When I look at what Mitt Romney is saying about Medicare and Wall Street, the lies are so brazen and so unsupportable that I find it enervating. Who has the energy to debunk this crap every single day? When Mitt Romney says he is going to restore $716 billion in spending for Medicare (all of which is negotiated cost savings with insurers and hospitals) and that he has no intention of deregulating Wall Street (when he intends to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill), the bullshit has reached such a laughable level that the press shouldn’t even treat the man with any respect.
I actually think the press has been doing a pretty good job of reporting the truth about the Medicare issue. But they need to start talking about the meta issue of Romney’s serial dishonesty and untrustworthiness and contempt for people’s intelligence.
Screw this, I’m going to the beach.
Romney’s recent round of rhetoric goes beyond unbelievable lying, it’s also highly irresponsible, and perhaps even dangerous. This whole notion of Obama’s supposed “campaign of hatred,” or whatever he’s calling it, is rapidly catching fire among the righties, or at least as far as I can tell from here.
This story making the rounds has a great quote from the President about the new GOP (emphasis mine):
I realize that’s nothing earth-shattering, but it used to be that the GOP would take these remarks out of context and try to make whatever hay they could of them, and fool people more often than not. At some point though, we turned a corner to a place where, increasingly, the voters know it’s all a crock too, but they run with the talking points as gleefully as the biggest right-wing media sellout.
I don’t know how seriously to take things like comments threads following stories like this, but already today I’m seeing labels like “President Hate” and suchlike following Romney’s new line of attack.
I’ve been less than optimistic about the political mood in the US for years, now, but here just in the last few days or weeks, suddenly I have this inescapable gut feeling that something extremely ugly is coming any day now–and I don’t mean the campaign, we’ve all known this year would break all the records for partisan nastiness. I mean something totally unpredicted, perhaps unpredictable.
/concern troll
Frankly, I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t yet been a serious attempt on Obama’s life yet.
Well, you have to remember who we’re dealing with; it takes brains to plan a realistic attempt like that.
Tell you one thing, though, when PBHO wins in November, be ready for a national hissy fit to beat anything we’ve seen yet. “Obama gun sales” are just the beginning. As a black woman who frequently calls into a radio show I listen to says, she and her family are going to be keeping indoors for the election and the inauguration.
I don’t blame her. If I still lived there, I’d do the same. There are a lot of loose screws running around out there with guns, and the GOP hate machine has been dumping gasoline on the fire and fanning the flames for all they’re worth. There are going to be serious consequences.
“is rapidly catching fire among the righties.”
Everything rapidly catches fire among the righties, and has done so for quite some time. So what else is new?
Yeah.
As a few folks have pointed out, it’s one thing for a news outlet to carefully fact-check a politician’s statements — as some of them are doing a little more — it’s another thing to continue to note the facts when the politician continues to use the same lies.
The McCain/Palin dishonesty seemed to backfire, at least a little bit. But it was partially overshadowed by the grumpy-old-uncle/crazy-lady storyline. Romney/Ryan are cranking it up to 11, but by virtue of being two middle-aged wealthy white guys, I suspect that they can get away with more. They obviously think they can.
You’ve commented on the public reaction to this scale of lying before.
It is so over-the-top that too many “independent thinkers” in the public discount it as being a lie.
There is a quote making the rounds that shows how much the Republican Party has been philosophically captured by a Russian atheist welfare queeen:
ENJOY THE BEACH with that wonderful boy of yours.
but, this is the whole point…lie so much that folks get tired..
I’m not tired..I’m mad.
mofo can’t open his fucking mouth without lying.
and it should be reported just like that.
Me too. I’m angry as hell. I’m energized. Who would have predicted 20 years ago that we would be fighting for the right to vote to this extent because one party is trying to take it away? And then on so many other issues, the GOP has gone to an insane extreme.
Getting tired is also part of what the campaign of lies is intending to do. If they get enough swing voters and Dems to start feeling sedate or even apathetic, they win.
Exactly! Dems are not just showing a spine these days but in the face of being outspent 7:1 the Dem campaign has been extraordinarily well choreographed. The lies and those that believe them are sooo tedious but it’s not to say that we aren’t learning something and making headway. We are!
We have another 2 fires here. They are in the same terrain that killed 30 firefighters just a few years ago. The wind is changing direction every hour. Choosing a line of attack takes flexability and pure grit. Shit, if they can do it, we can hang in there. Btw, in the Bush years the comment was, nahhh, let it run to BC, the Canadians will put it out. These days, it’s stomp that mother as soon as it lights!
Like two Pinocchio puppets on strings. Only the truly deluded can’t see the lies and puppet masters who are also prepared to spend a billion bucks to create enough smoke to make half the country too blind to see.
Only the truly deluded or too busy trying to cope with this shitty economy to notice.
Nobody in this country is
If those in the past that were down in the mines or in the fields from before down to after dusk without any access to radio/TV during those hours and after could figure it out, and with limited to no formal education, “too busy” is just an excuse.
