Mitt Romney’s Son Went to Russia With a Secret Message for Putin

Mitt Romney and son Matt, at right

The lies and false posturing of Mitt Romney never end.  While some in the media are wringing their hands whining that Obama has "goner negative" they continue to give a total pass to the easily documented lies of Mitt Romney.   Lest we forget, America was suckered into the Iraq War because of the lies of Chimperator Geoprge Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Lies that could have been exposed had the mainstream media pulled its collective thumb out of it ass and done some hard hitting investigative reporting.  We are seeing the same failure of the old main stream media in the current 21012 elections:  it refuses to expose lies and to call out liars.  The last post looked at Mitt Romney's lies on foreign policy towards Israel.  In the same presidential debate Romney sought to depict Russia as the USA's principal foreign policy foe and made claims that  he'd "get tough on Russia."  Apparently, that message was intended only for American voters who Romney seems to view as simple minded cretins.  Via his son Matt who is in Russia soliciting investors, Romney sent a different message to Putin: I'd ddin;t really mean what I said about Russia or getting tough.  New York Magazine looks at the message Romney was actually sending to Putin.  Here are excerpts:

Mitt Romney has made a point throughout his campaign to refer, with teeth, to Russia as our country's "number one geopolitical foe" and promising to have "more backbone" than Barack Obama when dealing with the Kremlin. But that's all just bluster, says Romney's second-oldest son Matt, who made a sojourn this week to the former Soviet Union in search of investors for his real estate company. According to Matt's colleague, it was just a "harmless trip," but the New York Times has the juicy geopolitical gossip via an anonymous source:

 [...] while in Moscow, Mr. Romney told a Russian known to be able to deliver messages to Mr. Putin that despite the campaign rhetoric, his father wants good relations if he becomes president, according to a person informed about the conversation.

Now we're used to these rascals saying things they don't mean, but that sure sounds like some massive foreign policy undermining just days before the election. Can a grown man get grounded?

The Romney campaign has opted not to comment, but we can imagine Mitt's defense in his own words: "Look, I got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true and just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it." Who's getting fooled here?

Seriously, I believe that the most tawdry whore is a pillar of virtue and honesty compared to Mitt Romney.   I keep asking myself, are all Mormons this incredible dishonest?  Similarly, I keep wondering whether or not a majority of voters - or at least the non-racists among them - are stupid enough to believe anything Romney says.

Israel's Largest Daily Newspaper Rebukes Romney and Endorses Obama

If you recall, in the third presidential debate Mitt Romney accuse Barack Obama of having betrayed Israel and of having basically kicked Israel to the curb in terms of a faithful ally.  According to Romney, Obama had seriously strained US/Israeli relations.  Well, today, Israel's most influential daily newspaper, Haaretz, endorsed Obama.  This clearly suggests to me that during the last presidential debate Romney was - oh the shock and surprise - lying yet again.  I swear to God, if Romney's lips are moving, the man is lying.   Here are highlights from the Haaretz endorsement of Barack Obama:

The outcome of the elections will be determined by the voters' decision as to which of the two candidates is good for America. But if any of them are vacillating in their vote over whether Obama has been a good president for Israel, the answer is yes.

Tens of millions of Americans will go to the polls on Tuesday to vote for a president and vice president. It will be an important day for American democracy. This will be the Americans' day, but the outcome of the elections will impact the entire world.

For Americans in general, and American Jews in particular, the United States' attitude toward Israel is just one of many factors to consider - among internal and foreign affairs, the economy and defense - when casting their vote.

But for various reasons, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has made incumbent President Barack Obama's policy toward Israel a hot-button issue in the campaign. One of those reasons is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's open support for Romney, who like him enjoys the patronage of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

 [A] deeper examination of the core issues comprising the two countries' relations - devoid of political and personal interests - reveals no grounds for portraying Obama in a negative light.

Obama continued this two-way track vis-a-vis Iran and the issue of Palestinian statehood. Under his pressure, Israel suspended for the first time - for a while - construction in the settlements. Relations between the two countries' armed forces have never been so close. Obama's challenge in his second term, if he wins the elections, is to lead the region to a stable arrangement of peace and security.  

