NOT GROUNDED IN REALITY: In their quest to discredit Obama, conservatives have increasingly left the facts far behind. Playing upon myths
forged during the presidential campaign, Republicans like Sen.
Tom Coburn
(R-OK) and a chorus of talk radio hosts have spread the lie that Obama will "
take away your gun
." However, in the age of Obama, conspiracy theories have not been bound to only fringe members of Congress and right-wing radio. A
bill
aimed a preventing the creation of a "global currency" to replace the dollar -- a
non-existent
threat hyped by the
right-wing echo chamber
-- gained
at least 30
GOP co-sponsors. The pattern has persisted on every major agenda item Obama has put forward. Republicans have
falsely
claimed that an MIT study showed that a cap on carbon pollution is a
$3,100
light-switch tax. When the author explained the study actually found a
$65
cost in 2015, conservatives declared the cost was
then $3900
. GOP talking points opposing Obama's Recovery Act were laden with accusations similarly made of
whole cloth
. For instance, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) joined other Republican lawmakers in decrying a
made-up
high-speed train supposedly designed to run "straight from Disney[land] ... to the doorstep of the Moonlight Bunnyranch in Nevada." And during the first public debates over health reform, the conservative establishment
converged
to support a "report" by Hudson Fellow Betsy McCaughey that
erroneously suggested
that investments in comparativeness effectiveness investments would create a "new bureaucracy" to "
monitor doctors
."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
