Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Republi-CON Modus Operandi: Barefaced Lies

UPDATE III:  The Republi-con Party, aka The Just Make Stuff Up Party. 

Read the Washington Post, Romney’s unsubstantiated quote from union leader


UPDATE II:  The Chevrolet Volt, the European Car of the Year, is another subject of repeated Republi-con lies.

First, "the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had given the Volt its highest crash-safety rating. . ."

[Next, w]hat is the connection between President Obama and the Volt? There is none. The car was the brainchild of Bob Lutz, a legendary auto executive who is about as liberal as the Koch brothers. The tax credit — which is part of the reason conservatives hate the car — became law during the Bush administration.

'It's nuts,” said Lutz, when I spoke to him earlier in the week. 'This is a significant achievement in the auto industry. There are so many legitimate things to criticize Obama about. It is inexplicable that the right would feel the need to tell lies about the Volt to attack the president.'

In his regular blog at Forbes, Lutz has tried to counter what he has called the 'rabid, sadly misinformed right.' But he has largely given up. The last straw came when his conservative intellectual hero, Charles Krauthammer, described the Volt as 'flammable.' Krauthammer, Lutz felt, had to know better. Although he remains deeply conservative, Lutz told me that he has become disenchanted with the right’s willingness to spread lies to aid the cause. . .

Not to worry, though. With seven months to go before the election, Cavuto and his Fox News brethren will have plenty of opportunities to denigrate an innovative car, employing American technology and creating American jobs, in order to besmirch a president who had nothing to do with it.

It is, after all, what they do."

Read The New York Times, The Right Flames the Volt.



UPDATE:  "Mitt Romney is developing a Mirlande Wilson problem.

Wilson, for those not acquainted with the name, is the Maryland woman who claimed to have a winning lottery ticket worth $218 million. She had agreed to buy lottery tickets with money pooled from her co-workers at McDonald's, but then she claimed that the winning ticket was one she bought separately. As the New York Daily News has documented, she has since claimed she's not sure she won, she hasn't checked the ticket, the ticket is at her home, the ticket is hidden at McDonald's, the ticket is secreted away somewhere else, and now she can't find it.

On Wednesday, she called a news conference, only for her lawyer to tell reporters to 'go home.'

This was developing, by chance, on the same day I watched Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, give a speech in Washington. Like Wilson and her golden ticket, Romney was having some trouble getting out the facts. . .

No fewer than three Romney claims in that one speech merited PolitiFact's 'Pants on Fire' rating: that Obama led 'a government takeover of health care,' has been 'apologizing for America abroad' and is ending 'Medicare as we know it.' Romney's assertions that Obama 'is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare' and that eliminating Obamacare saves 'about $100 billion' were rated false.

That Romney resorts to such gratuitous falsehoods discredits his leadership more than his opponent's."

Read the Washington Post, The facts vs. Mitt Romney.

 
A barefaced lie "is one that is obviously a lie to those hearing it."

Watch Santorum "pull one out of his [bare] ass," at the Colbert Report, Rick Santorum Speaks from His Heart - California Colleges:


All part of the Republi-CON "not intended to be a factual statement" and "misinformation" propaganda industry

Monday, May 21, 2012

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Proving that Republi-CON politics is 'weird, and creepy, and . . . lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality," The Great Lecherer endorses Obamney, .  From the Colbert Report, Newt Gingrich & Mitt Romney Alliance Analogies

Monday, May 14, 2012

Obamney, Poor Little Rich Bully

Read the New Yorker piece by Edmund White, who was about seven years ahead of Mitt Romney at Cranbrook Schools outside Detroit, "about Romney and his bullying of a student who was perceived as gay (forcefully cutting off his long, bleached-blond hair), a familiar picture emerges. Romney was not a good student nor was he athletic; he was the manager of one of the school teams, a sort of default position for boys who wanted to be athletic and cool and popular—a water boy, in essence. He was considered a class clown, always up to rather cruel pranks. I can picture his situation, though it’s only speculation on my part (I’ve never known any of his friends, though one of his older brothers was a classmate). On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). When his father was president of American Motors, he lived at home and was a day student, an envied status. When his father was elected governor and moved to the state capital of Lansing, he became a boarder. Suddenly he was surrounded by other Cranbrook students and the strict “masters,” 24/7. He no longer had the constant support of his tight-knit family. Now he had to win approval from the other boys."

Read The New Yorker,  Cranbrook and Romney.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Success Has Many Fathers

Even flip-flopping fathers who denied you before.

From the Washington Post, So was the auto bailout Romney’s idea or not?

"Mitt Romney, Feb 4, 2012:

'The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.'
Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, April 30, 2012:

Romney’s 'position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that. The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.'"

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The State of Abortabama

If you use drugs while pregnant in Alabama, you best get an abortion quick.  Read The New York Times,

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The 'Love Child Father' Who Could Have Been President

UPDATE V:  "Beware the extreme narcissist. Although he may radiate a seductive confidence, he can justify and forgive himself for just about anything, given his belief in his own exalted purpose. He’ll lose sense of the line between boldness and recklessness. And he’ll quit the stage reluctantly, because he can’t bear not to occupy the very center of it.

What once drew so many people to Edwards and to Gingrich? Both men had an exaggerated and infectious certainty about them. In Gingrich’s withering sneer and Edwards’s shampoo-commercial smile, there was a seeming estrangement from any and all doubt. It is the kind of thing that assuages a voter’s anxieties."

Read The New york Times, A Shared State of Defeat.  

UPDATE IV:  "A man who seemed headed for the Oval Office may be headed to jail, raising the eternal question: Why is the flesh always weak?"  Read The New York Times, Brutality of Servility, which notes "[i]t's a trial without heroes, just liars and an abhorrent trio of selfish people trying to spin the story their own way."

Reminds me of that once upon a time, fairy tale president, with who Edwards was often compared.


UPDATE III: "The Justice Department reportedly plans to accuse John Edwards of misusing presidential campaign funds to cover up an affair." Read The New York Times, Edwards to Face Criminal Charges.


UPDATE II: The story gets uglier. Read ABC News, Ex-Edwards Aide: $1 Million Spent to Cover Up Pregnant Mistress.

If Edwards knew of this he needs to go to jail, and it is hard to see how he wouldn't have known.


UPDATE: Are we blinded by celebrity? Read the Washington Post, From John Edwards, lessons on celebrity and politics.

Is lying about a 'love child' an impeachable offense? Read CBS News, What if John Edwards Were President?

Just another narcissistic politician. (Yes, I know, another tautology.)

BTW, the National Enquirer plans to enter the paper's work on the John Edwards scandal for a Pulitzer Prize. If it wins the National Enquirer would have one more Pulitzer than Hedgehog News.