Way Back When

Pete Maravich, 1970

Hey, remember when those awful SEIU goons beat up that nice black man who was giving away American flags at a Tea Party rally in St. Louis, back a couple of years.  Vaguely, right?  Well, he had his day in court, and Tbogg reports the results here:

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/07/12/beat-me-in-st-louis/

I don't think the results are too surprising, and Mr. Tbogg also points to the lameness of various rejoinders offered.  But the problem for people trying to keep a realistic eye on life is, this stuff is an endless onslaught, a daily flood of lies.  And look how long it takes for even one of these lies to get quashed by reality.  In this case, two years and counting.  Meanwhile, the folks who think they can invent a right wing reality by just snapping their fingers together and believing continue on.  Yesterday on the news I heard both Michelle Bachmann and Rep. Steven King say that the debt ceiling is not really an issue--that default cannot happen, and that anyway, it's just like balancing a family's checkbook, this international web of financial transactions that we live in and that orders our economic life.  There's also intense lobbying on the Right for a balanced budget amendment--one of the stupidest ideas ever, but of course that's just like the family check book.

Maybe legislators need a degree in economics as a qualification for office?  Oh right--too late for that too, because the Right has built its own universities now, with their own "degrees."  It all goes back to the time, probably around 1970, when "Oral Roberts University" actually fielded an NCAA men's basketball team which made it to the big Tourney.  That moment probably mattered even more than Watergate. 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1084347/index.htm