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Say what you will about whether Obama supporter Bill Burton and his Super PAC, Priorities USA and their latest campaign ad is fair to Mitt Romney or not. Fair or not, if nothing else, it's proven one thing and that is if you are a Democrat and you run an ad which makes claims that the media can distort or paint as dubious, you're going to be savaged by the press. If you're Mitt Romney, there is absolutely no punishment for lying non-stop by the corporate media.

As Steve Benen has been documenting, the Romney campaign has been lying non-stop since he's been running for office and his latest installment from last week of his series can be read here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXVIII.

But never mind that, Fox's Shannon Bream and Ed Henry did a whole lot of water carrying for Mittens this Thursday afternoon where they relayed Romney's response to the Burton ad, without a care in the world for the sheer amount of lying we've seen from Romney day after day and month after month.

Here's Romney's statement about the Burton ad:

This campaign and the people working with him have focused almost exclusively on personal attacks. You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad, They were embarrassed. But today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on just running them.

Mitt Romney ought to have lightening striking him for the audacity of being willing to say that out loud. Romney's been lying about President Obama in his campaign ads and that's from day one, the very first one where he took the President out of context on the economy, and it's just gone on from there.

Benen started his running list back in January of this year. If you've got endless hours to try to keep up on the sheer volume of Romney lies since that time if you weren't already, here's the latest list Steve ended his post with:

Previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII

And don't count on our lazy, complicit, corporate media to relay most of what's in that list to anyone. They'd rather be screaming about how terribly unfair it is to point out that vulture capitalists might actually ruin lives and communities for years to come after they go in and raid pension funds, trash union contracts and extract every dime they can suck out of a company so they can pocket millions while people that worked for those companies for decades wind up with nothing.

That's a story none of them want to tell about Mitt Romney, which is the main reason they all lose their collective minds after another ad comes out attacking his time at Bain. What's really ironic about this whole thing is that Burton's PAC was only going to run the ad in a few swing states and the collective freakout by the right and the corporate media just ended up giving him a whole lot of free air time.

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Ed Henry and Fox News were made for each other. Here's a clip from today's presidential news conference where Ed asks a predictably stupid question, which President Obama is happy to use to smack him around verbally a little bit.

Actually, Ed's question was two separate ones, but the framing was classic Fox News.

HENRY: Followup on Israel and Iran because you have said repeatedly you have Israel's back. So I wonder why three years in office you have not visited Israel as President. And related to Iran and Israel, you have been concerned about this loose talk of war as you call it driving up gas prices further. Your critics will say on Capitol Hill that you want gas prices to go higher because you have said before that would wean the American people off fossil fuels to renewable fuels. How do you respond to that?

Yes Ed, let's not mention that those nameless critics include every single opinionator on Fox News, and those same opinionators are all completely hawkish on war with Iran in the name of "defending Israel." But catch the President's smile during the second question. He was ready, and here's his answer:

OBAMA: Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States going into a re-election campaign wants gas prices to go up higher?

Henry's doe-eyed, innocent look back at the President while saying "I'm just asking" was hysterical. No, Ed Henry wasn't trying to set up a Fox News meme, he was "just asking," doncha know? So President Obama put it to the rest of them in the room.

OBAMA: Does anybody here think that makes a lot of sense? Look. Here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices. I want gas prices lower because they hurt families, because I meet folks every day who have to drive a long way to get to work and them filling up this gas tank gets more and more painful and it's a tax out of their pocketbooks, out of their paychecks. And a lot of folks are already operating on the margins right now. And it's not good for the overall economy because when gas prices go up, consumer spending oftentimes pulls back. And we're in the midst right now of a recovery that is starting to build up steam and we don't want to reverse it.

He went on to talk about the fact that there's no magic silver bullet to the gas price problem, and that a long-term strategy of moving to other types of fuel is the real answer to solving the problem, but stressed that it's not an overnight solution. He also reminded listeners that this is an annual occurrence that won't change until we change our dependence on oil.

President Obama: 1 Fox News: 0

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President Barack Obama called out Fox News' Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry Thursday as a "spokesperson for Mitt Romney."

During a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the president allowed Henry to asked the first question.

"President Obama, I wanted to get your first reaction to the Iranian terror plot," Henry said. "Your secretary of state called it a dangerous escalation. What specific steps will you take to hold Iran accountable? Especially when Mitt Romney charged last week -- quote -- 'If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.'"

