In a campaign built upon lies, how many more can Romney squeeze in? It looks like he;s setting up his first debate stint to be a lie-a-palooza.
The Not-Liar
• Samuel L Jackson ” WAKE THE FUCK UP ” Barack Obama AD
• My Job
• Your vote matters. Obama stopped torture. Romney would rescind that order. Choose.
• More Jobs Than We Knew: The government’s estimates of job creation are not particularly accurate, a point that is often made and often ignored. On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provided another reminder. The agency said it probably undercounted the extent of job creation between April 2011 and March 2012 by 20 percent. In that revision, published Thursday, the agency concluded that an additional 386,000 jobs were created during the 12-month period, a 20 percent jump over its previous estimate that employment increased by about 1.94 million jobs. The revision is preliminary; a final version will not be published until February.
Lying liars that lie
• From this Wednesday evening’s CBS News, Mitt Romney, who is running a presidential campaign based on lie after lie, after lie, taking his opponent out of context, flip flopping to the point where he can’t even make it though one news cycle without changing his story about the last thing that came out of his own mouth, accused the Obama campaign of “character assassination.”
• Romney, in a speech to the American Legion, charged that the defense budget cuts would affect services for veterans. But Romney’s claim — that veterans’ care will be negatively impacted by sequestration — is not grounded in reality. Earlier this month, the White House announced that virtually all of the Veterans Affairs Department budget will be exempt from mandatory cuts if and when sequestration goes into effect in January 2013. The only exception, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, would be possible cuts to administrative costs. That means health care, vocational, and education services will remain fully funded while cuts are made elsewhere within the Department of Defense, despite Mitt Romney’s claims to the contrary.
• The Truth About The Obama Phone: Since 2009, there has been an urban myth that Obama created a program to provide free phones to low-income Americans at taxpayer expense. There is, in fact, a government program that will provide low-income people with a free or low cost cell phone. It was started in 2008 under George W. Bush. The idea of providing low-income individuals with subsidized phone service was originated in the Reagan administration following the break-up of AT&T in 1984. (It was expanded and formalized by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.) The program is paid for by telecommunications companies through an independent non-profit, not through tax revenue.
• Romney spoke at the American Spring Wire’s headquarters in Ohio to condemn Obama’s trade policies towards China, and the American Spring Wire’s headquarters benefited from Obama’s trade policies towards China. Making matters worse, when Obama took these efforts, Romney criticized them as too tough on China. Did the Romney campaign just not think this through?
The Republican Party of Florida’s top recipient of 2012 expenditures, a firm by the name of Strategic Allied Consulting, was just fired on Tuesday night, after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were discovered to have been turned in by the group to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections. The firm appears to be another shell company of Nathan Sproul, a longtime, notorious Republican operative, hired year after year by GOP Presidential campaigns, despite being accused of shredding Democratic voter registration forms in a number of states over several past elections. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Strategic Allied Consulting has been paid some $667,000 this year by the FL GOP, presumably to run its voter registration campaigns in the state. That number, however, does not account for another identical payment made in August. The Palm Beach Post is reporting tonight that the firm received “more than $1.3 million” from the Republican Party of Florida “to register new voters.” The firm is not only tied to the FL GOP, but also to the Mitt Romney Campaign, which hired Sproul as a political consultant late last year, despite years of fraud allegations against his organizations in multiple states. Moreover, the firm is also reportedly operating similar voter registration operations on behalf of the Republican Party, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a number of key battleground states this year, including North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado. Strategic Allied has recently taken steps to hide their ownership by Sproul’s notorious firm, Sproul & Associates.
[bradblog.com]
• Is a Pretty Young Mormon Woman Evidence of GOP Voter Fraud? A disturbing video is making the rounds: a pretty, young, fresh-faced Mormon woman outside a Safeway store in Colorado Springs registering voters. It may sound as innocent as she looks, but what lies beneath the surface seems a little uglier, especially given Adalia Woodbury’s coverage of Romney/GOP voter fraud yesterday.
Homophobia, Sexism, and general asshattery
• Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has been a very vocal advocate for marriage equality, helping fundraise to defeat his state’s marriage inequality amendment and just defending the gay community in general. For this, he has been bombarded with anti-gay hate mail, including one particular individual who photoshopped his name into a cartoon describing him as worse than a pedophile.
• The misogyny continues: “I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin said. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”
• On the heels of saying Claire McCaskill’s performace at the Missouri Senate debate wasn’t “ladylike,” Todd Akin compared Democratic Senator’s demeanor at the debate to that of a caged animal. “The first two minutes, wow, it’s like somebody let a wildcat out of the cage,” Akin told supporters Thursday according to the Los Angeles Times. “She was just furious and attacking in every different direction, which was a little bit of a surprise to us.”
