Thank You Hobby Lobby

So the nightmare scenarios unfold.

I like the Scientologist not covering antidepressants, the Jehovah’s Witness not paying for blood transfusions and the Christian Scientists not paying for anything. But my personal favorite is the one that could happen to me: my employer hires a new administrator who decides my three interracial children should not be covered for anything because the Bible says miscegenation is immoral and any illness would be God’s just punishment for my sin. Hard to say what’s worse: All the terrible things that religious zealots have now been empowered to do to the rest of us or listening to them preening and crowing about their victory for religious freedom. There’s more blowback on the way too here and here. The slippery slope is now in the rear view mirror folks. We’re in the shit.

But when you really think about it, maybe this isn’t going to pan out the way everybody thinks. I’m not so sure it’s as good as the Right thinks or as bad as the Left believes. Let’s speculate:

A furniture manufacturer in North Carolina won’t cover anybody who’s gay because they just lost their fight to fire them outright. A chicken processing plant won’t cover anybody who’s Catholic because they object to Papists. A Saudi Arabian consortium gains a controlling interest in GM. They instruct their insurance provider that any ailments traceable to alcohol or pork consumption will no longer be covered. Nobody covers Jews anywhere for anything. A group of Catholics in the chicken place sues in court for unfair discrimination. A group of Fundamentalist Protestants working at the furniture shop sue because they don’t think the Catholics should be covered by their employer. Muslim employees of GM sue because they don’t want anything covered for the Infidels. Jews start suing everybody.

The court system becomes paralyzed with suits and counter suits all alleging infringement on our constitutionally guaranteed religious right to exclude everybody we don't like from having anything we feel they shouldn't have. The courts have to choose which laws to ignore and which to follow, anti discrimination laws or pro religious bigotry statutes. These back their way up to the Supreme Court and Antonin Scalia has a stroke trying to read them all and untangle the legal knot he tied with his Hobby Lobby decision. He dies in the emergency waiting room while the hospital administrators are trying to determine if he’s excluded from coverage because he’s a Papist or because he's an Italian. President Paul declares the date of his death a National Health Care Free Holiday on which absolutely no American citizen connected to the Health Care Industrial Complex has to work and if you split your head open on a rusting factory gate you’re just shit out of luck.

Finally, the corporate CEOs get together and decide they’ve had enough and sue all their employees. In a unanimous decision, the Court agrees with the corporations that if their employees want religiously acceptable health care they should get it from their churches. “Let Dolan put it where his fucking mouth is,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes in her majority opinion. 

And why not? Why should employers be in the health care business in the first place? Who’s the genius that put those two together and where can we find him? Our religious leaders, the nation’s moral compass, when faced with the logistics of actually carrying out Christ’s call to heal the sick shit their pants and then do what all the rest of us less-holier-than-them do in an ethical conundrum. They blame the federal government for its ineptitude and inaction and call on it to fill the vacuum.

Smells like public option to me.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

That the most recent trends in anti Obama criticism have become so increasingly unhinged in their desperation has provided an abundance of comic material to his supporters. (There’s no point in wondering what those in “the center” are thinking since I haven’t met anyone of them in years.) How is anyone supposed to listen to John Boehner talk about suing the President over his use of executive orders or Michelle Bachman and others describing his actions as “king-like” when the facts bluntly show that characterization to be a hypocritical lie?  Or how can anyone possibly listen to John McCain, Mitt Romney or Dick Cheney claiming to have presciently foretold the failure of the President’s policies in Iraq when back in 2002 then-Senator Obama predicted that the Bush administration’s adventure would result in just such unforeseeable chaos as is occurring now? And how can anyone entertain their charges of failure of leadership when, if you read that 2002 speech, you can hear a fledgling international statesman cautioning against a hasty leap into a centuries old quagmire while all three of them couldn’t put our children in harm’s way fast enough and couldn’t contain their excitement at the opportunity to do so? Viewing attempts to counter these criticisms is akin to watching Bill Nye arguing with climate change deniers and Creationists or any educated person arguing with a holocaust denier: in the end you just feel more frustrated while they gain something that passes for legitimacy among a populace growing ever more illiterate politically, historically and scientifically.

