Which Party Speaks for the Working Poor?

David Brooks is smart.  But not here. 

Be on notice, this is not a polished final product.  I am sharing my initial thoughts and reactions, unedited. Italicized and indented portions are from Brooks’ original article.

On the one side, there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.

In this section, Brooks presents one faction in the party in one-side terms.  What he says is true, as is the (currently overwhelming) tendency to overlook that these risk takers depend on government support even as they rail against government.  This is not new.  Re-presenting private interests as if they were public interests is a common strategy.

But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government.

In this section, Brooks presents the other faction in one-sided terms.  What he says is true enough, but this faction also succumbs to the blindness of nostalgia for a past that never existed.  Their preservationism is at least as much about preserving their privilege (and others subordination) as it is about the concepts Brooks uses here as if they were meant to mean family as everyone lives it, communities that include everyone, and a ‘harmonious ecosystem’ that is not premised on exclusion and hierarchy.

Because they were conservative, they tended to believe that power should be devolved down to the lower levels of this chain. They believed that people should lead disciplined, orderly lives, but doubted that individuals have the ability to do this alone, unaided by social custom and by God. So they were intensely interested in creating the sort of social, economic and political order that would encourage people to work hard, finish school and postpone childbearing until marriage.

In this section, Brooks overlooks that the order-fetish central to this strain of American political thought is more than willing, in fact often eager, to call for the heavy hand of the law to enforce its view on marriage or voting rights or property rights, etc.  It is just one-sided and intentionally misleading to frame this perspective as opposed to centralized authority.

The two conservative tendencies lived in tension. But together they embodied a truth that was put into words by the child psychologist John Bowlby, that life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.

In this section, Brooks recognizes only the tension between his two romanticized halves, and not the tensions within each half.  By doing this, ‘from a secure base’ appears to suggest that there is a desire to create a safety net, but that is no where to be found here.

The economic conservatives were in charge of the daring ventures that produced economic growth. The traditionalists were in charge of establishing the secure base — a society in which families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand.

In this section, Brooks is just bullshitting.  This section depends on the fantasy that the daring ventures took place in a never-never land outside of the societies we live in and that securing the base for all families demands, as history shows us, more than a subtle government hand, particularly when the preservationist forces opposing this are willing to fight a civil war or campaign against voting rights to prevent it.

Ronald Reagan embodied both sides of this fusion, and George W. Bush tried to recreate it with his compassionate conservatism. But that effort was doomed because in the ensuing years, conservatism changed.

No comment.  Too far from reality.

In the polarized political conflict with liberalism, shrinking government has become the organizing conservative principle. Economic conservatives have the money and the institutions. They have taken control. Traditional conservatism has gone into eclipse. These days, speakers at Republican gatherings almost always use the language of market conservatism — getting government off our backs, enhancing economic freedom. Even Mitt Romney, who subscribes to a faith that knows a lot about social capital, relies exclusively on the language of market conservatism.

In this section, Brooks overlooks that the tea party is best seen as the other half of the traditional wing that he left out…on steroids.  So, far from in eclipse.  And Brooks is slippery here by choosing to say the other wind ‘uses the language of’ since this allows him to be honest and mislead at the same time.  It is true that this wing uses that language, but it is not true that this wing behaves in ways that are consistent with their own talk…they are first in line in search of government preferment.

It’s not so much that today’s Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don’t even know it exists.  There are few people on the conservative side who’d be willing to raise taxes on the affluent to fund mobility programs for the working class. There are very few willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40 percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. There are very few Republicans who protest against a House Republican budget proposal that cuts domestic discretionary spending to absurdly low levels.

If the traditionalist wing as he describes it was really as he describes it, there would be republican voices against the Ryan budget.  But he has argued by fiat to preclude this.

The results have been unfortunate. Since they no longer speak in the language of social order, Republicans have very little to offer the less educated half of this country. Republicans have very little to say to Hispanic voters, who often come from cultures that place high value on communal solidarity.

In this section, Brooks finally comes clean in describing the traditionalist as focused on order (not only or even primarily decentralized power, as he states).

