To compete as a Republican

... you have to be willing to tell blatant, outright, undeniable lies. In politics, practically everyone shades the truth. Yes, of course, even Democrats. Here's some normal political bullshit from Sarah Palin:

Palin discounted the administration’s view that the president’s plan would cut health care costs. The only path to lower costs, she said, was less treatment.

Never mind that anyone who can subtract can understand that the American health care system alone in the world spends hugely on overhead that doesn't contribute to care (that is, on insurance company bureaucracy). But this is a normal political deception. Those who don't engage in some happy talk and wishful thinking don't last very long, since most of us voters express our preference to be lied to in every poll.

What Palin and Limbaugh and the rest of the raving wingnuts are saying is well beyond any ordinary stretching and trimming. They and the entire Republican Party establishment are lying when they tell their rabid base that Democrats want to kill their family members. Yeah, that would meet our need for electoral popularity! We Democrats aren't even tough enough to even hurt Republicans in strictly legislative ways.

These Republicans know full well they're lying, but they know it's their path back to full exploitation of the severely polarized America that might reconsider its rejection of them. And they're calling us Nazis!

Update (8/10): Newt Gingrich stoops to defend this lie. Why is it again that the media views him as respectable?

The bankers you have

I've been trying to figure out why Obama hasn't moved more aggressively to assert government's role. What!???, you may say. He's borrowing and spending trillions.

His lack of aggressiveness is that he's handing the money over to the same people who made this diarrhea soup, as if he expects them to change their minds and their hearts about how the markets ought to work and what their cut should be. He should be clawing back money from them instead of making whole their bonuses, their stupid investments, and their shareholders (o.k., not whole exactly).

The credit markets are still blocked because everyone knows that what Atrios calls the big shitpile is still hugely overvalued, and the financial institutions want us to take the hit instead of them.

For some reason, though, Obama and Geithner believe that we need these people to run the system and to unwind all the deals. They think they're going to economic war with the bankers they have, not the bankers they wish they have.

Then there's the fear that wingnuts will scream socialism even louder. So what! Embrace it, tell them it's temporary, and then make it happen. Nationalize failed banks and financial institutions. They don't seriously think they're going to convince the idiots that Newt Gingrich is fomenting anger among, do they?