I like to periodically post old articles I wrote, because it not only shows that history really does repeat itself, but that Republican Party deceptions aren't just about Trump, but rather who the party really is.  In fact, sometimes I can re-post an old article with only a few tweaks, and it will seem like it's fresh off the presses today.  Also, I must admit, sometimes it's nice to be able to back up my periodic comment, "Hey, I tries not to steers ya wrong."

This is a piece that I wrote for the Huffington Post back in 2006, almost two decades ago.  When I tracked it down, I knew that the core issue was resonant to today, but only when I re-read the thing did I start shaking my head at how much overlapped.

 
    When a Landslide is Really Just the Ground Giving Way Underneath You
                                                May 3, 2006
 
Two days after his election a year ago, George Bush said, "Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.  It is my style."
 
Alas, he has since learned the lesson that Americans have long known:  a dollar just doesn’t go as far these days.
 
Of course, George Bush did earn political capital in the campaign.  That can’t be denied.  The pesky problem is that he didn’t earn nearly as much as he thought.   While he believed that he had one of the great landslide mandates in American history (or maybe hoped that 59 million people would forget they didn’t vote for him two days earlier), the reality is that he squeaked by with in the smallest margin by any sitting President during wartime, a paltry three million votes out of 121 million cast.  (If a handful of votes had been counted differently in Ohio, then John Kerry is President.  Boy, how’s that for a flip-flop?)  Yes, George Bush did earn capital – but he only earned a few bucks.  Chump change.  “Here, kid, go buy yourself an ice cream cone” kind of capital.  The kind of political capital that slips out of your dad’s pockets when he’s lying on the couch.
 
It’s one thing to use smoke and mirrors to trick people.  It may work, it may not.  But make no mistake, perception is not reality.  Reality is reality.  You may perceive that if you jump off a skyscraper, you can fly.  The concrete pavement will tell you otherwise.  No matter how loudly and often you yammer that you won a mandate, no matter how much a perception you create otherwise – the cold, hard, actual numbers will rear their ugly head.  And George Bush has finally hit the concrete.
 
As President Bush was plummeting towards the sidewalk from his leap off the Proclamation on the Mount two days after the election, he began throwing around those few nickels he earned as if they were oil gushers. 
 
The very first thing he spent his political capital on was gutting Social Security.  That was such a disaster that he had spent all his meager capital before even being able to get out the words “private accounts.”  Yet he kept spending capital he now no longer had, for his 60 Day Magical Mystery Tour of America.  And the public wasn’t buying.  By the end, he was more in debt from his lack of political capital than was the rest of the country from his tax cuts and war.
 
But he kept spending capital that was already long gone.  (Which ironically enough is, of course, supposedly an anathema to fiscal conservatives.)
 
He spent more of it with unabashed grandstanding, leaving his vacation early in order to fake-save Terry Schiavo and sign a bill allowing Bill Frist to make medical diagnoses by fortune cookie and let Republican Senators intrude on a marriage.  The country was appalled, and this fiasco backfired on the G.O.P.more than a broken-down Edsel.
 
His political capital debt mounting, the President overspent an ungodly amount on the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  Losing a major American city on your watch was seen by the public as Not a Good Thing.  The country watched as even more of the President’s political I.O.U.’s were swept away in the flood, where they can be found at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain, along with a large portion of New Orleans.
 
The thing is, when you’re living in deep political capital debt and forced to seek out loan sharks, interest builds up and drains your account even further.  As a result, still more deficit political capital got spent by his Administration fending off federal charges of outing a CIA agent, and then defending itself from party scandals with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
 
Then, just as you were sure the President would realize that he long-since had zero political capital left to spend, he opened his empty bankbook to kite a hot check for his Vice President shooting a man and forgetting to a) tell the public, b) tell his boss, and c) go to the hospital to see how the poor fellow was doing.
 