While a lot of those on the left are laughing, the fact that this kind of contemptuous carping has to be treated as serious debate should be alarming. The Republicans hold the House and will probably keep it in November while very possibly gaining control of the Senate. This means impeachment, pure and simple. Whatever the end result for the man and the legacy he deserves, the consequences for us are enormous. You can forget about legislation or governing. After four years of the most useless unproductive congress in history, the final two years of the Obama presidency will be consumed with exactly the kind of spectacle the Republicans have decided is the only role left to government: Bloodsport. The bestial cockfighting that Republican politics has degenerated to. (Anyone remember the President’s resistance to his more ardent left wing supporters back in 2009 to open hearings into Bush and Cheney’s handling of the war, their outing of active CIA agents and torture, because he wanted his administration to move forward and govern together with our friends across the aisle?)

Rather than laughing at these rants, though certainly imbecilic enough, maybe we’d be better served looking more closely at them for what they are, the most recent feverish symptoms of the underlying right wing illness: Obama Derangement Syndrome. And maybe we should look more closely at the disease itself because while it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the misery of those friends across the aisle it might just be proving to be more life threatening than a simple case of the clap infecting those who deserve it.

There’ve been a lot of facile explanations for the Right’s irrationally rabid hatred of a man who has been, after all, elected President twice by large margins, certainly larger than George Bush ever enjoyed. What’s the deal? He’s everything Republicans lecture the rest of us about. Actually born into meager circumstances (unlike George Bush or Mitt Romney) he bettered himself through hard work, perseverance and intelligence without the benefit of inherited wealth and the entitlements of family connections. He’s a church-going family man, a faithful husband and a good father to two beautiful children. He exemplifies everything Republicans say they stand for. Yet they accuse him of being a Muslim (even though being one, by the way, is perfectly legitimate, legal and reasonable) and of being a radical who hates America because of the ravings of the Christian preacher whose church he attended for twenty years. (Which begs the question whether he was there to convert Reverend Wright to Islam or the other way around.) He’s been accused of being a terrorist because some other guy who used to be one forty years ago donated $200 to his Senate campaign. His birth certificate is not really his birth certificate because he was born in Hawaii, which is part of Kenya, which is a foreign country. And of course the big reason everybody hates the guy so much, the Left is fond of saying, is because he’s black. Or at least not white. Not all the way.

But maybe there’s something else that’s causing ODS. You could feel it beginning back in 2007 and ‘08 as time was dragging the decayed carcass of Bush’s presidency over the finish line. It started even before Obama won the nomination. At the heart of ODS is the inner realization by everybody on the right, at some conscious or unconscious level, that the Bush presidency was a catastrophic failure. And I can hear the whining, here we go blaming Bush again. It’s been six years already, enough. Nope. The mess that presidency left will be with us for at least a generation. (Iraq is only beginning whatever path he and Cheney set it on, a path which could actually lead to a solution first floated by Joe Biden, of all people. Think you’ll be hearing anybody use the word “prescient” to describe Joe Biden?) Bush inherited a booming economy and if not a peaceful climate, at least an absence of open warfare. We were still the world’s only superpower and the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. And he inherited a government surplus. He left behind a smoking crater. The worst economy in seventy years with mounting government debt. The lowest, most negative international standing since the world news was dominated by black and white flickering images of American planes napalming grass huts in Southeast Asian jungles in the 1960s. An overstretched, exhausted and unwelcome military bogged down in not one but two foreign entanglements. And a significant portion of a major American city reduced to a muddy debris field.

