If Newt Gingrich has made himself famous through oratorical bomb-throwing…and he has….then Mitt Romney has become famous for his willingness to take both sides of any issue.

Romney said this January 22nd…

What unfortunately happens is with all the multiplicity of federal programs, you have massive overhead, with government bureaucrats in Washington administering all these programs, very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.

The larger message Romney is seeking to convey is one of a bloated, inefficient, failed European-style socialistic government….all imposed on Americans in just the last 3 years by a president who really down deep….is not one of us. "Big government" is written all over Romney's comment here. And of course, only the "Democrat" Party is in favor of big government….because liberals, progressives, Democrats….want America to fail.

Problem is….what Romney said….I know this will come as a total surprise….is not factual.

As Paul Krugman pointed out in his column here….

"…between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries."

Romney: "very little"…"reaches them".

Truth: 90% plus reaches them.

But that's only the half of it. A couple days ago, the GOP front runner…..as you've probably already heard….had this to say about the poor….

"I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it," Romney told CNN Wednesday morning. "I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

On January 22nd, Romney tells us "very little" from "government bureaucrats" actually "reaches" the poor who need help. On February 1, Romney tells us he's not concerned about the poor because "we have a safety net there." I don't think both can be true at the same time. Either the safety net for the poor is broken almost beyond repair because "very Little" of designated government funding ever "reaches" those who are in need of it…..OR…..there's nothing to be overly concerned about when it comes to the poor because "we have a safety net there."

This is what I mean by Romney taking both sides of basically any issue. Yes, politicians promise stuff they know they won't be able to deliver on….but I don't ever recall a major candidate taking both sides of virtually every question he's asked.

Even though Romney added that if the safety net needed fixing….he'd fix it as president….in reality, as Krugman says…

Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead.

How so?

….the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.

So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.

And is it really true that Mitt Romney is "not concerned about the very rich"? Is that true? If Mitt is not really concerned about the very rich, like him, because they are doing just fine….then why does Romney's economic policy contain a provision to lower taxes on millionaires by another $145,000 per year?

If it's true that Romney is "not concerned" about the very rich because they're doing "just fine"….then why would the rich need an additional $145,000 per year? If I know someone who is very rich…and I do…how not concerned would I be about that very rich person if I wanted to give that very rich person another $145,000 every year?

The question becomes then…..can Americans believe anything that Mitt Romney says?

Palm Beach Post, January 17, 2012…..

Florida Republicans say the latest voter registration and absentee ballot figures point to a GOP enthusiasm advantage over Democrats heading into the 2012 presidential election.

The election "enthusiasm gap" talk is a relatively new entry in the game of bullsh*t played by the Very Serious People every 2 years. How does one actually measure enthusiasm? For my money, the way to measure how enthusiastic voters are is to, pardon the simplicity, count the number of votes after the election. Even then, any claims of higher or lower enthusiasm on behalf of voters is nothing more than pure speculation.

In Florida, before Tuesday's primary, 446,000 Republicans had requested absentee ballots compared with only 307,744 in the 2008 primary….140,000 more. In 2012 the gap between Democratic registration in the state and Republican registration found Democrats leading by 4.3%. In 2008 Democrats led by 5.8%.

Those numbers were seen as evidence that Florida Republicans were hot to trot to get out to vote and get on with the business of taking their country back from the foreign President Obama. The "enthusiasm gap", it is being called…..and by jimminy, this year Republicans are really, really enthusiastic about the upcoming election. You may have heard something about all this from one of the millionaires reading a teleprompter while pretending to be a journalist on teevee. The oft-repeated messaging?…Republicans, when we're talking this fall's general election, are 'roided up on enthusiasm.

So how did all that enthusiasm work out in Tuesday's Florida primary? Using The Reverend's enthusiasm measuring stick….how many Republican voters actually voted in Florida on Tuesday…..we find that 1.660,000 Floridians voted in the GOP primary. In 2008's Florida primary 1,940,000 registered Republicans voted in the GOP primary. I suppose 15% fewer GOP primary voters in 2012 as compared to 2008 could, somehow, demonstrate greater GOP voter enthusiasm this year than 4 years ago…..but you'll have to forgive me for not seeing it.

Furthermore….even though I concede that Republicans in 2012 are really, really, really angry, angry, angry at Obama and the Communists he brought in with him to the White House….exit polls from Florida's Tuesday GOP primary demonstrated that 38% of those enthusiastic GOP voters down in Florida would like "someone else to run for the nomination." Someone else other than Romney and Gingrich, the candidates who finished first and second, respectively, on Tuesday.

To boot, only 51% of Florida GOP primary voters who voted for the eventual winner, Mitt Romney, said that they were "satisfied with the Republican candidates." All chubbed up on enthusiasm and nowhere to go, I suppose. Or as Jimi Hendrix once put it…"I know what I want but I just don't know."

