Romney, Fox News, Jim Hoft, Michelle Malkin and Other Anti-American Conservatives Lied About Obama and Libya

Romney, Fox News, Jim Hoft, Michelle Malkin and Other Anti-American Conservatives Lied About Obama and Libya

Transcript Truthers: Conservatives Deny Obama Called Libya Attack An "Act Of Terror"

During tonight's presidential debate, moderator Candy Crowley corrected Mitt Romney's false claim that President Obama did not refer to the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya as an act of terrorism the day after the attack.

Crowley was right, and Romney was wrong: In his September 12 remarks, the president said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America." Despite this, conservatives in the media are insisting that Obama never said that.

(Twitter captures above and at link)

Both Malkin and Hoft linked to a September 30 Commentary blog post by Alana Goodman arguing that "at no point" in Obama's remarks responding to the Benghazi attack "was it clear that he was using that term to describe the attack in Benghazi." Instead, argued Goodman, the line might have been "just a generic, reassuring line he'd added into a speech which did take place, after all, the day after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks." Even though Obama mentioned the four Americans killed in Benghazi in the very next line.

That makes little sense and is a reed far to thin to stand on. But it's good enough for Fox News and the conservative blogosphere.

Update:

Predictably, Fox News is echoing the misleading defense of Romney. During an interview with Romney surrogate John Sununu, Sean Hannity falsely claimed that when Obama referenced "acts of terror," he was "talking about September 11, 2001. He doesn't talk about Benghazi being an act of terror." Hannity then immediately aired video contradicting his supposed "fact check" of Obama:

Fox News host Bret Baier also tried to discredit the fact that Obama referred to the Benghazi attack as an act of terror. During Fox's coverage of the debate, Baier claimed that Obama wasn't "specifically speaking about Benghazi" when he referred to the attack as an act of terror -- that he was speaking "generically."

Baier also faulted Obama for repeatedly referring to an anti-Islam video as a possible catalyst for the attack and for stressing that an investigation was ongoing.

UPDATE 2: Obama also referred to the Benghazi attack as an "act of terror" while campaigning in Colorado on September 13:

    Let me say at the outset that obviously our hearts are heavy this week -- we had a tough day a couple of days ago, for four Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Libya.  Yesterday I had a chance to go over to the State Department to talk to friends and colleagues of those who were killed.  And these were Americans who, like so many others, both in uniform and civilians, who serve in difficult and dangerous places all around the world to advance the interests and the values that we hold dear as Americans.

    And a lot of times their work goes unheralded, doesn't get a lot of attention, but it is vitally important.  We enjoy our security and our liberty because of the sacrifices that they make.  And they do an outstanding job every single day without a lot of fanfare.  (Applause.)

    So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice.  (Applause.)  I want people around the world to hear me:  To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world.  No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America.  (Applause.)

Conservatives really should learn how to read and write American English, it is the language that most Americans use. After which thy could work on their comprehension and analytical skills. These skills tend to be important and are actually fundamental to having a system of values. Since conservatives seem to have simply learned the words values by way of route memory, perhaps that is why they do not understand American English and the legacy of American values and ideals. No One at The Conservative Anti-American Blog Newsbusters Can Pass a Reading Comprehension Test
One Matthew Sheffield | October 16, 2012 | 23:38 writes,

CNN correspondent and second presidential debate moderator Candy Crowley disgraced herself tonight, repeatedly intervening to save a floundering President Obama and showing why many Americans were rightfully suspicious of her ability to moderate a presidential debate fairly.

Her most outrageous act tonight was her incorrect seconding of Obama's statement that he declared the Libya terrorist attacks to be "terror." While Obama did indeed use the word, this is not what he meant by it. Instead, he was simply referring to "acts of terror." There was no mention of Al Qaeda or any of its affiliates with respect to the actual attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.

Crowley bungled the facts in attempting to save Obama from his administration's dreadful bungling of the Libya situation. She owes the American people an apology for inserting herself into the debate in such an inappropriate and embarrassing fashion.

