For Debate Analysis, Fox News Leans On Former Bush Officials (And Herman Cain)

SIMON MALOY /Media Matters for America

To help recap and analyze last night's presidential debate, Fox News' America's Newsroom trotted out a string of former Bush administration officials -- including Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton -- to pile accolades on Mitt Romney's performance and attack President Obama. The Bush veterans were joined by several conservative commentators, Romney surrogates, and the occasional Democrat.
Below is the list of non-reporter guests America's Newsroom featured this morning to comment on the debate, in order of appearance.
Stephen F. Hayes: Weekly Standard columnist, Dick Cheney hagiographer, and chief chronicler of the (nonexistent) "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Stuart Varney: Fox Business Network host, jobs report conspiracy theorist, and Romney campaign messaging troubleshooter.
Herman Cain: One-time Republican presidential candidate who probably knows where Libya is and boasts expertise on American-Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stani relations.
John Bolton: Romney foreign policy advisor, George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, and advocate of bombing Iran.
Gen. Jack Keane: Romney supporter, rumored candidate for White House national security advisor under Romney, and "intellectual architect" of the 2007 Iraq "surge."
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH): Office of Management and Budget director under George W. Bush, Romney surrogate, and Romney's debate coach.
Donald Rumsfeld: Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush who praised Romney's "terrific" speech at the Virginia Military Institute earlier this month.
Gen. Wesley Clark: Former Democratic candidate for president and Obama campaign advisor.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO): Romney surrogate.
Bob Beckel: Democratic strategist and Fox News host.
Andrea Tantaros: Republican strategist and Fox News host

At The Last Presidential Debate: Romney Told 24 Myths In 41 Minutes

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

1) “Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” Romney has his geography wrong. Syria doesn’t share a border with Iran and Iran has 1,500 miles of coastline leading to the Arabian Sea. It is also able to reach the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.

2) “And what I’m afraid of is we’ve watched over the past year or so [in Syria], first the president saying, well we’ll let the U.N. deal with it…. Then it went to the Russians and said, let’s see if you can do something.” While Russia and China have vetoed multiple resolutions at the U.N. Security Council on Syria, the United States has also been working through the Friends of Syria group and other allies in the region. Obama’s approach “would essentially give U.S.nods of approval to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters.”

3) “Former chief of the — Joint Chiefs of Staff said that — Admiral Mullen said that our debt is the biggest national security threat we face. This — we have weakened our economy. We need a strong economy. We need to have as well a strong military.” If Romney is worried about the national debt, why does he want to increase military spending from 3.5 percent of GDP to 4 percent? This amounts to a $2.1 trillion increase over a ten year period that the military says it does not need and Romney has no plan to pay for it.

4) “[W]hen — when the students took to the streets in Tehran and the people there protested, the Green Revolution occurred, for the president to be silent I thought was an enormous mistake.” Obama spoke out about the Revolution on June 15, 2009, just two days after post-election demonstrations began in Iran, condemning the Iranian government’s hard-handed crackdown on Iranian activists. He then reiterated his comments a day later in another press conference. Iranian activists have agreed with Obama’s approach.

5) “And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay.” The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.

6) “[W]e are going to have North American energy independence. We’re going to do it by taking full advantage of oil, coal, gas, nuclear and our renewables.” Romney would actuallyeliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.

7) “[W]e’re going to have to have training programs that work for our workers.” Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney has fully endorsed, calls for spending 33 percent less on “Education, training, employment, and social services” than Obama’s budget.

8) “And I’ll get us on track to a balanced budget.” Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut plan and his increases to military spending could explode the deficit.

9) “Well, Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis to put in place education principles that focused on having great teachers in the classroom.” Education experts have faint praise for his proposals while he was governor. “His impact was inconsequential,” said Glen Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “People viewed his proposals as political talking points, and no one took Romney seriously.”

10) “So I’d get rid of [Obamacare] from day one. To the extent humanly possible, we get that out.” Romney cannot unilaterally eliminate a bill passed by Congress and his plan to grant states waivers may also be a non-starter.

11) “Number two, we take some programs that we are doing to keep, like Medicaid, which is a program for the poor.” Medicaid isn’t just a program for the poor. While it provides health coverage for “millions of low-income children and families who lack access to the private health insurance system,” it also offers “insurance to millions of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities” and is “the nation’s largest source of coverage for long-term care, covering more than two-thirds of all nursing home residents.” Medicaid is also a key source of coverage for pregnant women.

