Category Archives: Pants on Fire

Liars Lie

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Why do people fib to us?

Gregory House, M.D., taught us “Everybody lies.” Oh, sure, we may start with the little “white” lies, but according to Dr. Gail Saltz everyone lies or “omits the truth” at least some of the time. “We start lying at around age 4 to 5 when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can [be] manipulated in a child’s environment. Eventually children begin to use lying to get out of trouble or get something they want.”

It has gotten so bad that we expect some people to lie to us outright.

How do you tell if a politician/lawyer/used car dealer is lying? Their lips are moving.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center project FactCheck.org monitors TV political ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases for accuracy. The Washington Post grades politicians on their command of the facts with one to four “Pinocchios.” Each state Bar Association can tell you if an attorney is in good standing, what grievances have been filed, and so on. And databases like CarFax, AutoCheck, and the NICB VINCheck offer an accurate look at a used car’s history.

(On the other hand we expect scientists, the clergy, and our mothers to tell us the truth.)

I’m looking for a Corvette but I got caught up in a search for a nice, mid-size, generic, American-made convertible. Found this ad on Craigslist:

used carV6, Automatic,
ONLY 42K MILES
Power Everything!!! Leather, Alloy Wheels
Runs and Drives 100%
Power top, windows, locks. Auto. Cold Air.
Very clean and Needs Nothing

Wow! I ran a Carfax and emailed the seller some questions:

How long have you owned the car and why do you want to sell?
“I purchase it new. Sell because I need 4 doors car I have kids,” the seller responded.
Carfax reports the first owner drove only 31,000 miles in 10 years and the current owner has had it just 7 months.

What accident damage has been repaired?
“Car runs perfect.”
Carfax reports an accident (damage unknown) in 2006.

Is there an extended warranty and is it transferable?
No answer from the seller.
Carfax reports an ECM check, A/C system check and recharge, and a service contract purchased just last month.

I emailed the seller back to ask for the Vehicle Identification Number. I haven’t heard back.

Even if the liars we deal with don’t have a moral issue, why do we let them get away with it?

OK, don’t ask me how that dress fits.

How Low Can You Go?

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I am just sooooo tired of you airheads. Politics ain’t a limbo contest.

limbo barAn open letter to Jim Messina and Stephanie Cutter on the Left, Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden on the Right:

The Thief-in-Chief calls the Candidate-in-Chief a “liar or a felon” over the date he signed some papers.

Let us not forget that the Loyal Opposition has long claimed the Thief-in-Chief has no papers.

The Candidate-in-Chief retorted “liar liar pants on fire” about the Thief-in-Chief.

Let us not forget that the Loyalists have long claimed the Candidate-in-Chief is an evil, religious, rich guy.

I don’t give a hoot.

I don’t have a job.

Barack Obama made more money in Illinois selling political favors than you made in all of 2001. I don’t care.

Mitt Romney made more money last night than you made last year. I don’t care.

See, I read the news. I already know what Barack Obama has done to this country for the past three years. No amount of sleight-of-hand or political spin will change that although I have noticed he is running on “change” again. I also know what Mitt Romney has done for the past twenty years.

“I fixed the auto industry!” Mr. Obama crows in his ads. Sure. Stealing General Motors from its stockholders and introducing the worst selling car since the Aztek (which itself sold 112 more cars than the Edsel) is a great fix.

Mr. Obama? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record unemployment, your record public debt, your Chicago politics and tell us step-by-step how you are going to fix what you’ve done.

“I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re gonna get fired,” Mr. Romney said in New Hampshire.

Mr. Romney? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record at Bain, good and bad, your Olympics record, your Massachusetts record, and tell us step-by-excruciating-step what you will do to fix this mess.

otterMy friend Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot and gives him a unique overview of life. Dino noted that, “What this country needs is a veterinary service that will spay and neuter otters at a reasonable rate, not another third-rate carnival barker who can do the limbo.”

And, for the record? Until the IRS tells me otherwise, I figure Barack Obama and Mitt Romney followed the tax code to the letter and paid exactly the taxes they each owed. As did Mortimer Zuckerman and Warren Buffett and David Koch and Sheldon Adelson. And me.

And I don’t even have a job.

Lordy Lordy™.

UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATEJuly 21, 2012 — “We will pull all the ‘comparison’ ads.”

July 22, 2012 — CBS Sunday Morning today aired the singing Romney ad. “Approved by Barack Obama. Paid for by Obama for America.” CBS’ Face the Nation today aired the “You can change” ad. Paid for by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC.

