Progressives woke up on November 9th to a world gone sour. Sure, we grieved for awhile but we almost immediately began thinking about how to resist the worst of what the Trump cabal promised to bring about. The good news is that there’s plenty that we can do. Specifically, Trump’s propensity for obvious lies offers all of us what will – sadly – likely be an ongoing opportunity.

We can inform ourselves and when media fails to sufficiently point out Big Orange’s mendacity, we can call them on it with whatever tools we may have, for example, send admonitory emails or make phone calls to the editor of our local papers, submit letters to the editor for publication, or use Twitter or Facebook to point out examples of lax reporting.

Greg Sargent points out examples of one type of the media failure I am referencing. He examined the headlines that greeted Trump’s effort to take credit for bringing Sprint jobs to the US – a move by Sprint that was announced in April of 2015 and that did not necessarily have anything to do with Trump (who also seems to have at times inflated the number of jobs from 5000 to 8000). With a few exceptions, most of the headlines obligingly repeated Trump’s claim although the body the articles may have suggested reasons to doubt its veracity .

Sargent suggests that in cases like this bit of unsupported braggadocio, “if the headline does not convey the fact that Trump’s claim is in question or open to doubt, based on the known facts, then it is insufficiently informative” or even “misleading” because many people simply “scan headlines without digging deeper into the stories and the factual details.” He suggests that care in constructing headlines is important because:

..  it’s obvious that Trump has adopted a strategy of actively trying to game such headlines in his favor. Trump’s claims about Carrier jobs staying in Indiana turned out to be significantly less rosy upon closer inspection. And remember when Trump falsely claimed credit for keeping a Ford plant here that was going to stay anyway? It really doesn’t take much to convey it in a headline when Trump’s claim is in doubt

Headlines are not the only place where media may mislead due to an overly casual approach to reporting. Recently, in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on newly proposed right-to-work-for-less legislation in Missouri, the reporter glibly stated that the legislation would make it unlawful to force workers to join unions, a blatantly misleading statement. Workers are not now required to join a union, although, if they enjoy the benefits of a union contract – from which they cannot by law be excluded – they must pay at least a portion of the dues paid by union members. Folks who receive benefits paid for by the actual union members are nothing more than free-loaders if they don’t pay their share of the cost.

Examples of such misrepresentation are rife and promise to be especially common as media struggles to deal with the serial-liar and champion deflector who will soon be President of the US. In fact, the failure to deal with his lies and the false narratives emanating from political propaganda outlets like Fox News and Breitbart.com may have significantly contributed to the fact we are now facing a walking, talking disaster like our new President-elect.

It becomes our obligation to point out problems in reporting and presentation of news when we notice them and to demand that journalists do better. Responding to the lies of the Trump mafia by refusing to let our media either inadvertently or intentionally perpetuate them is one of our first tasks. So, let’s get busy – if we are to be effective, there has to be lots of voices calling out Trump and other rightwing liars along with their media enablers.

*1st sentence of last paragraph slightly rewritten for clarity.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, is working in spite of GOP obstruction. 152,335 Missourians, 29% more than projected, signed up for insurance via Healthcare.gov. 300,000 more low income uninsured Missourians would have insurance today if Missouri’s GOP lawmakers weren’t still relying on the ACA shuck and jive job they’ve been pulling for the last several years to pay off.

The fact that Obamacare’s proving itself out there in the real world means that some GOPers are struggling to find  another con-job they can pull come election time this year. Which explains this little opus from Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4):

It has been almost 20 months since four Americans were killed during a terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But the White House has deliberately and consistently obstructed efforts by Congress and the media to learn the truth about the Obama Administration’s reaction to this attack, and recently disclosed White House emails indicate the facts might have been intentionally altered to create a false narrative of the tragic events. As a co-sponsor of legislation calling for an investigative Select Committee, I applaud this action. The families of those brutally killed in Benghazi and all Americans demand accountability. The stonewalling must end; the truth must be heard.

Yep. Benghazi. Stale, but our Vicky’s not the swiftest pony in the stable, and beggars can’t be choosers – even when the latest Benghazi “smoking gun” seems to have misfired. In the words of a former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, “dude, this was two years ago,” and there’s no more there there than there was then. I don’t want to be too hard on Vicky though; she’s not the only GOPer who thinks Benghazi is the perfect fallback – today Speaker Boehner announced the formation a select committee to investigate the issue yet again, based on “new” evidence that tells us nothing we didn’t already know.

