Historic

[Image source: sent to me by a friend]

Tell Lies, Suppress The Truth

Repeat lies over and over, reinforce with propaganda, suppress the truth. It's a time-tested plan.

No, I'm not talking about the former Soviet Union, which had it down to a science. I'm talking about today's Republicans. The lies are so ubiquitous that's it's a waste of time to repeat them: they're repeated every time Mitt Romney opens his mouth. He's even re-running the "gutting welfare" ads that were laughed off the stage a while back. And continues to go with his "full-of-shit" (quoting Chrysler exec there) Jeep claim.

Suppressing truth. In a democracy, is there anything worse for a political party to do? Whether it's climate change information, or the latest analysis of their tax claims, it's their game plan. And they get away with it. "Low information voters?" How about "no information voters?"

How can anyone in their right mind, no matter how far right, who believes in democracy and the importance of an informed electorate vote for these guys? What happens if they win?

[Image source]

The Truth Shall Set You Free

On his way to the nomination, Mitt Romney made a career of lying, and he's doing it still. Presumably, he always will. What lies will he tell us as president? Willing to say anything to advance his self-interest, and doing so all his political life (I say "political" because I don't know about the rest, although he's told some whoppers about his status with Bain), Mitt Romney, one would have to assume, could make LBJs Vietnam lie and George Bush's Iraq lie look like words from the mount. That would, so you'd think, scare the crap out of anyone.

Doubled the deficit. Fifty percent of green investments failed. Apologizes for America. We need more teachers, we need fewer. Time for talk with Iran is over, time for talk. War, peace. War is peace. Peace is war.

It's usual that candidates run to the extremes to get their party's nomination, and then to the center if they get it. But Mitt Romney has been unique. He's run on lies, continuously. And, while doing so, appealed to the furthest right, right up to the debates when, suddenly, he materialized as someone else entirely. I assume his calculus is that, having nailed the teabaggers to his wall of lies, they'd never leave.  Information, to them, is like garlic to vampires. And he -- correctly, evidently -- figured that people who saw the debates as a way to decide for whom to vote (i.e. people who simply weren't paying attention till then) would buy whatever he chose to sell, no matter how opposite from what he'd been saying mere moments before.

And guess what: he's right. He and Fox "news" treat voters like the sheep they actually are. Because it's true, and it works. Surrounded, in my life, by people who think and who pay attention, to whom politics is a topic of conversation all the time, not just once every four years, for a minute or two, I've gotten a very skewed idea of how Americans think. Or that they think at all. This election, if nothing else, has proved that you can win by banking on stupidity and inattention. And by "banking" I mean billionaires bankrolling the effort.

Speaking of which, right on cue, some Rs are now talking about limiting money in elections.* Once they get what they want, ie a Supreme Court for decades, as far right and politically active as Antonin Scalia, they'll wrap it up and make sure rich Ds can't do the same.

Buh bye democracy. Buh bye education. Been nice knowing you.
________________________________
* I read that somewhere recently and now I can't find a link. Maybe I'm starting to hallucinate. Next thing you know, I'll be claiming Romney told the truth about something.

Your Lying Eyes

They simply are incapable of being truthful about anything. If only the rest of their lies were as obvious as this crappy photoshop of a Romney rally. Oh, right. They are (and those are just the latest!) But who cares, right? Not, obviously, the people whose votes they seek by treating them like idiots.

Oh, and how about hypocrisy? Let's not forget that. Here's what he said about today's economic growth numbers, and what he said about his, when he was governor, which were worse. (Save yourself some time, if you want, and don't read the link. You already know what it says.)

I've asked before, and still don't know the answer: who's more deserving of scorn? Of whom should we be most afraid? Mitt Romney, or the people who buy his blatant, pandering, flip-flopping, lying bullshit?