So, once again, whatever this "enthusiasm gap" Republican voters are supposed to have opened up on Democratic voters……color me skeptical. I'm not seeing it…..no matter how many times conservative-pumping teevee anchors and guests repeat it.

What I see is a political party in peril. At war with itself. Teetering more closely to the edge of fragmentation each and every month we go forward. Out of touch with the American public yet still holding on for dear life to their shredded, rotted, and proven-failure-policies of out-of-touchness.

Republicans are experiencing their own little civil war this primary campaign. That's why Johnny Mac McCain called recently for an end to any more GOP candidates debates. Too embarrassing to the party. Too divisive. Making the GOP look as if they are not united.

For the last number of years the GOP has been purging their party of candidates who have shown a willingness to compromise with the Communists Democrats in order to promote the general welfare of the American people. The clamor from the Tea Party has advanced that purging process.

Eventually….I'm hoping this election cycle…..the Republican Party will implode from their misguided, self-imposed purification process….and start to rebuild their party by jettisoning their extremist elements.

Contrary to Village lore….America is not a conservative-right nation. A conservative-right nation would not be in favor, by 70-75%, of increasing taxes on only the rich. A conservative-right nation would not prefer, by 54%, to have abortion remain legal. A conservative-right nation would not be moving ever closer to legalizing marriage for gays.

Republicans and angry conservatives can insist all they want that America is a conservative-right nation…..just as they have been insisting that Republican voters are way more enthusiastic than Democratic voters about this year's election cycle.

But just like in Tuesday's primary down in Florida….it's only the evidence that counts.

In 2002 when neo-cons within the U.S. military and inside the Bush White House worked hard to deceive Congress and the American people into cheering for an unprovoked attack against the non-threatening nation of Iraq, steady and repetitive neo-connish messaging cleared the pathway to aggressive war.

Not only was Saddam Hussein's Iraq not a threat to the U.S. in 2002-2003….after a decade of harsh sanctions mainly affecting non-military Iraqis….but Hussein's military capabilities had never returned to pre-Iraq War I levels. The con by the…umm….neo-cons was to convince Americans who didn't know any better, and were still filled with vengeful hate from 9-11, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were about to devastate the east coast of the U.S., as well as Israel and Europe…or all three simultaneously.

In 21st century America, it's all about the messaging. Veracity has nothing to do with any of it.

The Iraq Sequel.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that sanctions so far had not caused Iran's leaders to change their pursuit of nuclear capabilities.

But he said some Iranian officials appear more willing to conduct an attack in the United States if they feel threatened, citing last year's alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

"The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime," Clapper said in his Senate testimony.

"We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas," he said.

Insert 2002 Bushie claim here. "Smoking gun-mushroom cloud", "grave and gathering danger", "there's no doubt Saddam is reconstituting blah, blah effing blah"…..you know how it works, or should by now. But Americans in the beginning of the 21st century have become a caricature of a "short attention span theater" skit…..can't recall what happened last week, let alone what happened almost a decade ago.

And so the deceptive and duplicitous neo-con message machine cranks up again. This time in order to dupe U.S. citizens into accepting yet another military assault on yet another middle eastern sovereign nation.

How it's done.

In October of 2011, U.S. officials launched a new propaganda message against Iran claiming that Iran planned an assassination attempt of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Why Iran would risk nuclear annihilation at the hands of the U.S. and/or Israel over some cockamamie Mexican drug cartel/Quds Force story of clusterf*ckness…..was never explained.

Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corporation, found it "difficult" to believe that Khamenei or Suleimani would order such an attack that "would put all of Iran's objectives and strategies at risk".

Reza Sayyah from CNN questioned the plausibility of the claim by asking, "Did an elite branch of Iran's military handpick a divorced, 56-year-old Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas to hire a hitman from a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the ambassador to Saudi Arabia by blowing up a bomb in a crowded restaurant in Washington?"

Sure it's ridiculous…but then Saddam Hussein plotting to spray anthrax down on the eastern seaboard of the U.S….was a ridiculous notion as well…and yet that deceptive and ridiculous story reached the homes of millions of post-9-11, still-feeling-vengeful Americans.

See how DNI Chief James Clapper carefully constructs his misleading message meant to gin up support for a U.S. attack of Iran?

"The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,"

Using the laughable, really, claim that a used car salesman from Texas, allegedly hiring a Mexican drug-cartel hitman, was about to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S…..and that the highest leaders in Iran were behind the laughable story….using that as his springboard of disinformation, Clapper then implies that Iranian leaders are…"probably", "more willing"…to do what?

"conduct an attack in the U.S."

See? Just like Saddam was about to do in 2002.

Of course, when disinformation…like Saddam spraying anthrax over New York using small prop planes…. doesn't carry quite the deceptive punch neo-cons are looking for…any DNI can always fall back on the old American standby….

