When Mitt Romney talked to "60 Minutes" last week, he said President Obama has "repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for the truth." If there's ever been a more blatant example of political "projection," I can't think of it.
And yet, Romney is increasingly invested in this. This week, several reports noted that Romney intends to use next week's debate to "fact check" the president. The Obama campaign, unimpressed, released a video this morning on the subject.
Of course, if the 2012 presidential race comes down to which candidate is more dishonest, Romney's in trouble. Consider, for example, the 36th installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity.
1. Romney argued just yesterday that the crisis of military suicides would be made worse by looming cuts to the defense budget.
2. In same speech, Romney said, "You realize we have fewer ships in the Navy than any time since 1917."
This one again? Romney dropped this lie a while ago, but it's apparently back.
3. Romney went on to say, in reference to the president, "[H]is plan also calls for trillion dollar deficits."
Obama's plan calls for trillions in deficit reduction.
4. Romney added, "It is the same series of policies he's put in place over the last four years and they have not worked. And if you don't, why, look at the price of gasoline."
To blame gas prices on the president's policies is ridiculously untrue.
5. Romney also said in reference to Obama, "He's put us on a road to Europe."
The irony is, Europe is trying to grow through austerity, just as Romney intends to do here. He's lying in a self-refuting sort of way.
6. In a speech at Westerville, Ohio, Romney boasted, "We got unemployment down [in Massachusetts] to 4.7 percent."
Well, in reality, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts dropped because so many people dropped out of the state's workforce. The fact of the matter is Massachusetts' job creation record during Romney's term was "one of the worst in the country," ranking 47th out of 50 states.
7. In the same speech, Romney argued, "Now we have a president who the other day says something quite revealing. He said he can't change Washington from the inside. Only from the outside."
That's not what Obama said.
8. Romney added, "Obamacare is point number one. It's the example number one, where he wants to put bureaucrats between you and your doctor."
There's nothing in the Affordable Care Act that does this. Maybe Romney is thinking of his pal, Virginia Gov. Bob "Ultrasound" McDonnell?
9. Romney also said, "He believes that government should have a board of people that tell you what kind of care you could receive."
Romney's trying to describe the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), but he's doing so in a way that's completely dishonest.
10. In a minute-long ad, Romney said, "My plan will create 12 million new jobs over the next four years."
Putting aside the pesky detail that Romney doesn't actually have a specific jobs plan, the fact remains that if we do nothing, we're on track to create 12 million new American jobs over the next four years anyway.
11. Romney told ABC News this week, "[M]ine is a campaign about 100% of the people, not 99 and 1, not any other percent."
I seem to recall watching a video in which Romney said it's not his "job" to "worry about" 47 percent of the population.
12. In an interview with CNN, Romney said, "[C]rippling sanctions [on Iran] ... These are the types of things that the president could have done, should have done from the very beginning, which he did not."
13. Asked about his own dishonest ads, Romney said, "We've been absolutely spot-on. And any time there's anything that's been a miss we correct it or remove it."
14. Romney also argued, "Look, it has been shown time and again that the president's effort to take work requirement out of welfare is a calculated move."
This continues to be as obvious a lie as Romney has told all year.
15. Romney added, "The requirement that they're waiving was saying that people don't have to work to get welfare. That's the change that they proposed."
16. Romney said in an ABC interview, "And of course also on 60 Minutes he laid out his economic agenda saying things are going just fine."
17. At a campaign event in Ohio, Romney said on Obama, "He's going to bring the deficit down. Of course, he didn't. He 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.
18. In the same speech, Romney added, "[D]o you know how much money he's spent in one year putting money into companies that he thought had a bright future, green companies? He spent $90 billion! $90 billion!"
The details matter: much of the $90 billion was appropriated by George W. Bush, not Obama.
19. Romney also argued, "This president persists on the road of making it harder and harder for small businesses to grow and thrive."
Actually, the administration has done the opposite.