[Image source is obvious]

Squeaky Clean Man Of Integrity

I'll never understand why President Obama let him get away with this stuff. Everyone but teabaggers knows The Rominee is a continual liar, so there's no excuse for not expecting it. The only thing I can think of is that Obama was unprepared for such a torrent of lies, and that they'd be so breathtakingly blatant. Maybe he realized Romney would only lie more in response, which is no doubt true. And maybe he thought such brazen falsehoods would be rejected by voters and that they'd speak for themselves. In that, he surely misjudged the gullibility and carelessness of so many voters. Didn't appreciate the extent to which their desire for facts, and ability to tell them from fiction, has been carefully removed by RWS™ and Fox "news" for years.

If the election turns on this kind of lying, and on the false creation of Barack Obama as America-hating Nazi Communist Socialist Muslim Kenyan Manchurian terrorist-appeaser, instead of on the choice between two very different economic and political approaches to our future (granted, Romney has obscured his most deliberately and effectively, to the point that who the hell knows), it'll mean that the approaching fiscal cliff is irrelevant; because we'd have long since abandoned any measure of caring at all. Deep, deep sigh.

Ping Pong

It's starting to feel like watching an insane match of a game with no rules. Romney says something that whips your head around, then his campaign walks it back. I have no idea if this is planned (he says something to pander to his audience of the moment, knowing it'll get more coverage than the walking back, so he gets it both ways?) or if Mitt's really such a loose canon. (Yes, I know.)

If they were paying actual attention -- that is, if his voters had anything on their minds other than getting rid of the black guy at any cost -- you'd think Rs and teabaggers, the thoughtful among them, would be starting to worry. Who the hell is their Rominee? We know he's not going to tell us. Is he for legislation further to limit abortions, or not? Is he for reducing government -- especially the part that helps those that don't have private schools and security -- or not? Does he have a tax plan, or not? Cover pre-existing conditions, or not? Will he roll over onto his back whenever his billionaires demand it, or will he, finally, stand up for something. And if he would, what the heck would it be? In his career -- heck, in the last week! -- he's stood for everything. In a rational world, there'd be a limit to his empty willingness to say any damn thing, a point beyond which people wouldn't follow him.

It's hardly news that Mitt Romney is such a liar, willing to say anything to anyone at any time, and deny it -- or have his handlers do it -- later. What absolutely astounds me, and depresses me enough that I lie awake thinking about it, is that when he does it, people don't care. Flock to him, in fact. How is it that a single debate, in which he tossed every previous position overboard like dolphins caught in a tuna net, in which he straight-up lied about his (mostly absent from the debate) opponent's accomplishments, can have changed so many minds in his favor?

You'd think, as he left his previous supporters behind like road kill, and as "undecideds" saw what he was doing (assuming "undecideds" are capable of "seeing"), he would have dropped off the public stage like someone who lies and flip-flops and drops off the public stage.

But this is America, land of the freed-from-facts, home of the bravado. Watchers of Fox "news" and listeners to Rush Limbaugh.

Some things are controversial, subject to interpretation. Others are as obvious as sunrise on a clear fall morning: like the fact that Mitt Romney has made a career of changing every single position he's ever held, and is doing so even as we byte. There's no way for the hardest of his hard-core supporters (okay, I doubt he has much in the way of hard-core supporters; just people who want to avoid taxes or people who don't care as long as ... you know...) to be able to predict, based on anything he says, what he'd actually do as president. About that, there can be no argument. Really. There's never been anyone remotely like him, in terms of central vacuity, unrepentant lying, and enthusiastic changing of positions like Ron Jeremy used to.

Of course, Bill Clinton says it much better than me:

Uncountable

For anyone who believes Mitt Romney isn't a liar, and didn't lie during the debate, this is worth a read. At the end of the very long list of debate lies, with links to facts in each case, there are additional links to thirty-six other posts chronicling The Rominee's never-ending mendacity. The total number of lies is overwhelming. Here's but a sampling:

... 4. In the same speech, Romney said Obama "spending more and more, borrowing more and more, putting us on a road to Greece."
That's painfully untrue.
5. In Wednesday night's debate, Romney said, "I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about."
Independent analysts determined the proposed across-the-board rate cut wouldcost $5 trillion.
6. Romney said, "I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy."
That's not true. The wealthy would receive a massive, disproportionate tax breakunder the Romney plan.
7. Romney said, "[G]asoline prices have doubled under the president."
To blame gas prices on the president's policies is ridiculously untrue.
8. Romney said, "I'm not going to cut education funding. I don't have any plan to cut education funding and grants that go to people going to college."
That's a lie.
9. Romney argued, "Energy is critical, and the president pointed out correctly that production of oil and gas in the U.S. is up. But not due to his policies. In spite of his policies. Mr. President, all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land."
Wrong. ...

