M. Shishkin: Thanks to Putin, post-war Europe is now pre-war Europe

I can't think of anything to add this essay by famed Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin except my regret that, in addition to Russians in Russia being zombified and primed to revert amazingly fast to their self-deceiving Soviet ways, so too have many Russian-Americans, including U.S. academics in Russian and post-Soviet studies. 

Emotionally, not intellectually, they have felt the need to take sides, and sadly they have taken the side of the ex-KGB dictator because he's "theirs." 

Moreover, among Russian thinkers and elites there has always been a feeling of chauvinism and superiority vis-a-vis their "little Slav brothers" in Ukraine. I suspect but cannot prove that many Russian "liberals" are jealous of Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Maidan Revolution, and so they seek to discredit both, either as nefarious anti-Russian plots organized and funded by the U.S. (in both cases, they charge) or a neo-Fascist coup by an un-elected "junta," in the latter case.

Russia, Ukraine and Europe have been into Vladimir Putin's black hole of fear

By Mikhail Shishkin

September 18, 2014 | Guardian

I remember that as a child I read about black holes in a popular science magazine about space and it scared me. The idea of our world being sucked into these breaks in the universe kept bothering me until I realised that it all was so far away that it would not reach us. But then a black hole tore our world very close to us. It started sucking in houses, roads, cars, planes, people and whole countries. Russia and Ukraine have already fallen into this black hole. And it is now sucking in Europe in front of our eyes.

This hole in the universe is the soul of one very lonely ageing man. The black hole is his fear.

TV images of the demise of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi were messages that fate sent him from exotic countries. Protest rallies that gathered hundreds of thousands of people in Moscow ruined his inauguration and signalled approaching danger. The disgraceful flight of Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych earlier this year set off alarm bells: if Ukrainians could oust their gang, it could serve as an example for the brotherly nation.

The instinct of self-preservation kicked in immediately. The formula for saving any dictatorship is universal: create an enemy, start a war. The state of war is the regime's elixir of life. A nation in patriotic ecstasy becomes one with its "national leader", while any dissenters can be declared "national traitors".

Before our eyes, Russian TV was turned from a tool of entertainment and misinformation into a weapon of mass destruction. Journalists became a special part of the arsenal, maybe the most important one, more important even than missiles. The desired world view formed in the infected minds of a zombified nation: Ukrainian fascists wage a war to annihilate the Russian world on orders from the west.

"There are no Russian soldiers in Crimea," Vladimir Putin claimed to the world with a wry grin in the spring. The west could not understand: how can he tell such blatant lies to his nation's face? But the nation did not take it as lies: we ourselves understand everything, but deceiving the enemy is not a sin, rather a virtue. The fact that "Russian soldiers were indeed in Crimea" was later admitted with such pride!

We are back to the Soviet times of total lies. The government renewed the social contract with the nation under which we had lived for decades: we know that we lie and you lie, and we continue to lie to survive. Generations have grown up under this social contract. These lies cannot even be called a sin: the power of vitality and survival is concentrated in them. The government was afraid of its nation, which is why it lied. The nation participated in the lies, because it was afraid of the government. The lies are a means of survival for a society built on violence and fear.

But just violence and fear cannot explain such an all-encompassing lie.

Why did the father of the Russian paratrooper who lost his legs in Ukraine write on Facebook, "My son is a soldier; he followed orders, which is why, whatever happened to him, he is right and I am proud of him"?

He keeps his mind off the idea that his son went to kill brotherly people and became disabled not defending his motherland from real enemies, but rather because of an insipid colonel's panic-stricken fear of losing his power, because of the ambitions of a clique of thieves swarming around the throne. How can he admit that his country, his motherland is the aggressor and that his son is the fascist? Motherland is always on the side of good. This is why when Putin lies in his nation's face, everyone knows that he is lying, and he knows that everyone knows, but the electorate agrees with his lies.

