Sideshows and carnival barkers

"If we just make stuff and pretend that facts are not facts," is as much an indictment of the men and women in that room as it is of his political opposition.

And Fallows is right (and Obama addresses this towards the end of his remarks:

Here we have a wonderful real-world test: if "actual knowledge" mattered, the number of people who thought Obama was foreign-born would approach zero by next week -- with exceptions for illiterates, the mentally disabled, paranoid schizophrenics, etc. My guess is that the figures will barely change.