M*therf#cking C*cks#cking Lying Piece Of Sh!t

Sorry. I guess I've finally lost it. I wish I knew more swearwords.

The title doesn't do justice to Mitt Romney's latest ad about Obama "gutting welfare reform," which, in the name of decency (and I'm nothing if not decent), I won't show here. But it's not hard to find. Sinking to a low wherein no carbon-based life forms can live, assuming an amount of stupidity of its audience that would be an insult to petrified wood, the ad is testament to a level of cynical disregard for the democratic process that would have embarrassed Saddam Hussein.

Romney's first ad against Obama was egregious enough, taking the president's words and flipping the context one-eighty. There was some blowback, about ten seconds' worth, but Romney defended it because the words they decontexted had, indeed, begun life in Mr Obama's larynx. And the dishonest ads have kept coming, one after another, as if truth has no meaning or value to him, as if he's -- and he is! -- mortally afraid of the truth, like it's garlic, or a wooden stake. This latest one, though, is a flat-out, surpassing lie of the first magnitude (if that means the most egregious the human mind can imagine). Even the R architect of welfare reform agrees. And what makes it so much worse than usual (except to a teabagger, to whom it's apparent that no transgression in the name of beating the black guy is too much to countenance) is not just that it (per usual) falsely blames Obama for doing something he didn't do; but that what he did do was, as has often been the case, to accede to a request from a bunch of Republican governors, including Mitt Fricking Romney himself, back then.*

Romney's lying. He's not spinning the truth to his advantage; he's not hiding in a gray area between fact and fiction; he's just lying. The law hasn't been "gutted"; the work requirement hasn't been "dropped." Stations that air this ad are disseminating an obvious, demonstrable lie.

All Obama did is agree to Republican governors' request for flexibility. That's it. Indeed, perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that Romney himself, during his one gubernatorial term, asked for the same kind of flexibility on welfare law that Obama agreed to last month. Romney, in other words, is attacking the president for doing what Romney asked the executive branch to do in 2005.

[...]

The Republican nominee for president is working under the assumption that he can make transparently false claims, in writing and in campaign advertising, with impunity. Romney is convinced that there are no consequences for breathtaking dishonesty.

And, so far, there have been none. Not from the press, not from his supporters, who evidently have no more morality than he does. If they don't give a shit; if they don't really care that they have a candidate who lies about everything; if they don't find that disturbing; if it doesn't cause them to question his qualifications to be our leader (or to call himself a decent human being) or worry what he'd do if elected, then why should he stop? He assumes his voters don't care or have been made too dumb to, and, from everything we see, he's sadly, sickly, depressingly, disappointingly, disgustingly, destructively, damnably right.

Absent believing -- against all evidence -- that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist who hates capitalism, there's literally no justification for voting for a guy who's this egregiously mendacious. Even then, you have to swallow a lot to vote for the unprecedented liar that is Mitt Romney. He's -- demonstrably, based on everything he says -- the most dishonest candidate a major party has ever offered up, and it says much about what they think of their voters, of how confident they are that they've dumbed them into obedient submission.

I don't care who you are or what your claimed values are: to vote for Mitt Romney is to admit you have none, that if you ever did, you've tossed them aside. If I weren't such a nice guy, I'd call him a bad name, like a big poop-head. Because that's exactly what he is, and it's disgraceful that half of our electorate can find ways to excuse a man such as he.

That Romney's kind of incessant, blatant lying is tolerated as "politics as usual" in what some claim is the world's greatest democracy ought to worry everyone, deeply.

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* Here's Bill Clinton's statement about the ad, which puts it in historical context, and makes even more clear how dishonest Romney is. And, in case it's not obvious, think what's behind and who's the audience for the dog-whistle lie of removing work requirements for welfare.

I Was Wrong

Yep, I was. I've been saying that Romney's experience with Bain provided no experience that applies to being president; that he doesn't understand the economy. Turns out he does:

Halperin: You have a plan, as you said, over a number of years, to reduce spending dramatically. Why not in the first year, if you’re elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you’d like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?

Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.

Of course. Deficit spending has been necessary therapy for the economy devastated by his party's wrongheadedness, and he recognizes it. In fact, he knows that now's not the time to be cutting spending the way his party is calling for. He's a goddam closet Keynesian. (I added that sentence for you, PT.)

So, yeah, he evidently understands the need for what Obama has done. Which, because it's his nature, hasn't stopped him from lying about it and campaigning against it.

Prevaricator In Waiting

Quoth Mitt Romney to the gullibles:

As President, on Day One, I will focus on rebuilding America’s economy. I will reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts. Time and again, we have seen that attempts to balance the budget by weakening our military only lead to a far higher price, not only in treasure, but in blood.

Sayeth the facts, were anyone to care:

He lied about other things military, as well.

That Mitt Romney changes positions like a gymnast is not news. Nor, other than the fact that his shameless lying gets less light shone on it, is the fact that he's a shameless liar. Like a burglar who never gets caught, he keeps doing it. And the above is hardly his most egregious fabrication. He's been repeating the lie that Obama apologizes for America like, well, things that repeat. While our feeble excuse for media blithely enable it. Look the other way. Don't give a shit.

Sure, most politicians lie. But Romney? He's made it his fundament. His central arguments are patently false. Following in the footsteps of such notables as Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, he's taken to lying each time he exhales, figuring (rightly), I assume, that it's what teabaggers want. Whereas those two ladies, definitionally pathological liars, are destined to be footnotes in textbooks everywhere but Texas, Mitt is the one taken seriously by the punditry; the one seen as the right's best hope to take the White House. (Or is he?)

Shouldn't Republicans demand more? Shouldn't he be held to account, daily, hourly, as this stuff spills forth? Can't the man who, so they say, rescued the Utah Olympics have the wherewithal to come up with something true, something consistent, something not cynically aimed at the dumbest amongest? Shouldn't our (liberal, lamestream) media call him out? Isn't that their job?

In a functioning democracy, where intelligence wasn't equated with elitist snobbery, where education was valued and facts were considered worthy, where so-called news organizations respected their own work and believed in the premise that informed voters are crucial to our form of government, you'd think so.

Wouldn't you?