Pundits of the Right Lie and Spin for Romney

The nerve of Romney to try and score political points on Libya once again underscores he will say and do anything including hurting our national security if it gets him votes.  This time it backfired when Candy Crowley told Romney that Obama did bring up act of terror the next morning after the Libya attacks.  Romney went out with his press release attacking Obama before the President even knew four of our people had been killed that night.   Romney wanted to score political points on the night of the attacks the same as he did last night.  Romney and his advisers don't have the decency to wait until the investigation is complete before launching their attacks.  
I said exactly the same thing about the Democrats attacking President  on the photos released from Air Force One as he was flying to Offutt AFB, NE, to a secure facility the night of 9/11.  Politicians of both parties would be better served to keep their mouths shut and allow the President to hand foreign affairs.
Obama takes on Romney's comments and schools Romney about his job as President and Commander in Chief while Romney just sets there with a pained look because he stepped in it but then Romney comes right back again which shows a total lack of class and when he got shot down with the facts.  
Right after the debate Romney, his wife, and family immediately left the debate forum while the Obama's stayed for 45 minutes talking to voters, signing autographs, and having their pictures taken.  That says it all about who won the debate and no amount of spin from the right can changed what happened or the number of lies Romney told.
Romney with his penchant for lying scares the living daylights out of me.

Here are some links from the debate.  Couldn't believe Fox News reporting Crowley tried to 'walk back' her remarks but she never did as she was on with Anderson Cooper later last night confirming what she had said.  The media of the right will say anything to prop up Romney just like Republicans.  Lies make zero difference to these people as the links below prove:

Candy Crowley Stands By Her Debate Fact Check 

Fox's Kelly Pushes False Claim That Crowley Tried To "Walk Back" Her Debate Fact Check Of Romney 

Limbaugh: Obama Can Claim He Called Libya Attack An "Act Of Terror" But "Everybody Knows He Didn't 

"Tucker Carlson: "Fundamentally Dishonest" For Crowley To Correctly Note Obama Called Benghazi Attack An Act Of Terror 

Fox's Sean Hannity: "I'm Glad To Hear Romney Repeat My Refrain" Of Economic Falsehoods  

Fox's Perino Thinks Obama Eating Steak And Potatoes Is "Pandering To The Blue-Collar Worker" 

Conservative Medi Attack Debate Question On Pay Equity As "Feminazi" Lie, Call Questioner "Tool"  

Right-Wing Media Try To Distract From Debate By Attacking Michelle Obama 

Wash. Times Column Praising Romney On Guns Omits His Assault Weapons Flip Flop

Think Progress: Romney Told 31 Myths (Lies) in 41 Minutes

Will someone please answer the basic question of how Republicans can prop up Romney who doesn't think twice about lying?  He upped his total of Myths or in plain talk lies in the second debate.  As I was watching the debate I kept thinking that  Romney came across as the boss you cannot stand.  He was arrogant and tried to badger not only the moderator but Obama by interrupting and acting like a spoiled brat.  This time Obama and the Moderator Candy Crowley were having none of the Romney entitled to speak over others mentality to tell more lies.

Finally Candy Crowley called out Romney on the lie Romney/Ryan and Republican pundits have been spreading about Obama not talking about it was an act of terrorism for two weeks.  Republicans on Twitter were trying to say act of terror and terrorism are not the same thing.  Do they know how dumb they look or is it because they don't care as the will they lie like Romney to prop him up.  Former NY Governor Pataki did when talking about oil leases where he lied just like Romney on the actual program which he was caught on in the debate.

Thanks to Think Progress for putting this together.  When Romney is the opponent, it is not an easy task as he tells so many lies during the course of the night sometimes over and over.  Then Republicans go out and call Obama a liar which is out of the Rove playbook to accuse your opponent of what you are doing.  I have had to quit using conservative sites for this blog because when I do the research I have discovered over and over they have a problem with facts.  Yet, the vast majority of more moderate to liberal sites provide links to prove their facts, but then they don't have Sean Hannity telling them what to do as he bragged last night.

At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes
By Igor Volsky on Oct 17, 2012 at 9:12 am 

During the first presidential debate in Denver, Colorado Romney managed to tell 27 myths in his 38 minutes of speaking time. But at his second encounter with Obama in New York, the GOP presidential candidate — who has run a post-truth campaign from day one — outdid himself and crammed 31 myths in 41 minutes: 

1) “I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We’re also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford school.” Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.” 

2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.” The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim. 

3) “And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent.” 14 percent is a one-year number. “Overall, oil production on federal land under Obama is up from 566 million barrels in 2008 to 626 million barrels in 2011, a 10.6 percent increase.” Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of Obama. 

4) “Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.” There are slightly fewer permits in 2009 and 2010, from between 8,000-9,000 permits to over 5,000, and they have not been cut by half. The oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, where it hasn’t begun exploring or developing. Two-thirds of “acreage leased by [oil] industry lies idle” on public lands, according to the Department of the Interior. 

5) “I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.” Romney is actually against a one-year renewal of the wind production tax credit. The wind production tax credit has led to $14 billion of investment in 2011 and tens of thousands of American jobs. 

6) “And coal, coal production is not up; coal jobs are not up.” 1,500 coal jobs have been created under Obama. 

