Gaffe: Noun: An unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder: "an unforgivable social gaffe".
Downright Lie: Noun phrase, the noun referring to: A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. 2. Something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture. 3. An inaccurate or false statement. 4. Any statement made by Mitt Romney.
When I recently visited my lovely sister in Arizona she told me that when she votes in elections she votes for the man (I'll be politically correct for her and posit that she meant "person") rather than the issue.
I didn't tell her at the time because I didn't think of it, but upon reflection, that is a ridiculous position or voting strategy, for several reasons. Or at least two.
Number 1: The electorate may vote for a candidate who they "like" or admire due to their perceived personal qualities rather than one who will solve the nation's problems, or attempt to, in the manner the electorate may wish. When George W. Bush ran for office the media made a big deal about how common folks could identify with him, how he was a guy they would like to have a beer with, and his "swagger," whatever that meant, more than the less demonstrative democratic candidates he was running against, yet... George W. Bush started two unpaid for foreign military actions which we are still involved with costing the nation huge losses in life and treasure, decimated individual civil rights within the country, made torture a national policy, let a major American city languish after a natural disaster, and through his policies caused the nation to slide into the most sever economic crisis in 80 years, on and on. Some would say these policies were decidedly against the best interests of the voting public.
"Miss me yet?" No George, we do not!
Number 2: It's the issues that are important, not the ma... person who is elected to deal with them. The issues will always be more important than those elected to deal with them. The issues will also be around longer than any one person who is elected to deal with them at any particular time. In the next general election, for instance, the economy, issues of foreign policy forseen and unforseen, health care, regulation, etc., will still be with us long after Obama or Romney leave office to write more books and collect fees on the lecture circuit.
Still, my dear sister does have a point.
If a particular candidate's... deficiencies... are so glaring, so obvious, then one is forced, it seems to me, to take them into account.
Or should.
For instance, hypothetically speaking of course, if given the choice between a presidential candidate, an office of some importance, one who is demonstrably a pathological liar, and unapologetically so, whose entire campaign is based on proven lies and distortions, and a candidate who does not rely on lies and distortions, who may occasionally get his facts wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally, but still is markedly more truthful, who would you vote for, no matter what the issues are that we face?
If you answered that you'd vote for the person who was the pathological liar just because of party affiliation or the opposing candidates race, then there is something horribly wrong with you.
Because if a candidate for high office believes it's perfectly alright to lie to gain office, and does it repeatedly, they will surely continue that practice once the actually gain that office, and you will never know the truth about anything. How could you?
Mitt (Mitt) Romney is a proven liar. He knows he is and doesn't care. It's my belief that he is a sociopath, but I'll explore that later. He's been called out on his lies (and flip-flops, which are a form of lie, taking whatever position is most convenient at the time) and he doesn't get flustered as most normal people would, he doesn't even make excuses. He gloriously accepts that he lies, and has not, as yet, apologized for them, or made any effort to correct them.
This shows a shocking lack of principle.
Shocking!
All politicians lie, you may say.
To a degree you're absolutely right, and that is a direct result of money in politics, our nation's biggest political problem. But I've never seen a candidate lie like Mitt Romney. Not even Tricky Dick Nixon or Bill Clinton.
How so, you may ask.
Well, let's start with his very first ad he ran against President Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3a7FC0Jkv8
Forget about the political gobbly goop that Romney spews in the last part of the ad which is just empty promises devoid of any specific plan (a problem still plaguing his campaign), but the first part in which he selectively edits a campaign speech Obama made in 2008 against Sen. John McCain. Romney's ad would lead you to believe; 1: that Obama's speech was recent, and 2: that Obama was trying to hide his handling of the economy with this excerpt: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."
We already know the ad wasn't recent, and in that speech candidate Obama was actually quoting his opponent, John McCain, who was trying to hide the effects of the Republican stewardship of the economy during the George W. Bush years.
Romney was confronted about this ad being a distortion... and he just did not care.
Here, let our erudite friend, the ever lovely Rachel Maddow, speak to this point, a subject she has thoroughly documented:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/06/01/12010806-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xx?lite
Please excuse the advertisement at the beginning, and that Rachel takes about as long to get to the point as I do.
"...what's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander..."
WTF?!
That response to the fact that his ad misrepresented what Obama said; 1: doesn't make sense, 2: doesn't address the issue, and 3: shows that he is such an elitist one per-center that he's unfamiliar with the more general term "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."
The man doesn't even know what a donut is!
Oh yes, dear readers, there's many more examples of Mitt's lies and flip flops. Oodles.
Here's a pretty comprehensive list of some of some of them complied by Jueseppi B.
http://theobamacrat.com/2012/05/08/the-complete-list-of-lies-by-willard-mitt-romney/
Lately though the Romney campaign has been blitzing the airwaves (and cablewaves) with another clear cut, easy to check, distortion of the President's words.
The second clip at the top of this post is of a speech the President made on the 13th in which he was clearly speaking of the country's infrastructure and other considerations that help make individual achievement possible in this country, especially business.
But of course the Romney campaign, showing clear desperation, focused on a few lines the President spoke of, took them completely out of context, and has been running negative ads on this issue ever since.
It's pathetic really. I would even feel sorry for the poor miserable sons of bitches if they weren't such inhuman, psychotic assholes.