12) “[W]e’ll take [Medicaid] for the poor and we give it to the states to run because states run these programs more efficiently.” A Congressional Budget Office analysis of Paul Ryan’s proposal to block grant Medicaid found that if federal spending for Medicaid decreased, “states would face significant challenges in achieving sufficient cost savings through efficiencies to mitigate the loss of federal funding.” As a result, enrollees could “face more limited access to care,” higher out-of-pocket costs, and “providers could face more uncompensated care as beneficiaries lost coverage for certain benefits or lost coverage altogether.”

13) “Our Navy is old — excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917…That, in my view, is making — is making our future less certain and less secure. The U.S. Navy is smaller than it was in 1917, but it is not making America less secure. The navy has actually grown in the sheer number of ships under Obama and Romney’s plans to increase shipbuilding is unrealistic. As one historian told PolitiFact, counting the number of ships or aircraft “is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades.” Romney’s comparison “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test,’” he said.

14) “And then the president began what I have called an apology tour, of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness.” Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.”

15) “And I think that when the president said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel, that they noticed that as well.” They haven’t noticed because it’s not true. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told CNN, “President Obama is doing . . . more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].” “When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issues, security, I think it’s a highly satisfactory record, from an Israeli point of view,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres.

16) “And — and — we should not have wasted these four years to the extent they — they continue to be able to spin these centrifuges and get that much closer.” Obama hasn’t wasted time on Iran. In July 2012, Obama signed into law the most effective sanctions ever put into place against Iran, targeting the country’s oil and financial sectors. These sanctions were imposed unilaterally by the U.S. and come in addition to the four rounds of sanctions the UN has enacted since 2006. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the sanctions “very effective,” and Romney has said he would continue them if elected.

17) “I would tighten those sanctions. I would say that ships that carry Iranian oil, can’t come into our ports. I imagine the E.U. would agree with us as well.” Almost no Iranian oil has come into the United States since Ronald Reagan signed an executive order in 1987 banning all U.S. imports from Iran. The nation received a small amount of oil from Iran after the first Gulf War, in 1991.

18) “I see jihadists continuing to spread, whether they’re rising or just about the same level, hard to precisely measure, but it’s clear they’re there. They’re very strong.” Obama’s policies appear to have gravely weakened al Qaeda Central, the lead arm of the organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan principally responsible for 9/11.

19) “It’s not government investments that makes businesses grow and hire people.” The Romney campaign routinely touts government military spending as a way to create jobs and boost businesses.

20) “My plan to get the [auto] industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks. It was President Bush that wrote the first checks. I disagree with that. I said they need — these [auto] companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy.” Romney’s plan for the auto bailout would have ensured the collapse of the auto industry. In his editorial titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Romney advocated for letting the private sector finance the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler. Auto insiders, however, have said that plan was “reckless” and “pure fantasy.”

21) “Research is great. Providing funding to universities and think tanks is great. But investing in companies? Absolutely not.” Ryan’s plan, which Romney has endorsed, “could cut spending on non-defence-related research and development by 5%, or $3.2 billion, below the fiscal-year 2012 budget, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over the long term, Ryan’s small-government approach would shrink funding for research and development to historically small sizes.”

22) “One is a path represented by the president, which at the end of four years would mean we’d have $20 trillion in debt heading towards Greece.” The U.S. is not headed down a path like that of Greece. Greece, contrary to popular belief, had a revenue problem rather than a spending problem. While its spending was high compared to US standards — 50.4 percent of GDP compared to 38 percent of GDP in the US — its spending was average among European nations. As CAP’s Michael Linden and Sabina Dewan note, “Over the past 10 years, Greece has consistently spent less, as a share of GDP, than the European Union as a whole.” However, it generated less that 40 percent of GDP from revenue — one of the lowest rates in the EU.

23) “I was in a state where my legislature was 87 percent Democrat. I learned how to get along on the other side of the aisle.” Given Romney’s 844 vetoes as governor, Massachusetts legislators dispute this claim. As the New York Times has noted, “The big-ticket items that Mr. Romney proposed when he entered office in January 2003 went largely unrealized, and some that were achieved turned out to have a comparatively minor impact.”

24) “We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment, and that of our friends, we should coordinate it to make sure that we — we push back and give them more economic development.” Romney’s website promises to “Reduce Foreign Aid — Savings: $100 Million.” “Stop borrowing money from countries that oppose America’s interests in order to give it back to them in the form of foreign aid,” it says. In November of 2011, Romney said he would start foreign aid for every country “at zero” and call on them to make their case for U.S. financial assistance.

