When we were kids, the older folks taught us a very valuable lesson. How do you know when a politician is lying? The answer? Their lips are moving. In all seriousness, lying and politics have gone hand in hand for the length of this experiment we call democracy. So, why is it so difficult for the mainstream media to do the basic job of vetting comments before running with them?

Apparently, Donald Trump has “agreed” to debate Kamala Harris on Fox News on September 4th. It will be beautiful in front of a packed MAGA house. It will be the best debate anyone has ever seen with fair and balanced moderators straight from Fox News. You won’t believe how great it will be. There is only one problem you have probably already guessed. Neither Fox nor Kamala Harris have agreed to anything.

Despite this, most mainstream media outlets initially reported that the two would debate on September 4th. Why? Simply put, Trump said so on his shitty little app. Of course the mainstream media ran with the story because of course Trump wouldn’t lie about something like this. The guy that told over 30,000 documented lies as president is the perfect kind of guy to take at his word no matter what he says.

That is until the try to cover up what he said and make it sound more palatable. The headlines only changed after they received a ton of pushback from readers and viewers. The media has never been able to figure out how to treat him as a whole, but we have occasional pockets of reporters that get things right. His appearance this past weekend before a group of African-American journalists was a masters class in holding him responsible for inflammatory rhetoric and dubious claims.

This is very simple and I can’t believe I have to write this down. He’s lying. If he’s arguing anything anywhere near policy he’s lying. He’s not even particularly good at lying. Imagine a second grader BS’ing their way through a copy of “Where the Red Fern Grows” and you have a good mental image. One good targeted question and that second grader goes running back to their seat with tears in their eyes. You know, big strong men with tears in their eyes.

The Trump way is to overwhelm you with a tsunami of lies. The hope and expectation is that you won’t catch them all. You don’t have to report on him in real time. You can stop and verify it simply because if it sounds like a load of crap then it probably is. Did he really agree to a debate on Fox? Does it make sense for Kamala Harris to agree to go on conservative sponsored media with conservative moderators and a conservative crowd? Of course, since the MSM bought it hook, line, and sinker, the Trump team gets to run with the narrative that Harris is backing out. It’s a really simple lie that a second grader could work through. I just wish the mainstream media were smarter than a second grader.

When people know that what they have done or said is wrong they have three choices. They can double down and really go for the jugular. They can admit that what they have done or said is wrong and seek to reconcile with whomever they have offended. They can use slight of hand mentally, psychologically, or physically to make it appear that what they did was really not that bad.

We call the third rationalization. It is usually more mental and psychological than anything else. We need to convince ourselves that what we did was somehow justified and not wrong. I won’t say that everyone has done it, but I will say I’ve done it. Sometimes it is because I was just incapable at the time of seeing my own culpability. Sometimes I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had done an awful thing.

The news media reported excerpts from Kristi Noem’s book and the rationalizations started in full force. Granted, some of these that were mentioned to me by friends and family that were sympathetic to her. Some came from her or people in her camp. My friends simply used a different report than I did. Others developed their own rationalizations to explain someone else’s behavior. What if the dog had done this? What if the goat did that?

I will never understand the power that some people have over others. I will never understand the need to rationalize the behavior of someone you have never met and aren’t connected to. I certainly get choosing to believe the best of people. I try to do that too. What I also believe in dealing with teenagers on a daily basis is that the story you get first is usually the most truthful one.

I wasn’t there when Noem shot her dog and goat. I just know that the amended details don’t make a ton of sense to me. She supposedly shot this goat when she was 14. So, how did this same goat terrorize her children at the same time as one of my friends said? So, could she have left out some details in her book that would make the story more palatable? Absolutely. Of course this begs the question of why.

In this story, if she or other family members were attacked wouldn’t that be the lead? Instead, the lead was that she hated the dog because it didn’t perform well while hunting and chased some chickens. The story about the goat came because she didn’t like the goat because it didn’t smell very good.

My instincts tell me that she told this story because she thought it would score points with the MAGA crowd. Cruelty is in you know. However, once she discovered that even they have their limits the story started to change some. Let’s give her every benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the animals should have been put down because they were a danger to her family and anyone they came into contact with. That still means she lied initially to curry favor with a group of people.

My favorite rationalization came from Kimberly Guilfoyle. She wondered if someone inserted that story into her book without her consent. As if someone would completely make that story up out of whole cloth to make her look bad. That is some active imagination. So, there you have it. Notice that Noem never disputed the account in her own book. She never said the media was mischaracterizing the account from her own book. She just wanted to change the story after the fact. Given the circumstances I probably would too.

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.