Good to see nothing ever changes.

Lie to Me

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Choosy mothers may not choose Jif any more 1 .

The price Jif is going up by more than FORTY percent today, according to published reports.

Social Security checks are going up by less than FOUR percent, according to published reports.

Decades before she collected Social Security, my (very choosy) mom branded us a Skippy Peanut Butter household. After all Jif is just creamed peanuts in a jar but Skippy is peanutbutter.com.

Monthly Social Security for more than 60 million Americans will increase by 3.6 percent starting with checks issued January 1, 2012 (the Supplemental Security Income increase starts with checks issued December 31 of this year).

The San Antonio Express News reported that “the Cost of Living Adjustment ensures that the purchasing power of Social Security and SSI benefits is not eroded by inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is no increase, there can be no COLA. There was no COLA in 2010 and 2011 because the CPI-W, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor, for those years did not increase above the level of the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined.”

Some recipients, may see their Social Security partially or completely eaten by the rising Medicare premiums.

Is Lie to Me Real?

Lie to Me was a Fox television series that spanned three seasons from 2009 into 2011. The show centered on human lie detection based on applied psychology including interpreting microexpressions, a Facial Action Coding System, and body language. Lie to Me was cancelled by Fox in May but probably not because people can’t detect liars.

Nearly 80% of Americans said they do not trust the government to do what is right, according to a Pew Research Center public opinion survey released in 2010. It was the highest level of distrust of Washington in half a century.

That was 2010.

A New York Times and CBS poll released last week shows now, just 18 months later, 89% of Americans do not trust government to do the right thing and 74% of us say that we believe the nation is on the wrong track. That’s higher than the highest level of distrust of Washington in more than 60 years.

There are plenty of partisan political reasons for discontent but I figure it is simpler than ideology.

Uncle Sam lies.

From Vietnam body counts to “I am not a crook” to “I did not have sex with that woman,” we have become lost in a misery of misstatements, mistruths, misdirections. Lies.

I don’t believe the statistics that show my cost of living has risen only 3.6% since 2008. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe Harry Reid who said “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers,” last week while pimping a $35 billion bailout for public employee unions. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers poorly. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Lots of somebodies monkeyed with the numbers to make that case. Somebody lied.

Of course it may be entirely because that well-known inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, lied to us in order to feather his own very noble but lightbulb-intense mansion.

Unfortunately, the result of the lies is that choosy mothers can’t afford Jif and really really choosy mothers will have to give up on Skippy for the peanut butter cookies in my Halloween basket.

Dead Elephants

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Q: How do you make a dead elephant float?
A: You take a dead elephant, two tons of chocolate ice-cream, a ton of bananas…

We know you can’t make a dead elephant float without bacterial action but any number of Rabid Righties thought a death scare was the way to derail ObamaCare.

Gundersen Lutheran in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the medical trend to make sure patients get the end of life they want. The hospital has been trying to force Medicare to pay the docs when they help patients with that planning. H.R. 3200 incorporated it.

Sarah Palin made that into the “Death Panels” in H.R. 3200 and it has been a rallying cry against any kind of health care reform ever since.

“It’s really distressing,” hospital official Bud Hammes told MSNBC. “These things need to be addressed.”

When you spread false information, you give up the right to thwap the other guy for propagating falsehoods.

My friend Dino sent around the Windfall Tax on Retirement Income rant a couple of days ago.

Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys where I reside. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.

“What’s neat about this is the way Snopes dismisses it with a series of rhetorical tributaries and sly spins and then tosses in billionaire Warren Buffet as a strawman. Snopes is right that Pelosi probably did not say these exact words–even though they are in quotes,” he wrote, “but that is not the point. The point is that she demonstrates it daily in her actions from the floor and prolly implied it directly in her rhetoric.”

“Pelosi probably did not say these exact words,” he wrote. “That is not the point…”

Sorry, Dino, but that is exactly the point.

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi is anything but and she has proven that over and over. Unfortunately, Dino has joined her club. Prevaricating, obfuscating, misdirecting, diverting, and pretending all add up to lying. When Liberals lie to advance their cause, it makes them liars and gives us ammunition to use against them. When Conservatives lie because they think it is for a good cause, it makes them liars, too.

Lying not only gives the other guy ammunition to use against you, it makes it impossible to believe or respect the liar.

Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: From stamping out forest fires.

Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: From stamping out flaming ducks.

I’ve always hoped I was the elephant but days like this I feel like a sitting duck.