The Romney/Ryan campaign has made a big deal out of President Obama's factual statement that all US businesses have been helped in some way by government.
The first night of the GOP convention was, except for Ann Romney's odd speech, devoted to the theme that "we built it" on our own.
Charlie Pierce was there, and was astounded by the serial lying, calling the scripted performance by one and all "an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie."
Told mostly by people who live off government.
Like Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin.
Fallin, who has been cashing steadily larger paychecks from the taxpayers for at least the last 22 of her 57 years, started off the cavalcade of lies by leaving out the central role of the federal government in the creation of Oklahoma out of the Indian Territory.
Here's her version:
The history of my great state of Oklahoma offers a great example of pursuing the American Dream.
It was built and settled by pioneers moving west to seek better lives.
During the Great Land Run of 1889, thousands of families rushed to put a stake down on empty plots of land. They built tent cities overnight. They farmed the land and they worked hard. ...
(And some struck oil.)
President Obama wants us to believe that Oklahomans owe that success to the federal government — to the Department Of Energy,to the EPA, to the IRS, or maybe even to him. Mr. President, we know better. As we say in Oklahoma, that dog won't hunt.
Pierce's reply to that is how it's done:
Handed in as a seventh-grade history essay, this would get no better than a D. Delivered to the convention of one of our only two political parties, it was perhaps the most singularly dishonest speech I have ever seen a politician give, and I grew up in Massachusetts, and Willard Romney was once my governor.
My god, Oklahomans wouldn't even have Oklahoma without the federal government, without the Homestead Act of 1889 or the Railroad Act — both, by the way, achievements of a Republican presidents named Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Harrison.
And the land wasn't exactly "empty," Governor. It got emptied by a big-government program called the United States Army.
You know what your state would be without the federal government, Governor, without the votes for the legislation from congressmen from the east and north, without the soldiers from New England and the Great Lakes? You know what Oklahoma would be?
Sand, with a whole lot of pissed-off Native Americans.
The nickname of Oklahoma University's semi-pro football team is the Sooners, who were the cheaters who rushed in illegally early to claim/steal Indian land that the federal government had secured for white settlers.
No other state university honors criminals like that.
Oklahoma remains a beneficiary of federal government largesse, a relatively poor red state subsidized by prosperous blue states, via the federal government most GOP Okies hate.
From 1990 to 2009, Oklahoma received more than $49 billion in federal spending vs. what Oklahoma businesses and individuals paid in federal taxes.
Oklahoma is represented in the US Senate by wingnut/tea party faves Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, who profess to hate the federal government while ensuring that that government continues to subsidize their state.
That is, they are liars and/or hypocrites.
Regarding the never-ending lies showcased in the GOP convention, Pierce hopes against hope that the media will do their job:
It was an entire evening based on demonstrable lies told in service to the overriding demonstrable lie. And there was only one real story for actual journalists to tell at the end of it.
The Republicans simply don't care.
They don't care that they lie. They don't care that their lies are obvious.
Because they've gotten away with obvious lying before, and plan to do so again.