7) “And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years.” Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.  

8) “I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada.” Even with generous assumptions, the impact of the pipeline on oil prices is unclear and may raise prices in midwest states. After all, a lot of that refined tar sands crude will be sold on the international market. 

9) “The proof of whether a [energy] strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more.” Gas prices are certainly high, but oil is a global commodity, and the president has virtually no control over them. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, Romney’s proposal to increase domestic oil production would not have much impact on volatility. 

10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.” As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found. 

11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.” This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it. 

12) “A recent study has shown the people in the middle-class will see $4,000.00 per year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.” Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. 

13) “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.” Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased. 

14) “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.” Romney did not ask women groups for candidates. Instead, prior to his election, a “bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.” They “put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions” and presented it to Romney after he was elected. A UMass-Boston study found that “the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.” 

15) “I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.” Romney has been uncomfortably silent on the issue of pay equity. He has refused to say whether he’d support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would allow women to sue for equal pay, and named four of the justices who voted to roll back equal pay in that Supreme Court decision as his models for any of his appointments to the federal bench. 

16) “I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.” But back in March, Romney expressed strong support for the so-called Blunt amendment, which that would allow employers to deny contraception coverage to women. Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood, where 76 percent of the patients seek low-cost birth control options. Defunding the organization would make it much harder for those women to obtain contraceptives. 

17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.” This is false. As Buisnessweek explains: Romney “opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.” 

18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.” Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers that spend too many premium dollars on administrative spending have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases. 

19) “He keeps saying, ‘Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.’ That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country.” Job creation is net positive since Obama took office in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression. Economists estimate that up to 3 million jobs were created by the stimulus alone. 

20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.” But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act. 

21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.” Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time. 

22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.” Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son. 

23) “It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.” Obama called the Libya incident an act of “terror” the very next day. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.” 

24) “Consider the distance between ourselves and — and Israel, the president said that — that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.” The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].” 

25) “The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.” Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.” 

26) “We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.” Automatic weapons are legal in this country. 

27) “The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.” The Justice Department’s inspector general “issued a scathing critique of federal officials for their handling of the botched gun-trafficking case,” but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.” 

28) “What I will do as president is make sure it’s more attractive to come to America again.” Romney’s plan to move the country to a territorial tax system would let corporations do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the U.S. This would encourage American companies to invest abroad, potentially costing the country up to 800,000 jobs. 

29) “Canada’s tax rate on companies is now 15 percent. Ours is 35 percent. So if you’re starting a business, where would you rather start it? We have to be competitive if we’re going to create more jobs here.” The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies. 

30) “And there’s no question but that Obamacare has been an extraordinary deterrent to enterprises of all kinds hiring people.” Under the law, only companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine — that’s just 2.6 percent of businesses. If anything, expanding health care coverage to more Americans will actually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. 

31) “He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy.” The possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.

The red bold are mine.  Reading through this makes me wonder even more how Republican leadership can support a man so devoid of honesty.  Also ready knew his chief anti-Obama spokesman, John Sununu, had trouble with the truth but I am seeing it from people I have admired over the years.

Obama won the debate hands down -- you want to read how much, please visit the Pink Flamingo Blog where the owner shows Obama has gotten that Western Swagger after last night!

Secretary of Explaining Stuff: Pres Bill Clinton

There is no one better to explain, then President Clinton.  This is vintage Clinton!

Marco Rubio Throws in with Romney Against Deferred Action

Marco Rubio is putting the Republican Party ahead of Country once again with this lie:

"The mistakes that Republicans have made is that we have allowed conservatism to be defined as anti-illegal immigration," Rubio said. "In fact, conservatism is pro-legal immigration."

Conservatives are the home of the anti-illegal immigration crowd.  Just go check out the states with the toughest laws on illegals and you will find those laws were put in place by hard right legislators along with Republican dominated legislatures voting for those hard right illegal immigration laws.  Governor Perry was taken out in the primary by the far right because he supported the Texas version of the Dream Act started by then Governor Bush and then carried on by Governor Perry.  How can you tell students who have been in the US in our schools most of their lives that they don't qualify for in-state tuition.  Some do not speak very good Spanish because they have been here their whole life.

With all the Romney lies, Rubio wants us to believe he would do something about illegal immigration that would help them?  What he would do is probably deport since one of his advisors is John Bolton along with some other hard right anti-illegal immigration people.  In fact some of his advisors are not too keen on legal immigration as they attempt to put them all in one box.

But the idea that Romney would be able to pass other reforms into law by the time he repeals the deferred action policy seems removed from the political realities of immigration in Congress. And Rubio himself seemed to acknowledge that Republicans need to approach the concept through a different frame and mindset. 

Marco Rubio is not doing the Cuban community where he came from any favors with throwing in with Mitt Romney.  Believe Romney will use him and throw him under the bus because he is not a rich Republican -- we have seen it happen more than once.  Why are Rubio and other Republicans willing to work with Romney but never would work with Obama on illegal immigration?  Shows they only care about the Party winning not the Country which has made a lot of center right Republicans really disgusted with the Congress.  Noted that some of the people who want to work with Romney were at the meeting the night of the Inauguration like Dr. Coburn (R-OK) who started working on details to obstruct that night.  I thought Dr. Coburn had more integrity then that but I guess I was wrong not only about him but Marco Rubio.  