Obama clearly ised the word terrorism as the above transcripts show. One of the great things about the web is that anyone, including malciously ignorant neatherthals like Sheffeild can write anything that they like, disregarding the most obvious and easily checkable facts. Conservatives are notorious for exploiting any tragedy that happens to an American for political gain, you could call them the Addicts and Whores of Exploitation. This is easy to see when you compare the response of conservatives to the attacks of 9-11 and Bush's responsibility to Obama and Libya. Bush was in no way responsible for 9-11, yet Obama is responsible for Libya.

In Presidential Debate Romney Acts Like a Child in a Tantrum Rather Than a Principled Adult

Get the truth about these dangerous miscreants hiding their radical agenda behind fake patriotism, 10 Things Paul Ryan Doesn't Want You to Know

There Were Many Lies In Romney's Convention Speech, This Is The Biggest

There Were Many Lies In Romney's Convention Speech, This Is The Biggest

Who knew that Mitt Romney was such a fan of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign?

"How many days have you woken up feeling that something really special was happening in America?" Romney told thousands of Republican delegates, alternates and hangers-on Thursday night. "Many of you felt that way on Election Day four years ago. Hope and Change had a powerful appeal."

Speaking of the "fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president" Americans felt upon Obama's election, the man who will now seek to prevent the Democratic president's reelection told the 40th Republican National Convention about how much he had hoped Obama would succeed "because I wanted America to succeed."

But it wasn't just that citizens wanted America to succeed. As Romney noted: "Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who’s living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity… This was the hope and change America voted for.”

In this, Romney was right.

When Americans went to the polls in 2008, the clear majority voted for Barack Obama because they wanted a president who would address the economic missteps and misdeeds that had caused a stock market meltdown on the eve of the election -- handing the new president what even one of his harshest critics, Republican vice president nominee Paul Ryan, admitted in his Wednesday night acceptance speech was "a crisis."

The response to that crisis, Americans hoped, would do more than just bring a measure of stability to the markets. They hoped that it would bring a measure of prosperity to them and to their communities.

Unfortunately, Obama and his party did not have partners in addressing the crisis.

While Romney says he wanted Obama to succeed, Rush Limbaugh said before the new president was inaugurated in January, 2009, "I hope Obama fails." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said on behalf of the president's legislative partners: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Paul Ryan saw to it: rallying opposition to a stimulus that was designed to jumpstart the economy, opposing health-care reforms that mirrored those Romney implemented as the governor of Massachusetts, and refusing even the most minimal compromises as the nation's credit-rating was threatened during a absurd fight over whether to raise borrowing limits that Democratic and Republican presidents had raised in the past.

Even in the rare instances where Obama put the needs of the nation -- and the moment -- above politics, other members of "the loyal opposition" merely opposed. One of them even argued against providing the support that was needed to preserve the American auto industry, writing an article that declared: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Who was that guy?

Oh, right, Mitt Romney.

Much was made of the web of deception that Paul Ryan wove with his acceptance speech on Wednesday night,. But Romney actually tried to one-up his running-mate.

The man who stood before the convention of his party and declared that he wanted Barack Obama to succeed campaigned against Obama's election in 2008 -- attacking the Democratic nominee and his supporters for proposing "timid, liberal empty gestures."

Throughout Obama's first-term, Romney was a steady critic -- not just of auto bailouts but of virtually all of the policies of the new administration. He never demanded, as Wendell Willkie did after the 1940 elections, that Republicans recognize the necessity of working with a Democratic president. Like Ryan, Romney abandoned the traditional "one nation" Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower and a former Michigan governor named George Romney, which argued that Republicans could and should work with Democrats, especially in tough times.

On a night that was all about telling Mitt Romney's story, with reflections on his humane service with his church, on his not so humane service with Bain Capital and of his moderate Republican service as governor of Massachusetts (well, except for the Romneycare part), Romney and his enthusiasts had plenty to say about Obama's failings. Even in speeches that were ostensibly about Romney's business acumen, there were sharp, at times unrelenting "they just don't get it" attacks on the president.

Then, Romney went for the jugular with lines like: "President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family."

