By Manifesto Joe
The easiest job in the world must be that of Rush Limbaugh's fact-checker. One would hardly have to do a thing.
The following seems predictable, when you let mentally ill people try to be working journalists, even if they are supposed to be "opinion" journalists. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan was famously quoted, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
This started when some half-ass Indian news agency reported that President Obama's Asia trip is going to cost taxpayers $200 million a day. The report also said that something like 34 U.S. warships were going overseas to protect Obama.
People in the "conservative" blogosphere jumped all over this. It was reported as fact, without investigation of sources or probability, by The Drudge Report, Michelle Malkin, and El Lardbaugh himself. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's office apparently disseminated the report as fact, with no checking. By the time Glenn Beck got through distorting and exaggerating it, he had the taxpayers out $2 billion for the entire trip. (Glenn will never have to worry about being unemployed. Even if the great unwashed out there eventually figure him out, I hear they're hiring at Barnum & Bailey.)
This seems to be more than a little tear from a page out of the Bill Clinton haircut folklore. To this day, there are people who believe that he held up air traffic for a considerable time while he was getting a haircut. It came out that this was an urban legend, because there were no other planes on the tarmac at the time. But plenty of right-wing morons still swear by that story.
In our times, I suppose we could have expected Obama to eventually have to start enduring the same kind of right-wing horseshit that Clinton did. Obama had a longer "honeymoon" -- they started working on Clinton almost right out of the chute. But Obama's time definitely seems to have come.
Anyway, the government isn't releasing exact numbers about how much the Obama Asia trip is going to cost, because there are rules about that sort of thing. But the Pentagon, upon hearing particulars like about those alleged 34 warships -- well, they rather quickly characterized the report as "absurd" and "comical."
Here's a link to the story from McClatchy Newspapers. (Yeah, I know -- those experienced lefty journalists of the MSM are just making all this up! They are clearly part of the liberal media conspiracy!)
Again, this is predictable when you have to, per the 1st Amendment, allow mentally disturbed, sloppy people to pose as trustworthy disseminators of public information.
The bigger problem is that one of those who was at the center of this is a member of Congress (Bachmann) who is seeking a leadership post in the new House. Hello, America -- you just elected 60-something more of these bozos to Congress.
And then you'll be surprised when they start trying to phase out Social Security and Medicare, and kicking millions of people off jobless benefits?
I'm going to have one hell of a time over the next couple of years saying over and over and over again, I told you so.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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4 comments:
The real beneficiaries of Obama's India trip will be the shareholders of corporations ranging from Wal-Mart to Lockheed Martin. After all, the real point of the trip is for Obama to act as a glorified sales pitchman for the 250 or so American CEOs traveling with him.
These corporations all stand to reap many billions of dollars from deals inked during this trip.
It seems to me that these CEOs should pay the U.S. government for the privilege of even going on this lucrative trip. That'd take care of the cost to the U.S. taxpayer right there.
This is what the "Conservatives" ought to be advocating (if they really were Conservatives, and not Kool-Aid-drinking wingnuts).
Great point, Marc. It's hard to understand why "conservatives" would object to such corporate welfare. But in the case of some "conservatives," it seems like a segment of the population better left to mental health professionals than to political analysts.
It's just part of a constant conservative Republican plot to lie about and discredit Obama on every single little thing he does so that, in their hopes and dreams, NOBODY will vote for him in 2012!
As bad as the bogus Clinton haircut story was, the wingnuts have made far more sinister claims. For example, Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly insinuated that Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in the death of Vincent Foster. I'm unclear as to why this gelatinous, blubbery, drug-using, Nazi asswipe is able to make such claims on the public airwaves and not face libel charges.
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