"We're doing a lot with the Israelis, working together with them. And of course for them, this is, as they have characterized, is an existential threat," Clapper said.

I wonder if Iran considers the 200 nuclear-tipped warheads the Israeli government has pointed in their direction to be, you know, "an existential threat"?

The WTF-ness of this latest propaganda salvo ginning up support for an eventual military attack against Iran is found in this Clapper comment….

"We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so," he said in written testimony. "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

Iran does not have a nuclear weapon right now and Clapper admits that he and his smart guys don't know if Iran will "eventually decide" to make one or not, but those wily Iranian leaders are, you know, keeping their "options" open…..so who knows, right?

All I can conclude about this clumsy, juvenile attempt to rah-rah the nation into another act of pre-emptive military aggression….is that the militaristic neo-cons who work so hard to deceive us into slaughtering more Muslims…..are in need of better script writers.

Last night down in Florida GOP candidate Mitt Romney basically called Newt Gingrich out as an unprincipled liar…which, of course, Gingrich is.

Starting at about the 9:40 mark…listen to Gingrich, a master of deception, attempt to convince viewers that the $1.6 million his company took from Fanny and Freddie wasn't for the purpose of lobbying and influence peddling. Watch how Romney calmly calls out outrageous bullsh*t on Gingrich…and also notice how Gingrich takes a long pause to consider which diversion or distraction to use to take him off the subject.

Romney…

"On this stage, in a prior debate you said that you were paid $300,000 by Freddy Mac as an historian. They don't pay people $25,000 a month for 6 years as historians. That adds up to $1.6 million. They weren't hiring you as a historian. This contract proves you were not an historian, you were a consultant. It doesn't say you provided historical experience, it said you were a consultant. And you were hired by the chief lobbyist for Freddy Mac….You also spoke publicly in favor of these GSE's, these government sponsored entities, at the very time that Freddy Mac was getting America in a position where we had a massive housing collapse. You could have spoken out aggressively. You could have spoken out in a way that 'these guys are wrong, this needs to end'..but instead you were being paid by them."

Yes, Gingrich lied about his work for Fanny and Freddy. Presumably because patriotic conservative voters, according to Village Media Professionals commenting on Gingrich's recent and powerful debate performances, don't care about what's true and what's a lie.

What conservative GOP voters want isn't a candidate who tells the truth. I mean, seriously, consider the top two contenders left in the GOP primaries. Gingrich and Romney change their answers more often than most of us change our socks.

What, then, is the distinction, really, that differentiates Gingrich from Romney….at least to conservative voters? Isn't the answer that conservative voters think Gingrich can put it to President Obama in a mean-spirited, divisive, hate-filled way…in a way that Romney cannot? Isn't that it in a nutshell, so to speak?

Associated Press…

The Republican presidential debates have served up riveting TV and exposed the contenders' strengths and weaknesses. No one has benefited more than Newt Gingrich, whose in-your-face style has excited GOP voters who want a scrappy fighter to take on President Barack Obama in the fall.

The AP writer goes on…

That group of voters (the most conservative S. Carolina voters) backed Gingrich in Saturday's primary in the strongest numbers, in part because of two memorable debate exchanges.

The "two memorable debate exchanges" are explained as being the Juan Williams exchange with Gingrich in the Myrtle Beach debate and John King's hapless exchange with Gingrich at the beginning of the debate in Charleston.

Why do you think these two exchanges, specifically, made the difference in the S. Carolina primary?
I have an answer that conservatives will probably not appreciate.

Conservative voters are angry. They, and their mainstream media apologists, have been telling us that they have been angry ever since Obama took their country away from them. Conservatives are not simply angry, either. They're fighting mad. More than anything else this general election cycle, angry conservative voters want a candidate who will fight as if he/she was as angry as they are.

Angry people…I'm talking mad as hell…..don't care about pesky facts or inconvenient truths. They simply want a representative candidate who has the capability of spreading hostile poison all over the dreaded Dark Knight. These angry conservatives don't even care if their candidate loses the election in spectacular fashion. They don't.

They just want a hitman who will make them feel better when he "gives it" to that dark-skinned president. Gingrich…although truth-challenged and a master of deceit over his career….is just the bombthrowing fighter these angry, angry conservative voters are looking for.

Gingrich is not afraid to dress down an "uppity black" Juan Williams….instructing Juan that, no, he doesn't recognize his insults directed towards poor blacks and black children as "insulting." The audience roared their approval.

Gingrich is not afraid to drag out the rotted "liberal media" sleight of hand game….like Newt did with the pathetic John King the other night. Gingrich, and his conservative fans, just know that the media is "liberal", even though it isn't…and what better way to send tingles down the legs of angry, angry conservative sore losers than to publicly chastise a representative from that "liberal media" for asking a perfectly legitimate question about his 2nd ex-wife.

