Forum Post: A Circus of Lies and Hypocrisy that Could Sweep our Government if we don't Vote
Posted 11 years ago on Aug. 29, 2012, 10:24 a.m. EST by werone
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A Circus of Lies and Hypocrisy that Could Sweep our Government if we don't Vote
6 Big Lies By Republican National Convention Speakers, Day One
The entire program of the convention's opening night was based on a deception wrapped up in falsehoods.
August 29, 2012 |
TAMPA, FLA. -- On the opening day of its national convention, the Republican Party refrained from putting its full crazy on display in favor of unleashing a mere torrent of mendacity. Not that there wasn't a heavy quotient of weirdness.
A white man sang a full complement of R&B songs to a nearly all-white audience of delegates. (Thank you, G.E. Smith Band.) Old people danced comically to the strains of 3 Doors Down.
The Ron Paul people accused the G.O.P. of "detaining" the Virginia delegation in order to keep one of its leaders, Morton Blackwell, from participating in a rules committee meeting that ultimately stripped Paul of many of his delegates on the heels of a rules change that conferred a kingly sort of power on the party's nominee.
Following Ann Romney's speech, which she said was "about love," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie yelled at Republicans that respect was more important than love, and they seemed to love him for it.
Former U.S. senator Rick Santorum, presidential nominee Romney's closest rival during the primary season, admired the hands of his grandfather's corpse, and then shook hands with the American dream, finding it to have a strong grip.
But another bit hand-dancing was more than strange: a bevvy of lies and deceptions that defined the evening were epitomized in a set of videos called "These Hands," which featured deceptively edited audio of President Barack Obama's ineloquent attempt to explain the role of government in paving the way for successful businesses, and cinematic depictions of noble small-business owners who were mighty mad at the president.
The theme was reinforced by speakers throughout the program, including Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, as well as Governors Nikki Haley, S.C.; Brian Sandoval, Nev., and Mary Fallin, Okla.
The videos dramatized the evening's theme: "We Built It." But wait, there's more. Here are the top six lies or deceptions fed to the American voter on Day One of the 2012 Republican National Convention.
- The "You didn't build that" deception. By now, Obama's rhetorical trip-up on the campaign trail is the stuff of legend, because in the construction of a series of sentences, Obama left an opening for Romney and his allies to suggest that the president meant something entirely different from what he said. At a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., Obama said that a business owner's success requires government investment in infrastructure such as roads and bridges. "If you've got a business, you didn't build that," he said -- meaning, quite clearly, the roads and bridges. Republicans, however, pulled the quote from its context and ran with it. And Romney is determined to carry that ball to the finish line.
Never mind that even mainstream media have repeatedly refuted the meaning falsely imparted to the president by Romney and company. As of Tuesday night, the Obama quote was altered even further in the "Hands" videos to make it seem that he was shaking his brown finger in the face of lighter-skinned business owners: the audio track takes the words, "Let me tell you" from earlier in the speech, and sets them just ahead of the out-of-context quote to make it sound like this:
"Let me tell you, if you've got a business, you didn't build that."
Here's the actual quote in its entirety, with the Romney edit in bold: "There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
II. The welfare lie. The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that it would consider providing waivers to states from the implementation of welfare-to-work requirement in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program if the states could demonstrate that they had a more effective means of helping welfare recipients find work. Romney has seized upon this announcement to claim that Obama is "gutting welfare reform" and eliminating the TANF work requirement -- a blatant lie that has been reported as such by many news outlets. MORE: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/6-big-lies-republican-national-convention-speakers-day-one?paging=off
AND:
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill#
By Matt Taibbi August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET
The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.
I take issue with Obama's remarks, "You didn't build that" because it's the taxpayers, not the government that paid for and built the roads and paid the teachers and built the schools. It was businesses and citizens who paid for all of our infrastructure. And some of us have families who started businesses before there were roads and before the government got involved in our schools.
You try to start a business, mortgage your home, go into debt, take a big risk that you may lose because you have an idea and want to pursue a better future for your family. You work long days and weekends to get out of the red and you put everything you have into it. You pay your employees before you get a paycheck. And you don't always get a paycheck because materials, equipment and supplies have to be paid for as well as the loan you took out on your home, overhead, the ever complicated taxes and permits and health care for your employees. Starting a business is a risk and it doesn't always pay off. So when the president says we didn't build it, I take offense. And even in the context of roads, etc. We built those too. We paid for them with our tax dollars and some of us actually built them.
And when we fail in our business because the sluggishness of this economy has dragged for just a little too long that we can't hang on anymore to keep our businesses going and everything Obama and his friends have done has made the economy much worse and there's no end in sight so we have to lay off employees that we struggled to keep for as long as we could and sadly close our doors, does the President and the government take responsibility for that? Did they destroy that like they think they built it? Their policies have destroyed it.