Pundits Try To Gore Joe Biden's Debate Performance

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters for America

Stressing style over substance, lots of Beltway pundits teamed up with Republican partisans to push the theater criticism point that Vice President Joe Biden may have blown last night's debate with his body language. Specifically, critics are complaining he smiled and chuckled too much while Rep. Paul Ryan was speaking.

Even after CBS News' snap poll showed that Biden had scored a big win with undecided voters, pundits and Republicans suggested Biden's facial expressions, not the substance of his comments, were newsworthy.

From the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin:

And BuzzFeed's Ben Smith:

The media effort is reminiscent of when pundits and Republicans teamed up on Al Gore after his first presidential debate with George W. Bush in 2000. Back then, they pushed the line that Gore had sighed too often in response to Bush's answers. History shows that right after the debate viewers crowned Gore the winner of the face-off. But after the media's sigh initiative, Bush was perceived to have won the debate. Today, Gore's sighs are routinely referenced as debate blunders. ("Utterly insufferable," Esquire recently wrote.)

It's unlikely the press can turn Biden's strong showing into a stinging defeat, in part because the 2000 sigh episode was part of a much larger anti-Gore press push. But it's telling how seamlessly the mainstream press joined with Republican operatives to launch post-debate (style) spin targeting Biden last night and trying to tie him to Gore's performance.

From former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer:

And the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: 

In its piece, "Is Joe Biden The New Al Gore?" Politico reported that "at least among some pundits and Republican strategists: it reminded them of Al Gore's infamous sighs in the 2000 presidential debates against George W. Bush, which were enough to seriously hurt Gore's candidacy." [Emphasis added.]

Politico stressed that Gore's sighs were "universally panned by pundit" are now "remembered as one of the standout aspects of the debates that year." What's lost in that rewriting is that Gore actually won the first debate. The Associated Press reported on October 4, 2000 that Gore had won three out of four snap polls conducted that night.

Blogger Bob Somerby meticulously documented Gore's press treatment during the 2000 campaign. Herecently revisited the infamous sighs:

Did George Bush win that first debate? Only after the press corps began playing videotaped loops of Gore's troubling sighs (with the volume cranked, of course).

Debates matter. But so can the media's lazy style spin.

Biden dismantles Ryan during debates

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At The Vice Presidential Debate: Ryan Told 24 Myths In 40 Minutes

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Paul Ryan spoke for 40 of the 90 minutes during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate and managed to tell at least 24 myths during that time:

1) “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that [the Libya attack] was a terrorist attack.” Obama used the word “terrorism” to describe the killing of Americans the very next day at the Rose Garden. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12.

2) “The administration was blocking us every step of the way. Only because we had strong bipartisan support for these tough [Iran] sanctions were we able to overrule their objections and put them in spite of the administration.” Even the Israeli President has effusively praisedPresident Obama’s leadership on getting American and international sanctions on Iran, which have significantly slowed Iran’s progress.

3) “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.” [T]he possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.

4) “The vice president was in charge of overseeing this. $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups.” Multiple reviews, including an independent review of all Department Of Energy loan programs by Herb Allison –- finance chair for McCain for President 2008 –- have found no “pork” in the stimulus’ funding of green projects, concluding that the loans were not steered to friends or family, as Ryan claims.

5) “Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland, or on windmills in China?” As PolitiFact has pointed out, the money for electric cars in Finland did not come from the stimulus. Rather, it originated with the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which predated the Obama administration. The claim about “windmills in China” is also inaccurate.

6) “When they see us putting – when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.” The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”

7) “You see, if you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don’t change for people in or near retirement.” Here is how the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan will affect current seniors: 1) by repealing Obamacare, the 16 million seniors receiving preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving $3.9 billion on prescription drugs will see a cost increase, 2) “premium support” will increase premiums for existing beneficiaries as private insurers lure healthier seniors out of the traditional Medicare program, 3) Romney/Ryan would also lower Medicaid spending significantly beginning next year, shifting federal spending to states and beneficiaries, and increasing costs for the 9 million Medicare recipients who are dependent on Medicaid.

8) “Obamacare takes $716 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare.” Ryan is claiming that Obamacare siphons off $716 billion from Medicare, to the detriment of Medicare beneficiaries. In actuality, that money is saved primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, cutting waste fraud and abuse, and eliminatinginefficiencies in the system. Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts, but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction.

