Romney lies

The Unending Campaign Of Lies

Dave Johnson — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 11:12:22 -0500

Wow, an entire campaign based on lies... Often they were simply ridiculous lies. (Remember when Romney said Obama will take God off our coins"?) The campaign even used doctored audio and video in ads to make people think Obama had said things he never said. So MANY lies! The country is divided by an entire political philosophy based on lies -- by an entire massively-well-funded conservative ecosystem dependent on lies. Half the country is convinced by this propaganda machine that the lies are true and that policies that never worked did work. So we are mired in this mud of lies that keeps us from solving our problems. Global warming, lack of demand, lack of jobs, lack of good wages, lack of energy alternatives, lack of good infrastructure... This environment of lies can't lead us anywhere good.

Romney Actually Said ...

Romney -- a candidate for President of the United States -- actually said that Obama was going to "take God off our coins!" He said Obama was waging "a war on religion!" He said Obama sympathizes with Muslim rioters. He said Obama was trying to keep members of our military from voting! A candidate for President of the United States said those things! This is not just insulting to the country, it is deeply embarrassing to the country. It is an illness.

Look at just some of the campaign lies at our Romney Lies collection. We were unable to even begin to keep up:

The Maddow Blog's Mendacity collection actually tried to keep up with all the lies. Just wow.

It is insulting to all of us, the disrespect shown in this willingness to just lie to us. This is the disrespect of a person willing to throw people out of their jobs, force wage cuts on the remainders, and pocket those wages for himself. It is the disrespect shown to a young kid who was chased down by a bully, thrown to the ground, and had his hair cut off.

And he still has another day of campaigning, and spreading destructive lies.

No More Lies!

Watch this powerful Neil Young video, The Restless Consumer.

The people have heard the news
The people have spoken
You may not like what they said
But they weren't jokin'

Way out on the desert sands
Lies a desperate lover
They call her the "Queen of Oil"
So much to discover

Don't need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don't need no Madison Avenue War
Don't need no more boxes I can see

Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace

People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'

Don't need no TV ad
Tellin' me how sick I am
Don't want to know how many people are like me
Don't need no dizziness
Don't need no nausea
Don't need no side effects like diarrhea or sexual death

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer lies
Asleep in her hotel
With such an appetite
For anything that sells

A hundred voices from a hundred lands
Need someone to listen
People are dying here and there
They don't see the world the way you do
There's no mission accomplished here
Just death to thousands

A hundred voices from a hundred lands
Cry out in unison

Don't need no terror squad
Don't want no damned Jihad
Blowin' themselves away in my hood
But we don't talk to them
So we don't learn from them
Hate don't negotiate with Good

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for efficiency
And pace...

Don't need no more lies.

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The Latest Lie: Now Romney Doubles Down On Welfare Lie

Dave Johnson — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:49:11 -0400

Candidate Mitt Romney is trying to "get the job done" of winning, doing anything and saying anything to accomplish that, no matter the hard done in his wake. After doubling down and scaring Ohio's auto workers with his "Jeep moving all its jobs to China" lie, now he has revived his "Obama gutted the work requirements in welfare" lie. The problem is that too many people are too busy to pay close attention, so they only see the lies and don't have a chance to dig for the truth. And many other people are watching FOX or listening to Limbaugh, so they will never hear that these ads are just lies. It just might work.

How Many Lies?

How many lies and tricks can you count in just this one ad?

"If you want to know President Obama’s second term agenda, look at his first: gutted the work requirement for welfare," the script goes. "Doubled the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps. Record unemployment. More women in poverty than ever before. Borrowed from China and increased the debt to over $16 trillion, passing the burden onto the next generation. We may have made it through President Obama’s first term – it’s our children who can’t afford a second."

Obama doubled the number of people on food stamps? Maybe the fact that 815,000 people lost their jobs just in the last month of Bush's presidency had something to do with people needing food stamps? Here is the actual record:

When Romney talks about jobs lost under Obama, he is talking about the left side of that chart, when the country was still suffering from the Bush crash! And just look at the tremendous difference the stimulus made, just completely turning things around!