Marco Rubio On Mitt Romney, Deferred Action: Not Upset That Program Will Be Ended

By  Sam Stein Posted: 10/16/2012 11:54 am EDT Updated: 10/16/2012 12:12 pm EDT 

NEW YORK -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Tuesday he was comfortable with Mitt Romney's decision to end President Obama's deferred action program upon entering office because he believes the Republican nominee will put in place other reforms by the time the program expires. 

The senator, one of the leading Republican voices on immigration reform, has called for a reform plan that many say prompted Obama's policy, which grants a special two-year deportation reprieve to young immigrants between the ages of 16 and 30 brought here as children illegally, provided they have a clean criminal record and are currently attending or have graduated high school. But even with Rubio's philosophical support for the concept of deferred action, he chose to bite his tongue Tuesday when asked if he was upset that Romney would end the policy, while respecting those temporary stays that have already been handed out. 

"What I'm really comfortable with is that [Romney] says he wants to find a permanent solution and, in fact, has now openly begun to talk about the idea that we were working on," Rubio told a group of reporters at a Bloomberg View event. "So, not to put words in his mouth, but what I'm fairly confident about is that if Mitt Romney is elected president, we will have a willing partner in the White House to find a solution to this issue along the lines of what we were working on." 

"We are going to replace [Obama's program]," he added. "I think his point is, we are not going to give out new permits because we are going to replace the system with a new one. And I think that is very promising." 

"I don’t know about hypotheticals," he said, when ased what would happen if a new system wasn't in place by the time Obama's program was revoked. "Irrespective of it we have to do this. It is not like this is going to expire in ten years. It is going to expire in less than 24 months. So either way we are on the clock."  

Rubio has criticized Obama routinely for "poisoning the well" on immigration reform by going forward with his deferred action concept without input from the Congress. He hammered that point home once more during his sit down with journalists Tuesday, noting that several unexpected Republicans -- Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) -- had expressed openness to working with him on immigration legislation.

(snip)

This story has been updated to clarify details of Obama's deferred action program.

Source:  Huffington Post 

A good friend told me I should support Charlie Christ over Rubio as Rubio was not the most honest candidate -- I should have listened.  Learned some valuable lessons in the last few years since those Republican blinders have come off.  Taken a lot to admit that the Republican Party is not the Party I grew up in but a party in this election of liars and pandering to wealthy donors.  They will lie just like Romney and obstruct bills for veterans jobs, farmers who have gone through a major drought, and all kinds of job bills to hurt Obama putting Party over Country.  Is this what the hard right is all about -- 'my way or no way' and if you choose not to follow what they say, then they won't cooperate in any way?  Is this the new Republican Party?

Ohio Secretary of State Appeal denied -- Early Voting Remains

Maybe it is because I grew up in Ohio where I cut my teeth on politics with my Uncle who was very active in Republican politics not only local and statewide but also nationwide, because I have been more livid then normal at what I have seen out of the Ohio Secretary of State  John Husted.  Doesn't take a genius to figure out that he is trying to do voter suppression in Ohio to give Ohio to Romney.  It is not working and now with this ruling all Ohioans not just Republicans will be able to vote the weekend before the election.

BREAKING: Supreme Court Leaves Early Voting In Place In Ohio | 

Earlier this month, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down an Ohio law cutting back early voting for most Ohio voters. Today, the Supreme Court rejected a request by the state to stay this decision. The Court’s denial of the stay did not explain the justices’ reasoning and did not include a dissent. Moreover, because their order only concerned the request for a stay, it is possible — if unlikely — that the justices will still decide to hear this case at a later date. Nevertheless, today’s order means that the new restrictions on early voting almost certainly will not be in effect during next month’s election.

Couldn't believed he appealed the unanimous ruling by the panel of Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  Read that -- UNANIMOUS ruling and yet Husted cost the state even more money appealing to the SCOTUS.  So happy to see that the SCOTUS rejected the appeal.  For two elections Ohio has had extended early voting but along comes Romney running for President against President Obama and Husted has put up a roadblock every step of the way.  One of the most obvious ones was when he was going to allow Republican counties to have more hours to vote then Democrat ones.

Secretary of State in Ohio needs to be ousted in 2014 but frankly with his dirty tactics and then he falsely accuses democrats for being the problem should oust him from office early.  He is sworn to uphold the laws of the State of Ohio not the Romney campaign.  He fired to long time County Board of Election people in Montgomery County because the lawyers told them there was nothing to prevent them from having longer hours in what they read of the SoS ruling, but when they wouldn't back down, he fired two of them.  Know that area well.  Husted just messed with a County that is pretty heavy Democrat, and IMHO they will prove it on November 6th when the numbers come in.

I have found the voter suppression in Ohio to be an insult to the people who have worked their whole lives to make the Ohio Republican Party vibrant again after years of losing Senate elections.  Now with one partisan Secretary of State, he has wiped years of good will away.  I think Sherrod Brown is going to clean the ultra-conservative Josh Mandel's clock on November 6th.  Mandel is an Aiken/Ryan clone IMHO.  I cannot believe I am saying this but if I still lived in Ohio, I would not only vote for Sherrod Brown but I would be out working for his election.  Brown is leading a crusade to get Citizens United overturned to take the huge amount of wealthy donor money out of trying to buy elections.