When Putin tells blatant lies in the face of western politicians, he then watches their reaction with vivid interest and not without pleasure, enjoying their confusion and helplessness. He wants Kiev to return on its knees, like a prodigal son, to the fatherly embrace of the empire. He is sure that Europe will boil with indignation, but eventually calm down, abandoning Ukraine to brotherly rape. He offers the west the chance to join the social contract of lies. All it has to do is say that Putin is a peacekeeper and agree to all the terms of his peacekeeping plan.

The sanctions imposed by western states against Russia represent a timid hope that economic hardship will make Russians resent the regime and nudge them towards active protests. Alas, it is an idle hope. Russians have a proverb: beat your own so the others fear you. It is hard to imagine officials in Berlin or Paris summarily banning food imports. The entire nations would burst in indignation that same day.

In contrast, in Russia such a move boosted the ruler's already sky-high rating. Putin knows the difference between the power he enjoys and the power of European democracies. Democratic governments are liable to their electorate for the people and their future, whereas under a dictatorship, one is only liable to follow orders. Every dictator hopes he is immortal, but since it is impossible, he is ready to drag everyone he despises into the black hole. And he despises everyone – both his own people and everybody else.

Putin knows that the west cannot cross the red line that he himself has long crossed and left behind. The red line is the willingness to go to war. It is hard for a human mind to switch from a postwar to a prewar time. The means of mass informational terror in Russia helped Russians to make the switch. Moreover, Russia is already in a state of war, an undeclared war against the west. Coffins with fallen Russian soldiers have started coming to Russian cities from Ukraine. Europe has fallen behind; it is still enjoying the relaxed prewar peace.

Europeans are not ready for the new reality that has set in. Leave us alone! Return everything to the way it was: jobs, gas, peace! No supplying weapons to Ukraine! One cannot start an armed conflict in the age of nuclear weapons because of some Mariupol! Should the world perish in a catastrophe because Ukraine was to be part of Europe? It is just because the Americans want to cause us to quarrel with Russians! It is all the fault of US imperialists and European bureaucrats! Why do we need sanctions that would hurt us too? The French are ready to take to the streets to protest at the American ruling that forces France to abandon the sale of Mistral warships to Russia. Moscow just protects its interest in Ukraine! And maybe fascists are indeed in power in Kiev? It may have started as a public uprising, but then a Nazi junta took over. Then why should we support them and fight with Russia? Putin offers peace! We want peace!

Putin's calculations are proving correct: it is more likely that citizens of western states, scared by economic woes and the possibility of war, would elect new governments, replacing Putin's enemies with more amenable politicians, than Russians would start to protest because of devastation and rising food prices.

Putin offered Europe his social contract. And with every new person willing to accept it, the black hole will grow and expand.

One needs to realise: postwar Europe is already prewar Europe.

Begala: Cheney can't seem to lie enough on national TV

It's scary to think that Cheney, who is obviously a deeply disturbed and narcissistic liar, was practically running the country for eight years.

Begala's list of Cheney's lies and the proof of them is must-read stuff, for the historical record, but also because Cheney is out on every TV show now as some kind of voice for a conservative U.S. foreign policy. It's insane.

Does Dick Cheney believe his lies?

By Paul Begala

July 18, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/opinion/begala-dick-cheney-lies/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Barack W. O'Bush: 'Assad has WMD!'

I predict this will become Obama's equivalent of Dubya's "Saddam had WMD" -- if not now, then after his second term.  We'll all look back on this and acknowledge it for the lame pretext it obviously was, and Obama will go down in history for lying America into another war of choice, just like President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, George Bush, Sr. did in the Iraq I, and Dubya did in Iraq II.  (Some would argue President Bill Clinton also used a "fraudulent" Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia as a pretext to attack Serbia; I'm still on the fence on that one.)

