2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumRolling Stone: The First Debate: Mitt Romney's Five Biggest Lies
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004The First Debate: Mitt Romney's Five Biggest Lies
The truth behind that $5 trillion tax cut, pre-existing conditions and more
By Tim Dickinson
October 4, 2012 9:32 AM ET
Mitt Romney turned in a polished performance in last night's presidential debate and revealed himself to be an accomplished and unapologetic liar. In an evening where he sought to slice and dice the president with statistics, Romney baldly misrepresented his own policy prescriptions, made up numbers to fit his attacks and buried clear contrasts with the president.
Here are mendacious Mitt's five most outrageous statements:
2. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." Romney has claimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes and deductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn't named a single loophole he's willing to close; worse, there's no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts even if you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romney has not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percent capital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney's proposal would create a "net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers." Moreover, some of Romney's tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly his proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons' tax burden by tens of millions of dollars.
3. "We've got 23 million people out of work or {who have} stopped looking for work in this country." Romney is lying for effect. The nation's crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23 million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 million Americans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping 23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who hold part-time jobs as also being "out of work."
4. Obamacare "puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have." Romney is reviving Sarah Palin's old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors.
5. "Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan." In the biggest whopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal would guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just not true. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unable to obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than 90 days because you lost your job or couldn't afford the premiums, you would be shit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny you coverage, as even Romney's top adviser conceded after the debate was over.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004#ixzz28LQltVbo
barbtries
(28,810 posts)thank you
EmeraldCityGrl
(4,310 posts)TxVietVet
(1,905 posts)It's his religious mission to become president and satisfy the mormon's "white horse prophecy". Mormons view "lying for the lord" as okay as long as you are advancing the religion. That's how they deal with the real history of mormonism and it's founders and history. Because if the truth is known, they lose members.
http://www.mormonwiki.org/Lying_for_the_Lord
http://www.archive.org/download/LyingForTheLordInMormonism.mp3/LyingForTheLordInMormonism.mp3
AzDar
(14,023 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Rob H.
(5,352 posts)I was feeling discouraged after watching last night's debate (and how useless as a moderator was Jim Lehrer?) and this helped.
ailsagirl
(22,898 posts)Kurovski
(34,655 posts)Thank you dear Babylon Seester!
babylonsister
(171,079 posts)I'm so glad you pop in once in awhile!
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts). . . and caught lying out of his Limbaugh instead!!
It was the strangest debate I have ever seen.
I've been watching Presidential debates since 1968, and I have never seen a candidate just flat-out deny his own political platform, the "stuff" that got him to be the candidate, ever before.
I can't wait for the next debate.
Maybe Mitt will tell us that now he is for a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, while he won the Republican primaries and became the GOP candidate by saying he was against abortion of any kind, for any reason, and would also like to overturn Roe v Wade.
Or, maybe Mitt will say now that he believes that all women should get equal treatment and equal pay at work, after he ran for nearly 10 months as a Republican candidate during the primaries saying that he believes a woman does have a place in our work force, as long as she is barefoot and pregnant and is working in the kitchen making his supper.
Or, maybe Mitt will tell us how he intends to solve all of the problems in the Middle East by sitting down and talking rationally with the leaders of those countries that are involved and getting them to make concessions with each to hammer out a peaceful settlement, since he ran for the last 10 months of the year as the Republican candidate saying he would park 3 aircraft carriers off of the coast of Iran and then threaten to attack Iran if they don't do what he tells them.
I think the tea party coalition members were shocked by what Mitt said in the first debate.
They heard him say that he wasn't going to give them a 20% tax cut.
He denied that he made all of those promises of tax cuts that he made to them for the last year about lowering their taxes.
They're probably more angry about not getting that promised 20% tax cut than anything else.
They don't care if Big Bird gets axed, but man, they wanted to have their 20% tax cut.
Oh well, they'll just have to get over it, I guess.
babylonsister
(171,079 posts)By 'winning' this debate, he could actually be ostracising his core. Who'd a thunk it?!
And I missed it last night, but it's not too difficult to get caught up around here.
libodem
(19,288 posts)That about sums it up.
trusty elf
(7,398 posts)[IMG][/IMG]
kimbutgar
(21,174 posts)They are really angry and accusing Dickinson of being a liar and a left wing stooge who parrots media matters. I wonder how much they are being paid?