I'm so tired of Obama excuses and justifications from his hypnotized sheep. Wake up. He's in bed with the people that brought us to our knees, the bankers, especially Goldman Sachs. Get a clue and quit supporting this fraud. He's also a flip-flopper, lightweight, cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.
Show me a self made man and I'll show you a thousand people who were responsible.
Drop that same self made man on a deserted island and I'll show you a man struggling to survive.
No one denies that everyone is influenced by people, environment and circumstances that they encounter thru their life. We are all a product of our experiences along the way. This is what makes us who we are. And of course people are influenced by family, friends and communities throughout their life. This is what builds character and makes us either people who take risk or people who don't.
The people that start businesses do so for many reasons. It starts with an idea that they are passonate about and they are willing to take a risk to better the lives of their family, friends and community. They risk a lot to do that. Even though they have been influenced by people along the way, no one else actually took the risk to put their home up or borrow against their savings or take out a loan. And no one else worked the long hours and many days in the beginning to make sure the business succeeds. And if it does fail, it hurts the employees that had to be let go, but it's the owner that loses everything because of the risk he took. He's the one that may lose his home and may spend years paying off creditors or lose all his assets with a bankruptcy.
You're not willing to give people any credit for taking the risk to start a business. People that have never taken that risk don't understand what goes into that decision to risk everything for an idea.
And to your comment...that same person on a deserted island would survive because that's the kind of character it takes to open a business...strong character, passion, self reliance and the will to survive.
Maybe you should open a business and after you've worked hard for years and sacrificed much to make it succeed, see if you don't feel insulted when your President says "You didn't build that". Especially when it's the policies of the last 3 years that have made a bad situation worse and caused more and more businesses to close their doors and lose everything. It seems to me that there is a lot of insulting and devisive "talking points" being thrown around and expressed by people that don't have a clue about the real world and the truth.
Why do you assume I don't know anything about business? I've been self employed for more years than in regular employment. Yes, I know what it feels like to work twice as many hours for half the pay to get a business going.
All of this talk about whether a businessman is completely responsible for his success misses one of the major points of the Occupy protest. That wages for the lower 50% of workers during the last 40 years has not increased when adjusted for inflation. The college educated workers wages have barely risen either, even though they are more responsible for the 80% gain in productivity.
This graph below illustrates where most of the profit is really going in our economy. This is why people are working two jobs, why women have to work instead of raising their own children, and why business owners like yourself struggle harder than ever just to stay in business.
Wealth is pooling at the top while being drained from the bottom. No economy can thrive in these conditions.
http://stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/#/?start=1969&end=2008
I have seen this very graph and did not need to see it to know that you were correct!
How about that?
Our opponents have probably not seen it. It's a great weapon to use in our fight against tyranny.
They will disregard it because they don't agree to start with. better they find their own facts upon initiating their own search
Now you're talking about a totally different topic on which we can agree. I was originally responding to the post at the top of the page.
And, by the way, I never said "completely responsible for the success". I took offense at the remark that "You didn't build that". There's a difference. I give credit to the people along the way that influence us and help to build our character to take those risks. But it's the risk-taker that goes into debt initially to start a small business. They are the ones that can lose everything. Those comments were from a president that thinks that success comes from government and people have nothing to do with it. Government is successful because of its citizens and businesses...not the other way around.
On the topic you now bring up, in my opinion the problem has been the government getting into the business of skewing money thru bad policies to benefit the people writing the laws and their cronies and lobbies. The Federal reserve and it's monetary policies have screwed us. That is what has thrown the economic system out of whack that rewards ponzi schemes and punishes the citizenry. We need to get back to the gold standard and get rid of the Fed. We also need to reinstate Glass-Steagle so that we can break up the big banks that caused this mess...split up investment banks from insured depositor banks. There are other things to do but those 2 are the most important that can be done without thousands of pages of stupidity that results in unintended consequences. This is what I thought OWS was about. To do this we need to vote for anyone that says they will do those 2 things and vote out people that keep the status quo whoever they are from both parties. If OWS would speak loudly on these 2 issues, they might be heard. The messages have been getting lost with too much wandering. We need to pick a message and scream loudly so everyone can hear. You can get more done with 1 clear message than with 100 different messages or none at all.
Just my opinion...
Obama's remark's were twisted out of context by his rare slip up in communication. He was clearly talking about the infrastructure already built, not about business being built. I'm also no fan of Obama. I don't defend him unless he is being wrongly maligned.
I agree completely with your third paragraph. Occupy's message is terribly divergent. A thousand different subjects have been brought up here, only a few are really necessary. Most of your opinions are right in the mainstream of OWS views.
Welcome to the forum!
I know what's wrong with your logic, you're brainwashed. What to do, what to do?
Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican Monday, 10 October 2011 16:23
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.
Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.
REPUBLISHED: Originally published by TvNewsLIES.org July, 2004. Written by John Gray Cincinnati, Ohio - jgray7@cinci.rr.com - Published July - 2004
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R are bunch of cheerleader for the corporation.,they want socialism for rich and capitalism for the poor