Lying 101 is a course that teaches the ins and outs of creating a baseless fact – also known as a lie – by asking a question. In politics it is a course requirement for every Republican office holder or wannabe.

And it is a course that every Democrat fails.

To be successful, the lie MUST be a question, because questions can’t be lies, right? Detecting the lie is a no-brainer then, because the question is asked in public but no answer is proffered.

And then the unanswered question establishes a truth, and anyone that responds later with facts or figures to “answer” the question is too late.

The damage is done.

Witness Texas Senator John Cornyn’s tweeted “question” of the other day, quoting from Huffpost:

“California Has More Than 100 Gun Laws. Why Don’t They Stop More Mass Shootings?”

See, California suffered two mass shootings this month, and 11 people are dead. Senator Cornyn apparently asks this rhetorical question at their expense so his voters are pleased with him by “owning the libs,” and his gun lobby patrons will reward him with more campaign cash.

Only afterward did California Governor Newsom tweet a response to Cornyn’s tweet:

“Texas’ gun death rate is 67% higher than California’s.”

Yep. Truth.

But a truth told 2nd is always trumped by a lie told first. Ask any school teacher (I was one once). Any teacher will tell you that the first thing a person hears about something is the thing the person remembers and believes to be true, and it is an uphill battle to dissuade them from it with supporting facts.

It’s a trap that Democrats keep falling into, much to the glee of ultra-conservatives and Trumpists.

Democrats need non-comeback comebacks. Ones that are humorous, folksy, and cover a wide array of issues.

And I hate to say it, but Ronald Wilson Reagan had the best one I’ve ever heard: “There you go again”.

See? No muss. No fuss. No data. No supporting information. Just good fun.

I wish I could come up with something original and witty, but I don’t do either any justice at all.

Any suggestions would be helpful

Welp, it appears that now Chris Sununu (the Son of a John)  is “considering” running for President against TFG in the GOP primary.  He joins a long list of people also considering but too poopie del pollo to announce.

Actually, it’s more of an announcement that they’re praying that TFG crosses the Jordan River and they want to be ready to pounce.  There is not a one of them with a lick of courage or even a political foundation of ideals or goals.

But, Sununu stands out among the crowd with his campaign slogan.

GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said Sunday he is considering a White House bid in 2024, citing the Granite State’s “live free or die” spirit as a model for the Republican Party.

Holy damn cow.  The guy wants a civil war.  That is just bone chilling for a fluffy little rich white boy who didn’t even join the Boy Scouts because pocket knives were involved.

Sununu is trying to run as a moderate Republican in the Rockefeller-style but describes himself as “a Trump guy through and through.”   He vetoed a bill outlawing carrying guns on a school campus.  He voted for Trump. He’s flipped on abortion rights so many times that they have menu items named after him at The Pancake House.

So, anyway, I want to announce that I’m considering doing a whole lot of stuff but prancing around announcing that I am lining up on death watch to continue Trump’s legacy, you know, just in case he dies ain’t one of them. And apparently that’s real hard to do.

 

I have a beef with the Democratic party, progressives, and leftists. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m a Catholic. I also have made no bones about the fact that my Catholicism shapes my politics. While it is true that the first amendment guarantees of freedom from religion as much as it guarantees freedom of religion, there is a difference between the reality of policy and the tactics that we use to communicate those policy ideas.

This past Sunday, the gospel reading was the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously, the homily was too. The sermon on the mount was compared to Moses bringing down the ten commandments from Mt. Sinai. In Moses case, he was bringing God’s law down to the people. In Jesus’ case he was trying to lift the people up to heaven. The famous eight beatitudes are listed below:

1. Blessed are the poor in spirit
2. Blessed are the meek
3. Blessed are they who mourn
4. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice
5. Blessed are the merciful
6. Blessed are the clean of heart
7. Blessed are the peacemakers
8. Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’ sake

This is where Democratic and left wing thought slides off the rails. Many want to shun Christianity in favor of something else. This has given over Christianity and its values to the right wing and the right wing alone. Therefore, people that call themselves Christians can get the vote of others that call themselves Christian without embodying none of the characteristics listed above. Conversely, someone embodying most of the characteristics of above can be called immoral and unfit to lead because the voters reject the packaging that they come in.

Admittedly, it is a tight rope balancing act. The general idea is to make yourself palatable to Christians without pigeonholing yourself as only palatable to Christians. Non-religious people can be most of those things above and many are. People of different faiths can be most if not all of those things above and many are. The simple fact is that there isn’t a single objectionable quality on that list no matter what faith (or lack of faith) tradition you come from.

