Althouse: The "most popular" article in WaPo right now is "Romney's distortions about Obama do us a disservice."

May 29, 2012

The "most popular" article in WaPo right now is "Romney's distortions about Obama do us a disservice."

But when you click on those words, you get to a column titled "Romney’s pants on fire."

The 2 different headlines go to such opposite extremes of phoney politesse and dopey childishness. Who writes that stuff... and what's the thinking about which attitude goes where?

I didn't read the attached column, though I did glance at the last sentence: "He seems to believe voters are too dumb to discover what the facts really are — or too jaded to care." I really identified with those last 4 words: too jaded to care.

23 comments:

ricpic said...: Me too. Too jaded to care fits me to a tee. Or maybe it's just the hot weather.; 5/29/12, 8:41 AM
Chip S. said...: I didn't realize that "Eugene Robinson" was a pen name of Jay Carney.

Mickey Kaus has got this covered nicely.; 5/29/12, 8:47 AM
ndspinelli said...: Maybe Romney should adopt Soul Asylum's hit, Runaway Train, as their cqampaign song. "How in the world did I get so jaded."; 5/29/12, 8:49 AM
SGT Ted said...: The reason folks are too jaded to care is that the WaPo is whining about "distortions" concerning Obama, when they were all in with the attempt to paint Romney as a bully based on a event alleged to have occured 40+ years ago.

Telling the truth about Obamas politics isn't a distortion.; 5/29/12, 8:50 AM
Big Mike said...: You need to understand that Eugene Robinson is an African-American columnist who has consistently taken the position that any disagreement with Obama on any point is yet another sign that America is still a racist society.

His key point is paragraph 4: “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history,” Romney claims on his campaign Web site. This is utterly false. The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

Put me down among the people who believe Romney and don't believe either Robinson or Obama. If spending accelerated under Dubya's first term at a rate of 7.3% and under Obama at a rate of 1.4%, then someone has to explain why the deficit under Obama is more than 5 times higher than the deficit under Dubya.; 5/29/12, 8:53 AM
Real American said...: the fact is, Obama is a horrible president. no other facts matter.; 5/29/12, 8:59 AM
rhhardin said...: The jaded palate would be a good name for an Indian restaurant.; 5/29/12, 9:11 AM
Wince said...: Robinson:

“Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history,” Romney claims on his campaign Web site. This is utterly false. The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

Mickey Kaus offers two possibilities:

Today’s NYT campaign notebook has Obama sluicing the controversial Nutting Marketwatch chart straight off the Internet into a campaign speech, in which he proclaims “Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years.” (The exact sequence seems to be Nutting’s keyboard to Web to Carney to Obama to the world.) Obama’s instantaneous embrace of Nutting’s chart–a calculation so absurd even Ezra Klein tried to change the subject, since (among other things) it attributes most of Obama’s $800+ billion stimulus to Bush–raises an interesting pair of possibilities:

a) Does Obama really not have an intuitive feeling for how much he’s been spending? That’s a little like not remembering how much sex you’re having. He’s the one doing the spending, after all. Even if he wasn’t, you’d think an ordinary BS detector would kick in. It’s one thing to expect MSNBC viewers to be credulous. It’s another thing …

or

b) Obama doesn’t care if it’s BS as long as it might work.**

Are there any other possibilities? I don’t see them. … P.S.: I guess there is a third possibility–to Obama, this isn’t big spending. He’s in self-pitying mode, and feels he’s been admirably restrained. Big spending is … Sweden, maybe. But you’d think he’d still know the historic drift.; 5/29/12, 9:24 AM
edutcher said...: Neal Boortz went all in on this one.

It's about how Robinson tries to justify MarketWatch reporter Rex Nutting trying to pin spending Dubya wouldn't sign, but Zero would, back on Dubya - as well as Stimulus I (if you can believe it) - so Zero doesn't look like quite the big spender he is.

The WaPo seems awfully nervous about Zero.

Wonder why.; 5/29/12, 9:25 AM
Larry J said...: The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

Complete bullshit and a damned lie. That lie was clearly discredited last week. Looks like Eugene Robinson is willing to lie his ass off for Obama or is too stupid to see the lie for himself.; 5/29/12, 9:25 AM
Anonymous said...: "voters are too dumb to discover what the facts really are"

Yeah, as in believing Obama is the second coming of Lincoln, JFK, FDR,...Reagan, Obama made the gutsiest call of all times, Obama killed Bin Laden single-handedly, Obama created millions of jobs (from whole cloth),...