The Worst Lie (In This Ad)

But the worst lie in this ad (can there be a "worst" lie?) is the one about "gutted the work requirement for welfare," The reason this is the worst lie (in this ad) is that we've been over this and over it, and every single non-Romney fact checker that has looked at it has called it a blatant, outright, flat-out, bald-faced lie. And here he is retelling it, betting that it will fool a few more voters.

Sam Stein at Huffington Post, Romney Revives Obama Welfare Reform Attack In Unannounced Ad,

As newsworthy as the ad's script is the way in which the Romney campaign released the new spot. There was no public pronouncement, at least not via email (the campaign did post the spot to its YouTube page). And it seems to fit a pattern. The campaign is throwing what it can against the wall in the election's closing days. Any movement it creates among voters outweighs howls it may cause from the press corps, the campaign believes.

Benjy Sarlin at TPM, in Romney Camp Going Off The Fact Checking Rails In Ohio writes,

In a blast from the past, the Romney campaign is also reviving ads (unannounced, yet again) that feature a debunked claim that Obama “gutted” welfare work requirements. Romney’s original welfare attack in the summer was savaged in the press as inaccurate, prompting Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse to respond that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

Does Romney Get Away With It?

Does Romney get away with it? Simple answers to simple questions: so far, yes.

P.S. this might be a good time to refer readers to yesterday's post, What Does Romney's Campaign Of Lies Say About Our Country?

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What Does Romney's Campaign Of Lies Say About Our Country?

Dave Johnson — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:52:56 -0400

Last week Mitt Romney delivered possibly the most dishonest presidential campaign speech in American history. It contains lie after lie, distortion after distortion, and trick after trick. The fact that a person capable of giving such a speech has reached this level suggests that it may be too late to salvage the country. Our institutions may be corrupted beyond repair.

In the Friday post, The Romney Close: No Lie Left Behind, my colleague Bill Scher examined just some of the specific lies in Romney's "closing argument" speech. Romney said Obama promised that the stimulus would create 9 million jobs. Obama did no such thing. Romney said Medicare has been slashed to pay for Obamacare. Of course it has not. Romney said President Obama did not stand up to China's trade practices. Of course he did. Etc., Etc.

In the speech Romney also repeated a flat-out lie he had used multiple times in the debates. He said that President Obama has "doubled the deficit." In the post, What Was Romney's Biggest, Flatest-Outest Debate Lie? "Obama Doubled The Deficit" I explained,

The US budget fiscal year goes from October 1 to September 30 of the following year. On the day that President Obama took office the 2009 budget year -- Bush's last budget year -- was in its 5th month. The projected deficit for that budget year -- again, Bush's last budget year -- was already $1.2 trillion. Click that link, and look at the date that article was published. Check the date on this one. Or this one from a conservative news outlet with the slogan: "The Right News. Right Now." It is dated January 7, 2009, two weeks before Barack Obama took office, and the title is Congressional Budget Office Projects $1.2 Trillion Deficit for 2009,

The federal budget deficit will hit an unparalleled $1.2 trillion for the 2009 budget year, according to a Capitol Hill aide briefed on new Congressional Budget office figures.

That was two weeks before Obama took office. That is the first of "four straight trillion-dollar deficits" upon which Romney is basing much of his campaign rhetoric. Except it was Bush's last budget year, not Obama's first.

Overwhelming The Truth

This is picking apart just one lie, showing how it is just a flat-out, blatant lie, intended to confuse and deceive voters. The Romney strategy has been to swamp us with so many flat-out lies that refuting them all would take a lifetime. And so they remain out there unrefuted. And if someone did spend that lifetime refuting each lie, there would of course be a dozen lifetimes worth more lies waiting.

Media Response To Lies Is To Not Respond

The "mainstream" media appears to have decided to the best way to deal with this level of deceit is to just gloss over it. They have largely responded to Romney's flat-out lies with silence, choosing instead to provide "both sides do it" nonsense, "he said-she said" excuses and "horse-race" coverage of who is winning and losing, calling the lies "strategies" and "attacks" to avoid calling it what it is. The lack of shocked and outraged response from all corners of the country shows that our institutions are corrupted to the point that they are not capable of providing our citizens with the informationment and empower needed to maintain our democracy.

