Mark my words, Romney’s “I love Big Bird” but PBS has to go remark will prove to be the final nail in the coffin of his train wreck of a campaign. Alright, I don’t know if that will really be the case but you have no idea of how much I want that to be true.
1. THE DEBATE
I started out fully amped to watch the debate and then the debate started and very quickly I realized two things: (1) President Obama was not going to bring the pain in the manner in which I had hoped and (2) As should have been expected, Romney flip flopped so repeatedly on so many topics that my brain got dizzy. He was like that not quite dead fish that musters up enough energy to keep futilely flip flopping across the cutting board. If only President Obama had forcefully delivered that deadly stroke. Still, on the bright side and oh yes there is one, this was only the first debate and there is still time to put that flip flopping cold fish out of our collective misery.
Romney lied with a profound smoothness that should scare the hell outta anyone who is not a multimillionaire. If you thought Richard Nixon was bad well go ahead and mess around and elect that Romney fella, see how your world shakes out then.
From Rolling Stone: “The First Debate – Mitt Romney’s Five Biggest Lies”
1. “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut.” Romney flatly lied about the cost of his proposal to cut income-tax rates across the board by another 20 percent (undercutting even the low rates of the Bush tax cuts). Independent economists at the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for those cuts is $360 billion in the first year, a cost that extrapolates to $5 trillion over a decade.
2. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.” Romney has claimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes and deductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn’t named a single loophole he’s willing to close; worse, there’s no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts even if you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romney has not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percent capital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney’s proposal would create a “net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers.” Moreover, some of Romney’s tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly his proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons’ tax burden by tens of millions of dollars.
3. “We’ve got 23 million people out of work or [who have] stopped looking for work in this country.” Romney is lying for effect. The nation’s crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23 million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 million Americans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping 23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who hold part-time jobs as also being “out of work.”
4. Obamacare “puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Romney is reviving Sarah Palin’s old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors.
5. “Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” In the biggest whopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal would guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just not true. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unable to obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than 90 days because you lost your job or couldn’t afford the premiums, you would be shit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny you coverage, as even Romney’s top adviser conceded after the debate was over.
If he lies so easily during the campaign what do you think will happen once he’s in office? Exactly.
2. MEANWHILE ON SESAME STREET…
Because I fully appreciate finding “the comedy” in the face of horror (Mitt as President) the highlight for me was the attack on funding for PBS, the specific mentioning of Big Bird by name and the subsequent Save Big Bird / Save Sesame Street campaign that promptly sprung up. His exact words re cutting the budget for PBS:
“I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS…. I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like, you too — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for,” Romney said.
By the way #SaveBigBird became the 4th highest trending topic on twitter last night and @FiredBigBird had 26,000 followers within 12 hours. HeeHee.
Below are just a few of the awesome memes immediately created.
And just so we are all ABSOLUTELY clear on how cutting the PBS budget will NOT miraculously jump start the American economy and make sure every American has a loaf bread on the kitchen table, renown Astrophysicist and extremely cool Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson made this astute observation:
Sure Mitt, cut PBS and save America. #Idiot. By the way, anyone who would vote for the guy who wants to fire Big Bird is just straight up UN-American! Yeah I said it! LEAVE BIG BIRD ALONE YOU MEANY!!
I don’t know about you but I may hang out on Sesame Street later today just to show my solidarity.
#SaveBigBird #SaveSesameStreet #Obama2012