But this is actually bigger than just George Bush. The right instinctively understood that the cast of clowns parading through the farce his presidency turned into had laid bare the utter bankruptcy of Republican ideology. Relieving the wealthy of their responsibility to the American community did not result in any largesse trickling down to the rest of us. Whatever trickled, trickled up. The rising tide pretty much swamped all but the biggest boats. Government was not the enemy after all. Instead it turns out it had been what was holding us together. Until 1980 anyway.

And with this realization came the decision, conscious or instinctive, that no matter who followed George Bush to the presidency he (or she) would be transformed into the most reviled public figure in living memory by the sheer volume and viciousness of their criticism. No matter what his successor actually did or said the Right was determined to keep that individual an object of scorn and derision from the moment the votes were legitimately counted and the choice of the president was taken from Scalia, Thomas and Alito and given back to the electorate. Every circumstance of his life, including his very birth would be twisted into some indication of a flawed, even malicious character.  And here I agree with even his most ardently racist critics: That he was nonwhite was never really a factor, it just made it easier to enlist the bigots and Luddites who might have been dissuaded from the Right wing cause with a higher minimum wage and health care for their kids.      

The Obama presidency has been flawed, as has every other one. But there have been important accomplishments as well, chiefly the apparent turnaround, however tenuous, of the economy (if anyone really wants to call 52 consecutive months of private sector job growth -- the longest in history -- a tentative recovery I’ll concede the point just to save time) and the initiation of a health care reform process that will finally begin to stanch the thirty year long hemorrhaging of the middle class. Don’t forget, these were carried out against the stiffest, most venomous obstruction ever encountered by a sitting President. (While George Bush enjoyed six years of one-party rule from 2000 to 2006. You know the Republicans miss those heady days in 2004 when the only things left on the agenda were converting Social Security into a Wall Street slush fund and diverting the population by hunting down and purging the last few government Liberals left in the judicial branch in places like Oregon and Massachusetts.)

And for all of you in the “both sides do it” false equivalency club: Yes Bush encountered incredible opposition and derision from his political enemies on the Left. But name the elected Democratic senate leader who publicly announced that his party’s chief priority (before national security, job creation, health care, infrastructure, education and the environment) was to prevent George Bush from gaining a second term. Name the elected Democratic congressional leaders who met the night of Bush’s inauguration to plan to oppose and obstruct any initiative he chose to launch from the White House. How many times after taking the House in 2006 did Democrats vote to repeal Bush’s unpaid for Prescription Drug Program? Name the sitting Democratic Congressman who during a nationally televised State of the Union Address called George Bush a liar to his face. (When you come up with that one, I’ll reward you with your very own Joe Wilson “You Lie” memorial extended ammunition clip.) Name the Democratic party officials, candidates and elected legislators who called either for the violent overthrow of the federal government under Bush or participated in talk of his personal assassination. Send me a picture of people brandishing assault weapons and waving threatening signs at a Bush public appearance. Remember all those clever Pray for Bush bumper stickers so popular at the start of his tenure? And how many Democratically controlled states saw a rise in actual secessionist movements in response to the Supreme Court's appointment of George Bush to the presidency in 2000 or his 2004 win enabled by the manipulation of voting machines and practices in Ohio? No President in modern history has encountered the kind of mindlessly hateful opposition seen by this one.

Since thirty-four years of conservative Republican policies have decimated the middle class and started our republic down the road to decline President Obama, Democrats, Liberals and Progressives and all those who still believe in the power of Government to be a force for positive change have an increasingly legitimate and important role to play in governing the country. The Right wing onslaught of rabid attacks on our elected leader are calculated to lead to impeachment, which is calculated to keep government dysfunctional. And since Republicans can no longer run for anything, a dysfunctional government is all they have left to run against.

New Quote of the Day

Just another Orwellian inversion that rationalizes fucking the poor from today's Compassionate Conservative. Seriously, who actually wants his smiling portrait posted next to this supercilious bile?

 

And since Christian Conservatives can cherry pick whatever they want from the bible to justify bullying the rest of us into submission to their prejudices and hatreds smoke this in your pipe and put that in:

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ 

Asshole.