The Calculation

The Romney campaign is betting on voter ignorance -- that the "base" voters are going to stay with him out of FOX- and Limbaugh-induced belief in the lies, or by outright hatred for Obama. They are betting that the remaining undecided voters won't know better and can be scared into going Romney's way.

Then, if they do win the office, what will they do with it? Who can say? What did 'W' Bush do with it? War, debt, corruption -- and year after year denying global warming, allowing the problem to get worse and worse.

Abuse

Lying is a form of abuse. It is a form of battering. It shows incredible disrespect to the people you expect to believe your lies. People who are lied to repeatedly lose their sense of what truth is, their grounding and their faith. They can become cynical, and no longer even able to trust those they should trust.

Lying to a country harms the country. Policies based on lies lead to disasters. A population that has been primed to believe things that are not true is a population that can be herded into outrageous actions. Look at the damage done when the country discovered that Nixon was dishonest -- to this day people cannot believe in their government. Look at the damage done when people realized that Bush lied us into the Iraq war. If Romney is elected based on a campaign of lies, what will be left of us? What is left us us already, that he could rise so far?

What does Romney's campaign of lies say about our country -- and US? This is a question we all need to discuss honestly. Can we?

PS, Typically, Romney's "closing argument" speech was delivered at Kinzler Construction Services, a company that the Obama stimulus helped to save. The company benefited from more than $650,000 in stimulus funding.

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Romney Willing to Win Without Honor

Leo Gerard — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:39:03 -0400

Mitt Romney kept quiet last week when the subject was rape and God’s will. He remained silent the week before when the news was all about Illinois factory workers pleading with him to stop his alma mater Bain Capital from offshoring their jobs.

At no time this year did Mitt denounce Republican employers who threatened their workers if President Obama is re-elected or condemn repeated Republican legislative attempts to suppress Democratic votes.

Throughout the campaign, Mitt Romney confronted numerous George Washington moments -- opportunities to establish an aura of honor. It takes moxie to tell fellow Republicans that voter suppression is un-American. Only a guy with strongly held principles would stand up to the firm he founded and insist they stop the morally bankrupt practice of offshoring jobs from profit-making American factories. At every turn, Romney chose the ignoble path. He kept his mouth shut rather than speak up for what’s right.

Just last week, an opportunity for righteousness landed in Romney’s lap. It happened when the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, said he opposed all abortions, even in cases of rape, and suggested that God intends rape to happen. Here’s what Mourdock said:

“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, it is something that God intended to happen.”

Romney could have specifically renounced this view – that God intends women to be raped and become pregnant as a result. And he could have underscored that position by ending television ads in which he endorses Mourdock.

But he didn’t. A campaign spokeswoman said Mitt “disagreed” with Mourdock on that rape thing, but still supports him. Since then, Mitt has refused to answer questions about Mourdock. And he’s kept airing his Mourdock endorsement ads.

Clearly, Mitt values a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate over a decent stand on rape.

Just the week before, heightened news coverage of the plight of workers at the Sensata factory in Freeport, Ill. gave Romney another opportunity to do the right thing.

He chose to do nothing.

The 170 workers at Sensata will lose their jobs at year’s end when Bain Capital finishes shipping the car sensor factory lock, stock and machinery to China. The workers have repeatedly petitioned Romney to intervene with Bain, a firm he created and still profits from, to stop the offshoring.

Romney stiffed them. The candidate who claims he would create 12 million jobs if elected president failed to make an attempt to save the jobs of these 170 workers at a successful, money-making American factory. He didn’t send the workers his condolences for personally profiting from their calamity. He has never even acknowledged the Sensata workers’ existence.

At virtually any moment as he ran for president over the past two years, Romney could have very publically deplored Republican attempts to suppress Democratic votes. That’s because virtually continuously over that time, Republican-controlled legislatures, Republican governors and other GOP officials have concocted a variety of measures to wrest from Democrats their right to vote. These include passing onerous photo ID requirements, limiting early balloting and aggressively purging voter rolls.

These measures disproportionately affect minority, poor, disabled, elderly and women voters, all of whom tend to vote Democrat. Among the most egregious examples occurred in Ohio where the secretary of state tried to limit poll hours in Democratic-dominated counties and extend them in Republican-controlled counties.