Romney has taken it to a new low level of dishonesty with his big donors who are routinely breaking the law but they will send in amended returns AFTER the election.  Anyone with a brain can see the Romney reports for his campaign are including money meant for the RNC.  Also never saw a campaign with so little data on donors -- far outside the norm.  This is part of what Sherrod Brown wants stopped along with identifying all major donors so no one can hide behind a group where they don't have to reveal donors.

Republicans are proving that when there are no campaign finance rules in place, they take full advantage including groups who hide donors.  Rules no longer apply if you are a Republican.  I hope the voters of Ohio have the final say in sending Romney to defeat along with Josh Mandel showing that all the ads being bought in Ohio by the Super PACs mean zero, zip, nada.  Voters need to show the GOP that their votes are not for sale to all the negative Super PAC ads and vote their conscience by voting for the campaigns who tell the truth not lies which means their votes would go to President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown.

New Obama Ad with Morgan Freeman -- Very Positive Ad

David Stockman: Mitt Romney: The Great Deformer

David Stockman has finally said what so few economist are willing to say, but what every last one of them SHOULD have been saying about Mitt Romney, the so-called businessman from the beginning:

Mitt Romney was not a businessman; He was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. 

That says it all right there by a man who served as Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman.  This article should be required reading for anyone who claims that Mitt Romney is a businessman or that Alan Greenspan had all the answers.  I could be wrong but looks like to me that Greenspan and the Federal Reserve were enablers to companies like Bain.  This Stockman article gives you a real insight into why Romney and his people along with Republicans should not be touting the Romney is a businessman label:

Mitt Romney: The Great DeformerOct 15, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

David Stockman  

Is Romney really a job creator? Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, takes a scalpel to the claims. 

Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise. 

(snip) 

Nevertheless, Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital, from 1984 through early 1999. According to the campaign’s narrative, it was then that he became immersed in the toils of business enterprise, learning along the way the true secrets of how to grow the economy and create jobs. The fact that Bain’s returns reputedly averaged more than 50 percent annually during this period is purportedly proof of the case—real-world validation that Romney not only was a striking business success but also has been uniquely trained and seasoned for the task of restarting the nation’s sputtering engines of capitalism. 

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better. 

That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance. 

So the vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise. I know this from 17 years of experience doing leveraged buyouts at one of the pioneering private-equity houses, Blackstone, and then my own firm. I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible. Occasionally, we did invest in genuine growth companies, but without cheap debt and deep tax subsidies, most deals would not make economic sense.

In truth, LBOs are capitalism’s natural undertakers—vulture investors who feed on failing businesses. Due to bad policy, however, they have now become monsters of the financial midway that strip-mine cash from healthy businesses and recycle it mostly to the top 1 percent.
The waxing and waning of the artificially swollen LBO business has been perfectly correlated with the bubbles and busts emanating from the Fed—so timing is the heart of the business. In that respect, Romney’s tenure says it all: it was almost exactly coterminous with the first great Greenspan bubble, which crested at the turn of the century and ended in the thundering stock-market crash of 2000-02. The credentials that Romney proffers as evidence of his business acumen, in fact, mainly show that he hung around the basket during the greatest bull market in recorded history. 

Needless to say, having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt-burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate. Indeed, the next president’s overriding task is restoring national solvency—an undertaking that will involve immense societywide pain, sacrifice, and denial and that will therefore require “fairness” as a defining principle. And that’s why heralding Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance. 

RIP VAN ROMNEY 

When Romney opened the doors to Bain Capital in 1984, the S&P 500 stood at 160. By the time he answered the call to duty in Salt Lake City in early 1999, it had gone parabolic and reached 1270. This meant that had a modern Rip Van Winkle bought the S&P 500 index and held it through the 15 years in question, the annual return (with dividends) would have been a spectacular 17 percent. Bain did considerably better, of course, but the reason wasn’t business acumen. 

The secret was leverage, luck, inside baseball, and the peculiar asymmetrical dynamics of the leveraged gambling carried on by private-equity shops. LBO funds are invested as equity at the bottom of a company’s capital structure, which means that the lenders who provide 80 to 90 percent of the capital have no recourse to the private-equity sponsor if deals go bust. 

(snip) 

By contrast, the 10 home runs generated profits of $1.8 billion on investments of only $250 million, yielding a spectacular return of 7X investment. Yet it is this handful of home runs that both make the Romney investment legend and also seal the indictment: they show that Bain Capital was a vehicle for leveraged speculation that was gifted immeasurably by the Greenspan bubble. It was a fortunate place where leverage got lucky, not a higher form of capitalist endeavor or training school for presidential aspirants. 

VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT 

The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies. 

The most emblematic among them was a roll-up deal focused on down-in-the-mouth department stores and apparel chains that were falling by the wayside in small-town America due to the arrival of Wal-Mart and the big-box retailers. Bain invested $10 million in 1988 and nine years later took out 18X its money—that is, a $175 million profit. 