20. Romney went on to say, "This president has a plan for small business. He's got a plan for small business. He's going to raise their taxes!"
In reality, 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.
21. On a conference call with a group of Iowans, Romney argued, "Small business is getting crushed under the president's program ... by forcing people to join unions that don't want to. That's something known as card check."
Card check didn't pass. It wouldn't crush small businesses anyway, but a law can't have any effect if it doesn't exist.
22. In an interview with CBS, Romney defended himself against the flip-flop label. "The president has certainly changed his view on a whole host of things. He was going to close Guantanamo."
Obama's views on Guantanamo didn't change; Congress intervened to keep the detention facility open.
23. Romney added, in reference to voters looking for details, "Well, I can tell them specifically what my policy looks like. I will not raise taxes on middle income folks."
There's ample evidence that Romney will raise taxes on the middle class.
24. Asked about what spending he'd cut to balance the budget, Romney said, "The first big one is I'm not going to go forward with Obamacare. I will repeal Obamacare. It costs about $100 billion a year."
That's the exact opposite of the truth. The Affordable Care Act saves the country hundreds of billions of dollars. If Romney repeals it, the deficit goes up, not down.
25. Romney added, "I don't want any change to Medicare for current seniors or for those that are nearing retirement. So the plan stays exactly the same"
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.
26. Romney also said, "The president's cutting $716 billion from current Medicare. I disagree with that."
Sigh.
27. Romney argued, "I'm going to look at every federal program and I'll ask this question, 'Is this program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?'"
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.
28. Romney went on to say in reference to the president, "His challenge with blaming it on the Republican Congress is of course that for his first two years, right now the majority of his term, he had a Democrat Congress, a super majority in the Democrat Congress."
The Senate supermajority lasted four months, not two years.
29. In his weekly podcast, Romney said, "As many of the original proponents of welfare reform have made clear, the Obama Administration's actions were not in keeping with the spirit or the letter of the law."
As many of the original proponents of welfare reform have made clear, Romney's lying.
30. He added, "My five-point plan will deliver the economic recovery we've all been waiting for."
The five-point plan is a sham, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.
31. At an event in Las Vegas, Romney said of Obama, "This redistribution idea, this redistribution idea has been tried in other places. This is not a new idea. It's just never worked in other places. And it's certainly not going to work here."
As falsehoods go, this is just dumb.
32. In the same speech, Romney argued, "I don't want to have a government getting bigger and bigger, more intrusive, telling us what kind of health insurance we have to have."
As Romney surely knows -- his state-based policy works the same way -- the whole point of the Affordable Care Act is to provide consumers with choices of private plans, made available through regulated exchanges. Giving people choices and telling people "what kind of health insurance we have to have" are opposites.
33. At an event in Florida, Romney said, "We can't keep spending a trillion dollars more than we take in every year or we will be Greece at some point."
This is painfully untrue.
34. In the same speech, Romney promised, "I'll get America on track to have a balanced budget."
No, he won't. 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.
35. Romney added, "I think a lot of us were really surprised when the President in Roanoke, Virginia a few weeks ago, he stood up and said, 'If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Someone else did that.'"
That's not even close to what the president said.
36. Romney went on to say, "I will never apologize for American abroad."
How is it possible the whole "apology" lie hasn't gone away yet?
37. Romney also argued, "One more thing this president has proposed, and that is the combination of the sequential idea come from the White House which is cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars in its own budget, which cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars, he would have cut a trillion dollars by this decade."
That's two falsehoods in one. First, the sequester would cut about $500 billion from the military budget, not $1 trillion. Second, Romney's not only lying, he's also condemning defense cuts crafted by his own party and endorsed by his own running mate.
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, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV
Leave a Comment:
Caught Benen on The Ed Show last night, and totally agree with him that Romney is engaging in projecting his own foibles onto Pres. Obama. Now Romney is planning on turning the presidential debate(s) into some kind of "gotcha" game show? Romney's a joke. A bad one.
