of what they actually are. That is clearly the m.o.
It's always something of a relief when others notice this, but it's a dynamic much of the political world resists. Perhaps these stragglers could take a few moments to consider the 31st installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity. (This week is the biggest list since I started the project in January.)
1. Referencing the money he gives to his church every year, Romney said, "This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one's financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known."
This is ridiculously untrue.
2. In an interview with Time magazine, Romney said of the recent Tax Policy Center analysis, "The basic foundation and premises of my plan are ... we don't reduce taxes or the share of taxes paid by the highest-income individuals. The highest-income individuals will get to pay the same share of taxes they pay today."
At a minimum, this is ridiculously misleading. Under Romney's plan, high-income people would get an enormous tax break.
3. In the same interview, Romney added, "I know that many in the modeling community do not want to assume growth with changes in tax policy. I do."
Actually, the Tax Policy Center, which Romney was criticizing, gave him the benefit of the doubt on growth assumptions, and found that his numbers still didn't add up.
4. On Twitter, Romney claimed President Obama "gutted bipartisan welfare reform by ending the work requirement."
5. Also on Twitter, Romney argued that the Affordable Care Act, "raises taxes on families making less than 120k. I will repeal it."
He's referring to an individual mandate that would apply to 1% of the population. And if President Obama's health care policy raised taxes on families making less than $120,000, then Romney raised taxes on families making less than $120,000.
6. In a campaign ad, Romney says Obama is "raiding $716 billion from Medicare."
7. The same ad accuses Obama of "taxing wheelchairs and pacemakers."
At a minimum, this is wildly misleading.
8. The ad concludes, "The Romney/Ryan plan will restore Medicare funding, and protect and strengthen the program for the next generation."
As it turns out, that's the polar opposite of the truth.
9. At a campaign event in Hobbs, New Mexico, Romney said, "Sometimes I have the impression that the whole regulatory attitude of the administration is trying to stop oil and gas and coal, that they don't want those sources."
In reality, coal production is up; we have more natural gas than we know what to do with; and oil production is up.
10. In the same speech, Romney said of Obama, "He's taken federal dollars, your money, to invest in companies -- solar companies, wind companies -- about $90 billion in so-called green jobs."
The details matter: much of the $90 billion was appropriated by George W. Bush, not Obama.
11. On welfare policy, the Romney campaign said this week that all the administration needs to do "is have HHS send out a hard letter making sure that the only things that will qualify under the work requirement is hard training and the cooperative programs with employers and define it in such a way that what was allowed before is all that's allowed in the future.... That's all that's required."
The administration already did this two months ago.
12. On the budget sequester, the Romney campaign argued this week, "It was the president who insisted on this makeup, this formula. Defense spending is not half of all federal spending, but it's half of the cuts approximately in the sequester. We disagreed with that then, disagree with it now.''
That's a lie. Democrats wanted the other half of the sequester to be tax increases. The defense cuts were proposed by House Republicans.
13. The Romney campaign also said it can create a "debt-free nation just like our parents."
For one thing, the Romney campaign isn't proposing to eliminate the debt, just the deficit. For another, I don't know how old most folks' parents are, but the U.S. has maintained a debt every year since 1836.
14. At a campaign event in Bettendorf, Iowa, Romney argued, "We've now had four years in a row with a president that's built trillion-dollar deficits."
That's not true. Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush; it wasn't something the president "built."
15. In the same speech, Romney said, "Now, the president promised that he was going to cut the deficit in half. Yeah, it didn't happen, did it. He's more than doubled it."
Maybe Romney doesn't know what "double" means. The deficit on Obama's first day was $1.3 trillion. Last year, it was also $1.3 trillion. This year, it's projected to be $1.1 trillion. When he says the president "more than doubled" the deficit, as he has many times, Romney's lying.
16. Romney added, in reference to the president, "He's added almost as much debt held by the public, $5 trillion, as all the prior presidents of the country combined."
Romney has said this before. It's still a blatant lie.
17. Romney went on to say, "One out of six people's fallen into poverty under this president."
That only makes sense if we count Obama's first year in office, which relies on a standard Romney believes is fundamentally unfair.
18. Romney also said, "What [Obama] said was not a gaffe. It was not a slip of the tongue. What he said was his philosophy. He said that if you have a business you didn't build it, someone else did that."
That's not even close to being true.
19. Romney said his economic plan "creates 12 million jobs in four years."
If we do nothing, we're on track to create 12 million new American jobs over the next four years anyway.