Applause.

"To the majority of Americans who now believe that the future will not be better than the past," he told a crowd filled , 'I can guarantee you this: if Barack Obama is re-elected, you will be right.'"

Thunderous applause.

That just does not sound like a guy who wanted Barack Obama to succeed.

It sounds more like a guy who formed part of a partisan opposition that did everything in its power to make Obama "a one-term president."

Three years into the first Obama term, veteran Washington watchers Thomas Mann (who works for a think tank packed with former Republican White House aides) and Norman Ornstein (who works for Dick Cheney's old think tank) wrote an article titled: "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

"We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party," observed Mann and Ornstein.

"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition," they continued. "When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges."

The Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, of Dwight Eisenhower and George Romney, of Gerald Ford, and, yes, of Ronald Reagan, never moved so far from the mainstream that it would not cooperate and compromise when it came time to do right by America.

But the party that Mitt Romney now leads moved so far that it was, indeed, "nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges."

They did not achieve Limbaugh's dream of forcing an Obama failure. But they made the president's tenure dramatically harder, and the prospect for renewal dramatically more difficult to achieve. And, now, Mitt Romney says: "Today the time has come for us to put the disappointments of the last four years behind us. To put aside the divisiveness and the recriminations. To forget about what might have been and to look ahead to what can be."

Or, it could be a time to consider the successes that might have been if the party that has nominated Mitt Romney for president and Paul Romney for vice president was not "an insurgent outlier in American politics. (that was) ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."

"You might have asked yourself over these last years whether this is the America we want," Romney said in his acceptance speech.

Yes, Americans might have asked just that.

 Most voters know that President Obama inherited the worse recession since 1929. Ironically or maybe not, Romney inherited a small economic slump when he was governor of Massachusetts. In his RNC speech he holds Obama responsible not not fixing a catastrophe caused by Republicans, yet it was Mitt who complained as governor that he should not be blamed for not fixing the economy left by his predecessor - a Republican by the way. Republicans did everything in their power to make Obama and the USA fail. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) famously confused about the Republican tactics on the debt ceiling negotiations - McConnell Debt Ceiling Strategy: 'I Refuse To Help Obama Reelection' . This is the same anti-American fanatic that voted to raise the debt ceiling seven times under the Bush administration. Mr. Romney, supposedly a shining example of values, has the values of an old Soviet propagandist, Fact check: Mitt Romney's convention speech. Mitt is no more than George Bush with a better haircut. Romney represents all that is wrong with the conservative movement - their agenda is about catering to the compliants of billionaires who want even more money and ethnocetric women haters.

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Wants To Be President So He Can Give Himself an $80 Million Dollar Tax Cut

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Wants To Be President So He Can Give Himself an $80 Million Dollar Tax Cut

The U.S. tax code may be difficult to grasp, but understanding the presidential candidates' plans for it doesn't have to be. President Obama wants to raise his own taxes, while Mitt Romney wants to dramatically reduce the already small slice he pays to Uncle Sam.

Of course, that simplification doesn't shed light on just how dramatic President Romney's windfall for his family would actually be. Mitt's plan, which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center forecast would cut taxes for the richest five percent of earners while increasing the tax bill for the other 95 percent of Americans, could slash his own annual IRS payment by almost half. And by eliminating the estate tax, the $250 million man would potentially divert $80 million (and possibly more) from the United States Treasury to his own heirs

On Friday, Governor Romney defended his mystery finances, declaring, "I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes." But when he announced Sunday that he wants "something dramatic" to boost the economy, he must have been speaking about his own.

Here's why.

At the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 will expire. Among other changes to the tax code, President Obama wants to let the top 35 percent tax rate for income over $250,000 to return to its Clinton-era level of 39.6 percent and implement the Buffett Rule guaranteeing millionaires pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate. Obama would also end the "carried interest exemption" that allows Mitt Romney and other similar financiers to pay under 15 percent to Uncle Sam each year. In contrast, Romney would not only make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but deliver a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Upper income taxpayers would not only see their rate slashed to 28 percent, but would benefit by the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

While conservatives and their friends in the media have decided we have a deficit problem, we in fact still have a revenue problem. They are at their lowest level since the Reagan years - the last time we had a major recession. The major reason conservatives want to frame the issue this way is to make everyone believe we can cut spending to balance the budget. The only way to do that is to gut the safety net programs like Medicare.

