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16:00:56 12/29/11
Mitt Romney's Big Promises - and Bigger Lies
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 16:00:56 12/29/11
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In the election of 1928, the Republican Party of Herbert Hoover promised voters "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard." (We all know how that turned out.) Now, Mitt Romney is pledging that "If I'm President" every college graduate will be guaranteed a job, Iran will have no nuclear weapons and the United States will dominate the 21st century. And when Romney isn't making fantastic promises about what he'll do when he gets to the White House, he's slandering the current occupant , Barack Obama.
"I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes"
Governor Romney's guarantees start with Iran and its nuclear program . In a November 10, 2011 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Romney pledged, " I won't let Iran get nukes ." Or as he put it 10 days earlier during a GOP national security debate : >
"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."
As to how he'll ensure that outcome, Romney explained that "If you want peace, prepare for war." And despite occasionally acknowledging the complexity of a strike against Iran and even the questionable possibility of success, Romney told the Wall Street Journal this weekend how he would get it done: >
So what would he do about it? "I do not have a top secret security clearance at this stage to be able to define precisely what kinds of actions we could take." But he adds that "the range includes something of a blockade nature, to something of a surgical strike nature, to something of a decapitate the regime nature, to eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether."
No U.S. Decline in Romney's "American Century"
Romney's promise to "eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether" is just part of his larger assurance that the 21st century will be another " American Century ." Pretending that the rise of India, China and Brazil doesn't inevitably entail the relative loss of U.S. power and influence, Romney announced in his October address at The Citadel : >
"This century must be an American Century. In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world...As President of the United States, I will devote myself to an American Century. And I will never, ever apologize for America."
Not content to rest there, Romney accused President Obama of "waving the white flag of surrender": >
"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender. >
I will not surrender America's role in the world. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your President. >
You have that President today."
Two months later, Mitt Romney repackaged his promise and his slander at the December 15 Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa: >
"Our president thinks America is in decline. It is if he's president. It's not if I'm president. This is going to be an American century."
As for Romney's charge that President Obama "went around the world and apologized for America," the Washington Post Fact Checker deemed it a Four-Pinocchio lie .
A Job for Every College Graduate
At an event in New Hampshire last week, Governor Romney's pandering went from the sublime to the ridiculous. There, Mitt pledged President Romney would deliver full-employment for all American college graduates: >
"What I can promise you is this -- when you get out of college, if I'm president you'll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job. That's the reason I will hopefully get young people who are in college is to say, You know what, I understand what it takes to get jobs in America."
As the record shows , not so much. After all, as the Los Angeles Times recently documented, Romney's "Bain Capital often maximized profits in part by firing workers." That's why FactCheck.org , the Washington Post Fact Checker and Fortune all refused to vouch for Romney's claim that "In those hundreds of businesses we invested in, tens of thousands of jobs net-net were created."
Obama "Has Not Created Any New Jobs"
If Mitt Romney can't prove his boasts about his own job creation record, neither can he justify his blatant lie about President Obama's : >
"25 million people are out of work because of Barack Obama. And so I'll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs." >
"I'll compare that record with his record, where he has not created any new jobs."
Sadly for Mitt Romney, the Bush recession began in December 2007. As ThinkProgress rightly noted, "The private sector has added 2.3 million new jobs since March 2010, and it took the Obama economy one year to create more jobs than the economy under President Bush did in eight." As The Economist explained earlier, the recession was not at its deepest just as Barack Obama was entering office, but far worse than official statistics revealed at the time. Romney might also want to check with former McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi as well as the non-partisan CBO , who concluded that the Obama stimulus program "added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011."
Obama's Debt Exceeds All Previous Presidents Combined
Mitt Romney didn't just lie about Barack Obama's jobs record. At the Sioux City debate, he got President Obama's contribution to the federal debt all wrong as well: >
"We all understand that the spending crisis is extraordinary, with $15 trillion now in debt, with a president that's racked up as much debt as almost all of the other presidents combined."
Of course, we don't all understand that, because it's not true . After Ronald Reagan tripled the gross national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, Uncle Sam's red ink totaled almost $11 trillion when Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Obama is "Taking over 100 Percent" of Health Care
In his desperate quest to win over conservative Republican primary voters, Mitt Romney has turned his back on his signature achievement which he once boasted was a health care model for the nation. And to do it, Romney has been lying for months by telling voters "Obamacare is about taking over 100 percent of the people's insurance in this country."
