What Does the Book of Mormon Say About Lying?

Because the few Bible translations just checked say don't bear false witness against your neighbor, in other words lie.

Nevertheless, Willard Mitt Romney really does lie a lot.

Don't get me wrong, this extremely cynical just turned 54 year old--who knew even at tender age of 10 Richard Nixon full of shit when he said he had a secret plan to end Second Indochinese War--has read The Selling of the President by Joe McGinniss and realized politicians in the age of mass media have to idealize themselves in certain ways, gain at least a sheen of common man as hero glow, and to  emphasize their positive attributes and minimize negatives.

Even as it turns out Nixon did have a secret plan, bomb the bejesus out of North Viet Nam and hope to thus bully their leaders while inflicting great devastation upon common people.  Nixon ignored the fact leaders safe in bomb shelters have an extraordinary capacity to endure the suffering of others.

Many folks listening to Tricky Dicky in the campaign of 1968 assumed he meant peace negotiations rather than biblical levels of destruction.

Recent history of the last campaign illustrates another aspect of the idealization process; voters tend to see candidates as transformational actors in the larger American polity without evaluating factors constraining the actions of a President: a recalcitrant House of Representatives, a minority party in the Senate abusing the filibuster to block any progress whatsoever, and even an activist, conservative Supreme Court.

Thus we see and read whiny, puling, progressive punks whining about Obama's inability to institute "our" liberal agenda.  Thanks, Suze.

For the rest of us living in the real world, we assume truth as a fundamental basis of human communication,  Otherwise, how would prehistoric humans tell each other facts to help human survival, stuff like you'll find water over the next ridge or run a big ass tiger coming this way.

Nevertheless in this age of mass mis-communication, our words have become un-moored from any truth whatsoever, as witnessed by current crop of TV ads run by Willard Mitt Romney lying about welfare waivers granted to governors of states which requested them, reviving Ronald Raygunz's canards on welfare queens.

At long last, Willard, have you no decency?

[So what does {Paul Waldman} think of Mitt Romney's new ad that claims President Obama has a plan for "dropping work requirements" for welfare? "Under Obama's plan," says the narrator, "you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

"I've seen ads that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some). But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one.

…Usually candidates deceive voters by taking something their opponent says out of context, or giving a tendentious reading to facts, or distorting the effects of policies. But in this case, Romney and his people looked at a policy of the Obama administration to allow states to pursue alternative means of placing welfare recipients in jobs, and said, "Well, how about if we just say that they're eliminating all work requirements and just sending people checks?" I have no idea if someone in the room said, "We could say that, but it's not even remotely true," and then someone else said, "Who gives a crap?", or if nobody ever suggested in the first place that this might be problematic. But either way, they decided that they don't even have to pretend to be telling the truth anymore.

This is what's so striking about Romney's campaign. As Paul says, it's common to twist and distort and cherry pick. But Romney has flatly claimed that Obama said something that, in fact, a John McCain aide said. He's snipped out sentences from an Obama speech and spliced the two halves back together so nobody could tell what he did. Then he did it again to another Obama speech. And he unequivocally said that Obama plans to drop work requirements for welfare even though he's done nothing of the sort."] emphasis in original
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/mitt-romney-sure-does-lie-lot-doesnt-he