JOE VS O.

So, as we all now know, "Joe the Plumber" is a registered Republican who doesn't have a plumber's license. And the business he works for, and said he hoped to buy, has a yearly income that will get a tax break under an Obama presidency, not a tax hike.

But as we also know, these facts mean nothing to rightwingers.

Obama will "raise your taxes" is still their mantra, and McCain less than twenty-four hours ago—and after "Joe the plumber" was exposed as a fraud—is still claiming in his speeches everything he was claiming in the debate that has since been exposed as lies.

This is what so many of us have been pointing out (and been frustrated by the media often ignoring or trying to "balance" by giving the lying side and the factual side as if both were equal)—that rightwing Republicans have perfected "the big lie" of the Nazis and Soviet Communists so well that an inordinate amount of people in this country (see some of the comments on past posts on this blog for perfect examples) believe them, no matter the evidence.

I told a friend the instant I saw the photo of "Joe the Plumber" and Obama—even before the video turned up on youtube or that encounter became an emblem of the debate and the commentary that followed—I could see "Joe" was trying to control an obvious distaste, if not outright hatred, for Obama.

And when I learned "Joe" said that Obama "tap danced all around the answer" and added that Obama outdid Sammy Davis Jr. Well, that's all she wrote. I don't listen to Rush or his ilk, but that sounds exactly like the kind of thing they say in their coded racist way.

The right despises Obama's consistently thoughtful and reasoned answers to questions and proposals for solutions to our problems. They have been thriving on their own "big lies" for so long now, they have no aptitude for reason and thoughtfulness, only sarcasm and simplified rightward spin.