I hate to use a golf analogy, but there have been many a round that I have played that began poorly. In fact, that’s the norm these days. The road back does not begin with a string of birdies, eagles, and pars. It begins with a single shot. You execute a single shot. Then you execute another and another. When you look up, you have rebounded from your poor start.

In a similar way, our politics will not rebound overnight. A sea of performance artists and carnival barkers won’t suddenly give way to serious people with serious ideas. It starts with a single shot. It starts by asking ourselves one simple question regardless of religious affiliation or not: which candidate embodies most of the qualities above? That’s true whether it is the local school board or the presidency. That’s true whether it is the dog catcher or the governor. It’s true whether they be Republican, Democrat, or third party. Good and wise policy cannot come from bad people. There is no getting around that no matter what they call themselves.

Gym Jordan was on MTP this morning babbling about how law enforcement has been weaponized, but only when it comes to conservatives being investigated.  He’s all over the “weaponized” FBI trying to protect school board members whose lives are being threatened, but completely blind to the tsunami of blatant law breaking on his own side.  When Chuck Todd brought up the fact that the NY Assistant US Attorney, Charles McGonigal, has been charged with taking money from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, Jordan stated he was going to investigate that, but brushed Todd off when he pointed out that Paul Manafort was Deripaska’s primary contact between the TFG campaign and the Russians.  He wants to investigate the Steele dossier, but is not interested in investigating whether the US Attorney’s office in NY was suppressing the dossier and leaking other stories to the press intended to damage Hillary during the 2016.  The new conservative House majority has only a few goals for this term – cementing in their own power, hamstringing the federal government, and exacting revenge for TFG’s loss in 2020.  That’s it, period.  They don’t give a flying shit about their country or their constituents; their only tools are retribution and disinformation.

When asked about the George Floyd act and reforming policing in the US, Jordan took the usual position of conservatives today, saying that the US government has no role in policing reform and that it must be handled at “state and local levels”.  This is the strategy now followed by most Republicans who shirk responsibility to avoid being blamed for the consequences.  It’s also the SCOTUS’s normal response to all issues of privacy, individual rights, civil rights, and voting rights.  The Court, under Roberts, has now taken the position of taking no position on critical issues like privacy, gun safety laws, campaign finance, radical gerrymandering, and systemic voter suppression, punting all those issues to the state level which in 35 states is under the iron fisted control of minority Republicans cemented into power by…wait for it…radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The Court has also gone so far as drawing the idiotic conclusions that money doesn’t corrupt and that magically the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed.

At the state level, DeSantis and Abbott are the poster children for shirking their duty.  They both habitually override local county and city officials who are trying to protect their own citizens by grabbing power at the state level to hamstring them, but then take no responsibility for massive failures like the 2021 Texas power failure that killed 700 Texans.  By keep a “free market” ideology where free markets don’t exist, they avoid blame when their own constituents suffer from their negligence.  By hiding behind idiotic libertarian ideology that has never worked anywhere on the planet, they can blame faceless villains rather than doing their goddam jobs to improve the lives of their constituents.

This is the biggest fraud that’s been committed against the American people, but they retain power through two strategies – using disinformation to blame non-existent bogeymen for their own failures, and radical gerrymandering that creates a base of voters who believe their destructionist rhetoric and bullshit.  AND, it’s getting worse, not better.

My congressman is a precious little munchkin of a person who struts, even when he’s sitting down.

This is going to be one of my rare long stories because I haven’t written in so long that this stuff has been piling up.

Let me start here: My congressman is Troy Nehls.  He’s has lived on the public dole most of his life. First in the military, then he became a cop in a small town where he got fired for lying, and then he got elected constable, next he was sheriff, and finally congressman. During that time, he used his military education benefits to get a degree from Liberty University – Jerry Falwell’s laughable institution of higher learning.

The only thing of note he’s done in congress is to restore smoking to the capitol building.  He went on Tucker Carlson, lit up his ever-present cigar and declared that smoking is “all about liberty.”  But what is freedom to the Republicans if not the ability to imperil somebody else?

A couple of weeks ago, a You Tube flashed online with Congressman Nehls being either drunk, drugged, or totally out of his freeking mind over some guy named Dontarius who was escorted into his office for some reason unknown to either Nehls, Dontarius, or God Hisowndamnself.

