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Deputy White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Republicans owed Susan Rice an apology after they misled the country about the Benghazi emails -- a story that was hyped by his network's correspondent Jonathan Karl. After Stephanopoulos feigned ignorance on the matter, Pfeiffer should have told him ABC owes her an apology as well.

Karl gave a sorry excuse for apology this weekend, saying that he regrets that "the email was quoted incorrectly." More like he regrets getting caught. So to sum things up after reading his statement and listening to this interview -- not only is ABC refusing to come clean about the names of the Republicans who lied to them and conned them into hyping and giving new life to this so-called scandal that was being ignored by most of the networks other than Fox until Karl and ABC decided to lend it some credibility -- Stephanopoulos decides to sit there and pretend he doesn't have any idea why someone might want Republicans to apologize to Susan Rice after what they did to her.

Instead he decided to ask Pfeiffer about the emails without a word on Karl's "apology" or any acknowledgement of his network helping to spread lies for Republicans by hyping doctored versions of them. Stephanopoulos should have been opening This Week with a statement from the network on their shoddy "journalism" and with Karl's statement instead of trying to pretend it didn't happen.

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Here we go again with Willard telling about his thousandth or so lie out on the campaign trail, but this time we find out that apparently badly sourced right wing blogs are his fact checking department. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Romney repeats false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China; Chrysler refutes story:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeated a false claim Thursday night that Chrysler Group may move all Jeep vehicle production to China, drawing criticism from the Obama campaign, which said the Michigan native had blatantly skewed a news wire story.

Romney’s comments came the same day that the Free Press reported that 1,100 new Chrysler workers will begin making the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs at a plant in Detroit next week.

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said during a rally in Defiance, Ohio, before 12,000 cheering supporters, according to several reports. “I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.

Romney apparently was referencing conservative bloggers who misrepresented a Bloomberg story from Monday that discussed Chrysler’s decision to consider starting Jeep production in China, the world’s largest new-vehicle market.

That story, while accurate, sparked a raft of other stories and blogs that incorrectly concluded that Chrysler might close plants or move Jeep production from the U.S. to China.

Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, criticized those stories Thursday even before Romney made his comments.

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They just can't stop themselves from completely disrespecting this President, can they? Here's Queen Ann on Fox News in an interview which will air in full Wednesday, calling the President of the United States a child because his campaign has dared to call out her husband for lying his ass off during the debate last week. Way to keep it classy.

So much for Willard saying his wife's views were not "terribly relevant" to his campaign. She's been inserting herself more and more as time has gone on, without terribly wonderful results as we saw again here. She's just as much of a nasty piece of work as her husband, if not worse.

Ann Romney accuses Obama of showing 'poor sportsmanship' :

Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, equated President Obama's campaign to a petulant child during an interview Tuesday after being asked about charges from the president's campaign that her husband had "lied" during last week's debate.

“I mean, lied about what? This is something he’s been saying all along. This is what he believes. This is his policy, these are his statements," Ann Romney said in an interview set to air Wednesday on Fox News. "I mean, lie — it’s sort of like someone that’s, you know, in the sandbox that like lost the game and they’re just going to kick sand in someone’s face and say, ‘you liar.’ I mean, it’s like they lost, and so now they just are going to say, OK, the game, we didn’t like the game. So to me, it’s poor sportsmanship.”

In an interview Sunday with CBS News, Obama adviser David Axelrod said Romney's debate positions were "uprooted" from what he had said on the campaign trail.

"I think [the president] was a little taken aback at the brazenness with which Gov. Romney walked away from so many of the positions on which he's run, walked away from his record,” Axelrod said.

Ann Romney said she "knew right away" that her husband was winning the first presidential debate.

"I knew after the first question," she said. "I turned to my son after 50 minutes, and I gave him a nudge, and I said it’s 100 to zero right now. "

She added that she hoped his performance would attract the support of more female voters, a crucial demographic headed into Election Day and one that the president has thus far dominated.

Yeah, good luck with that. Hey Ann, if you don't want your husband called a liar, why don't you ask him to quit lying day in and day out on the campaign trail as well?

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David Brooks was apparently very enamored with Mitt Romney's flip flopping during the first presidential debate and believes that he is somehow not beholden to the right wing of his party because he shifted a bunch of his positions back to the so-called "center."

The reason Mitt Romney has gotten away from having one of the most lie-filled presidential campaigns and with being on every side of every issue without being punished in the court of public opinion for his mendacity, is exactly because of the likes of David Brooks and his ilk in the media who continually either excuse or praise his behavior, as Brooks did here.

Here's how he ended the segment above:

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Obama folks are saying it is a different Mitt Romney.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, they had a big decision to make six, eight months ago, which was, do we attack him as a right-wing ideologue or as a flip-flopper? They went ideologue. Now they're trying to switch to flip-flopper.