The "two memorable debate exchanges" which have rocketed Gingrich to the top in GOP polling are memorable only because of what those exchanges say about today's conservatives. Today's conservatives are goddamn angry….so angry they will leap to their feet when blacks and media members are put in their place.

You see, under the spell of one's own hateful anger…..truth, facts, empirical evidence, eye witness accounts….nothing really matters. All that matters to angry conservative voters is that their candidate has enough gumption and audacity to deliver the same ugly, hateful and divisive anger that they have been feeling over America's first black president.

Mitt Romney's primary line of attack against President Obama.

Romney claims that Obama has been a job destroyer, while he was a job-creating businessman. For example, he told Fox News: "This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is 2 million jobs that he lost as president."

This is Mitt's mantra. Obama has failed to put Americans back to work. Obama has destroyed, will destroy, or is in the process of destroying, the U.S. economy. Not only is Romney going ahead with this main attack line against President Obama during the campaign, but the entire conservative and GOP movement has been repeating the same charge for 3 years running.

We hear it so often, most of us probably don't even hear it anymore. From the moment Barack Obama was inaugurated it began. Starting on January 20, 2009 the cries went up that the new Dark Knight Democratic president was "destroying" America.

All of it was strategically planned by the Orwellian corporate messengers whom we are oh-so-privileged to have as our overlords. Repetition is vitally important when branding the brains of the public you wish to deceive. The most often repeated word by conservatives and Republicans in describing President Obama….is some form of the word destroy. Obama is destroying America. Obama is destroying the nation's economy. Obama is a job destroyer.

I think it's a good time to look at some charts to determine how much destruction President Obama has done to the nation's economy and employment. I mean, for three continuous years, that's the only message heard from the Party Of Lincoln. Obama has destroyed our economy. Obama has destroyed jobs.

True or no?

The shaded area of the above chart represents employment before, during and after the official period of recession which began during the George W. Bush presidency. As is abundantly clear, only during the first year of the Obama presidency did our economy continue to shed jobs. As is also abundantly clear from the chart, the momentum of job losses during the sad, closing scenes of the Bush presidency was so severe that it took 6-9 more months after Bush left office for the massive job losses to bottom out.

From June of 2009 forward…..the last 2 1/2 years….employment, while sluggish, returned to positive territory.

Yet, Mitt Romney plans to build his campaign to beat Obama on misleading lines like this…."Obama has put us on a road to decline."

The bikini employment chart above is yet another rendering of this same fact. The crashing in employment came during the Bush presidency with enough negative momentum to spill over into the first 6 year of the new Obama presidency. But look at what's happened the last 2 years since. Employment has grown. And not because of government hiring either. Since 2008, 500,000 public sector jobs have been eliminated.

Now, an Obama critic can look at the bikini chart and tell me that job creation is still not strong enough…and I would agree. But to state that Obama's presidency is "destroying" the American economy and private sector job creation is simply not factual.

The Dear Leader of the conservative movement in America, Rush Limbaugh…

"…The president of the United States, Barack Obama, is destroying the United States economy. There is no other way to describe this, systematically destroying it,”

The conservative propaganda outlet Newsmax…

Obama is a human wrecking ball single-handedly destroying our economy and bankrupting the nation.

The DOW index chart above covers the last 3 years since President Obama took office. Take a good hard look. If there is any truth to the conservative claims that Obama is "destroying" our national economy, why would Serious investors be driving the DOW to a three year high? Why would investors be buying stock in American corporations if, in fact, Obama was "destroying" the U.S. economy? Do you think investors want to lose money?

In summary: President Obama has not destroyed the economy nor new job creation. The empirical data is overwhelming. After the hangover wore off from an economic crash that began in December 2007 under George W. Bush's watch…..the nation has experienced private sector job growth upwards to 2 million. After the "bears" in the market sold off starting in the fall of 2007, they have turned bullish ever since.

The one thing, however, which has been "destroyed" over the last three years…..and I can say this unequivocally…..is the credibility of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They simply lie….without ceasing.

P.S. I think there's some irony in the fact that even though Bush/Cheney did not protect the nation from attack on 9-11, they never tired of telling us how they kept us safe from attack after 9-11. And yet, today's conservatives and Republicans insist that President Obama's first 6 months in office is the only period worth examining when evaluating employment and the national economy. Seems odd, perhaps dishonest.

Myth making is an industry within politics. In our age of smorgasboard news,….just choose what you like….myth making has exploded. Americans can no longer agree on one narrative of what just happened yesterday. Our politics, if not our entire culture, has accepted post-modernism: there is no real truth.

Back in the Bill Clinton days….before the internet and Fox News exploded as primary sources of information, much of it false….myth making was all the rage. If you took the words of conservative and Village media as truth, then you believed that Hillary Clinton was a murderer, or a lesbian…or both. And that President Clinton was most likely still running drugs down in Arkansas and Tennessee. Those were the salad days of what I refer to as wingnuttery.