9) “And then they put this new Obamacare board in charge of cutting Medicare each and every year in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.” The Board, or IPAB is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending, should Medicare costs exceed a target growth rate. Congress can accept the savings proposal or implement its own ideas through a super majority. The panel’s plan will modify payments to providers but it cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403 of the ACA). Relying on health care experts rather than politicians to control health care costs has previously attracted bipartisan support and even Ryan himselfproposed two IPAB-like structures in a 2009 health plan.

10) “7.4 million seniors are projected to lose their current Medicare Advantage coverage they have. That’s a $3,200 benefit cut.” Enrollment is actually projected to increase by 11 percent in Medicare Advantage (MA) in 2013. Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, Medicare Advantage premiums have decreased an average of 10 percent and enrollment in these plans has increased 28 percent.

11) “This [Medicare premium support] plan that’s bipartisan. It’s a plan I put together with a prominent Democrat senator from Oregon.” Wyden not only voted against Ryan’s budget, he also called the idea that he supported it “nonsense.”

12) “Eight out of 10 businesses, they file their taxes as individuals, not as corporations.” Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.

13) “[Unemployment is rising] all around America.” In August, the unemployment rate dropped from a year before in 325 of 372 metro areas surveyed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

14) “The average tax rate on businesses in the industrialized world is 25 percent, and the president wants the top effective tax rate on successful small businesses to go above 40 percent.” The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.

15) “He’ll keep saying this $5 trillion plan, I suppose. It’s been discredited by six other studies.”The studies Ryan cites actually further prove that Romney/Ryan would, in fact, have to raise taxes on the middle class if he were to keep his promise not to lose revenue with his tax rate reduction.

16) “You can – you can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayer. It is mathematically possible. It’s been done before. It’s precisely what we’re proposing.” If Romney/Ryan hope to provide tax relief to the middle class, then their $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax code that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work. As the Tax Policy Centerconcluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.

17) “So they proposed a $478 billion cut to defense to begin with. Now we have another $500 billion cut to defense that’s lurking on the horizon. They insisted upon that cut being involved in the debt negotiations, and so we have a $1 trillion cut.” Ryan has frequently gotten in hot water for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for in 2011.

18) “If these cuts go through, our Navy will be the smallest – the smallest it has been since before World War I.” PolitiFact rated this claim as “Pants on Fire,” noting that “a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military.”

19) “Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals.” Religious institutions haven’t been forced to “violate their conscience” by paying for contraception. Houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt from offering birth control.

20) “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Try telling that to the 20 million people who are projected to lose their health insurance if Obamacare goes through or the 7-point million – 7.4 million seniors who are going to lose it.” The Affordable Care Act would actually expand health care coverage to 30 million Americans and all seniors will keep their guranteed Medicare benefits, despite Ryan’s fear mongering. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that very few people will have to enroll in new coverage.

21) “We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people.” In March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintonnoted that “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” However, she did not endorse their view.

22) “When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material — nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five.” This is misleading and unproven. Iran now has enough fissile material, but has not yet enriched to the necessary level for a weapon. The Institute for Science and International Security says “it would take Iran more than two months to produce that amount if it started with 20%-grade uranium, and ‘several months’ to make enough for a bomb using low-enriched uranium. That would give the world community enough time to detect the operation and organize a response, ISIS noted in June.”

23) “[Iran is] racing toward a nuclear weapon.” Israeli and American intelligence officials aren’t so sure.

24) “We don’t want to do is give our allies reason to trust us less [by announcing a withdrawal timeline for Afghanistan].” It’s unclear how our allies would trust us less since they too agreed to the timeline. As Biden pointed outed, “That’s a bizarre statement. .. Forty-nine of our allies — hear me — 49 of our allies signed on to this position.”

Obama’s Critics Misread President Obama and Fail to Understand Debate Strategy

By: Rmuse/politicususa

One of the privileges of being a spectator in a sporting event is criticizing athletes for making the wrong play, and it never fails that the most vocal critic likely never donned a uniform or actually played in a professional level game. What spectators often fail to acknowledge is that during the heat of a contest, an athlete may see something, or know something, that an observer cannot imagine because they are removed from the action and have little understanding of the game’s intricacies. The same thing happens in political debates and after examining volumes of criticism and interpretation of the first presidential debate in Denver, it is obvious that the critics misread President Obama and that they fail to understand debate strategy.