The most straight-up, out-and-out, flying in the face of reality without a care in the world lie of all -- equivalent to claiming Moses came over on the Mayflower or that two plus two is ten -- is that the president doubled the deficit. There's no planet, no math, not even "new math," in which that's true. By any measure. The deficit is less than it was when Bush slithered away, and continues to drop. It's high, that's for sure. But to say it's doubled is to assume the people to whom you're speaking are stupid. Which, if they believe it, they are.

What kind of person says something so totally false, in front of a nation of viewers? With access to, say, the internet. I guess we know: an amoral cipher, with no beliefs of his own. Confident that enough voters have been Foxified into dumb acceptance or too distracted by the latest conspiracy theory to care about anything else.

What are the chances people impressed with Romney's debate performance will get the facts and reconsider? One thing for sure: The Rominee and his team answered that question to themselves before embarking on the plan to lie their way through it: approximately zero. That's why they chose to aim for the low-information voters, and to keep them that way.

Imagine the conversations that went on in Romney's debate prep: "We have something we think will work for you, Governor, but it's a lie." "And your problem with that is.... what?"

[I wrote this one the day after the debate. Little did I know how effective it would be, how much teabaggers prefer lies to truth, how they rally when they hear them, like blood into corpora cavernosa.]

[And here's another lie, hot off the presses.]

 [Image source]

Strategy

In an exclusive interview with America's finest news source, The Rominee has explained his recent turnaound in the polls:

“I’m lying a lot more, and my lies are far more egregious than they’ve ever been,” a smiling Romney told reporters while sitting in the back of his campaign bus, adding that when faced with a choice to either lie or tell the truth, he will more than likely lie. “It’s a strategy that works because when I lie, I’m essentially telling people what they want to hear, and people really like hearing things they want to hear. Even if they sort of know that nothing I’m saying is true.”

“It’s a freeing strategy, really, because I don’t have to worry about facts or being accurate or having any concrete positions of any kind,” Romney added.

Funny thing: I read that one right after reading a real article, about how Romney's family had insisted, before the debate, that he be allowed to "be Mitt." Following which, he jettisoned everything he'd ever said and began to ooze lies even more nonstop, like sweat in a sauna. So evidently truth and satire, when it comes to Romney and lying (and his family's okayness -- from familiarity, I assume -- with it), are as inseparable as his morals are separable.

Which is not to say it's not brilliant: a party that lies as strategy, supported by a news organization that does it as business plan, with supporters demanding to be lied to, anxious to repeat the lies, can hardly be expected to punish their candidate for doing what it is they so obviously need and want. Quite the opposite: they reward him with their votes, just as Mitt Romney (and his devoted family) obviously predicted: the more we lie, the better it gets. It's what we (or, at least, a frighteningly lot of us) have become.

And thus, on the wings of programmed prevarication, is the end in sight.

[Image source]

A Policy Of Lying

He'd respond, no doubt, by saying that his cuts are offset by eliminating loopholes. But until he can say how much money a "20% across the board" cut would cost, and how much would be recaptured by closing the loopholes that he's yet to specify, and about which experts say that eliminating every deduction (and, presumably, the ability to hide money in Caymans) you can't make it balance, he's a liar. Period. You can say he "won" the debate -- which he did, on style points -- but he did it by lying and contradicting everything he's said until now.

Making it even more clear than it was before: we have no way of knowing who Mitt Romney is and what he believes. In fact, I think it's pretty clear: he believes only in winning at all costs. Lying and changing positions at will doesn't enter into it: if it helps him win, it's justified. 

