Conventional Lying

There is every day political lying. Then there is conventional lying.  Conventional lying is actually a misnomer.  It is not the usual run-of-the-mill political lying. It is the kind of outrageous, continuous, and repeated (even sometimes bizarre) lying you can get away with at a political convention because you have an audience that is only too eager to believe the most incredible falsehoods imaginable.

This is what is now happening at the Republican convention in Tampa. Most likely, the same thing will happen when the Dems get their pack of lies all assembled and allocated out to their speakers at their convention.

Why is this happening?  If you have been reading earlier articles in this blog, you know only too well. 

The reason for all the lying is that most of the time the facts available to us do not fit together into a nice coherent simple story, but it’s the story –not the facts– that counts when people are putting together in their minds what they believe in and how they vote.

Facts are messy.  Facts lead to confusion.  Too many facts and too much truth seeking leads to uncertainty and the realization that we might not know as much as we think we do. In fact, taken to an extreme, it can lead to the realization that we don’t know very much at all about anything.

The human mind cannot handle that kind of uncertainty.  We need to know what the Hell is going on so we can act now. “Hey man, I got to vote. I can’t be bothered trying to figure out all that complicated macroeconomic budget and Medicare stuff.”

Over millions and millions of year, our brains have worked out short cuts that allow us to make decisions and act without too much time-consuming and burdensome thought, fact finding, and analysis.  After all who wants a course in zoology when you are about to be eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger?  Better to attack first and ask the scientific questions later.

Smilodon fatalis. Photo from Wikipedia Commons 

Get this guy with a spear before he gets you. Worry about what biological genus he came from later. If you start giving a lecture on the eating habits of Smilodon Fatalis, you will be dinner.

We have carried that biological survival lesson into the 21^st century.

If the facts don’t fit the simplistic story that we use to navigate our life, the answer is:  change the facts.  Make up some lies that will fit the story.  It is way too difficult and confusing to puzzle things out and change the whole story to fit the elusive and ever-changing facts. With a little twisting here and there and a little obliviousness and obfuscation of the truth, we can proceed happily on our way without any unnecessary interference from the complexities of real world.

Politicians are our story tellers in the modern world.  It follows logically, therefore, that they are the leading experts in fact “adjustment”. They are the authors of the political "narratives," as their consultants call the stories that motivate the voters.

Meanwhile, self-righteous political reporters and pundits are busily engaged in documenting all the lies and fact distortions emerging from the Republican convention.  In a week or so, they will be complaining about all the lies and distortions put forth by the Dems to justify their story.

Robert Reich, for example, who should know better, is disturbed about Romney because “resorting to outright lies -- and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies -- reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.”[1]

Almost every major newspaper has articles about the recent convention orgy of lying.  James Downie at the Washington Post called Paul Ryan’s speech “breathtakingly dishonest” and quoted a Romney advisor as saying “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” [2]

The LA Times called out one of the most popular convention lies in its headline “Rick Santorum Repeats Inaccurate Welfare Attack on Obama."

The  NY Times took the Republican speakers to task one by one for a ”parade of truth-twisting, distortions, and plain falsehoods.”  The liars included Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bob McDonnell of Virginia, John Kasich of Ohio, and many others. The paper’s editorial board opined that “it was startling to hear how many speakers in Tampa considered it acceptable to make points that had no basis in reality…Voters looking for a few nuggets of truth would not have found them in Tampa on Tuesday.”[3]

What is the point of all this documentation of all the lies?  Every idiot on the street knows that the truth is not going to change anyone’s mind.  These experienced reporters should know what every politician knows: Facts don’t matter unless they fit the story.

At the moment, we have two stories in vogue.

One story is that things only work in life if every man is free to advance his own personal interests and exercise his special talents unfettered by rules and regulations. Anything else is socialism, and socialism is a proven failure. [4] A whole lot of facts need to be adjusted to fit that narrative.  Plus-- you need a big banner saying “You didn’t Build That.”

The other popular story is that we are all in this community together and the more powerful and stronger of us need to share resources to help pull along the weaker and less able of us if any of us are actually going to have a good life.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is cruel and selfish.  If that is your story, you are going to need to make some big fact “adjustments” concerning exactly how much free stuff the rest of the country can afford to hand out to the aged, infirm, and underprivileged without bankrupting the whole country.  Or maybe you can just ignore that awkward cost side of the equation, which is what the Dems will do at their convention.

