Cut the act, Obama

When senators are being burned in effigy, shouted down at meetings, and having their offices graffitied with swastikas, something is wrong. In this case, it’s the blatant lies and distortion the media is feeding much of the American public. This needs to stop. Meaningful health care reform is something that everyone has a stake in, and whether or not you support a certain component of it, the discussion needs to occur. We need to put political pressure on the Obama administration not to let the big pharmaceutical companies off the hook with price negotiation bans. That’s a subjugation of the free market principles the GOP touts so highly, yet backs away from when they interfere with lobbyists desires.

And Obama needs to stop with the diplomatic responses to crackpot questions. When someone asks him about “death panels”, he shouldn’t say “I don’t support that.” He should say “That’s not true. That is not part of the bill. That is not part of the plan.”

In a way, this situation is analogous to the birthers. A bunch of lies have dominated the exchange of ideas, and are being regurgitated by the media, and then seized upon by those same pundits when people repeat the claims that the media’s made. A self-fulfilling prophesy, a vicious and malicious cycle.

America deserves better.