What would he do after he wins, if he does? No one knows, not even Mitt. To him, it's beside the point.

At All Costs

Just as the majority religion in America -- the one with a virtual monopoly -- likes to portray itself as under siege even as it's succeeding in worming its way into our schools and political platforms to an unprecedented degree, so is Mitt Romney's Republican party seeking to win by appealing to white people who've seen the black guy in their house as a threat to their legitimacy, their sense of entitlement. There are none so manipulatable as those made to feel threatened by forces beyond their control.

... The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, gave the welfare ads his lowest rating, four Pinocchios. The Tampa Bay Tribune’s Politifact was equally harsh, describing the ads as “a drastic distortion” warranting a “pants on fire” rating. The welfare commercial, according to Politifact, “inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance.”

Sharp criticism has done nothing to hold back the Romney campaign from continuing its offensive — in speeches and on the air — because the accuracy of the ads is irrelevant as far as the Republican presidential ticket is concerned. The goal is not to make a legitimate critique, but to portray Obama as willing to give the “undeserving” poor government handouts at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.

Insofar as Romney can revive anti-welfare sentiments – which have been relatively quiescent since the enactment of the 1996 reforms – he may be able to increase voter motivation among whites whose enthusiasm for Romney has been dimmed by the barrage of Obama ads criticizing Bain Capital for firing workers and outsourcing jobs during Romney’s tenure as C.E.O. of the company.

[...]

The Romney campaign is willing to disregard criticism concerning accuracy and veracity in favor of “blowing the dog whistle of racism” – resorting to a campaign appealing to racial symbols, images and issues in its bid to break the frustratingly persistent Obama lead in the polls, which has lasted for the past 10 months. The result is a campaign run at two levels. On the trail, Paul Ryan argues that “we’re going to make this about ideas. We’re going to make this about a positive vision for the future.” On television and the Internet, however, the Romney campaign is clearly determined “to make this about” race...

The longer campaigns go on, the nastier they get. Once unthinkable methods become conventional...

The thing is, the approach is working. Playing on white Christian fear and aggrievement, caring nothing about factuality, the Romney campaign has finally gotten back to the base(st) line. It's always worked, and Republicans have the most experience and expertise in the technique.* Plus they have the distinct advantage, having played to perfection the long game of misinforming and diseducating, of having potential voters who are more primed than ever to accept it. Nor should we forget they have unprecedented cost-free use of a well-honed and shameless propaganda complex.

A recent commenter seemed shocked that I think Obama will lose. As I do, she lives in the Pacific Northwest, where, although hardly an all-liberal bastion, there's a general sense of sense, even among Republicans; so it's easy to be lulled into not recognizing what American voters have become. And as we've seen, the story of Mitt Romney's life has been learning how, and willingness, to win at all costs.

(Here's an interesting article suggesting it'll be the last time the R party tries to win by appealing only to white people. If he loses, maybe so. But I'm not at all confident he will. And if they manage to put in place their programs, so devastating to our ability to compete in the world, it won't really matter what happens next: it'll be too late to recover. Educating our kids, helping to feed the hungry ones, providing a modicum of health care for them -- gone from the list of priorities, in favor of tax cuts at the top, and the war machine. Let's hope China and India will be kind to us, and share their inventions. And let's hope we'll be able to afford to buy them.)

___________________________________

* Sure, Obama and Ds are willing to raise fears, too. But they've been relying on the truth, at least insofar as politicians ever do. Their claims about the Ryan/Romney budget and its effects on education, infrastructure, health care, etc, etc, are accurate, and supported. As are their statements about voucherizing (a word Rs have been instructed to avoid) Medicare and its effect on costs.

Like It Is

Here's a former political scientist and researcher on that latest of Romney's lying ads, the one that sent me into insensate frothing:

Now, let me be absolutely clear about something. I've been paying very, very close attention to political ads for a long time. In my former career as an academic I did a lot of research on political ads. I've watched literally every single presidential general election campaign ad ever aired since the first ones in 1952. I've seen ads that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some). But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one.