Of course, some folks don’t seem to have gotten the message about a possible election strategy pivot. Take Senator Roy Blunt. I got this email message from our man in Washington today:

President Obama’s so-called “victory lap” on ObamaCare may have been a bit premature. According to a recent survey, only 38% of Americans think the president’s health care law is working.

Maybe that’s because so many people have experienced skyrocketing premiums and job losses as a result of this flawed law. On top of that, we recently learned that the disastrous ObamaCare website is far from finished, and is estimated to cost taxpayers $121 million before the second round of enrollments – $30 million more than the Obama Administration estimated a few months ago. The president’s own approval rating has dropped to 37%. To make matters worse for President Obama, early results show that only two-thirds of individuals that signed up for the ObamaCare exchanges actually paid their enrollment premiums.

Every day, I receive stories from Missourians who are concerned about the president’s health care overhaul. And almost every week, I go to the Senate floor to share those experiences.    

As tired as I get of trying to correct straighten out all Roy’s errors, somebody’s got to keep pointing out that he’s got it all wrong:

* Could some well-meaning soul out there tell Roy that the ACA poll numbers he cites include negative ratings from those of us on the left who want a real “socialist” health care system, single payer or Medicare for all, something along those lines. But most of us wouldn’t want to get rid of the ACA if its all we’re going to get right now – and it is. And as for those who bought into the GOP line on Obamacare, they aren’t to blame. It’s hard to resist the flood of misrepresentation and outright lies with which GOPers have been flooding a compliant news media. But never fear, the dupes are going to figure out soon enough that they’ve been had.

* Health care spending is rising because more uninsured people are getting care at last. But sorry, Roy, healthcare costs aren’t “skyrocketing.” Insurance premiums are lower than expected and many insurance companies are predicting stable or even lower costs next year thanks to the success of the exchanges. The success of the ACA could even lower automobile insurance rates!

* To date the only documented job losses I know about that are related to the ACA are taking place in states like Missouri that are refusing to expand Medicaid under the provisions of the law. As a result, hospitals and clinics are being forced to close and numerous new jobs that would have been created are also forfeit.

* Only two-thirds of the people who signed up for Obamacare have paid their premiums? Really, Roy? You ought to know better than to parrot the House Energy and Commerce Committee report that produced that figure unless you want to get called out with the GOP fools on the Committee who thought we wouldn’t notice how they were cooking the books. If you’re not more careful, you’ll have to choke down your share of the crow they’re now eating.

* As for the stories about Missourians who’re suffering from the ravages of Obamacare, I’ve heard some of these whines – most of us have – and all I can say is that I hope that even a small percentage of the stories you manage to dredge up hold up better than most have done so far. As the Los Angeles Times Michael Hiltzik observes, “virtually every yarn promoted by Republicans or conservatives about people hurt by the Affordable Care Act has deflated like a pricked balloon on the merest examination.”

Do you sometimes think that Senator Blunt just isn’t even trying anymore? Of course, if the alternative is more Benghazi, à la Vicky Hartzler, perhaps he’s better off to keep on with the same ol’, same ol’ ACA drivel. After all, even if it’s probably true that you really can confuse some of the people all of the time – and, to judge by our congressional delegation, lots of those people seem to live in Missouri – the lame Benghazi narrative by itself won’t reverse the tide of diminishing returns.

* Last paragraph edited for clarity.

Dave Spence spent what probably amounts to a pretty big pot of money to run an ad that is likely to be more notable for the fact that it misspells “governor” as “Spenceforgoverner.com” than for its content. Rep. Todd Akin has also run into problems with spelling and grammar when assembling his campaign adds Website. They’re minor errors, and, God knows, with my propensity for typos, I should tread carefully. But wouldn’t you think that folks who are paying beaucoup bucks to run ads could take the time to proof them? Especially since there are relatively few words to check and most of them are common everyday words.