There are still more lies to tell at the Republican convention. Each speaker seems to have his or her personal allocation.

Then come the Democrats.

Can the Dems outdo the Republican lying machine? Or at least match them lie for lie?

It will be a tall task, but they have a lot to work with and some of these guys came from Chicago --so I am not putting it past them.

---

[1] Article in the Huffington Post about Romney’s well-funded lying machine.

[2] The link to Downie’s article is here. Elsewhere in the Post, other reporters noted the same trend. Jonathan Bernstein called Ryan’s “flat out” lying “staggering”. See his article here.

[3] The editorial can be read here.

[4] In his convention speech, Paul Ryan said that President Obama and the Democrats see “life as one “dull, unadventurous journey from one entitlement to the next,’ as part of a “government-planned life.’.” (You gotta love that statement!)

Obama's Ignorance

A friend sent me a picture of this sign from the side of a county road in Louisiana. Similar signs are popping up on public roads all over the country to point out how ignorant President Obama is about what it takes to be successful.  According to the sender, the purpose is to “sweep the nation and send a message about the audacity, arrogance, and ignorance of Obama.”

In a recent speech, Obama made the incendiary statement (echoing Elizabeth Warren’s now famous off-the-cuff message[1]) that people become successful in life –not all on their own—but with the help, somewhere along the way, of someone else, a teacher, a parent, a coach, a mentor, a church leaders, or someone else perhaps.[2]

The Romney campaign radically distorted the President’s statement–essentially dismembered it--to make it sound like a call for government assistance.  Then they began using it in its hijacked form in political ads to pour gasoline on the anti-government fire burning in the hearts of the right wing. Romney claims that President Obama's comments were "insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America."[3]

This cynical tactic is working. (Taking the low road never fails in politics. Never.)

How ignorant is Obama?

He is so ignorant that he thinks Mr. Herbert had a mother and father, or at least a mother or a foster mother, who helped him through childhood before he got into business.

He is so ignorant that he thinks that Mr. Herbert probably went to school, at least elementary school where he had teachers working in a building, paid for by the taxpayers, providing him with a basic education. Same thing for all his employees. And his customers.

Obama is so stupid that he actually thinks that roads and bridges, as well as telephones and the internet, may be helpful to Mr. Herbert in getting employees and customers to his place of business and in getting goods and services delivered to and from the business.

Obama is such an idiot that he thinks Mr. Herbert needs local and national electric power systems and local public water systems to operate his business.

Obama is so dumb that he thinks police officers and courts are helpful in maintaining law and order so that Mr. Herbert’s business can operate with being robbed on a daily basis, as many businesses are in countries that do not have functioning police and courts.

Obama is so stupid that he thinks that laws enacted by democratically elected legislators protect businesses like Herbert's from unfair competition and extortion by criminal enterprises who would otherwise demand protection money from legitimate businesses, as they do in “failed” nations.

Obama is so stupid that he thinks that businessmen (as well as their employees and customers) are benefitted by government institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control  that protect everyone from catastrophic epidemics.

Obama is such an idiot that he think businesses need strong military and intelligence systems to protect the nation from terrorists and enemies who would like to see our whole way of life disappear.

Obama is foolish enough to think that businessmen travelling on business need air traffic controllers to keep aircraft from colliding into each other in flight.

The list of Obama’s idiotic beliefs goes on and on, endlessly it seems.

Why can’t he just leave businesses alone?

It works in Somalia.  Why not in Louisiana?

………………………………………………..

Warning! This is a certified organic free-range blog. There may be factual or truthful material remaining in the text that escaped editing.

To comment on this blog, click on the hyperlink at the bottom that reads “Post a Comment.”

---

[1] Warren’s off the cuff statement (now claimed to be a communist manifesto) is as follows: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. ….You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

[2] The text of the President’s statement prior to its dismemberment by the Romney campaign is as follows: "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.  If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges."

[3] Romney’s statement as reported on CBS News.

I.Q. Test

Which of the following is smarter?

Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin

Uterus of 13-Year Old Girl Raped by Close Relative

You guessed right!

 It’s the Uterus.

