Monday, January 09, 2012

Very Sad - Very Infuriating; But not at all surprising

This whole article should be read (I will add all of it from Salon after the page break), but it is deadly and sadly true.  And this is why I cannot get enthusiastically behind Obama - and why I really can't stand the Republicans...
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What this article descries marks the end of Representative Government in my mind.  I am not saying is bad or evil or anything, but it can't be representative when you can't believe a word they say.
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Here are some extracts from the article - which should be read (and I included from Salon below the break).
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To review: Santorum recently told an Iowa audience that “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” When asked about the comments a few days later, he insisted he never said “black” — even though the video shows he clearly did. For sheer balls-out-ness, Santorum’s denial takes the cake for expressing such open disdain for the verifiable truth — and in the process, it threatens to set new standards for how we distinguish between honesty, spin, truthiness and totally unacceptable lying.
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After the election of Barack Obama, many hoped this trajectory would be reversed. In the new president, optimists saw a straight shooter rather than what we’ve come to know — a president who only seems so earnest because he dissembles without even so much as an explanation when his fibs are exposed.
Unlike the Bush administration, which at least coupled its refusal to apologize with post-facto spin purporting to explain what happened (“the intelligence was wrong!”), Obama has set a standard whereby politicians today will simply lie without bothering to offer a justification — even a far-fetched or dishonest one — for their dishonesty. This is a president who explicitly promised to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bayrespect Congress’ constitutional power to declare warrenegotiate NAFTA and end warrantless wiretaps — a president who said he was “tired of watching as year after year, candidates offer up detailed healthcare plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over.” This same president, of course, has kept Gitmo openscoffed at the War Powers Actrefused to re-open negotiations over NAFTAcontinues warrantless wiretaps and worked closely with lobbyists to craft a healthcare bill that has ended up being a financial boon to the drug and insurance industries — all while the healthcare crisis gets worse for average Americans. Importantly, in each of these reversals (which are only a few among many), Obama hasn’t even offered up a rationale — not even a “Look, I just changed my mind.” Instead, he’s either ridiculed the notion of expecting him to be honest (“This is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign”), or said nothing at all.
Full Article