Yes, once again, Mitt Romney was not telling the truth.  I truly don't think that Romney would recognize the truth if it beat him about the head with a two by four.  The man is a disgrace to to America.

Presidential Debate Reactions - No. 1: Romney Lied Shamelessly

The reactions to last nights presidential debates are all over the place although a majority consensus seems to be that Barack Obama won.  What was perfectly clear for anyone who has followed the campaign daily for its duration is that Mitt Romney again showed himself to be a complete shape shifter with a bad case of "romnesia."  The other issue that again was clear is that Romney's budget/tax plan doesn't add up in any fashion and that he'd make the budget deficit explode if elected.  The ultimate critical question, of course, will be whether voters who have only recently begun to pay attention will realize that Romney's now 180 degrees from where he was on many issues not that many weeks ago.  Perhaps Romney's indulging in "Lying for the Lord" as suggested by Brigham Young's great great granddaughter as noted in a prior post.  Here are a few reactions via Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Fallows thought "Obama did very well this evening, and Romney put up his worst showing":

As a matter of substance, it was depressing in principle that this was the level of presidential-campaign discussion on China, India (nothing, or close to it), climate change and the environment (nothing I heard), energy (next to nothing), Europe (ditto). But it was more striking as a matter of substance that on virtually no issue did Romney make an actual criticism, of any sort, of Obama's policy or record. Instead it was, "I agree, but you could have done it better."

Ambinder sees Romney's eagerness to agree with Obama as a possible mistake:

Romney was betting that he did not need to take risks, and stands a better shot at winning the election the more people associate him with the economy.  Deciding to let Obama once again be the aggressor carries real risks, because of the large audience, and because the contrasts in tone between the two candidates could be large enough that some voters who initially thought Romney crossed the credibility threshold might have second thoughts.

Richard Adams gives the win to Romney:

I'd say Romney won it because he just lashed away at Obama without regard to subject or logic, showed that he knew enough about what passes for foreign policy that he's not going to fart in front of the Queen or whatever. And Obama did what he did in the first debate: lay out Romney's multiple positions and expect that would be enough. Well it wasn't then and it wasn't now.

Kevin Drum disagrees:

Romney's main goal tonight was pretty transparent: not to sound like a warmonger. He probably succeeded in that, but at the price of turning every attack into mush and validating nearly everything Obama said. It just didn't seem like a good night for him. I'd give him a C+ and Obama an A-.

Matt Taibbi's final thoughts:

Just going by the reactions from Carville and Fleischer on CNN (I've switched back because that's where you go to find out the conventional wisdom) it's already clear what the talking points will be. Fleischer talking about how this debate doesn't matter because the public is focused on the economy, that's a clear signal that he knew Romney fucked the dog tonight. This should be the death-blow to Romney, but I've said that before and been wrong.

Ezra Klein digs up Romney's "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed:

You can read it here. Note that Romney calls for post-bankruptcy guarantees, not pre-bankruptcy guarantees. That’s the rub: The credit markets were frozen, and most experts thought Detroit couldn’t find the private financing to survive a masnaged bankruptcy. That’s where federal money came in. Glenn Kessler fact-checked the exchange and gave the edge to Obama.

 

Presidential Debate Reactions - More Lies From Romney

UPDATED:  The Boston Globe has joined others who are pouncing on Mitt Romney's lie about advancing qualified women last night.  Here's the pertinent quote:

Romney ... did not have a history of appointing women to high-level positions in the private sector. Romney did not have any women partners as CEO of Bain Capital during the 1980s and 1990s. The venture capital and private equity fields were male-dominated, to be sure, especially during Romney’s time. Women started to break into the upper echelons of the firm after it started a hedge fund, called Brookside in 1996. Today, 4 of out of 49 of the firm’s managing directors in the buyout area are women.

Thankfully, Barack Obama seemed much more on his game last night - the boyfriend and I watched CNN in our cabin - and Mitt Romney was, well Mitt Romney.  A liar who either lied out right (e.g., saying he wants to increase Pell grants when his plan would actually cut them), evaded the truth or made things up as he went along.  I truly believe that the man will do and say anything if he thinks it furthers his cause and the truth be damned.  On his repeated statements that he knows "how to create jobs" I had to nearly vomit or throw something at the television.  As I noted recently, even David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director has taken Romney to task on this bullshit.   It's also noteworthy that Romney apparently lied about seeking to get women into his administration while governor of Massachusetts.  Here's a highlight from The Phoenix addressing Romney's fictional account of his actions to find qualified women:

Not a true story.

