From a commentator over at the New York Times, a very nice list of Mitt Romney’s cynical use of outright fabrications.

Romney´s incessant lying is appalling. He seeks to rewrite history with dismaying nonchalence and cavalier indifference.

He says repeatedly when Obama took office the economy was in recession, and that he made it worse and longer. Then when challenged he denied he said the economy was worse. {Obama stopped the recession within months of assuming the presidency. GDP has been growing each month since Jun ´09}.

He keeps saying Obama doubled the deficit {it´s actually decreased} and he attacks the President going around the world apologizing for America {he didn’t}, he insists that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different {they’re identical} and that Obama cut medicare benefits {simply not true}, he claims Obama has lost millions of jobs (he´s created more private sector jobs in less than 3 yrs than Bush in eight yrs}, he says repeatedly that corporate tax rates were raised {they weren´t}, and that Obama has not signed any trade deals {he has with Chili, South Korea, Columbia, Panama}.

Romney maintains he left the world of politics and went back into business {he didn´t, he´s been on the campaign trail continuously for years, even when “working”}. He further claims he formed Bain Capital from nothing and personally grew the business at great personal risk. {He was co-opted with guarantees into a going concern built by others through family connections and was never financially at risk}.

Beezer.  Not to mention his anxiety over his tax returns.  I get the feeling there’s a big bomb inside those returns and that Romney simply cannot make them public as a result.  Who knows.  Maybe making stuff up about Obama will keep the press from bringing the secret tax returns up.

He won’t release his past tax returns or discuss his use of offshore trust accounts and he disavows any knowledge of what his wholly owned company, Bain Capital, was doing when he was supervising the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.  And now Mitt Romney is running television advertising accusing the President of gutting welfare reform by dropping work requirements.

Now for the truth of the matter.   President Obama was responding to the request by two Republican governors (of Utah and Nevada) asking for more flexibility in applying the rules.  This wasn’t the first time such a request has been made.   In 2005 29 governors requested waivers so they could implement the law better for their states’ individual circumstances.  One of those governors was named Mitt Romney.

That’s it.  No big deal in other words, because the underlying principle being applied by the president is well understood.  It’s called federalism.

Romney, the poster child for legally sidestepping taxes, has a nasty habit of making up things about the President, and then attacking him for the made up things.  This is called a ‘straw man’ argument.  It’s commonly used when you can’t find anything substantive to attack, so you make stuff up and construct a ‘straw man’ to attack instead.

It would be real nice if the campaign started dealing with real issues and real policy discussions.  Obama has one out now, framing the campaign as one about whether or not the American public wants to go back to the Bush era policies of tax cuts and de-regulation of finance–policies which obviously ended very, very badly in the worst recession since the Great Depression.   One can disagree with Obama, but the ad is basically fair.  No straw man there.

I’d like someone to ask both the president and Mitt Romney their policy on legal offshore account use.  For them, or against them?