June This is a Karl Rove tactic that all the Republicans are trying to use.
The republicant party is not waging a Presidential campaign so much as it is waging a Disinformation campaign. Over the years they have had plenty of practice honing the Big Lie, the lie so absurd yet announced by such figures of authority (and of course repeated ad nauseum) that the average Joe figures it must have a grain of truth.... They hoped to have enough collaborators and cowed journalists in media that their echo chamber would resound throughout the land. I think they see themselves as the beleaguered defenders of the paranoid privileged, the misunderstood 1%, and as such are entitled to use any and every tactic and strategem in an effort to beat back the thieving horde (the 47%), in the great, zero-sum War for All the Marbles.
Why isn't it working? Maybe because a million little lies don't equal a Big Lie, they just mark you as a Compulsive LIAR, not the most endearing trait in a President.
willard , what a disgusting idiot ; yes "projection is the main-frame-game" of the repub party - surprise-surprise ! what's new ?
Mud-slide. Sent you a friend request.
I gather that his entire debate strategy will be, in effect, to yell 'You lie!' at everything Obama says, and as his team puts it, make voters lose confidence in Obama.
Hah!
Yeoman's work again, Steve. Only five more of these to go, hopefully.
"3. Romney went on to say, in reference to the president, "[H]is plan also calls for trillion dollar deficits."
Obama's plan calls for trillions in deficit reduction."
Both statements are true, not just one.
LOOK AT THIS. IT IS HORRIFIC. What idiots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_KGF0thEM
There've been a number of instances of "chair lynchings" in the last few weeks...
bleah.
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)
When you post references showing your "mendacity" comments to be true, please link directly to the source, rather than to your own reporting/opinion. Better for credibility to just give the source rather than present second hand info that includes your take on your take on the issue. Thanks much. Love your show, generally agree with your positions.
That would be a serious problem on some of these.
There are links in his "stories or takes" that he is linking to. So by sharing that link he's once again giving his opinion while at the same time giving you all the links to the sources.
Short attention spans.
"22. In an interview with CBS, Romney defended himself against the flip-flop label. "The president has certainly changed his view on a whole host of things. He was going to close Guantanamo."
Obama's views on Guantanamo didn't change; Congress intervened to keep the detention facility open."
Actually Obama planned to bring the prisoners to the US so the even the majority of Democrats voted against the plan.
As your own network reported it:
"WASHINGTON — In a rare, bipartisan defeat for President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to keep the prison at Guantanamo Bay open for the foreseeable future and forbid the transfer of any detainees to facilities in the United States.
Democrats lined up with Republicans in the 90-6 vote that came on the heels of a similar move a week ago in the House, underscoring widespread apprehension among Obama's congressional allies over voters' strong feelings about bringing detainees to the U.S. from the prison in Cuba."
Since then the President has taken an even more restrictive view of prisoner rights than the Bush administration:
"WASHINGTON — Accusing the Obama administration of “an illegitimate exercise of executive power,” a federal judge on Thursday rejected the government’s effort to impose new restrictions on lawyers’ access to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, if they were no longer actively challenging the prisoners’ detention in federal court."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/us/judge-rejects-limits-on-lawyers-access-to-guantanamo-prisoners.html?_r=0
...what was the point of this post banned? Nothing you stated refutes or adds to the statement made by Benen. You are neither confirming or denying Benen's statement. This seems to be a non-sequitur barely related to the subject. Clarification is in order on your part. You have a tendency to make these comments and then leave them hanging as if they explain themselves when they do not.
The president never told anyone during the campaign that he intended to close GITMO by bringiing the prisoners into the US. As you can from the above, no one in either party would ever have supported such an idea.
So yes either Obama lied to us during the campaign or his views changed after he got into office. Closing GITMO never, ever meant bringing the prisoners here.
