No, Romney did NOT have a 'cheat sheet'

Mitt Romney and the handkerchief that's
not a cheat sheet./Image via BuzzFeed.

Unfortunately, via Daily Kos and other sites, notably, the Washington, D.C., CBS station with uncritical reporting, liberals, I mean Democrats, are making the claim that Mitt Romney brought a cheat sheet, “illegally,” to the US presidential debate Wednesday night.

But, showing that liberals, or I should say, Democrats, have just as much Chris Mooney type motivated reasoning to lie as Republicans, it was actually, apparently, a handkerchief, per Buzz Feed. Wish I had thought to look on a place like Memorandum FIRST before sharing the original link above on Facebook.

That said, in what's not actually a debate, sponsored by mega-rich corporations that anti-democratically excludes third-party candidates, the whole thing is nothing but theater and who the fuck cares who cares about real democracy and real political choices? Isn't the real problem, if you're a Democrat, that Obama didn't think of something similar, if Mitt had cheated? Just think of Michio Kaku's wet-dream Internet contact lenses!

so

Anyway, truth is, Mitt didn’t cheat.

But, Daily Kos, via one of its “contributors,” goes more conspiratorial than the “Bush had an electronic receiver on his back” from 2004.

Read Kos:

Yes it could be a hanky.  But it falls kind of heavy, and stays uniform in it's fold.  Plus it is flat.  I have never seen a man's hanky be so uniform and flat coming from a front pant's pocket.  Back pocket, yes, breast pocket in a jacket, yes.. but not the front pant pocket.

He was also wearing make up and to wipe any sweat from his face with a hanky would have taken off his make up.  Plus remember that old saying "Never let them see you sweat?"  If he was seen to wipe sweat from his brow, the optics would have been very bad ("Obama makes him nervous, he can't stand up to him.")

Wow. Of course, the proprietor of that website once claimed the CIA was full of closet liberals, so what can you expect? And froze my account for being too liberal and too green.

Since my friend posts all his statuses as “public,” I consider the comments by the friend of the friend legitimate to grab. Here it is:

Folks, he can be seen clearly returning to his podium at the end of the debate to pick up a sheet of paper, fold it, try ineptly to stuff it in his jacket pocket and then rope in his kid to have the son put it in his own pant's pocket.

Conspiracy thinking. Both parties do it … Democrats “pull a Chris Mooney” too.

 

Update: A second friend of this friend has weighed in, first making the assumption that I'm a typical conservative, rather than a left-liberal (at least for America, and a skeptical one, too) who voted Green in 2004 and 2008 and plans to do so again. That's despite comments on the link the second friend of a friend posted, that said Rachel Maddow had already debunked this.

And, yet another reason to say Chris Mooney is full of motivated reasoning bullshit with "The Republican Brain."