Even newly minted Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin admitted  that the uteri of rape victims are incredibly smart, so smart in fact that, according to Aiken, they actually prevent rape victims from getting pregnant. [1]  Todd revealed that being raped causes women to “secrete a certain secretion” that kills sperm.[2]

This little-known[3], but ingenious, behavior by uteri avoids a whole lot of political problems.  Here in the U.S. it makes it OK to legally prohibit rape victims from obtaining abortions in order not to be forced into fathering the child of their assailants. VP candidate Paul Ryan joined Todd Akin in promoting legislation to make this the law of the land.

In Muslim countries, it allows a rape victim to avoid being stoned to death publicly for allowing herself to be raped and then become pregnant.

All this is very convenient, and we owe this amazing scientific discovery to Todd Akin.  Akin is now the most popular celeb in America, beating out even Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.   (All three of course have a lot in common, mixing intelligence and sex into a potent popular brew.) 

Paris, Upstaged by Todd

Akin is incredibly popular among Republicans now because his discoveries about how the female body handles rape and incest have taken the media spotlight off Presidential candidate Romney’s perfectly legal tax schemes, his astonishingly fruitful IRA and his mysterious offshore bank accounts.

The spoltlight is also diverted from VP candidate Paul Ryan’s bizarrely cruel political philosophy (Cribbed from  Atlas Shrugged.)

Democrats also have fallen for Todd. They cynically dream that his candidacy may cement their hold on the votes of rape and incest victims nationwide, or at least in Missouri.

Todd has a little something for everyone. A nonentity until last week, Todd was happily swilling moonshine in his native Ozarks when suddenly he got the idea to run for the U.S. Senate. With a little help from Harry Reid, he won a competitive Republican primary. The rest is history.

The Ozarks is no stranger to scientific discovery. It has the highest per capita concentration of Nobel Prize winners in the United States.[4]

Todd has made other astonishing discoveries. He was the first to reveal that liberals hate God.  And he proved that the school lunch program, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, all federal education programs, all federal antipoverty programs, federal disaster relief, federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs, national child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections and federal civil rights are ALL TOTALLY AND FLAGRANTLY unconstitutional.[5]

Welcome to politics in Amerika in the Year of Our Lord 2012!

---

[1] Interview of Todd Akin on Missouri TV station KTVI-TV.

[2] The genealogy of Akin's  discovery is set forth in the an article by Robert Mackey in the Lede.

[3] Some say that Todd was not the first to make this discovery. According to the NY Times, the theory is based on 13^th century medicine when it was believed that a women had have an orgasm in order to conceive (although not necessarily at exactly the same time as her male partner). By logical extension, then, if a woman became pregnant, she must have experienced orgasm, and therefore could not have been the victim of rape because how could she be raped if she was having that much fun.

[4] The source of the scientific prowess in the Ozarks is its religious and educational leadership, including Assemblies of God, Baptists  and Southern Baptists, Church of Christ and other Protestant Pentecostal denominations. Scientific organizations headquartered in the Ozarks include the Assemblies of God and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International in Springfield, and the Pentecostal Church of God in Joplin.

[5] Aiken was of 5 Congressmen to vote against the school lunch program.

Getting to Know the Catfish Noodler

Whatever happens, the next President and Vice President of the USA will be narcissists. That is a given.  In order to run for such high offices, any politician in any party must think so highly of themselves as to be clinically diagnosed as a narcissist.  

Narcissism is defined as a personality disorder in which the individual believes “that the world revolves around them…[the] condition is characterized by a lack of ability to empathize with others and a desire to keep the focus on themselves at all times.”[1]

This is old news.  It is the same deal for all politicians. Democrat. Republican. Wing Nut. Whatever. This phenomenon was explained in my earlier June 2, 2012, blog entitled "Ignorance."

In the distinguished roster of exciting Republican Vice Presidential picks: Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, Spiro Agnew, and others too obscure to remember, we have a newbie, a US Vice Presidential candidate who takes self-worship to even higher altitudes as an outspoken advocate of a bizarre political belief that glorifies narcissism as a superior way of life.  Sometimes propagated under the less clinically pejorative term, “Objectivism,” this quack philosophy is the invention of the eccentric Russian-American atheist weirdo, Ayn Rand. (Real name: Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum.)
(1905-02-02)

Photo of Ayn Rand Courtesy of  Wikipedia

Ayn Rand, one of the most curious crackpot fruitcakes ever to grace the planet, is the guru for Romney’s VP pick, Paul Ryan. (She is also the guru for other influential leaders: Alan Greenspan, Ron Paul, Jack Kemp, and Rand Paul—who is actually named after her—among others.) Republican politicians and conservative hacks like Glenn Beck have acknowledged her dominating influence on their lives and recommended her novels.