You can get the details on those lies here or here, but it's something quite rare in politics. Usually candidates deceive voters by taking something their opponent says out of context, or giving a tendentious reading to facts, or distorting the effects of policies. But in this case, Romney and his people looked at a policy of the Obama administration to allow states to pursue alternative means of placing welfare recipients in jobs, and said, "Well, how about if we just say that they're eliminating all work requirements and just sending people checks?" I have no idea if someone in the room said, "We could say that, but it's not even remotely true," and then someone else said, "Who gives a crap?", or if nobody ever suggested in the first place that this might be problematic. But either way, they decided that they don't even have to pretend to be telling the truth anymore.

The article, titled "Lies Are The New Truth," is worth a read in full, if only for its inclusion of Newt Gingrich's defense of the ad by saying, essentially, well, yeah, it's not true, but I have no doubt it would be true if it were true. And, as is his wont, throwing in some of his tried and false lines about "the welfare president." (Newt, tell me this: does the fact that jobs disappeared under George Bush faster than your first two wives have anything to do with increased numbers of people getting government aid?)

[I wrote this one a while back, so it's a little dated in terms of timeliness; but not in content, especially since Mitt's come out with two more ads repeating the same lie, and it's clear he plans to build his convention around it, too, despite its demonstrated falsity.]

Revelatory

Anyone remember back, oh, about three days ago, when The Rominee complained about false political ads, and said something about how in the past, when claims were shown to be false in one, the ad was taken down? (I believe the term is projection.)

If you're not already convinced that the R nominee is a soulless lying amoral man who wants so badly to look at himself in the mirror in the White House every morning that he doesn't even bother to pretend what he says has any meaning, there's this: mere moments after his welfare ad was decried for its blatant lies, he's out with another, saying the same things.

So I guess his idea of morality is that when you're caught producing a lying ad, you take it down, all right, and replace it with another that repeats the lies, maybe changing a word or two.

It's consistent, of course, with the party that chose the sumbich: they're barely able to arise from their fainting couches over the fact that that black guy fights back. The party that smears opponents like a barbecue chef slathers a pig is aghast that Obama puts out tough truth against their low lies.

Mitt Romney, folks. Give him a big round of applause. Rising from (sure, let's give him some credit: maybe it's sinking into) the swamps of Foxorovian scum, he's the worst there ever was.*

_______________________________

*Okay, not being an A student when it comes to history, and trying to maintain a truthful, if a teensy bit hyperbolic, blog, I'll allow that, counting back to 1776 or thereabouts, there may have been worse. I'd love to be educated: has there ever been a major candidate who so thoroughly based his or her campaign on lies? (Okay #2: excluding vice presidential candidates and Congresspeople from states that get really cold in the winter.)

Mendacious Mitt

Steve Benen, formerly of Washington Monthly, in what must be a full-time job, has been keeping track of The Rominee's lies. It's an impressive list, and makes my attempts at keeping up seem amateurish at best. Here's only a few of his latest. At the bottom of the linked article are links to his past lists, which are many, and overwhelming.

1. Romney claimed this week that President Obama was saying success "is the result of government," not "hard-working people," when Obama said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

That's as obvious a lie as Romney has told all year. It's not even close to what the president said.

2. Romney told CNBC's Larry Kudlow, in reference to last week's massacre, "There were, of course, very stringent laws which existed in Aurora, Colorado."

Actually, that's the opposite of the truth.

3. On a related note, Romney said "it was illegal" for the Aurora gunman to have his arsenal.

That's not true. The gunman in Aurora purchased his guns and ammunition legally.

4. Romney told donors this week that Ronald Reagan was so focused on the economy after taking office in 1981, he told his aides not to schedule any national security meetings in his first 100 days as president.

That's so ridiculously false it seemed to thoroughly annoy Republican media figures, including Bill Kristol and Marc Thiessen.

5. Romney told CNBC's Larry Kudlow, "I think the president made an error coming into office and deciding that the economy would take care of itself."