It is curious that any observer was surprised that pathological liar Willard Romney came to the debate armed with a mountain of lies. One has to wonder if any spectator expected Willard to stand on that stage and tell the American people he intended to slash education, give $5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, reduce the number of police and fire fighters, or admit that he has contempt for 47% of the population, and yet the blogosphere was rife with articles recounting the number of lies and flip-flops Romney is best known for. It was also somewhat surprising to see critics assailing President Obama for not calling out each of Romney’s lies, and if they looked at the bigger picture, or understood the nuances of debate, they may have couched their criticism and gave the President the credit he deserves, and he does deserve credit for not succumbing to Romney’s tactics.

Of course Willard lied, it is what pathological liars do, and as a master liar, Romney distinguished himself as the best. He took his lying seriously too, even resurrecting a Sarah Palin lie that won distinction as “Lie of the Year” in 2009 regarding the dreaded “death panels.” Romney has not come up with any novel ideas throughout the campaign, but up until Wednesday night he primarily parroted Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush rhetoric in hopes of appealing to conservatives stuck in the 1980s and early 21^st century. However, when he complained that the Affordable Care Act contained a provision to ration healthcare, he put himself on the same level as Palin.

It was not the first time the Romney-Ryan tandem entertained the notion that a group of appointees would decide if grandma was worthy of healthcare or lifesaving medical attention, because last week in Florida Paul Ryan took the opportunity toexpound on Palin’s death panel sophistry. For the record, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of Senate-confirmed experts, are explicitly prohibited from rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits, or raising the Medicare eligibility age, so obviously they do not have power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe. However, Willard did not mention the truth about the panels and the President did not waste valuable time debunking 2009′s lie of the year again, and it leads to why President Obama did not squander his time discrediting each and every Romney lie.

There is a tactic in debating called “spreading” that involves throwing as many unproven assertions as possible at an opponent in hopes they waste time refuting lies instead of expounding their message. If the President had spent his limited time refuting every lie Romney told in Wednesday’s debate, he could not have shared his vision for America’s future or how he intended to fight for Americans who are not in Willard’s wealthy elite class. What Americans were treated to, was a President with a clear vision and message, replete with specifics, that the people have come to expect from Barack Obama. Romney’s tactic was popularized by a creationist maniac, Duane Tolbert Gish, who without facts or valid arguments to back up his creation myth ideology, drowned his opponents in lies, half-truths, and straw-man arguments in rapid bursts they could not answer in real time. Romney utilized the tactic well, but he failed to take one simple fact into account. His lies on Wednesday night do not square with his campaign rhetoric and he came off looking more transient on the issues than ever, and it is a misstep he has made throughout his run for the White House.

Romney and, indeed, all Republicans fail to understand that in the information age of instant reporting and video tape, every statement a candidate makes is easily verified or, in Romney’s case, debunked within minutes of uttering a contrary position or outright lie. On Wednesday night, Romney not only lied as pathological liars are wont to do, but he contradicted his own position and statements he made just a day earlier and that is the peril for pathological liars; they lie with such ease that they lose touch with reality and forget the lies they told just a minute earlier, and one has to wonder if President Obama knew Romney was digging himself into a pit of mendacity with no way out.

There have been few critics who noted the President’s steady resolve in dealing with Romney’s lies, or that he was able to wade through Willard-excrement and still get his message across to the American people. It is true that a spectator’s first inclination may have been to second-guess President Obama’s handling a pathological liar, but it is tantamount to questioning the logic of not preaching sobriety to a raging alcoholic during a drunken stupor, and it is another example of why President Obama is much more intelligent than the average pundit. If there is one thing Americans should have learned by now about the President, is that he looks at the big picture and does not do knee-jerk reactions that an undisciplined teenager is apt to do. President Obama is no undisciplined teenager.

On CNN throughout the debate, they put up a graph that showed how each participant was faring in real time according to their panel of white Southerners, and it showed President Obama lagging below the midline right up to the closing statements. However, after he gave his closing remarks, and unnoticed by most spectators, the line quickly moved back to the center line and it just shows that the President was successful getting his message across despite suffering ninety minutes of mendacity from America’s biggest liar. It should be but another reminder that this President’s foresight, discipline, and resolve are qualities Americans expect in a President, and after 9 months of Romney’s Palinesque lies, the people want an honest leader with a consistent vision for the future, and despite the pundits, armchair debaters, and reactionary critics, President Obama successfully reiterated what he first said almost 4 years ago; as President he will work for all Americans and according to his most recent approval ratings, people believe him.