Just to show how lame and half-hearted a fake-out this is, the White House is already saying that it made the decision to arm Syria's rebels weeks ago, but that finding out Assad used chemical just provided fresh justification to to arm Syria's rebels, according to the Washington Post.  Mm-hm.  Right.  

This guy Joshi is correct: if Obama doesn't want to go down in history as a lamer liar than Dubya, he has to show us the evidence that Syria's President Assad used sarin gas and other chemical weapons "on a small scale" against his own people.  It can be done without compromising U.S. intelligence sources.

The US must show evidence of Syria's use of chemical weapons

By Shashank Joshi

June 14, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3gtdv

RIP, Bob Woodward's reputation

I wasn't even going to mention this tempest in a teapot that is the Bob Woodward-Gene Sperling "threatdown," because it just seemed made for right-wing talk radio and cable news talking heads. Not a real story.

But this non-story has had more legs than I thought. People still give Woodward cred for stuff he did in the '70s, I guess.

So first, let me ask you, is this how a man who was threatened responds to that threat, much less to something that made him feel "uncomfortable"?

Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today. Best, Bob

And second, it is now known that Woodward probably embellished parts of his Deep Throat story, his Wash Post editor Ben Bradlee never bought it entirely, and when Woodward's own research assistant started to write about it, Woodward told him to kill the story. Woodward let his young assistant know that he would regret publishing quotes from Woodward's old boss. No word yet on how uncomfortable this made Woodward's assistant feel, and the global implications it had for the profession of journalism.

So now we know for sure: Bob Woodward is a dissembler, a fame hog, a whiner, a hypocrite and a bully.

UPDATE (03.11.2013): Check out this story by Max Holland: Bob Woodward's Dark Days.

Goodbye, Bob

By John Cook

February 28, 2013 | Gawker

URL: http://gawker.com/5987586/goodbye-bob?tag=clowns

Romney's hopes rest in 'contempt for the electorate'

Romney really has been hoping that nobody would care to dig into any of his statements or arguments, like his plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion and increase military spending by $2 trillion and yet (somehow) cut the deficit:

The important thing to remember here is that the GOP argument for a Romney victory rests explicitly on the hope that those who turned out to vote for Obama last time won’t be quite as engaged this time around. Republicans are hoping the electorate is not as diverse as it was in 2008, and they are arguing that the GOP base’s enthusiasm is much higher than that of core Dem constituencies. The Romney camp seems to think it will help whip GOP base voters into a frenzy — and perhaps boost turnout — if Romney casts the way Obama is urging Democratic base voters to get more involved in the process as something sinister and threatening. This is beyond idiotic; it is insulting to people’s intelligence.

The Post editorial board, in a widely cited piece, has claimed that the one constant about the Romney campaign has been that it is driven by “contempt for the electorate.” To make this case, the editorial cites Romney’s nonstop flip flops, his evasions about his own proposals, his refusal to share basic information about his finances and bundlers, and his monumental Jeep falsehood and all his other big lies. It’s fitting that Romney’s closing argument rests heavily on one last sustained expression of that contempt for the electorate — one focused squarely on a call for more engagement in the political process, i.e., on something that is fundamental to democracy itself.

Call me a conspiracy nut, but I think many smart Republicans realize Romney's plans are pie-in-the-sky.  It's just that they hate Obama so deeply, so viscerally, that they will vote for anyone running against him.  And those Republicans are mostly white people, mostly white men, mostly white older men.  It's really as simple as that.  This isn't a campaign about ideas for them.

Mitt Romney insults the American electorate one last time

By Greg Sargent

November 4, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-insults-the-american-electorate-one-last-time/2012/11/04/84e2f5be-268e-11e2-b2a0-ae18d6159439_blog.html

Dionne: No matter who wins, Tea Party already lost

It's a Wa-Po twofer today.

Here's the best line I've read in a while:  "Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying [about his moderate stances], what should the rest of us think?"

