Cuccinelli Gave Money To 'Crisis Pregnancy Centers'

According to Mother Jones, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli gave thousands of dollars to "crisis pregnancy centers" (anti-abortion advocacy centers) and took it off his taxes. From Mother Jones's Molly Redden:

... [C]risis pregnancy centers... [are] controversial facilities that counsel pregnant women against abortions. Abortion rights advocates have criticized crisis pregnancy centers for showing women graphic simulations of abortions, providing medical misinformation, and opening offices near abortion providers in the hopes that women will confuse the two. At one of the centers Cuccinelli supported, staff told women that abortion increases their chance of breast cancer and that abortion will "haunt" them for the rest of their lives. At another Cuccinelli-backed center, employees falsely told a New York Times reporter that Margaret Sanger, an early advocate for legal abortion, was a Nazi sympathizer.

...

Out in the real world, abortion does NOT cause breast cancer, women who have abortions by and large get on with their lives untroubled (let alone haunted) by their abortions, and Margaret Sanger... oh, just go read about her; she had her flaws, but Nazi sympathy was not among them. Even the names of such crisis pregnancy centers are dishonest: e.g., "AAA Women for Choice" is NOT pro-choice in the conventional sense. *

People like Cuccinelli don't belong in any aspect of government, let alone as governor of a state. Fortunately, a recent Rasmussen poll (see TPM) shows McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli 50% to 33%.

(Reminder: don't forget to vote. These are "off-year" elections in name only; they are every bit as important as presidential elections.)

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* I have tried to use well-known major sources for information about abortion and breast cancer, and abortion and depression. If you want a different answer, you can find it in individual statements and papers by org's with an ax to grind... by the thousands of posts... but the articles linked above, in the American Cancer Society web site and Time online, reflect the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion.

Vile, Vile, Miss 'American Bile'...

Robert Reich, in his post "American Bile," explores the raw anger, the ad hominem hostility, the obscene, profane and personally insulting language one encounters in today's American society, especially in the political context. He concludes:

I’m 67 and have lived through some angry times: Joseph R. McCarthy’s witch hunts of the 1950s, the struggle for civil rights and the Vietnam protests in the 1960s, Watergate and its aftermath in the 1970s. But I don’t recall the degree of generalized bile that seems to have gripped the nation in recent years.

...

... we increasingly live in hermetically sealed ideological zones that are almost immune to compromise or nuance. Internet algorithms and the proliferation of media have let us surround ourselves with opinions that confirm our biases. We’re also segregating geographically into red or blue territories: chances are that our neighbors share our views, and magnify them. So when we come across someone outside these zones, whose views have been summarily dismissed or vilified, our minds are closed.

...

No kidding. When someone on the radical Right makes shit up and throws it, sometimes every five minutes or so, who's going to be able to correct every instance of deliberate falsehood, let alone mitigate the effects of quickly spreading innocent misunderstandings? Lies and even nonmalicious errors simply can't be combated quickly enough. To try or not to try? That's a damned good question

Update to 'Lies, Damned Lies And GOP Slurs Against Obama'

... appended to my original post. Republicans never cease to disgust me with their bald-faced dishonesty. The notion of a fierce but fair political battle is evidently unknown to them.

Lies, Damned Lies, And GOP Slurs Against Obama — UPDATED

Sarah Jones at Politicus USA has a few words on the subject of White House emails provided by GOP sources to ABC and CNN regarding what really happened within the Obama administration concerning Benghazi... provided, as it turns out, after significant editing by those GOP sources, editing which substantially misrepresents the original content. Here's Jones:

...

In an exclusive for CNN, [Jake] Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.”

“The actual email from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever (sic) leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department,” Tapper concludes (my [i.e., Jones's] bold).

...

GOP Lie-brary

In the same article, Jones notes that Tapper reveals how ABC and the Weekly Standard, both major conservative (or at least Republican) news outlets, "paraphrased" the emails, quoted them "inaccurately" and twisted the original meaning so as to make it appear that then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes was involved in a CYA operation benefitting the Obama administration State Department after the fact.