How Jim Lehrer Lost The Debate

TERRY KREPEL/Media Matters for America

At the start of Wednesday's presidential debate, moderator Jim Lehrer said he would place an emphasis on "differences, specifics, and choices." But Lehrer missed repeated opportunities to press Mitt Romney into offering specifics on his policy proposals -- just one of the ways in which he lost control of the debate.

During the debate, President Obama echoed the consensus among economic experts who have pointed out that Romney has consistently refused to detail which loopholes he would close to pay for his planned tax cuts, at one point stating that Romney has "been asked over 100 times how you would close those deductions and loopholes, and he hasn't been able to identify them." In each case, Lehrer failed to ask Romney which deductions and loopholes he would eliminate.

Similarly, Lehrer failed to press Romney for details on how he would replace Obama's health care reform plan, letting Romney assert that he has a detailed plan. But as MSNBC's Ezra Klein pointed out, the health care plan on Romney's website is just 396 words, "about half the length of an average op-ed column." Klein added that Romney "was able to hide in the sort of pockets of vagueness he created."

His failure to press Romney for details was one symptom of Lehrer losing control of the debate, a conclusion that was shared across various media outlets:

• USA Today's Robert Bianco wrote that Lehrer "seemed to give up" on failing to hold the candidates to the predetermined time limits. "Clearly, Lehrer lost control, early and often," Bianco added.

• The Week noted that Romney "seemed to have his way with" Lehrer.

• Bloomberg Businessweek stated, "Some compared Lehrer with the replacement officials called up during the strike by National Football League referees."

• New York University journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen tweeted that "Romney took strong advantage of a weak moderator."

Romney has been repeatedly criticized for failing to offer details of his proposals, and Lehrer missed every opportunity to push Romney on those details and make the debate about policy specifics.

Last night, Mitt Romney lost. Yes, you read that right

By Dan Hodges/The Telegraph

Barack Obama won last night’s debate. Or to be more precise, Mitt Romney lost it.

That’s obviously not the conventional view of the commentators or pollsters, who gave the GOP candidate a clear win. But that doesn’t matter. He still lost.

There are three reasons why Romney experienced a soft implosion of his already tenuous electoral chances. First, there was no “gotcha moment”. Before the debate every political analyst, be they from the Left or Right, agreed that Romney had to land a knockout blow, which he didn’t.

There was no major presidential gaffe. No glancing at watches, sighing or claiming there has never been any soviet domination of eastern Europe. Crucially, in the new media age, there was no YouTube moment. In fact, the one single moment I suspect most voters will remember from the debate was Barack Obama sending his wife Michelle greetings on their wedding anniversary.

The second problem for Romney was that while he failed to land a knockout blow, he kept piling into him. He was aggressive, too aggressive.

This is Romney’s greatest weakness as a candidate. He lacks compassion. He comes across as one of those big businessman in old Westerns who turns up at the farm and explains to the widow that he needs to buy her land to make way for his new railroad, and if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll take him up on his kind offer. CNN’s post election poll found that two thirds of those who watched thought Romney put in the most effective performance. But only 46 per cent said they found him more likeable than Obama. Not only did Romney not land the knockout blow, he failed to close the empathy gap.

Finally, Romney has fatally shifted the expectation game. In advance of this debate, he was able to talk down his chances of success. This morning, his supporters are ecstatic – just look at my friend and colleague Tim Stanley’s take on the debate – and working themselves up into a frenzy at yet another ‘game-changing’ moment.

Romney will probably enjoy a small boost in the polls. And then the race will settle back down to where it was, which is a relatively tight national poll margin, but an insurmountable lead for Obama in the battleground states.

And when that moment comes, Mitt Romney will have finally run out of road. Because if you remember, we were told that the debates were his last chance. When it becomes clear to him, his campaign and his supporters that last chance has gone, the race will be called.

Denver was a game changer all right. For Barack Obama

The First Debate: Mitt Romney's Five Biggest Lies

By TIM DICKINSON/Rolling Stones

Mitt Romney turned in a polished performance in last night's presidential debate – and revealed himself to be an accomplished and unapologetic liar. In an evening where he sought to slice and dice the president with statistics, Romney baldly misrepresented his own policy prescriptions, made up numbers to fit his attacks and buried clear contrasts with the president under a heaping pile of horseshit.

Here are mendacious Mitt's five most outrageous statements:

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.

