Romney video crops Obama's words to fabricate the quote they wish he'd said

Via Greg Sargent, here's the latest attempt by Mitt Romney to move past Bain and his tax returns (my emphasis):

The Romney campaign is out with a new Web video hitting Obama over the 'don't build that' quote. It features a business owners who is angry at Obama for supposedly insulting his hard work. 'My hands didn't build this company?' the man asks. 'Through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. Why are you demonizing us for it?'

But the video deceptively edits Obama's remarks to seamlessly link up two different parts of the speech, removing a chunk in order to make Obama's remarks seem far worse than they are.

As a reminder, President Obama said:

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.

So "that" = "roads and bridges." It equals the American economic system and the teachers and other people who helped you along the way. Nothing about that is controversial. Mitt Romney said the exact same thing yesterday.

But according to Romney's edited video (which you can see at the right) this is what Obama said:

If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be 'cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

If you watch the video, you'll see that there's no indication whatsoever that Obama's words had been edited. It still would have been misleading even if they had offered such an indication, but not including an edit marker turns the clip from simply misleading into one of the most egregiously dishonest edits I've ever seen, right up there with Romney's first anti-Obama attack ad.

But as outrageous as Romney's flagrant dishonesty is, let's not forget the reason he's resorting to these sorts of lies: He's panicked about Bain and he's panicked about his taxes. Even Republicans agree that he needs to open his books. It's a big problem for him. And instead of solving it, his solution is to make up stuff about President Obama.