20. At an event in Manchester, New Hampshire, Paul Ryan, standing alongside Romney, said, "Now, let's be very clear and fair. The president inherited a difficult situation, no two ways about that. Problem is, he made things worse."
21. Ryan also said of Romney, "He took struggling businesses and turned them around -- an 80 percent success rate. That's astounding."
It may be astounding, but it's also not true.
22. At the same event, Ryan said, "Remember when the president said, when he came in office he would create jobs. Unemployment would never get above 8 percent."
Obama never said unemployment would never get above 8 percent.
23. Also in New Hampshire, Romney said of Paul Ryan, "This is a guy who's been able to work with good Democrats, find people who could look beyond partisanship, find common ground to get things done."
After seven terms in Congress, Paul Ryan has never found common ground with Democrats to pass a significant piece of legislation.
24. Romney added, in reference to the budget, "So what do I do? Well, first, you've got to end the deficit and then start accumulating, if you will, reserves and growing. That's what we did [in Massachusetts]."
Romney left his successor with a deficit.
25. Romney also vowed to "get rid of the deficit."
There's no reason to believe this is in any way true. Romney says his plan "can't be scored," but independent budget analysts have found his agenda would make the deficit bigger, not smaller, and add trillions to the national debt.
26. Romney went on to say, "My test is this. I look at every program and say, is this so critical as a program it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?"
This continues to be misleading. The implication here is that U.S. debt is financed by the Chinese, but this isn't true -- China only holds about 8% of the nation's debt.
27. In explaining his plans to balance the budget, Romney added, "We're going to get rid of some programs like Obamacare and some others."
The Affordable Care Act saves the country hundreds of billions of dollars. If Romney "gets rid of" it, the deficit goes up, not down.
28. Romney also said, "We can't go on the way we're going on, or we'll end up being Greece."
29. Romney went on to say, "I don't want to raise taxes on the American people."
He may not want to, but according to independent analyses, he's going to.
30. Romney also complained about Obama's tax plan, arguing., "When you raise taxes on small business from 35 percent to 40 percent, you will kill jobs."
Obama has repeatedly cut taxes on small businesses -- by some counts, 18 times -- and if given a second term, his tax plan would have no effect on 97% of small businesses.
31. On U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Romney said, "We haven't heard this president" explain "what's happening and why they're there, what the mission is, what its purpose is, how we'll know when it's completed."
That's the exact opposite of reality.
32. At the same event, again alongside Romney, Ryan said in reference to Israel, "When President Obama made the 1967 borders the precondition to the beginning of negotiations, it undercut our ally."
That's both dumb and dishonest.
33. Romney added, in reference to Iran, "We should make it very clear that we're going to put in place crippling sanctions."
We've already put in place crippling sanctions. How can a presidential candidate not know this?
34. In his inaugural weekly audio message, Romney claimed, the Affordable Care Act "put in place a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats and gave them the power to make additional cuts to Medicare without even having to get approval from Congress. This means they could deny elderly Americans the care they've worked for their entire lives -- all because President Obama trusts bureaucrats more than he trusts seniors and their doctors."
Romney's trying to describe the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), but he's doing so in a way that's completely dishonest.
35. In the same message, Romney said, "According to independent, non-partisan scorekeepers, these cuts the president's people will take to Medicare won't prevent it from going bankrupt."
The lying is just amazing. The independent, non-partisan scorekeepers said Obama's plan would strengthen Medicare's finances and extend its financial health, while Romney's plan would move the Medicare system closer to insolvency.
36. Touting his own agenda, Romney added, "I released a plan to save and strengthen Medicare -- without making any changes for those that are 55 years of age and older."
That's demonstrably wrong. Under Romney's policy, the cost of prescription drug prices and preventive care for seniors would go up immediately -- for current and future retirees.
37. And again in reference to Medicare, Romney said, "No president should put in jeopardy your benefits."
Romney's proposal cuts Medicare benefits.
Previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX
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It will most Definitely be a sad, sad day for America if Mitt Ryan and Paul Romney get elected. However, if they do, I have one word, IMPEACHMENT!!!!! (actually, I have another word, but I refuse to stoop to teabagger level...President Kennedy knows what I mean)
IS it really necessary to use bigoted homophobic slurs against your opponent?
This hateful miserable intolerant less than 20%'er is already crying like the sore loser that they are. These traitorous little *ricks are the ones that need to be eradicated talking about assassinating those they can never measure up to or beat in elections on merit or honesty. Faggot mouthed Commies. don't even pretend you care about AMERICA you un-AMERICAN loser.