At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Pundits from both sides of the aisle have lauded Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance, praising his preparedness and ability to challenge President Obama’s policies and accomplishments. But Romney only accomplished this goal by repeatedly misleading viewers. He spoke for 38 minutes of the 90 minute debate and told at least 27 myths:

1) “[G]et us energy independent, North American energy independent. That creates about 4 million jobs”. Romney’s plan for “energy independence” actually relies heavily on a study that assumes the U.S. continues with fuel efficiency standards set by the Obama administration. For instance, he uses Citigroup research based off the assumption that “‘the United States will continue with strict fuel economy standards that will lower its oil demand.” Since he promises to undo the Obama administration’s new fuel efficiency standards, he would cut oil consumption savings of 2 million barrels per day by 2025.

2) “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about.” A Tax Policy Center analysis of Romney’s proposal for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut in all federal income tax rates, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminating the estate tax and other tax reductions, would reduce federal revenue $480 billion in 2015. This amounts to $5 trillion over the decade.

3) “My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” If Romney hopes to provide tax relief to the middle class, then his $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax code that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work.

4) “My — my number-one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.” As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.

5) “I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families. Now, you cite a study. There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it’s completely wrong.” The studies Romney cites actuallyfurther prove that Romney would, in fact, have to raise taxes on the middle class if he were to keep his promise not to lose revenue with his tax rate reduction.

6) “I saw a study that came out today that said you’re going to raise taxes by $3,000 to $4,000 on middle-income families.” Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

7) “And the reason is because small business pays that individual rate; 54 percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed not at the corporate tax rate, but at the individual tax rate….97 percent of the businesses are not — not taxed at the 35 percent tax rate, they’re taxed at a lower rate. But those businesses that are in the last 3 percent of businesses happen to employ half — half of all the people who work in small business.” Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.

8) “Mr. President, all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land. On government land, your administration has cut the number of permits and licenses in half.” Oil production from federal lands is higher, not lower: Production from federal lands is up slightly in 2011 when compared to 2007. And the oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, that it hasn’t begun exploring or developing.

9) “The president’s put it in place as much public debt — almost as much debt held by the public as all prior presidents combined.” This is not even close to being true. When Obama took office, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. Now the national debt is over $16 trillion. That $5.374 trillion increase is nowhere near as much debt as all the other presidents combined.

10) “That’s why the National Federation of Independent Businesses said your plan will kill 700,000 jobs. I don’t want to kill jobs in this environment.” That study, produced by a right-wing advocacy organization, doesn’t analyze what Obama has actually proposed.

11) “What we do have right now is a setting where I’d like to bring money from overseas back to this country.” Romney’s plan to shift the country to a territorial tax system would allow corporations to do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the United States. This encourages American companies to invest abroad and could cost the country up to 800,000 jobs.

12) “I would like to take the Medicaid dollars that go to states and say to a state, you’re going to get what you got last year, plus inflation, plus 1 percent, and then you’re going to manage your care for your poor in the way you think best.” Sending federal Medicaid funding to the states in the form of a block grant woud significantly reduce federal spending for Medicaid because the grant would not keep up with projected health care costs. A CBO estimate of a very similar proposal from Paul Ryan found that federal spending would be “35 percent lower in 2022 and 49 percent lower in 2030 than current projected federal spending” and as a result “states would face significant challenges in achieving sufficient cost savings through efficiencies to mitigate the loss of federal funding.” “To maintain current service levels in the Medicaid program, states would probably need to consider additional changes, such as reducing their spending on other programs or raising additional revenues,” the CBO found.

13) “I want to take that $716 billion you’ve cut and put it back into Medicare…. But the idea of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to be able to balance the additional cost of Obamacare is, in my opinion, a mistake. There’s that number again. Romney is claiming that Obamacare siphons off $716 billion from Medicare, to the detriment of beneficiaries. In actuality, that money is saved primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, not payments to beneficiaries. Paul Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts, but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction.

14) “What I support is no change for current retirees and near-retirees to Medicare.” Here is how Romney’s Medicare plan will affect current seniors: 1) by repealing Obamacare, the 16 million seniors receiving preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving $3.9 billion on prescription drugs will see a cost increase, 2) “premium support” will increase premiums for existing beneficiaries as private insurers lure healthier seniors out of the traditional Medicare program, 3) Romney/Ryan would also lower Medicaid spending significantly beginning next year, shifting federal spending to states and beneficiaries, and increasing costs for the 9 million Medicare recipients who are dependent on Medicaid.