Voters who read WaPo have been "too jaded to care" about facts for a loooong time.; 5/29/12, 9:30 AM
Rumpletweezer said...: It's easier to believe that The Avengers is real than to believe anything in the Post. I hear it used to be a real newspaper.; 5/29/12, 9:50 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Eugene Robinson must've been that guy who wrote for the college newspaper and warned us all about the rising tide of student apathy.; 5/29/12, 9:50 AM
bgates said...: The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

Eugene Robinson is a stupid person, but the Post is a propaganda organ, so it's hard to tell if that sentence is a mistaken version of the lie they mean to tell (that the increase in spending has slowed) or a new, more preposterous lie (that spending itself has slowed).; 5/29/12, 9:53 AM
damikesc said...: It's even funnier when you notice that he's using the already repeatedly-debunked talking point.

Note to Eugene: The Democrats refused to send Bush the 2008 budget to sign. He had zero input. It was all Democrats.

It was SUPPOSED to be a one-time surge due to the crisis that Obama simply made part of the baseline. TARP? We're spending that money EVERY SINGLE YEAR now since the Dems won't pass a budget and simply keep spending what we spent on the last budget they passed. 3 years ago or so.

...which is why when you hear that the stimulus was only "800 billion", consider it a lie since it has been used as a baseline for budgeting for 3 yrs now. So, technically, the stimulus has added 2.4 TRILLION to the deficit. Almost 2.7T actually.

Romney needs to start mentioning that we have spent nearly THREE TRILLION DOLLARS on Obama's stimulus and the economy is STILL crap.

The reason folks are too jaded to care is that the WaPo is whining about "distortions" concerning Obama, when they were all in with the attempt to paint Romney as a bully based on a event alleged to have occured 40+ years ago.

Or spent months obsessing over Sen Allen saying "macaca".

Or spent months obsessing over the college thesis of Gov McDonnell.

Their obsessions seem kinda odd, no?; 5/29/12, 10:18 AM
Comanche Voter said...: Robinson is a pathetic putz who preaches pustulutent poppycock to progressives.; 5/29/12, 10:44 AM
Alex said...: Isn't it weird that the leftist trolls have disappeared in the last week? I mean Allie shows up once every few days, but it's just not the same.; 5/29/12, 10:55 AM
wyo sis said...: We can't afford to be jaded. I admit it's a struggle not to be. We should be horrified and ashamed of ourselves for the lack of vetting of Obama in light of what we now know and could have known then.
We need to get over being jaded and start at grass roots with people we know have our values and watch them all the way to presidential politics until we have decent candidates.; 5/29/12, 11:04 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Isn't it weird that the leftist trolls have disappeared in the last week? I mean Allie shows up once every few days, but it's just not the same."

Well, it's mainly Garage that's not around, right? He must be depressed about the Walker recall. His style was almost always to gloat about how great things were for some liberal cause. Even though the Walker supporters have not engaged in the same kind of gloating they'd have heard if he were losing, maybe it hurts too much or when there's no gloating to do, they don't know what to say.; 5/29/12, 11:06 AM
Alex said...: Ann - true enough I believe garage knows Walker is not going down. But as Han Solo once said - "Don't get cocky kid". There's a lot of work to do to save this glorious experiment known as the United States of America.; 5/29/12, 11:07 AM
CWJ said...: Ann, Garage for sure has gone missing. But I've seen very little of 36, harrogate, and Freder as well. Maybe he's on vacation.; 5/29/12, 12:45 PM
Chip S. said...: Garage for sure has gone missing. But I've seen very little of 36, harrogate, and Freder as well.

You think absentee ballots just fill themselves in? There's important work to be done!; 5/29/12, 2:15 PM
ken in tx said...: I give Allie a pass because she is good looking in her picture—like Ann. I like good looking women no matter what they say. Garage not so much. Although his online name is one of the best ones I have seen. I bet he will revive himself soon.; 5/29/12, 8:01 PM