At any time during the massive publicity over any one of these incidents across the country – from Maine to Montana and Florida to Arizona – Romney could have stood up and spoken for fairness. He never did – not even after the Republican National Committee was forced to fire a shady voter registration firm that was caught in September submitting hundreds of fraudulent registration forms in Florida or after a Republican operative in Virginia was criminally charged in October with throwing completed voter registration forms in a Dumpster.

A simple statement from Romney would have sufficed: winning by means of voter suppression and registration fraud is craven and beneath the dignity of anyone seeking public office. But he said nothing.

Similar to voter suppression is the attempt at voter coercion that has been made by numerous employers this year. Just this past week, Mike White, owner of Rite-Hite, a Milwaukee industrial equipment manufacturer, threatened his workers with “personal consequences” if President Obama is re-elected. Earlier this month, timeshare mogul David Siegel, who is building himself a 90,000-square-foot, $100 million home, threatened to lay off his workers if President Obama is re-elected. Arthur Allen of ASG Software Solutions and the Koch brothers of Georgia Pacific, told their tens of thousands of workers they’d suffer fallout if Romney loses.

Romney could have acted as a shield for workers by condemning this intimidation. Instead, in a June conference call with business owners, Romney encouraged bullying. He told the business owners:

"I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”

What Americans want is a president like George Washington. The general’s appeal is not the quirky wooden teeth or odd half-finished portrait. It’s the never-tell-a-lie, step-down-from-power nobility of the guy. Romney, by contrast, has shown he’s willing to win without honor. He doesn’t seem to know Americans won’t elect a candidate they believe lacks nobility.

The Latest Lie: Romney Doubles Down On Friday's Lie

Dave Johnson — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:20:07 -0400

Mitt Romney told a lie Friday, scaring Ohio's Jeep workers with a claim that Jeep is shutting down US manufacturing and moving it to China. Now he is doubling down on this lie with a new ad. He is calculating that the lies will scare enough poorly-informed people to vote his way, never mind the truth. And we could see a president elected based on just lying.

The Original Lie

In Friday's post, The Latest Lie: "Jeep Moving All Production To China" (Plus #Sensata),

The things Mitt Romney says can just astonish you. Romney shows a wondrous perfection of the ability to smile and just say whatever needs to be said at the moment to make the sale.

This time he tries to scare Ohioans by saying Jeep is leaving the country and taking all its jobs with it (when it is really expanding into other countries) and then promises to "fight for every American job." He says this even as Bain Capital's Sensata is closing their factory here and sending all its jobs to China -- adding even more money to Romney's huge fortune.

The New Romney Ad

Here is the new Romney ad:

Here are a few responses:

Sam Stein at Huffington Post, Mitt Romney Releases Auto Ad That Misleads On Facts,

Where the ad goes from misleading to something more nefarious is in the text it shows. At one point, it displays a line from a Bloomberg story stating that Chrysler "plans to return Jeep output to China," the implication being that the company is moving operations there as opposed to expanding operations that are already there. Romney has cited this report on several occasions while campaigning and has been summarily criticized for doing so. Chrysler has denied the report, and multiple news outlets have called out the Romney campaign for using it in on the stump.

UAW: UAW: Romney doubles down on Jeep lie,

Even after Chrysler Corp.'s Gualberto Ranieri, vice president of communications, said Friday, “Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” the Romney campaign put out a false and misleading ad basically repeating his bogus statement made Thursday in Ohio that Chrysler was moving all Jeep production to China.

Travis Waldron at Think Progress, Romney Auto Bailout Ad Tells Four Myths In 30 Seconds,

As Mitt Romney continues to struggle to explain his various positions on the auto rescue that saved General Motors and Chrysler, his presidential campaign has released an ad about the bailout that is littered with falsehoods and misdirections.

Keith Laing at The Hill, Chrysler: Romney is wrong, Jeep not leaving US for China,

Chrysler is not moving Jeep production from Ohio to China despite claims by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, the auto company said.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, Mitt Romney Gets Desperate in Ohio,

On this scale, Romney's ad rates about 9 out of 10 on the deceptiveness scale. He's obviously trying to imply that American jobs will be shipped overseas; stating things accurately would require wholesale revisions; and doing so would completely destroy Romney's point. But he doesn't care. He's got an election to win, and if scaring Ohio autoworkers is what it takes, then that's what it takes. It's truly nauseating.

