Romney's "We Did Build It!" banner based on a lie

[RedStateLiberal]

CNN just reported that Mitt Romney is now displaying a banner at his campaign events that reads: "We Did Build It!."



Romney is still dishonestly taking a quote from Obama out of context.

Today Washington Post's 'The Fact Checker' gave Romney's lie "Three Pinocchios"

-snip-

The biggest problem with Romney’s ad is that it leaves out just enough chunks of Obama’s words — such as a reference to “roads and bridges”— so that it sounds like Obama is attacking individual initiative. The ad deceivingly cuts away from Obama speaking in order to make it seem as if the sentences follow one another, when in fact eight sentences are snipped away.

Suddenly, the word “that” appears as if it is referring to a business, rather than (apparently) to roads and bridges.

-snip-

Romney, however, descends into silly season when he extrapolates Obama’s quote and says that means Obama believes Steve Jobs did not build Apple Computers.

Here’s what Obama said when Jobs passed away earlier this year: “By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the Internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun.”

That sounds like Obama believes that Jobs really did build his company. He did not mention the roads to Cupertino.

-snip-

Obama certainly could take from lessons from Warren or Roosevelt on how to frame this argument in a way that is less susceptible for quote-snipping. And Romney certainly could answer Obama’s argument by engaging in a serious discussion about whether the wealthy should pay much more in taxes as a matter of social good and equity. That would be grounds for an elevated, interesting and important debate.

But instead, by focusing on one ill-phrased sentence, Romney and his campaign have decided to pretend that Obama is talking about something different — and then further extrapolated it so that it becomes ridiculous. That’s not very original at all.

Three Pinocchios

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/an-unoriginal-obama-quote-taken-out-of-context/2012/07/20/gJQAdG7hyW_blog.html

[rusty charly]

1. "We Did Build It...

... In India and China!"

[RedStateLiberal]

2. LOL! Good one! (nt)

[AtomicKitten]

4. And the lie has morphed into full-on horseshit.

Progressive 960 Green here in SF was bought by Clear Channel. The only progressives left on the channel are Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller. I turned to the channel yesterday and there was a rightwing loon that kept referring to Barack HUSSEIN (cue hissing sound) Obama. He said Pres O said private businesses can only be successful with the the public sector - teachers, construction crews, etc - and that his intention is to exponentially expand the public sector. It was odd that they played O's actual quote and they still didn't get it. It appears Rmoney's lie has morphed into a convoluted rightwing conspiracy theory.

[RedStateLiberal]

5. They want people to think Obama is a Socialist

and will use anything they can to try to fool people into believing that.

This conspiracy theory has been around since the '08 campaign when they used his "spread the wealth around" quote. That's their only evidence that Obama is a Socialist but they pretend to believe it anyway because it scares people into thinking Obama is somehow un-American.

The fact that they have to take a sentence out of context to try to show Obama is somehow a Socialist after 3.5 years of him as POTUS should tell people they are completely full of crap. However, our piss-poor media lets them get away with it.

[freshwest]

6. +1

[marshall]

7. It's all a grammatical snafu

Logically one can figure out what the President meant, but grammatically it is confusing. The immediate antecedent of the word "that" is business. Moreover, "that" is singular, like "business," whereas "roads and bridges" are both plural.

The speech would have been far more clear, and less controversial, if the President had said: "...Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build those. Somebody else made that happen.