WHO'S THE BIGGEST LIAR?

Right wingers say that politifact, a project run by the Tampa Bay Times, is bogus.  They claim it's biased in favor of a liberal agenda.  They point to factcheck.org as the best fact check outfit, but liberals say that it's a right wing proaganda machine.  Is there a good fact checker out there?  Probably not, if you're looking for something that absolutely, one hundred percent on the nose when it comes to checking for truth.  But even though fact checkers may be somewhat biased, some of the things they point out need to be taken seriously.

Politifact recently did some checking of Republican party comments and found them severely lacking.  Democrats did better in their estimate, but still not good.  According to them, Democrats are truthful about 22 percent of the time while Republicans are truthful only 11 percent of the time.  Even if you switched those stats, there's still a distressing thing about them . . . which is that our professional politicians are most usually liars.  Your chances are not better than one in five of getting the truth out of them, or it could be as bad as one time in ten.  Perhaps a fact check on something else is in order, and that would be determining exactly what constitutes a lie.  Do politicians just outright lie, or do they manipulate statistics to fit their agenda?  Is there a difference beween lying and misleading?  Those are questions that could be argued back and forth for a long time, but the bottom line is that politicans rarely tell the outright truth. 

Another fact check group did some research on those email that circulate - you know, the ones about how Obama isn't qualified to be President because his birth records are questionable.  A recent email from right wingers states that both the president and his wife have lost their law licenses because of some murky illegal dealings on their parts.  All bullshit, so says the checkers.  In fact, they offered the opinion that almost all such emails are nothing but lies . . . no mismanagement of states here, just made up falsehoods.  These things don't come straight from politicans but rather from their various supporters.  Now we've broadened the spectrum of lying to the public.  We can't trust our political parties to tell the truth, and we most certainly can't trust their supporters and backers. 

Should any of this surprise us?  Well, it shouldn't.  Perhaps that old joke is really more truth than just humor.  You know, the one that asks the question, "Do you know how to tell when a politician is lying?" Answer, "When his lips are moving."