"The basic foundation and premises of my plan are ... we don't reduce taxes or the share of taxes paid by the highest-income individuals. The highest-income individuals will get to pay the same share of taxes they pay today."
Do you see that? They GET to pay the ridiculously low rate they pay today rather a reasonable rate high enough that they would bitch about HAVING to pay it!
Who is "They"? Do you mean the 50% of Americans who pay no federal income tax?
Wow, and if people weren't being totally bombarded with the lies, or if the lamestream media wanted to talk about something other than whether Obama is being "mean" to Mitt or in reporting he said/he said (fact free reporting!) they might actually be making an informed choice!
Mendacity? And from Obama's reelection network NBC/MSNBC. The network that keeps doctoring tapes to give a totally false impression of important news events. If there were any teeth in our election campaign contribution laws NBC/MSNBCs entire news division expenditures/budget for the entire election period would at least be counted dollar for dollar as a contribution to the Obama campaign. And of course there is no concern from NBC/MSNBC about Obama's sewer campaign in which he has accused Gov Romney of being a Felon and Killing a poor woman who actually died of Cancer? What are plain fact is that after nearly 4 years of Obama we have the Worst UNEMPLOYMENT since the Great Depression, More DEBT than in the history of the world, Solyndra, and the highest level of POVERTY since 1965. Obama has given us the most arrogant, dishonest, divisive, failed Presidency in U.S. history. With Obama we know what to expect. More Decline, More DEBT, More Despair! Gov Romney offers growth, jobs, and the restoration of the American dream. In Nov the decision looks pretty easy!
On a topic devoted to lying valwayne provides excellent examples:
Obama's campaign did no such thing. You are referring to an independent "super PAC" which is prohibited by law from coordinating with Mr. Obama.
That is not correct. Unemployment was higher under Reagan.
That is not correct. We had more debt during WWII.
Prove that has anything to do with Obama. Look up post hoc ergo propter hoc, every right winger's favorite rhetorical fallacy.
Good work, need to get the old blood boiling in the locker room. Get 'em ready for the final Quarter. Nothing like a little pep talk. Things look bad for the Kenyan but its not over till its over. When we lose we'll just blame it on all that voter suppression the white supremacists are doing. How can the chosen be down to only 40% of the white working class "clinger" vote? How did that happen they usually so easy to bamboozle with the class warfare routine. I thought they were all supposed to be stalwart union men.
can anybody stop this lying guy?????? Thanks for showing us a running commentary of the continuous blatant lying and stunningly wild positions, statements, flip-flops and ads, but can anyone stop this team of two lying guys???
This lying guy means Obama. right? The team being Obama & "Chains" Biden
What's entirely missing in the debate about the Romney/Ryan ticket's intentions as to Medicare is that, according to the TEFRA Act of 1982 passed under REAGAN, providers who service Medicare patients are NOT allowed to charge whatever they like, but their prices are controlled by Medicare. It is, in fact, a FELONY to charge a Medicare patient more than the Maximum Actual Allowable Charge (MAAC), whether or not the provider participates in the program.
The idea that Medicare should not restrict reimbursements because providers might leave the program is ridiculous. They couldn't charge any more than the MAAC in any event. Providers have to choose between WORKING and not working, not whether to make more money or not by participating in Medicare.
If the Republicans have their way, their most significant change will be to eviscerate Medicare's ability to control prices in the market for HC services for seniors and the disabled. Republicans will remove the price controls. This will lead to SOARING medical, surgical and hospital charges, which seniors, the disabled and the poor will simply not be able to afford.
You would need a lot more paper to chronicle all the lies by the Obama administration.
It's fun to click on user names and find out who the trolls are.
oh, a "troll" is someone that doesn't agree with you? you must encounter a lot of "trolls" in your little life. good luck.....
It's fun to click on user names and find out who the trolls are.
I typed "Mitt's" into Google and this topic came up at the top. Shows a lot of people are following this.
So far I haven't seen any lies, except from Obama. Nevertheless, if the Romney campaign decides to lie, they are certainly entitled. Turnabout is fair play. The Obamunists started the lying. And I support anything that removes the False Messiah from office. It's about time the GOP learned to gutter fight like the Democrats.
awww, poor MSNBC. poor little liberals twisting in the wind as the race narrows. your "transformative" hero can't even get a lead on mitt romney, for k's sake. that's how bad obama's performance actually is. he's in a dead heat with mitt romney. lmfao. keep talking to yourselves, little clucks, it's really so very entertaining.....
This country would be better off with Romney President for the next 50 years than have Obama in office for even 1. Obama has been an unmitigated disaster.
