Wingnut lies (posted by DT)

Sorry to my legion of fans to go so long without posting. It's tough to drag myself away from the NHL and NBA playoffs- good stuff!

Anyway, in my latest email correspondence with some new-found Right Wingnut friends, I've been particularly struck by the power of the Right wing noise machine. It blows my mind how the Right can, through sheer repetition in their closed system, create a reality in the Common Wisdom that is the exact opposite of the truth

For example, there's financial reform. We have Democratic senators working on a bill to regulate Wall Street. Republican politicians are criticizing this as a "permanent bailout of Wall Street". Now this is so beyond the pale that I have to believe it won't work and will be abandoned, but I've learned that almost anything is possible. These guys are masters at what they do. Our current system is set for automatic bailouts of the financial industry in times of crisis, as happened in 2008. The proposed legislation offers an orderly way to prop up and then break up failing financial companies. It is opposed by Wall Street, which would of course love to continue the current system in which they make piles of money in good times gambling with excessive leverage, and then gets the rest of us to pay for the bailout when it hits the fan. It's a win-win! I think it's pretty clear which party is more in line with Wall Street thinking, but their rhetoric is that Democrats are bailing them out.

Maybe we're not stupid enough to buy it this time. Sometimes I think that the Right has become so good at this ("Obama is a fascist!" "The deficit is the Democrats' fault!"), that they sit around in a smoke filled room drinking scotch and saying "hey, check this out, I think we can make America believe that Democrats are the party of Wall Street!" "No way, that's going too far!" "What the F---, let's try it and see!".