Today, unfortunately, myth making and a post modern approach to politics has matured into the ghastly, disformed creature we call our modern political discourse.

One particular ongoing story today illustrates what I'm getting at. Operation Fast and Furious.

As you may know, Darrel Issa (R-CA), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, and richest man in the House…..has decided to go after President Obama through the ATF program Fast and Furious. Issa, and other wild-eyed Republicans, think that they have some impeachable material to use against President Obama after Obama wins a second term. If it all leads to the impeachment of a second-in-a-row Democratic president, then, all the better. Those who doubt what I'm saying may want to look at this article entitled, "Fast and Furious" Just Might Be President Obama's Watergate, from this past September in Forbes.

Issa accuses the Obama administration of…..

…acting recklessly by losing track of almost 2,000 guns on the Southwest border in a botched ATF operation called Fast and Furious. Two of those weapons were recovered near the body of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Here is how the richest representative in the House characterizes the role Obama's Justice Department played in Fast and Furious.

American Thinker…

"The Department of Justice's conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful," said Chairman Issa. "From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew."

The Reverend's response to this Issa myth making was to explain that Fast and Furious is not unique…and that during President George W. Bush's tenure….an almost identical program was being run by ATF and the U.S. Border Patrol. Conservative commenters scoffed.

In order to squelch yet another myth before it fully forms into a wingnut legend…..read this…

The Justice Department sent nearly 500 pages of documents to Republican lawmakers Thursday that suggest the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may have used questionable tactics and lost track of American-made weapons in a gun trafficking investigation on the Mexican border as early as 2006.

….

The newly released email messages and briefing papers suggest there may be similarities between the Obama operation "Fast and Furious" and an earlier effort during the Bush administration to target the flow of guns into Mexico. The papers include several communications between ATF supervisors and Justice Department prosecutors in Arizona who were trying to build a case against "a very powerful, aggressive and violent" Mexican drug cartel in an earlier operation dubbed "Wide Receiver."

A senior Obama administration Justice Department official who briefed reporters on the documents said the papers show law enforcement officers in the Bush years could have filed criminal conspiracy and false statements charges against lower level figures in the gun trafficking operation, but they decided to watch and wait until they could move higher up the chain of command.

"We want the… manufacturing and distribution pieces also – we want it all," an ATF official wrote in March 2006.

In December, Issa denied that Bush's Operation Wide Receiver had any similarity with Obama's Fast and Furious….

“The difference in the previous administration is there was coordination with the Mexican government,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said at a hearing in December. “They made a real effort under Wide Receiver to pass off a small amount of weapons and track them.”

Umm…no…

…new documents DOJ disclosed to congressional investigators on Thursday indicate that ATF officials didn’t even consider looping Mexican authorities in on their operation until several months after the investigation began and ATF had already lost track of weapons that likely ended up in Mexico.

Republicans and many conservatives actually think that if Obama does something equal or similar to what a previous Republican president has done….that it's different somehow, I guess, because Obama is a Democrat. But that is the stuff of mythology….and blind partisanship.

Insisting that a Justice Department ATF program under a Republican president warrants no comment or consideration…..and at the same time insisting that the same program under a Democratic president is worthy of impeachment….is the stuff of American conservative political mythology.

It's a little like those huge deficits Republicans didn't notice during the Bush years, isn't it?

Writing about Mitt Romney in Esquire, the excellent Charles Pierce had this to say….

He (Romney) is really the only true class warrior in the race. He's counting on prejudice and ignorance because he is running in the Republican primaries and that's the coin of the realm. But he's also counting on the desperate dreams of desperate people who want to believe that there is a big bag of money out there that's going to the Wrong People, and that, if someone would only re-direct it, their lives would be better. Well, there is a big bag of money out there, and it is indeed going to the Wrong People, and those would be the people in whose company Willard Romney has spent his entire, cosseted, entitled existence. He has embarked on a divisive campaign of misdirection, hoping against hope that nobody notices that he mortgaged himself to his ambition on an adjustable rate, and that he's underwater on his soul.

From the moment Barack Obama was elected president, that has been the daily message from the right. Lazy, working and non-working Americans sucking on the government teat are the real source of all of America's economic problems. That, and too many restrictions and taxes on all those rich jaaabb creators.

I've always found that curious. Not curious in the sense of not knowing what the right was doing….but curious in the sense of wondering how in the hell the right was going to get away with blaming the victims for Bush's Great Recession and its consequences.

Through Foxian outlets of deception and the 24/7 braying by racist liars on AM propaganda radio, through a compromised and often corrupt Village media totally beholden to the wishes of the top 1%…and even through despicable GOP presidential candidates claiming that one of our problems is that the working poor simply do not pay enough in taxes….Americans have been bombarded with this, "look over there at those irresponsible poor", malarkey for almost four straight years now.