And finally, instead of recognizing that his political debt was so massive that the only appropriate response was dropping to his knees and begging for mercy, the President ignored his bankrupt account and tried to palm off the management of American ports to a country with ties to terrorists.  (Note.  See earlier speech re: “axis of evil” and “You’re either against terrorism or you’re for it.”)
 
In his now-infamous Proclamation from the Mount two days after the 51-48% faux-mandate, the President also stated through his bullhorn, “I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.”  While excitement of the moment is understandable, it probably wasn’t the wisest declaration to make, since that group today is limited to a mere 34% of the country. 
 
As the President himself would phrase it, “Let me put it to you this way”: considering that in only one year George Bush is now supported by a third fewer people than voted for him, it would suggest that this is a really poor way to spend his political capital.  But then, when you don’t have much political capital to begin with, it’s probably best not to spend any of it, but rather hold on and let it accrue for a rainy day.
 
Like next hurricane season.
 
 
 
 

Back on March 29, 2011 -- another time, another almost quaint era it almost seems -- I wrote a couple of articles about what I called the Republican Party's longstanding War on Education.  Though I've reposted the articles since, the topic seems more than timely to address again, now that Trump and his team have begun pushing efforts to get rid of the Department of Education. 

To clarify, "have begun" merely refers to this current effort.  It is hardly a new concept for the party.  Indeed, I address their calls for shuttering the Department back in the second of those 2011 articles.

Raising the issue has always been a disturbing bugaboo for Republicans, outraged that anyone would even dare have the gall to just suggest their party is against education, no matter how much evidence supports the long-documented fact.  But as I wrote a decade-and-a-half ago --
​ 
"It’s simple:  if you don’t want to be angered when your candidates are perceived as less than brilliant, then promote brilliance.  Don’t make it your platform to abolish the Department of Education.  Don’t claim that opinion supplants fact."
 
To which I could now add, don't claim that "alternative facts" exist and supplant fact. What I also noted at the very end is something I think most-especially and importantly bears repeating today as Trump and his enablers try to force a divisive wedge between the parties --

"Ultimately, though, there is something far more important at issue than mere politics. 
 
"Will Durant, with his wife Ariel, wrote the legendary Story of Civilization.  Eleven volumes, over 8,000 pages of discovery that remains today insightful, even-handed and remarkable.  And after they finished, they put together The Lessons of History.  Written over 40 years ago, in 1968, its perception is as fresh as any news headline you will read."

And since the words that the Durants wrote, now almost 60 years ago, remain prescient, here, then, is the first of my articles on the MAGOP War on Education. 

                                        Every Child Left Behind
                                               March 29, 2011
 
Several years ago, I had a realization: conservatives don’t care about education. 
 
It’s a generalization, I admit.  And sounds outlandish.  Yet for the past 60 years, conservatives have made crystal clear their utter disdain for education.  Hoping to convince others.
 
It began in 1952.  When Dwight Eisenhower ran for president against Adlai Stevenson, the contemptuous attack Republicans made was that Stevenson was “an egghead.”  Someone who was really – smart.  And you just can’t trust those smart people.
 
In 1960, when Richard Nixon ran against John Kennedy, the Republican blast was that JFK was advised by his “Harvard Mafia.”  Smart people.  So smart that they were dangerous.  And you can’t trust those smart people who go to good colleges.
 
When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, he hated those smart people who go to colleges so much that students made his Enemies List.  And later his "get tough" policies on student dissent (including wanting the Secret Service to beat up protestors) resulted in Republican governor Jim Rhodes sending armed troops sent the campus of Kent State University -- and four "enemy" undergraduates were killed.
 
In 1988, George Bush claimed to be “the Education President” – yet on an campaign stop in Los Angeles told a rally of service employees that not everyone had to go to college.  A valid sentiment, certainly, but for a candidate supposedly promoting education, it leaked his true feelings.
 
And in 2000, George W. Bush failed to fund his “No Child Left Behind” education program.
 
It’s continued for 60 years, as conservatives have demeaned public education, pounding away at the national consciousness that learning for the masses is a bad thing to be scorned and mistrusted.
 