I suppose all's fair in love, war and GOP politicking, but a democracy cannot function with a continuing misrepresentation of the facts regarding significant events by the opposition party, however politically advantageous such misrepresentations... face it, lies... may prove to be.

Jones concludes that this is only one incident in an ongoing pattern engaged in by the GOP:

This is why we do not run with these stories when they first come out. Consistently over Obama’s first term, we found that when the facts come out later (as I pointed out in the new shiny ball IRS scandal story), it has turned out that the stories were being planted in the press. The information was wrong. There was an agenda afloat.

What is even worse for Republicans is that the real email expresses dismay at the uninformed spreading bullcrap. The only people screaming bullcrap about Benghazi were Republicans who sought to use it to win an election.

Another day, another conspiracy debunked. Now, when will the press stop falling for this crap? Note to the media, the next time a “Republican congressional aide” or unnamed source has a smoking gun OMG!!11!!! Nixon Bush scandal, you might want to find a back up source, and get the original documents before being Breitbarted by edited emails/videos/etc.

And so I paraphrase Disraeli or Twain (take your pick) in the post title. Lies, damned lies, and... not statistics... but GOP fabrications of news stories that actually do have a legitimate backstory, but not one that is to the GOP's advantage. There is plenty wrong with Obama and his administration, but the GOP is unwilling to settle for less than his total destruction, even if it means the country's destruction as well. For our nation to have survived over 200 years of legitimately fierce political infighting, only to be brought low by a party willing to claim anything, and a news media willing to serve as that party's stenographers, would be a damned shame.

UPDATE 5/19 via Josh Marshall of TPM: according to Major Garrett on CBS Evening News, Republicans leaking the emails inserted text referring to the State Department, text that simply wasn't there in the original. Example from an email from Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes:

• Original: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”
• Republican leaked version: “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.”

You know, if I were permitted to revise anything my opponent says, I believe I could win every argument. Apparently that's what GOPers have decided to do.

Holy Toledo Faults Unholy Rmoney For His Lies About Chrysler And GM

Tell Chrysler and GM executives that after receiving bailouts they are now shifting US production to China, and they will politely call you an outright liar. They are contemplating building plants in China to produce cars for Chinese consumption... that's how the auto industry works these days... but they are shipping zero American autoworker jobs overseas; indeed, they are adding workers at plants in Toledo, OH. In an NYT article by Jim Ruttenberg and Jeremy W. Peters, GM spokesman Greg Martin called Rmoney's ad "cynical campaign politics at its worst." Who am I to disagree

The entire "moving jobs to China" meme, on which Rmoney refuses to back down, is a red herring. And it's been out there long enough to start to stink. This was bad enough when Rmoney's "cynical campaign politics" were merely pointed out in the Times. But when the incidents multiplied and the Rmoney campaign doubled down on its false accusation, it reached the editorial page, where the NYT... quite rightly in my opinion... had no kind words for the Governor:

...

Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.

...

I couldn't have said it better myself. I suppose all politicians lie, but there are differences among them in what they do when they are caught. Several dozen times so far we have seen Rmoney caught in a "misstatement," to put it politely, and inevitably he simply repeats the lie, louder, in more ads, emails, etc.

Mr. Rmoney is a deeply dishonest man. This character flaw precedes his run for president (see the post immediately before this one), but whether or not it is new, it is an absolute disqualifier for the office he seeks. Political lies are one thing. Lies that interfere with a current administration's practice of diplomacy, lies that compromise the legitimate business successes of US firms abroad, and... briefly put... lies that harm Americans... are another thing altogether.