• When federal snitch and convicted fraudster Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was released from custody in the summer of 2011, he swore that he wouldn’t use a computer without checking with his probation officer first. Barely a month later, he began producing a movie, which announced its casting calls online. A year after that, a trailer for the film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” was uploaded to YouTube — and quickly became the focus of protests in Islamic communities worldwide for its depictions of a child-molesting Prophet Muhammad. And that’s why, on Wednesday night, a federal magistrate order Nakoula back to jail.
F.D.Brightly
How many more lies?
Shorter Question Everything
In a campaign built upon lies, how many more can Romney squeeze in? It looks like he;s setting up his first debate stint to be a lie-a-palooza.
The Not-Liar
• Samuel L Jackson ” WAKE THE FUCK UP ” Barack Obama AD
• My Job
• Your vote matters. Obama stopped torture. Romney would rescind that order. Choose.
• More Jobs Than We Knew: The government’s estimates of job creation are not particularly accurate, a point that is often made and often ignored. On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provided another reminder. The agency said it probably undercounted the extent of job creation between April 2011 and March 2012 by 20 percent. In that revision, published Thursday, the agency concluded that an additional 386,000 jobs were created during the 12-month period, a 20 percent jump over its previous estimate that employment increased by about 1.94 million jobs. The revision is preliminary; a final version will not be published until February.
Lying liars that lie
• From this Wednesday evening’s CBS News, Mitt Romney, who is running a presidential campaign based on lie after lie, after lie, taking his opponent out of context, flip flopping to the point where he can’t even make it though one news cycle without changing his story about the last thing that came out of his own mouth, accused the Obama campaign of “character assassination.”
• Romney, in a speech to the American Legion, charged that the defense budget cuts would affect services for veterans. But Romney’s claim — that veterans’ care will be negatively impacted by sequestration — is not grounded in reality. Earlier this month, the White House announced that virtually all of the Veterans Affairs Department budget will be exempt from mandatory cuts if and when sequestration goes into effect in January 2013. The only exception, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, would be possible cuts to administrative costs. That means health care, vocational, and education services will remain fully funded while cuts are made elsewhere within the Department of Defense, despite Mitt Romney’s claims to the contrary.
• The chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee complained Thursday that an unnamed Republican senator blocked a bill [HR 4114] last week to provide veterans with an annual cost-of-living adjustment, a maneuver that could delay payments for recipients. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) brought the bill to the floor Sept. 21. The bill was cleared by Democrats but was held up by an unidentified Republican, according to her office. The Senate subsequently recessed without passing the bill. [Also: Senate GOP Blocks Veterans Jobs Bill]
• The Truth About The Obama Phone: Since 2009, there has been an urban myth that Obama created a program to provide free phones to low-income Americans at taxpayer expense. There is, in fact, a government program that will provide low-income people with a free or low cost cell phone. It was started in 2008 under George W. Bush. The idea of providing low-income individuals with subsidized phone service was originated in the Reagan administration following the break-up of AT&T in 1984. (It was expanded and formalized by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.) The program is paid for by telecommunications companies through an independent non-profit, not through tax revenue.
• Romney spoke at the American Spring Wire’s headquarters in Ohio to condemn Obama’s trade policies towards China, and the American Spring Wire’s headquarters benefited from Obama’s trade policies towards China. Making matters worse, when Obama took these efforts, Romney criticized them as too tough on China. Did the Romney campaign just not think this through?
Projection: GOP vote fraud
• Florida GOP fires Romney consultant’s voter registration firm after fraudulent forms reported in Palm Beach County:
• Is a Pretty Young Mormon Woman Evidence of GOP Voter Fraud? A disturbing video is making the rounds: a pretty, young, fresh-faced Mormon woman outside a Safeway store in Colorado Springs registering voters. It may sound as innocent as she looks, but what lies beneath the surface seems a little uglier, especially given Adalia Woodbury’s coverage of Romney/GOP voter fraud yesterday.
Homophobia, Sexism, and general asshattery
• Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has been a very vocal advocate for marriage equality, helping fundraise to defeat his state’s marriage inequality amendment and just defending the gay community in general. For this, he has been bombarded with anti-gay hate mail, including one particular individual who photoshopped his name into a cartoon describing him as worse than a pedophile.
• The misogyny continues: “I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin said. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”
• On the heels of saying Claire McCaskill’s performace at the Missouri Senate debate wasn’t “ladylike,” Todd Akin compared Democratic Senator’s demeanor at the debate to that of a caged animal. “The first two minutes, wow, it’s like somebody let a wildcat out of the cage,” Akin told supporters Thursday according to the Los Angeles Times. “She was just furious and attacking in every different direction, which was a little bit of a surprise to us.”
• When federal snitch and convicted fraudster Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was released from custody in the summer of 2011, he swore that he wouldn’t use a computer without checking with his probation officer first. Barely a month later, he began producing a movie, which announced its casting calls online. A year after that, a trailer for the film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” was uploaded to YouTube — and quickly became the focus of protests in Islamic communities worldwide for its depictions of a child-molesting Prophet Muhammad. And that’s why, on Wednesday night, a federal magistrate order Nakoula back to jail.