There’s an understandable – and historic – reason for this, of course, because the less educated the public is, the more it relies on authority figures, rather than question anything.  And the more that education is disdained, the less that inconvenient facts will be believed.
 
And so, instead, we get an attitude that challenges any assertion of education with a contemptuous, “So, you think you’re better than the rest of us??” – conditioning people to wear with pride that they know less.  In all other areas of life, we want the best.  We want more riches, more success, to be faster, stronger, cooler – better at everything.  Except, after 60 years of conservative pounding against education, not to be as smart as we and our children can be.
 
And while this conservative effort has been surreptitious over the past 60 years, it’s finally released itself:  open, unrelenting Republican attacks in Wisconsin against teachers – teachers, for goodness sake! – and a widespread Republican war against education.
 
In Florida, $3.3 billion has been cut from education over the next two years [UPDATE: under then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the state's U.S. senator] almost 15% from the education budget to our children.  While $1.6 billion has been given in corporate tax breaks.
 
Texas has proposed $9.8 billion in cuts in education assistance to school districts.  (Bringing a loss of 100,000 jobs.)
 
Wisconsin cut $834 million from state aid to K-12 education over the next two years.  That’s 20% of the proposed cuts in the budget.  And cuts to teacher pay and pensions.
 
We have always heard the praise that teaching is the most important job.  That teachers are preparing our most precious resource, our children, for the future.  How teachers are underpaid heroes.  But from the other side of their hypocritical mouths, conservatives will slam teachers as lazy slackers with three months of vacation, overpaid plunderers of public pensions – and for 60 years desensitize the public for stripping away public education.
 
And now, they couldn’t be any more clear:
 
Last Wednesday in Iowa, three prospective Republican presidential candidates bluntly stated their condemnation of public education at a home schooling rally.
 
"The public school system now is a propaganda machine," said Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX).  “And they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American."  Like, apparently, the Pledge of Allegiance.
 
"It is not up to a bureaucrat to decide what is best for your children," insisted Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who home-schooled five children.  "We know best."  Except about U.S. history.  Home teacher Bachman recently placed the cornerstone of the American Revolution – Lexington and Concord – in the wrong state.
 
"That's all we want,” said Herman Cain, a prominent businessman testing a GOP presidential run. “For government to get out of the way so we can educate ourselves and our children the old-fashioned way."  Note:  “the old-fashioned way” included one teacher for six grades in one room, few women and minorities, and teaching math with an abacus.
 
But it was left to the event’s host, Justin LaVan, to explain plainly how so many conservatives truly see education.  "Talking about our Creator.  Our rights that came from our Creator, acknowledging that and giving Him the glory."  Of course, that’s why God invented church.  For educating children to succeed in a global community where others are learning science, history and geography, it’s a disaster.  If prayer worked in school, every kid would get straight-A’s.
 
And in the end, that disaster is what conservatives have long wanted from education.  No need to learn anything.  No public education.  Just private schools and home schooling.  Which is the end of an educated nation. 
 
Private schools limit education to those who can afford it.  Home schooling limits education to families where one parent can afford to stay home.  While hoping that the parent completed high school.
 
This is known as every child left behind.
 
But for conservatives, that’s okay.  The wealthy and privileged will get their children a great education.  And the rest of America?  You’re on your own.
 
Public education is what helped make America the envy of the world.  A nation of well-informed citizens.  Leading the way in the space race, technology, finance, and medical advances.
 
But conservatives? They want to go back to “the old fashioned way.”  Like the Dark Ages.  Where kings and the aristocracy ruled.  And you peasants, obey thy overlord. 
 
Make no mistake, this is nothing new.  The attack against education is the drug that conservatives have been pushing through history.

It’s been increasingly clear the influence that money and most-especially of billionaires have had on politics, and mostly notably the MAGOP Party. 
 
