So Jon Stewart commented last night on the President's disingenuous selling of the AHCA, but had to end by noting that, in his estimation, in the grand scheme of things that was okay since he believed the Republications were even less credible.
The problem is this: It's not all relative, the is an absolute standard for truthfulness and deceit is not justified just because one's "opponents" use it. The lies told by Obama (and his recent tap-dancing around them, trying to add previously non-existent qualifications) are eerily similar if not at the same degree as many told by his predecessor. But this was to be hope, change, a new era of openness and accountability, not the same old business. One cannot sell themselves as above such deceit, as above the fray and then justify it by saying "But they've done worse".
It does not take much reading of the history of this blog to see I was an Obama supporter. I thought the tales of his dishonesty were partisan paranoia; I thought the discussion of his plans to change course during a second term, when he would not need to run for re-election, were hysterical hyperbole. But it has come to pass and recent events have revealed the duplicity. He has proposed doing things he said he would never do ("No one is going to take your guns away"). He has revealed that he has been less than honest so as to achieve his own ends. He has as much as said "Let's be clear - I do not have to run for election anymore". And he has now become Bushian in his backtracking and re-imaging and re-interpreting his past words and deeds.
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