Dionne points out that the Tea Party made election gains in an off-year when people were demoralized, distracted and too tired to show up.  It was no revolution.  Nobody wants to buy what the teabaggers are selling except that waning white sliver of conservative Republican "purity" that's shrinking visibly by the day.

The tea party is over

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

October 25, 2012 | Washington Post

The right wing has lost the election of 2012.

The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.

If conservatism were winning, does anyone doubt that Romney would be running as a conservative? Yet unlike Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Romney is offering an echo, not a choice. His strategy at the end is to try to sneak into the White House on a chorus of me-too’s.

The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction. It also means that conservatives don’t believe that Romney really believes the moderate mush he’s putting forward now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying, what should the rest of us think?

Almost all of the analysis of Romney’s highly public burning of the right’s catechism focuses on such tactical issues as whether his betrayal of principle will help him win over middle-of-the-road women and carry Ohio. What should engage us more is that a movement that won the 2010 elections with a bang is trying to triumph just two years later on the basis of a whimper.

It turns out that there was no profound ideological conversion of the country two years ago. We remain the same moderate and practical country we have long been. In 2010, voters were upset about the economy, Democrats were demobilized, and President Obama wasn’t yet ready to fight. All the conservatives have left now is economic unease. So they don’t care what Romney says. They are happy to march under a false flag if that is the price of capturing power.

The total rout of the right’s ideology, particularly its neoconservative brand, was visible in Monday’s debate, in which Romney praised one Obama foreign policy initiative after another. He calmly abandoned much of what he had said during the previous 18 months. Gone were the hawkish assaults on Obama’s approach to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, China and nearly everywhere else. Romney was all about “peace.”

Romney’s most revealing line: “We don’t want another Iraq.” Thus did he bury without ceremony the great Bush-Cheney project. He renounced a war he had once supported with vehemence and enthusiasm.

Then there’s budget policy. If the Romney/Paul Ryan budget and tax ideas were so popular, why would the candidate and his sidekick, the one-time devotee of Ayn Rand, be investing so much energy in hiding the most important details of their plans? For that matter, why would Ryan feel obligated to forsake his love for Rand, the proud philosopher of “the virtue of selfishness” and the thinker he once said had inspired his public service?

Romney knows that, by substantial margins, the country favors raising taxes on the rich and opposes slashing many government programs, including Medicare and Social Security. Since Romney’s actual plan calls for cutting taxes on the rich, he has to disguise the fact. Where is the conviction?

The biggest sign that tea party thinking is dead is Romney’s straight-out deception about his past position on the rescue of the auto industry.

The bailout was the least popular policy Obama pursued — and, I’d argue, one of the most successful. It was Exhibit A for tea partyers who accused our moderately progressive president of being a socialist. In late 2008, one prominent Republican claimed that if the bailout the Detroit-based automakers sought went through, “you can kiss the American automotive industry good-bye.” The car companies, he said, would “seal their fate with a bailout check.” This would be the same Mitt Romney who tried to pretend on Monday that he never said what he said or thought what he thought. If the bailout is now good politics, and it is, then free-market fundamentalism has collapsed in a heap.

“Ideas have consequences” is one of the conservative movement’s most honored slogans. That the conservatives’ standard-bearer is now trying to escape the consequences of their ideas tells us all we need to know about who is winning the philosophical battle — and, because ideas do matter, who will win the election.

Taibbi: 'We shouldn't take it seriously'

It's funny that I'm reading this now, after I just debated with a buddy to what extent the media should be calling "bullshit" on liars, and whether and how the media should show stupid people for what they are.  So in his latest post, Matt Taibbi comes with this:

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

Anybody who votes for these hucksters, Romney and Ryan, is either retarded or just flat out hates Barack Obama with so much passion, they wouldn't care who was running against him.  That's all there is to it.  There can't be any other reason. Because, since the GOP primaries, Romney's campaign has lacked any rhyme, reason, consistency or facts.  His campaign is the biggest political snow job I've seen in my lifetime.  