When I was in college, I remember a professor who declared that casual, sloppy errors in term papers amounted to an expression of contempt for the educational process and for educators. By the same measure, aren’t such casual, easily corrected slips on the part of politicians likely to be an expression of contempt for voters? It’s sort of like they think we’re so easy we don’t require much effort. And isn’t it just as likely that this contempt will express itself in other ways as well? Through blatant, in-your-face dishonesty, perhaps, or excuses that beggar belief? And sure enough, both Akin and Spence are guilty.

Remember Spence’s effort to present his home economics degree as a business degree in economics? Or consider his crude deflection of accusations that he voted to default on a TARP bailout loan while on the board of Reliance Bank. He can’t refute that fact, so he pretends that the issue is whether or not he was on the Board when it decided to request the funds. Do you maybe think Spence thinks we’re stupid?

Akin, for his part, quickly flip-flopped on earmarks when it meant a few bucks in his campaign coffers, but tried to save face by claiming that his new-found enthusiasm for earmark bans was consistent with what he’d really meant all along when he said that banning earmarks was unconstitutional. Once again, don’t you get the idea that this guy thinks we’re stupid?  

If Spence and Akin demonstrate a lazy contempt for voters, the Romney/Ryan campaign has taken the same approach to new heights (or, perhaps, depths?). Take, for example, Romney’s tax and deficit proposals. When challenged with the fact that there’s no math there, he refuses to actually discuss the issue in terms of specifics; he just insists that the criticisms aren’t true and, if we’ll just trust him, it’ll all turn out okay. However, in the words of the non-partisan study that actually did the math:

Our conclusion was not a prediction about [what] Governor Romney would do as President, it was an arithmetic calculation: all of the promises couldn’t be met simultaneously without resorting to tax increases on households with income below $200,000.

Now, are you telling me that Governor Romney, a former financier, doesn’t know that? Want another example? Consider Romney’s statement in last Wednesday’s debate that the health care “plan” that he put on his Website provides for coverage of preexisting conditions. It’s just flat-out not true, and it’s highly unlikely that the Governor didn’t know that. He’s responsible for what it says after all. Do you think that maybe he figures we’re just too lazy or stupid to check it out?

Of course, in the aftermath of an obstreperous  presidential debate performance, Romney is enjoying a bump in the polls. While Akin is running behind McCaskill in the polls, at least 40% of Missourians don’t care how he disses them – in fact, he’s just announced that he pulled in a $1 million dollars in online campaign donations. True, Spence has an uphill battle, but he’s still collecting endorsements from organizations that ought to know better. Maybe the GOP is on to something with that stupid shtick. If any of these bozos make it into elected office this November, it won’t be because the electorate is all that.

While President Obama quizzically looked on during tonight’s debate, a jittery and aggressive Mitt Romney (over caffeinated perhaps after his sleepless night?) tried, once again, to say little of substance about his own proposals while hectoring the President noisily and at length. Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you to slow down and give somebody else a chance to talk? Well, Mitt needed a few words from Mother tonight.

There were so many questionable assertions in Mitt’s barrage of words that taking issue with them all would have been impossible during the debate. Fortunately, there are reputable folks who were live-blogging a fact-check during Romney’s effort to shout down both the President and the poor moderator, Gentleman Jim Lehrer. It strikes me that it may be useful to to list a few of more overt fibs that they called Romney on.

The big stuff I’m sure we all caught – Romney’s come out in favor of privatizing Social Security last summer whenever it was convenient, but tonight he’s thinks it’s just fine – that kind of thing. But old Mitt was playing fast and loose, at such high speed, that lots of the guff he was shoveling could easily be allowed to go unchallenged. If you are interested, or want to compare my list with yours, check below the fold.

Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog provided a running commentary  with context for the facts and figures cited by the two candidates. The bloggers identified the following especially egregious Romney misstatements which I have paraphrased below – you can get the details over at Wonkblog:

–None of the cuts to income tax deductions that Romney described would raise the $500 billion/yr necessary to ensure revenue neutrality.

–Romney touted a “lengthy description” of his health-care plan on his Website. It’s only 369 words (I write more in a casual SMP posting!) and does not, as he repeatedly said, cover pre-existing conditions. Let me repeat that – the most overt lie of the evening: Mitt Romney’s plan, to which he specifically referred, does not cover pre-existing conditions.

–The McKinsey study that Romney cited to support his contention that companies would drop coverage because of Obamacare is an outlier that is contradicted by other, more recent studies.

