Newly-elected congressional representative George Santos is a lying sack of shit.  There’s no other way to say it. He’s lied so much about his background that it’s probably easier to find what he didn’t lie about, but here’s what we know he did lie about – his family, ethnic background, his family in the Holocaust, his religion, his education, his work history, his business (it doesn’t exist), his finances, his residential status, and his sexual orientation.  He doesn’t even live in the district where he got elected.  During his interview on Fox Noise, Santos admitted to all of his lies and making excuses for his lies like “I didn’t say I was a Jew, I said I was Jew-ish,” whatever that means.  The Noise Machine, including him, have started calling these easily disprovable lies “embellishments”, as if embellishments were Okey Dokey.  And apparently to the RNC, it is.

The response from Kevin McCarthy and the RNC about their latest shitbag making the headlines? Crickets. Based on the deafening silence from the party, there is zero doubt that McCarthy is going to seat this guy in Congress and let him get away with massive lying.  It’s no surprise that’s going to happen, because power is more important than legality or democracy, but it just confirms yet again that the GOP is now the GLP (Grand Liars Party).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Friday is normally a news dump day. People don’t talk about these stories on the weekend. So, they have to wait until Monday and by the time Monday arrives, most people are talking about the stories that took place over the weekend. Why talk about anything when we can talk about Will Smith punching Chris Rock?

That was the Browns way of protecting Deshaun Watson. They will be doing that a lot over the next few years. We could start with the garden variety lying that happens at all of these. Deshaun said it was not about the money and that he didn’t know about the additional money until after he had picked the Browns. Sure. Then, he talked about how honest the Houston front office was and how both sides acknowledged they had different priorities and that they were going in different directions. Sure. If anyone was buying that they should have turned in their press badge right then and there.

Lying to the press core and to fan base is one thing. That’s par for the course. Lying to yourself is something else. As a school counselor, I know when someone is lying to themselves. I know when someone is in trouble in terms of their mental health. I can’t diagnose anyone. I couldn’t tell you if Deshaun has a sex addiction, if it is diagnosable, or if his behavior goes beyond that. After all, we don’t know all of the facts about his 22+ cases.

He was asked directly if he felt like he needed counseling. He declined. He said he doesn’t have a problem. He didn’t assault anyone, disrespect anyone, or demean anyone. This is all comforting until we realize two very important things. First, he had just finished lying about his contract and how it impacted his decision and the decision to leave Houston. Secondly, more than 22 women would not characterize his behavior the same way that he did.

On a personal and human level, this is really quite disturbing. When 22+ women accuse you of something it either means you did it and are in complete denial or all of them are making it up which means you were dumb enough to put yourself in a position to have 22+ women all tell the same lie and have it be believed.

Deshaun was asked why he had so many different massage therapists. He only talked about the fact that this was over a multi-year period. Great. That doesn’t answer the question. It defies logic. It isn’t so much that he needed that many massages. Being a professional athlete has to be tough. It is the fact that he went to that many different massage therapists and as far as we know, they were all women. What are the odds that this is a coincidence?

The fact that so many of those instances turned sexual is extremely worrisome. Obviously, it is a pattern with him. That pattern obviously will get him in trouble with the people he loves, but also puts him into positions like this. He sees no problem with it. The fact that he sees no problem with is the proof that he needs some help. Most of us are perceptive enough to see when people are lying to themselves.

So here is hoping Deshaun does get some help. Most of us are adult enough to realize that people have many sides to them. We are adult enough to realize that people have different hobbies, appetites, and habits which may or may not be deemed healthy by the majority. The line between deviant, liable, and criminal behavior is not necessarily visible to the naked eye. Even though he is gone, here is hoping he gets some help.

There are always moments that leave me speechless. As much as I am able to throw more than enough words on a page, I struggle to speak when someone does something so brazen that it defies explanation. The right makes up stuff all the time, so that really shouldn’t be a shock, but I still find a way to come away surprised at how low they are willing to go.

Nevada happens to be the place we are talking about today. A unassuming elementary teacher passed away in 2017, but was never removed from the voting rolls. That became a problem when she somehow cast a ballot in the 2020 election.

Fox News does what Fox News does. This seemingly isolated case became proof that the election was stolen. Now, we probably shouldn’t talk about the mental gymnastics necessary to take one case and somehow extrapolate widespread fraud out of it. Hyper-partisan hacks will certainly take logical leaps in the interest of a good story. Heck, they’ll even make conclusions without all of the evidence.

That’s not the part that gets me. The part that gets me is how they put on the husband to talk about how peculiar it was that his wife’s absentee ballot was submitted. He went on talking about how it proves there is fraud. He should know about that because he’s the one that submitted it. After all, he is seen looking dead into the camera expressing how dumbfounded he is that someone would do this.

