Posts Tagged ‘liar’
Did you know – that Ted Cruz is a dirty syrup-guzzler?
Jon Stewart rocks!
It will be nothing but fun to watch the Birthers who ran all their Trumped-up blather over a non-white Democrat born in Hawaii running for president. Even worse – winning.
Now, they get to flip-flop when the same silly questions on presidential eligibility are asked of their favorite white Republican Kool Aid Party Kandidate – born in Calgary.
CEO sends letter to Chrysler employees denying Romney’s lies
Jeep plant in Belvidere, Illinois
Chrysler Group LLC Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne reiterated that Jeep sport-utility vehicle production will stay in the U.S. after presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested output may move to China.
“Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” Marchionne wrote today in a letter to Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler’s employees. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”
Romney told a crowd a crowd in Defiance, Ohio, on Oct. 25 that he saw an unidentified story that said Jeep was “thinking of moving all production to China.” The Republican nominee has since aired an ad in Ohio highlighting Chrysler’s desire to make Jeeps in China without mentioning investments and added jobs at U.S. Jeep plants. President Barack Obama is scheduled to air a response ad in the closely contested state today.
Bloomberg News reported Oct. 22 that Chrysler’s majority owner Fiat SpA (F) planned to resume Jeep output in China and may eventually make all of the brand’s models there. The report stated that potential production in China would be in addition to output at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.
Chrysler hasn’t built Jeeps in China, the world’s largest auto market, since before Turin, Italy-based Fiat took control of the U.S. automaker in 2009 after a U.S.-backed bankruptcy. Production in China would allow Fiat and Chrysler to sell Jeeps that avoid Chinese government tariffs on imported vehicles…
Since its bankruptcy in 2009, Chrysler has announced about $4.2 billion in investments for Jeep models and plants that produce them in Detroit; Belvidere, Illinois; and Toledo, Ohio. The three investments will add about 5,700 jobs combined by next year, Marchionne wrote today in his message to employees.
Republicans have often lied about economics, racism, bigotry of every stripe – when their tactics embrace the worst of hypocrisy. Never can I recall the CEO of a corporation having to distribute a letter to employees about the lies of a presidential candidate.
If you vote for Romney, you’re really going to get what you deserve – untruth in advertising.
New genetic disease infects Republicans
There’s a lot of chatter about the new word debuted by Obama today — “Romnesia” — which is meant to describe Mitt’s tendency to forget about, contradict or evade his own positions on a host of issues. Here’s the “Romnesia” riff Obama delivered in Virginia today:
Obama runs through Mitt’s “Romnesia” on a range of issues — equal pay, contraception, abortion, tax cuts for the rich, etc. — and then ends on a joke. He says the good news is that Mitt’s “Romnesia” can be cured — thanks to Obamacare, which guarantees coverage to people with preexisting conditions…
Romney held extreme positions to get through the primary, then flip flopped away from them to get through the general election, but can be expected as president to honor the extreme positions he originally took, since his base won’t let him do otherwise. There’s nothing contradictory in pointing all that out. However, painting Romney as a flip flopper does risk driving home the idea that Romney never really believed in the exreme positions he adopted and is a moderate at heart.
The new “Romnesia” riff can be seen as an answer to this. There’s no need to choose between “extremist” and “flip flopper.” Romney is simply a weasel.
I’ll take weasels – or the ferrets who live in tunnels under my front yard – over politicians like Romney, any day. They may be aggressive carnivores, scary to prey appropriate to their size and nature; but, Romney takes Brylcreem image onto the battlefield of ideas like a phony ambulance with a big Red Cross on the side and white phosphorus flame throwers mounted behind a sliding panel.
We’re supposed to believe that in his heart he’s just a traditional American conservative who really cares about us ordinary folk. When the reality is that he’s greedy money-sucker whose only allegiance is to dollars and gold. He doesn’t care who gets screwed for him to profit. He doesn’t even care which country’s banks get to hide his money.
How Mitt Romney gets away with his lying
I keep your phone number under my pillow, George
Yesterday, Mitt Romney gave a big speech in which he accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt.” It’s a good line, and it has received widespread media coverage.
Romney’s speech has already been dissected by Jonathan Chait and Steve Benen. They note that it’s entirely at odds with conventional understanding of how deficits work, and utterly disconnected from context, rendering it almost unquantifiably misleading.
But I wanted to make another point. If you scan through all the media attention Romney’s speech received, you are hard-pressed to find any news accounts that tell readers the following rather relevant points:
1) Nonpartisan experts believe Romney’s plans would increase the deficit far more than Obama’s would.
2) George W. Bush’s policies arguably are more responsible for increasing the deficit than Obama’s are…
This shouldn’t be a matter of partisan opinion. On the first point, independent experts think an actual set of facts exists that can be used to determine what the impact of Romney’s policies on the deficit would be. And according to those experts, based on what we know now, Romney’s policies would explode the deficit far more than Obama’s would.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has taken a close look at this question. It has determined that relative to current policy — that is, if you keep the Bush tax cuts in place, as Romney wants to do — Romney’s tax cutting plans would increase the deficit by nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s on top of keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Romney has promised to close various loopholes to pay for his tax cuts, but he hasn’t specified which ones. Until he does, the Tax Policy Center concludes, his plan would cost $5 trillion — which would be added, yes, to the deficit.