–Romney mentioned a study that claims Obama will raise taxes by $3-4,000. That amount is the tax equivalent of servicing the debt under Obama’s budget. It ignores the consequences of Obama’s proposals to cut the debt via a mix of spending cuts and raising taxes for high earners.

–Contrary to Romney’s claims, 23 million Americans are not “out of work.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 12.5 million unemployed Americans along with 2.6 million Americans who are not in the labor force but want work. You get 23 million only by adding in 8 million Americans who are working part-time right now.

–Romney consistently denied that his tax cuts would cost $5 trillion as the president claimed. This is not true. Economists have shown that his tax cuts would depress revenue by $5 trillion if he doesn’t find a way to pay for them. Romney says he plans to pay for them by eliminating tax breaks and credits, but won’t name specific breaks. Obama, correctly, noted that his tax promises don’t add up.

–Romney claims that though he wants to lower tax rates for the rich, he won’t cut their taxes. The Tax Policy Center’s analysis found that Romney’s proposals would result in people who make more than $1 million a year saving an average of $87,117 in taxes.

–Romney claims that 50% of the 90 billion investments in green energy jobs were failures. It is true that $90 billion was allocated for green energy, but much of that sum was dedicated infrastructure, energy efficiency initiatives, and clean-energy research funding. Of the loans to clean-energy producers, only 1.4% of the recipients failed. (And Romney should he forced to substantiate  his claim that significant amounts of the money went to Obama donors – along with the implication that it was  a quid pro quo.) What a jerk!  

Think Progress was also able to quickly draw on the site’s past research to rebut numerous Romney claims: Many of them we are familiar with , but several were less well known:

–Romney took credit for Massachusetts’ excellent educational system although his own contributions to the state’s educational programs were minimal or outright failures.

–Romney denied President Obama’s contention that he had said  we need fewer teachers. Romney’s on the record, however, saying that we not only need fewer teachers, but firemen and policemen as well.

–Romney noted that he didn’t raise taxes in Massachusetts to pay for Romneycare. That, however is only because he received federal subsidies to do so.

— The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill, while weaker that it should be (thanks, GOP!) does not, as Romney claimed, specify some banks as “too big to fail.” It strictly regulates larger  banks and, via the so-called resolution authority, it protects tax payers from future bailouts of the big banks. The resolution authority is, wouldn’t you know, a provision that that Romney’s VP pick,  Paul Ryan, has tried to repeal.

— Hiring has not, as Romney asserted, slowed as a result of regulation.

–Romney promises to create 3 million jobs a year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, as a result of the spending cuts it proposes,  his economic plan would “lead to employment losses of 608,000 in 2013 and roughly 1.3 million in 2014,”

–Romney claims that there are no tax breaks for taking jobs overseas. Just. Plain. False. Think Progress lays out the specific breaks here.

Todd Akin thinks he’s being treated unfairly – after all, he only made a “six second mistake” when he mispoke about lady parts, rape and the right to chose not to carry your rapist’s baby:

“My six-second mistake is well known. But Claire McCaskill’s six-year record is something you should know.  “McCaskill voted with Obama 98 percent of the time. She cast the deciding vote to pass Obamacare, that cuts Medicare by over $700 billion dollars. She voted for Obama’s budget-busting stimulus spending and raised our taxes but didn’t pay her own.

What’s this election about? Saving our country.

I’m glad that Akin feels so sanguine about his little misadventure in expressing his deepest beliefs. He wants us to think that Claire McCaskill’s six year record more than balances his little error – and maybe to the reality-challenged rigtwingers who form his base that’s the case. Who can account for lunatics anyway?

However, in common with Missouri GOP spokesperson, Mr. Prouty, whom we referenced in a previous post, Brother Todd has failed to get his facts straight. He thinks Claire McCaskill has voted with Obama 98% of the time. First of all what does 98% of the time mean? Much of what Claire McCaskill and other senators have voted on is routine, or otherwise so removed from the scope of partisan distinction that it’s almost impossible to make quantitative statements of this sort – and if you do, I’d really want to know what your criteria is. We’ve already noted (and documented) the fact elsewhere that McCaskill’s voting record is a lot more complex than can be digested in simple soundbites – and it’s far from always being congenial with a progressive, or even the Obama administration agenda (and, FYI, they’re not always the same thing either).

