I watched about fifteen minutes of the first debate then turned it off. I didn’t want to waste any more of my time. I had better things to do.

Instead, I waited for the fact checkers and the analysts to examine the claims made by Obama and Romney during the debate.

The morning after the debate, I learned that the perception was that Obama lost the first debate by a WIDE margin.

Further reading revealed that President Obama lost because he wasn’t as aggressive as Romney or should I say he only exaggerated and made half as many false claims as Romney did and many of Romney’s exaggerations were WHOPPERS.

For example: inflating the unemployment numbers from 12.5 million to 23 million compared to Obama inflating the number of jobs created to 5 million from the actual number of 4.63 million.

There is a HUGE difference between 370,000 jobs and 10.5 million unemployed people that did not exist.

Fact check.org said, “Romney came off as a serial exaggerator”.

I read the report from Fact Check.org and counted the exaggerations and false claims made by each of the White House contenders and discovered that Romney exaggerated twice as much as Obama and that Romney’s false claims made Obama look terrible, then President Obama stumbled defending himself against Romney’s false claims magnifying the perceptions of Americans watching the debates.

In fact, the exaggerations and false claims (a LIE  is a LIE no matter the term used to soften its impact) were so huge it is obvious that President Obama was not ready to deal with them.

If the majority of Americans that vote want the BIGGER liar to be its next President, the United States deserves who moves into the White House but beware the devil you do not know.

As an example, instead of regurgitating what Fact Check.org has already reported, I will point to one of Romney’s lies.  Romney claimed that Obama was responsible for an annual trillion dollar deficit without revealing the facts behind that claim (why would he?—the truth would sink his chance to move into the White House).

Romney said that the deficit doubled under Obama.  Not true. Obama inherited a $1.2 billion deficit and the deficits have remained (due to budget items mostly beyond any President’s control) at or above that level every year since because you cannot “get blood out of a rock” (my words).

What about the truth?

Fact Check.org said, “Obama added to the 2009 deficit, but not by much. We found that Obama was responsible at most for an additional $203 billion. The government ended $1.4 trillion in the red that year. The deficits were about $1.3 trillion each year for the next two years , and this fiscal year just ended with a shortfall of nearly $1.2 trillion.”

In one piece that I read this morning, it was mentioned that the Iraq  (2003 – 2011) and Afghan (2001 -) wars have been and are still being funded by borrowed money.

A point missed by everyone, it seems, was that no one made the connection that this borrowed money adds to the annual deficit and grows the interest on the annual deficit that adds to the national debt.

Cost of War.com says, “Total War Funding: $1.38 trillion has been allocated to date to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $121.1 billion in fiscal year 2012 (for a total of $1.5 Trillion—all borrowed adding to the national debt and the interest on that debt).

Let’s see what the interest is on debt that President Obama inherited and discover where the national debt comes from.

The National debt is currently $16 trillion and in 2012 the interest on that debt will be almost $360 billion. No matter how Romney or the GOP spins the facts, President Obama is not responsible for most of that national debt or its continued growth.

In fact, he inherited $13.76 Trillion (86%) of the national debt, and the interest that comes with that number. for 2012, the interest on each trillion dollars is $22.5 billion.  Do the math and you may discover that $309 billion of the interest on the national debt in 2012 comes from what President Obama inherited. In Obama’s first term (2009 – 2013), that adds up to $1.235 Trillion just in inherited interest.

To discover where all of the national debt came from by president, you may want to look at Table 4: Average annual deficit at Adelphi.edu to learn that the national debt we live with today started with Republican President Herbert Hoover, who left $42.5 billion in national debt when he was voted out of office in 1933.

Including President Hoover, GOP presidents are responsible for $8.73 Trillion of today’s national debt and $196.4 billion in interest for 2012, and Democratic presidents $5.02 Trillion in addition to $112.95 billion in interest for 2012.

F. D. Roosevelt and President Obama are the only Democratic presidents that added more than one trillion dollars to that debt and both presidents had to deal with war/s and each had an economic crisis that was inherited from GOP presidents.

When the Great Depression started in 1929, unemployment was less than 4%. During the one term that Herbert Hoover was President (1929 – 1933), unemployment exploded:

1929 – 3.2%
1930 – 8.9% unemployment
1931 – 16.3%
1932 – 24.1%
1933 – 24.9%

We cannot blame Hoover for the Great Depression. We can only blame him for how he handled the crises, but who did Hoover inherit the Great Depression from?

W. G. Harding (1921-1923) Republican
C. Coolidge (1923-1929) Republican

Then in 1933, F. D. Roosevelt (Democrat) was elected President and unemployment started to drop from Hoover’s high of 24.9%, and to achieve both putting people back to work and winning World War II, FDR borrowed $1.4 Trillion adding that sum to the national debt started by Hoover’s failed policies.

Unemployment under FDR:

1934 – 21.7%
1935 – 20.1%
1936 – 16.8%
1937 – 14.3%

In fact, by the end of 1941 when World War II started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), unemployment was down to 10%. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President from 1933 – 1945 (he died in office).

How does President Obama’s unemployment numbers compare to the Great Depression era (NOTE: 2009 was the last year of President G. W. Bush’s policies and budgets—2010 marks the beginning of President Obama’s policies and budgets):

2008 – 4.70% unemployment
2009 – 7.30%
2010 – 9.90%
2011 – 9.8%
2012 – 8.10%

Compare and contrast unemployment for the early years of the Great Depression with President Obama’s first four years in office.  Because there has never been a financial crises equal to the Great Depression until the Great Recession in 2007-2008 inherited from Republican President G. W. Bush, we have nothing else to compare with.

Note that President Obama never had double digit unemployment rates.

Who did a better job keeping more Americans working during his first four years as President of the United States?

A. Barack Obama
B. Franklin D. Roosevelt
C. Herbert Hoover
D. Mitt Romney

Discover Twisting History for Fun and Profit – Maybe

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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