....a lie implies that Obama stated X was true and then X turned out to not be true. You cannot say that because Obama did not explain what the policy would entail that this was a lie. By definition that's not possible. You can argue that this, in your mind, is misleading, but that would only be if you have amnesia and don't remember the 2008 election cycle. Not only did Obama talk about bringing prisoners to the US and wanting to try them in our justice system, but one of the first "scandals" of his presidency revolved around him doing just that- trying a 9/11 hijacker in New York city (which ended up never happening). During the debates between McCain and Obama both candidates were asked about Guantanamo and what they would do. Obama stated that he wanted to close Gitmo and the GOP talking point was that well if you close Gitmo they will come to the US. Of which Obama tried to do that funky thing where politicians straddle both sides talking about how he would release some (which he did), send some to foreign prisons (which he did), and how some would come to the US (which didn't happen). He then chastised McCain for not having faith in our criminal justice system. In fact Jon Stewart did a parody of this event in which he talked about how the #1 thing besides war that America does that America is unequivocally the world leader at is imprisonment. We are better at imprisoning people than any other nation in the world so the very idea that trying people and subsequently imprisoning them here in the US would be too far of a stretch is just comical. You make this accusation, as you have done so many times, without any context of how events actually played out. This is completely disingenuous on your part.
But, besides this, you brought this up as a refutation of Benen's statement. You did not refute Benen on the statement that Gitmo was closed. Was it closed? Yes. But because the US Congress has not agreed on what to do with the prisoners they have been primarily kept in Guantanamo (aside from the aforementioned who were released and/or sent to foreign prisons). Your statement, as I said earlier, is a non-sequitur to the argument being presented by Benen.
That was a well written post and since I am defending some of these othera on literal grounds I'll buy what you're selling, however I think the last court case above indicates Obama or his Justice Department has done a big change in how it views GITMO.
It may very well have changed, but that wasn't the argument presented by Benen that you were refuting.
I think it is either a bait and switch issue where the Obama Administration was claiming one thing and then is now doing another OR it's an issue where they are and have adapted to the situation as they've felt necessary. I'm not sure which one disturbs me more. I'm not OK with being lied to, but I'm also not sure that I agree with someone who changes his/her positions as the political winds blow. But I don't work in politics so perhaps it's necessary. Maybe there is an element of the means justifying the ends that cannot be escaped even by the most honorable of politicians. Or maybe I'm just jaded and my standards are lowered. I don't know.
Again on this one I mostly buy what you're selling.
When you give a reference to support your "mendacity" comments, please cite the source directly, rather than another page that you author which then links to the support page. Much better for credibility to link to the proof rather than to link to another version of your take on the proof before finally getting there. Otherwise ist looks like you're trying to gloss the issue.
Love your show, generally agree with your positions but don't like being pummeled when trying to verify your statements.
"6. In a speech at Westerville, Ohio, Romney boasted, "We got unemployment down [in Massachusetts] to 4.7 percent."
Well, in reality, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts dropped because so many people dropped out of the state's workforce. The fact of the matter is Massachusetts' job creation record during Romney's term was "one of the worst in the country," ranking 47th out of 50 states."
An unintended ironic reference to the current unemployment rate perhaps?
Also Massachusetts moved from 50th to 26th in job creation under Romney, nothing to brag about but the above statement is certainly misleading if not completely false.
Was the average ranking under Romney 47th? If it was then your correction here is entirely misleading which is funny because you're accusing Benen of doing the same thing.
Benen is the one that is misleading because Romney actually greatly improved the record of Massacusetts. Why are you uniwilling to put the blame on Obama for the conditions of his first year in office (a quite reasonable position) but insist theat Romney was responsible for Massachusetts from day one?
Why are you so presumptuous in your statements? You make this giant leap on the basis of what exactly?
Questioning you or asking you to validate your statements or refuting statements you make that aren't factually accurate =/= equal a counter argument/proposal OR an assertion of position.
If you state my favorite color is blue and I say no my favorite color is black this isn't a counter-argument. It's a statement of fact against your non-fact. You have just presented a false premise here and employed it as an ad hominem.