If you haven't already voted, please go on Nov. 6 to send Mr. Rmoney home, where he can presumably lie his magic underwear off without harming our nation.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I spent a couple of weeks in each of the summers of 1981, 1982 and 1983 in Ohio. A carload of Texans drove to Oberlin for the Baroque Performance Institute, an intensive three-week training course for professional musicians who perform on old instruments or exact copies of same... "early instruments" for "early music," meaning mostly the Baroque period. We took different routes in different years. I was mightily impressed; Ohio struck me as a very civilized place to live. Big cities like Cleveland are second to none (and I've explored a lot of cities) in opportunities to pursue the arts. Small cities like Canton have symphony orchestras of a quality not found in small-city Texas, that's for sure. I spent only one night in Columbus at the home of a friend, and another time I passed through Toledo and still another time Dayton, but they all struck me positively. Small towns are a marvel: Oberlin, of course; Alliance; Berea; Elyria; every one I saw was, from a human standpoint, a winner. All of this, and a Great Lakes coast almost as good as the open sea; Erie was nearest to our housing. In short, when you're messing with Ohio, you're messing with a part of our great nation that I love dearly. You'd best keep your Mitts off of it!

Rmoney's Fact-Free Jeep Ad Scares Jeep Factory Workers

How loooow can he go? David Dayen of FDL has some news on that:

There's a pic like this
in Rmoney's lying ad

Mitt Romney’s latest play for Ohio – which remains the touchstone of the entire election, desperate plays for Minnesota and Pennsylvania aside – apparently involves straight-up lying about the intentions of Chrysler to “build Jeeps in China,” to the extent that Jeep factory employees are calling their managers wondering if they still have a job.

[quote from UAW local president]

Fiat’s chief executive reiterated today that there are no plans to move Jeep production to China.

...

Dayen then describes the balance of forces in this war of truth vs. blatant falsehood: newspapers' pointing out Rmoney's ads as pants-on-fire class does not balance out the huge ad buys of the Rmoney campaign. On the one hand, a few calls to union shop stewards should set the record straight; on the other, maybe enough autoworkers will remain ignorant of the falsehood of the ad to be willing victims of it when they go to the polls.

Happy Halloween!

It's really difficult to campaign against a candidate willing to lie through his shiny white teeth about anything and everything to win. That is to say, it's really difficult to campaign against today's current focal GOP strategy. These people are neither honest nor well-intended, and there is real danger that they can persuade people to vote against their own interests for the worst reasons. We can only hope we can stop them. And Great Pumpkin, I'd also like a pony...

Rmoney's Lying Auto Ad

Rmoney Emblem

Few statements in this Rmoney ad (YouTube) are individually false, yet the statements are arranged in such a way that the whole ad tells several lies: "fact checkers confirm" (actually they don't; some are voicing outrage), "Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry" (all best evidence is that when Detroit needed help, Rmoney advocated letting them go bankrupt with no assistance), that Rmoney's non-plan is supported by "Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News" (but NOT the Detroit Free Press), that "Obama took Chrysler into bankruptcy" (neglecting to mention that was with assistance and a bailout toward a structured bankruptcy and sale, rather than allowing catastrophic collapse as Rmoney advocated), that Chrysler was sold to "Italians" who plan to build Jeeps in China (neglecting to mention that this was part of the abovementioned deal that saved Chrysler, or that Fiat has no intention of closing its very successful Jeep manufacturing plants in the US... hey, even our tiny two-car household has one Jeep and one ancient Chevy).

By my count, that's one lie every five seconds, in a 30-second ad. And they wonder why I so often use the pants-on-fire symbol for Rmoney.

The End Of Science In America?

Paul Krugman:

...

Like others doing similar exercises — Drew Linzer, Sam Wang, and Pollster — Nate[ Silver]’s model continued to show an Obama edge even after Denver, and has shown that edge widening over the past couple of weeks.

This could be wrong, obviously. And we’ll find out on Election Day. But the methodology has been very clear, and all the election modelers have been faithful to their models, letting the numbers fall where they may.

Yet the right — and we’re not talking about the fringe here, we’re talking about mainstream commentators and publications — has been screaming “bias”! They know, just know, that Nate must be cooking the books. How do they know this? Well, his results look good for Obama, so it must be a cheat. Never mind the fact that Nate tells us all exactly how he does it, and that he hasn’t changed the formula at all.