What's most baffling is that I don't get why Romney is doing it, why he's promising a 20-percent tax cut that he knows he can't pay for, when he could just wink at Republicans and say, "Oh, I think I'll take a hard look at cutting taxes after I'm elected, but for now, I'm keeping my options open [wink-wink]."  And that would be enough. They're all going to vote for him anyway; he doesn't even need to lie to them and everybody else so brazenly to get their votes.  

The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh

By Matt Taibbi

October 12, 2012 | Rolling Stone

I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.

But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."

The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn't even a real platform, it's a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.

The essence of the whole campaign for me was crystalized in the debate exchange over Romney's 20 percent tax-cut plan. ABC's Martha Raddatz turned the questioning to Ryan:

MS. RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well – (chuckles) –

MS. RADDATZ: You have refused yet again to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics, or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?

Here Ryan is presented with a simple yes-or-no answer. Since he doesn't have the answer, he immediately starts slithering and equivocating:

REP. RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the –

"We want to have bipartisan agreements?" This coming from a Republican congressman? These guys would stall a bill to name a post office after Shirley Temple. Biden, absolutely properly, chuckled and said, "That'd be a first for a Republican congress." Then Raddatz did exactly what any self-respecting journalist should do in that situation: she objected to being lied to, and yanked on the leash, forcing Ryan back to the question.

I'm convinced Raddatz wouldn't have pounced on Ryan if he hadn't trotted out this preposterous line about bipartisanism. Where does Ryan think we've all been living, Mars? It's one thing to pull that on some crowd of unsuspecting voters that hasn't followed politics that much and doesn't know the history. But any professional political journalist knows enough to know the abject comedy of that line. Still, Ryan was banking on the moderator not getting in the way and just letting him dump his trash on audiences. Instead, she aggressively grabbed Ryan by his puppy-scruff and pushed him back into the mess of his own proposal:

MS. RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math? Do you know exactly what you're doing?

So now the ball is in Ryan's court. The answer he gives is astounding:

REP. RYAN: Look – look at what Mitt – look at what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. They worked together out of a framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked together to fix that. What we're saying is here's our framework: Lower tax rates 20 percent – we raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forgo about 1.1 trillion [dollars] in loopholes and deductions. And so what we're saying is deny those loopholes and deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation –

Three things about this answer:

1) Ryan again here refuses to answer Raddatz's yes-or-no question about specifics. So now we know the answer: there are no specifics.

2) In lieu of those nonexistent specifics, what Ryan basically says is that he and Romney will set the framework – "Lower taxes by 20 percent" – and then they'll work out the specifics of how to get there with the Democrats in bipartisan fashion.

3) So essentially, Ryan has just admitted on national television that the Romney tax plan will be worked out after the election with the same Democrats from whom they are now, before the election, hiding any and all details.

So then, after that, there's this exchange.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Can I translate?

REP. RYAN: – so we can lower tax rates across the board. Now, here's why I'm saying this. What we're saying is here's a framework –

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I hope I'm going to get time to respond to this.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress –

MS. RADDATZ: I – you'll get time.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful – look –

MS. RADDATZ: No specifics, yeah.

Raddatz did exactly the right thing. She asked a yes-or-no question, had a politician try to run the lamest kind of game on her – and when he was done, she called him on it, coming right back to the question and translating for viewers: "No specifics."

Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running for president – for president! – promising an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without offering any details about how that's going to be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn't some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God's sake.

If you're going to offer an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without explaining how it's getting paid for, hell, why stop there? Why not just offer everyone over 18 a 1965 Mustang? Why not promise every child a Zagnut and an Xbox, or compatible mates for every lonely single person?

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break, not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day, knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public. Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.

The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by what Romney and Ryan are doing – we should take professional offense that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and dishonest tactics.