I Told You So

I hate to say it but I told you so.

As we come upon the dog days all the pieces are falling into place for another Republican-engineered debacle. Once more the used-to-be routine business of running the country is about to be hijacked by a band of radicals bent on bringing our society to a grinding halt unless they get what they want. Or at least unless they prevent the people they dislike from getting what they want. And what the radicals want is the dismantling of the one entity that keeps us from becoming an epic Technicolor wide screen version of the Balkans: our duly elected federal government.

We used to be the envy of the civilized world. In the aftermath of the city-razing catastrophe of World War II that rendered almost the entire European continent a dazed refugee camp, we brought the planet back from the edge of social and economic disintegration. After the wholesale destruction and deadly havoc resulting from unrestrained conflict between ethnic and political groupings our wholly disparate yet united states worked together to forge a new economic engine that rebuilt a devastated hemisphere and eventually spawned a global economy. And we did it by ensuring that everybody had a stake in that progress. We created a social contract that included everyone from a geographic and ethnic jumble that made the Europeans look homogenous.

On the one hand we had the Free Market: Capitalists unfettered by any centralized direction of their resources and innovations. And on the other we had liberals who made sure the progress they made was regulated to prevent over exploitation of resources and included opportunities for all participants at every level of the ladder. When confronted with our greatest inequities we expanded that contract in the 60s to include people of color, women and the handicapped. All of this managed through the Federal Government and its resources.

Then came 1980 and our President, the “great communicator,” informed us that with everything confronting the country our one big “problem” was this same government. Now we’re being manipulated and controlled by his disciples whose only goal is to take the one government that inspired the Western world through thirty years of the Cold War and “drown it in the bathtub.”

We worked our way to the top of the heap from the forties through the sixties, leapfrogging over the Soviet Union by hammering out compromises and accommodations between owners and workers, unions and management, lefties and righties, whites and blacks. It wasn’t all kumbaya and group hugs. We never felt we had to like each other but just acknowledged that since we had to live together we might as well minimize the conflict and make deals. In fact, growing up in the fifties and sixties I got the impression that that was the “American” way: Tolerance, acceptance, respect and cooperation.

Quaint.

Now we’ve got a major political party whose single fundamental principle is that the other side has no right to incorporate their own beliefs as a component of their citizenship. Since the 80s, Republicans have been tapping into right wing loathing and paranoia by demonizing Democrats and Liberals, characterizing them as having no legitimate say in governing the country. While this may have been a winning strategy in the short term it has finally backed them into a corner: How can you compromise with "the devil" and remain true to the believers who sent you to Washington? This isn’t rabid frothing at the mouth from the fringe any more, it’s become the official party line. And since the election of the black guy, this extremism has gotten outright dangerous.

They have fashioned a perennially winning strategy — there are always angry people out there willing to vote for someone as angry as they are — but at the same time they've rendered themselves incapable of governing, a process, again, that requires tolerance, acceptance and compromise.
When you add this to the fact that the Bush presidency exposed the self-aggrandizing ineptitude of a sustained "governing" program built solely on excluding your political opponents from meaningful participation, it's to be expected that when one of those opponents begins to effect positive change the reaction will be shrill hatred and mindless opposition. 

"Governing" as we've always known it has been corrupted by more than just money and poisoned by more than just racial bigotry. I listed the American values I was raised with above. Which ones are these avowed “patriots” holding the rest of us hostage to?

Queers: A vignette for the times we live in

So these two guys (we’ll just call them Larry and Moe) are sitting in a bar across from each other at a booth. The remains of a just finished meal between them. They’ve just gotten a couple more beers. On the TV screen over the bar, the announcers at CNN or Fox or MSNBC are announcing and discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Prop 8 and therefore allow same sex marriages in California. Larry starts curling his lip in disgust and shaking his head in disapproval.

“This is wrong,” he says.

