The Detroit News: Mitt Romney lying by omission

http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2012/07/17/mitt-romney-lying-by-omission/

Jul 17, 2012, 3:33 pm Campaign 2012 | National Politics
Mitt Romney lying by omission
By Libby Spencer

Mitt Romney is so desperate to create a distraction from the growing call for release of his tax returns, he and his army of Republicans and other apologists, have taken to throwing out any and all smears they can think of with the hope that something sticks in the news cycle. The most alarmingly dishonest of Romney’s false accusations against President Obama is the taking of a single line from a speech our president made about the importance of investing in infrastructure and pretending he was slamming business owners. A Romney press release today makes their deceit clear. It trumpets: “OBAMA, TO BUSINESS OWNERS: ‘YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT.’”

This interpretation of President Obama’s remarks is a bald-faced lie. Here’s the one sentence in the context of the speech:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.