What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I've checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I've just presented it is correct -- and that Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false. 

None of the senior positions Romney cared about -- budget, business development, etc. -- went to women.

Secondly, 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. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)

Third, note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

As I said, Mitt Romney is a shameless pathological Liar.  Any woman - or man - who believes anything Romney says is an idiot and does so at their own risk.

Fact Checking Romney's Debate Lies

While much of the consensus in the blogosphere is that Mitt Romney out performed Barack Obama last night, the consensus also seems to be that Romney lied through his teeth.  Whether or not the lazy and hapless mainstream media will go after him remains to be seen.  Given the growing worthlessness of many news outlets, one likely should not hold their preath.  Andrew Sullivan has collected some reactions on Romney's lies - which seem aimed at viewers who are poorly informed - and these seem to address the dishonesty of Romney the best:

Josh Marshall wonders if the press will call out Romney on his lies:

Obama simply hasn’t pressed any points where Romney said things that were demonstrably false. A bit on his tax cut plan, but not much. But how does it play over the next week? Romney’s been holding back all the details on his plans, basically refusing to talk about him. He’s put a lot on the table here, made a lot of claims which simply don’t add up. Obama hasn’t pressed the falsehoods or math that doesn’t make sense. Does the press do it tomorrow? How well do these claims wear? That’s how we’ll know how each did.

Along those lines, here's a highlight from Wonkblog's live fact-check of the debate:

Romney said his web site has a “lengthy description” of his health-care plan. In fact, it’s only 369 words. He also said it covers preexisting conditions. It doesn’t. Romney wouldn’t cover preexisting conditions for Americans who fall uninsured for periods of time, which happened to 89 million Americans between 2004 and 2007.

Jackie Calmes also catches Romney bending the truth:

Mr. Romney says Mr. Obama doubled the deficit. That is not true. When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office had already projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30 of that year, would be $1.2 trillion. (It ended up as $1.4 trillion.) For the just-finished fiscal year 2012, which ended last week, the deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion — just under the level in the year he was inaugurated. Measured as a share of the economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly — from 10.1 percent of the economy’s total output in 2009 to 7.3 percent for 2012.

Personally, I increasing believe that Romney is amoral and that he will say and do anything to try to win. Truth and honesty have never meant much to the man, and now they mean absolutely nothing to him. 

Reactions to the Presidential Debate

I hate to say it, but in my opinion Obama blew it tonight.  Romney lied through his teeth repeatedly - e.g., his claim that he would not seek a huge tax cut for the wealthy, that he'd lower the number of those without health care and the utterly farcical claim that small businesses can effectively negotiate with big insurance companies for heath care plans - and Obama failed to effectively call him out.  The end result was that Romney looked commanding and those not aware of his total dishonesty likely had their opinion of the man enhanced.  As for the moderator, he completely lost control of the situation.  Obama had better regain his game quickly and Romney's shocking lies of the evening need to be exposed.  In sum, I am NOT a happy camper.

P.S. I cannot help but note that Romney, who claims to be the protector of traditional values and religious values, proved to be the biggest liar of the evening.  Of course, that's really no surprise given that the "godly Christian" crowd and professional Christians are the worse lairs one will likely ever encounter.

Romney Has His Own "Redistribution" Plan

With his campaign in such a bad mess that some are predicting a GOP civil war, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, a/k/a Mini Mitt, are grasping for anything that might breath life into the hopefully moribund campaign.   They think they found a message: the Obama is a "redistributionist" who supports European socialism on statements he made 14 years ago.  Yes, it's lame and has nothing to do with Obama's recent statements, but when one is out of touch, has alienated nearly half the population by calling them lazy moochers, one has to grab whatever twig one finds in the river as it flows towards the top of the approaching waterfall.  The irony, however, as the Washington Post points out is that Romney has his own redistribution plan: progressive taxes, maintaining social security, some form of Medicare, etc.   Of course, he has another goal too: make the poor and the middle class pay more so that he can allow the wealthy to have more - including the obscenely wealthy.  Here are some editorial highlights:

[T]he Romney campaign is accusing President Obama of being a — gasp! — redistributionist. In a rather pale replay of 2008’s Joe the Plumber spread-the-wealth debate, the GOP dredged up a 14-year-old video.