Moe: “What’s wrong?”

L: This gay marriage thing. I tell ya it’s wrong.

M: Yeah it is queer… (he chuckles at his own joke)

L: Nah, I’m serious. We shouldn’t be doin this.

M: Ahh why not, why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us? (this time he laughs out loud at his own joke)

L: Yeah, see, that’s part of the problem right there. You think it’s funny, you’re making jokes.

M: So? What else ya gonna do? Ya gonna get all pissed and miserable an start chewin the inside a yer mouth over it? You think yer gonna stop this?

L: Well I ain’t gonna just sit back an laugh about it.

M: So wattaya gonna do?

Long pause, Larry thinks it over, drinks some beer.

L: Well I don’t know what I’m gonna do, I just know it ain’t right.

M: They’re all grownups , they can do whatever they want. They ain’t hurtin anybody.

L: Yeah they are!

M: Who? Who they hurtin if they wanna get married to each other?

Larry thinks it over again.

L: Me.

M: They’re hurtin you.

L: Yeah, they’re hurtin me.

M: How?

L: How?

M: Yeah, how? How does what a couple queers in San Francisco do hurt you here?

Larry takes another slug of beer while he thinks it over.

L: Well I think it’s wrong. I think it ain’t right.

M: Who says it’s wrong?

L: Me. It’s wrong. See, I just said it. (now it’s his turn to chuckle at his own joke)

M: Oh I see, you say it’s wrong so they can’t do it.

L: Ahright, it ain’t just me. God says it’s wrong.

M: When did he say that?

L: I dunno it’s inna bible or someplace.

M: Well I ain’t no authority but I’m pretty sure it don’t actually say those exact words. Besides, so what if it does? Not everybody believes in the bible. Not everybody believes in the same thing as you or me.

L: Well they don’t have to but I believe it and if I think it’s wrong I’m supposed to say so, right? Ain’t I supposed to speak up when my religion says something somebody’s doin is wrong?

M: Well think and believe whatever ya want, just don’t expect everybody else to buy it. They got a right to do whatever they want just like you do.

L: Well it hurts me that people are doing something my religion says is wrong. They’re saying what I believe is wrong. There, that’s it: They’re denying me my religious freedom telling me I gotta shut up while they do the things they do. I got rights too, ya know.

Moe sits a long time thinking. Has some beer. Larry sits drinking, feeling like he got his point across. After a while Moe gets up from his seat. He’s got his ketchuppy steak knife in his hand. Instead of proceeding to the bathroom, he slides into the seat right next to Larry. In fact he forces Larry right up against the wall pinning one of his arms back against his side and he grabs Larry’s other hand and forces it down on the table. He holds the sharp greasy knife-edge right over Larry’s little finger.

L: Wha’… Whattaya doin?

M: I ever tell ya about my religion?

L: Whattaya mean, we went to Catlick school together. Twelve years.

M: Yeah, but that ain’t my religion now. Lemme tell ya what my religion now says. My religion now says that whenever somebody else tells me I gotta do what their religion says, I get to cut off one of their fingers. No wait, that's wrong. My religion says I HAVE TO cut off one of their fingers.

L: That ain’t no religion.

M: Yeah it is. It’s my religion. You telling me I can’t practice my religion the way I’m s’posed to? Now I gotta cut off two.

L: Two?!

M: Yeah, one for sayin I have to be against queer marriages because of what your religion says, and the other for saying I can’t follow my own religion and cut off one of your fingers.

L: Ahright ya made yer point.

M: Not yet I ain’t.

L: Cut this shit out!

M: Tell you what. My religion is merciful. I won’t cut off the thumb or the index finger. The first time. You need those and I want you to see the merciful side of my beliefs. I’ll just do the pinkie and ring finger. Ready?

L: Goddamit, cut it out!

M: You’re telling me I can’t practice my faith.

L: You can’t cut off my goddam fingers, no!

M: I have to cut ‘em off. God says so.