But where Todd, who likes to claim that he’s an honest man, really oversteps the boundaries of truth is when he echoes the dishonest claims about Medicare that are also being promulgated by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. As I am now writing for the umpteenth hundred time, the $750 billion that Obamacare cuts from Medicare are mostly administrative costs, including subsidies to private supplemental insurance programs with inflated costs. These supplemental programs will not go away, but will be tied to quality metrics so that we get a better bang for the buck. As The Swampland notes, The Obamacare cuts that Claire McCaskill supported will not change the program’s benefits:

The idea, however, that the Affordable Care Act struck a dangerous blow to Medicare that will change the program in fundamental ways is untrue. Under the new law, Medicare will remain a wildly popular, public single-payer health insurance system that provides comprehensive coverage to millions of Americans.

Nor does pious Brother Todd tell us that he voted for the Ryan budget that makes those same identical cuts, plows the money’s into the deficit (where it’s hardly a drop in the bucket) instead of using it to expand benefits, and then, after taking the Medicare loose change, voucherizes Medicare, essentially destroying the program for current as well as the future retirees who are the only ones Ryan says will be affected. Pretty devastating. And just like the lying Romney/Ryan duo, Todd hasn’t got the cojones to admit what he’s proposing to do with Medicare, but tries to lay it off on Claire McCaskill. For shame, Rep. Akin.

Oh, and by the way – there is a consensus among economists is that the stimulus did work. But I’ll give Brother Todd a pass on his naysaying piece of GOP BS on the topic since he probably gets his economic information from the same sources who told him about the birds and bees.  

It’s time to point out some home truths about Claire McCaskill’s voting record. Why, you ask, is this important? Anyone can check out her record online – anyone who’s interested in the truth that is. But the fact is that she’s a  Democrat running against the Republican machine and Republicans in general are no longer interested in the truth. Just consider the Romney campaign functionary who recently declared that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers strategy.” Which is to say, truth be dammed. And it’s becoming equally clear that Missouri Rpublicans aren’t going to let the campaign against Claire McCaskill be dictated by facts either.

Although the state GOP is clinging to the story that they too scorn the their bumpkinish Senatorial candidate, Todd Akin, Talking Points memo reports that their disdain has not, in fact, stopped them from launching the usual dishonest attacks aimed at Claire McCaskill. I sympathize. I know how hard it is to keep quiet in the midst of a violent spleen attack; I lived through eight years of President George W. Bush after all. Nevertheless, after sampling their rhetoric, I would recommend that if these folks have to throw tantrums, they try for just a smidgen of accuracy. Specifically, a GOP official in a fit of high dudgeon claimed in response to a McCaskill ad:

This is about Claire McCaskill’s disingenuous effort to paint herself as a moderate when she clearly is not,” Missouri GOP communications director Jonathon Prouty told TPM. “We have always worked to hold McCaskill accountable, and we will not allow her to get away with distorting her record of rubber-stamping Barack Obama’s agenda.”

Buddy, from where I’m sitting here on the real left, not the GOP fantasy left, McCaskill is a moderate’s moderate. If you examine her record carefully, you’ll see that she’s voted with Republicans and she’s voted with Democrats. She’s made me screaming mad so many times I can’t count them – and I’ve probably also written thanking her for standing up for the good of the average Missourian just as many times.  Mr. Prouty should get it clear in his head that there’s a big difference between moderates and Republicans. The former are still able to think for themselves.

You want to know what drives progressives into a fury, just consider the fact that McCaskill’s votes on energy policy and regulation have frequently been in sync with one the oil industry’s favorite congressman, Roy Blunt – in spite of the fact that she doesn’t benefit nearly as much from the generosity of the energy industry. She’s been consistent about her approach to energy from the beginning, even though many of her votes angered those of us who make up the Democratic base. Her main goal has been to save Missourians from any increases in their utility and gas bills. Short term thinking that will catch up with all of us, but you sure as shooting can’t call it rubber stamping the Obama administration agenda.