Why Does Mitt Romney Want To Restrict Voting Rights For More Than 900,000 Ohio Veterans?

Scott Brown (R-MS) has a well deserved reputation for being lazy. So lazy that he is letting his buddies at the Anti-American Fox News do his attacking for him, REPORT: Fox Spends Over 43 Minutes Smearing Elizabeth Warren. Why is Scott Brown afraid of doing his own dirty work. Would making these kinds of false smears ruin little Scotty's fabricated image as a nice guy.

Mitt Romney, Like The Republican Party is Out to Destroy Capitalism

Mitt Romney, Like The Republican Party is Out to Destroy Capitalism

Mitt Romney touts his business acumen and job-creation record as a key qualification for being the next U.S. president.

What’s clear from a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses.

What’s less clear is how his skills are relevant to the job of overseeing the U.S. economy, strengthening competitiveness and looking out for the welfare of the general public, especially the middle class.

Thanks to leverage, 10 of roughly 67 major deals by Bain Capital during Romney’s watch produced about 70 percent of the firm’s profits. Four of those 10 deals, as well as others, later wound up in bankruptcy. It’s worth examining some of them to understand Romney’s investment style at Bain Capital.

In 1986, in one of its earliest deals, Bain Capital acquired Accuride Corp., a manufacturer of aluminum truck wheels. The purchase was 97.5 percent financed by debt, a high level of leverage under any circumstances. It was especially burdensome for a company that was exposed to aluminum-price volatility and cyclical automotive production.

Casino Capitalism

Forty-to-one leverage is casino capitalism that hugely magnifies gains and losses. Bain Capital wisely chose to flip the company fast: After 18 months, it sold Accuride, converting its $2.6 million sliver of equity into a $61 million capital gain. That deal, which yielded a 1,123 percent annualized return, was critical to Bain Capital’s early success and led the firm to keep maximizing the use of leverage.

In 1992, Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper by financing 87 percent of the purchase price. In the next three years, Ampad borrowed to make acquisitions, repay existing debt and pay Bain Capital and its investors $60 million in dividends.

As a result, the company’s debt swelled from $11 million in 1993 to $444 million by 1995. The $14 million in annual interest expense on this debt dwarfed the company’s $4.7 million operating cash flow. The proceeds of an initial public offering in July 1996 were used to pay Bain Capital $48 million for part of its stake and to reduce the company’s debt to $270 million.

From 1993 to 1999, Bain Capital charged Ampad about $18 million in various fees. By 1999, the company’s debt was back up to $400 million. Unable to pay the interest costs and drained of cash paid to Bain Capital in fees and dividends, Ampad filed for bankruptcy the following year. Senior secured lenders got less than 50 cents on the dollar, unsecured lenders received two- tenths of a cent on the dollar, and several hundred jobs were lost. Bain Capital had reaped capital gains of $107 million on its $5.1 million investment.

It always seems that some essential ingredients are missing from how conservative Republican views capitalism versus moral patriotic Americans. Romney and conservatives are out to exploit the system, to plunder, to sneak around ethical concerns, to undermine competitive markets - to create loads of money for themselves by any means necessary. Normal patriotic capitalists see the free market as a place to compete - to offer goods and services at competitive prices. To engage in meaningful dignified employment. To enjoy our families and lives.To buy the basics like food, shelter and clothing to provide the basic comforts. Republican believe in making America into a kind of corporate collective - a weird mirror image of Marxism - with the corporate lite at the top, and the powerless workers below.


Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech Is a New Low

Mitt Romney Wants To Stack His Administration With The Same Corrupt Plutocrats Who Crashed The Economy. Republicans See Corruption As A Virtue

Mitt Romney Wants To Stack His Administration With The Same Corrupt Plutocrats Who Crashed The Economy. Republicans See Corruption As A Virtue

In May, Mitt Romney suggested a new eligibility test in the U.S. Constitution requiring that the President first "spend at least three years working in business." It was bad enough that America's would-be second Harvard MBA President forgot the disastrous record of the first. Now, Mitt has chosen the worst possible week to announce that President Romney's Cabinet will feature people who had "real jobs" and "have experience in the real world, in the private sector." After all, while Romney's campaign was getting battered by mounting questions over his AWOL tax returns and mysterious tenure at Bain Capital, some of the biggest banks on both sides of the Atlantic were revealed to be cheats, gamblers and frauds. And as it is turns out, recent studies suggest those abysmal business ethics are not exceptions to the rule.

To be sure, the Republican nominee and his former firm weren't the only ones to be on the receiving end of headlines like "50 Shades of Bain" and "Did Romney Make a False Statement on His Financial Disclosure?" The mushrooming scandal over Barclay's rigging of the crucial London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) came to the U.S. with word that the New York Fed knew of manipulation in the UK dating back to 2008. (That scandal has already claimed the job of Barclay's CEO Bob Diamond, a man who was to have co-hosted Mitt Romney's upcoming fundraising event in London.) On Friday, JP Morgan once again found itself the under the microscope as the bank reported its growing losses from bad bets placed by the notorious "London whale" may have cost the firm $7 billion. That same day, the New York Times reported that "MasterCard, Visa and major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, agreed to pay more than $6 billion to settle accusations that they engaged in anticompetitive practices" in processing credit card payments to retailers. Meanwhile, the nation's largest bank, Wells Fargo, beat earnings expectations on Friday even as it announced a $175 million settlement with the Justice Department over "accusations that it discriminated against some minority homeowners seeking loans from 2004 to 2009."

Reflecting on the LIBOR scandal, University of San Diego Law School professor Frank Partnoy lamented, "I wish I could say I'm shocked, because it is shocking, but regulators have not been particularly effective or aggressive in the past two decades of finance." Simon Johnson summed up the banking scandal that may have impacted $800 trillion worth of business and consumer credit transactions with this powerfully simply headline:

    "Lie More, as a Business Model."

Conservative Republicans like Mitt have be successful in repealing most of the financial regulation that would have prevented the Great Recession. What regulation we had left they were negligent about enforcing. If terrorists had done this much damage to the USA conservatives would be back in shrill paranoid mode. Instead they're asking to help elect more congressmen, senators, governors and a president so they can commit some more domestic terror on working and middle-class America's finances.

Fox's Latest Attempt To Deflect Blame For Recession Away From GOP

Is Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) Going Crazy? Will LePage Start Murdering People?

Is Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) Going Crazy? Will LePage Start Murdering People?

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) raised eyebrows last week when he called the IRS "the new Gestapo." Soon after, he issued a statement saying "the use of the word Gestapo has clouded my message," but in person, the governor didn't sound especially apologetic.

This morning, LePage appeared in Vermont, where he spoke at a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock, and the far-right Maine Republican started the mess all over again (thanks to reader B.S. for the tip).

    Standing by Brock's side at the Sheraton in South Burlington, the Maine governor said, "What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad -- yet."

    LePage then said, "They're headed in that direction."

    Asked if he had a sense of what the Gestapo did during the second world war, LePage said, "Yeah, they killed a lot of people." Asked whether the IRS "was headed in the direction of killing a lot of people," LePage answered: "Yeah."

If you're skeptical that LePage could be this absurd, there's an audio recording of the exchange.

So, in the mind of the governor of Maine, the IRS reminds him of Nazis, then he's sorry, then he's comfortable saying the IRS is headed in the "direction" of Nazis and "killing a lot of people."

One of the techniques the Nazis used to gain and keep power was to unjustly demonize any group they disagreed with. IRS employees are our friends, neighbors and families - real human beings. All they do is what presidents and Congress - both Republicans and Democrats  -  what the law dictates they do. So far they have not gone on any murderous rampages. Does anyone know if LePage has ever had a mental exam?