The truth is state governors have very little, if any, effect on how state governments grow and in particular on how the economy does. Most, if not all, of the growth seen under Romney had more to do with the national situation of our economy at the time than it did with Romney and his particular state policies. If this has been your argument- that you believe that Romney is claiming too much credit, but that Benen is giving too little- then I wouldn't have said anything because that would have been a true statement. However you are attempting to assert that jobs were better under Romney when he was Governor of Massachusetts. They weren't. MA had one of the worst job gains in MA state history under Romney. Most, if not all, of that has nothing to do with Romney. By trying to assert that jobs improved under Romney you're committing the same fallacy of guilt by association that Benen is making. So you cannot say that no really your point was that govenors don't have much to do with job growth therefore Benen is being unfair.
Your whole argument is premised on the idea that Benen is giving a factual misrepresentation of MA state growth under Romney using a premise that you feel is adequate. So I will ask again: what was the average of MA state's ranking in economic jobs growth under his term in office? If you're going to refute Benen then you need to do it on equal terms.
"They weren't. MA had one of the worst job gains in MA state history under Romney"
That's true ONLY if you count from day one, which you will concede that NO Democrat is willing to do for this administration. If you count Obama job losses from January 20 2009, then I'll concede.
....or you can just ignore the point I made about governors and job growths and why the whole thing is silly and instead nit-pick that by the logic you presented this would mean Romney had these horrible gains. Again you weren't disputing the logic of giving credit to governors for state growth, you were disputing the number given. You haven't proved that your dispute is factually correct.
Now you are strawmanning and attempting to divert the conversation away as though this somehow makes you more correct. It doesn't.
I'm looking for consistency of argument. If the job losses don't count for Obama, then they don't count for Romeny either. This column is oh so quick to point out the numbers that proceed from the Repubiican polices that were in place when Obama took office, which I think is perfectly fair. However when the same policy would favor Romney, we throw that one right out the window!
Romney's losses and gains as governor really can't be attributed to him- if that was your initial argument I would have agreed with you. Your initial argument was that Benen is lying because the 47 number is incorrect. You still have yet to prove that number wrong. Governorships and presidencies shouldn't be related and it's a false comparison for the two to be conflated, BUT if you're going to follow the premise that it's not a false comparison (which, by your argument, you are doing), then this means Romney takes responsibility for the net total gains/losses and the net growth under his administration. That same standard is being applied to Obama.
So when Romney states that unemployment went down to X we can look at X and see whether or not this was or wasn't true.
For the record if I were going to bash Benen on this one I would do so on the basis of an apples to oranges comparison. He's comparing job growth to that of the unemployment rate. The two are related, but not the same. However this wasn't your argument and therefore is irrelevant to the discussion.
"10. In a minute-long ad, Romney said, "My plan will create 12 million new jobs over the next four years."
Putting aside the pesky detail that Romney doesn't actually have a specific jobs plan, the fact remains that if we do nothing, we're on track to create 12 million new American jobs over the next four years anyway."
Both statements are false. The CBO lays out a number of condtions that have to be created in order to get the 12 million right there in black and white in the report. Doing nothing is not even slightly true.
Doing nothing here means changing nothing from the current policies put into place. The CBO has scored this and has said that approximately 12 million jobs will be created and the recession will be over by 2016 if no policies are made.
If your complaint here is at the use of the term "nothing" then you are correct- government would still be functioning so it wouldn't technically be "nothing." If your complaint here is that the number is incorrect, then you are lying.
That is absoultey incorrect, not at all the language in the CBO report Go read the actual CBO report and THEN quote me the assumptions, not the language the blogger used.
One correction is was the Moody's report not the CBO reprot they were quoting.
Here's is the language that you (and Benen) omitted
Now hoepfully we can agree that "doing nothing" is a complete lie, because at a miniumum doing nothing would mean ending the Bush era tax rates for all, not for those under $250,000 as they are currently scheduled to do at the end of this year.