This is, of course, reminiscent of the attack on the Bureau of Labor Statistics — not to mention the attacks on climate science and much more. On the right, apparently, there is no such thing as an objective calculation. Everything must have a political motive.

This is really scary. It means that if these people triumph, science — or any kind of scholarship — will become impossible. Everything must pass a political test; if it isn’t what the right wants to hear, the messenger is subjected to a smear campaign.

...

This strikes me as yet another manifestation of the right-wing concept of science as simply a belief system, like Catholicism or Islam or Mormonism: as though, if you don't like one "faith," you can choose another; if you are offended by one scientific theory, you can replace it, based not on whether the replacement truly describes the world we live in, but on whether it is compatible with your political outlook. It's the same situation as in any other search for truth in reality: you don't get to choose your own facts. Honest seekers across the spectrum freely acknowledge this. Right-wingers, even the ones who are not utterly nuts, do not: the facts themselves, as they see them, are subject to reshaping based on one's political philosophy.

That simply doesn't work... at all... in scientific research. You cannot "pray away" global climate change. You cannot merely assert loudly, or even pass a law in Congress, that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has no ongoing environmental consequences. You cannot pass a law about when human life begins, and thereby change the physiology of the process. And as Krugman reminds us, you cannot legislate underlying motivations for human economic behavior, the ones that are truly wired in, as if they were simple matters of policy. You can't make trickle-down supply-side economics "true" by fiat. You can deny Keynes until you're blue in the face, but his message will nonetheless haunt you in the real world if you ignore it.

Newton

Galileo

There have always been science deniers; this is nothing new. Indeed, before a few people in 17^th-century England, Italy and Germany framed the basics of how one does science, of the notion of a hypothesis to be tested, of experimental confirmation, of mathematical description, there was not a great deal of science done anywhere. (The age of Archimedes, c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC, mathematically enlightened and technologically clever as he was, was all too brief, and had no thread of historical succession directly connecting him with the beginnings of science as we know it.) For millennia, most people did not think in scientific terms; those who did often paid dearly for their troubles. Today's science deniers would take us back to that time. (Hey, the torture apparatuses are already in place, thanks to the political system!)

And that is the crux (!) of what is frightening about right-wing politics: the wingers wish to establish a new age of "truth" by fiat, not truth through research in scientific matters, not even political truth by honest debate among people of differing interests, but truth by reference to authority. Regular use of the argument from authority leads almost inexorably to more emphasis on the authority than the argument. Spare us, please!

Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXIX

... yes, Vol. 39. The list... this one, at least, is by Steve Benen, on the Maddow Blog. It lists 49 specific lies that Rmoney has perpetrated since... um, since the last list, together with specific debunking (text or links) for each Rmoney lie. I'm not going to trouble to call them "misstatements"; when you let fly with that many, you lose all claim to anything short of outright mendacity. Mittens is a liar... no 39 ways about it.

Feel free to follow up on the other 38 lists if you like; there are links in Benen's post to the whole series from the beginning. If you're anything like me, you'll quickly bore of the task: anyone who lies that often is, pure and simple, a liar, no two ways about it.

'I'm Mitt Romney, And I Approved This Message Pack Of Lies'

Rmoney's blockbuster closer is an ad with five statements about Obama... each of which is a baldfaced, unsubstantiated, indeed easily rebutted lie. Jed Lewison at Kos has the details. Here's the text of the ad:

If Barack Obama is reelected, what will the next four years be like? One, the debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars. Two, 20 million Americans could lose their employer-based health care. Three, taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000. Four, energy prices will continue to go up. And five, $716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors.

In a way, this election will prove a test of several hypotheses that have been advanced by Rmoney and his henchmen:

• The most obvious, of course, is that under the aegis of Citizens United, an American presidential election can be bought outright by a thoroughly unqualified candidate with access to effectively unlimited money.
  
