"Republican senator John McCain is still raising questions and hackles."

Hackles again! Can't get enough hackles in the big media... when the topic is Republicans.

A few days ago, the NYT lit into Ted Cruz: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles." And now, it's John McCain who's ruffling the feathers of big media, whose meme is The GOP died. So, whenever a Republican Senator is anything by docile and deferential, the Death-of-the-GOP meme must be swapped out long enough to discipline the outlier. The standard message is: Nobody likes you. Metaphor of choice: Hackles. You're raising hackles.

Here's my meme for that media discipline: When they say hackles, I say hacks.
The article with the headline quoted in this post title is at The Washington Post. Here's some of the text:

The 76-year-old will be 80 when he is again up for reelection in Arizona in 2016. “I have seen a number of occasions around here where people have stayed too long,” McCain said during a recent interview in his Russell Senate Building office. “I have seen people who were real giants in this institution deteriorate, and unfortunately, we remember them at the end.”

Endings matter in politics. If McCain is approaching the exit, this term could determine how he will be remembered. (“In the way people think of him,” former GOP Arizona senator Jon Kyl said, “in the near term, it matters a great deal.”)

Right now, like it or not, the five-term senator is stuck in “get off my lawn” territory, lashing out at his friend-turned-foe Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary; incessantly tugging at what McCain is convinced is a coverup of the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya; lambasting the president; and railing against indiscriminate defense cuts. If hard-core conservatives feel burned by McCain’s resurgent reform spirit, the media that he once called his “base” have essentially written him off as an angry and sour loser who once went through a maverick phase but has, in the words of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, gone on a “seven-year quest to negate every good thing he’d ever done.”

Wow. That's heavy-handed! They're saying: The GOP is supposed to be dead, and you're at the grave's edge, old man. Old, old man. You look old. Old men when the say what they mean and they say it with passion seem like they're saying "get off my lawn." Har harr. Old man! You're going to die soon.

You don't have to be a genius to extract the bias and see the real message: McCain is effective.

By the way, the hackles article about Cruz depicted him as too young — hadn't been around long enough to be speaking with intensity and passion. 

Hacks!

ADDED: I deleted a line that was in this post for a couple minutes: "by the way, hackles are not feathers." I based that on what I'd read — quickly — in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary when I wrote the "hackles" post about Cruz:

The hackles of a cock are erected when he is angry; hence with the hackles up, said also of a dog on the point of fighting when the hairs at the top of the neck stand up or of a hound when near the fox and on the point of killing him, also transf. of a man when aroused. Hence hackles is sometimes put for hair, whiskers, etc.

I pictured the cock's comb, but reading more of the OED entry "hackle," I see:

The long shining feathers on the neck of certain birds, as the domestic cock, peacock, pigeon, etc. Also, the feathers on the saddle of a cock. a cock of a different hackle, an opponent of a different character.

"Michelle Obama's posterior again the subject of a public rant."

That's an actual headline at The Washington Post. The article informs us of an incident involving something that was said by a previously unfamous high school football coach. The erstwhile nonentity, Bob Grisham, said:

"Fat butt Michelle Obama.... Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight."

For his sins, Grisham was suspended from his job, but that's clearly not enough punishment. He must be further humiliated. As if this is enforcing good taste in talking about the First Lady! The Washington Post published an article about her ass! Halfway through it gets to the provocative question:

But what is it with Michelle Obama’s critics and the fixation with her derriere?

Does using words like "posterior" and "derriere" make this okay? The Washington Post asked the question — I'll put it in plain English: Why are so many people talking about Michelle Obama's ass?

Now, the obvious answer would seem to be that she's made childhood obesity her issue, so that's somehow asking for comment on the subject of whether she herself is at all fat. (I disagree with that sort of critique, by the way. She's made the subject obesity and how it affects health, not mere fatness and how it affects beauty. For her issue, it's fine that she doesn't come across as thin. She looks robust and not health-impaired. If she looked thin, people would say she's pushing vanity-based dieting and insufficiently concerned with the scourge of anorexia.)

The WaPo article ignores that obvious answer but does not eschew obviousness. It goes racial.

The first lady’s critics “are reacting to the culture in which they’ve grown up or they are using it as a code to racialize Michelle Obama and remind people that she’s black,” says Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University.

"Sarah Palin: A political obituary."

The Washington Post teases its readers like this:



The headline at the link is different: "What Sarah Palin meant." She is gone. The living human shell that once contained Sarah Palin still walks the earth, but Sarah Palin, the repository of political meaning, is dead.

WaPo readers feel a chill of relief and ease down into another Chris Cillizza column. It's his column on the occasion of Palin's parting ways with Fox News, and he's got nothing new to say about her, other than that now, she's gone. Really dead. Ding dong.

"So far, few traditional farmers lining up to grow marijuana in Washington state, Colorado."

WaPo reports:

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law....

The Justice Department has not said whether it will try to block the two states from implementing their new laws, passed late last year.....

In addition, marijuana is a crop that can’t be insured, and federal drug law bars banks from knowingly serving the industry....

Both states are in the process of developing rules for a legal marijuana industry....

How can state rules possibly make the industry legal? They can only make chaos that might conceivably move Congress to change the federal law. I don't see that coming any time soon. The Justice Department might say something encouraging, but will the next President's Justice Department stick with whatever position Eric Holder embraces?

Even if you felt sure you wouldn't be prosecuted, would you want to sign up on an official list as someone who is conspicuously committing an ongoing felony? Would you switch from a legal crop and expose yourself like that? And even if some farmers would go ahead and violate the criminal law — presumably because the upside profits are high — does the inability to buy crop insurance and use banks wreck the whole idea?

Dozens of marijuana experts, who have been growing plants for medical use or in secret for illegal use, are educating state officials about the potential for the crop. Probably 95 percent of those people choose to grow their plants indoors, despite higher costs, to control light and temperature, improve quality and increase yields....

Indoor crops generally allow for up to three harvests per season, compared to just one harvest for an outdoor crop, and allow for easier security measures. 

So "traditional farmers" have an entirely separate reason for not responding to the new program. You can't be growing marijuana amber-waves-of-grain-on-the-fruited-plain style. This stuff will be grown in big warehouses, pulling in loads of electricity for intense lighting and heavily guarded with guns! guns! guns!

Oh, but here's a little old lady, "Gail Besemer, who grows flowers and vegetables near Deming, Wash., [who] has expressed interest in a producers’ license."

Besemer already has three hoop houses, which are essentially temporary greenhouses, but could see expanding her business slightly to grow marijuana for a local clientele in northwest Washington.

Slightly! Flowers! Grandma!

However, “I’m concerned about druggies invading my property — ne’er-do-wells invading my property to steal, to get free dope,” she said. “Security would be an issue.”

Where do you get off with that contempt for the consumers of the product you want to grow? Seems to me, these are your people. Don't insult them.

“My family is not particularly excited about me being interested in this. But if someone has an integrated farm, growing a number of different crops, I would think it would be a high profit plant,” she said. “Taxation and security might get in the way of profits, and it might end not being so profitable.”

Yeah, you'd better think about it, lady. There's a reason it's a high profit plant. If it weren't for all these problems, any idiot could grow his own in his house. Take away the obstacles, and it's not a business at all. Which removes half of the attraction for the government, since there won't be anything to tax if there isn't a big rules-heavy structure burdening business. This isn't a game for the little old lady with her flowers and hoop houses. But that's the screwy, sentimental anecdote The Washington Post ties to plant in our brain.

The Washington Post has a system of badges for commenters.

You can nominate yourself or someone else for high-quality comments in the following categories, and if WaPo agrees, your comments will appear with one of these icons next to your name:

A badge for comments on politics and national affairs.
A badge for comments on Washington area news and trends.
A badge for comments on Washington area sports events and news.
A badge for comments on international affairs.
A badge for those trained by the National Weather Service as Skywarn Spotters.

If I could do a system of badges for the blog commenting here at Althouse, I might like having 5 different badges, but I'd have different categories! Help me fantasize about what the badges could be. And feel free to provide graphic design for the badges.

Ridiculous WaPo headline + photo combination.

"A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House bid"?

He doesn't look detached or wounded and he's obviously not in seclusion while riding a roller coaster. The text emotes:

Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver transplant soon: “I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment.”

The media never got Romney, did they? WaPo is presenting "I’ll change your bedpan" as abject and pathetic. Are they only pretending not to understand or does it truly escape them?

"Everytime I think the Democratic race card players could not get more vile..."

"... more deranged, more patronizingly demeaning to blacks, someone manages to defy even my vivid imagination."

This time, it is the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, which issued a truly amazing screed... claiming that critics of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are motivated by race and sex, as demonstrated by the facts that most are male and a significant percentage come from former confederate states....

It's an obvious scheme — actually, I am not amazed — to scare conservatives into believing that there are some Democrats who may not be criticized. If you accept the pushback, it will occur again and again. It's bullying, really. The key is to recognize it and confront it soundly, or it will go on and on.

Everyone holding power is open to criticism. Anyone resting on the argument that black/female politicians cannot be criticized is actually arguing that black/female individuals should be excluded from power. That is the racist argument that should be moved to the center. That is my answer to the bullying.

Nate Silver says the polls say "Romney's Momentum Has Stopped."

Because, you must understand, "a body in motion tends to stay in motion. That is, it ought to imply that a candidate is gaining ground in the race — and, furthermore, that he is likely to continue to gain ground."

Romney peaked last Friday, and the "slightly favorable trend" is Obama's. Obama's chance of winning is, as of yesterday, 71%, up from 68.1% Tuesday.

By the way, there is a 10.5% chance that Wisconsin's electoral votes will be decisive, making us the third most-likely-to-be-decisive state (after Ohio and Virginia).

And The Washington Post just endorsed Obama:

[E]conomic head winds and an uncompromising opposition explain some of [Obama's] failures — and render that much more impressive the substantial accomplishments of Mr. Obama’s first term....

What kind of case has Mr. Romney made for himself?... The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes.

ADDED: There's no way to know what Obama really believes either. It's mentally unbalanced to allow such pedestrian realities to make you sad.

WaPo presents Obama's failure to maintain eye contact as "a successful technique."

Of all the pro-Obama reframing I've read in the press, this may be the most ridiculous. It's Sarah Kaufman — WaPo's Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic — purporting to answer the question "who won the battle of body language" in the second presidential debate (boldface added):

“In the last four years you’ve cut permits and licenses on federal lands and federal waters in half,” Romney charged, turning to his opponent and hacking at the air.

“Not true,” Obama called out, eyes blazing. Then he looked away.



“How much did you cut the licenses by?” Romney continued, stepping closer to Obama. His finger jabbed the air. Obama tried to cut him off. Romney kept coming at him, and Obama got out of his chair, his head high and tilted back a bit, which felt like a silent taunt. (Say it again — I dare ya.)

Romney stepped forward, staring at Obama. The two men locked eyes.

You held your breath.

Obama looked away, and you let it out.

Time and again, as the tension built, Obama defused it with his eyes. It was a successful technique. He seemed to have decided that he would match Romney move for move, going so far at one point as to step toward moderator Candy Crowley’s desk so he was exactly the same distance away from it as his opponent...

Obama... didn’t match his opponent’s chilling gaze. Romney wanted a staring contest, but Obama didn’t take that bait. He shunted it aside, cutting his eyes to the audience. Or he’d diminish the threat with a joke...

Obama made a show of avoiding his opponent. He looked to Crowley with a grin, widened it to show his teeth, let out a chuckle. Finally, in a smooth legato, he delivered a crippling zinger: “You know, I — I don’t look at my pension.” He shot Romney a look, and just as quickly glanced away. He addressed the punch line to the audience:

“It’s not as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long.”

It’s not as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long. Great line, taken out of context, in a who-is-more-macho contest.

But Obama knew, perhaps intuitively, perhaps by virtue of a lifetime of guardedness, how to avoid escalation.

He simply looked away.

Obama has a problem maintaining eye contact. Romney proved his dominance over and over. And the dance critic says Obama won with his dazzling grin and pirouetting away from confrontation.

Tell Putin, after the election I will have more flexibility.

"WaPo Dept. of Burying the Lede: Jesse Jackson Jr. thought he was reincarnated chariot driver."

Hmmm.

Maybe WaPo thinks it's fakery, this evidence of mental illness that's being dished out.

Guess how mentally ill Jesse Jackson Jr. is:
	Quite insane.
	He's got some problems but not enough to escape responsibility for any crimes.
	He's as sane as the next person and faking to get sympathy and mercy.
pollcode.com free polls

The NYT kept the Libya hearing off the front page because "It’s three weeks before the election and it’s a politicized thing..."

Why, yes, it is a politicized thing, isn't it? Oh... you didn't mean your coverage of the news, did you? The NYT managing editor Dean Baquet was explaining to the NYT public editor why the decision was made to go with the 6 stories they did put on the front page...

... one on affirmative action at universities, one on Lance Armstrong’s drug allegations, two related to the presidential election, one on taped phone calls at JPMorgan Chase, and one on a Tennessee woman who died of meningitis.

Baquet said: “I didn’t think there was anything significantly new in it.” And: “There were six better stories."

They put the story on page 3.

To be fair: The NYT put the original news of the Watergate break-in on an inside page. Was it page 18? Sorry, I'm not finding that fact as easily as I think I should. I did come up with the information that when Deep Throat/Mark Felt wanted to communicate with the Washington Post, Bob "Woodward’s home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20."

So the myth of the inside pages of the New York Times looms large in the annals of presidential scandal.

Is the Libya scandal as big as Watergate? The substance of it may be much worse than Watergate, and the Obama administration seems not to have heeded the old Watergate lesson that it's the cover-up that gets you, but if Obama loses the election, that will limit the dimension of the scandal. If he wins the election — especially if it's very close or contested in some way — Republicans may work themselves into a frenzy going after Obama. Remember that Richard Nixon was reelected after the Watergate scandal broke. The break-in was 5 months before the election, and the first stories had come out. The next 2 years were hell for Nixon, and he was drummed out of office. And Nixon had won by a landslide.

Just how much liberal bias is there in the Washington Post news and opinion?

Asks the WaPot ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton. He talks about the bias people see in the new articles and then moves on to the columnists:

One aspect of The Post that particularly irks conservatives is the columnists who appear in print and online in news positions (as opposed to those on the editorial and op-ed pages and the online Opinions section). With the exception of Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza, who cover politics in a nonpartisan way, the news columnists almost to a person write from left of center.

Balz and Cillizza are nonpartisan? That assertion screams liberal bias.

Is it any wonder that if you’re a conservative looking for unbiased news — and they do; they don’t want only Sean Hannity’s interpretation of the news...

They. That's telling.

... that you might feel unwelcome, or dissed or slighted, by the printed Post or the online version? And might you distrust the news when it’s wrapped in so much liberal commentary?

Yeah, they need to get a lot of conservative columnists if they want to get away with doing the news liberal-style. Isn't that the Wall Street Journal method?

Does "exceptionalism" = "swagger" in the mind of the Washington Post?

"Obama, Romney differ on need for U.S. 'swagger.'" That's the headline on the WaPo front page now, linking to a story with the headline "Obama, Romney differ on U.S. exceptionalism."

The word put in quotes is "swagger," and that ought to mean somebody said that. The word appears once in the article. After a few sentences on Romney's "far tougher approach to the world" and Obama's emphasis on "diplomacy and partnerships, and American assistance where wanted without heavy-handed demands from the top," we get:

“It’s very clear in reading and hearing what the two candidates have to say that, at least rhetorically, there would be a significant change under President Romney,” said Karl F. Inderfurth, an assistant secretary of state in the Bill Clinton administration who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Inderfurth, who is not working with either campaign, said some of the “swagger” of the George W. Bush administration would return to U.S. foreign policy under Romney.

“Obama has tried to tone that down, and he has faced pushback for doing so,” he said.

So, apparently Inderfurth used the word "swagger," perhaps only to characterize the feeling some people got from George Bush (that cowboy), but Romney has never — as far as I can see — said we need "swagger," and Romney's manner seems wholly different from George Bush's. It seems modest and mannerly. The word "swagger" seems more applicable to Obama, who's been killing enemies with drones and likes to point out that he killed bin Laden.

It's rather annoying to see WaPo quote a supposed expert telling us what's "very clear" in the rhetoric and then slap the label "swagger" on it. Show us the rhetoric, and let us judge. I'm displaying your rhetoric, so my readers can judge.

Until now, the campaign has been concerned mostly with the economy, and foreign policy has been viewed largely as a strength for the president, who was behind the killing of Osama bin Laden.

But the recent unrest in the Muslim world — revealed in the attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans — has exposed Obama politically and been seized upon by Romney as a product of what he calls the president’s weak engagement of the world.

So, I suspect, you're putting out this article, with that front-page headline, in an effort to help shore up the fortunes of your favored candidate. Let's find a way to scare voters... equate Romney with Bush!

The conflicting philosophies Obama and Romney outlined this week are consistent in large part with their life experiences.

Those backgrounds have given each a different vantage on the world — a former chief executive’s broad-strokes view of how it should work and a former community organizer’s details-matter assessment — and different opinions about the best way to promote U.S. interests at a time of fiscal constraint at home and rapid change abroad.

What?! You're just going to make generalizations about the 2 men based on what they did in the parts of their careers when they were not politicians, and Romney's long career as a business executive is translated into a "broad-strokes view of how it should work" and Obama's short bit of time performing the little-examined role of "community organizer" shows he's a details guy! And the suggestion is that Obama actually got things done while Romney floated above it all with ideas about what "should work." Businessfolk can just believe in big dreams? Is there any evidence at all the Romney didn't have to pay attention to the facts on the ground as he went about these business enterprises, that he didn't get tested over and over by whether things actually did work?


If we keep going and click over to page 2 and scroll halfway down (which I think very few readers will do), we get to more contrasts between Obama and Bush, with Obama the "realist, free of the 'freedom agenda' ideology." Obama doesn't talk freedom ideology?

Obama’s choice of force... is the drone strike, which he has expanded greatly from the Bush years on similarly contested legal ground.

So he is like Bush. Even more than Bush.

[Obama's] realism has often felt arid to those trying to understand it, too calculating and lacking in passion for U.S. values and power. This is the vein Romney has sought to tap.

Lest you think Romney might have an advantage here, please picture him draining blood from one of Obama's veins. (The normal metaphor using "vein" has to do with mineral deposits, and the verb should be "mine" not "tap.")

"What's behind all the... hype?" — asks the Washington Post, revealingly.

The WaPo seems to be brimming with optimism about the sunny prospects of our handsome President. Look at him striding forward silhouetted against blue skies.



But look closely, there across the top. Yes, the new poll — Lead widens! — and there's Elizabeth Warren — Gloves are off! — but then the facade slips. See it?

"What's behind all this kale hype?"

Yeah! Hype! I keep seeing it everywhere! Ridiculous promotion! Ridiculous promotion of... a vegetable. You know, that one: Kale!!! Why's everybody talking about kale?!! Kale! It's on everyone's lips! Kale! We're gonna live forever! Kale! I'm gonna learn how to fly! On Air Force One!!!11!!1! I got more in me, and you can set it free, I can catch the moon in my hands. Don't you know who I am? Barack Obama. And Kale! We're gonna live forever. I feel it coming together. People will see me and cry. Kale! I'm gonna make it to heaven! He went to Harvard not Yale! Kale!

And have you heard? WE'RE EATING MORE BEETS!

A WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" is delighted to travel to Madison, Wisconsin.

"We’d always heard about that mythically quirky place called Madison, a free-spirited land with far fewer chain stores and BlackBerry addicts than Washington," enthuses Emily Wax. Man, living in Washington, D.C. really lowers your standards of authenticity.

Influenced by the 2011 documentary “Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old-Fashioned Experience,” Wax goes to the restaurant called Old Fashioned, which is fairly new, and not one of the funky old places I think of as "supper clubs." She eats some fried cheese curds and says she has no idea how to tell whether cheese curds are especially good. (Answer: They squeak. Except they don't squeak if they're fried.)

She drinks the cocktail called an Old Fashioned, and then on another day she has another Old Fashioned and proclaims "How Madison!" On another day, "my husband and I headed for a romantic dinner at the sexy, dimly lit Tornado Steakhouse," which supposedly "has a wonderful menu."

And so did she achieve it, that sense of authenticity infusing the city, of delight with mythical quirkiness all around her, of free-spirited energy rushing through everything alive? Myself, I'm over-indulging in deep-fried prose tonight and wondering if I need to see a surgeon to get my neural pathways reconnected. I'm losing it somehow, as I gaze out on the treetops of Madison.

Over 3,000 comments on WaPo's blogpo "Harry Reid: Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years."

It's gotten this bad, the shameless, idiotic, desperate efforts to push Obama: passing along something Harry Reid said "a person who had invested with Bain Capital" said. Well, HuffPo had already published it. It's a fact that it's a rumor. Just reporting the existence of a rumor, maybe. Pathetic!

Here's one of the highest rated comments:

It may appear that Reid's claim that Romney paid no taxes for ten years is extreme and poorly sourced -- however, if Mitt thinks his comment is unfair, all he has to do to make Reid appear a liar and a fool is to release his own tax returns, which is totally within his power. 

While not having paid ANY taxes for TEN years is a sufficient cause for Mitt to not release them, it is not a necessary cause. There could be many other things he wishes to hide, from offshore tax shelters, to very low tax rates, to connections to Bain Capital actions he wishes to hide from. There is only one thing certain about Romney's tax returns: HE KNOWS that there is SOMETHING in them which is disqualifying, that there is something that dare not face the light of day.

That's the narrative. All you have to do is to track people into thinking like that, and Harry Reid knows it.

Liking and hating Obama.

Here are 2 articles on the front page of washingtonpost.com right now:

1. "Romney’s problem? Americans don’t like him as much as Obama, polls say."

2. "What drives the Obama doubters and haters?"

There's an inane amount of talk about liking/hating Obama. What's going on? Is it a struggle over race at some deep psychic level? Is it the media talking about race without talking about race?

More context, from the second article:

What drives [the haters]? Some of it can be attributed to the give-and-take of today’s harsh ideological divide. Some of it can be explained by the way misinformation spreads virally to millions of like-minded people, reinforcing preconceptions. And some of it, I believe, arises out of fears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism.

It's no accident that the last word of the article is "racism." If you read that paragraph quickly, the impression left in your mind — or maybe not your mind but many minds — is: "What drives [the haters]... blah blah blah blah ... racism!

Race isn't mentioned in the first article, but there's talk of that "it's okay" ad:

Sounding a bit like a sympathetic psychotherapist, a recent Republican National Committee ad acknowledged Americans’ affection for Obama and offered them permission to move on.

“He tried. You tried,” the announcer said. “It’s okay to make a change.”

Is the "it's okay" message massaging our racial sensitivities?

WaPo Fact Checker gives the Obama campaign 3 "Pinocchios" for using Bain's SEC documents to portray Romney as a criminal.

Glenn Kessler went back over the story (which yesterday he characterized as already well-studied and rejected). Excerpt:

We readily admit that there is grey area about Romney’s involvement with Bain in the 1999-2002 period, because his future post-Olympics role had not been settled and the future of Bain Capital was in flux. Some have seized on the SEC documents as evidence, but we think there are two stronger pieces of evidence that trump these random filings.

Indeed, if someone wanted to make a criminal case, why quibble with ancient SEC documents? In 2011, Romney, as a presidential candidate, filed a public financial disclosure form, under pain of perjury, that stated:

“Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”

You can see Romney’s signature, on the first page, in which he states: “I certify that statements I have made on this form and all attached schedules are true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge.” If Romney lied on this form, that would be a felony.

Moreover, there is another document — the 2002 Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission report that certified that Romney could run for governor.... [A]n official state investigation concluded that Romney no longer worked at Bain as of early 1999, and also was working “12 hours a day, six days a week” on the Olympics from 1999 to 2002. That also would seem to trump the SEC filings....

We were tempted to award this claim Four Pinocchios, but the documents with his signature leave some room for inquiry. But, overall, they shrink in importance to the other evidence cited above.

Still, if the Obama campaign wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should immediately lodge a complaint about Romney’s financial disclosure form, filed just last year, rather than try to mislead people about potential violations in relatively unimportant SEC documents.

ADDED: I strongly disagree with that last sentence. An incumbent President running for reelection should not unleash his executive powers to hound his opponent with a criminal investigation. That is not preferable. There's no decent "put your money where your mouth is" argument for that. It's not his money, it's the authority of the United States government, and that must not be appropriated for political gain. Within the political arena, he can make whatever arguments he wants over any evidence that's out there about his opponent, and he incurs the risks that people will judge his arguments weak or even disgusting and dishonest. That's the process and it's working. Don't push the candidate into some other, abusive process!

WaPo Fact Checker is "considering whether to once again take a deeper look at this, though it really feels like Groundhog Day again."

It's the old Romney-departure-from-Bain story:

There appears to be some confusion about how partnerships are structured and managed, or what SEC documents mean. (Just because you are listed as an owner of shares does not mean you have a managerial role.)

Why's everyone digging around in this again: "Millions of dollars of attack ads by the Obama campaign are hanging in the balance. "

ADDED: Here's how the Obama campaign is exploiting this story in email received at 8:07 pm this evening. The subject line is "Romney's Bain lie exposed":

The more everyone finds out about Mitt Romney's finances, the more questions they have. Perhaps that's why he's hiding as much as he thinks he can get away with.

Today, The Boston Globe reported that Romney was still running Bain Capital two years after he claims he left the firm, directly contradicting his campaign's denial that he was involved in deals that led to layoffs, bankruptcies, and American jobs getting shipped overseas.

It's a pattern of secrecy, and this is just the latest example of him trying to hide the truth from voters. There are a number of issues in play right now -- questions to which voters deserve answers:


1) Why won't Romney come clean about his taxes? He seems intent on being the first presidential nominee in over 30 years to keep his financial records hidden from the American people. Earlier this year, Governor Romney hedged when asked if he'd follow the precedent set by his own father, George Romney, and release multiple years of tax returns. After pressure from fellow Republicans, Romney released one year -- 2010 -- which raised many more questions that full disclosure would answer. Here's why that matters: Presidents make important decisions for this country, and Americans ought to know the motivations behind those decisions.

2) Who are the secret supporters raising millions for his campaign? I'm not talking about the shadowy outside groups -- I'm talking about the people in charge of raising money for Romney's campaign and the Republican Party. Romney refuses to reveal his fundraising "bundlers," something even George W. Bush did when he ran for president. Why is that important? Because we'd never know whether these "bundlers" were getting special consideration in decisions made in a Romney White House.

3) What's up with this corporation in Bermuda? One of the Romneys' assets revealed in his 2010 tax returns is a corporation that had previously been transferred to a blind trust the day before he took office as governor. The single year of taxes he's released shows that at some point it was moved back into Romney's sole ownership. What's going on? And, crucially, what's the purpose of having a corporation in a known tax haven like Bermuda in the first place?

4) Why did he have a Swiss bank account? Even his closest allies, like Republican House Speaker John Boehner, can't explain why any American running for president would have ever kept his money in a secretive Swiss bank account.


5) When exactly did he stop running Bain? Today's Globe story sheds light on the two years he now claims he wasn't running the firm. According to legal documents Mitt Romney signed and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was the sole owner, chairman of the board, CEO, and president of Bain Capital, drawing a salary as an executive until late 2001, and legally responsible for decisions the company made until that time. The Romney campaign denies this report is true, but the SEC documents with Gov. Romney's signature are hard to refute. If he was in charge, it means his role in deals that led to layoffs, bankruptcies, and outsourcing is much deeper than he has admitted to date.

Please forward this email and share this with everyone you know who cares about the outcome of this election.

Everyone deserves the right to judge for themselves whether Romney's motivations, experience, and perspective are what they want in a president. But Mitt Romney doesn't want people to have the information they need to make those judgments.

More to come,

Stephanie

Stephanie Cutter
Deputy Campaign Manager
Obama for America

WaPo's Eric Wemple credits Andrea Mitchell with airing the full context of Romney's "Wawa" remark...

... and seems to accept MSNBC's refusal to give Mitchell's critics a real apology:

In the unedited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks. And in MSNBC’s edited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks.

In a statement sent to me this afternoon, MSNBC stands behind the editing: “MSNBC did not edit anything out of order or out of sequence and at no time did we intend to deceive our viewers.”

But the video at the link, which bills itself as the "full Romney video" is still clipped out of context. It's not "unedited" as Wemple asserts! It lacks the anecdote about the optometrist dealing with government bureaucracy, which is why Romney told the Wawa story: for contrast. The point wasn't: gee whiz, technology is amazing. The point was: Government, unlike private business, lacks the incentives to make things easy and efficient. Yes, the new clip contains a summary to that effect, but the rest of the context is missing. The effort is to make Romney sound as silly and scattered as possible. Under criticism, some of the context was put back. But it was only enough to try to palm it off as context, and the Washington Post is promoting the palm-off.

Look at the full text compared to the MSNBC clip (and compare it to what Wemple displays as the "unedited" clip). It's actually a coherent, incisive speech and there's nice rapport with the audience!

Anyone not blinded by a wishful desire for Obama to win knows that Obama would never have been edited like that. And if somehow a short clip (like MSNBC's original Wawa clip) had gone out and gotten mocked, the mainstream media would have fallen over itself getting out the longest, most favorable form of the context, used the occasion to promote whatever point Obama was making and to praise him for his brilliance and eloquence in making that point, and denounced right-wing media for its nefarious out-of-context attack.

Wemple does go on to say that Wawa really is in the forefront of technology here, and it actually wasn't dumb to get gaga for Wawa. Fine. That too. But the key point — maybe the central theme of Romney's campaign — is that competition, free markets, and capitalism work and he's the guy who really knows about it. He's a pretty exciting candidate when you think about the expertise he's offering to bring to running the federal bureaucracy. That's what the mainstream media doesn't want people to see. Only Obama is exciting. Only Obama is brilliant. But no! Both candidates are brilliant and exciting. The question is which way do you want to go?