Republicans repeat formulas — government support equals dependency — that make sense according to free-market ideology, but oversimplify the real world. Republicans like Romney often rely on an economic language that seems corporate and alien to people who do not define themselves in economic terms. No wonder Romney has trouble relating.

Some people blame bad campaign managers for Romney’s underperforming campaign, but the problem is deeper. Conservatism has lost the balance between economic and traditional conservatism. The Republican Party has abandoned half of its intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens.

The problem is deeper.  He is on target in these last two paragraphs, but the former makes understanding this impossible.

Romney Finding His Stride in UN Speech
The Christian Science Monitor does a good job of comparing the two speeches today, and providing links to each one for those who missed them.  Candidate Romney puts country first in this speech.  He provided a thoughtful alternative perspective on how to operate American foreign policy, without suggesting to the world that we are weak and divided as a nation when it comes defending ourselves against attack.

 

Make Way for the Next Generation
Krista Tippett interviews in On Being two emerging young leaders changing the way the Christian Right thinks and talks about politics and religion, democracy and collaboration.  Very interesting trend.

Democracy Without Sound Bites
Jefferson Action is conducting a Citizen Election Forum in Ohio's 16th Congressional District.  You can watch the live stream at Jefferson Action, see the full video from earlier days (and weeks), and prepare to watch the live streaming interaction between a group of twenty-four informed citizens of the district and the two candidates in two weeks. 

They will focus on holding the candidates accountable on three issues the citizens in the district have said the candidates should be focusing on: weak ecomonic growth, unemployment, and the deficit and debt.  Democracy without sound bites...granted it takes a little longer, but it reminds us what our framers risked everything to achieve.  Tune in.

Republicans Block Aid to Veterans
A bipartisan bill was defeated today on a procedural vote by Republican Senators putting party ahead of country yet again.  It is so important to them to deny any legislative success to the Obama administration, that they are willing to turn their backs on our veterans, even turning their backs on legislation they participating in writing. 

Republicans have chased out all the moderates from their caucus and replaced them with the Tea Party taliban.  Like Romney, they are doing this to themselves. 

We need a functioning Republican Party to govern well when they win and to provide a counterpoint as a loyal opposition when the other side wins.  And to make it possible for a wide variety of problems to be addressed, when possible with strong bipartisan support, starting with the problems plaguing American families in general and veterans families in particular.

Romney Fumbles, But Let's Examine His Claim Seriously
This Washington Post article explains the situation with 8 simple graphs, starting with Romney's claim and expanding from there to improve our understanding. 

Turns out that, Romney was focusing only on one particular type of federal tax.  In addition to federal income tax (where his numbers are accurate) there is the federal payroll tax (paid by many more) and there are state and local taxes (including sales taxes) that are more regressive (nearly everyone pays them) and hit lower-income groups harder. 

Adding up all taxes, the article shows that total tax rates are not that different across income levels.

Sometimes I wonder

Incivility is what undermines civil society, making elite campaigns threat #1
Who could oppose motherhood, apple pie, or civility?  I sometimes wonder, however, if civility is the wrong solution, based on a misdiagnosis of the problem today.  Yes, elite political ads and speeches are often personal attacks that make us uncomfortable.  And, yes, incivility can be an obstacle to communication and makes us uncomfortable.  But when I observe our situation today, I do not see these as the same thing or same type of discomfort.  

If we assume they are the same, then the solution is some sort of grammar police, pretending we can separate form from substance contrary to what any skilled teacher of writing would tell us. The image in my mind is my grade school nun beating the heck of me for speaking my mind in a way that annoyed her, on the grounds that I used a dangling modifier.

If, however, we separate these two problems and focus on the most immediate associated with elite ads...I am not sure the most important thing for us to address in response to these is civility, unless we think of civility in a way that focuses on both form and content, style and substance.

Maybe a cultural reference will help here.  Keep in mind, from the movie Pleasantville (analyzed in Chapter Three of Punishing Schools) where the leadership worked hard to make ‘being pleasant’ the core value in order to silence disagreement, and in particular silence what the elite consider disagreeable positions.  Like the civility police today, these elites observed popular discontent and frustration and responded by choosing to direct the attentions of ordinary citizens on the ways other citizens get emotional, speak with passion about the stifling sense of suffocation they feel, in order to distract them from focusing on elite behavior causing far deeper and more disturbing harms.  Disruptive subjects were reframed as uncivil; virtuous elites reframed as defenders of the ‘common sense’ notion of order captured in being pleasant.