"Well, I didn't know that you were the spokesperson for Mitt Romney," the president replied with a quick smile.

"With respect to how we respond, our first step is to make sure that we prosecute those individuals that have been named in the indictment and I will leave to the attorney General the task of describing how that will proceed. The second thing that we're going to continue to do is to apply the toughest sanctions and continue to mobilize the international community to make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behavior."

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From CNN tonight, huge crowds gathered outside of the White House and in New York City on the news of Osama bin Laden's death in celebration. I've got a lot of mixed feeling on this because of my problems with our national security policies that have contributed to these acts of terrorism in the first place.

I'm glad bin Laden is gone. That doesn't mean his organization is gone. I can understand why a lot of people felt the need to celebrate this, especially those who lost loved ones on 9-11. I truly wish we were a more peaceful people where there was not so much death and suffering around the world in the first place and that somehow we managed to be a world where we weren't constantly at war, where there was no terrorism and with those in power constantly taking advantage of the powerless. I also fully realize that's a pipe dream because there's always going to be someone out there who can make a buck stepping on someone else's neck doing what they can to enrich themselves.

From a purely political view, I'm sure Mittens and his fellow GOP candidates aren't too happy about this. And I wonder just how Fox will manage to attack the President for something they would have gone crazy lauding Bush for.

I also await Donald Trump saying he needs a copy of bin Laden's birth certificate before he believes he's really dead.

If this election cycle doesn't go down as one of the most ridiculous and shameless and embarrassing in our country's history, I'd be surprised because I'm not sure how you could top it before most of the potential GOP candidates have even formally announced they're running, if they're running.

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I'm with Digby... watching this stuff just makes me want to go have a tall drink as well. Dana Bash, Ed Henry, John King and Gloria Borger were discussing how the policy debate was going on raising the debt ceiling and on the 2012 budget, and the Republicans refusal to raise taxes. Ed Henry goes from saying that the President needs to get his base excited if he hopes to be reelected in 2012 and in the next breath, talks about how having liberal Democrats mad at him "is not a bad thing."

I think our beltway Villagers love to push this stuff just to aggravate the hell out of people at the left wing blogs and anyone that writes at or reads them. In what world would Ed Henry or anyone else in our corporate media be talking about how it's a good thing for a Republican to piss off their conservative base and conservative Congressional members and that it would somehow help their chances for reelection?

Whoever it is at the White House that talked to Ed Henry has their head on backwards because liberal Congressional Democrats are trying to keep the President from giving in too much to Republicans and allowing them to destroy our fragile economy, which is obviously the Republican's plan. They'd like nothing more than to see us in another recession because they think it helps their chances for reelection, because they can then blame the bad economy on the Democrats.

And if anyone doesn't think they're crass enough to do it, just look at how they attacked Democrats the last election for the health care bill as an assault on Medicare. Who wants to let a few facts get in the way when you can do some fearmongering instead?

I don't know what the President is going to say tomorrow, but if he concedes too much to Republicans, I think he's going to help them get their wish with tanking the economy again. The center of our political debate in this country has moved so far to the right, it's ridiculous. It would really be nice to see some push back in the other direction and the hostage taking by Republicans called out for what it is so the blame can lay at their feet if their demands harm the economy, which they will.

And as Digby noted in her post, Chambliss has not agreed to tax increases:

Chambliss has not actually signed on to "modest tax increases" he's signed on to "raising revenue" which is not the same thing in this debate and relies on magical thinking about loopholes --- and tax cuts!

She's got more on that here -- Raising revenue without raising taxes. We need to be beating back at these Republican memes. We don't have a spending problem. We've got a revenue problem. And lowering taxes on the rich does nothing to reduce our deficit; it makes it worse.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rick Sanchez states the truth on CNN about just how bad ClusterFox is with getting a move up to the front row in the briefing room for the White House press corps. They didn't get Helen Thomas' seat, the AP did, but they still got a seat in the front row. Much to the horror of his cohorts Ed Henry who voted to allow Fox to move up and Brook Baldwin, Rick Sanchez does something I'll bet he's backpedaling on later, he tells the truth that Fox is not a news organization.