Fittingly, Stage Stores Inc. was the last deal underwritten by the Drexel-Milken junk-bond machine before its demise. And the $300 million raised for this incipient LBO was exactly the kind of slush fund that Milken’s stable of takeover artists had used to acquire corporate castoffs and other bedraggled pots and pans that got rechristened as “growth” companies.
During the next eight years, Bain slogged it out, accumulating about 300 small Main Street storefronts under such forgettable banners as Royal Palais, Bealls, and Fashion Bar. Yet the company wasn’t making much headway. By 1996, it had paid back none of the Milken debt and was only earning $14 million—exactly what it had generated back in 1992 on half the number of stores. 

In the spring of 1997, when Chairman Greenspan decided that “irrational exuberance” was not such a worrisome thing, Bain Capital decided to indulge, too. It caused Stage Stores Inc.—which was already publicly traded—to raise $300 million of new junk bonds and used the proceeds to buy a faltering 250-store chain of family clothing stores called C.R. Anthony.
These 12,000-square-foot cracker-box stores sold mid-market shoes, shirts, and dresses right in Wal-Mart’s wheelhouse. In hot pursuit of “synergies,” Bain promptly rebranded these Anthony stores to the purportedly more compelling Stage and Bealls banners. While the name change did nothing to ward off the grim reaper from Bentonville, it suddenly gave Stage Stores Inc. the “growth” story that Greenspan’s bull market craved. Within five months of this ostensibly “transformative” deal and long before the results of the ritual “synergies” and “rebranding” could be determined, the company’s stock price had doubled. Bain Capital and its partner, Goldman Sachs, quickly unloaded their shares at the aforementioned 18X gain. 

As a matter of plain fact, the “transformative” C.R. Anthony deal was a bull-market scam. Almost immediately, results headed south. After growing 4 percent during the year of Bain’s quick 1997 exit, same-store sales turned to a negative 3 percent in 1998 and negative 7 percent in 1999, and were still falling when Stage Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. The company hemorrhaged $150 million of negative cash flow during 1998-99—that is, during the two years after Bain and Goldman got out of Dodge City. 

Bain Capital subsequently claimed the company was “a growing, successful and consistently profitable company during the nine years we owned it” but then immediately ran into “operating problems.” That was a doozy by any other name but typical of the standard private-equity narrative that confuses speculators’ timing with real value creation on the free market. The fact is, the bad inventory and vastly overstated assets that took the company down did not suddenly materialize out of the blue during the 24 months after Bain’s exit: they were actually the result of financial-engineering games from the very beginning.

Worse still, the Stage Stores deal embodied all of the hidden leverage that had become par for the course in the era of bubble finance. When the crunch came, the company had no assets to fall back on because Bain had hocked virtually everything; it sold all the company’s credit-card receivables to a third party, and among its 650 stores it owned exactly three! By my calculation, the capitalized debt embedded in its store leases was nearly $750 million and when added to its disclosed balance-sheet debt, the company’s true debt of was $1.3 billion or a devastating 25X its peak-year free cash flow. 

The bankruptcy forced the closure of about 250—or 40 percent—of the company’s stores and the loss of about 5,000 jobs. Yet the moral of the Stage Stores saga is not simply that in this instance Bain Capital was a jobs destroyer, not a jobs creator. The larger point is that it is actually a tale of Wall Street speculators toying with Main Street properties in defiance of sound finance—an anti-Schumpeterian project that used state-subsidized debt to milk cash from stores that would not have otherwise survived on the free market. 

(snip) 

The pointless exercise of counting jobs won and lost owing to these epochal shifts on the free market is obviously irrelevant to the job of being president, but the fact that Bain made $15 million from the winner and $175 million from the loser is evidence that it did not make a fortune all on its own. It had considerable help from the Easy Button at the Fed.

(snip) 

The lesson is that LBOs (leverage buyouts) are just another legal (and risky) way for speculators to make money, but they are dangerous because when they fail, they leave needless economic disruption and job losses in their wake. That’s why LBOs would be rare in an honest free market—it’s only cheap debt, interest deductions, and ludicrously low capital-gains taxes that artifically fuel them. 

The larger point is that Romney’s personal experience in the nation’s financial casinos is no mark against his character or competence. I’ve made money and lost it and know what it is like to be judged. But that experience doesn’t translate into answers on the great public issues before the nation, either. The Romney campaign’s feckless narrative that private equity generates real economic efficiency and societal wealth is dead wrong.

(snip)

In that endeavor, they got plenty of help from the inside management of spun-off divisions, which were usually marketed as a “key asset” of the business and eager to participate in the prospective LBO. Thus, Experian’s CEO, D. Van Skilling, and his lieutenants reaped millions from this Wall Street-orchestrated windfall before they had even been issued new business cards. Oblivious to the irony, however, Skilling defended Bain’s instant $165 million profit by insisting to Business Insider “there was never a hint of financial chicanery at all.” He had that upside down. The deal was pure chicanery, but not because the private-equity investors were underhanded. It was because they were artificially enabled by the central banking and taxing branches of the state—the true source of this kind of rent-a-company speculation. 