But I think he will have to continue that. It's working for him.

Yes folks, all that lying is working out splendidly. As I've heard a few people -- one being Randi Rhodes on her radio show -- point out after listening to Romney again 'pivot" on a number of his positions, if you're on a debate team at your high school or college, there are actually penalties for lying. You lie like a rug and reverse yourself and tell easily disprovable lies like we've been hearing from Romney for ages now, and you lose the debate just for that. Sadly, we don't have anything close to those standards in the corporate media or for presidential debates. There, the opposite is true and the lying is rewarded.

And if anyone actually believes that Romney won't be beholden to the right wing of his party if we're unfortunate enough to find him as our next president just because he's shifting some of his stances again to appease some low information voters who watched the debate, I'd say they're deluding themselves. All you have to do is look at how he's responded to them during this campaign and the fact that what moves he did make during that debate were empty rhetoric which either he or his staff started to immediately reverse course on as soon as he left the stage.

And speaking of Romney lying, here's more from Joe Conason, who did not excuse President Obama's performance, but expressed some of the same frustration I had while watching the debate -- Highly Debatable: The Big Liar’s Biggest Lies:

“It’s not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate – and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).

Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney’s barrage of blather and bull. The Republican’s own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the primaries. Romney executed that pivot on Wednesday night, but he could do so only by spouting literally dozens of provably fraudulent assertions — which various diligent fact-checkers proceeded to debunk. Read on...

And here's Steve Benen's latest with his update on the staggering number of lies told by Willard over the last thirty seven weeks -- Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVII.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Now that Mittens has gone on Fox and tried to Etch-a-Sketch his 47 percent comments, we've got the surrogates coming out to defend him. Here's the first one out of the gate this morning -- Campaign Surrogate Admits Romney Is Changing Positions Just To Win Votes:

Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) admitted that the GOP presidential candidates was changing his positions and moving towards the middle in order to win over voters, during an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Friday morning. Gingrey’s comments, reminiscent of Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s claim that Romney would “Etch-A-Sketch” his positions after the GOP primary, came in response to the candidate’s recent claim that his 47% remarks were “completely wrong.”

“[T]he Republican, the conservative candidate in the primary, is always going to lean right and come back to the center for the general, the opposite for the Democrat,” Gingrey explained. “That’s all you are seeing here. It is very typical. We strong conservatives understand that. There are a lot of undecideds in this country…we want those votes too. So, this is campaign strategy.”

Romney began moving towards the center during Wednesday night’s debate, distancing himself from his $5 trillion tax cut plan, embracing portions of his Massachusetts health care law as a model for the states, faulting Wall Street reform for providing “the biggest kiss that’s been given to New York banks,” and considering eliminating tax deductions for oil companies.

I can't believe they're trying this stunt so close to the election and think they're going to come across as anything other than craven liars, but then, that's all Romney has done since he started campaigning, so it's nothing new. The man has been on every side of every topic imaginable, so why stop now? He's gotten some push back like this interview from the media, but for the most part he's been given a pass for his behavior.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Last month, Fox News was trying to pretend they weren't even aware of the leaked tapes of Mitt Romney talking about his disdain for the 47 percent when they aired his late night press conference where he was desperately attempting some damage control. This Thursday evening on Fox, Romney was allowed by Sean Hannity to just rewrite his whole response. He didn't really mean what he said at all now.

Romney On 47 Percent: ‘I Said Something That’s Just Completely Wrong’:

Mitt Romney's secretly taped comment about "47 percent" of Americans never made an appearance in last night's presidential debate. But on Sean Hannity's show on Fox tonight, Mitt Romney was asked what his response would have been had the debate moderator Jim Lehrer, or President Obama, confronted the candidate about the tape.

Here's his answer, portions of which likely would have been prepared ahead of the debate:

"Well, clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of question and answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right. In this case I said something that's just completely wrong. And I absolutely believe however that my life has shown that I care about the 100 percent and that has been demonstarted throughout my life. This whole campaign is about the 100 percent. When I become president it'll be about helping the 100 percent."

As they noted, that's not at all what he said during that press conference, when he simply said his words were "not elegantly stated" and "off the cuff." Romney's changed his position so many times and told so many lies, I'm wondering when or if he's going to finally start suffering some real political damage for it. Sadly, a lot of that is going to be up to the media and whether the outlets other than Fox, who is actively campaigning for him, are going to start calling him out.

In the mean time, since he didn't get a chance to try to sanitize his remarks during the debate, he ran to Sean's loving arms at Fox to have them "Hannitized" instead.

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On this Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, former Bush-Cheney stategist Matthew Dowd did his best to give a little cover to Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign based on an endless string of perpetual lies by playing the 'both sides" are equally terrible game.