I read something a while back where Fox won a law suit and if memory serves it was from Canada and they won it because they said they were an "entertainment" network and not news. I keep wondering how they can keep the word "news" as part of their marketing after that happened but haven't had the time to look into it. Maybe some of our readers here can fill me in if they've followed it.

Anyway, here's the transcript of Sanchez's slam and Ed Henry's lame excuse for pretending like any of their so called "straight reporters" deserve their colleagues giving them a move up with their seating arrangements. To be honest the whole thing looks like a game of who's the most popular in high school to me in the first place. Where Helen was seated didn't matter a whole hell of a lot when the Bush administration refused to call on her for years. I would imagine it's not going to matter any more with Gibbs or whoever takes his place either.

The Villagers do love their popularity contests though, don't they?

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Ed Henry points out the obvious about President Obama's poll numbers which is that once you have to start making decisions on how you're going to govern, there are people who are not going to be happy with those choices. What he glosses over here is the level of obstruction that the Republicans have chosen to use purely as a crass political tactic. Instead of explaining to the viewers the unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate, Henry merely says that the White House is "hoping" they can portray them as the party of "no". Maybe if the Ed Henry's of the world did their job and explained our political process to the viewers instead of everything being framed around the horse race and politics, they'd understand why the President has had a hard time getting any of his agenda which would satisfy the left passed.

VELSHI: Ed, you're around the president all the time. I mean this -- his campaign and his election can really be characterized by excitement. What happened to all that excitement surrounding the election of President Obama and why is he not -- either by choice or not -- drumming up that kind of enthusiasm leading up to the midterm elections or is it too early to say?

HENRY: You could probably boil it down to one word. Governing. Governing is just not as much fun, not as easy as it is, as Candy will tell you, as campaigning is. When you're out there, you're a rock star, you're sort of this new brand.

Once Barack Obama was elected president, all those campaign promises -- you know, liberals wanted to cash in on various things that are not so popular in the center of the country.

I think the enthusiasm gap they're hoping here at the White House will be closed once the president gets out there more on the road, once Bill Clinton -- they're planning on deploy him, the former president -- gets out there, they think they can drum up some enthusiasm.

And they're banking on one other thing that Paul will tell you about, as well Candy. That sort of behind the big picture numbers which is that, you noted that people don't trust the president, don't have faith in the president in some of these numbers, but they have even less faith in Congress.

When you dig down deeper, they have the least faith in Republicans in Congress and the White House believe that's because Republicans haven't put up a lot of alternatives to their plans on health care or Wall Street reform.

They're trying to paint the Republicans as the party of the no and basically say you can't get something with nothing and they're hoping here n the White House that over the next three months or so they convince the American people that they've taken some touch choices, the Democrats, some tough votes.

But at least they stood up to try to reform some things, fix this economy, et cetera. We'll see if that works.

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As CNN's Ed Henry pointed out, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs got a bit testy when asked if the government has been complicit in a cover up by BP in the severity of the oil spill. When we're looking at three weeks into this thing with very few answers or solutions to this disaster and where it looks like BP is indeed running the show, Robert Gibbs had better suck it up and get used to it because he's got a lot tougher questions coming than just what Ed Henry asked him in this clip.

COOPER: White House correspondent Ed Henry joins us now. He spent the day looking for accountability as well.

Ed, we have been hearing a lot from the administration about this boot-to-the-neck approach, which, I mean, it sounds good on paper, but, you know, they write this letter. It's not exactly a boot to the neck.

HENRY: Right.

And you had a Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, today saying, look, she believes for the first time there's a cover-up here by BP and that the government could be complicit in that. And when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about the cover-up charge, he said, any charge like that is ridiculous.

So, I pressed him on, how could you say it's ridiculous for BP, when they have had so many competing claims and different statements? Here's how I pressed him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: This morning, a spokesman for BP, Mark Proegler, said that he now believes that it's actually spilling more than 5,000 barrels a day, but he couldn't say exactly how much.

ROBERT GIBBS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

HENRY: And I think this gets back to the point these oceanographers were on the Hill testifying yesterday, saying that this government -- the Obama administration should be doing more to demand of the company this data and how much is really spilling...

GIBBS: Well, that's...

(CROSSTALK)

HENRY: ... out and how...

(CROSSTALK)

HENRY: ... four weeks later, we do not know.

(CROSSTALK)

GIBBS: That's why the letter -- that's -- that's one of the reasons the letter is going, is to find out more information. Ed, I...