No- you are making a strawman argument. Doing nothing banned means that all the policies in effect at the time the report was given would stay in effect. This would mean that the current tax rates stay in place, but that they are neither raised or lower. That is what Benen means when he states doing nothing. At no point in time did Benen assert otherwise. You're using a favorite tactic of the GOP which is strawman literalism. This is the same kind've argument that GOPers use to deny global warming and to deny that hate crimes are real. They take the title of those words and assume that in the former case if snow happens that debunks the idea of global warming (after all snow=cold and warming=the opposite of cold!) and that if a crime is committed with hate (as most are) this therefore debunks the idea that hate crimes can be committed (which is so paradoxical it causes tiny nuclear explosions to go off in my skull). You're deliberately misrepresenting what Benen said by pandering to the ambiguity of the statement nothing and then are applying to it a definition that wasn't intended, implied, or stated outright. It's disingenuous at best and slimy politics at worse.
I also love the arrogance here. Apparently you think I didn't read the CBO report directly, but instead just read Maddowblog. Who the hell said that I didn't read the CBO report???? You just make this accusation solely on the fact that I'm not agreeing with you. You aren't 100% correct 100% of the time dude. You can be wrong and you aren't better than me or anyone else. What IS IT with this arrogance bullcrap from people on the right. Liberals disagree with you on the basis of facts. Now we can disagree about what the data is saying, but the data itself doesn't change. For you to presume that because I'm disagreeing about what the data is saying that this therefore means I'm completely ignorant and not as awesome as you is just a. silly and b. horrifically arrogant and condescending. Get over yourself dude.
"Doing nothing banned means that all the policies in effect at the time the report was given would stay in effect. This would mean that the current tax rates stay in place, but that they are neither raised or lower"
Nope 100% wrong. No economic forecast works that way and as you can see the one from Moody's does not. It assumes policies not in place now, and not in place then, for example tax cuts for only those making less than $250,000
Sorry you did well before but on this one the plain language in the report that Benen himself links to makes the irrefutatbly wrong.
Sorry, but you're a jackass.
too bad and to think i complimented you below on not name calling
your post was quite clearly 100% wrong as was Benen's I'm sorry that you can't accept that and got so frustrated that you're only comeback was name calling
As is quite clear ,none of the policies upon which the 12million jobs report was based was in place at the time it was written or now as they make quite clear in the report itself
"We also assume a bipartisan deal to scale back sequestration and achieve a long-run fiscally sustainable path, with Democrats accepting reforms to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for the increase in top tax rates."
Reminds me of 'The Wizard of Oz", a horse of a different color every day. Yes, he leads not from behind but with his behind. He is the closest thing to a horse's behind I've ever come to see in national politics, and I'm old.
Wondering why oil and gas prices seem totally disconnected from economic fundamentals?
Maybe this is why: Broken in drunken blackout buys 60% of world oil supply, drives up price $1.50/barrel.
If one guy can do this in a couple hours, what can 100 traders do?
Good lord this makes my skin crawl...
Minor point: the buyer bought 60% of available spot market options. Most world oil does not trade on the spot market, but with longer term contracts.
But, yes, it does show that moderate amounts of hot money can manipulate the oil markets, at least temporarily.
Patrick:
not only that but as the writer of the original fails to understand this was done after hours and the market returned to normal immeditately after reopening. similar gyrations happen all the time in the after hours equities markets and then disappear upon reopening.
Yes, I know the market "returned to normal" from this one incident. That's not the point.
The fact checkers are over-sampling Democratic reality and under-sampling Republican reality!
"2. In same speech, Romney said, "You realize we have fewer ships in the Navy than any time since 1917."
This one again? Romney dropped this lie a while ago, but it's apparently back."
This is quite literally true and also quite literally irrelevant but Benen can't be happy to characterize it that way. It has to be a lie even though it's not.