Mitt's mendacity - The author lists a bunch of quotes from Romney then gives his own mendacious opinion as to their veracity. Even if the authors opinion was true, when it comes to mendacity Mitt is an amateur compared to Obama. To be fair let's say they both bend the truth, Romney is the only candidate whose objective is to have this country remain a democracy. As best we can tell from his first term Obama would be happy to have this country become some type of a Marxist-Muslim nation with the vast majority of people living in poverty dependent on the government. Absolutely no one except aparently Obama knows how it is possible to grow the middle class from the bottom up as he claims he can do. Obviously what he means is the poor will become the middle class, and the really poor will live in tent city. To be fair when he cuts the military budget down to nothing, finishes taking over our corporations like he did GM; he should be able to give the tent city people some rice and beans and water. I am hoping he has enough money left to do that for them after he gives trillions to his new Solyandras. Yep Obama has a great vision for America and he has a plan on how to achieve it. It's understandable, isn't it, why he won't talk about his plans for his next term.
Rachel Maddow is a hardcore liberal. Sean Hannity is hardcore extremist. Seriously people, we SHOULDN'T believe MSNBC nor FOX NEWS!!! We should listen to networks that don't have hardcore this, hardcore that. Seriously, Rachel Maddow? You people disgust me. You hardcore left-wing/right-wing people disgust me. You people are the ones that DESTROY this BEAUTIFUL GOD-GIVEN COUNTRY. So Shut Up, and DO NOT distort the FACTS. Just because I'm saying that "don't distort the facts" thing doesn't mean I'm a republican. Remember, I hate hard-cores from both wings. I'm an independent.
The criminal organization of democrats has reduced itself to be worse than dope fiends. Everything they say is nothing but a DOPE FIEND MOVE by a bunch of desperate despicable criminal frauds that fiend for power and tax payer dollars. These creeps have no business in positions of power. Prison is where they belong.
I fear a NIGHTMARE scenario for the United States if Mitt Romney is elected President. I assume he will implement the Ryan budget plan, which will cut taxes predominately for the "investor class" (aka the rich), while reducing government spending by cutting programs that mostly benefit the poor, working and middle class families. Since money knows no nationality, and owes no loyalty but to itself, most of the tax cut the rich receive will be invested in emerging market countries, where it will get the greatest return, or deposited in the secret bank accounts of "offshore tax havens", or hidden away in gold. This money will not circulate through the American economy, create demand, and help the economy grow. Capitalism is driven by the simple supply and demand equation, if there is no demand any extra supply will just rot on store shelves. Demand must always be there first.
Meanwhile, since Romney promised not to increase the deficit, to pay for the tax cut, the budgets would be slashed for programs like: crop insurance for farmers, natural disaster relief, food inspection, interstate highway repair and maintenance, school nutrition programs, unemployment insurance, student financial aid, food stamps, employment training, "Head Start", "aid for dependent children", etc. Cuts in federal grants to local and state governments would mean the layoff of policemen, firemen, and teachers. Of course, all these things and people consume "goods and services" which employ people to meet this demand. However, people can have a want or demand for stuff, but if people do not have money or credit to buy these things, in economic terms, there is no demand. To the extent demand is now lessened, employers will cut back and factories may close, jobs will be lost, and the unemployment rate will rise. Rather then the agonizingly slow but steady economic growth we presently have, the economy will begin to shrink, we will be in a "double dip" recession.
As the economy shrinks and people lose jobs, their ability to make their mortgage payments will decrease, and bank foreclosures will increase. They will lose their homes. They will be looking for help, but they will get none from Mitt Romney, since he believes "don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom." But we must always remember the statistics we read about unemployment and foreclosures are not just numbers. They represent real men, women, and children, who, maybe for the first time in their lives question: “Will I eat tonight and where will I sleep?” They are more afraid then they have ever been before in their lives. Without any government help, what will those families be forced to do in order to survive? Prostitute themselves, steal, become criminals in order to put a roof over their head and food on the table for themselves and their children. Is this what Mitt wants, because in some cases, this is what he will get.
But the nightmare continues: Mitt Romney has said, "I have indicated, day one, I will issue an executive order identifying China as a currency manipulator. We'll bring an action against them in front of the WTO (World Trade Organization) for manipulating their currency, and we will go after them." Sounds good until you read the warning that same WTO gives on their Website: "The short-sighted protectionist view is that defending particular sectors against imports is beneficial. But that view ignores how other countries are going to respond. The longer term reality is that one protectionist step by one country can easily lead to retaliation from other countries. (For example), the trade war of the 1930s when countries competed to raise trade barriers in order to protect domestic producers and retaliate against each others’ barriers. This worsened the Great Depression."