(snip)  

Wesley-Jessen had not then filed financial statements with even $1 of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income. But when Bain’s underwriters wired the proceeds in August 1997 the selling price was $23.50 per share. That’s 52X the $0.43 per share it had paid for the stock 25 months earlier. At the end of the day, massive leverage, fancy accounting, and bubble finance, not entrepreneurial prowess, were the source of Bain’s 50-bagger.

 (snip)

THE ITALIAN JOB 

In November 1997, Bain Capital pulled off a veritable capitalist heist in the socialist redoubts of the Italian Yellow Pages. On a $17 million investment in the Italian phone book, it took out a profit of $375 million. This was not only a 22-bagger; for Mitt Romney, it was the ultimate in no-sweat riches. According to the company’s CEO, Romney’s sole involvement was a cameo appearance during a due-diligence session: “He came into the room, asked a couple of very sharp questions immediately, shook hands and left.” Twenty-eight months later, in February 2000, Romney’s former colleagues at Bain located him during his tour of duty in Salt Lake City, where they wired his share of the winnings: a reputed $50 million.

(snip) 

Now hoist atop a stupendous house of cards, the raiders next went after Italy’s gussied-up Yellow Pages, paying $24 billion—or 180X net income—for a business that was slithering into the sunset. In fact, it is currently worth perhaps 1 percent of Bain’s exit price through a deal that top-ticked Greenspan’s NASDAQ bubble in February 2000. Never have a group of private-equity men laughed more heartily on the way to the bank.

The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund’s profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature. 

In short, this is a record about a dangerous form of leveraged gambling that has been enabled by the failed central banking and taxing policies of the state. That it should be offered as evidence that Mitt Romney is a deeply experienced capitalist entrepreneur and job creator is surely a testament to the financial deformations of our times.

From the Forthcoming The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy by David Stockman. Copyright © 2012 by David Stockman. Adapted by permission of Publicaffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Stockman’s book will be published in March 2013.

This article is heavily excerpted and the bold/red are mine.  For the financial information included in this article, please visit The Daily Beast to read the full background on why Romney is not a businessman.  Former Budget Director has done an excellent job of explaining exactly how Bain operated which is about 180 from how he is being portrayed by the Republican Party as their candidate.  Are some people going to be shocked when the real truth comes out about Romney after he election or are they still going to believe the koolaid because they refuse to acknowledge that they nominated an habitual liar as the GOP candidate?  Jury is out on that one.

Not a Good Week for Romney: Romney Flips to Anti Choice (Again); Told to Quit Using Those Killed in Libya in Speeches, and Biden Schools Ryan on the Facts

Does this mean Romney is back to having to shore up his hard right base again?   Never have seen anything like this where the candidate makes a statement and then his consultants/press people do clean up afterwards.  
Which Romney is going to show up for the debate this week is what a lot of people want to know?  Bet Obama is prepared this time for anything that Romney has to say.  Really hard to handle a debate when your opponent has done a 180 and lies so much during the debate.  Biden did a great job of handling Ryan and his lies for the Romney camp.  Does Ryan know that he has shot his credibility completely by being the VP candidate who lies almost as much as Romney?
What is with all the lies from the Romney camp?  People I used to admire like Gillespie are now out there spinning and or outright lying for Romney on where he stands on the issues.  Seems they cannot let the candidate speak what he believes (if he believes anything) if it is counter to what the hard right wants.
The Romney/Ryan camp has no class, ethics, or  integrity but has plenty of gall to use some of the stump speech stories like these to push their campaign forward:

• The mother of Glen Doherty, a Navy SEAL who was one of four Americans killed in the Sept. 11 attack in Libya, told a Boston TV station that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney shouldn't politicize her son's death.  

In the same speech, Romney went on to describe how Doherty was actually in a different building across town from the consulate, but went there to help once he heard about the attack. 

"This is the American way," Romney said. We go where there's trouble. We go where we're needed. And right now we're needed. Right now the American people need us."  (my emphasis)

• Much buzz re Ryan telling a (canned) car crash story in a debate with a man whose first wife & young daughter died in just such a crash.

• The father of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack in Benghazi last month, said his son’s death shouldn’t be politicized in the presidential campaign.  “It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue,” Jan Stevens, 77, said in a telephone interview from his home in Loomis, California, as he prepares for a memorial service for his son next week.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has criticized President Barack Obama for not providing adequate security in Libya, saying the administration has left the country exposed to a deadly terrorist attack. The ambassador’s father, a lawyer, said politicians should await the findings of a formal investigation before making accusations or judgments.  

“The security matters are being adequately investigated,” Stevens said. “We don’t pretend to be experts in security. It has to be objectively examined. That’s where it belongs. It does not belong in the campaign arena.” Stevens said he has been getting briefings from the State Department on the progress of the investigation. 

It was bad enough when Romney compared his Mormon mission in France to those serving in the military during Vietnam after getting a deferment from the Mormon Church.   Lot of bullets flying from the Viet Cong in France don't you know. (sarcasm)  Then he compared his sons Mormon missions and working in his campaign to serving in the military which is an insult to everyone who serves in the miitary.