By contrast, Obama’s plans would not increase the deficit by anything close to that amount. Relative to current policy, the Tax Policy Center has found, Obama’s plan would reduce the deficit by approximately $2 trillion over the next decade. Now, under Obama, the deficit would still increase. That’s because current policy means we’re forgoing the $4.5 trillion in revenues we’d gain if we let all the Bush tax cuts expire. But neither candidate is going to do that. Obama, however, would end the Bush tax cuts for the rich and bring in revenues through a variety of other tax increases. Bottom line: relative to current policy, Obama’s plan would reduce the deficit by bringing in $180 billion or more in revenues a year, or approximately $2 trillion over 10 years; Romney’s plan would increase the deficit by nearly $500 billion a year — $5 trillion over ten years…
On the second point, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has determined that the policies put in place under Bush are the main driver of the deficits that are projected over the next decade.
The only debate about Romney’s advocacy, so far, is whether he’s ignorant of how many times he’s flip-flopped on questions of policy and economics — whether he’s ignorant of real facts [which I sincerely doubt - the man is unethical not stupid] — or whether he chooses to tell the lie du jour for whichever audience he confronts.
The reason he gets away with any of this is the incompetence of the Talking Heads, the media flunkeys posing as journalists.
Why Social Security is not going broke
Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?
Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.
That surplus is almost twice the $1.4 trillion collected in personal and corporate income taxes last year. And it is projected to go on growing until 2021, the year the youngest Baby Boomers turn 67 and qualify for full old-age benefits.
So why all the talk about Social Security “going broke?”…The reason is that the people who want to kill Social Security have for years worked hard to persuade the young that the Social Security taxes they pay to support today’s gray hairs will do nothing for them when their own hair turns gray.
That narrative has become the conventional wisdom because it is easily reduced to a headline or sound bite. The facts, which require more nuance and detail, show that, with a few fixes, Social Security can be safe for as long as we want…
Now let’s look at how that $2.7 trillion Social Security surplus arose. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan sponsored an increase in Social Security taxes, changing the program from pay-as-you-go to collecting much more taxes than it paid in benefits. The idea was to have the Boomers prepay part of their old age benefits. The extra tax was supposed to pay off the federal debt and then be invested in federal bonds. Instead, Reagan ran huge deficits, violating his 1980 promise to balance the federal budget within three years of taking office…
Silvio Berlusconi sneaks out the side door – in disgrace
Silvio Berlusconi’s scandal-ridden premiership ended in ignominy as he was forced to hide from a jeering crowd in Rome after handing in his resignation at a late-night meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano. His departure followed a historic vote in parliament that paved the way for a new government tasked with shoring up the ailing economy.
Berlusconi was forced to leave the presidential residence through a side entrance, to chants of “buffoon, buffoon” from thousands of demonstrators outside….The protesters, including a choir singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah, rejoiced at his departure.
The 75-year-old billionaire brought down the curtain on a government that has become plagued by scandals and seemed increasingly helpless in the face of the economic storm that has taken his country and the euro to the brink of catastrophe. The dramatic end of his 17-year domination of Italian politics came as the lower house of parliament approved a package of savage cuts and stimulus measures demanded by the European Union to trim Italy’s massive €1.9 trillion debt.
After losing his majority in the house, a weakened Berlusconi had pledged to resign as soon as he had pushed the reform package through parliament. The reforms were passed by 380 votes to 26. Opposition parties did not participate…
Italy’s longest serving postwar prime minister raised a toast with ministers at a final cabinet meeting after the vote, only for his car to be chased by protesters shouting “Go, go, thief!” as he left for a second meeting with party officials at his Rome residence…
The questions facing Italy, today, are the natural result of leaving the Clown Prince of Populism in place all these years. Those who vote for nationalism, imperial lies, the histrionics of a Berlu or his counterparts throughout the Western world run the inevitable risk of getting exactly what they vote for.
An incompetent, a paper tiger who buried his nation in debt and disgrace.
Berlusconi to resign after losing parliamentary majority – he says
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday he would resign after suffering a humiliating setback in parliament that showed a party revolt had stripped him of a majority.
Berlusconi confirmed a statement from President Giorgio Napolitano that he would step down as soon as parliament passed urgent budget reforms demanded by European leaders after Italy was sucked into epicenter of the euro zone debt crisis.
The votes in both houses of parliament are likely this month and they would spell the end of a 17-year dominance of Italy by the flamboyant billionaire media magnate…An ill-bred creep is more like it.
Berlusconi’s government won a key budget vote after the opposition abstained on Tuesday but failed to secure a majority, obtaining only 308 votes in the 630-seat lower house, eight short of the 316 needed to be sure of passing legislation.
Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said Italy ran a real risk of losing access to financial markets after political uncertainty pushed yields on government bonds toward a red line of 7 percent…
Berlusconi has been on the ropes for weeks, beset by a string of sex and legal scandals, political defeats and, most crucially, a loss of confidence on international markets.