L: God never said that!

M: Well maybe not to you. Listen the harder you struggle here the worse it’s gonna be. Just close your eyes and… you know… pray.

L: “Y- you’ll go to jail for Chrissakes!

M: God’s law supersedes man’s.

L: You’ll go to jail?

M: I’m ready to pay the price for my religious beliefs. You can’t tell me I can’t follow God’s law… now hold still…

Moe presses gently but firmly down onto Larry's pinkie finger with the edge of the knife. Just when it's about to break the skin:

L: Ok. I get it.

M: Get what?

L: I get it. I get IT! I ain’t stupid.

Moe relaxes his grip and slides back. He goes back to his seat and has some more beer. Larry does all the stuff you would expect to get back his composure. He takes a good drink of his beer.

M: So ya wanna talk about abortion?

Quote of the day

Probably for the same reason that smug self satisfaction is now considered a virtue while poverty, sickness and hunger are vices.

-- gootch

Townhall.com According to The One's logic, Olympic gold medalists didn't earn their success.

(This is reprinted here from my FaceBook account)

OK, I just can’t keep my mouth shut about this one any more.

First, here’s what “the One” actually said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Here’s fact number one: The passage “…you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen…” refers not to the business “you” built, but to the “…great teacher somewhere in your life…this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive…” and “…roads and bridges…[that] “Somebody invested in…” and finally “…the internet…” at least partially created by “…government research…” Again, it’s a fact that the passage in question refers to communally funded and built facilities that all of us depend on for our livelihood and well being.

Fact number 2: Back in September of 2011, Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren had already made a notable speech saying very much the same thing:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Actually, fact number two is really a couple facts rolled into one: fact, Elizabeth Warren said very much the same thing, and two, each of the assertions made in the passage is a fact of life. Bridges and roads, police and fire protection, trained and educated work forces; these are all things paid for out of the common weal. Yes, the businessman pays a portion of those taxes but so do the rest of us. It’s part of the community in which we all live. Together.

But lest this appear too one-sided, Mitt Romney’s speech to the Olympian athletes at the 2002 games in Utah had something very similar to say about our interdependence:

You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities.

And by now, everyone has heard his more recent words reacting to the President’s speech:

[President Obama] describes people who we care very deeply about, who make a difference in our lives, Schoolteachers, firefighters, people who build roads. We need those things. We value schoolteachers, firefighters, people who build roads. You really couldn't have a business if you didn't have those things. We pay for those things. The taxpayers pay for government.

The portion of the speech right after this segment is an attempt to paint Mr. Obama into a different corner by ascribing a different meaning to the President’s words, but the fact here is that both men said the same thing:

• President Obama: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.
• Mitt Romney: “You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided…”
• President Obama: “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.”
• Mitt Romney: “We value schoolteachers, firefighters, people who build roads. You really couldn't have a business if you didn't have those things.”

Spin all you like, both men said the same thing, both believe in the same sense of community. I’m sure I’ll hear all about how the President has “demonized success and successful people.” He has demonized no one. He applauds success and hard work the same as Mitt Romney does. When you put their words side by side it’s objectively demonstrable that they both believe in the same work ethic that generates wealth and security in an American system that is exceptional in its opportunities for achievement and reward. It’s also objectively demonstrable through side-by-side comparison of those same exact words that both men are appealing to the common bond between us as members of a community. None of this is to say that individual success is necessarily "communally brought about," it's just that nobody creates anything in a vacuum. We're all responsible for our individual choices and their consequences, but with that in mind, try building that successful plumbing business in Somalia where the last thing you have to worry about is government regulation or taxation.

The image of either candidate as a threat to this system and community is in the subjective eye or judgment of the observer. And it is demonstrably false in that same side-by-side comparison of their exact words. Instead of characterizing the other candidate as an ominous threat out to destroy our way of life maybe we should be asking who’s profiting from our being at each others' throats over such an utterly fictitious distortion?