[h/t Daily Kos]
Every time I see one of these reports I end up wondering how exactly it is that Mitt Romney is even in contention for this election, because common sense on everyday kinds of things is so...not there. Here's an ad from the Romney campaign accusing Barack Obama of causing businesses to close in Ohio because he bailed out the auto industry.
In the 30-second spot, Al Zarzour, a 61-year-old car dealership owner from Lyndhurst, Ohio, says that in the wake of the auto bailout General Motors shut down his credit line, forcing him to lay off his 30-person workforce.
"In 2009, under the Obama administration's bailout of General Motors, Ohio dealerships were forced to close," a narrator says in the commercial.
But just as the narrator says that at the 5-second mark, the ad shows a streetscape that appears to be in Oklahoma City, as noted by Sarah Burris, managing editor of the progressive blog FutureMajority.com. Google street view confirms that the scene is indeed outside the Advanced Academics building on E. Sheridan Avenue in Oklahoma City.
Burris told The Huffington Post via email that she and her friend, Dwight Clark, who she met in Oklahoma political circles, noticed the mistake while chatting the other day.
"It's amusing at the very least," Burris wrote on her Tumblr. "Looks like the stock footage of 'Ohio' just wasn’t good enough or someone maybe just miss clicked??? Ohio does come right before Oklahoma…. Oops."
Yeah, stupid. But so is the whole commercial. Let's see if I have the accusation right. General Motors, facing its demise in the wake of the financial meltdown, had this little side business called GMAC Credit, which extended lines of credit but also got caught in the whole credit crunch. And so GMAC shut down that guy's line of credit not because GM was bailed out, but because GMAC was a disaster just like the banks and other high-rolling lenders of that time were.
And he blames the bailout? Because he thinks without the bailout GMAC and GM would somehow have kept that line of credit open in the middle of the worst financial credit crisis since the Great Depression? With what? Fairy dust?
How utterly magical of him to think so.