Apparently, Mitt Romney, will feature this "the poor are responsible for our economic problems" message in his upcoming national campaign to oust President Obama.

The largest threat which faced our 1% overlords following the big bank bailouts of 2008 was the threat that Americans would turn against these bankster overlords in a significant way. The prospect of the 1% paying higher taxes to deal with the galactic loss of government revenues in the aftermath of the crash was real. The fear that these banksters, along with the others who make up the 1%, would face the vitriol from an angry American population was real.

But because so many media outlets and so many politicians are nothing other than servants for the top 1%, the pent up rage and frustration of the American people has been kept to a minimum. Instead, Americans were bombarded with the new, yet counterfeit, Tea Party movement. The Tea Party, whether members realized it or not, was used as a foil, a distraction to keep any serious talk of tighter regulations and higher taxes on the 1% from happening. The Tea Party assisted the bankster criminals, and their political servants, in redirecting responsibility for our nation's economic problems onto government. It soon became the government's fault that banksters removed trillions from the economy. A monumental case of Ayn Rand capitalism gone bonkers became the fault of big government socialists and their lazy-ass dependents.

And that's where Romney comes back into the picture. Mitt Romney is the personification of all that's wrong with America during the bankster era. Mitt is the Wall Street candidate. Romney, apparently, plans on campaigning for the presidency by blaming the poor, the elderly, the vulnerable, the outcasts, and the average working men and women of America for the damage done to our economy by a handful of very wealthy controllers. All governmental programs that assist the poor, the elderly, etc. will be endlessly pummeled by candidate Romney….when the truth is that none of that had anything to do with the economic predicament the banksters put the nation into.

It is not an accident that the last 3 years have been marked by lengthy sermons about deficits, entitlements, the "food stamp" president, the lazy-assness of the unemployed, the "unfairness" of taxing the 1% a bit more, the "makers" and the "takers"…and all the rest of it. It is all part of a very concerted effort by our oligarchial overlords to keep the spotlight off of where it belongs….on them.

Americans have had enough time to evaluate the Tea Party servants of the rich. Americans are now more alert to the deceptive and misleading ways of a corrupt media. Americans have seen the results of an extreme right wing element controlling one chamber of Congress. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney, with his rich overlord funding, and in coordination with a Village media hard wired for Republicans…will undoubtedly take their best doubletalk shot throughout the first 10 months of 2012.

As voters, we must be prepared for the tsunami of propaganda, deception and lies that will be upon us very soon.

So, I open my Akron Beacon Journal this morning to find an article entitled, "Gingrich gains anti-Romney Ohioans"….by AP writer, Dan Sewell. The author goes deep into the heart of Ohio RepulicanLand….West Chester…asking a few Republican voters who they will be voting for in the GOP presidential primary to be held in Ohio in March. The featured interviewees, some guy who owns a bar, and a couple standing on their back deck, answer with the name, Newt Gingrich.

Why Newt?

"He's the guy they think can go toe to toe with the president."

As I previously documented, Newt Gingrich can't even go toe to toe with Mitt Romney….and Mitt Romney holds both sides, devoutly, on any given issue. But, hey…whatever.

I'm tempted to say that you can fool most of the Republican voters most of the time….but out of respect to the few that can't be easily fooled…I won't. But in that spirit, get a load of this…

Ohio could be more crucial to Gingrich than some of his rivals because the former House speaker failed to qualify for Virginia's primary ballot. Gingrich has said he will pursue an aggressive write-in campaign in Virginia, although state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.

…..Failing to get on the ballot in Virginia, where Gingrich lives, underscores the difficulty first-time national booksellers candidates have in preparing for the long haul of a presidential campaign.

A handful of West Chester, Ohio Republicans are now attracted to Newt Gingrich as the GOP presidential nominee. Newt Gingrich will really, really need Ohio BECAUSE Gingrich didn't qualify for the ballot in his own home state of Virginia. Because Newt did not qualify in his own state, his campaign will launch a write-in campaign there….not simply a write-in campaign, but an "aggressive" write-in campaign….something which is prohibited in Gingrich's home state.

Again, I'm tempted to ask the age-old pertinent question WTF? But I won't because I'm sure the serious and responsible AP would not permit the circulation of an entirely incoherent puff piece. The profundity of Sewell's piece must be woven so deeply that mere mortal readers, like The Reverend, might struggle to find the turds gems.

I wonder if the AP's Dan Sewell knew about this before he authored his article….because this, if you can believe it, is even more profound than what we've already read….