HENRY: Do you really think a letter is going to force the company -- I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

GIBBS: Ed, Ed, listen, let me -- well, do you have a better idea?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, you know, there is actually a better idea. And -- and, I mean, I'm not an expert, but what's incredible is that, for -- for three weeks now, the EPA, the Interior Department, NOAA have been going along with this 5,000-barrel-a-day figure.

It wasn't until a guy from Purdue analyzed the -- the 30-second clip that -- that BP reluctantly put out after 23 days, and came up with a figure of 70,000 barrels that -- that people started to ask questions. I mean, it's completely disingenuous for -- for Gibbs, for Robert Gibbs there to ask you if you have any better idea.

I mean, the -- the White House could have been -- I mean, the government could have been, and the White House and the EPA and NOAA could have been trying to measure this thing or demanding the video be released so scientists could measure it. There are scientists who can look at these images and, with accuracy, measure the velocity of -- of things coming out of a pipe.

HENRY: And NOAA, the chief agency here that you mentioned, one of their ships that can measure this data was in -- off the coast of Africa when the spill first occurred. And there were reports on Capitol Hill yesterday in some of this testimony from the scientists that it took two or three weeks for the ship to actually be called to the Gulf.

So, there are all kinds of questions about the government response, of course, but also the company and how the government can be believing what the company is saying, when -- when the story has shifted.

A CNN reported here, one of them is going to be why did it take this long for the EPA to finally demand that BP quit using Corexit when there were less toxic dispersants available, one of which BP still has stockpiled in Houston.

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Donna Brazile takes the rest of the CNN panel to task for their concern for the deficit at a time when our main concern should be putting people back to work. Of course Bill Bennett continues to claim we need more tax cuts and thinks the Democrats are going to "go off the cliff" if they increase the deficit. Brazile reminds him "we've been off the cliff".

Transcript via CNN.

KING: And, Donna, on that point, I want you to listen to Larry Summers because Gloria notes they're starting to talk about the deficit because they're going to raise the federal debt ceiling this week and the numbers get incredibly high. Republicans are starting to say, you know, where's the fiscal discipline here?

And yet, if the you listen to Larry Summers, he seems convinced that they have a little more political space to make the case, that, in the short term, spending to help the economy is more important than reducing the deficit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUMMERS: We've got to do a lot more. There's no more important issue facing the country than job growth because, if we don't create jobs, we've got no prospect that the kind of budget deficits we want. If unemployment stays high, we're not going to have the strength in the world that we want, if unemployment stays high.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: They get away with that a bit longer?

BRAZILE: All the politics aside, the administration is walking a real tightrope between creating the jobs that the American people clearly want and trying to focus on the long-term fiscal health of the nation, the debt.

The Republicans raised the debt ceiling 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007. SO this is customary sometimes during a budget process, to raise it that way. But because of the additional spending that we have on the wars and other issues, we have to raise it again. That's a responsible thing that Congress needs to do.

On the other hand, I think the president is absolutely right to use some of the additional TARP money that will be utilized to pay down the deficit, but to use some of it to create jobs.

Now, hopefully, the private sector -- the president will be able to put some fire under the bankers tomorrow for them to start lending to small businesses so we don't have to continue this rate of government spending.

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Isn't this special? Even Ed Henry was flustered by these people openly carrying assault rifles and other guns outside of an Obama rally in Phoenix, AZ. As Henry stated, this is legal, but at what point does the Secret Service get involved and say, you know what if you've got a weapon out in the open with these crowds, it's time for you to go?

These are not concealed weapons. They are being carried out in the open where maybe someone who doesn't have a permit or own the gun could take the gun away from the person carrying it and shoot people in the crowd. I would love for someone who knows something about what the conceal and carry laws are in Arizona to explain to me why this is legal? It just looks down right irresponsible to me to be carrying an unconcealed, loaded weapon in a crowd even if you do have a right to carry it.

And for the record, I'm not some anti-gun zealot. I have no problem with those that own and handle guns responsibly. My husband hunts and we've got a safe full of guns at our home. That said, if he brought one of them loaded into a crowd like these people did and had it right out in the open where anyone might take it away from him, I don't think we'd be married any more. I think it is completely irresponsible and if the gun laws in Arizona allow this, there's something wrong with their laws.

Transcript below the fold.

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