Or perhaps a comparative perspective will help.  As China modernizes they are confronting a wide range of real and potential threats to social order.  Threats based on the fact that more and more citizens live without a safety net, in poverty and with little hope.  One part of the response from Chinese leadership has been to embrace the Confucian value of harmony (和为贵,he wei gui, or Harmony is the Prime Directive) and many have noted that making this the new prime directive makes it a lot easier to mobilize citizens against those articulated disagreeable positions.

Maybe an illustration from crime and punishment will help.  Jeffrey Reiman, in his classic analysis called The Rich GetRicher and the Poor Get Prison, reminds us in that the forms of disruptive behavior common among the elite are generally not crimes (but regulatory issues or market externalities), while those more common among the communities you and I live in are targeted in Wars on Crime, elite campaigns that enlist our support for punishing ourselves to distract our attentions from elite failure. 

Incivility on Steroids: Branded Information

It seems much more important today for us to find ways to hold elites accountable for repeatedly and systematically misleading us, sometimes outright lying to us...and, if it helps us accomplish this then we need to see their behavior as incivility on steroids.  Remember, in these elite campaigns they hold their audience is such low regard that they feel free to act in ways that are fundamentally disrespectful and dismissive... far more damaging that any passionate statement from a regular citizen that might include a well-chosen curse word or two...and this is the kind of incivility that is undermining political communication today. 

 

 

Incivility on steroids is an approach to political communication that centers on hiring the highest paid PR firms to create messages that are misleading by design and then use their enormous financial advantages to saturate communication channels with these messages.  It is the school yard bull shit artist as intellectual mercenary selling his skills to elites who only care about civility to the degree that his silences citizens interested in making decisions based on the best available data.

It is important for citizens to learn to speak with passion and civility, because we will be more effective that way, but we should avoid using civility as a way to distract us from focusing on holding elites accountable for actually creating the distorted information system we suffer within today and acting as if the problem is regular citizens using language most of us hear every day.    

From Phony Ads to Dangerous Actions
Candidate Romney's ads about the non-existing presidential apology tour have now been directly connected to dangerous actions.  While our service men and women are in harms way, and instead of rally behing our president, Romney wants the world to think the American people are divided on our determination to protect our own interests. 

That is dangerous and opportunistic and short sighted action the follows directly from his decision to mislead by pretending the president has been projecting weakness in killing bin laden, ending the war in Iraq, supporting Libyan efforts--in collaboration with our allies--to topple a Libyan dictator, and by all objective accounts enhancing the stature and influence of the US internationally.

And to the degree that Romney, in doing this, has moved from platitudes to specifics (and the move has been characteristically close to zero) we can see that his alternative actions, were he president, are just recycled neo-con nonsense we heard from Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz that got us into two costly wars instead of targeting those who actually attacked us on 911.

And the party that Romney represents has also demonstrated over the past three years a third type of dangerous action: a willingness to put party above country...and now that party and the Romney campaign think they can mislead us with ads claiming the failure of the government to do more to get us out of this recession, like the putative failure to protect American interests, should be seen as the president's failure, unrelated to their obstructionism.

Ran across this old photo and tried to scan it, but the quality is not so great.  I spent the summer of 1979 in West Virginia with a bunch of college students from around the country repairing the roofs on the homes of retired coal miners.  This woman asked us if we could help her bring some trees down to her yard that her neighbor had just cut down on a hill behind her place.  With all the confidence of a 19 year old I asserted that I knew how to work a horse and could do it.  We got the trees down and cut them up for her for firewood and I am alive to tell the tale, but let's just say I did not and do not know how work a horse!

Military.com Movie Review

“The film causing the current uproar in the Middle East can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ntgzoE7rU9A -- It is an absolute piece of shit. The acting is bad, the dialogue is bad, and the green-screen effects are almost mind-boggling in their awfulness.