Campaign director Michael Krull went on Facebook to convey that Newt told him “this is not catastrophic — we will continue to learn and grow.” Then, in the very next paragraph, Krull employed a “catastrophic” metaphor to suggest the campaign is now recovering from a calamity:

Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action. Throughout the next months there will be ups and downs; there will be successes and failures; there will be easy victories and difficult days – but in the end we will stand victorious.

Newt Gingrich's failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot is just like when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Well…yeeaah.

Let's examine Newt's brilliant anal-ogy. Newt's home state launched a surprise attack against him. Although Virginia has always required 10,000 signatures to qualify for the presidential primary ballot there, Newt and his campaign were taken by complete surprise. No doubt a sign of Newt's superior toe-to-toe intellect and laser-like organizational skills…..just what the office of the presidency requires.

But Newt's personal Pearl Harbor attack, though catastrophic, makes it possible for Newt's campaign to "learn and grow". After the smoke clears from Virginia's "unexpected" attack on the surprised Newt, the favorite of at least 3 West Chester, Ohio Republicans….."in the end we will stand victorious."

How will the surprised Gingrich learn, grow and eventually prevail? By launching an "aggressive" write-in campaign in Virginia….a state that prohibits write-in campaigns. See how quickly Gingrich's crew adapted, grew and learned?

Has there ever been a presidential primary campaign as brilliant in it's strategy as that of the former disgraced Speaker? I cannot think of any.

Now, allow me to shovel the bullsh*t out of the way. Newt Gingrich does not want to be president. The job doesn't pay enough money. Newt and Callista launched their half-hearted campaign for the sole purpose of advertising the Gingrich brand. Gingrich sells books and videos, is paid handily for giving speeches and takes millions from groups willing to pay for Newt's access to government historian skills.

The 3 West Chester Republicans notwithstanding…..Newt has no intention of being president. But there is gold in them there winger hills and it must of necessity be mined. If there ever were a golddigger…..Newt is the guy. The Newt presidential primary branding, like the Trump presidential primary branding, is, for all intents and purposes, just like any other corporate branding effort…..heartless, deceptive and ever focused on how much more profit can be squeezed out of an often-fooled consumer base.

Politics as a profit-center. That's the genius of Newt. The only opponent Newt can successfully go toe-to-toe with is the checkbooks of uninformed Republican primary voters…like those 3 trend-setters down in West Chester, Ohio.

Let's do a thought experiment, shall we?

Let's say that McDonald's comes out with a 'new and improved' Big Mac. The Big Mac sandwich has been around for quite awhile now and despite it's continued popularity, McDonald's decides to "save" the iconic sandwich by reforming, remodeling the classic, 39 grams-of-fat, double hamburger.

In my hypothetical, McDonald's plan for revamping the Big Mac includes eliminating the center bun, the sesame seeds on the bun, the pickles, the lettuce, the cheese, the special sauce, and one of the hamburger patties. The new Big Mac has a single hamburger pattie, ketchup, and a slice of onion all on a wheat bun. When McDonald's rolls out it's 'new and improved' Big Mac, the price has also changed. Now the Big Mac costs 40% more than before.

In spite of what appears to be an entirely different sandwich from the Big Mac, McDonald's continues to market the sandwich as the Big Mac. When consumers of grease-infused, fast food hamburgers repeatedly point out that the new sandwich from McDonald's is NOT really a Big Mac at all….Politifact, an alleged online exposer of lies, is called in to settle the issue. Politifact is to look at the evidence and conclude whether McDonald's calling the 'new and improved' sandwich a Big Mac is a lie, or you know, not.

Politifact concludes, in my hypothetical, that not only is McDonald's sandwich still a Big Mac, but that anyone who says it isn't is lying.

Seems kind of crazy….but that's exactly what the compromised online lie detector outfit, Politifact, has done over claims that Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare will end Medicare. In fact, Politifact has made the line "Republicans voted to end Medicare" it's lie of the year.

In April the new GOP-controlled House thought that they would go ahead and swing for the fences. So, Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced his new budget….and within that budget was a plan to revamp Medicare. All but 5 GOP House members voted to pass the Ryan budget…and zero Democrats. In Ryan's new and improved plan for Medicare, the federal government would no longer be the single service provider for processing health care claims by America's seniors. In fact, the government would only send out vouchers to seniors, that's it. Seniors would then be expected to take those vouchers and purchase their own private insurance each year from for-profit insurance companies. The conclusion by the Congressional Budget office was that Ryan's 'new and improved' plan for reforming Medicare would cost each senior, on average, an additional $6000 per year out of pocket.

Republicans said that the Ryan plan "saved" Medicare. Democrats and progressives claimed Ryan's plan would "end Medicare". Politifact is claiming that any statement which says that Ryan's plan "ends Medicare" is a lie. The lie of the year, in fact.

Here are the three justifications by Politifact that Democrats and progressives were lying when they said that Ryan's plan ends Medicare….