For starters, that’s easy.  There’s the world’s richest man Elon Musk buying Twitter and changing policies to allow far-right fascism creep back onto the platform, bringing more of the material, racism and division to be posted than before, and drive many users away.  And then himself promoting Russian talking points and racist propaganda, interviewing Trump, campaigning with him at campaign rallies and running one of the party’s get out the vote efforts.  Topping it off by giving away a million dollars daily to those who signed up for his PAC.  Not to mention the news today that ABC reporter Jon Karl reported a Trump advisor telling him, "If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you're buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there's a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it."
 
But that only touches the surface.  This includes billionaire Peter Thiel who groomed and paid for most of “JD Vance’s Senate campaign and pushed him to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate, a heartbeat from the presidency, for a 78-year-old man with dementia.
 
There’s also Leonard Leo, vice-president of the Federalist Society, who received control of a $1.6 billion gift to fund his efforts to push his far-right legislative agenda.  His many payments to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – as well as “gifts” to SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito would force the jurists to resign his seat on any other court in the country for ethics violations, except that the High Court has no such rules.
 
Billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of long-time benefactor of the MAGOP Sheldon Adelson, got upset at a slight she perceived from someone on Trump’s staff and threatened to withhold future funding.  How much money did she donate?  Enough for Trump to make nice by awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  The money flowed again.

Not to mention billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and billionaire owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos blocking their newspapers a week before the election from publishing prepared endorsements for Kamala Harris.
 
And we haven’t even gotten to hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow (who also made “friendly gifts” to Justices Thomas and Alito) and the Koch family billionaires, whose donations to Trump and the MAGOP have been profound over the years.
 
Yes, Democrats have their billionaire donors, as well.  But nothing at this level of payment, and nothing even remotely close to this level of deep, substantive influence.  Just from Elon Musk (the richest man in the world) and Peter Thiel alone.  And that's before even getting to all the rest.
 
All of which got me to thinking about an article I wrote for the Huffington Post about this very problem – 14 years ago.  That was when the Supreme Court, in all its infinite wisdom, for reasons know only to itself, ludicrously ruled that money is free speech.
 
I thought it was therefore an appropriate time to revisit that piece.  I tracked down a dollar bill for an interview, to make its case that it was indeed deserving of free speech.

Written January 26, 2010.

This is sort of a multi-part article, though all connected.  And its provenance from over a decade ago really didn't have any connection to the news today.  But as the Trump Final Argument Racist-a-thon took place in Madison Square Garden on Sunday, it brought to might the unrelenting torrential storm of lies that Trump and "JD Vance" have been dumping on the country during the campaign -- most notable for their "immigrants are eating pet dogs and cats," but oh-so-much more, down to Trump's idiotic "You have a 75% chance of being killed in the New York subway" at MSG over the weekend. 

That led to me remember an article I wrote here in 2020 about all the mass of lies during the Trump time in office, and the maniacal and foolish efforts from those around him to desperately try to explain them away.

And that column, in turn, directly stemmed from 2011, when I wrote an article on the Huffington Post about Jon Kyl, then the junior Republican senator from Texas, and the most ridiculous lie he told, topped by his utterly ludicrous attempt to explain it away -- which I used as a way of describing how the GOP seemed to be a party built on lies.  And yes, that was written in 2011, thirteen years ago, a full five years before Trump even entered the scene. I embedded that piece in the 2020 article as a way to support how the GOP got to Trump.

So, with the election just a week away, I thought this was a good time to revisit it all.  Because it's important to see that this dementia-laden MAGOP world of Trump which has degenerated so much into lunacy and a realm where facts almost don't seem to exist isn't something that just occurred, and isn't only a Cult of Trump (though it most definitely is that, in part), but is something which the Republican Party has been doing for a very long time, and priming its members to accept as their normal.  To accept lies, to accept idiotic explanations, to distrust facts, Democrats, the news, reality, and lay the groundwork and pathway to accepting a Trump, opening the door wide for him to walk through.

Here, then, first is that article from 2020, before the look back into 2011.