I've never been a Joe Biden fan. After four years, I'm not the biggest Barack Obama fan, either (and I'll get into why on that score later). But they're at least credible as big-league politicians. So much of the Romney/Ryan plan is so absurdly junior league, it's so far off-Broadway, it's practically in New Jersey.

Paul Ryan, a leader in the most aggressively and mindlessly partisan Congress in history, preaching bipartisanship? A private-equity parasite, Mitt Romney, who wants to enact a massive tax cut and pay for it without touching his own personal fortune-guaranteeing deduction, the carried-interest tax break – which keeps his own taxes below 15 percent despite incomes above $20 million?

The Romney/Ryan platform makes sense, and is not laughable, in only one context: if you're a multi-millionaire and you recognize that this is the only way to sell your agenda to mass audiences. But if you're not one of those rooting gazillionaires, you should laugh, you should roll your eyes, and it doesn't matter if you're the Vice President or an ABC reporter or a toll operator. You should laugh, because this stuff is a joke, and we shouldn't take it seriously.

What else is Romney 'completely wrong' about?

Gee, maybe Romney's also wrong about his denial that extending Dubya's tax cuts, plus another 20 percent cut across the board, will increase our national debt by about $4.8 trillion over 10 years? (This is not to mention $2.1 trillion in extra military spending he can't pay for either).  

Romney could make his campaign about anything and have a great shot at winning.  He could say he's in favor of rainbows and ice cream and probably win. But no, he had to propose two big-ass tax cuts that he knows he can't pay for. Why? What on earth?! Either somebody's pulling his strings, or he's mentally retarded, or both. There is no reason for him to go out on a limb with a lie like this, embarrassing himself, and insulting our intelligence. 

And all you "fiscal conservatives," all you Tea Partyers out there who are supposedly so worried about our national debt: you should all be ashamed of yourselves for letting him put this over on you, in your Party's name, as if you've forgotten elementary school arithmetic.  Stand with Romney now and you've lost all credibility (if you had any left).  

Romney on 47% comments: I was 'completely wrong'

By Ashley Killough

October 4, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/romney-on-47-comments-i-was-completely-wrong/?hpt=hp_t2

Romney was a lying sack of s--t last night

Romney may have "won" last night's debate according to snap polls, (I watched the first 15:00 then I couldn't take Romney's lying anymore), but he proved once again that he's willing to say anything to get elected, promising us that we can have our cake ($4.8 trillion in tax cuts) and eat it too (zero deficits).

Welcome back, Big Government Conservatism!  How ya been, Voodoo Economics!

Seriously, we've been through this GOP charade how many times already?  And Republicans just keep on trying it.  You know, like when Dubya cut taxes and it was supposed to grow our economy, not the deficit.  Instead, from 2002-2009, Dubya increased our national debt 91 percent or  $5.9 trillion!

Now here's the truth. This is what the non-partisan Tax Policy Center said in August about Romney's proposed 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts, on top of a permanent extension of Bush's tax cuts:

The basic arithmetic of revenue neutrality requires eliminating $360 billion worth of tax expenditures [in 2013] to offset $360 billion of [Romney's proposed] tax cuts. [...] Thus, in order to offset $360 billion in cuts, one must eliminate 65 percent of all of the available $551 billion in tax expenditures.

TPC says these cuts will total $480 billion by 2015.  Total this up over 10 years, as the Obama campaign did, and you get $4.8 trillion that must be made up for somehow.  PolitiFact confirmed it.  

Romney refuses again and again to tell us what tax expenditures he'll end and which loopholes he'll close.  Where's the money going to come from?  Don't worry, he's a business pro, he'll find it, that's what we're supposed to believe!  (Maybe it's hiding in Romney's couch cushions... or in the couches in his offshore banks).  

And it gets worse: Romney wants to increase military spending by $2.1 trillion. That brings the total of unfunded tax cuts and spending hikes to $6.9 trillion, as President Obama correctly pointed out last night.  