I don't know what planet Romney's on, but on this one, Obama came into office and immediately worked on a stimulus bill called the Recovery Act. Romney probably should have heard of it -- he's condemned it many times.

I read somewhere the other day a quote by a R strategist; it was after Mitt's European presidementia praecox tour. "Romney can't win," he said. "But Obama can lose." Therefrom ariseth the strategy: lie so much, so continuously and thoroughly, that people will stop trying to point it out (the media certainly have), and it'll stand. But it's unprecedented to have a candidate base his entire pitch on nothing else but lies about a sitting president. Afraid to commit to anything, or to reveal what little of the disastrous plans he has, Romney lets loose lies the way a malabsorber lets loose gas. And he's been gifted by the Foxorovians with an electorate fully softened into submission. The lies work. People actually believe Romney's blatant lies, and it speaks volumes about the state of our democracy.

If Mitt Romney wins, we'll deserve everything we get, awful as it'll be.

Sine Qua Non

If you need an example of the pot-calling-the-kettle-African-American strategy of the R party, and of their Rominee in particular, look no further than this video. This, from the man who lies constantly, who's barely uttered a word about Barack Obama that's not demonstrably false. And, as more information comes out, even the above ad turns falser and falser, like the Marshall family's chests. Over time. It's Rovomcconnellboehnerhannitianism par excellence: accuse Ds of doing what you've been doing since day one, while expressing Louisrenaultian outrage.

If Obama fudges, Rominee packs fudge...

As I've said many times, even though it appears to be effective, I don't much like the line of attack on Bain. To me, the point is that what Mitt did there has nothing, zero, to do with how a president might manage the economy. (As the President just said.) And the more important point is what the budget that The Rominee loves will do to the economy.

As response to the above ad, I think the Obama campaign needs to make ads listing the lies of Romney, and throwing the line back at him: America expects more from a president.

Only problem is, it'd take way more than thirty seconds. Maybe a series, lasting from now till November. That'd cover about half of 'em. (Turns out, there is such an ad, but since it lasts longer than thirty seconds, it'll never be on TV.)

Related, here's an opinion piece by a conservative writer which exemplifies the sort of false equivalency that people apply to Obama and Romney:

Mitt Romney's unusually frequent flip-flops, shameless misrepresentations of the truth, and brazen pandering has caused some pundits to marvel at how dishonorable he is. "How did this happen?" Scott Galupo asks. "How did we come to this pass, where a man like Mitt Romney -- whose candidacy represents a breathtakingly cynical, borderline nihilistic pursuit of power on behalf of a tiny sliver of the population -- sits within striking distance of the highest office in the land?"

I won't defend the Republican nominee. But I am a bit confused by all the folks who aren't as disgusted by President Obama's performance on these metrics. This is, after all, a man who misrepresented his core to the electorate in 2008, constantly asserting that systemic reform would be his first priority in Washington, D.C., only to arrive in the White House and work within the system.

Admitting that Romney's lies are shameless and brazen and dishonorable (he links to another conservative who calls Rominee "loathsome"), he moves on fast -- nothing to see here -- and comes up with a list of Obama's transgressions which he suggests are equivalent. (Wow! "... worked within the system." The monster!!) They're not. Apples and... really small apples. Obama made some unfulfilled promises, all right, but he was thwarted at every turn when he tried to carry them out. Closing Gitmo is frequently cited, for example, as an Obama lie. But it was Congress -- Rs, mostly, of course -- that refused to allow it; which hardly makes it a lie, or in any way comparable to deliberately lying about what is already known. And so it goes.

I'm not saying Obama doesn't play footsie with the truth; and I agree with Friedersdorf that we've gotten pretty blasé about what we accept from politicians in terms of honesty. But I see enormous orders of magnitude of difference between the things that Obama has done or not done, said or not said, and what The Rominee says daily: if the former sometimes stretches the truth, or has failed to pull off what he said he would, the latter takes the truth and smothers it, boils it, turns it into something unrecognizable, and feeds it back as its opposite, to be gobbled up by Foxified R voters like chocolate pudding, with which it shares certain features, from a distance, and absent the senses of taste or smell.