According to the newly minted VP candidate, Rand's works are required reading.  Ryan said : “I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are." He especially liked her book entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness." [2]

Paul Ryan

With all this Ayn Rand worship now at the top of the ticket, it is it important to learn more about the new VP pick's guru.

Rand was part of the McCarthy purge, eliminating leftist writers and actors from Hollywood. Her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," sets forth her bizarre philosophy in the form of a lengthy novel.  Written under the influence of powerful  drugs, the sophomoric book was booed from the beginning by literary critics, but it survived in high schools around the country by word of mouth. 

Rand’s grandiose delusions and astounding misconceptions were largely propelled by her 30-year addiction to amphetamines.  Charles Murray pointed out,  “As anyone who has had the experience knows, a good way to get a really, really distorted sense of reality is to swallow a couple of Dexedrines.”[3]

I can personally testify to that. My whole college experience was a titanic struggle between two chemical influences, amphetamines (the little blue and red pills) and alcohol.  (Some hormones also.  Cannabis came later.)

For decades, Rand’s books were regarded as suitable only for naïve teenagers trying to emerge from the confusing period of childhood and adolescence. One writer summed it up: “Rand is probably best read by those still young enough to miss the implication of her beliefs: neither charity nor compassion nor common cause have any value when compared with the transcendence of the individual mind”.[4]  

Despite, or maybe because of, all this criticism from the intelligencia, Ayn Rand is now having a curious resurgence. Tea Party nuts wing now revere her as the true source of their political doctrine and system of ethics.  A new kind of ethics that advocates the primacy of selfishness over the interests of others.

Rand despised the very concept of altruism or charity. Her utopia was a brutal dog-eat-dog world of bullies gloriously clawing their way to the top as they broke the backs of weaker mortals and sent their jobs offshore.  She described her philosophy as the promotion of a strong man’s individual happiness over the group (society) as the absolute objective of life. She recast narcissism as “rational egoism” or “objectivism,” always praising the “virtue of selfishness.”

Rand’s language was tough.  She used words such as “refuse” and “parasites” to describe the poor, while celebrating millionaire businessmen as heroes.[5]

How tough was she?

One of her early heroes was the serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation.  Didn’t shock Ayn. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to her biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street, on him.[6] 

What did she admire about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities.  “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.'”[7]

Gore Vidal described Rand’s viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality.” [8]

But never mind. Rand’s antisocial adolescent pseudo philosophy is still the key source of Congressman Paul Ryan’s thinking, according to his own proud claims. He credited her as “a central inspiration for his entry into public life.” He told the Weekly Standard in 2003 that he gave his Congressional staffers copies of “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. Speaking to a group of Ayn Rand acolytes in 2005, Ryan said, “…the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” [9]

There’s more.  Guess what Ryan’s favorite sport is?

He likes to stick his fist down the throats of catfish. It's called "noodling," and it involves catching a catfish with one's bare hands. "We walk around the banks looking for holes, and you get your hand inside the fish and they kind of come up on your hand. And then you just squeeze wherever you are on that fish and pull it out," Ryan told the Times last week. "I know it sounds a little crazy, but it's really exhilarating."[10]

Whoa Nellie!

Where are we headed with this candidate?

I don’t know about you, but I am joining the Society for the Protection of Catfish.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Warning! This is a certified organic free-range blog. There may be factual or truthful material in the text that escaped editing.

To comment on this blog, click on the hyperlink at the bottom that reads “Post a Comment.”

These Are Desperate Times

---

[1] The quoted material is from  Psychology Today.

[2] The source for this material is, among others, the Huffington Post.

[3] For the pharmacology of this beauty see the NIH website here.

[4] See the article in the Herald Scotland.

[5] Read more here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rand.html#ixzz23PspL3kZ.

[6] See on Naked Capitalism..

[7] Hickman’s achievements are catalogued here on Wikipedia. Read more about her admiration of Hickman on Naked Capitalism.

[8] Esquire, July 1961.

[9] As reported in the LA Times.

[10] As reported in Meet Paul Ryan.