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic, A Desperate, Deceptive Gambit for Romney in Ohio,

Of course, this kind of deception is emblematic of the campaign Romney and his supporters have waged in the last few days. They insist that Romney never thought government should let Chrysler and GM collapse.

If we elect a president based on a campaign of flat-out lies, deception and misdirection what kind of country will we have as a result?

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The Romney Close: No Lie Left Behind

Bill Scher — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:00:21 -0400

Mitt Romney delivered his "closing argument" today. True to form, Romney did not make argument contrasting his conservative positions with President Obama's. He instead tried to take as many Obama positions as his own, blame Obama for things he wants to do himself, and distort Obama's record as much as humanly possible.

He are some of the many lies, projections and misdirections from today's speech:

***

* [Obama is] trying instead to distract our attention from the biggest issues to the smallest--from characters on Sesame Street...

...oh wait, that was me, telling you the only specific thing I will cut to make up for my giant tax giveaway to millionaires.

* America voted for a post-partisan president, but they have seen the most political of presidents...

...except that every major legislation that was passed had bipartisan support. Except for ObamaCare. Which was a Republican idea. Namely, mine.

* He promised to cut the deficit in half, but he doubled it.

If by doubled you mean, long-term deficit cut of $4 trillion, if Republicans will just accept tax increases on people like me.

* He said he would reform Medicare and Social Security and save them from pending insolvency, but he shrunk from proposing any solution at all.

...except for that whole ObamaCare thing, which extends the solvency of the Medicare trust fund, costs savings which I pledged to junk. And except for proposing to raise the Social Security payroll tax cap so the wealthy contribute more to that trust fund's long-term solvency.

* Where are the 9 million more jobs that President Obama promised his stimulus would have created by now?

...or maybe I should say, where is that 9 million jobs promise? Oh that's right. Nowhere. It was President-elect Obama who promised a plan to create "2.5 million more jobs by January 2011." It was President Obama's stimulus which met that goal, and then some, ahead of schedule.

* They are in China, Mexico, and Canada and in countries that have made themselves more attractive for entrepreneurs and business and investment.

... Thanks to the wave of outsourcing which I pioneered at Bain Capital and tax incentives which I benefit from yet claim not to know exist.

* ...because Medicare has been slashed to pay for Obamacare.

...Fact-check me all you want, suckers! I'm still gonna keep saying it!

* It matters to the man from Waukesha, Wisconsin I spoke with several days ago. In what were supposed to be his best work years, he used to have a job at $25 an hour with benefits and now has one at $8 an hour, without benefits.

...and he won't get any health benefits from me after I scrap ObamaCare!

* Nor did he stand up to China's trade practices

...except when he did and I criticized him for "protectionism."

* ...anti-American extremism is on the rise

...so much so that terrorist attacks worldwide are at a seven-year ... low.

* The president invested taxpayer money--your money--in green companies, now failed...

...since I got burned putting a number on that in the first debate, I won't mention that the failure rate on the green energy loan guarantee program is a mere 10%, and only amounts to 2% of the taxpayer funds involved.

* Energy prices are up in part because energy production on federal lands is down.

...Of course, by now you know that in my book, "up is down." Gas prices peaked in 2008 at $4.11 per gallon. It's now at $3.69.

* ...his tax plan has been calculated to destroy 700,000 jobs.

...in a phony study cooked up by the same lobbyists who sued to overturn ObamaCare.

* ...cutting one trillion dollars from the military will kill jobs and devastate our national defense.

Which only will happen if Republicans refuse to accept higher taxes on the wealthy as a basis for a compromise deficit reduction plan, a possible scenario created by the Budget Control Act, voted for and praised for its bipartisanship by my vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan.

***

Other than that, the speech was great.

The Latest Lie: "Jeep Moving All Production To China" (Plus #Sensata)

Dave Johnson — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 11:15:10 -0400

The things Mitt Romney says can just astonish you. Romney shows a wondrous perfection of the ability to smile and just say whatever needs to be said at the moment to make the sale.