McCaskill also, sadly, immediately broke with progressives on the question of deficit reduction, which most of us on the left think should be deferred until the economy has recovered more fully. McCaskill, though, has been seriously hawkish about deficit spending. She actually introduced legislation that would have drastically capped spending; heck, she she even voted against extending Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Contingency Fund (ECF) funding.  Wrong-headed, yes. Obama rubber stamp, no way.

On the liberal side, McCaskill’s been equally consistent in her positions. She’s been a stalwart if somewhat muted defender of a women’s reproductive rights. She stands up for union people, including currently unpopular public unions, the teachers, firemen and policemen that the Republicans think we can do without. She defends the minimum wage, because she’s been around long enough to realize that the “job-killing” claim the GOP makes against it is so much smoke – a fair minimum wage brings prosperity to everyone. She seems willing to insist that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, although she’s willing to quibble about what that share might be. McCaskill also stands closer to the liberal side of the aisle when it comes to protecting Medicare and Social Security, while her opponent, Todd Akin is on the record for turning Medicare into a voucher program and privatizing Social Security.

And yes, Virginia, Claire McCaskill voted for Obamacare. And someday, when the disinformation campaign that the right has waged against this historic legislation has faded away, a much older Claire McCaskill will be able to point with pride to her vote which helped insure affordable health care for all Americans. As far as I’m concerned, this single vote means that Claire McCaskill passes an important test – she voted for a program that would make America a better place and, given the fury of the conservative campaign to demonize that program, she did it at the risk of her career.

For the most part, though, McCaskill’s votes have been on non-controversial issues, and bills that’s she’s introduced or sponsored have been equally non-controversial, directed at cutting waste and fraud in government contracting, at promoting transparency in campaign spending, and at protecting our veterans, along with some short-sighted efforts to cut the deficit – which prompted Slate’s Dave Weigel to dub her a “Tea Party Democrat” – a label that becomes even more ironic when one recollects McCaskill’s consistent vendetta against and refusal to take earmarks – while Tea Party caucus member Todd Akin defended the practice as ” an extension of a lawmaker’s constitutional duty to appropriate money.”

If you consider the voting records and achievements of both Claire McCaskill and Todd Akin, I think that you will have to conclude that McCaskill is just as she presents herself – a mostly reasonable, sometimes wrong-headed, centrist Democrat, who, no matter how she strays when it comes to progressive orthodoxy, manages to get lots of good, neutral, center-of-the-road stuff done. On the other side of the equation stands a bible-spouting zealot who in ten years hasn’t put forward any non-ideological initiatives; nor has he accomplished much of anything for Missourians besides warm his back bench perch, vote reliably for right-wing causes, and stick his foot in his mouth on a regular basis.

Sadly, since Republicans can’t point to positive achievements or sympathetic policy positions, they seem to think that their only alternative is to exaggerate, distort and outright lie, not only about the other guy, but about what they themselves stand for. Just as Paul Ryan told one whopper after another in his convention speech last night, we can expect to hear more lies and exaggerations about Claire McCaskill’s record over the next two months. Strength, brothers and sisters – we’ll need it as the Grand Old Party morphs into the party of grand mendacity.

I know that this blog should focus on what is happening in Missouri and when we deal with national policies, we need to show how it will affect Missourians. Well, the presidential election will affect Missourians. If Mitt Romney wins it will affect thousands and thousands of Missourians and in a very bad way. If he wins because he lies more blatantly than any previous lying candidate, it’ll be a painful, cryin’ shame. Ipso facto, we all have an obligation to call him out whenever we learn about his lies – doesn’t matter how many other places have the scoop – we’ve got to amplify the message which is, simply put, Mitt Romney cannot be trusted.

Case in point:  Just so it’s clear where President Obama stands, here is a new campaign video decrying what the GOP has done to our economy by cutting public sector jobs. He makes his attitude about the disastrous GOP tack against public employees, that is, teachers, firemen and policemen, crystal clear:

Romney, who is on record with his belief that we don’t need so many of those dirty, stinking, commie public employees, specifically teachers, firemen and policemen, seems to have realized that openly declaring his druthers in this case wasn’t so smart. So he evidently decided to try to tar the president with the same brush – which his campaign did by taking film of the President and editing it so that the President appears to be saying the exact opposite of what he actually did say (h/t DailyKos):

If you want to know what the President really said, check out the actual transcript of his remarks printed by Talking Points Memo. Just in case you miss the point, in the words of DailyKos’ Jed Lewison:

This really isn’t a question of interpretation. It’s a simple case of dishonesty. And it’s not the kind of thing campaigns usually do. Sure, you always have spin. You always position things to help win votes. And sometimes you make mistakes and get things wrong. But for the most part, campaigns don’t lie as eagerly as Mitt Romney’s did today and has done throughout the campaign.

