This process got started early, back in 2007 and 2008, when Obama campaigned against an aging John McCain, who used every contortion of the truth to try to claim the presidency he thought he deserved. Enough voters were smarter then, though still under the sway of the idea that all problems could be resolved quickly and without effort if the right man was in office. That lack of patience has caused a falling away among middle of the road independents, and lots of "just do it" grumbling among progressives who imagine that Obama can just make all things happen without having the numbers to actually pass any legislation. He should force votes, take the loss, and presumably rail in anger at Republican intransigence.
To insure electoral success, the liars should be out early, and in force, and if this little speech by Representative Michelle Bachman is any indication, we can also conclude that there is no lie a relatively attractive brunette can tell and not get away with it. The heads in her audience were no doubt bobbing in agreement with her every utterance. Talking Points Memo takes us there:
"As a matter of fact, President Obama spent so much money that if you took all the debt that we accumulated from George Washington, every president up until Barack Obama, President Obama accumulated more debt in eight months than all previous presidents combined. Combined. That gives you context for the times we're living in."(TPM)
The above quote from a Minnesota speech she gave is entirely incorrect, but we have seen in recent days and weeks that the truth is not a necessary ingredient when making and scoring political points. By way of knocking Obama for his financial unsoundness, she demonstrated her inability to do basic addition, among other things. How can Bachman understand the times we are living in if she has trouble with the math we are living in. Read the article itself to find out how bad that math is. No time for the nonsense here.
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Hey remember how conservatives were all against raising the minimum wage anywhere because businesses would suffer? Eventually wages got raised and small businesses didn't really suffer. (Turns out things like lowering the interest rate and causing a housing bubble leading to losses in bank revenues and thus reduced lending has a much huger effect, but that's kinda off topic.)
Now we have Dick Cheney announcing that he feels that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays in the military should be scrapped. Why? No reason other than a few people in the military have shifted their positions and most conservatives are so used to sucking up to the military (in order to appear patriotic) that when that same military comes out with something new, they then have to go with the program.
In essence everything that conservatives were telling you was bad about gays is in fact, no so bad after all, and will no longer be an issue. Same as with raising the minimum wage. You rarely hear a peep about that now.
Cheney told ABC’s “This Week” that 20 years ago when he was secretary of defense, the military was a strong advocate of the policy that bans gays from openly serving in the military, but that “things have changed significantly since then” and he anticipates that ultimately “the policy will be changed.”
“I think society has moved on,” Cheney said the policy shift is partly “a generational question.”
(Politico.com)
Thanks for telling us this huge issue is now a non-issue. Wonder if healthcare reform will turn out to be one of those things that conservatives think differently about ten minutes from now.
Other News:
- "Don't Copy Me,"should be the lesson we all learn from the most recent plagiarism scandal involving the N.Y. Times. Sometimes it's just not enough to have a job, or have a job as a writer, or have a job as a writer at one of the nation's top newspapers, or have a job as a writer at the nation's top newspaper in the best city in the world. You wake up feeling a little empty sometimes, and needing other people's words to fill your void.
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