The actors and crew involved have released a statement saying they were duped by the film-maker; a man going by the pseudonym 'Sam Bacile.' They were originally hired to make a film called 'Egypt: Desert Warrior' which was supposed to be about a random ancient Egyptian.

You can tell by watching that all of the lines insulting Islam were dubbed in after the film was shot. The man who is supposed to be Sam Bacile has given a phone interview saying he is an Israeli Jew and that the film was financed by Israeli donors to the tune of $5 million. There is no conceivable way the film cost $5 million. The real budget is probably around $500. The actors in the film also say the man they knew as Sam Bacile looked Egyptian and spoke Arabic.

This whole thing appears to be a ploy to whip up violence in the Middle East; a task which it has succeeded at admirably."

This reads like a lousy knock-off of a James Bond plot.  But I worry about what this suggests about how easily the news cycle can be manipulated by those with the resources to saturate communication channels.   

 

Love the line in Clinton's speech about politicians wanting us to believe they were born in a log cabin they built themselves.  Not sure the 'were you better off 4 years ago?' is the best question to ask, since it suggests that a four year window is the best perspective for analyzing our situation.  But, even if it is...

Fox News Criticizes DNC for Same Things Fox News Praises in RNC Convention
The Daily Show comes through for democracy again.  Simply brilliant.

This blog has spent some space explaining the numerous studies showing that Fox News viewers are more likely to believe demonstrably false claims (like Saddan Hussien attacked us on 9/11)...and that the more Fox News they watch...the more likely they are to believe these false claims.  This blog has also focused space on comparing the level and type of mis-statements at the two conventions. 

Jon Stewart brings these two themes together here in one his most brilliant and must watch analyses. 

Lies:  It is not exactly true that ‘both sides do it’
In this blog you have seen me weigh the fact checking for both conventions and conclude that, while both parties massage the truth, only one party has built nearly its entire convention message on lies that have been repeated fact checked and are not mere exaggerations, nor are they rooted in a partial truth (and thus debatable).

Salon has a detailed analysis of the fact checking on both conventions that comes to the same conclusion.  I highly recommend it if you want to base your vote on something other than fantasy and fabrication designed to mislead.

“Speaker after speaker stood up to praise the president’s record and critique Mitt Romney’s rhetoric with the sort of straightforward honesty that Americans should expect from political campaigns. That’s not to say the campaign didn’t spin the facts. Every political campaign massages the truth toward its own advantage and the Obama campaign is no different. But unlike Republicans who spouted known lie after known lie at their convention, pretty much every assertion at the DNC can be traced to some kernel of truth.”

When you hear a talking head or neighbor assert that ‘both sides do it,’ be prepared with the facts to demonstrate the important ways that this is not true, and the ways that this false equivalency provides cover for a systematic campaign designed to mislead voters (or deny them the right to vote entirely).

Real Clear Politics Poll Average Paints Picture of a Dead Heat
Perhaps the best place to go for up-to-date polling data, and lots of other great political information and analysis, is the slightly right-leaning Real Clear Politics page.  I highly recommend bookmarking it to check regularly, particularly during and election.

After watching the conventions I had hoped ordinary Americans would begin to cut through the plutocrat-funded haze designed to confuse us these past three years (more really, but much more intensively lately).  I still do trust that ordinary voters will come through as the voices of deceny and pragmatism they have so often been in the past. 

But I do wonder if the game is not rigged at two levels.  The long-term economic game that Elizabeth Warren referred to and the immediate electoral game...where the refs incompetence is more deeply structural, as they systematically skew the playing field in favor of the already ultra-wealthy.

Fact Checkers Not Working Overtime on Obama-Biden Speeches
The fact checkers at Annenburg and Politifact found some misleading statements and some areas of disagreement, but nothing close to the systematic campaign of deception that kept their teams working overtime last week. 

You can make your own call by reading through the fact checkers reports for both sides at the links provided on this blog.  Doing so does not result in knowing how to vote, but not doing so makes it pretty likely someone else is pulling the lever when you vote.

President Clinton’s Virtuoso Performance
Former President Clinton held the attention of Americans around the country for nearly an hour last night, providing powerful frames for thinking about the choice (On your own society or We are in this together society), responding point by point to the frequently fact checked (and found wanting) charges made at the RNC convention, and like no other explaining complex policies in everyday language we can all understand.

