Romney, The Serial Flip-Flopper and Constant Liar

It should work this way: when a candidate lies, the media should point it out. Period. Instead, the media bend over backwards in order to avoid calling out a lie. They call lies "stretching the truth", "factual inaccuracies", and other euphemisms that fall short of using the word lie, and treat that custom as a venerable act of moderation. The only places where lies are called lies is in the blogosphere, and we know bloggers are not worth the keyboards that they type on. At least that's what "respectable" media figures and pundits like Mark Halperin, one of the most offensive regurgitators of political common wisdom, would have you believe. Never mind that, increasingly, the words "respectable" and "media" clash like a polka dot shirt and a pin-stripe suit. (There are exceptions, of course.)

As I was doing a bit of research on the matter of why it has become okay to let lies slide, I found an interesting piece on The Atlantic's website. It contains the following passage, which in my view is symptomatic of the trouble that plagues mainstream media (emphasis added):

I think this point is just absurd and ridiculous. This is a big thing among folks calling it "moral equivalence" (Fallows, Ornstein) and others calling it the "cult of balance" (Krugman). It's just stupid. If you want someone to tell you that Republicans stink, read opinion pages. Read blogs. Also, the underlying sentiment on the left is that this is the real reason why things went wrong in 2010: That the mainstream media is to blame. Sorry, I think that's the sorta head-in-sand outlook that leads to longer term problems for a movement.

The quote is by Paul Kane, a Washington Post reporter. I'd suggest that Mr. Kane listen to BBC Radio interviews, in which interviewers, armed with their British sense that journalism is a public service (go figure!) can often be heard saying to the interviewee "But that is simply not true." Yes, I know, there is a difference between radio and newspapers and between an interview and a news article. Or is there? More importantly, should there be one? I don't think so. Just as I don't think that someone writing on a blog has less journalistic integrity than his newspaper "equivalent".

Luckily for us, Hunter at the Daily Kos is a disrespectable blogger, so he has no qualms about calling Mitt Romney a liar. Romney lies very often, and he seems to be possessed with complete disregard for the truth and for the positions he had in the past, seemingly oblivious of the fact that we are long past the days of the VCR. DVRs and the World Wide Web are horrible things to have around, for people like him.

Governing Against One's Campaign Promises

Health care reform was one of the reasons I was happy to help candidate Obama's campaign in 2008. It was at the top of my list of needed reforms then and, it seems, it will still be in the same spot come the next election cycle, due to the corrupt electoral process that rewards not the most honest candidates, those who really want to improve things for 99% of Americans, but those with the best fundraising ability, aided and abetted by the most entrenched special interests.

And I don't think the United States deserves to be called all nice the things Americans call it (uh, I don't know... "number one", "the best country in the world", and all such bombastic things) until it does what... oh, I don't know... the rest of the civilized world? has already done. Which is to say, give its citizens universal, affordable health care, and stop rewarding the special interests (PhRMA, insurance companies, greedy doctors, etc.) that have led the nation into the ridiculous predicament it finds itself in after decades of near unfettered free-market bullshit. What predicament? We spend almost twice as much as the next country in the world and, unlike any other CIVILIZED country in the world, cannot insure everybody. To what end? So that smug people can say that we have the best medicine money can buy in the world. For that matter,we also make the best Space Shuttle money can buy. Do you own one?

Where we stand is that we have 45 million uninsured and, even worse, an even higher number of underinsured (read people who have been ass-raped into paying premiums and who do not get the coverage they think they were paying for or who, in order to get it, need to pay unaffordable, bank-breaking amounts of money out of their own pocket, after which they get dumped by the insurance companies that happily collected their premiums while they were healthy.) The solution concocted by special interest representatives in Congress? Individual mandates and no alternative for those who are sick, literally, and sick, figuratively--of insurance companies. In other words? You think insurance is the problem? Here's our solution: buy it or... buy it! What a special country this is. "Number one!", really.

And this is the best our "change president" can do?



I want to puke.

John Boehner Needs To Get Out More

Out of office would be nice, but I'd be satisified if he took a walk around the streets on any town in Ohio, where 57% of the state's population supports a public option. And yet, Boehner, the quintessential Repub-lie-can, actually said this on camera:

"I'm still trying to find the first American to talk to who's in favor of the public option, other than a member of Congress or the administration."

If he is not lying he is clueless and should be voted out of office. If he is lying, all the more reason to vote him out of office. Either way, please make him be gone, Ohio.

Remember, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an issue that had zero impact on your life or mine (except for the impact that was created by the people who hated him and wanted him out of office). Instead, this tool is lying to justify his opposition to health care reform that would arguably improve the lives of most Americans.

We will see who we are as a nation when Ohio goes to the poll. I fear I know the answer already. I have rarely seen deceit and dishonesty go unrewarded in America's politics.