                                                        *   *   *

                                                The Road to Hell
                                               September 23, 2020

As I listened to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany twist herself in knots and try to explain to an unrelenting Jim Acosta of CNN why Trump wasn't lying when he said that "nobody" was really affected by the coronavirus, despite 205,471 deaths of Americans, so far -- and 7,097,937 infections, so far.  And these were only in the United States.  In fact, around the world, there have been almost 32 million human beings infected by the coronavirus and just under one million people have died.  So far.  So, that whole "nobody" thing, not so much.

And yet, on and on, Ms. McEnany went on, trying to explain that Trump was being honest and only talking about young people -- despite that, no, he wasn't, and, of course, despite there also being an actual recording of Trump telling Bob Woodward that he knew young people could get infected by it.  

And as I listened to someone from the White House once again try to explain what Trump meant when he said something horrible and irresponsible and cruel and racist, I just started to wonder when it was that we formally went past the line where it become officially head-numbing to hear a White House spokesperson again explain "What the president meant when he said..." something.

I mean, words matter.  But when it comes to the President of the United States, words not only matter, they can be life-and-death critical.  A president should ever have to have it explained what he meant, but though in life that does occur on occasion, those occasions should be rare -- not something so common that the White House Communications Office has the words, "What the president meant when he said..." on speed dial and a macro.

Of course, most people know what Trump "meant" when he says something.  We've heard him for four years.  We know he meant something egomaniacal or cruel or untrue or racist.  The only time we don't know is when it's totally incomprehensible and a mindless bunch of word less.  Or "covfefe."

The thing is, this -- like most things -- isn't just about Trump, though he and his spokespeople have turned it into an art form.  (Can we ever forget "alternative facts"?)  But Republicans making bald-faced lies and then having to explain what they actually meant when the lie is too egregious even for them to double-down on and they're called out on it.  The list is too long and massive, but a few leap out.  Like when Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson said that President Obama was responsible for the battle that killed Captain Humayan Khan (son of Khizr Khan, who had spoken at the Democratic Convention) -- except the problem is that Capt. Khan did in Iraq in 2004, and Barack Obama didn't take office until 2008. And of course, there was Republican lying claims of birtherism long before Trump made it his campaign issue.  And maybe one of the most legendary of all, there was the infamous article by Ron Suskind in 2004 when an unnamed W. Bush White House official (now believed to be Karl Rove) who chided Democrats for living in a "realty-based community" while Republicans "created our own reality." 

In other words, you tell the truth, we make it up.

And that's just been standard operating procedure for Republicans.  And as it often happens, I can delve into the archives and explain what I mean.

Back in 2011, I wrote an article about then-senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) getting caught in a lie so blatant that he ended up coming out with one of the more stupid, teeth-aching attempts to explain it away.

This isn't about Trump.  It isn't even specifically about All Republicans.  This is just one individual.  But especially because of what his mind-numbing explanation for his lie was, it is all too indicative of what Republicans have been doing for decades, and what Trump does when he breathes.  Over 20,000 Trump lies that the Washington Post documented in just over two years of his time in office.

Yes, all politicians lie.  All people lie.  But it's how you lie, what you lie about, how you explain your lie, how you correct your lie, if you correct your lie and why you lie that separates people.

This is just a look at Jon Kyl..  But when we live with this sort of thing for decades because one party has "created their own reality" and live on "alternative facts," and as a result of all that we now live with the standard, default White House explanation of "What the president meant when he said..." -- this is far more than a look at Jon Kyl.  It's about Trump.  And it's about much more than Trump, it's about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable him, are complicit and, in fact, long-since laid the foundation for him.

So, we head back to April 13, 2011.

As most know, the Washington Post has documented 30,000+ lies by Trump when he was in the White House.  They stopped counting when he left office, but the lies have continued to skyrocket, which is what you expect from a pathological liar.  Even if you didn't expect even from him that he'd say something so utterly clownish that for a long while he never knew that Kamala Harris was Black.

