Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Never Alone


As the examples mount up, it's impossible to point to any lie which stands above the rest; but the Romney video of Obama's words about business-builders is about as exemplary as it gets. He'll try, but he'll never top his way (the copyrighted RWS™/Republican politician way) of accusing his opponent of doing that which he's done himself. Because, in this case, he actually had to decontextualize and edit what his opponent said, and then hide the fact that he's said it himself. (And, amusingly enough, that the featured businessman in his dishonest ad got $800K of government help, righteous claims to the contrary notwithstanding.)

So Barack Obama made a statement about how success in America never happens alone: you had teachers, you drove on roads someone else built, you probably used a light bulb at some time and likely used indoor plumbing... you know, something so obvious it's been said before by such people as Elizabeth Warren and FDR, and that flaming liberal (well, he was once, by comparison) Mitt Romney.

Take something Obama said, make it sound like he said the opposite, then say what he actually said yourself. Gotta hand it to the guy: I mean, that's third-order dishonesty, raising the bar to impossible levels. Obama's statement is true. Everything Romney says about it -- as is the case with everything else he says about Obama -- is false.

Wingers, of course, see the ad as a "game changer", and who can say they're wrong? Because it's obvious that the fewer the facts and the more the mendacity the better they buy it. But it hardly changes the game. Not their game, anyway. It's exactly the way they've played it since Newt and Karl came on the scene; and, as sure as dogs get diarrhea on car roofs, it'll persist until conservatives demand better.

Forever, in other words.


1 comment:

  1. Well...the ass-hat republicans are fond of claiming the government is a monster, an enemy that devours taxes and creates nothing, especially jobs; this in the face of all the jobs and payrolls amounting to billions of dollars spent on the war industries and standing armies alone.

    They forget that the “government is us - “We the People” they bite the hand that feeds their greed and mockingly display their contempt for all the “Little People.”

    The government - “We the People”- provides millions in socialistic contributions to the Army, Navy, and Air Force – actually all military formations, who produce nothing and live, cradle to grave on the taxpayers dollar. Ironic, isn’t it; socialism defends capitalism, and of course capitalists!

    “We the People” also provide all the cash for the infrastructure and manufacturing industries that take government money and it has always been that way.

    Historically, it turns out that from the beginning, American businessmen had virtually unlimited "help" from every level of government in the country. And, by the way, not just the businessmen; everyone in the country expected the government to do more than simply favor the wealthy as in the age-old European model.

    None of the roads, canals, bridges, railroads, buildings and whatever could not have been built by so-called "Self Made Men" without grants, loans and contributions directly from American taxpayers because there was not enough wealth in private hands to build the massive infrastructure required for the settlement of the continent.

    The only entity that could provide the millions of dollars required, was the government i.e. the taxpayers – little people – working people – people who provided the wherewithal of their labor to every level of civil government from villages to big cities that wound up in the hands of “Self Made Men” who claim that they did it all by themselves, as though like God they just made it all happen out of nothing.

    They are still doing it of course, lobbying for, demanding and accepting massive government funding, while indulging in their masturbatory orgy of self-congratulation; and as always, ignoring and degrading the contributions of the cash, earned by lives of hard physical labor and intense mental effort, of millions of Americans that are the actual foundation of all the advantages enjoyed by our civilization.

    We need to take away some of Mitt’s toys and mansions to teach him how many people it takes to make a “Self Made Man”

    EugeneInSanDiego

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