Who is responsible for fact checking?

Can a writer just send stuff to HuffPo and they run it?

Whose responsibility is it to fact check in this brave new world?

Right now the Repugs are filling people’s minds with blatant lies —like Obama’s cutting MediCare when he’s actually making the insurers cough up some dough. The Democrats are irate but impotent as corporate money buys the airwaves.

 “Reform movement” honchos and honchettes have also been getting away with telling a lie about Obama’s position on their special single issue. They do it by lifting one clause from a long riff  in which Obama, campaigning in Oregon in 2008, restated the Demo-Prohibitionist line on marijuana.  “Treat it as a medicine,” the first words out of his mouth, was the Clinton-Gore rhetoric and it means clinical trials, Cannabis from NIDA, DEA approval, FDA approval, etc. —the old four-cornered stall.

Taking a few words out of context can be an effective misquote. Dennis Peron’s detractors did it to him when he said “in a country that’s giving Prozac to shy teenagers, all marijuana use is medical.”  But I digress.

Our Reform leaders, to maximize their leverage with the President, continue to misinform the rank-and-file that Barack Obama betrayed us, when in fact it was they who misled us about his actual —basically ominous— position. They treat us like pawns in some bigger game they’re playing on the national stage.

In the movement of the ’60s, “elitism” was a serious put-down. Now it’s a synonym for “leadership.”