...dude you misuse the term lie all the time. Seriously you're going to add "hypocrite" to your repertoire by going after Benen for misusing it? If you had left this bit of snark out and had just clarified that by definition this statement isn't a lie, but is just silly OK that would've been one thing. But you just couldn't help going that extra jerk step? Seriously what is up with you??
It's not a lie. Period
if it is then prove it using numbers. Sometimes you want to be literal like in the job creation in Massachusetts thing and at other times like now you say literal doesn't matter. Pick a consistent spot and I'll stand there with you.
Based on the data at
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm
I'd say it is not so much a lie as a misstatement. The current number of total active Navy ships is similar to the number that were active in 1917. However, we had fewer active ships in 2007, 2008. The total number of Navy ships has varied between 297 in 2003 to 278 in 2007 and is currently 285.
You are upset that Benen misused the term lie by claiming that Romney was lying about the US Naval vessel status. I am not disagreeing that Benen is misusing the term, I am pointing out that you have misused the term and continue to do so on a regular basis and yet you have no problem ignoring your actions while chastising other people. I am not the one changing positions here; I am pointing out the hypocrisy of the positions you are taking. Try to keep up.
"37. Romney also argued, "One more thing this president has proposed, and that is the combination of the sequential idea come from the White House which is cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars in its own budget, which cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars, he would have cut a trillion dollars by this decade."
That's two falsehoods in one. First, the sequester would cut about $500 billion from the military budget, not $1 trillion. Second, Romney's not only lying, he's also condemning defense cuts crafted by his own party and endorsed by his own running mate."
No It's perfectly true (and a good idea to boot)
The sequester cuts somewhere around 500 billion give or take as Benen says. The one trillion number comes from the Democrats own budget proposals which estimate that as the "savings" from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/25/news/economy/debt_ceiling_military_spending/index.htm
But Benen can't be happy saying it's true and good thing. He has to pretend it's a lie, as he does so often.
Secondly, the defense cuts were not proposed by Republicans, that's another Benen lie:
"Ryan is correct here that the defense cuts were proposed by the administration, within the framework of "security" spending. He is also right that the additional $500 billion in defense cuts is the result of the failure of the two sides to reach a budget agreement on achieving $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.
It is also worth noting that Ryan, about a week after the Budget Control Act was approved, co-signed a letter expressing concern about reports that the administration was contemplating reducing defense spending "somewhere between $330 billion and $420 billion over the next 10 years." The administration actually requested $487 billion over 10 years. (Ryan apparently reversed two digits when he said "$478 billion.")"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/understanding-the-battle-over-the-looming-defense-cuts/2012/09/10/3ba236ac-fb9c-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html
The Republicans proposed non-defense cuts and the Democrats proposed an equivalent amount of defense cuts and the deal was struck. So yes it's true that the GOP did vote for the deal but it's a lie that they proposed them
Romney makes the statement that the sequester will cut $1 trillion and Benen says actually it cuts $500 billion. You say Benen is lying by arguing that the sequester cuts $500billion. Seems legit
No he doesn't
"which is cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars in its own budget,"
cartoon
BTW i actually like the way you post, no personal attacks or anything, so though we disagree, my hat's off to you
Romney gives argument A: the sequester will cut $1 trillion from defense spending
Benen counters with argument B: the sequester cuts $500 billion from defense spending which Republicans agreed to
You say Benen is incorrectly calling it a lie because the sequester cuts $500 billion from defense spending (Benen's claim) and not $1 trillion (Romney's claim). This is a complete contradiction
It does not matter that Romney is conflating 2 different situations to get to his $1 trillion figure. If $500 billion of that $1 trillion number Romney is getting at come from savings and not cuts then Romney is lying about that money being cuts to the defense department. If Romney is claiming that this comes from the sequester, but in reality it comes from 2 segregate policy concerns then Romney is lying by conflating the two subjects. So either a. he's lying because he doesn't understand the term "cuts" or b. he's falsely claiming that the $1 trillion number comes entirely from the sequester (which, even by his own argument (or at least his argument as you're presenting it) it does not).