Will Mitt Romney's actions towards China, if elected president, ignite a fire he may not be able to control? Europe is economically frail; already many countries are in a recession because they adopted budget cutbacks which are the equivalent of the Romney/Ryan budget. Austerity in those countries has only caused the financial condition of the people to worsen, and created political instability and rioting in the streets. At this point, the possible starting a trade war between the world's two largest economies would be a unwarranted risk. A trade war, when combined with Europe's fragile economy, and the downturn in the American economy caused by the Romney/Ryan budget, would result in another economic depression, not just a severe recession.
While the preceding facets of my nightmare are based on facts, what follows is INFORMED SPECULATION. The Romney/Ryan budget has increased economic inequality, in that, it gave significant tax cuts to the rich while cutting benefits such as unemployment insurance, student financial aid, food stamps, "Head Start", school nutrition programs, etc, mostly used by the poor. The common perception will be the government adopted programs that made the rich, richer; and the poor, poorer. This will revive and reinvigorate the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, perhaps to the extent where the size of its demonstrations will match those against the war in Vietnam. Because of the economic downturn, and Romney's policies which are seen as causing it (unlike Obama who was seen as inheriting it from the Bush administration), the demonstrators will be angrier then they were in the first wave of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Some of the demonstrations may deteriorate into riots, as they have done in London, Greece, and Spain. These will only be splinter groups but media reports, especially Fox News, will focus on them.
President Obama was "hands off" regarding the first wave of "Occupy Wall Street" (OWS) movement and appeased them by using a more populist tone in his speeches. However Romney will not do that, since he will be pressured by his "hard right" supporters, including Rush Limbaugh, into declaring the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators are terrorist, because of the riots, and evoking the "Patriot Act." (As an aside, many of the illegal actions in regards to the anti-war movement for which Nixon was impeached in Watergate, would today be perfectly legal under the "Patriot Act.") The "Occupy Wall Street" encampments would then be swept clear and destroyed by soldiers, like what happened under President Hoover, to the encampment of the "Bonus Marchers" in 1932. At that time soldiers with fixed bayonets and hurling tear gas destroyed an encampment of 10,000 people. Two babies died and nearby hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties.
America would be bitterly divided, especially if any demonstrators were killed by soldiers, as they were at "Kent State" during an anti-Vietnam War protest. And as president, we would have a man who is closely tied to Wall Street and corporate financiers, in fact he was one; he was ruthless in the way he handled his business (Bain) and political campaigns; he has no problem being deceptive, to either us or the SEC (as to when he left Bain), along with for many years not disclosing a Swiss bank account on government financial disclosure forms; and he is completely opaque and secretive in whatever he does. In sum, a man whose attitudes and aloofness more closely resembles that of a king, rather than those of a patriot. With this combination no one could know what would happen next.
As Martin Luther King Jr reminded us, "We must never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." Hitler in a time of political and economic distress, in a sloppy and flawed political process, achieved office democratically. We say it could never happen here, but as the little known "plot against FDR" shows, it is not unthinkable. The economic system of the United States has already changed, we have gone from capitalism to corporatism; stealthily, without notice. A Wal-mart store, because of the size of the corporate chain, get a special low prices from manufacturers available to no one else; it comes to town and how many stores on main street go out of business. Banking corporations get too big to fail, they take reckless risks to increase profits, they get in trouble, and the taxpayer has to bail them out; while their executives, the same ones who took the risks, get huge bonuses. This is because as Mitt said, "The TARP (bank bailout) program was designed to keep the financial system going," and as a CEO of a private equity firm, he was a part of this financial system and previously had been a partner in transactions with many of these banks. In the past, we would say this could never happen here, but it did. Thus my nightmare ends.
You may think I'm paranoid, and I can only hope you're right. However, many economist believe that if Romney does what he says he wants to, in regards to the budget and China, the economic portion of my nightmare will become a reality. As far as the political portion of my nightmare, the very fact that I can make a coherent, cogent and credible scenario, is scary enough.
You have to look at Mitts business experience. He spent his life with Bain, buying out companies, lying to the employees, running what is left of the companies into the ground and then making millions, while hundreds of workers lost everything. In his mind he is not lying if the pacts are the ones running the ads.
I just began reading the chronicles, and will finish reading sometime today. But I think I understand the lies now. I have listened (not seen it but very much want to) to the music and lyrics from Book of Morman ... and it seems to be about lots of lies! I don't think I want someone as stingy as Romney in the White House though!