  
• Another assertion is evidenced in this Rmoney ad, a very old assertion extending back through every 20^th-century totalitarian regime: that lies, repeated frequently and relentlessly enough to a passive public, can come to supplant truths, even in cases where the truths are easy to understand and explain.

I guess we'll find out soon, won't we?

How Does Mitt Lie To Thee? Let Me Count The Ways...

I'm running into bandwidth problems viewing my own blog on this ancient computer, so I don't want to post yet another video right away. But when I refer you to this YouTube video of Mitt Rmoney's lies (H/T TPM) from last Wednesday's debate, thirty (30) of them laid end to end (apologies to Dorothy Parker), I hope you take it as seriously as if I had posted it right here. Seeing all of Rmoney's lies debunked in one place is no shocker, of course; it must have been a systematic if tedious effort by the debunkers. But seeing that virtually every significant statement Rmoney made that entire night long was a lie, including all his manifestly false accusations against Obama, surely gives us insight into Rmoney's character. Why would anyone consider voting for this con man?

Paul Ryan, Compulsive Liar

It must be a genuine pathology: no mentally healthy person, placed in a position where the truthfulness of his/her every statement is sure to be evaluated, would lie about the most trivial of details. From David Taintor of TPM:

After Runner's World magazine called into question Paul Ryan's claim that he ran a marathon in less than three hours, the Republican vice presidential nominee backtracked. Ryan told The New Yorker, through a spokesman:

“The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight.”

If Ryan would lie about something essentially meaningless, presumably because he foolishly thought no one would call him on it, he is not to be trusted on any issue whatsoever. Ryan is a liar, through and through.

Remember Sequestration? Republicans Don't

Remember how Congress, on a bipartisan basis, agreed to automatic sharp cuts in programs of value to both parties, both defense and non-defense programs, for a period of 10 years, as compensation for failure to negotiate targeted cuts?

Well "surprise, surprise": Republicans lied. Paul Ryan announced it today. Here's Brian Beutler of TPM:

If Mitt Romney wins in November, he and a Republican Congress will fast track legislation early next year to replace across the board defense cuts with cuts to food stamps and other programs for needy Americans.

“In January our intention is that if we don’t fix it in the lame duck is to fix it retroactively once a new session of Congress takes place,” Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, told a crowd in North Carolina Thursday, “We have procedural way in the Senate to advance that legislation very quickly and get it to the next President of the United States who I believe is going to be Mitt Romney, to pass that into law and retroactively prevent that sequester from taking place in January.”

...

And fuzzy-minded Democrats, including Obama, agreed to this fool's bargain. Even the Democratic Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta rejected defense cuts altogether. It should have been obvious that no such thing would ever actually come to pass.

Do you suppose Obama will ever get tired of the "pull my finger" game played on him by Republicans? I know I am, and the smell in here is getting pretty strong...

People Unclear On The Concept Of 'Truth': Paul Ryan Edition

When even ABC News says GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan, um, misspoke, you know it's got to be bad:

After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.

Ryan had denied doing so as recently as Wednesday, when he spoke to ABC’s Cincinnati affiliate, WCPO, in Ohio.

“I never asked for stimulus,” Mitt Romney’s new running mate said. “I don’t recall… so I really can’t comment on it. I opposed the stimulus because it doesn’t work, it didn’t work.”

Two years ago, during an interview on WBZ’s NewsRadio he was asked by a caller if he “accepted any money” into his district. Ryan said he did not.

“I’m not one [of those] people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money,” the congressman answered.

But as we’ve now learned, Ryan did write letters. He did request stimulus funds.

...

Ryan lives in a fantasy world of Ayn Rand. He has those who publicly oppose him arrested. And he's a liar, liar, plans (for "prosperity") on fire.

Seriously, a man who believes the stimulus was not necessary, when in fact an even bigger stimulus would have helped more, is delusional, and should not occupy the office a heartbeat away from the presidency. Paul Ryan's false claim not to have requested a stimulus, a claim he abandoned only when confronted with the paperwork showing that he himself requested a stimulus, is just another indicator that he is the perfect running mate for Rmoney.