"Romney gives argument A: the sequester will cut $1 trillion from defense spending"
No he doesn't. He says sequential when he means sequester of course, but then he says "which is cutting our military by hundreds of billions of dollars IN IT'S OWN BUDGET" (emphasis added) he ris referring to the additional cuts from Iraq and Afghainstan, not the sequestration.
Again I must be to the left of everybody because I think it's a GREAT thing. Our defense budget is about 47% of the defense budget of the whole world total! We have even, without Afghanistan, almost 700 miltary bases outside the US with about 200 in Germany alone according to the Pentagon itself.
Instead of accusing Romney of lying, we should be saying that not only is it true, it's not enough.
For those interested in doing their own fact checking about Navy history and ship counts, I recommend the site: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm
By the count on that site, the lowest ship count was in 2007 and today's count is slightly higher. Overall it has been on a slow decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union which dramatically changed our force requirements. Of course, numbers say very little about combat capability as others have pointed out. I vote for the "fewer horses, too" as the best response to this comment.
Unrelated digression for naval history buffs: The 1941, 1942, 1943 counts of Aircraft Carriers tells a dramatic story if you know anything about WW II in the Pacific. Both because historians agree we were winning by the end of 1942 and by what it says about America's industrial power in a time of national crisis.
33. At an event in Florida, Romney said, "We can't keep spending a trillion dollars more than we take in every year or we will be Greece at some point."
We would be so lucky as to have had Greece's history.
Obama: The Audacity of Hope - Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.
Romney: The Hope of Mendacity - One Out-of-Contect Quote at a time.
From now on, let's refer Mitt as:
THE ANTI-OBAMA!
Almost everything Mitt does is a mirror opposite of Barack:
Mitt started well-endowed < Barack started humble
Mitt bullied < Barack lost mom and dad, drug struggle
Mitt followed money < Barack served communities
Ann < Michelle
Mitt fails in politics repeatedly < Barack honestly wins respect and change in gov
Mitt uses old tricks < Barack seizes the future
Mitt's lies < Barack's truths
Mitt hater #s > Barack hater #s
On a side note...
Obama's campaign team watches PBS Newshour?!
Shields and Brooks are extremely helpful in pointing out political stats and scenarios
I hope our President pays more attention than Mitt!
There is a term called "poisoning the well". Most of the time, it is someone else poisoning your well by stating that every thing you say is a lie. But in Romney's case, he has poisoned his own well. He has lied so much, and been proven to have lied, that anything he says between now and the election will be assumed to be a lie by most Americans. Therefore, all this talk about him having a game changing debate performance is a joke. At this point, even if he tells the truth, no one will believe him. I guess he has never read Aesop's fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." At the debate, the wolves will come out and there will be no townspeople to save him.
At this point he could say, "Hello, my name is Mitt Romney, and I am lying" and... my head might explode. :D
Liar Paradox
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)
The only time a man has to sit on a toilet, is to do the dirty.
Romney uses this area of his body, to talk!!!!
In otherwords, Romney is speaking through his Axxx hole, and its smelly to say the least!
lies galore!
I have to thank Mr. Benen for this wonderful, continual post. It will be used as a fundraiser for my State Senate District Democratic Party. We will be hosting a fundraiser on Wednesday, Oct. 3, at Broadway Pizza in Fridley, MN. There we will all play a game called, "Romney Lies, Win a Prize." Every person attending the event will receive a bingo card with 25 squares on it. Each square will contain a separate lie that Mitt Romney has told during the campaign. As we listen to the debate, each time Mitt repeats one of the lies that appears on your card, you mark off the square. The first person to get five squares in a row, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, will win a prize. We have several good prized to give away. I have to confess that I have taken most of my bingo card entries from the Maddow Blog. If you give me an email address to send it to, I will email you a sample bingo card.
I'd love to see one.
From the main page of the Maddow Blog (in the column of links and other info along the right side of the page):
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)