This has morphed to MAGOP members of Congress who seem to feel that they've gotten the Seal of Approval from Trump -- though they do miss that though the lying works with the base of the party (a base that believes JFK, Jr. will come back to life and run with Trump, and that Anderson Cooper eats babies), the lies aren't working so well with the rest of the country.  All the more so now.

That hasn't stopped "JD Vance" from picking up the mantle, of course.  In fact, it's almost a requirement if you're going to be Trump's running mate -- especially if you have previously called Trump "America's Hitler" and "I'm a Never Trump guy.  I never liked him" and now have to defend how great you want everything to think he is.  His lies about his counterpart, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, began almost immediately in a torrential downpour -- from repeating Trump's lie about Gov. Walz supposedly not doing anything about riots in Minneapolis (in fact, Walz actually called in the National Guard, and there's now audio of Trump praising his actions!) to lying about how Tim Walz's admirable and honored 24-year record in the Army National Guard, reaching the high level of Command Sergeant Major was false and 'Stolen Valor' (a charge many have angrily refuted)...and more in between.  Including his repeated lies attempting to suggest that Kamala Harris is a "chameleon" whose life she hides and keeps changing.  And only yesterday bizarrely said about her, "Do not pretend to be somebody you're not."

This last, it must be repeated, is all the more "weird and creepy" (tm) -- and Trump-like clownish -- when you realize that "JD Vance's" real name is James Donald Bowman.  Which he then changed to James David Hamel.  Which he later changed to James David Vance.  (Which he later changed to J.D. Vance, and then instead used JD Vance.)  And further, that he wrote a memoir about growing up in Appalachia, when in reality he was born and was raised in a suburb or Cincinnati. 

Man, talk about pretending to be somebody you're not.  "JD Vance" is on a level that is almost Oscar-worthy.  It's living a life that's a lie.

But what leaped out amid all that was when Trump had a major meltdown after Gov. Tim Walz, the genial former schoolteacher and former high school football coach who has been described as a "happy warrior, was made the Democratic running mate for Vice President -- and wrote a long screen on his social media site that ended with a mournful cry in the wilderness that that, if elected, Tim Walz would “unleash HELL ON EARTH.”  While an obvious lie, of course, it's more a punchline for a Saturday Night Live sketch.

By why it leaped out to me was that it reminded me of an article I wrote for the Huffington Post about egregious Republican lying 13 years ago -- in 2011.  I can't say nothing has changed, since it's gotten far, far, far worse.  But for that reason, I thought it was worth revisiting.

                   The Road to Hell is also Paved with Bad Intentions
                                                  April 13, 2011
 
As a young man, Jon Kyl, the Republican junior senator from Arizona, was convicted of selling heroin, and he spent eight months in federal prison.
 
This remark was not intended to be a factual statement.  Rather, it was to illustrate that Jon Kyl, a Republican senator, is from Arizona.
 
Yes, that was unfair.  But just because Jon Kyl wasn’t actually convicted of drug crimes doesn’t mean he hasn’t committed any legal abuses.  Make no mistake, in his early days in Arizona state politics, he was reprimanded for 12 ethics violations, though avoided expulsion on a technicality, changing the spelling of his name which originally was “John Kyle.”
 
This remark was not intended to be a factual statement, either, rather it was to illustrate that Jon Kyl doesn’t have the letter “H” in his name.
 
Joking aside, there is something I do admire Sen. Kyl for.  It is his deft skill manipulating the English language to avoid responsibility for making a gross smear on the floor of the U.S. Senate.  Addressing his senate colleagues, Mr. Kyl had said that abortions accounted for “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does” – though the actual, truthful number is 3 percent.  When later confronted over these shamefully inaccurate remarks now in the official Congressional Record, he hid behind his staff, which commented that “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.”
 
Forgetting for a moment that this isn’t even an attempt at an apology, there only two options here:  either Jon Kyl takes you for an idiot, or himself.
 