Mitt Romney and his campaign seized on the clip as ominous evidence of Mr. Obama’s European socialist tendencies. “I know there are some who believe that, if you simply take from some and give to others, then we’ll all be better off. It’s known as redistribution. It’s never been a characteristic of America,” Mr. Romney said.

The campaign apparently thinks that voters will find “redistribution” a scary word. But does Mr. Romney really disagree with the belief that part of government’s role is, in Mr. Obama’s words, to help “make sure that everybody’s got a shot”? To tax is to redistribute. To govern is to redistribute. Benefits from government spending flow in different amounts to different individuals and different states.

More to the point, Mr. Romney himself has endorsed redistributionism. He does not proposing abolishing Medicaid, Pell grants for college affordability or food stamps — all ways in which government redistributes benefits to those less well off. Indeed, Mr. Romney has proposed more redistribution. Social Security is a redistributionist program .  .  .  . 

Mr. Romney favors — brace yourselves — a progressive tax code. He has said that one of the principles of his details-to-follow tax plan is to maintain the current progressivity of the code so that the wealthiest continue to pay the same share of taxes — that is, a larger share of taxes than the less well-off pay.

It’s indisputable that Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama have diverging views about the danger posed by increasing income inequality and the degree of redistribution in which government should engage. But the Romney campaign’s desperate, clownish portrayal of Mr. Obama does this important debate a serious disservice.

 As I have noted before, I find it bizarre that a political party that wraps itself in religion and claims to worship Christ and the Bible continually maligns European governments where the Gospel message of caring for the sick and the poor is actually done through national health care systems, etc., while in America, Republicans want to callously throw the poor and sick in the gutter.  The hypocrisy is breath taking.

Bill Clinton's Speech Taking Down Romney

Bill Clinton just did a masterful job of calling Mitt Romney (and Paul Ryan) a liar.  No mincing of words, simply calling him out for telling deliberate lies.  It gets directly to the issues of the hypocrisy and betrayal of the Gospel message by the Republicans that drives me crazy.  Andrew Sullivan has some good bullet points in his live blogging.  Here is a sampling:

[B]y being a former president and exposing the shameless lies perpetrated by Romney, especially on welfare reform, he was able to say things no one else could. I don't buy the argument that Obama is more liberal than Clinton and never have. But for those who do, tonight was a brilliant reminder of the things that unite them. 

11.18 pm. Republicanism today is failed arithmetic. Clinton is really bringing this home - intellectually. It is not a series of platitudes; it is a series of arguments rebutting last week's entire convention arguments. It has far more policy substance than Romney's or Ryan's speeches. And it has the added benefit of being true.

11.15 pm. Clinton is now equating Obama's plan with Bowles-Simpson. And when you spell out the Romney plan as it exists, it does not add up. And it's perverse. Cutting revenues as a way to cut debt when revenues are at 50 year lows is not a policy. It's madness.

11.11 pm. Now the important passage on Romney's massive welfare lie. The requirement was for more work, not less. Bill Clinton is the perfect man to rebut this lie. I wonder if it will have some serious blowback for Romney. A former president has called him out on a clear lie.

11.10 pm. Now he's telling seniors that slashing Medicaid means slashing home-care for the elderly.

10.51 pm. Clinton's summary of Republican malfeasance these past four years is simply liberating. Liberating because it is true: their moral and intellectual and political degeneracy is our biggest challenge. And he is directly comparing his re-election to Obama's. And he's being as honest as he can: no one could have repaired the full damage of the 2008 crash in four years - but the green shoots are there.

10.49 pm. Genius: "We left him a total mess and he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough so we should get back into power".

 
I haven't always liked Bill Clinton, but he did a wonderful job of exposing the abject lives that are the norm in today's GOP and the Romney-Ryan campaign.