So will the Democrats fight back against the lies?

The latest meme: the GOP and their media flunkeys are screaming that Obama's going to raise our taxes, which he has already said he won't do. Even CNN is reporting -- well, it looks like Obama is going to raise our taxes, so will that cost him his second term? -- when Obama said exactly the opposite. Even the mainstream media has been sucked into the GOP lie-and-smear machine.

Meanwhile the wingnuts got busted for claiming that Obama will eliminate private insurance. Drudge posted some Breitbart nonsense on this subject, but when the White House threw the bullshit flag, it was withdrawn from the site.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/04/white-house-launches-counteroffensive-over-drudge-report-link/?eref=politicalflipper

And Cal Thomas, over in the Washington Times, is peddling the granny-euthanasia story again.

This sort of agitprop nonsense is what the GOP is devoting itself to, when they're not sending their Brown Shirt goon squads to disrupt town hall discussions of health reform, or cranking up the birth-certificate poppycock again.

This is a key moment in the history of the Democratic party, and the nation. For half a century the Republican party has won elections by telling scary lies about Democrats -- they hire traitors in the State Department, soft on communism, soft on crime, soft on terror, they hate the troops, Dukakis loves rapists, Kerry lied about being a war hero, Obama's a terrorist sympathizer.

It works because Democrats never fight back. That sort of mudfight is beneath us, we have important issues to discuss.

The perfect depiction of the relationship between the Republicans and Democrats came to us in the film "Recount", when the Democratic legal team handling the 2000 election battle wanted to make history by showing the world we could have a civil, philosophical, Socratic debate about the nature of leadership and democracy, while the Republicans hired a tough motherfucker named Baker who simply wanted to win and was willing to do anything to get the job done, to include exactly the same formula the Republicans are using now: nonstop lies, and sending in goon squads to intimidate Democrats into giving up and running away.

Because Democrats never fight back.

If we let these thugs beat us up, take our lunch money, and go bragging to our mommas about it, yet again, then we deserve to lose. In 2010, in 2012, the works.

Keith Olberman eviscerated not only the Republicans but also the Blue Dogs for whoring themselves out to the insurance industry and spewing lies all summer. It's his latest Special Comment -- a classic. A Democrat with balls -- I forgot we had those.

And that brings me to the other issue: the pathetic performance of the media. Even the mainstream media is refusing to give proper attention to the reality of the health care issue. They battened upon one incomplete CBO report to switch from reform-is-inevitable to reform-is-doomed in a matter of days, and then went yapping off to cover asinine diversions like Michael Jackson, the birthers and Professor Gates. This health care debate is a pivotal moment in our nation's history, and the media are alternatively refusing to take part, or doing the GOP's work for them by covering their lies and distortions as straight news.

Imagine if, during the Watergate debates, Cronkite and Brinkley decided to report only on the pro-Nixon claims of Ron Ziegler, and the marriage of Burton and Taylor. That's where modern journalism is today: given the choice between reporting the boring facts of a complicated issue, or regurgitating the prepackaged lies of corporate whores and pawning infotainment off on us packaged as real news, they take the easy way out. Because real leadership isn't sexy enough for them -- gotta put butts in seats!