Sadly this is the type of false equivalency we see day in and day out from the talking heads in the media, but one of the more ridiculous ones. Since when is Romney refusing to release his tax returns the equivalent President Obama supposedly not saying we're going to have to have some "shared sacrifice" when it comes to balancing our budget?

First of all, it's not even true. Unfortunately President Obama has shown more than a willingness to make a deal with Republicans, much to the ire of much of his base, and cut some sort of "grand bargain." The side which has said they refuse to budge and raise a penny in taxes has been the Republicans. Sadly I think this was an exercise in these Villagers just dying for more austerity when our country cannot afford it and insisting on balancing the budget as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets, because Republicans have always hated them since the day any of them were enacted -- as much as it was trying to muddy the waters on Romney's lies. They want the New Deal dismantled so badly, they can taste it.

Republicans never cared one iota about the deficit when their hero George was blowing huge holes in it with his tax cuts and a couple of wars he left off the books. But now what a Democrat is back in office they're all screaming to the hills about how we're "broke."

And you've just gotta' love George Stephanopoulos here saying it's not a debate moderator's job to fact-check the people debating. Sadly that's the status quo these days, but it shouldn't be.

Transcript below the fold.

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CNN's Don Lemon took the Romney campaign to task for doubling down on their lies about the embassy attacks and their ridiculous claim that the Obama administration apologized to or sympathizes with the attackers. While I was glad to see yet another cable anchor take them to task for this latest lie, I have to wonder where Don Lemon has been, given the statement he made at the end of his "No Talking Points" segment here:

LEMON: President and the secretary of state were front and center. The optics were in their favor and they knew it. And quite frankly, there was nothing the Romney campaign could do to counter. Yet in an odd contrast, before the ceremony had even ended, Mitt Romney took to the stage in Ohio to bash the very people who were paying tribute to the fallen. And from my perch here at the anchor desk and to many of you watching at home, you wrote me and told me it felt weird, uncomfortable and sad. How can a man in a campaign who throws around the word patriot so often get this one so wrong?

Don, if you don't know the answer to that question, I've got some recommended reading for you via Steve Benen -- Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXIV.

The Romney campaign has been doing their best to set a world's record for the number of lies told during their campaign and you're asking how the latest one happened? Really? Maybe they'd have been doing less lying if the media had been doing a better job of calling them on it from the start, instead of constantly either just ignoring the lies, or using weasel words and being unwilling to call a lie a lie for fear of being called biased, or impolite, or...gasp, liberal.

Full transcript below the fold.

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At the so-called Values Voters Summit, which should have been called the lying-liars' wingnut summit, hypocrite and former gambling addict, Bill Bennett, came to Mitt Romney's defense and attempted to do some rehab for him after his disastrous response to the attacks on our embassies.

Bennett: The Press Attacked Romney on Libya and Tried to 'Kill This Truth in the Womb':

During his astonishingly smug introduction of Paul Ryan at the Values Voter Summit, self-styled "values czar" Bill Bennett blasted the Obama administration's response to the attacks in Libya and Egypt while hailing Mitt Romney's crass attempt to exploit them for political gain as a bold stand for truth.

After falsely claiming that the administration responded to the attacks "by shuddering and shaking and wondering at the consequences of our First Amendment," Bennett then declared that the fact that Romney's response was so widely pilloried as tactless and inappropriate by the media was itself proof that what he sad was true because the press sought to "kill this truth in the womb; something it is well-practiced at":

And as the Washington Post pointed out after noting this about his speech: Bill Bennett proposes new fact-checking, media-bashing formula. "Now there’s a fresh fact-checking model for you."

BENNETT: Whatever timing, wording or parsing one may want to bring up, one may want to suggest as an improvement on his remarks, his words had a shock effect, didn't they? They had a shock effect because they were true. When they are condemned so broadly, so almost universally, among the establishment press, it is likely that they are true.

Sorry Bill, but they were shocking because they were so easily disprovable, completely brazen and crass in how ill-timed they were, but hey, heaven forbid that should get in the way of your talking points here. Bennett had the feigned victimhood and the "liberal media bias" nonsense all wrapped up in one nice steaming sack of lies with this one. Nice "values" you've got there pal.

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Never mind that Mitt Romney and his running mate, Lyin' Ryan just both got their asses handed to them by Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, the lying went on undeterred the day after their convention ended by Willard. Here he is in Iowa, repeating the lie about "Obamacare" robbing Medicare, and pretending the $700 billion savings is going to harm seniors instead of helping to keep the program solvent.

And of course you can add to that the steaming pile of hypocrisy it takes for someone to sit there and claim they'd repeal a law based on something they passed themselves at the state level, and pretend that it's somehow evil incarnate now that a Democrat passed the same plan at the national level.

Steve Benen has another update with the latest list of Romney's lies from his weekly series here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXIII.