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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:

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Continuing that fine Republican tradition of saying one thing and doing another, Florida Gov. Rick Scott showed his compassion for his state's homeless by slashing the programs that help them. Think Progress has more:

In a state that is near the top of the national chart in food insecurity, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) took time this holiday to pass out Thanksgiving dinner to about 1,000 families at a shelter in East Naples.

The shelter’s program fed about 7,000 families last week, with roughly 200 volunteers packing and distributing meals.“I care completely about all these programs,” said Scott while handing out food.

However, he possesses a singular way of showing it, as his sweeping budget cuts this year “slashed funding to some veteran and farm surplus programs that helped the homeless.” To justify those cuts, Scott simply explained, “all the programs are very important, but nobody wants their taxes to go up”:

“I care completely about all these programs,” said Scott, whose budget cuts earlier this year slashed funding to some veteran and farm surplus programs that helped the homeless.“All the programs are very important, but nobody wants their taxes to go up,” Scott explained, noting that businesses also can help spur the economy. “They’ve got to grow. We’ve got to make this a place people can do well.”

One Jacksonville homeless shelter official noted that Scott “zeroed out all homeless funding” — $7 million worth — in his budget proposal. That funding supported programs dedicated to homelessness prevention, housing initiatives, and programs that “re-house” people once they’re on the street.

“Not only that, he took out the line items so it can never be funded again,” said the official.

Did you know that Florida has the second-highest population of homeless veterans? Seventeen thousand of them, and Scott cut their services, too. I was in Florida last month, and I didn't meet one single person who wants to reelect him, so at least it's likely that he's a one-termer.

(h/t Mark Fiore)

Now, you knew they weren't going to allow any more cuts to the military, right? They'll tie themselves in knots to cut anything but. And why the hell are we talking about deficit reduction during a depression, anyway? (Call it a recession if you want, but I don't agree.) So if there's one thing we can count on, it's that any deep cuts will come out of things that benefit people like us, because Democrats are compulsively cooperative with their oppressors:

WASHINGTON — As pessimism mounted this week over the ability of a bipartisan Congressional committee to agree on a deficit-reduction plan, lawmakers began taking steps to head off the large cuts in Pentagon spending that would automatically result from the panel’s failure.

Members of both parties and both chambers said they increasingly feared that the 12-member committee would be unable to bridge deep partisan divisions and find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction as required under the law that raised the debt ceiling and created the committee in the summer.

As talks sputtered, one panel member publicly lamented that the process was not working, and the group was chastised by a bipartisan group of budget experts (Editor's note: No progressive experts invited, of course!) at a public hearing for failing to show progress. Several members of Congress, especially Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, are readying legislation that would undo the automatic across-the-board cuts totaling nearly $500 billion for military programs, or exchange them for cuts in other areas of the federal budget.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has drafted a bill that would replace the military reductions that would occur under a process known in Congress as sequestration with 5 percent cuts to other, unspecified parts of the federal budget, and a 10 percent decrease in pay for members of Congress. In the House, similar measures are being assembled.

A little more than a year ago, I attended the AmericaSpeaks town hall, which was billed as an opportunity for Americans to have their say in the America's budget decisions. I was so impressed by how informed and assertive my fellow Americans were about standing up for other people, and that's what I wrote.

What I didn't say was how curious I was about how and why the event was put together. Yes, I knew that Pete Peterson had funded it, but who was pushing it? Who was this AmericaSpeaks group, anyway?

I talked to a knowledgeable insider (someone who'd worked on the issue for decades), and he told me AmericaSpeaks didn't initiate the project - it came from the White House. In fact, he told me, Austen Goolsbee had been tasked by the White House with bringing public opinion in line with supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

I didn't write about it then because my source wasn't willing to go on the record. But under the current circumstances, I thought I'd tell readers, and remind you all to take what you hear about the need to cut these programs with a very large grain of salt.

And by the way? People's opinions on what to cut haven't changed!

For the first time in a long time, I might have some faith in America. Because no matter how many times the facilitators of this event (which was funded heavily by Pete Peterson, the conservative billionaire who wants to cut Social Security) tried to steer us toward cutting Social Security and Medicare, the 3500 or so people who took part in this national town hall weren’t buying it. Sure, there were Fox News junkies here and there, and some cautious, low-information voters who kinda-sorta disagreed, but the majority who attended seemed to have their own ideas about how to solve the deficit “problem.”

You know what most of them wanted to do? Soak the rich — and cut defense spending. (Are you listening, President Obama?) I thought maybe it was just my table, but when they tabulated the results, it was pretty much the same throughout the crowded ballroom of several hundred attendees. (Whew!)

And the national tabulation from the 19 cities across the country showed pretty similiar results. In fact, the only places in which it varied from a progressive agenda were on more complex, less familiar topics like the tax deductions businesses take to keep jobs in this country. (“They leave anyway!” my tablemates exclaimed.)That, in spite of a pretty sophisticated, full-scale marketing push.

When you arrived, you were given a glossy information packet and asked to fill out a questionnaire about core values. Now, clearly this approach had been focus-grouped, because the common theme seized on by the moderators was our desire to leave a better world for the next generation. (Apparently they thought this would translate to a spirit of self-sacrifice. Hah!)

When we talked about the economic recovery, I said the deficit had nothing to do with it. “It’s only a ‘crisis’ when the GOP is out of power and they want to cut entitlements,” I said. “The top economists are all saying you don’t worry about the deficit in a major recession, so why would we even accept this premise?” (I think I made our facilitator nervous. So did the guy who said he was worried about a double-dip recession.) It was also a happy moment when we pointed out that they forgot to include the possibility of cutting the estate tax in their budget estimates. That, and the loud snickers throughout the room when our hosts showed a video starring Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg.)

Even more heartening, though, was how carefully people looked at the questions. You know what else they said? They’d rather see no cuts at all in any social programs than give Congress the go-ahead to slash them. They don’t trust them to look out for the interests of the vulnerable over the corporate interests. (Hell, one guy at my table even quoted Karl Marx! “Shouldn’t matter who said it if it’s a good idea,” he said.)

You know what everyone said they supported instead of Medicare cuts? Medicare for all! In fact, people wanted to spend more money on all social programs!

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Good. Maybe more people will understand how important this is when they hear it from a nonpartisan group like AARP:

AARP understands the urgent need to reduce the deficit and control government spending, but we also recognize that imposing arbitrary spending limits on Medicare and Social Security could significantly reduce benefits to current and future retirees.

The proposed limits on Medicare could force seniors to pay higher insurance premiums and co-pays, and threaten their choice of doctors and hospitals.

Imposing limits on Social Security could lead to cuts that could deny seniors the money they count on to pay for essentials such as groceries, utilities and prescription drugs.

Cutting Social Security would also break our nation's commitment to provide the benefits our seniors have rightfully earned.

Instead of making harmful cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Congress should cut down waste, fraud and inefficiency throughout the health care system and target other wasted and inefficient spending, including spending through the tax code in the form of loopholes and other unnecessary subsidies.

AARP urges members and all Americans to contact their representatives in congress and tell them to oppose arbitrary limits that could force dangerous cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Contact your member of congress now!

Doug Smith has a good piece over at Naked Capitalism about the $88 million budget cut for HUD housing counselors, calling it "a stiletto in the back of sane housing markets":

Do the math. The market has too much supply and too little demand. The trends point to even worse un-affordability down the road – meaning more supply and less demand. So, as said, even the empirically wrong-headed extend and pretend strategy requires efforts aimed at reversing instead of exacerbating this picture.

Among other things, reduced housing supply means, as Yves has repeatedly pointed out, doing principal modifications that are actually affordable – which, in turn, requires a new, separate underwriting effort. And, the same applies on the demand side: only careful underwriting leads to affordable, sustainable purchases – and the asset values that go with that.

The banks do not know how to do this work. Nor, as long as they seek usurious rents, will they ever learn.

But non-profit affordable housing groups do know how to do this work. They know how to prepare people to buy homes that will remain affordable. They know how to help people find affordable solutions to avoiding foreclosure and staying in homes. And, finally, the dedicated, professional foreclosure counselors know how to help people who cannot afford to stay accept that reality and find the most humane route out of their homes.

Efficiency, as we’ve come to learn, is not part of the efficient market hypothesis. Unsustainable and predatory returns grounded in ignoring the balance sheet not to mention tail and even non-tail risks – yes, those are part of the efficient market hypothesis. But efficiency itself? Not so much.

But the self-serving proponents of this false theory remain in control. So, instead of rational, efficient capital finding its way to high performing organizations who know how to prepare and underwrite home ownership that avoids a plague of delinquency and foreclosure, our purveyors of capital prefer the casino, come what may. As a result, high performing groups like the excellent non-profit housing counselors –groups with strong track records of low delinquency and foreclosure — depend on government funding and private charity. Yet, the grown ups in government now stupidly endanger many of these groups instead of providing even more support for their economy-saving efforts. It is an upside down world.

Apologists for Obama and the Congress often speak soberly about taking scalpels to budgets as part of shared sacrifice and tough decisions. In this as so many other cases, that is arrogant and ignorant nonsense. These decisions affecting less than one one-thousandth of one percent of the federal budget are not ‘tough’ – at least on those who make them. Which means there’s nothing shared by the decision makers in the sacrifices that will now get worse. Finally, these are most certainly not scalpels. They are stilettos in the backs of everyday Americans and the people of good performing organizations who serve them — who see and treat them as customers instead of income-and-asset targets to be strip-mined. But, then, the ill-got profits from strip mining are more likely than the meager, shrinking resources of everyday consumers to find their way into the political war chests of a post-Citizens United oligarchy.

You know what the administration reminds me of? Those crazy, dysfunctional households that are in utter chaos before Jo, the Super Nanny, arrives. "We have to let the kids stay up all night because if we don't, then they'll scream and no one will get any sleep." Reinforcement of negative behaviors to avoid short-term disruption because YOU DON'T HAVE CONTROL OF YOUR CHILDREN.

So every time they scream, you give them what they want because you don't know how to say no. Any lessons there, I wonder? Of course not.

Senior Advisor to the President David Plouffe conceded this morning that some of the cuts the White House agreed to in order to avoid a government shutdown were draconian. In an interview on “This Week” with anchor Christiane Amanpour, he called the cuts both “draconian” and “historic.”

“The Senate majority called what the Speaker was asking for, just in February,” Amanpour said, “he called it ‘draconian.’” She pointed it the cuts were now being called historic. “I mean, which is it? Is it draconian yesterday and historic today?” Amanpour pressed.

“Well,” Plouffe replied, “some of the cuts were draconian. Because it’s not just the number, it’s what composes the number.”

“So in this budget deal,” he said, “the President, Senator Reid, you know we protected medical research, community health centers, kids in Head Start. We were not going to sign off on a deal that cut those things,” Plouffe said. “The President was comfortable with the composition of this deal that, again, there were some tough cuts in there…but in these fiscal times, everyone is going to have to make tough decisions. So it was a historic deal for the American people.”

Plouffe insisted the budget that the White House, the Senate and House agreed to preserved the country’s ability to invest in and “win the future.”

No, no, no, David. Let's be clear. The only really tough decision people have is now convincing themselves to vote for a president who rode in on a wave of high hopes, and floats out as the mere lesser (barely) of two evils. Because this budget crap is campaign kabuki, and you insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise.

This morning the New York Times praises Pete Peterson as the prescient man who saw the budget debate coming, never quite drawing the obvious conclusion: He dedicated $1 billion to manufacturing the budget "crisis."

We're surrounded by brazen liars and craven fools.

One of the most stressful things about being a liberal blogger is having to watch as congressional Democrats stand openmouthed at the plate, watching the fastballs fly by. Steve Benen really nails it. Go read the rest:

At face value, congressional Republicans went into budget talks playing a strikingly weak hand. They're an unpopular party, pushing unpopular spending cuts, going up against a more popular president. Of the three main players -- the House, the Senate, and the White House -- the GOP controls about one-half of one-third of the relevant institutions.

And yet, who seems to be calling the shots here?

The New York Times had an interesting summary of the lay of the land, emphasizing the fact that Democrats seem to realize they let this debate slip away from them.