Now he was using the Navy Seal he met who he couldn't remember 20 minutes after he met him at an event as four times Romney introduced himself according to what Doherty told his friend.  Saying Romney 'teared' up was a ruse IMHO because he couldn't remember meeting him at the time of the event.  Nothing compares though to what Romney said comparing his campaign to the two security people who gave their lives to help save the Ambassador and the embassy:

"This is the American way," Romney said. We go where there's trouble. We go where we're needed. And right now we're needed. Right now the American people need us."  

Rachael Maddow has it right about the Romney comments:

Rachel Maddow Wednesday night took issue with Romney's ham-fisted effort to compare Doherty's sacrifice with his own run for office. "Part of the problem is, here, Mr. Romney equating his running for office with the bravery Mr. Doherty had displayed trying to save lives in the armed attack in Benghazi," she said.

Maddow noted that this is hardly the first time Romney has tried to profit politically from the Libya attacks, recalling his bungled response to the Obama Administration's handling of the attack, while it was still going on.

"Since before the attack was even over in Benghazi," Maddow said. "the Romney campaign has tried and tried and tried to make some political hay out of it, to take political advantage of the fatal attack on the American consulate in Libya. It started before the attack was over, before American deaths had been confirmed there. It has continued with Mr. Romney's efforts to loop into his campaign now one of the Americans killed in that attack, as a sort of unwilling political surrogate after he's died." 

A lot of us have also objected to House Republicans led by Issa holding a hearing on Libya before the final investigation is complete.  It seems to a lot of people the House GOP was hoping to cast the Administration in a bad light.  Yet the Republicans including Paul Ryan voted against funds for increased security at the Embassies around the world.

One Republican, Congressman Jason Chaffez (R-UT) interrupted testimony to point out that the photo contained the location of CIA base on the map.  Chaffez couldn't keep his mouth shut as he decided to grandstand and in the process revealed classified information.  Minutes after Chaffetz’s outburst, committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) ordered the photo be taken down.

“Too bad he didn’t think of that before putting the CIA on C-SPAN,” Milbank said.

Milbank is 100% correct.  IMHO Issa should have held a closed hearing but that wouldn't have benefited the Romney camp so it was on CPAN.

Then to add to Romney's bad week, Joe Biden schooled Paul Ryan at the debate on Thursday night after Ryan kept lying and trying to repeat the lies of Romney.  It was awesome to see Biden in action.  GOP complained about his laughing but what is a candidate to do when his opponent is telling Whoppers right and left.  The funniest thing I saw was comments about how Biden picked on a kid -- Ryan is a long time Congressman in his 40's not some kid even if he acted like he was.  Do you want him a heartbeat away from being President?

This group of Republicans deserve to lose big in this election with their obstructionist tactics along with investigations by the House on issues they believe will hurt the President the most instead of what hurts the Country.  Who made these leadership assignments on Committees -- Boehner or Cantor?

Paul Ryans Tells at Least 24 Myths (Lies) in 40 Minutes (Think Progress Fact Check)

Noticed after the debate that Fox News and CNN seemed to be more interested in the fact that Joe Biden grinned and laughed at the Ryan lies rather then the fact Biden schooled Ryan on the truth.  Most people would laugh at the Whoppers being told by Ryan if they were in Biden's place as some of them were so incredulous.  My favorite is that the US would have the smallest Navy ships since before WWI if the sequestering cuts go through.  Obviously that received the highest rating of four pants on fire.  Are Romney/Ryan and the Romney advisers that stupid not to realize how big some of our carriers are today.  At least we know why Romney wanted 19 more destroyers, etc.  Does he not understand the mission of today's Navy?  Where is he going to find the men and women to man these ships?   Cannot believe anyone would compare today's Navy to before WWI.    

Ryan bringing up a canned car crash he uses on the stump against a man (Biden) who lost his first wife and young daughter in a car crash shows the lack of class from the Romney camp.  That was actually brought up on Twitter during the discussion of the OU beatdown of TX game.  Showed that someone was really irritated at Ryan.  How can the advisers not tell Ryan to lose that part of his speech.  I used to think that Ryan was very smart, but not anymore as Ryan will say anything the Romney staff tells him to say as this illustrates:

What could have possessed the Romney campaign to allow its No. 2 to recite a canned story about an auto accident—in a debate with a man who lost his wife and daughter to such a tragedy? Michael Daly on a moment even Palin could have avoided.

Fact Checkers were busy once again with Ryan spewing out lies right and left.  Romney/Ryan can tout their religion all they want but are morally bankrupt with all their lies.  Don't understand candidates lying at a debate when their lies can be so easily fact checked.  When your only path to winning is to lie, you are scum in my book.

Think Progress has done a very good job of Fact Checking with the links below:

Think Progress Fact Check from the Vice Presidential Debate Thursday Night:

Paul Ryan spoke for 40 of the 90 minutes during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate and managed to tell at least 24 myths during that time:

1) “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that [the Libya attack] was a terrorist attack.” Obama used the word “terrorism” to describe the killing of Americans the very next day at the Rose Garden. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12. 

2) “The administration was blocking us every step of the way. Only because we had strong bipartisan support for these tough [Iran] sanctions were we able to overrule their objections and put them in spite of the administration.” Even the Israeli President has effusively praised President Obama’s leadership on getting American and international sanctions on Iran, which have significantly slowed Iran’s progress. 