15) “Number two is for people coming along that are young, what I do to make sure that we can keep Medicare in place for them is to allow them either to choose the current Medicare program or a private plan. Their choice. They get to choose — and they’ll have at least two plans that will be entirely at no cost to them.” The Medicare program changes for everyone, even people who choose to remain in the traditional fee-for-service. Rather than relying on a guaranteed benefit, all beneficiaries will receive a premium support credit of $7,500 on average in 2023 to purchase coverage in traditional Medicare or private insurance. But that amount will only grow at a rate of GDP plus 1.5 percentage points and will not keep up with health care costs. So while the federal government will spend less on the program, seniors will pay more in premiums.

16) “And, by the way the idea came not even from Paul Ryan or — or Senator Wyden, who’s the co-author of the bill with — with Paul Ryan in the Senate, but also it came from Bill — Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.” Romney has rejected the Ryan/Wyden approach — which does not cap the growth of the “premium support” subsidy. Bill Clinton and his commission also voted down these changes to the Medicare program.

17) “Well, I would repeal and replace it. We’re not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world.”Romney has previously called for full repeal of Dodd-Frank, a law whose specific purpose is to regulate banks. MF Global’s use of customer funds to pay for its own trading losses is just one bit of proof that the financial industry isn’t responsible enough to protect consumers without regulation.

18) “But I wouldn’t designate five banks as too big to fail and give them a blank check. That’s one of the unintended consequences of Dodd-Frank… We need to get rid of that provision because it’s killing regional and small banks. They’re getting hurt.” The law merely says that the biggest, systemically risky banks need to abide by more stringent regulations. If those banks fail, they will be unwound by a new process in the Dodd-Frank law that protects taxpayers from having to pony up for a bailout.

19) “And, unfortunately, when — when — when you look at Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office has said it will cost $2,500 a year more than traditional insurance. So it’s adding to cost.” Obamacare will actually provide millions of families with tax credits to make health care more affordable.

20) “[I]t puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have. I don’t like that idea.” The Board, or IPAB is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending, should Medicare costs exceed a target growth rate. Congress can accept the savings proposal or implement its own ideas through a super majority. The panel’s plan will modify payments to providers but it cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403 of the ACA). Relying on health care experts rather than politicians to control health care costs has previously attracted bipartisan support and even Ryan himself proposed two IPAB-like structures in a 2009 health plan.

21) “Right now, the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year. And likewise, a study by McKinsey and Company of American businesses said 30 percent of them are anticipating dropping people from coverage.” The Affordable Care Act would actually expand health care coverage to 30 million Americans, despite Romney fear mongering. According to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, 3 million or less people would leave employer-sponsored health insurance coverage as a result of the law.

22) “I like the way we did it [health care] in Massachusetts…What were some differences? We didn’t raise taxes.” Romney raised fees, but he can claim that he didn’t increase taxes because the federal government funded almost half of his reforms.

23) “It’s why Republicans said, do not do this, and the Republicans had — had the plan. They put a plan out. They put out a plan, a bipartisan plan. It was swept aside.” The Affordable Care Act incorporates many Republican ideas including the individual mandate, state-based health care exchanges, high-risk insurance pools, and modified provisions that allow insurers to sell policies in multiple states. Republicans never offered a united bipartisan alternative.

24) “Preexisting conditions are covered under my plan.” Only people who are continuously insured would not be discriminated against because they suffer from pre-existing conditions. This protection would not be extended to people who are currently uninsured.

25) “In one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world. Now, I like green energy as well, but that’s about 50 years’ worth of what oil and gas receives.” The $90 billion was given out over several years and included loans, loan guarantees and grants through the American Recovery Act. $23 billion of the $90 billion “went toward “clean coal,” energy-efficiency upgrades, updating the electricity grid and environmental clean-up, largely for old nuclear weapons sites.”

26) “I think about half of [the green firms Obama invested in], of the ones have been invested in have gone out of business. A number of them happened to be owned by people who were contributors to your campaigns.” As of late last year, only “three out of the 26 recipients of 1705 loan guarantees have filed for bankruptcy, with losses estimated at just over $600 million.”

27) “If the president’s reelected you’ll see dramatic cuts to our military.” Romney is referring to the sequester, which his running mate Paul Ryan supported. Obama opposes the military cuts and has asked Congress to formulate a balanced approach that would avoid the trigger.

UPDATE

Romney has now admitted that number 26 was not true.