During this visit Nehl’s behavior ranged from declaring, “I’m all about the little man. The little man,” while reaching out to touch his visitor, chit chatting for 8 minutes over things that multinational corporations and the Illuminati are both still scratching their heads over.  If you have eight minutes to watch this video, please note Nehl’s interactions during the picture-taking to “put the black man in the middle,” and the freaking size of his stand up humidor. This suckers ain’t cheap.

But it’s not over. Hell, the fat lady is only clearing her throat and putting on her panties.  Let’s go visit the Federal Elections Commission.

Here’s a letter they sent him  last week asking about “Apparent Excessive, Prohibited, and Impermissible Contributions Nehls for Congress (C00730150)” And, just one of those full page of hinkey contributions was way too much money from Steve Wynn.  Look, if you’re going to take money from Steve Wynn, don’t take so much that it’s illegal because that’s like putting a neon sign over it saying “I’m not just dumb. I’m dumb and a damn crook.”

And, there’s something I can’t figure out. An unauthorized expenditure at Misty J Productions? What the hell? I can’t even figure out who Misty J is, and Lord only knows what she produces.

So if you’re wondering why my congressman has to take so much questionable money, I have a little explanation for you.

First off, exercising your liberty to foul my air is not cheap. Apparently he doesn’t purchase his own cigars but allows his contributors to pay fr them from his tax-free campaign account.

Here’s Shelly’s Back Room. So, if you’re ever in DC and need the smell of farts and sludge, you can visit Shelly’s and have yourself a white boy experience.  You’ll see more from Shelly’s in a minute.

But wait, liberty also means never paying for your own food.

Yeah, there’s some more money to Shelly’s and two payments to simply “Nehls” which is beyond normal reasoning.

There’s more but I’m tired of typing.  I’m gonna keep an eye on this fella.  What information I got from the FEC came from Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen and this anonymous Facebook page here.

There will be more.

 

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” — Howard Beale

Beale is a fictional character. He was an anchorman in the movie “Network”. In the movie. Beale asks all of the viewers to open their windows and shout out the above refrain at the same time. Referencing a fictional character and a fruitless gesture seems oddly apropos in the moment. Naturally, you are just going to have to take my word for it.

 

What you are looking at above is the media bias chart we teach our students. See, most people naturally just assume that media sources should only be measured by where they are on a left-right scale. The more important axis is percentage of factual content provided on these programs. The lower you are on the chart, the fewer facts that get dispensed on your network.

I’m sure you noticed that the left and right axis is pretty balanced on both sides. There are more right wing sources than left wing sources when you absolutely count them out, but it’s close enough not to make a difference. It is the factual axis that is most revealing. You’ll notice all but two left to center stay above the line that denotes selective or incomplete story information. Quite a few right leaning sources fall below that. In other words, it’s not symmetrical. Both sides do not do the same thing.

We set this in the backdrop of the latest right wing hysteria piece about DirecTV dropping Newsmax from it’s channel list. The right wing noise machine has called this censorship. Sure. If anyone leaning right accidentally stumbles onto this space I want you to listen very carefully. Censorship happens when the government stifles your ability to speak. It is not happening if your boss fires you for saying something offensive. It is not happening if a social media site blocks your commentary or decides to ban you from their site. For the love of God, it is not happening when a cable company decides not to carry your channel.

If you look carefully you can find Newsmax on the site above. It exists on the far right hand wing on the chart and is one of the least accurate. It comes somewhere between OANN and Fox News. That is terrific company. Since most commentators can’t be bothered to explain this nuanced point, I will make an attempt in case you are conservative and stumbled into this space.

All media outlets are biased in some sense. There are two kinds of bias. The first kind of bias reflects the editorial judgment of the outlet. What stories do they pump up? What stories do they bury? On this level, everyone in the mainstream media deserves all of the criticism that gets hurled their way. We amp up conflict. We amp up controversy. We amp up whatever sensationalism we can for eyeballs, clicks, and advertising dollars.

The second level of bias is the kind of bias most people think of. Are you actually telling the truth? You can see the chart above as easily as I can. There simply is no equivalency here. The notion that both sides do it is not only wrong, but it is inherently dangerous. I suppose that when someone exaggerates the importance of an issue then we can consider it a form of lying. That of course depends on how cynical you want to be.

However, take a look at your chart. MSNBC and CNN are reliable sources. They exercise a ton editorial discretion in what they choose to focus on, but they generally report facts. OANN, Newsmax, and Fox News do not. I don’t subscribe to DirecTV. They can allow any channel they want and they can cut any channel they want. It’s called capitalism. Maybe conservatives can give it a try.