Romney Roundup 7/26: Illegal Legal Guns From The Soviet Union That We Built By Ourselves With Help From The Government

This is the first in an irregular series where I will post a bunch of unrelated stories about Mitt Romney, and a snarky comment about them.

Talking Points Memo: "Romney Camp Once Again Warns Of ‘Soviet’ Threat"'

A foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign warned against policies that would aid “the Soviet Union” Wednesday, making him at least the third person from Team Romney — including Romney himself — to refer to a country that hasn’t existed since 1991 in the course of attacking President Obama’s foreign policy.

Maybe they are using the history books found in some Utah classrooms.....


HuffPost: "Mitt Romney: 'Many' Of Aurora Shooting Suspect's Weapons Were Illegal" 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday said many of the weapons obtained by the shooting suspect in Colorado were obtained illegally and that changing laws won't prevent gun-related tragedies.
But the firearms that authorities allege James Holmes used to kill 12 people in Aurora, Colo., were obtained legally.

Typical Republican, making up his own reality....

 Think Progress:  "Romney’s ‘We Did Build This’ Events Feature Businesses Built With Government Subsidies And Contracts"

Today, the Romney campaign is hosting an entire series of campaign events based on President Obama’s misinterpreted commentabout small businesses. While Obama’s full speech made a “no man is an island” argument, the Romney campaign has seized on the quote, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that” as evidence of Obama’s disdain for small business owners.
Romney, ignoring the fact that he has echoed this same sentiment on multiple occasions, organized 24 “We Did Build This” events in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Nevada. At each event, local business owners are speaking about their self-sufficiency in running a business and how government is hindering their growth.
But, like the New Hampshire business owner showcased in Romney’s attack ad on the issue, many of these business owners have received significant support from the government, a ThinkProgress analysis finds.

Nothing like pointing out that your opponent was right.  Thanks, Mitt!

You Can't Fight Obesity Sitting In McDonald's

You can't fight obesity eating at McDonald's.  You can't teach people how to use a computer through an online course.  And you can't fight for more financial disclosure from political groups by hiding your own donors.

During the primary, there was a PAC who had sent out a mailer attacking a candidate.  The mailer went to a relatively small number of households, but it got a lot of play on the news.  Now, because the guy who runs the PAC was a Democrat, and it was a Republican primary, the narrative from the candidate getting attacked was "My opponent has liberal PACs that want him to win, so you must vote for me."  That candidate won the Primary, and since this is Utah, will likely win the general election (unless the accusations from the PAC are true, which I doubt).  And, since the winning candidate comes in to the right of Gayle Ruzika, and the losing candidate was much better qualified to be in the office and would do a better job for all Utahns, Utah lost because of this PAC.

When the person running the PAC was interviewed on TV about the allegations, he was asked who his donors were.  His response was that he wouldn't release his donors till he had to.  I Tweeted something about how B.S. this was, and got a response from the PAC owner.  He said that he had to file in the next week anyway, so it's water under the bridge.  I responded that it made him no different than the Republican PACs that hide behind loose reporting requirements.  I also go angry Tweets and emails from Democratic friends who rail about secret organizations.  Because apparently, the only way to have more open dialog is to talk behind closed doors.

And, that is what worries me about organizations like the Alliance for a Better Utah, because they won't tell us where their money is coming from.  They claim that they are funded mostly by small donations, but won't show us the money, so to speak.

This week, ABU is railing against ALEC for being this evil, super-secret organization.  Now, even though I disagree with just about all of what ALEC tires to push through, I at least know where a lot of their money comes from.  Unlike the "not evil, not super secret" organization ABU. 

The ends do not justify the means.  Playing by the rules doesn't work when the rules are broken.

-Bob

Mitt Romney: Frequent, Flagrant, Brazen Liar

Interesting bit from the Guardian about Mitt Romney's dishonesty.  Some highlights:

 Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.
Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying – they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney's repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot. But that's a criticism you're only likely to hear from partisans.

The author then talks about the bit in Romney's book about President Obama going around the world to "apologize" for America, which in the real world never happened.  

President Obama never went around the world and apologized for America – and yet, even after multiple news organizations have pointed out this is a "pants on fire" lie, Romney keeps making it. Indeed, the "Obama apology tour", along with the president bowing down to the King of Saudi Arabia, are practically the lodestars of the GOP's criticism of Obama's foreign policy performance (the Saudi thing isn't true either).

 He then goes on to list several more Romney lies about the economy, stimulus, auto bailout, Obamacare.  But then we get down to the "Brass tax" of it all:

The lying from the Romney campaign is so out-of-control that Steve Benen, a blogger and producer for the Rachel Maddow show compiles a weekly list of "Mitt's Mendacity" that is chockfull of new untruths. Benen appears unlikely to run out of material any time soon, particularly since Romney persists in repeating the same lies over and over, even after they've been debunked.

This is perhaps the most interesting and disturbing element of Romney's tireless obfuscation: that even when corrected, it has little impact on the presumptive GOP nominee's behavior. This is happening at a time when fact-checking operations in major media outlets have increased significantly, yet that appears to have no effect on the Romney campaign.

What is the proper response when, even after it's pointed out that the candidate is not telling the truth, he keeps doing it? Romney actually has a telling rejoinder for this. When a reporter challenged his oft-stated assertion that President Obama had made the economy worse (factually, not correct), he denied ever saying it in the first place. It's a lie on top of a lie.

As a song we used to sing in Primary says "When you tell one lie, it leads to another..." 


And, in conclusion, a paragraph I wish I had written, because it so well sums up my feelings about Mitt:

Romney is charting new and untraveled waters in American politics. In the process, he is cynically eroding the fragile sense of trust that exists between voters and politicians. It's almost enough to make one pine for the days when Sarah Palin lied about "the Bridge to Nowhere".

Republicans: Let's fight the individual mandate by electing the guy who passed an individual mandate

Sometimes, Republican logic is so illogical.

If You're Posting on the Governor's Facebook Page, Make Sure You Spell Correctly....

I realize it's not nice to make fun of how other people spell, but if you are in charge of posting for the Governor, make sure you spell correctly.  Especially if the thing you are spelling is the name of a county:

And, how reassuring that Twitter has all of the information I need about "Senpete County"  I bet it even has info about Sanpete County, too.  And the other 28 Counties as well, if only we knew how to find it.

-Bob