*According to a national media that depends on viewers and ratings and ad dollars. In terms of their currently popular reality show (the presidential campaign), one of the candidates cannot yet be voted off the island or the viewers might watch something else.

via: thepoliticalfreakshow

The Wall Street Journal says Romney turned in the best Republican debate performance since Ronald Reagan in 1980, a performance that signals a new start to the presidential race. And that might mean something too, if we didn’t recently learn that TEN Wall Street Journal op-ed writers are also advisers to Romney’s campaign. (link)

DailyKos: He was aggressive, he was decisive, he delivered. Of course he also lied through his teeth for most of the debate:

• When he claimed that “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” They’re not.
• When he said that President Obama had “cut Medicare by $716 billion to pay for Obamacare.” Obama didn’t.
• When he denied proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. He did.
• When he said President Obama had “added almost as much to the federal debt as all the prior presidents combined.” Not even close.
• When he resurrected “death panels.” That was called ”one of the biggest whoppers of the night.”
• When he stated that half the green energy companies given stimulus funds had failed. Onlyif three out of nearly three dozen is half.

(via: granholmtwr)

via: sarahlee310

ROMNEY LIED AT LEAST 27 TIMES during the debate. Here are nine of the lies – READ THEM ALL: 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

EVERYONE HAS A LIST of their favorite Romney lies from the debate:

• 10 Most Shameless Romney Debate Lies — Debunked | Alternet
• Mitt Romney’s 10 Most Baseless Claims At The Denver Debate | Huffington Post
• The First Debate: Mitt Romney’s Five Biggest Lies | Politics News | Rolling Stone
• Romney’s Successful Debate Plan: Lying — Daily Intel

Steve Benen: “This is admittedly only a sampling, but this piece from New York‘s Jon Chait caught my eye: Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies. Probably the best way to understand Obama’s listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones.

“As did this one from Rolling Stone‘s Tim Dickinson: 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.

“CNN’s David Gergen, hardly a liberal, was thinking along the same lines as Chait, saying last night he thinks Obama was surprised that Romney was “flat out lying” during the debate. Plenty of others were thinking along the same lines.”

CNN did something absolutely monstrous in covering the public reaction to the Oct. 3 Presidential debate: it polled a majority of white college-educated Southerners over age 49 who self-identified as either “moderate” or “conservative” – NOTE: CNN’s Candy Crowley will be the moderator in the next debate.

There’s a term for what we saw: The Gish Gallop: 

Daily Intel — Romney’s Successful Debate Plan: Lying: Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies. Probably the best way to understand Obama’s listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones. Obama, perhaps, was not prepared for that, and he certainly didn’t think quickly enough on his feet to adjust to it.