This time he tries to scare Ohioans by saying Jeep is leaving the country and taking all its jobs with it (when it is really expanding into other countries) and then promises to "fight for every American job." He says this even as Bain Capital's Sensata is closing their factory here and sending all its jobs to China -- adding even more money to Romney's huge fortune.

The Detroit News reports that "Romney picks up incorrect story about Jeep production moving to China":

"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair America will win."

Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

Jed Lewison writes at Daily Kos, in New Romney lie: Scare Ohioans by falsely claiming Chrysler may move all Jeep production to China,

Only Mitt Romney could take a story about how Chrysler is expanding into the Chinese market ... and turn it into a story about how if he doesn't get elected, Chrysler might send all of its Jeep production there.

... I know there's a risk of sounding holier-than-thou because in campaigns there's always going to be some exaggerations or stretching of the truth, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But that's not what Romney does. He lies. When he speaks, he doesn't care about the accuracy of what he says—he only cares about whether his words help him achieve his personal goals. That is the essence of dishonesty and it's a fundamental character flaw.

Sensata

Meanwhile, right now even as Mitt Romney promises "I will fight for every good job in America," Bain Capital is closing Sensata and sending all the jobs to China, the workers are asking Romney for his help, Romney refuses to help, and Romney will make a fortune from that.

See Why Voters Need To Know About #Sensata.

And click here to see the collection of stories about what is happening at Sensata.

Say Just Anything

By the way, here is what fellow Republicans say about Romney's ability to just say anything:

It is astonishing and wondrous, in its own way. It is a spectacle to behold. But not in a good way.

Click here to see my collection of "Latest Lie" posts.
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Yet More Doctored Audio In Anti-Obama Ads

Dave Johnson — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:23:40 -0400

Doctoring audio in an ad to fool voters? No problem, and certainly no consequences. Romney did it and got away with it, and then did it again, and got away with it again. So now it's the new normal for corporate-conservative election campaigning, just run ads that make stuff up, and propel them with millions in corporate cash.

This Time - Coal

The American Energy Alliance is running an ad with doctored audio. They took audio from a statement in which Obama supported coal (as long as it is cleaned up) and doctored it to sound like he wants to put the industry out of business. This matters because they are running it in swing-state areas where people's jobs depend on the industry.

Here is Obama's statement supporting coal, as long as we can find a way to keep it from polluting so much:

and later a different statement, saying that cap-and-trade brings increases on the front-end that will lead to the economy benefiting and if you can't make that argument it won't happen,

Now here is the ad with doctored audio making it sound like he is saying exactly the opposite:

The Washington Post takes a look, in Did Obama promise a ‘war on affordable energy’?,

"The comments in this ad appear in reverse chronological order."

In 2009, the Obama administration dedicated $1 billion in economic-stimulus funding toward re-starting a long-stalled program called FutureGen, which aimed to create the first zero-emissions coal plant in the U.S. The George W. Bush administration had put the brakes on that program in early 2008, citing cost overruns.

The Obama administration also committed $1 billion in 2009 toward moving forward with the Clean Coal Power Initiative, a public-private partnership started during the Bush years aimed at developing coal-fired power plants that use carbon capture and storage -- catching the carbon from exhaust and pumping it underground. It also dumped about $3 million into research on clean-coal technology at the university level.

... The coal-mining industry has shown a net increase of about 600 jobs since Obama took office, based on data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

... To review, the missing context in this ad was: 1) Obama said he supports clean coal and 2) he said consumers don’t necessarily have to feel the effects of tighter regulations.

So here we are, entirely in a George Orwell propaganda zone, where lies are the norm, and corporate money means the truth will not be heard.

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Romney's 2nd, 3rd and 4th Biggest Debate Lies

Dave Johnson — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:39:35 -0400

Earlier I pointed out Romney biggest debate lie: Obama did not "double the deficit" he cut it by almost 1/3. Here are three more big Romney debate lies.

1) Unemployment rate. Obama promised to bring unemployment down to 5.4%. This is another lie -- Obama never promised this. USA Today's Debate Fact Check explains:

Claim: Romney said Obama said unemployment would be 5.4% by now.

