Another foggy, moist morning here on California’s north coast, though, typical of the region, weather is like a series of smoke and mirrors — clouds of tiny bullshit droplets disguise reality.
And judging real time has become a kind of rigged liar’s poker.

A gut-grabber on the front-lines of political-spewed pot ash: Yes, one of the more depressing parts of the job of being a political reporter is watching an audience fully absorb a blatant and knowing lie.
Politicians — in the above case, good, ole, flip-flip, turnstile Mitt Romney — appeal to the lowest common denominator — ignorant, but don’t-want-to-know-the-truth folks

(Illustration found here).

The above emphasized quote comes from a piece yesterday in The New Republic by Alec MacGillis on the shitty work by the MSM — it’s almost a ‘who gives a shit‘ attitude by the press:

But at least in the glory-days of welfare-bashing, the attacks had some grounding in reality—the system had grown rapidly was in need of some sort of reform.
Now, at a time of drastically reduced welfare rolls, the attack is utterly unfounded.
And Romney just keeps using it, at stop after stop, in ad after ad.
How can this be possible?
Well, maybe because very few of my colleagues in the press seem all that troubled by it.
Unless I’ve missed it, none of the national papers or networks or Buzzfeeders have done a comprehensive report on Romney’s persistence in playing the welfare card.
It’s as if it was enough to have the factcheckers offer their initial scolding, but after that, hey, anything goes. I saw no mention in dispatches from yesterday of Romney’s successful use of the welfare line in Beallsville—instead, the stories were dominated by Romney’s declaration of outrage, later in the day, over Obama’s campaign of “anger and hate.”
This referred, apparently, to everything from the Obama SuperPAC’s boundary-pushing ad about the death of the wife of a steelworker laid off by Bain Capital (which has barely aired on TV) and Joe Biden’s use of the word “unchained” in talking about Wall Street reform in southern Virginia.
A psychoanalyst might see in Romney’s outrage over campaign excess more than a little Freudian projection.
But a smart political analyst would settle for the more mundane explanation that Romney is seeking to distract attention from his own very effective and mendacious offensive with welfare.
Though I’m not really sure that distraction was necessary, since as far as I can tell we were already letting it pass unnoticed.

A nasty example occurred Tuesday when ‘serious‘ Paul Ryan slapped at softball questions at Fox News about the mathematical reality of Romney’s budget plan — Ryan’s ‘gotcha’ moment was all hardball, but nearly-nobody caught it.
‘Cept Media Matters:

Last night, newly ensconced Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan sat down for his first solo interview with Fox News’ Brit Hume and let slip an admission about Mitt Romney’s budget plan — an admission that’s receiving surprisingly little press attention.
Asked by Hume when the Romney plan would balance the budget, Ryan said he didn’t know because “we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan.”

After explaining ‘why‘ this bullshit is important, Media Matters concluded:

The bottom line is that, by Ryan’s admission, the Romney campaign is promoting a budget plan despite not knowing what it actually accomplishes.
If that’s not grist for the media grinder, then what is?

Indeed.

And who lies the most?
Boston Magazine earlier this month gauged/listed the percentage of lying by poli-assholes.
The following:

President Barack Obama, despite what you may read on the farthest reaches of the Internet, came out with the lowest percentage of lies.
He had the largest total number of statements that had been checked for accuracy and he lied in “only” 29 percent of them.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but this is one of the best records of any high-profile, frequently quoted political figure I could find.

And others: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, lied 36 percent of the time; John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, lied in 39 percent of his checked statements; Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic Speaker of the House and current Majority Leader, was found to be untruthful 40 percent of the time; Sarah Palin lied 41 percent of the time; Mitt Romney’s bullshit is pure bullshit 42 percent of the time.
And the way worse?
Michelle Bachmann at 72 percent; Allen West at 73 percent and Rush Limbaugh’s fat ass lies 80 percent of the time.
And all that is just recorded shit.

The fear is ‘truthiness’ might prevail in November, and if that happens, the real-bad shit will then hit the fan, and that ain’t no lie.