I just heard a Mitt Romney introduction by Marco Rubio in which Rubio stated that Romney was responsible for creating over 100,000 jobs. He then stated that this was so much better than the current president. For some strange reason I almost jerked my head off. The obvious reason is that Rubio’s statement was nothing more than a lie. But the second reason is that you could tell by the cheer that there was a room full of folks who believed it, or at least wanted it to be true. That room represents nearly 40% of the country who simply choose not to believe facts anymore. Apparently the death of facts coincided with the birth of Fox “News.”

There has always been some things which were in dispute, but with the advent of Fox, there is little that doesn’t seem to be in dispute. With the power of television with its glitz and patina of authority, Fox in particular and other networks to a lesser degree, has been able to twist the public’s trust of news organizations and use that to plant flat out lies as facts.

In the above statement there are several flaws, yet an adoring public is ready to believe anything and They have their own set of “facts” to prove what they believe. Romney created 100,000 jobs? Sure because Staples did well after Bain stripped them. Of course that ignores the millions of good American jobs lost in other Bain restructurings where the object business either subsequently failed or operations were moved overseas. And then let’s look a little further into Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts. Really bad job creation record. 47th out of 50 with numbers being in the 4 to 5 digit range.

Is Romney’s magnificent(?) record of 100,000 jobs created much better than Obama’s? Well, there have been about 4,000,000 jobs created in the past three and a half years. Sadly that pace does not quite keep up with what is needed just to bring new workers into the workforce. But things rolling in the right direction. Most analysts agree that were it not for Republican obstruction, we could be having a decent recovery.

One other piece that is missing is the mess that Obama inherited from Bush. The country was hemorrhaging jobs with little relief in sight. Bush had inherited a country that was in pretty good shape economically. While the country won’t quite in that good of shape in January of 2013 as it was in January of 2001, the trends will be right. Based on Romney’s statements we could easily see a repeat of the Bush presidency. No wonder Republicans try to pretend Bush never existed.

And that is one of the realities that Republicans refuse to believe. They believe that Bush was a great president, ambushed by Clinton’s policies. Other myths include Bin Laden’s death being due to policies that were set in place by the Bush administration.

But the big problem is that the belief in alternative “facts” or as better stated lies is that there interjection into public policy is hurting and killing citizens. Doctors do not treat a patient for what they think the cause of an illness may be. They do tests to determine the true cause of an illness and then treat it with an accepted course of treatment. But in the policy arena, Republicans refuse to accept facts as discovered and instead postulate theories based on little more than the opinion of their own think tanks. Then they apply solutions that sound good late at night over cocktails.

Thus we have denial of global climate change despite overwhelming evidence, denial of full citizenship for women, application of austerity measures in the face of recession versus the proven Keynesian solutions. On and on it goes. Facts aren’t true, but the fantasies made up by Fox become their facts. When finally confronted with facts that must be faced the response is usually some half baked notion of a college sophomore.

But one thing is for sure, every false fact, every half-baked solution somehow takes money from the poor and middle class and moves that money into the hands of the corporations to whom the Republican Party is wholly owned subsidiary.

When I say “a wholly owned subsidiary” I mean that a Republican president will not make a move without the blessing of those who own he and the party. About nine months ago I wrote an entry on the true power structure in the Republican party.

This was an observation by me, but I think with a little tinkering it reflects the reality of the Republican Party both at a state and nationallevel. Right now Mitt Romney must be realizing that he has crossed from the true power structure into the world of being a puppet when he was forced to let his foreign policy adviser (Richard Grenel) go because he was not “acceptable” (he is openly gay) to the powers that be in his Party.

Alternate reality, run by the rich, hateful and distrustful of government. These traits of the GOP make for some terrible leadership at all levels.It is easy to provide examples. What is a mystery is why anyone would vote for them. Especially that in so doing, they vote against their own best interests.