In a September 15, 2011 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer , Romney made the same charge: >
"The Massachusetts plan was crafted for Massachusetts, for the needs of 8 percent of our population that didn't have insurance, not for the 92 percent that did. Obamacare is a plan that takes over 100 percent of the people in the country and their health care, and that's one of the reasons why people don't want it."
Sadly for Mitt Romney, repetition of a lie doesn't make it any more true.
The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in the spring of 2010 targets the 17 percent of people (over 50 million people) who are uninsured . As Politifact explained in deeming Romney's fraud another "Pants on Fire" lie: >
According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans without health insurance nationally was slightly under 17 percent in 2009, the year Obama began pushing for the bill. According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, the number was about the same in 2010, when the measure was signed into law. Other estimates have pegged the national number at about 15 percent.
As Henry Aaron, a senior fellow with the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution right noted, comparing 8 percent to 17 percent "would have been apples to apples" when it comes to the impact of the individual mandate at the center of both the Massachusetts and national plans. Sadly, Politifact concluded, Romney was guilty of "a felony case of comparing apples and oranges."
Romney "Will Reverse President Obama's Massive Defense Cuts"
During that same "American Century" speech in October, Governor Romney pledged: >
"I will reverse President Obama's massive defense cuts. Time and again, we have seen that attempts to balance the budget by weakening our military only lead to a far higher price, not only in treasure, but in blood."
Sadly for Romney, as Steve Benen pointed out, defense spending has not only gone up every year of the Obama presidency . It is higher than it ever was when George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office.
Of course, Romney's confusion over matters of war and peace are hardly new. In an April op-ed for the Manchester Union Leader, Mitt forgot about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as he denounced President Obama for "one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history."
Obama's "Equal Outcomes" and "Entitlement Society"
Last week, the Romney campaign rolled out what may well become the meta-theme and meta-lie for the 2012 general election race.
After President Obama declared in his Osawatomie, Kansas address that Republican trickle down economics "never worked," Romney struck back. Just not with the truth: >
"Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt's philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. >
"In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing -- the government. >
"The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off."
By raising the mythical red menace of communism and falsely attributing it to Barack Obama, Romney in the words of Paul Krugman had introduced " The Big Lie " into his " Post-Truth Campaign ." While Andrew Sullivan announced "Mitt Romney is a big, fat liar," Steve Benen lamented that "Romney, allegedly the responsible one in the Republican field, has been reduced to lying uncontrollably." And while Greg Sargent in the past had expressed amazement at "Mitt Romney's casual, effortless falsehoods," New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait explained that Romney's red scare rose to a whole new level of duplicity: >
"This isn't just a casual line. In eight sentences, Romney asserts over and over again that Obama wants to create "equal outcomes" and give everybody the "same rewards." This is nuts, Glenn Beck-level insane. Restoring Clinton-era taxes is not a plan to equalize outcomes, or even close. It's not even a plan to stop rising inequality. Obama's America will continue to be the most unequal society in the advanced world -- only slightly less so. The alternative proposals accelerate inequality even further."
Of course, as the proliferating profiles from the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times , the Washington Post and others show, Mitt Romney is no stranger to inequality. Legendarily cheap and analytical , as a Harvard Business School student Romney gave a presentation to his classmates that "proved the value of family time based not on emotion but on yield." Two Romney quotes - " I love business " and " I love data " - seem to sum up the man.
As for loving the truth, that for Mitt Romney is apparently another matter altogether.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
413 Views
02:00:00 11/11/10
10 questions with Jeff Potter of Cooking for Geeks
[LESS INFO] 413 VIEWS | ADDED 02:00:00 11/11/10
Working at O'Reilly Media headquarters, I'd been hearing the buzz about the new book Cooking for Geeks for quite some time, so I was thrilled when I saw author Jeff Potter filming a video in the Make: Labs on how to hack your slow cooker into a sous vide rig. Anyone interested in the science behind food and cooking needs to grab a copy of this unique and fascinating book. Check out the video Jeff was filming for a taste, and then hear what he has to say to 10 questions we asked.
Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes , download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube and Vimeo .
