Republicans are not even trying to pretend to be honest anylonger.

    The NRCC has created about two dozen new fake news sites targeting Democrats, both challengers and incumbents, and is promoting them across the country with localized Google search ads.

Citing the National Journal report about the new generation of NRCC website fakeries, Dana Milbank writes:

    These two dozen sites, with names such as “North County Update” and “Central Valley Update” look like political fact-checking sites; "This is a new and effective way to disseminate information to voters who are interested in learning the truth (That we completely invented)  about these Democratic candidates," said Andrea Bozek, communications director for the NRCC.

    An NRCC official stated that the sites are legal because, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll find, “Paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee” in small print. “They’re not fake Web sites,” the official said. “These are real attack Web sites.”

    Real attacks, but fake news: This is a fairly accurate summary of what the GOP’s scandalmongers have been purveying during the Obama years.

"We believe this is the most effective way to present information to leave a lasting impact on voters," said Bozek, who declined to say how much the NRCC was spending to promote the sites. The online ad spending, being done by the NRCC's independent expenditure arm, must eventually be disclosed but likely only after the fact.


. . . more even than the right hated Bill Clinton, though you would have thought it would be impossible for anyone to hate anyone else more than the right-wingers hated Bill Clinton -- for no identifiable reason except perhaps that with every breath he drew, he reminded them of what useless dickholes they are..

As we know, right-wing Obama hatred has come to make right-wing Bill Clinton hatred look like a bit of gentle ribbing. And so the always-operational Right-Wing Lie Machine has been operating at fever pace all through the present administration. Remember these great moments?

• "There was the assertion that the White House was covering up high-level involvement in Operation 'Fast and Furious,' a gun program under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives that went awry. No evidence was found."

• "There was the accusation that the Obama White House pushed through money for Solyndra to pay the president's political cronies even though officials knew the solar-energy firm was going bankrupt. Didn't happen that way."

• "Accusation: Obamacare would bring about the collapse of the American health-care system and replace it with socialized medicine and death panels. No such thing has occurred."

• "The IRS scandal, it was alleged, could be traced back to the White House, which targeted Obama’s enemies for political reasons. Nope."

No, that's not what all this is about. Not even if right-wingers believed in truth, which they don't, having been taught since Lee Atwater adopted the Joseph Geobbels playbook, that reality is whatever makes you feel good to believe -- verification not only not required but frowned upon.

I guess maybe there has been a lot of progress in political vandalism since Watergate after all. Now the NRCC has a paid lackey to assure us that this fraud they're perpetrating on the public totally legal!  Thanks to Reagan, and the Bush's stacking of the courts with politically like minded flacks.
As Dana puts it:

    The actual truth of the allegations doesn’t matter. Each one sullied President Obama’s name, and investigators’ failure to deliver the goods did little to remove the taint. That’s why fake news works: Falsehoods can drive a president’s approval rating into the cellar while the truth is still pushing the snooze button.

For nearly two years, Republicans have been alleging all manner of scandal involving the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in the Libyan city.

The accusations have been roundly debunked, most recently in military officers’ testimony released by the GOP-controlled House Armed Services Committee.

Now there’s a bipartisan report, adopted unanimously by the GOP-controlled House Intelligence Committee on July 31, awaiting declassification by the administration. It throws yet another bucket of cold water on the conspiracy theories. In a statement, the top Democrat on the panel, Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), said the report finds that:

“There was no intelligence failure surrounding the Benghazi attacks.”

“There was no ‘stand down order’ given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, and no American was left behind.”

“The talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis.”

“There was no illegal activity or illegal arms sales occurring at the U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”

“And there was absolutely no evidence, in documents or testimony, that the intelligence community’s assessments were politically motivated in any way.”

If there's one thing Lee Atwater and Newt Gingritch taught their disciples, it's that the people are entitled to the lies that make them happy -- even if being happy means spending much of their time lying, hating and screaming insane nonsense.