The "liberal' media gave the RNC a free ride by not having a fact-checker and lie-detector unit hired and wired by each media outlet to buzz each and every lie put forth to a convention hall full of gullible stiffs who do not know any better than to believe their party leaders.
It's a sham and a shame.
While many of us view it for its value in setting a new bar in the unintentional comedy world record meter, others actually believe the stuff being tossed around as fact by the puppets of Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and their brothers in harm.
TAMPA, Fla. — It was about halfway through the
speech given by Mary Fallin, by the grace of a pitiless god, the governor
of Oklahoma, where I finally came close to losing it. She rolled
herself into this remarkable passage:
The
history of my great state of Oklahoma offers a great example of
pursuing the American Dream. It was built and settled by pioneers movibe
west to seek better lives. During the Great Land Run of 1889, thousands
of families rushed to put a stake down on empty plots of land. They
built tent cities overnight. They farmed the land and they worked hard.
And, in 1897, eight years after the land run, a handful of adventurous
pioneers risked their own money — not the federal government's money —
to drill Oklahoma's first oil well, the Nellie Johnstone. By doing so,
these early-day pioneers changed the future and Oklahoma forever and
today Oklahoma is one of the nation's key energy producers and job
creators. President Obama wants us to believe that Oklahomans owe that
success to the federal government — to the Department Of Energy,to the
EPA, to the IRS, or maybe even to him. Mr. President, we know better. As
we say in Oklahoma, that dog won't hunt.
Handed in as a seventh-grade history essay, this would get no better
than a D. Delivered to the convention of one of our only two political
parties, it was perhaps the most singularly dishonest speech I have ever
seen a politician give, and I grew up in Massachusetts, and Willard
Romney was once my governor. My god, Oklahomans wouldn't even have
Oklahoma without
the federal government, without the Homestead Act of 1889 or the
Railroad Act — both, by the way, achievements of a Republican presidents
named Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Harrison. And the land wasn't
exactly "empty," Governor. It got emptied by a big-government program
called the United States Army. You know what your state would be without
the federal government, Governor, without the votes for the legislation
from congressmen from the east and north, without the soldiers from New
England and the Great Lakes? You know what Oklahoma would be?
Sand, with a whole lot of pissed-off Native Americans.
I'm not sure if it will be played this way. Ann Romney was sweet and lovely — and
very defensive
about people "attacking" hubby's success, but only as a "mom," of
course — and Chris Christie brought down the house. But the Republican
Party did something remarkable at its convention on Tuesday. It set out
on an experiment to see exactly how much unmitigated hogwash the
American political system can contain on a single evening. The
Republican Party has set out at its 2012 convention in search of the
Event Horizon of utter bullshit. It has sought to see precisely how many
lies, evasions, elisions, and undigestible chunks of utter gobbledegook
the political media can swallow before it finally gags twice and falls
over dead, leaving the rest of America suckers all the same. What you
didn't see in primetime, from Arthur Davis to Ted Cruz, and from one
2016 contender to another, was the GOP embarking upon the task of seeing
exactly how much nonsense it could produce at top volume before
democracy screams and gives up, like Noriega in Panama when they played
the metal music at him.
It was something to see, I'll tell you. An entire evening based on a demonstrable lie.
The theme was We Did Build It — which, as every sentient being knows,
is a mendacious barbering of something the president said a while back.
(On the video screens in the hall, television commercials based on a
severely edited version of the president's remarks were interspersed
between the speeches, just in case somebody sought relief from the lies
for a couple of seconds.) And there also was a lot of talk about how the
various speakers Did Build It.
There was Jack Gilchrist from New Hampshire, the metal-shop owner, who was briefly an important Romney surrogate until it was
revealed
that his company took a few cool millions in small-business loans.
