lying liars and the lies they've been telling

[opadit]

News article on a Friday afternoon that's a three-day weekend for a lot of Americans debunks some of the more egregious historical inaccuracies that right-wingers have been trying to get across lately (McClatchy, via Yahoo! News

Comments

[wisn]

One of the most broadly-sweeping corporate regulations in our country's history was passed on Teddy Roosevelt's watch: the Pure Food & Drug Act. He was also one of the first presidents to attempt to socialize medicine, but he was about as successful as anybody else has been.

The Pure Food & Drug Act has been occasionally demonized by right-wing shills as evidence of overreaching government powers, so by their terms it's grounds for vilifying the guy.

The rest of them, though - I dunno, at this point it's only evidence of how easily current media pundits can be bought, and how poor our educational systems are that arguments like that can get any traction whatsoever.

[handworn]

Yep, some pretty loopy stuff. The Theodore Roosevelt one at least has some remote basis-- not that he was a socialist, but he supported laws of the national government reaching farther into previously private companies, like ensuring safe food and drugs, and breaking up trusts. Which I suppose is what Beck meant. I consider him a lunatic, but people like him only spring up in response to the environment that makes it profitable. Gerrymandering by both parties is the main culprit, which ensures politicians' job safety at the expense of their constituents. Together with seniority rules, this means the congresspeople from the most extremist districts remain in office the longest and so scoop up all the leadership positions. Everyone else then has to run in the context of what they say.