Both parties remain uncertain about which of them would bear the brunt of public anger if Congress cannot agree on financing federal operations for the final half of this fiscal year and government agencies shut down or drastically scale back the services they can provide.

Even many Democrats believe that House Republicans have gotten the better of the antispending, antigovernment argument. But Democrats insist that is because much of the public does not appreciate the impact the Republicans' $61 billion in proposed reductions would have on spending for popular social programs if those cuts were to become law with just half of the current fiscal year remaining.

Democrats are right; most of the country has no idea the extent to which the GOP's proposed cuts would be devastating to key domestic priorities. These are cuts that, if put to a poll, the vast majority of the American mainstream would reject out of hand.

But here's another thought: maybe most of the country has no idea how brutal these cuts are because Dems haven't told them.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! No coherent, consistent message, a new logo that looks like a sign for a bus stop and an overwhelming need to cooperate with the slash-and-burn Republicans who want to decimate these very popular programs. Why not stand up for people instead of helping them cut?

(h/t TPM)

You want proof we're living in Idiocracy? Look no further than Fox & Friends, which I swear kills braincells each and every time I'm masochistic enough to tune in.

Libertarian John Stossel does his best to contribute to the dumbing down of the populace with this little gem. Quick, name the group that has gotten more government handouts than anyone else: Millionaires? Financial institutions? Big Pharma? Big Oil? The Military Industrial Complex? Surely, you jest. No, no, no....according to John Stossel, the group that has gotten more government handouts than anyone are Native Americans with their deficit-busting Bureau of Indian Affairs:

Stossel was on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss some high-paying government jobs recently reported in The Daily Caller. The report found that the "Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they'll pay up to $115,000 a year." Stossel took that as an opportunity to wonder about the entire concept of a Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?" he said. "There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse."

Established in 1824, Indian Affairs is the oldest bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. Among other responsibilities, the Bureau is charged with "maintaining the federal government-to-government relationship with the federally recognized Indian tribes," according to its website.

What a stunning ignorance of history, economics, the Constitution, Native Americans, tribal sovereignty and let's face it, reality. Maybe that hit Stossel took from that wrestler knocked sense out of him.

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Is there anything else you'd like?

Imagine that. The Democratic tactic of giving their lunch, their snacks and their spending money to the school bullies just isn't working. What oh what are they to do?

How about -- oh, I don't know -- growing a spine?

WASHINGTON - Democratic leadership and Appropriations Committee staffers are meeting Thursday afternoon to find ways to cut social spending from the remainder of the fiscal year 2011 budget, a Senate Democratic aide told HuffPost. The object of the gathering is to identify cuts that will satisfy House Republicans' demands for drastic spending reductions despite the flagging economy.

Multiple leadership aides, however, said that the cuts will be made to a long-term budget resolution, rather than a short-term spending bill, as Republicans insist. That the two parties are now arguing merely over how quickly to make cuts indicates that their positions may be drawing close enough to avoid a government shutdown - without the GOP giving much up yet.

Big surprise there, right?

"It sounds like Senate Democrats are making progress towards our goal of cutting government spending to help the private sector create jobs," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). "Hopefully, that means they will support the short-term CR with spending cuts that we will pass next week, rather than shutting down the government."

Boehner is traveling on a fundraising tour.

House Republicans have proposed a measure that would keep the government funded for two more weeks past the March 4th deadline -- when money runs out--asking for $4 billion in cuts. Democrats have not budged in insisting any stopgap be drawn along the lines of current funding levels.

The compromise offered to the GOP on Thursday would not change that. "This is not about a short-term CR," said a leadership aide. "We are planning to make a serious offer to the House Republicans on a long-term CR that contains deeper cuts than were originally proposed. And if the Republicans will meet us in the middle of this offer we might be able to avert the need for a short-term CR."

Senate Democrats are hoping that by offering the first concession, House GOPers will either respond in kind or take the blame for a shutdown. Yet each Democratic negotiating tactic has led to additional cuts. As the talks drag on, Republicans get closer and closer to their full goal. Meanwhile, the wrangling over a stopgap measure to temporarily avert a shutdown has the capacity to confuse the debate.