But the 75-year-old, who has dominated Italian politics for most of the past two decades, had steadfastly refused to step down until Tuesday’s vote and battled until the last to win over rebels in his PDL party.
The vote showed he had failed to stem the revolt and Berlusconi’s bitterness was revealed by a photographer who caught the words “8 traitors” jotted down on his notepad in parliament after the result was read out by the speaker.
The news that Berlusconi had finally agreed to resign came after European markets closed but the euro jumped against the dollar and U.S. stocks edged up…
There is no agreement among political parties on either a national unity or technocratic government and Napolitano’s consultations may be difficult.
Berlusconi is now following his statements about resignation with “amendment A, section2″ stacks of provisos which must meet his approval before he will actually resign.
Since he can’t be trusted out of sight of fourteen carabinieri with video cameras, I wouldn’t count on Italy being rid of his foolishness any time soon.
Sarkozy tells Obama what the rest of the world already knows — Netanyahu is a liar
“Don’t eat the knishes!”
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a liar” in a private conversation with President Barack Obama that was accidentally broadcast to journalists during last week’s G20 summit in Cannes.
“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.
“You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,” Obama replied, according to the French interpreter…
The conversation was not initially reported by the small group of journalists who overheard it because it was considered private and off-the-record. But the comments have since emerged on French websites and can be confirmed by Reuters…
Obama and Netanyahu have had a rocky relationship as U.S. efforts to broker a Middle East peace deal have foundered, with the U.S. president openly criticizing Jewish settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories.
It was unclear why exactly Sarkozy had criticized Netanyahu. However, European diplomats have largely blamed Israel for the breakdown in peace talks and have expressed anger over Netanyahu’s approval of large-scale settlement building.
During their bilateral meeting on November 3, on the sidelines of the Cannes summit, Obama criticized Sarkozy’s surprise decision to vote in favor of a Palestinian request for membership of the U.N. cultural heritage agency UNESCO…
The October 31 UNESCO vote marked a success for the Palestinians in their broader thrust for recognition as a sovereign state in the U.N. system — a unilateral initiative fiercely opposed by Israel and the United States.
Don’t let democracy, sovereignty, history get in the way of the relationship between a global imperial power and a regional hitman. Power, greed, are still the signal deciders in American foreign power. Choosing to work closely with a liar like Netanyahu is not a new choice.
Boy, 11, calls police emergency line over housework, chores
A boy of 11 called a German police emergency line to complain of “forced labour” after his mother told him to help clean the home.
Police say the boy from Aachen, who has not been identified, spoke to an officer via the 110 number. They say he complained: “I have to work all day long. I haven’t any free time…”
A transcript of the conversation, printed in local newspapers, revealed the officer asking the boy to describe the kind of “forced labour” he was doing.
The boy replied that he had to clean the home and terrace, it said.
Asked if he knew what forced labour was, the boy said he did, and the police officer asked to speak to his mother, who at that stage was standing next to him.
She explained he had called after being asked to pick up paper from the floor, adding: “He plays all day long and when told to tidy up what he’s done, he calls it forced labour.”
Sounds like he’ll grow up to become a member of the Bundestag.
Ten reasons why the Texas economy is growing that have nothing to do with Rick Perry
Rick Perry may credit much of Texas’ recent economic success to the low-regulation, small-government philosophy he has espoused, but some economists say that the governor’s policies aren’t the only (or even the primary) reason for Texas’ economic health…Here are ten of them:
1. Rising oil prices.
Rising oil prices have been one factor helping the Texas economy, economists say. When oil prices are high, job growth in Texas historically has exceeded that of the nation. He said Texas entered the recession late and came out early, mirroring trends in oil prices, which rose towards the beginning of the recession, fell in 2009, but have been steadily rising since…
2. Government growth.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, employment in Texas’ public sector has grown more rapidly than the private sector recently, with a 19 percent growth in government jobs compared to 9 percent growth in private jobs since 2000. Texas has added more than one in five of the public-sector jobs nationwide at local, state and federal levels…
4. No housing bubble.
Texas escaped the foreclosure bust that crippled other states’ economies – only 6 percent of Texas mortgage borrowers are in or near foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, while the national average is nearly 10 percent…
Texas house prices stayed down during the bubble, so when it burst the state didn’t suffer as much as other regions…
5. Cheap immigrant labor.
You don’t need that explained, do you?
8. Fracking.
A decade ago, Texas oil engineers decided to combine horizontal drilling and a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects chemical-laced water into the shale to push out the minerals. The system has been effective in releasing previously untapped pockets of natural gas in shale formations, such as the Eagle Ford shale formation…
“That’s a pretty sparsely populated area that has not historically been very economically strong. It’s bringing a lot of activity there, and we’re seeing a lot of new millionaires being created.”
9. Texas Exports
Petrochemical exports have been doing especially well since the recession, and Texas has a big cost advantage in the industry, explaining some of the states’ export-prowess.
10. Drug Trafficking.
You don’t need that explained either. Do you? RTFA for all 10 reasons and the details.