Everyone knows these ads are distortions of what the President actually said, except of course the poor fools who rely on Fox so-called news, and Rush Limbaugh as their only source of information, which is why the Romney campaign continues to run them (they're currently running ads with supposedly small business people who are offended by the distorted remark by President Obama that was taken completely out of context. In one, a supposed business owner gets very indignant: "He says that you didn't make that business yourself, and that the government helped you make it. That ticked me off more than anything else." Number 1: This guy gets ticked off pretty easily. Number 2: This guys a moron because he's referring to a Romney lie that's ticking him off, and Number 3: the government did help him start his business. Who provided his elementary and secondary education, was he home schooled? No? Then his local government did. How did he get to work? In a car? A car that was built with the help of a government bail out of the auto industry required by the mishandling of the economy by the Republicans. Who built the building he built his business in? Did he build it himself? Did he build the roads, the telephone and cable lines, and the Internet? If he did I for one would like to shake his hand. Some of these guys used in these ads have been found to take government money directly to help finance their businesses, just like Romney himself did when he ran the Olympics in 2002, and when he ran Bain)
Even the so-called mainstream, corporate media plays that game.
The Republican love fest called "Meet the Press," was preempted Sunday due to some kind of sporting event being held in London, so I watched "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," instead, but you know what? George Strepkaloupakus wasn't even there. Some guy named Matthew Dowd, Maureen's brother I guess (chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign. Wow, how impartial!), was standing in for him, and interviewed former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Romney spokesman Kevin Madden
In the interview Dowd said this: "So we'll go to -- let's switch now to the economy. And the president got into a little hot water over his comments about you didn't build it that he made, and that many people think a gaffe is really a politician accidentally telling the truth..."
WTF?!
Is this Dowd guy brain dead? It was not a gaffe, and the President was deliberately telling the truth... about the nation's infrastructure... and mentors, and teachers, and people like James Clerk Maxwell who first formulated classical electromagnetic theory, which allowed for these businesses to have electricity, not what Dowd was inferring, that individualism in business does not exist.
THE PRESIDENT DID NOT SAY THAT!
But the Romney campaign continues to repeat their lies over and over again, attempting that old Republican trick, repeat a lie often enough and it will become the accepted truth.
Does the Obama campaign rely on lies and distortions? Has it ever taken anything that Mittens has said out of context?
Nope. Not that I'm aware of. If you are aware of an instance, dear readers, please let me know and I'll give Obama a mighty what for.
But it would be so simple to do. One doesn't even have to wait for a candidate to make some provocative statement that would be easy to take out of context.
Let's take Romney in the first clip at the top of this post for instance. In it he makes this statement: "Number one of course are the athletes, that's what overwhelmingly the games are about."
From this sentence alone, with a little selective editing, we can come up with these rather alarming statements:
Interviewer: "Is it true that your campaign advocates for the use of small children to be used as golf driving range markers?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "Are you a compulsive liar, who works only for the benefit of the richest in the nation?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "Have you ever picked your feet in Poughkeepsie?"
Governor Romney: "That's what overwhelmingly the games are about."
Interviewer: "Excuse me?"
Governor Romney: "Number one."
Interviewer: "Come again?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "I just want to be absolutely clear about this... you are unequivocally a Poughkeepsie foot picker?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "What is your sexual preference Governor, if you don't mind my asking?"
Governor Romney: "The athletes of course."
Interviewer: "Excuse me?"
Governor Romney: "The athletes."
Interviewer: "You like to have sex with the athletes?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "Did you have sex with the athletes when you ran the Olympics in 2002?"
Governor Romney: "Of course."
Interviewer: "One last question Governor. Are you like the biggest freaking asshole the world has ever seen?"
Governor Romney: "Of course, number one."
Why I could have Romney say: "Hi. I'm Mitt Romney and I'm running for president of the United States. I'm also an effeminate blatherskite with an addiction to Indonesian child pornography, and suffer from a bad case of piles, incontinence, and horrible, foul smelling out of control flatulence that is at once pleasing and somewhat disconcerting at the same time. I'm also a socialist, commie, Nazi sympathizer with a predilection toward fascist anarchy. I'm a practicing Muslim Hindu. My mother was a marsupial, and my dad a Bohemian midget whose diet consisted of spoiled cabbage and mustard sauce. I practice infidelity as much as possible, two or three times a day if I can arrange it. I do worship Beelzebub, the great Lord of the Flies, and hope to one day soon join him in the seething bowels of hell only to return to wreck havoc upon all of mankind," if I so desired.
The point I'm so delicately trying to make here is that by lying in a political campaign you can get your opponent to have any position that is advantageous for your own position.
We've discussed downright lies quite a bit in this post. What about gaffes.
"The private sector is doing just fine," is an example of a gaffe that the President made during a press conference on the economy. I knew that the moment he said it, and sure enough the right wing media and the Romney campaign pounced on it in a couple of nanoseconds. Why did he say it? Most likely because he was more concerned with the public sector employment rate at the time, and he didn't realize what fodder he was providing for the right.
Now the gaffe that Mr. Romney made in that first clip above was made because... I honestly don't know. Considering our close relationship with Great Britain, it was very much like a distant relative coming over to visit for the first time and saying your house smells like crap. It's remarkable really.
Alright, enough of this, I have to get back to woman's beach volleyball.
Now that's something true and beautiful.
Another very strong and powerful post. I’ve been reading through some of your previous posts and finally decided to drop a comment on this one. I signed up for your newsletter, so please keep up the informative posts!
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