To be fair to Jon Kyl and sympathetic, he has unfortunately been painfully distracted lately, due to a bitter divorce he’s going through, brought about by the exposure of a 12-year, secret affair with his secretary.
 
Just to clarify, this remark is not intended to be a factual statement, rather it was to illustrate that Jon Kyl has a secretary.
 
A case could be made that Jon Kyl knew his senate statement was a lie when he gave it, or at least that he didn’t care whether it was false or not.  But even if one chooses to graciously accept that it was just a horrific mistake – we all know what a proper reply should have been.  We all know how we ourselves would have apologized.  We would have said –
 
“I’m sorry.  I made a mistake.  I relied on information given to me, and I should have checked it myself.  I apologize to Planned Parenthood, to my senate colleagues, and to the American public.  I will immediately correct the Congressional Record.  And will strive to make sure such a horrible error doesn’t occur again.”
 
We wouldn’t have had a lackey say for us – “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement.”
 
Jon Kyl’s lie and lying response reminds me of an election several years back for the Writers Guild Board of Directors.  An unsigned letter was mailed that smeared each candidate on an opposition slate.  Later, at a WGA Meet the Candidates Night, one of the candidates there (who had not been attacked) was asked for his reaction to the anonymous smear of his opponents.  Not wanting to defend his opponents, he said with a thoughtful, sad expression, “The fact that it got all the names and some of the ages right is what made the letter so hurtful.”
 
Sitting in the back of the room, all I could think was, “No!  The fact that it got all the names right is what made the letter – a smear.”
 
It was the same attitude weaving through Jon Kyl’s own smearing statement and smarmy, staff reply.  It’s as if the truth doesn’t matter.  That anything can be said if it helps you.  And if you’re forced to address the lie, dismiss it as not being intended to be the truth.
 
Of course it’s not intended to be the truth.  It was intended to smear!
 
This is an attitude that permeates the conservative movement these days.  Democrats can lie, too, and when they do, it’s just as wrong.  But these days, the “say whatever you want,” “truth be damned” weight has been falling more heavily on the Republican and conservative side.  Perhaps because they’re the ones in attack mode.  Perhaps because the truth that Social Security, Medicare, universal healthcare, and public education all actually help people causes Republicans political trouble.
 
Whatever the reason, when the truth hurts you, and you choose to say anything to win, the truth doesn’t matter.
 
To make a point attacking President Obama, Bill O’Reilly describes U.S. troops massacring Germans at Malmedy during WWII – when the truth is the exact opposite, German Waffen SS soldiers massacred U.S. POWs.  To prove that a political rally was popular, Glenn Beck shows a photograph of the crowd – when the truth is that the photo was taken years before.  To terrify the GOP base, Sarah Palin and others lie that Democrats want to kill old people.  And on and on the spiral downward goes. 
 
But of course, truth actually does matter.  And we should not only expect it of our children, but also our politicians and social voices.  Yes, I know that’s a lot to expect.  So, let’s make it easy and start small –
 
Let’s expect it of Jon Kyl.
 
That remark is intended to be a factual statement.

I've posted a lot of videos here of the wonderful Tom Lehrer, including some rare material that he wrote and performed for his fellow professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz which fortunately got privately recorded. (Lehrer had taught political science at MIT, and later went to UCSC to teach mathematics -- and even also taught a class in musical theater.)  But a couple weeks ago, my pal Mark Evanier had a rarity on his site -- a TV performance by Lehrer with a song I'd never heard before.  And it's a lot of fun.

The number is in the spirit of his song "New Math."  He was appearing in England on one of David Frost's TV shows (I don't know which one, nor does Mark), and he performed a song he wrote for the occasion.  He explains how to convert the old British pounds/shillings system to the new decimal currency, like in the United States, that they were going to be changing to in 1971.

You can find the song here on Mark's website.

And as a bonus, for the folks who like to compare, here is that aforementioned song, "New Math," from his great albums ​That Was the Year That Was.