I suppose we tell ourselves lies all the time. It’s all a part of the mental gymnastics it takes to get through the day. Sure, I’ve only had one cup of coffee. Sure, it wasn’t me that ate the last of the cookies. Sure, I’m going to work out today to work off some of these extra calories. We might even speak those lies out loud to our loved ones.

What we don’t do is go on television and offer bald-faced lies in the interest of a national narrative. The makers of South Park have always had ways of stripping down our malarkey and leaving us naked before the world. They poked fun at families that did this when some of them are probably guilty of murder. Those people blamed it on a random Puerto Rican guy. It’s the same concept. It’s not enough to say I didn’t do it. They had to actively point the finger at someone else.

One can hardly blame right wing blowhards for jumping on something before getting all the facts. Sure, their explanations defy logic, but we’ve done that before. Maybe we haven’t broadcasted those assumptions to the world, but most of us don’t have that opportunity. What’s unfathomable is being the guilty party and being brazen enough to go on camera and point the finger at someone else. I’d be doing good to find a bunker and stay put until everything blows over. I guess some people are more shameless liars than others.

Must read.  A great article today by Jennifer Rubin the the Washington Post about stopping right wing myth making.

Trump’s approval ratings, which always hover around the low 40s, has risen in the last month as many Americans rallied around him as he thrashed around trying to make the Coronavirus pandemic go away.  He started daily briefings for the first time in over a year and his approval went up.  Now an interesting effect of his daily exposure is occurring – people (who don’t pay much attention) are figuring out that Trump actually is doing a terrible job with the crisis.  I believe they’re figuring that out because every day, Trump:

• Lies, lies, lies.  His incessant lying results in his staff having to continuously crisis manage, backtracking on his bombastic claims of everything from cures to numbers, to non-existent vaccines and tests.
• Is permanently radically partisan.  He attacks everyone who criticizes him and airs old grievances daily.
• Cuts off the experts to spout conspiracy theories and bullshit.
• Insults the international community, WHO, NATO, and many others including his usual targets, China and “shithole” countries.
• Insults the press, refuses to answer a straight question repeats “fake news” every minute.
• Holds his “briefings” at the 5 pm newshour so his ratings are higher.  He sometimes blathers for up to 2 hours, providing very little actual new information. It wrecks news programing throughout the country.

This worked for a few weeks, but Trump is wearing pretty thin with millions of Americans.  His ratings are falling in new polls, and Biden is rising against him in key states like Florida.  I can’t watch it, but Trump is inadvertently damaging his re-election prospects by putting his incompetence and cornered badger personality every day on national television.  Even most loyal Trumpists have backed away from their idiotic boasting and taunting of normal Americans who are watching this debacle slack-jawed in disbelief.

Trump’s “winning” has now erased ALL of the stock market gains since he took office.  Unemployment this morning is 13% the highest in almost 100 years.  We are struggling with a global pandemic without the benefit of a strong pandemic response team because it was dismantled.  We are struggling with confusing and often conflicting information.  Our infection rate is understated because there is virtually no testing available.  Those who had it and have recovered have no way of confirming their illness because no serum antibody test is available.  The CDC is paralyzed by politicized appointments and slashed budgets.

Trump couldn’t do a better job of destroying the US economy if he tried.  The silver lining here, though, is that he’s putting his corruption, incompetence, and hatefulness of full display for hours every day.  Doing that is actually starting to get through to Americans who normally don’t pay attention.

Dana Milbank has a great piece in the Washington Post this morning where he describes how Republican senators made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment trial, repeatedly violating their oaths and violating Senate rules.  Many didn’t even bother to show up during the House Managers’ presentations, or if they did, smacked on chewing gum or read magazines.  As I read these descriptions, what struck me was what a poor job Chief Justice John Roberts did, not even trying to get Republicans to follow their own rules in the trial.  Trump always whines about how everything is rigged against him; well, this trial was certainly rigged in favor of him even before it started.

In voting to block all witnesses and close the record, Republicans completed their corrupt mission of acquitting Trump even as they admitted that he is guilty.  Milbank’s best line of the the piece was when he described Lamar Alexanders illogical reasoning for refusing to hear any witnesses.  Alexander’s statement was whiplash inducing as described by Milbank:

“’There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of ‘what to do about what he did,’ Alexander said, should be ‘in the presidential election.’ What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.”

Milbank nails it in those brief sentences by pointing out the idiotic reasoning behind not only Trump’s lawyers but his enablers in the Senate.  They admit Trump is guilty, yet either say it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachability or that the election should determine his fate.  How goddam stupid – if inviting, indeed extorting a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election is not impeachable, then nothing is.  Even more stupid is saying that the election he’s trying to rig is the one in which he should be punished.

The illogic is gobsmacking.