And in my own words – Romney’s an overtly lying piece of opportunistic slime who isn’t fit to clean our sewers, much less take on the responsibilities of president.

If I were to try to find a descriptive label for the political atmosphere in 2009, I would call it the year of the tantrum because of all the displays of thwarted fury that took place in the wake of the election of the first African-American president. Who can forget the right-wing tantrums that took place wherever Tea Party mobs hijacked congressional town halls or congregated to inflate the weight of their essentially minority demands. While the rage continued unabated in 2010, one might better characterize last year in terms of the bait used to snare those same angry Tea Partiers – any one of the numerous iterations of the big lie that has become the currency of the modern GOP.  

That fringewingers have been boiling over isn’t really anything new as those of us know who can remember the McCarthyist “better dead than red” protests and the original John Birchers. What was worth remarking, though, was the degree to which the Teople were worked up over things that just weren’t true – nonexistent death panels, fictional FEMA detention camps, or the imaginary threat of the great Obama gun confiscation for example.

This year, as GOP pols and their corporate supporters doubled down in their efforts to retake the congress, they also doubled down in their willingness to exploit what has been revealed as the almost limitless gullibility of those over-Foxified and Limbaughed individuals who inhabit the fact-free zone of GOP propaganda. GOP politicians have been liberated; they are free to deny obvious facts at will and make any outlandish claim, secure in the knowledge that they will never be held accountable by their base.

Missouri, of course, saw its share of political lies during the past year, but to my mind, there are two GOP pols who excelled in the rarefied art of bilking the suckers. Ed Martin who lost his race against Russ Carnahan for the 3rd district House seat, and Roy Blunt who beat Robin Carnahan for retiring Senator Kit Bond’s Senate seat. (You, of course, may have other candidates, and I would welcome your arguments for them in the comments if you are so inclined.)

It’s hard to know where to start when describing the excesses of Ed Martin, who seems to have mislaid whatever capacity he possessed to tell the truth as soon as he started his campaign. He started out by pretending that Carnahan had defaulted on debates that, contrary to Martin’s claims, he never agreed to, and finished by fabricating absurd claims of election fraud. In between, his campaign featured a multitude of spurious claims about his rival, among the most creative of which was his contention that Carnahan, along with his pal, the Obama boogyman, would come between Missourians and their religious “salvation.” The trouble with Martin, though, is that so little that he said had any relationship to truth that, after awhile, most of us found his fantasy life a little boring.

As truth challenged as Martin proved to be, probably the most overwhelming triumph of big-lie politics in Missouri was the election of Roy Blunt to the Senate. In part, this is because Blunt, a scandal-tinged insider who, during the Bush years, presided over a a GOP dominated House that helped drive the deficit to astronomical heights while simultaneously trashing the economy, managed to coast to election with promises to “fight to restore accountability” to Washington.

A plaid-shirted Blunt, who in his long-time Washington incarnation plays the role of a glossy socialite, tooled around the state in a rented pick-up, kissing up to any and every rural prejudice. After disrespecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security like a good GOP pol really wants to do, he not only denied his own words, but ran ads falsely implying that Carnahan’s support for the Affordable Care Act, would translate into cuts in Medicare benefits. He lied about his votes against the minimum wage. He even sunk so low that in the course of bragging about his GOP boiler-plate “jobs plan” he lied about its length, adding a good 80 pages.

This partial list of Blunt’s transgressions against the truth, which offers just a few of our new Senator’s self-misrepresentations, is in itself a strong argument for giving Blunt the title of Missouri Liar of the Year. Martin seemed, most of the time at least, to lie about his opponent – and so outrageously as to be simply amusing – but Blunt created an entire false persona which he used to promote himself to the Senate. Besides, Martin lost and Blunt won,  and by winning on the basis of so many lies, he debased our political discourse just a little bit more. He has contributed one more cog in the devaluation of truth that we have seen taking place in our political world over the past decade, each inch taken, leading to another mile of democracy lost.  