There was Sher Valenzuela, running for lieutenant governor of Delaware,
who talked about how she and her husband Did Build their business. She
also talked about her husband, who was a soldier, and her father, the
former drill sergeant and "a blue-collar union guy." She did not talk
about her sideline, which is giving PowerPoint presentations to people —
probably, I am sure, not in convention centers built with tax dollars —
on
how to suck up government contracts. There was a similar thing going on with Bob McDonnell, the slippery,
up-and-coming
transvaginalist of Virginia, who proved that his family Did Build It,
by having his father join the army, his children doing the same, and
himself, finding the "same job" in government once held by Thomas
Jefferson and Patrick Henry. After listening to this laughable bafflegab
for a spell, you begin to wonder whether or not the U.S. military is a
rather large venture-capital concern with anti-tank weapons.
It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie. It was an
entire evening based on demonstrable lies told in service to the
overriding demonstrable lie. And there was only one real story for
actual journalists to tell at the end of it.
The Republicans simply don't care.
They don't care that they lie. They don't care that their lies are
obvious. They don't care that their lies wouldn't fool an underpaid
substitute Social Studies teacher in a public middle school, who would
then probably go out one night and get yelled at by Chris Christie.
("They believe in teacher's unions. We believe in teachers," he said in
his speech. Yeah, you just don't believe in paying them.) They don't
care that their history is a lie and that, by spreading it, they devalue
the actual history of the country, which is something that belongs to
us.
Did Ted Cruz really quote Martin King in this hall? Did Artur Davis,
the newly minted Republican turncoat from Alabama, just cite Jack
Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and
Lyndon Fking Johnson as examples of
"leaders" who "reached across the aisle"? Lyndon reached across the
aisle? Yeah, he did, and he grabbed their peckers and put them in his
pocket, and he didn't give them back until the skinflint bastards
coughed up Medicare. Jesus, this was pathetic. They don't care that they
lie so obviously that they always get caught, like they did with the
evening's entire theme, like they have
in and around
the Tampa Bay Times Forum, or with the story of poor Jack Gilchrist.
The Republicans will just tell the lie again. And again. And once more,
until people get tired of telling the truth in response.
It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie because it was
an entire evening based on rejecting — publicly and dishonestly, and
without caring that the facts of your own biographies give the lie to
the words you're saying — the idea of a general political commonwealth
as expressed through the national government, which has been the great
engine behind the expansion of the country's size, the country's wealth,
and, yes, the country's freedom. It was a purchase in that political
commonwealth, and not in a loose confederation of states, that King
sought, and that Lyndon sought to give the country's poorest citizens,
including the vote, which the government of John Kasich in Ohio is
presently working assiduously to roll back.
It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie, and it was
topped off by a demonstrable liar named Chris Christie, who talked about
how the president can't lead, and that nobody wants to tell the
Americans the truth of the sacrifices we have to share, and talked about
"politicians who pander" at a convention that is preparing to nominate
Willard Romney, which was the final hilarious lie of the night, since
Romney hasn't stopped pandering since he walked down the steps of the
Massachusetts State House in 2006.
Earlier, though, Christie rang the theme of the evening's overriding
demonstrable lie, too. He talked about how his family Built It, his
Irish father and his Sicilian mother.
They
both lived hard lives. Dad grew up in poverty. After returning from
Army service, he worked at the Breyer's ice-cream plant in the 1950's.
With that job, and the GI Bill, he put himself through Rutgers
University at night to become the first in his family to earn a college
degree.
Chris, old man, you didn't even build yourself - yourself. The tax dollars — the
federal
tax dollars — of, among other people, my parents paid your father's
Army salary, and they paid for the G.I. Bill. The tax dollars of
thousands of other people paid for his education at Rutgers, which is,
as it proclaims, The State University Of New Jersey. All of them were
proud to do it, because they knew that they were part of a political
commonwealth that has as its proudest expression a national government
in which all citizens have purchase.
And, Chris, and Bob, and Sher, and Jack, and all of you, you're welcome.
Liars.