If you missed this speech you absolutely should watch it today.

Steve Schmidt, Republican Party strategist had this to say about the speech:

“Extraordinary.  A virtuoso performance….  Amazing.  I was struck by the political genius of how he embraced the Bush family for the purposes of marginalizing House Republicans and pushing them to the extreme.  It was a devastating critique delivered with an absence of malice or anger, with a smile on his face and with logic, aimed squarely at the middle of the electorate.”

Both Politifact and the original (and still most respected) fact checkers at the Annenburg School found that while Republicans will find Clinton’s claims objectionable, “with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out.”  As usual, in my view, these two sites do the best job of digging behind the claims and when they both agree that is a good sign.

The Empty Chair
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger at The Atlantic well worth reading, suggests the significance of Clint Eastwood’s RNC performance is the behind-the-curtain peak at the Romney campaign it provides. In this spectacle we can see the message behind the script: ‘an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama…an old white man arguing with an adversary he lacks the ability to see.’

Coates then provides the following quote, reminding us of the mean-spirited, inaccurate, internally contradictory, and unpatriotic claims the opposition has used these past three years to grind government to a halt.

“To paraphrase a commenter from a few years back, in GOP eyes, Barack Obama is a spellbinding orator always in need of teleprompter; the disciple of a radical Christian preacher who reigns like a secular-atheist determined to bring about a new era of Islamo-fascism; an Ivy-league wimp hailing from the gutters of Chicago; a white culture-hating racist who is not really black, but half-white; an anti-military peacenik who pals around with terrorists, who insists on killing terrorists, who insists on bragging about killing terrorists; an avowed Marxist specializing in the shadow arts of crony-capitalism and Leninist theories of banker bail-outs.”

Familiar?   Sadly yes, because we can remember hearing these over and over on the nightly news when it was time for the Republican response…instead of let’s help American families, the only response they could come up with was one that is captured in Clint’s image of the empty chair.

Fact Checkers Review First Night of DNC Convention
Fact Check, the original and in my view still most respected fact checking unit, found several misleading statements made by democratic speakers last night. 

Politifact, a newer fact checking unit but one that has franchised so that it also has local affiliates around the country able to check claims made about that area, did not find as many misleading statements.  Usually the two sites are much closer, so that gap is worth noting.  Having both conventions in play now invites a more probing analysis.

At the same time, the overall message is twofold.  First, the democrats stretched the truth.  Second, even the more harsh judgment above provides very clear evidence that, in comparing the two conventions, it is impossible to conclude anything close to equivalency.  One stretches; the other is removed from reality entirely.

This is just one night, but given the familiar strategy of letting the candidate stand above the mud slinging while others attack in his name, this is one clear sign of a meaningful difference in the two campaigns. 

One stretches and partisans on that side cannot be proud of the exaggerations, but in nearly every case after reading the fact checkers report these statements turn out to be arguable, if phrased in a way to seem obvious.  Last week, after reading the fact checkers reports that partisans could not be proud of, some fell in the same category while several core points, repeated over and over, were outright false, not arguable but rather the opposite of true.

I am reminded of an important analytical moment earlier in the campaign, when a pair of our most respected political analysts, from both sides of the aisle, concluded that it is fundamentally inaccurate and unfair to simply mouth the platitude 'both sides do it.'  At least in this case at this time in history.

Two of our most respected political analysts, one from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, do what they rarely do...argue that we cannot blame both parties for the mess we are in today. Since this type of analysis is an very real break with scholarly traditions, it is worth thinking about it carefully. 

They conclude that Republican behavior is very different from the traditional type of political tactics we see from the Democrats, it puts party before nation, it is an unloyal opposition that sees winning as failing to address the problems facing American families today.  After the first night, the comparison of the two parties as fact checked, leads again to this same, unsettling, conclusion.