Last week Greg Sargent’s Plum Line detailed some of the falsehoods in the flood of third party ads produced by Carl Rove’s Crossroads group and by the Chamber of Commerce. Because of the furor over their funding – the undisclosed donors, the possibility of foreign contributors, etc. – the fact that these ads are chock full of blatant, egregious falsehoods had not received much attention earlier. The onslaught has now truly begun; third party ads have been flooding the airwaves (on some evenings I have seen the same ad over six times – and I don’t watch that much TV). Many of us were worried about what Citizens United would mean for our democracy; these ads, the ugly spawn of that decision, prove that we were more than right to be concerned.

One ad in particular centers around absurd claims that the Affordable Care Act cuts Medicare by 500 billion dollars – the ad has been directed at several Democrats with only slight variations. You can see some of the versions of the ad and get the real facts about its lies here (you can also see one such ad below the fold). Take a look at it and then compare it with the new Roy Blunt ad (also shown below the fold) – not too much difference, right?

Given Blunt’s past propensities for abusing the truth, I’m not surprised that he is putting out one more dishonest ad, nor am I surprised that the subject matter is Medicare. He is clearly hoping to stem the damage Carhanan did in their last debate when she not only brought up Roy’s past statements about Medicare, but confronted him with proof when he denied them:

Among other things, the Carnahan camp disputed Blunt’s apparent denial during the debate that he had ever said that Medicare shouldn’t have been created. Carnahan’s campaign sent out a number of links to numerous news accounts — including two videos (click here and here) — in which Blunt appeared to disparage the government health-care program for the elderly, voted for cuts or voted for a proposal to turn the program into a voucher system.

What better way to save face when you are caught in a lie, but to lie some more – hence this new Medicare ad. Of course, if you are Roy Blunt, your contempt for your constituents is so great that you don’t even bother to come up with something plausible – you simply crib from your Crossroads GPS pals and adapt their all-purpose lies to do your dirty work. After all, Carl Rove proved that if you tell a lie often enough, everyone will think it’s the truth.

Update: FiredUp! Missouri has video of a KMBC TV segment that factchecks the Blunt ad.

One of the Crossroads GPS ads, the new Blunt ad, and two videos of Blunt dissing Medicare can be found below the fold:

Crossroads GPS ad attacking Joe Sestak (PA):

New Roy Blunt ad:

Roy Blunt on Medicare:

And:

FiredUP! points out that Blunt’s new line on Robin Carnahan – liar, liar, pants on fire – might not really correspond to reality all that much – and that, in fact, the claims that Carnahan makes in this ad, to which Blunt takes exception, actually do stand up to scrutiny:

So who’s the liar here? And why are we not surprised that it isn’t Carnahan? Maybe because there are are so many of Roy Blunt’s other equivocations, whoppers, prevarications, fibs, fabrications, and inventions out there. Here’s a small sample of what you can easily find on Google with a few simple searches:

Equivocating about birtherism: Blunt knows where Obama was born, but he wants birthers and Tea Partiers to like him – as long as he can pander to them without owning up to it in responsible adult company.

Tarp whopper: Blunts hopes that TARP haters have short memories; or that they think Obama managed the entire bailout all by his lonesome without any help from then President Bush and his go-to boy in the House, Roy Blunt.

Prevaricating about post-Katrina oil spills: Why? It’s obvious. Blunt’s collected lots of oil and gas money over the years.

Fibs about minimum wage votes: Blunt tells hardscrabble Missourians that he’s supported minimum wage increases in the past, but his record says otherwise.

Fabrications about knee and hip replacements: It wasn’t just the fairy tales about Canadian and English “rationing” of knee replacements that raised eyebrows – but his follow-up statement to the effect that the uninsured can get hip replacements by going to the emergency room.

Inventing a whole new persona: Hard to believe the plaid-shirted, (rented) pick-up driving, good ole boy is the same urbane socialite who is married to one of Washington’s “top 50 party animals,” with whom he shares a place in the “old-school Georgetown social establishment, which keeps them in the pages of Washington’s glossy society magazines.”

I could keep on doing this all night – there’s lots of material and plenty more synonyms for lies … but, by now I expect you’ve got the idea.