3) “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.” [T]he possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits. 

4) “The vice president was in charge of overseeing this. $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups.” Multiple reviews, including an independent review of all Department Of Energy loan programs by Herb Allison –- finance chair for McCain for President 2008 –- have found no “pork” in the stimulus’ funding of green projects, concluding that the loans were not steered to friends or family, as Ryan claims. 

5) “Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland, or on windmills in China?” As PolitiFact has pointed out, the money for electric cars in Finland did not come from the stimulus. Rather, it originated with the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which predated the Obama administration. The claim about “windmills in China” is also inaccurate. 

6) “When they see us putting – when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.” The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].” 

7) “You see, if you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don’t change for people in or near retirement.” Here is how the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan will affect current seniors: 1) by repealing Obamacare, the 16 million seniors receiving preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving $3.9 billion on prescription drugs will see a cost increase, 2) “premium support” will increase premiums for existing beneficiaries as private insurers lure healthier seniors out of the traditional Medicare program, 3) Romney/Ryan would also lower Medicaid spending significantly beginning next year, shifting federal spending to states and beneficiaries, and increasing costs for the 9 million Medicare recipients who are dependent on Medicaid. 

8) “Obamacare takes $716 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare.” Ryan is claiming that Obamacare siphons off $716 billion from Medicare, to the detriment of Medicare beneficiaries. In actuality, that money is saved primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, cutting waste fraud and abuse, and eliminating inefficiencies in the system. Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts, but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction. 

9) “And then they put this new Obamacare board in charge of cutting Medicare each and every year in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.” The Board, or IPAB is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending, should Medicare costs exceed a target growth rate. Congress can accept the savings proposal or implement its own ideas through a super majority. The panel’s plan will modify payments to providers but it cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403 of the ACA). Relying on health care experts rather than politicians to control health care costs has previously attracted bipartisan support and even Ryan himself proposed two IPAB-like structures in a 2009 health plan. 

10) “7.4 million seniors are projected to lose their current Medicare Advantage coverage they have. That’s a $3,200 benefit cut.” Enrollment is actually projected to increase by 11 percent in Medicare Advantage (MA) in 2013. Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, Medicare Advantage premiums have decreased an average of 10 percent and enrollment in these plans has increased 28 percent.

11) “This [Medicare premium support] plan that’s bipartisan. It’s a plan I put together with a prominent Democrat senator from Oregon.” Wyden not only voted against Ryan’s budget, he also called the idea that he supported it “nonsense.” 

12) “Eight out of 10 businesses, they file their taxes as individuals, not as corporations.” Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased. 

13) “[Unemployment is rising] all around America.” In August, the unemployment rate dropped from a year before in 325 of 372 metro areas surveyed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

14) “The average tax rate on businesses in the industrialized world is 25 percent, and the president wants the top effective tax rate on successful small businesses to go above 40 percent.” The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies. 

15) “He’ll keep saying this $5 trillion plan, I suppose. It’s been discredited by six other studies.” The studies Ryan cites actually further prove that Romney/Ryan would, in fact, have to raise taxes on the middle class if he were to keep his promise not to lose revenue with his tax rate reduction. 

16) “You can – you can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayer. It is mathematically possible. It’s been done before. It’s precisely what we’re proposing.” If Romney/Ryan hope to provide tax relief to the middle class, then their $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax code that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work. As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found. 

17) “So they proposed a $478 billion cut to defense to begin with. Now we have another $500 billion cut to defense that’s lurking on the horizon. They insisted upon that cut being involved in the debt negotiations, and so we have a $1 trillion cut.” Ryan has frequently gotten in hot water for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for in 2011. 

18) “If these cuts go through, our Navy will be the smallest – the smallest it has been since before World War I.” PolitiFact rated this claim as “Pants on Fire,” noting that “a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military.” 

19) “Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals.” Religious institutions haven’t been forced to “violate their conscience” by paying for contraception. Houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt from offering birth control. 

20) “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Try telling that to the 20 million people who are projected to lose their health insurance if Obamacare goes through or the 7-point million – 7.4 million seniors who are going to lose it.” The Affordable Care Act would actually expand health care coverage to 30 million Americans and all seniors will keep their guranteed Medicare benefits, despite Ryan’s fear mongering. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that very few people will have to enroll in new coverage. 

21) “We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people.”In March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” However, she did not endorse their view.
22) “When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material — nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five.” This is misleading and unproven. Iran now has enough fissile material, but has not yet enriched to the necessary level for a weapon. The Institute for Science and International Security says “it would take Iran more than two months to produce that amount if it started with 20%-grade uranium, and ‘several months’ to make enough for a bomb using low-enriched uranium. That would give the world community enough time to detect the operation and organize a response, ISIS noted in June.” 

23) “[Iran is] racing toward a nuclear weapon.” Israeli and American intelligence officials aren’t so sure. 

24) “We don’t want to do is give our allies reason to trust us less [by announcing a withdrawal timeline for Afghanistan].” It’s unclear how our allies would trust us less since they too agreed to the timeline. As Biden pointed outed, “That’s a bizarre statement. .. Forty-nine of our allies — hear me — 49 of our allies signed on to this position.”