1. What inspired you to write Cooking for Geeks?
I so want to answer "I was hungry!" and leave it at that. I'm lucky to have parents that took time to cook with me as a kid growing up -- food and cooking was just something that was part of my background. When I got to college, I was surprised to learn that this really wasn't a very common thing; most of my classmates didn't know how to cook. And I also discovered that I didn't really know how to cook dinner -- just breakfast and dessert, since that's what my interests had been as a kid. (Who me, sweet tooth? *Never.*) I spent the better part of a decade learning to turn out a good meal, pretty much by trial and error. In many ways, Cooking for Geeks is the book I wish I'd had ten years ago, so that my trial-and-error stage would have been much, much shorter.
2. Tell us how Cooking for Geeks differs from conventional cookbooks.
Most cookbooks are just collections of recipes. They're really notes from one cook to another, reminders of quantity and steps. But it's rare for a cookbook to actually step back and look at the bigger picture. Being a geek -- somebody who's curious how things work -- I wanted more than just "do this, do that" type of instructions. When it comes to cooking, having some basic food science actually ends up being incredibly important.
3. What's your background? What kind of geek are you?
Let's see, part German, part English, part Norwegian, part Irish. I studied both computer science and visual art at Brown, so I guess you could say that my "geek cred" comes from the CS degree, although really I think anyone who applies any sort of scientific approach would auto-qualify as a geek.
4. When did you start making cookbooks?
My mom dug up one from I think it was 1984? It'd been a class project where each student was assigned to bring one recipe to contribute. I liked pancakes a lot as a kid, so my page was pancakes.
5. You write, "Cooking is about community, and sharing knowledge and food is one of the best ways to build community." Explain.
We all eat, and we all rely on others to some degree or another for food. Whether you're talking about the farmer that supplies the grocery store or the cook who's put together the meal in front of you, food is a social thing. And if you look at community, so much of it is built up around taking care of each other, and cooking and eating food is one of the most important things that we do together. Regardless of your spiritual and political beliefs, sitting down together and breaking bread has the ability to bring people closer together.
6. What's your favorite food hack to wow the masses?
Sous vide, hands down. If someone only has time to try one thing, I'd recommend sous vide. It's probably one of the most important culinary techniques to have come around in the past few decades, but hasn't yet really made it big on the consumer scene.
7. How do you celebrate/embrace failure?
With a bottle of either champagne or whisky? Just joking, although isn't it funny how certain drinks have moods attached to them? There's short-term failure -- whoops, I burnt the dinner -- which I generally don't care too much about, besides trying to pick out the obvious lesson and improve my understanding of how things work. Then there's long-term failure -- whoops, I just spent 2 months on research that is going straight into the trashcan for no reason other than "it just didn't work out." I don't really look back long enough though to be bothered by what I've done. It's generally "On to the next thing!" with me.
8. What new idea has excited you most recently?
Well, there's generic stuff, like "the internet" which is really code for "disruption of traditional models," such as things like TV over the web. (If you think what happened to the music industry was tough, wait until you see what happens in the next 5 to 10 years with TV -- decoupling content creation from content distribution is going to radically change the way we consume, and fund, media.) Then there's specific stuff, such as understanding smell and flavors, and thinking about how new combinations of ingredients can be algorithmically deduced. Bernard Lahousse has done some great work in this area, and has a neat online tool for doing just that (see foodpairing.com ).
"Exciting" generally means up-beat, but I think Douglas Coupland's "Pessimist's Guide to the Next 10 Years" will turn out to be incredibly prescient.
9. Who are your inspirations?
This is going to sound cheesy, but my parents. They worked hard; and sometimes that work paid off, and sometimes it didn't. I think it's too easy to see public figures -- sport players, actors, politicians -- and idealize them, but the danger with that is you never really see just how hard these people have to work to get to where they're at, whereas when you know someone beyond their public image, you get a real sense of who they are and what makes them tick. Not to say that public figures shouldn't serve as role models, but I think too many people look at their achievements and desire the payoff without the work, and without understanding what the odds are really like.
10. What advice would you give to apprehensive chefs just getting started?
As one of the interviewees told me: "Just get in there and try it." It might not come out the way you expected, but that's OK. And learn to see where things are going, and adjust accordingly. Regardless of the profession, every example of a great creative outcome I've seen has been the result of a tight feedback loop: do something, see how it comes out, adjust, repeat. I can't think of many examples or people I've interviewed where they just sat down and knocked out the perfect whatever on their first attempt.
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