Mitt Romney: Not "big love," but "big lies," alongside sheep choosing to look the other way.

Cutting to the chase:

I recognize that Obama hatred is a real thing, but disliking the president so much that you would do harm to yourself by voting for someone who you admit you don’t trust seems to be taking things to extremes.

Mitt Romney's rapidly accumulating career lie tally strikes me as comparable to the upward arc of Barry Bonds's home runs. It is quite likely, although as yet not proven, that Bonds was juiced. We know that Romney refrains from alcohol, tobacco and caffeine (need we go any further?), but we don't know if that whole Mormon thing addresses steroid use. Surely testing is in order at this point, because the nose keeps growing.

Liberty to Lie, by Charles M. Blow (New York Times)

This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively.

Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election. And that person, the unprincipled prince of untruths, is running roughly even with or slightly ahead of the president in the national polls.

What does this say about our country? What does it say about the value of virtue?

See also: The Big Lie. The Wikipedia article does a good job of tracing the "theory" of the big lie from Hitler's ravings in Mein Kampf through Goebbels's musings about England, although the conceptual dots are not connected to the present day. However, fascists being fascists ... well, you know.