WHAT THE HELL??

I am freaking out.  I am so disappointed in President Obama and his team - this passive approach, allowing Romney to lie, lie,lie and claim to care so much about the poor and downtrodden with that smirky face. 

I have such a stomach ache from watching that damned debate.  What the hell are the Dems thinking?  Are they so afraid that Obama might bring out the racists by ratcheting up his cool demeanor to angry black man?  Hello?  The racists are already in full force, no reason to try to avoid riling them up. Get in there and point out the lies, point out the disdain for the 47%, point out the cuts from Medicare, privitization of medicare and Social Security, turning over education to profit making private companies and the fact that his plan will push the middle class further down the tubes.

I am not sure I can take any more of this.  I am going to step away from the pundits now and take a nice hot shower.

LYING POLITICIANS - OXYMORON?

A lot of people hate politics and politicians because they are not honest. People love to complain about politicians and lawyers - calling them crooks and out for themselves and worse. Being married to a civil rights attorney who sees his work as service, who picks and chooses his cases based on the merits and the  law, who doesn't take on cases in order to "blackmail" people into paying money unjustly; I have a soft spot for those who are lumped in with the bad guys.

Are there lawyers and politicians who behave badly?  Yes.  Are there doctors and bankers who behave greedily.  Yes.  Are there accountants and plumbers who behave shoddily?  Yes.

When it comes to lies, though, politicians seem to be making it an artform.  If I learned anything at all during the Bush administration it was that a lie told repeatedly takes on the veneer of truth for a whole lot of people.

He came by it honestly, as they say.  In 1984, his dad,  George H.W. Bush made up a quote about Walter Mondale's campaign that was both damaging and untrue. Bush's press secretary said: “You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it”; when newspapers point out the lies, “So what?” he said. “Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000, or 20,000.”

Seems that this cynical disregard for the truth has become part and parcel of the GOP's campaign strategy. In the words of W.C. Fields, “If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull---t.”  This election is a further test of how far politicians can bend the truth and have people repeating it to the point of believing it. Musch has been written about the factual inaccuracies of the Ryan and the Romney budget plans - are people paying attention?  I guess we will see.

To be fair, "a Politifact analysis of the two campaigns so far has rated 28 percent of Democratic campaign material as untrue to at least a degree, as against 46 percent for the GOP."  The thing is, statistically,  the Democrats seem to exaggerate,and misstate things, while the GOP runs major falsehoods up the flagpole.

This year I will proudly vote for President Obama, not because Democrats are perfectly honest, but because they have shown far more respect for the truth and for the public's  ability to discern lies from honesty than has the GOP and Romney.