Next week the planet Earth is going to be treated to (or tortured by) the first of three presidential debates between democratic incumbent US president Barack Obama and his republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
The primary topic of the debate is going to be the economy, which one might expect Romney, the multimillionaire ex-CEO of Bain Capital, a company that bought companies and then sold them or dismantled them at a profit, might actually have an advantage over the president. After all, in 3 1/2 years in office, the president has not yet fully restored the prospering economy and budget surpluses that Bill Clinton left to GW Bush in 2001, and which Bush spent eight years utterly destroying.
Additionally, speaking of budget surpluses, consider that during the 200 presidential debates between GW Bush and Al Gore, Bush questioned the veracity of the budget surpluses of the last 4 years of Bill Clinton’s administration by stating that the administration had used “fuzzy math” to “manufacture those surpluses. It was a premeditated and preplanned effort with malice aforethought, designed to cast doubt about the surpluses in the minds of voters. To some extent, causing that doubt was enough to get at least 635 people in Florida to vote for Bush who might otherwise have voted for Al Gore. Gore won the national popular vote anyway, but still didn’t get to be president.
It’s creative fabricated propaganda. A false statement is said loud enough and/or often enough, and people begin to believe it, even though there isn’t a shed of evidence to support it. It’s also the methodology perfected and used extensively by Nazi Germany Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
While Bush dabbled in it from time to time during the 2000 campaign, his abuse of the truth was nothing compared to the 2012 Ryan/Romney campaign. Their use of repeated fabrications and lies has risen to a new, extreme and abominable level for a free democracy. It actually rivals the worst excesses of the the Nazi house of horrors.
There are literally countless examples of these lies that have hit the airwaves. A more recent one is that Romney ads have falsely condemned president Obama for removing the work requirement from the federal Welfare to Work law.
The truth is that several republican governors have requested flexibility in implementing this law in their states, and the Obama administration responded by issuing waivers to those states so that they could in fact do so, providing that the states increase the number of people moving off welfare into jobs.
Politifact.com gave Romney a “Pants-on-Fire” score regarding that ad.
In addition to the outright fabrications, Romney has also demonstrated a fundamental lack of basic 4th grade scientific knowledge about airplanes and the atmosphere, specially that humans cannot breathe at 40,000 feet because there is not enough oxygen to sustain human life at that altitude. This was revealed when Romney commented on the unscheduled emergency landing in Denver by a jet carrying his wife, Ann Romney. The jet was headed to California from Omaha, Nebraska when smoke began to fill the passenger cabin. Romney stated at a press conference that the windows couldn’t be opened to let fresh oxygen into the cabin because the windows in airline jets don’t open, that he didn’t know why that was, and that it was a real problem. He added that there was enough oxygen for the pilots to land, though. See it for yourself:
If Romney doesn’t even know basic science about air pressure, oxygen and our atmosphere, why would anyone believe anything he says about global warming and climate change, or any other technical issue for that matter?
To make matters worse, Romney reinforced his acts for fabrication on the campaign trail when he said two days ago that his ads are “spot on!”
All of this indicates two things: First, that Romney thinks everyone is stupid and gullible, and ready to believe anything he says just because he says it, and second, that he is a lot more stupid about people and science than anyone knew.
As a result, Romney is losing this election because more and more people are realizing that someone who lies about everything can’t be trusted. They are also realizing that someone who changes his positions of every issue important to people, depending upon which group of people he just happens to be talking to at the moment, can’t be trusted.
And finally, people are realizing that someone as ignorant as Romney when is comes to why people need spacesuits in space can’t be trusted with a trillion dollars of military might.
In a way, Romney may be causing the average voter to become more internet- and research-oriented. He certainly has galvanized the fact-checkers into action. Watching republicans running for office distance themselves from the Ryan-Romney train wreck speaks volumes as well.
And as a side perk….Watching train wrecks can be very entertaining….from a distance, of course. 
Romney may know nothing about atmospherics, but his dog certainly does.
“Mitt Happens”
Hey, a new bumper sticker!