• They ignored the fact that the Ryan plan would not affect people currently in Medicare — or even the people 55 to 65 who would join the program in the next 10 years.

• They used harsh terms such as "end" and "kill" when the program would still exist, although in a privatized system.

• They used pictures and video of elderly people who clearly were too old to be affected by the Ryan plan. The DCCC video that aired four days after the vote featured an elderly man who had to take a job as a stripper to pay his medical bills.

See? The Big Mac is still the Big Mac…even though it isn't. It is because McDonald's says it is….and on no other basis could my hypothetical, new and improved Big Mac be considered a Big Mac.

It's the same with Ryan's Medicare remodel. Simply claiming that privatized and more expensive Medicare is still Medicare is comparable to calling the entirely different Big Mac in my thought experiment…a Big Mac. Republicans, and their faux-lie-detecting allies, say that Ryan's privatizing of Medicare leaves Medicare as Medicare, despite its having no resemblance to traditional Medicare. And Knee Pad equipped Politifact arrives right on time to fellate Republicans argue that what Ryan is selling is…swear-to-god…still Medicare….and that overreaching Democrats are the liars of the year for claiming Ryan's plan "ends Medicare."

Makes as much sense as this….

"According to (PolitiFact's) logic, if the FBI were replaced with a voucher program wherein citizens would receive subsidies for hiring private investigators to look into criminal activity, but the agency running the voucher program were still called the FBI, it would be unfair to say that the FBI had been ended," wrote Jed Lewison for Daily Kos. "I guess it's their right to make that argument, but it's transparently absurd."

Not just "absurd"….but "transparently" so.

Steve Benen notes that not only are claims that Ryan's plan "ends Medicare" true….but also how audacious Politifact acts when it claims the opposite and then makes the Democratic claim the "lie of the year."

Finally….the question of why Politifact decided to humiliate themselves. My favorite economist lays it all out. It's the false equivalency justification….

The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

The Liar of the Year award goes to Politifact.

Many times I've heard Village spokespeople rhetorically ask…why did we go into Iraq? Why the Iraq war? These Village talking heads know the answer to that question, but in typical Village fashion, cannot explain it to the unwashed masses because then people like Bill Kristol, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the rest of the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) gang….all respected Villagers themselves…would be embarrassed, put on the spot, perhaps even arrested. Village members simply can't be treated that way.

So Village media personnel act as if the reason the U.S. attacked the non-threatening nation of Iraq is still a mystery….something better left to future historians. Sure, Villagers will tell us that WMD were not found there, lots of people died, Saddam was killed and so forth….but corporate media, to this very day, still refuses to explain the real reason why we invaded Iraq.

Perhaps corporate media Villagers missed this from General Wesley Clark in 2007…..

After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?”

He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Clark went on to relate a conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz in 1991….

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

The answer to the question, why did we attack and occupy Iraq beginning in 2003?…is found in the long wishlist of a handful of hyper-hawks who make up the membership of PNAC, and apparently, much of the leadership of our military-industrial complex.

The following people signed on to PNAC's "statement of principles" in the 90's…..recognize any of the names?

Elliott Abrams
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush
Richard B. Cheney
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Norman Podhoretz
J. Danforth Quayle
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen P. Rosen
Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld
Vin Weber
George Weigel
Paul Wolfowitz

After 9-11, with so many PNAC members working for the Bush administration, it doesn't take a Mensa member to figure out what happened. PNAC members took 9-11 as the opportunity they had been praying for….a "new Pearl Harbor event"….and the rest, as they say, is history.

The obvious problem with all of this is that no one bothered to explain to the American people why the PNAC'ers inside the Bush administration were leading us into what they were leading us into. Instead, the Bushies made stuff up to scare us with….WMD, al-Qaeda affiliation, etc. And the reason is obvious. The American people were rightfully exercised over 9-11…..but would the American people agree to accept a "long war" of middle east conquest and domination meant to pre-empt any future enemies from controlling the shipping lanes and valuable resources under the sands of the middle east?

The Bushies decided to make stuff up rather than explain what the PNAC Brotherhood was really up to. They calculated that they would have a better chance of getting what they wanted by tricking the American people and Congress using fear and lies…..and it worked.

This all helps in explaining recent comments by John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman over President Obama's removal of U.S. military forces inside Iraq. To the neo-cons who understand and embrace the principles of U.S. Empire as outlined by PNAC….leaving Iraq is, like W. said, "the only reason we could lose Iraq is if we leave"

The purpose of invading Iraq was to initiate the PNAC middle east policy of endless war. It was to begin with Iraq and spread, as Wolfowitz clearly told Wesley Clark, to at least 7 countries there. According to the PNAC outline, the U.S. was to dismantle regimes, set up U.S. military bases and proceed to project U.S. power throughout the region.

Neo-conservatives still dominate our foreign policy and defense departments. And now they have set their sights on Iran.