(I guess when you calmly call somebody on his B.S. like Obama did to Romney last night, it's considered a losing tactic.  I suppose Obama should have been screaming, jumping up and down, and accusing Romney of being a pants-on-fire charlatan while doing the "you're crazy" finger twirl next to his temple?....)

   

Anyhow, here's how Romney responded to Obama's telling it like it is:  

I'm not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut.  What I've said is I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit.  That's part one.  So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say 'I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.'  Number two, I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals.  [...Romney makes a joke about how often his own children lie to him...]  I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.  And number three, I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income families.  I will lower taxes on middle-income families.  

Exactly.  I mean... huh-what?!?  [Double take.]  Mitt Romney just promised us that he would reject his own tax plan!

The Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman summed it up thus: "Romney’s problem is he cannot possibly achieve all of these goals. He is doomed by both political reality and simple mathematics."

Folks, seriously, do the arithmetic.  It's not hard.  Then decide if you want to be deceived or not.  If you want to be lied to then, by all means, vote for Romney.  This guy is an empty suit stuffed with deceit and calumny.  

UPDATE:  Paul Krugman pointed out in the NYT how Mitt also lied his ass off that his healthcare plan covers pre-existing medical conditions, which is just flat untrue. Romney lied many, many more times during the night, but I'd say these were the biggest two whoppers.

GOP donor: 'I'm not a miner, I just play one on TV'

This story made my day.  You can't make this stuff up, folks.  I mean, to think that somebody would think they could get away with this in today's Internet age is just hilarious.

WTF was he thinking?  Was he too cheap to hire an actor?  Too worried that none of his workers would do the ad for him, or they'd f--k it up?  Or was he just so vain that he had to be on TV himself, front and center?

Master thespian Heath Lovell missed his chance to add several authentic touches to his performance, such as coal dust on his cheek, a pack of Marlboro reds in his overalls front pocket, a canary on his shoulder...

Heath Lovell, Coal Executive, Poses As Miner In Ad For Republican Congressional Candidate Andy Barr

By Bonnie Kavoussi

September 20, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/S783mXhp_ref=tw

Cheater nation: Exhibit F

I live in a place where buying and selling papers, theses, and even purchasing official diplomas is common practice.

Now the U.S. is following suit.  (OK, I realize this site is based in Montreal; but credit cards know no borders).   

It's just one more example how we're becoming a nation of cheaters and scammers.  Our richest people are the biggest cheaters.  And rich people are the best.  That's what we're taught.  So forget about ethics; Americans don't mess with success.  

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Even FOX busts Ryan's big speech (sort of)

It's pretty bad when a Republican lies so much that even FOXNews has to bust him.

But let's not give FOX credit for coming to Jesus all on its own. Other news outlets were quick to point out Ryan's obvious mischaracterizations.  See here, here, here, here and here.

Plus FOX let an op-ed contributor do the fact-checking, which makes it seem like one person's partisan view instead of the simple truth.

Paul Ryan's Speech in 3 words

By Sally Kohn

August 30, 2012 | FOXNews

URL:  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/#ixzz251rvLkSe

Cheaters DO prosper, that's why kids imitate them

In the U.S., cheating is normal, and it's contagious.  That's what we now know for certain. 

It's too bad our holier-than-thou conservatives don't talk about rampant cheating and corruption in business and higher education, especially in business schools where future conservative leaders are ostensibly bred.

It seems that to them all the immoral acts in America go on in bedrooms, not boardrooms or classrooms.

P.S. - Add bullies to the list of bad people who excel in adult life.  

Kids Cheat Just Like Their Business Role Models Do

By Susan Antilla

July 13, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/MrrXqs

Palin given dubious honor of Biggest Lie of 2009

She's a big liar, you betcha!


PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
December 18, 2009 |  PolitiFact

URL: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/18/politifact-lie-year-death-panels/