Facts: Two economists who would soon join the Obama administration issued a report in early January 2009 – before Obama's inauguration – predicting that an economic stimulus plan would prevent unemployment from rising above 8% and would push it down to about 5.4% by the third quarter of 2012. However, the economists underestimated the severity of the recession. Even without the stimulus, they forecast in that report that the jobless rate would be 5.9% by now.

Last year, the Commerce Department said the slump was far worse than it had estimated, with the economy contracting almost 9% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 5.3% in the first quarter of 2009.

2. Number of People Working. ROMNEY: “We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office.” The Nation explains, in Romney’s Seven Biggest Debate Lies,

This is flatly false. The Bureau of Labor statistics just revised estimates from March 2011 to March 2012 upwards by 386,000 jobs—meaning that Obama crossed the magic imaginary barrier of net job creation for his term, and has actually created a net positive 125,000 jobs. This is a simple fact. And there have been 868,000 jobs created in the private sector during this time, which have been offset by public sector job losses—something Mitt Romney would like to see continue.

Moreover, this is an awful tough metric to judge Obama on in the first place. As he’s fond of mentioning, the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office—so holding him to a net job creation standard means he has to make up for those massive losses that were out of his control entirely. But he’s still done it.

This is so important to understand. When Obama took office we were losing more than 800,000 jobs per month. The stimulus completely turned that around. This chart says it all:

3. Half of College Kids Unemployed. ABC News, Debate Fact Check: The Presidential Debate clears this one up,

ROMNEY: With half of college kids graduating this year, without a college - excuse me - without a job and without a college level job, that's just not acceptable."

ABC's Z. Byron Wolf has the facts:

Youth unemployment is far lower than 50 percent.

... The unemployment rate for the young, just like it has more broadly, has fallen in the U.S. Back when the study was conducted, the unemployment rate for those from 20-24 was about 16 percent. In data for September it was 12.4 percent.

Zunaira Zaki adds...

The unemployment rate for college graduates with a bachelor's degree or higher was 6.3 percent in September, down from 8.1 percent at the same time last year.

Lie after lie after lie...

What Was Romney's Biggest, Flatest-Outest Debate Lie? "Obama Doubled The Deficit"

Dave Johnson — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:01:55 -0400

Mitt Romney said a lot of "sketchy" things in Tuesday night's debate. He again and again said jobs were lost under Obama, when all of that happened right after Obama took office and before the stimulus turned things around. He said "government does not create jobs" after earlier saying that he wants to hire teachers (after saying a while back he wants to fire them). But I think the biggest, flatest-outest lie Romney told was when he said - more than once - that Obama "doubled the deficit." Just wow.

The US budget fiscal year goes from October 1 to September 30 of the following year. On the day that President Obama took office the 2009 budget year -- Bush's last budget year -- was in its 5th month. The projected deficit for that budget year -- again, Bush's last budget year -- was already $1.2 trillion. Click that link, and look at the date that article was published. Check the date on this one. Or this one from a conservative news outlet with the slogan: "The Right News. Right Now." It is dated January 7, 2009, two weeks before Barack Obama took office, and the title is Congressional Budget Office Projects $1.2 Trillion Deficit for 2009,

The federal budget deficit will hit an unparalleled $1.2 trillion for the 2009 budget year, according to a Capitol Hill aide briefed on new Congressional Budget office figures.

That was two weeks before Obama took office. That is the first of "four straight trillion-dollar deficits" upon which Romney is basing much of his campaign rhetoric. Except it was Bush's last budget year, not Obama's first.

The third budget year of Obama's presidency just ended two weeks ago. The deficit was $1.1 trillion. That is not "double" as Romney claimed, it is lower than when he took office. Here is Reuters reporting on it: Federal deficit shrinks, still tops $1T in fiscal 2012

The federal budget deficit for the just-ended 2012 fiscal year shrank by $207 billion from the prior year, but still marked its fourth straight year above $1 trillion, Congress' budget referee estimated on Friday.

The deficit equaled about 7 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 8.7 percent in 2011, 9 percent in 2010 and 10.1 percent in 2009...

Got that? The deficit dropped from 10.1% of GDP in the 2009 budget year -- Bush's last budget year -- to 7% in the 2012 budget year. That is not "double," that is a 30% drop.

But Mitt Romney says, again and again, that Obama "doubled the deficit." No, he didn't, he reduced it.