Our Nieces and Nephews
My brother shared a bundle of pictures of Cecelia (4) and Colton (3) at the beach this summer and they made me think...they are why we take elections so seriously.  We all detest the mud slinging and misdirection and the added level of discomfort in everyday conversations.  But we suffer through this for them more than anything else.  As Aaron Sorkin said in Westwing, "in a democracy, sometimes the other side wins."  I hope we can re-learn this lesson this year, because an opposition party ought to be a loyal opposition, working together to fix the problems families face, for Cecelia and Colton, and for a strong democracy to protect their future wave riding.

Fiscally Conservative Budget Hawks for Democrats
Vote for the party of your choice, of course.  But if your central concern is the debt.  Consider this data before casting your ballot.

It is surprising to me that the facts are so heavily skewed in one direction and yet the myth that the other side is more fiscally responsible lives on in the hearts of so many voters.

 

Does it mean that when they say they are fiscally conservative they mean something else? Does it reflect the enormous power after Citzens United to overwhelm us with ads designed to convince us the opposite of what the facts clearly demonstrate? Even if we circulate this graph, and others like it, widely and daily...can we get us back to a conversation that is, if not based on fact, at least not based on the OPPOSITE of what the best available data suggests?

 

If this data makes you reconsider and decide that job creation is your top issue, and not the debt, than see earlier blog (Monday August 27) with that data as well...pointing similarly to superior performance by the Democratic Party, including President Obama. 

 

There are plenty of reasons to vote for either party, but if debt or jobs are your top reasons, the facts point in one fairly clear direction. 

Very Interesting Blog on Press Pushback
Thanks Jules for sharing this find with me!  Check out PressThink.

We like an independent press, until it impacts our message.  Similarly, everyone says they dislike negative ads and voters say they wish candidates would stick to problem solving rather than personal attacks until we vote and demonstrate that going negative works.  I feel like the Obama campaign is a test case to see how wide the gap can be between facts and electoral success.

Phoniness Instead of Leadership...Strategic Dishonesty
The Ed Show  on Friday August 31 focused directly on what Ed called ‘strategic dishonest,’ at the RNC convention and provides a fairly good list, even if Ed can sometimes be a bit over the top himself.  Well worth a listen.

Among all the illustrations provided, this one stands out to me.  Candidate Romney said: "I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed."

This only makes sense to listeners who have forgotten what Ed reminds us of when he plays tape of Republican leaders choosing government gridlock in the hope that the president --and America--would fail, rather than choosing to work together...so American families can succeed.

Alien?  Muslim? Socialist? Apology tour? Gutting work requirements in welfare? You didn't build that?

All phony.  Got leadership? 

See more detail below on this topic of phoniness and in today's New York Times.

When Leaders are Proud of Being Anti-Intellectual...
America has been built on the work of many, in factories and on farms, in NASA and GM, on the foundation of a nationwide public school system and the best teaching and research universities in the world.  In the business world, in our communities, churches, schools, and government agencies we have depended on a plethora of creative and innovative Americans to build the American dream, nearly always with the smartest person in the room driving the dream, pulling us together, figuring out how to solve the problems we face together. 

But a Romney pollster, speaking on ABC News, said: "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."    

When our leaders quietly attack analysis and fact checkers to protect their own ‘right to mislead’ that is one thing.  When they proudly and publicly announce that this is their strategy, it seems to me that they are saying we are not problem solvers. 

We are not the leaders you are looking for, we are not carrying the torch of previous generations of American leaders—public and private—who landed on the moon, created the internet and built the most productive manufacturing and agricultural sectors on the planet.  We are phony and proud of it.

Taking a firm stand against facts tells us a lot all by itself.  Then comparing the Romney staffer’s statement to previous statements from Romney himself (below) and we see another layer of phoniness: We are willing to hold our opponent to one standard and reject that same standard when applied to ourselves…and proud of it. 

Romney, reacting to attacks by a pro-Obama super PAC, told a radio station that "in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad." 

 

If only he lived the courage of his own convictions, instead of merely insisting others live up to standards he himself ignores.

Sadly, this is not that unusual, though the level of hubris and shamelessness, the willingness to proudly announce that we are unconcerned about facts, analysis, consistency or fairness…is astounding and both anti-intellectual and anti-democratic.  We need fact checking more than ever.  It may be our only, however tenuous, remaining link to common sense and a functioning democracy.