Low-information voters are low-information for three reasons. (1) They are not interested; more specifically, they are interested in other things. (2) They work multiple jobs, take care of family, and do not have the the media on that much; it doesn’t sink in. (3) They are too lazy to search out the facts.
I don’t paint everyone with the same brush.
Understandable why one wouldn’t want to pay attention and listen to the crap that passes for political discourse in this country. It really isn’t interesting. But not so many of those that tune out for lack of interest or understanding actually vote.
Those that do vote likely see, hear, and read a considerable amount about politics. And much of what they see, hear, and read is propaganda, spin, and factually challenged. Thus, they are the real low-info voters and that may describe a majority of the electorate.
You forgot willful ignorance. The racists are starting you whisper now. You understand, TarHeelDem. They whisper to you and me because they just need to let it out. They think we must agree with them deep down because we are old white guys from where they came from, me from the ethnic neighborhoods, you from the Jim Crow South. It’s amazing what you hear if you just give a sheepish smile instead of the tongue lashing they deserve.
They KNOW Romney/Ryan are no good for them, but they still fear the scary black man. He’s a Socialist. He’s planning massive taxes to expand welfare. He wants all the jobs for blacks and illegal Mexicans because he hates whites (don’t the psychologists call this transference). They know Romney and Ryan are the same rich bastards that have fucked them all their lives, but they’re WHITE. They CAN’T be as bad as that BLACK guy. Arrrrghhh! I agree with Booman. It’s too stupid!
Reminds me of The Wire:
you really don’t know of the ppl too busy trying to cope with this shitty economy?
single parent with minimum wage job; with several part time jobs, with several hours commutes each way, teachers in underfunded school districts where teachers unions are under attack, farmers who have a second job – examples that come to mind
Didn’t say there were none. But exactly how does one live almost anywhere in this country and not be exposed to radio, TV, and/or other people that share news, views and information? Or for that matter grow up with such a shitty education that they never learned that Republicans have always opposed minimum wage laws, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc?
What the hell else can he run on?
His entire party is devoted to an agenda so stupid and insanely anti-democratic people refuse to believe it and would bury the bastards in dead cats if they did.
They can only run on lies.
So they do.
Get used to it.
The best case is that the 27% loons and their party marginalize themselves. It has to happen sometime, assuming they don’t destroy the country first.
This is exaclty what is happening and has been happening for the last several years. You don’t see that figure of 27% growing, do you?
Meanwhile, R/R have just lost DevoAmericans:
What the Church of the SubGenius’s position on Romney? He is the politician who most resembles J.R. “Bob” Dobbs.
did you see Willard channel Glen Beck today?
the hilarious thing between him and his wife is like…
how dare you peasants question us?
it reeks from every pore of their being.
and we, the peasants are like..
Mofo, just show us the damn tax returns.
Missed that but saw Mitt channeling Tim Russert with his white board. (Must have already worn our the etch-a-sketch.)
jay rosen dubbed it the post-truth campaign back in july.
today, greg larson added the post transparency tag.
l would add that if it works, the republic is in far worse shape as a than even a cynic like myself imagined.
we shall see.
lest the “moran” bridge come tumbling down.
The concept of “agreed upon facts” was at one time a few decades in the budding days of mass communication and the “Big 3”, the standard sought and served as a bulwark against everything we find reprehensible about the state of modern journalism and many of those who pretend to be journalists. It also served as the primary reason our collective political discourse was generally more civil, and it no longer being observed entirely explains why the “have you no shame sir?” stuff no longer has little, if any, behavior modification value. Like misery, liars like company because it validates them. Just imagine for example, a liar like Mutt in the Murrow, or even Chronkite days.
It also imo, explains the extreme polarization this country has increasing suffered since its abandonment. The dynamics are something like this — 1. morality and politics are inseparable as Saint Raygun argued
This is why modern journalism is more about being lapdogs as opposed to watchdogs, and they employ and deploy the “he said/she said” BS, as well as false equivalencies galore in an effort to keep the concept of agreed upon facts dead and buried — to keep half the population disgusted with and not participating in our political system, and the other half highly polarized and trapped by that same disgust they feel towards their ideological opposition, and the fear and loathing that comes with it. It’s also why the myth of the “independent voter” is becoming increasingly seen as exactly that, a myth given their ever-dwindling numbers and the difficulty to be found in tipping them in either direction.
The rightwingnuts figured this out decades ago, and wisely moved to end the fairness doctrine and invest in the media — the biggest failure of the left.
And nothing is gonna substantively or substantially change unless and until that concept is restored, along with the value, recognition, and application of shame.
What slays me about all of this, is that the most prolific liars, etc, are by far the rightwingners, who have effectively totally dismissed and abandoned the 9th Commandment, and grant their pols and pundits a license to lie freely without fear of political or financial reprisal, yet they still claim to be the/our “moral” leaders.
Our abandonent of the concept of “agreed upon facts” has led directly to their “up is down” insanity, and the dismal state of our politics in this country, as well as a decrease of participation in it. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
You’d think that mass communication would lead to a more informed electorate and greater participation, no? What we’re seeing and being victimized by, is the deliberate use of it to sow confusion and increase ignorance, because some feel entitled to their own set of facts.