If a lie is egregious enough it has the potential to spawn its own meme and that was certainly the case with former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl’s epic performance in 2011. That year, Senator Kyl made a speech on the Senate floor during a looming government shutdown crisis in which he stated that Planned Parenthood spent over ninety percent of its budget towards abortion-related activities.
“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”
This wasn’t just a little untrue. Politifact quickly chimed in with a correction: “abortions accounted for just under 3 percent of the procedures Planned Parenthood provided in 2009, which is the most recent year for which the group is reporting statistics.”
Presented with the fact that he had just told a gross, mammoth lie on the Senate floor, Kyl had an excuse. His office released a statement saying that his remark was “not intended to be a factual statement.” Even today, people will mockingly use those words to comment on examples of things that are risibly untrue.
I didn’t think it was possible to outdo Jon Kyl, but former House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra has accomplished it:
A Dutch journalist just asked new U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra why he said there are “no go” areas in the Netherlands, where radical Muslims are setting cars and politicians on fire.
Hoekstra denied it, and called the claim “fake news.”
The reporter then showed Hoekstra a video clip of himself at a congressional hearing in 2015 saying: “The Islamic movement has now gotten to a point where they have put Europe into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands, there are cars being burned, there are politicians that are being burned.”
“And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands,” he added in the clip.
Then things got extremely weird.
When the reporter pressed, Hoekstra denied using the term “fake news,” which he’d uttered moments before.
“I didn’t call that fake news,” he said. “I didn’t use the words today. I don’t think I did.”
Hoekstra was being interviewed by reporter Wouter Zwart for current affairs program Nieuwsuur. The interview is not playing well in the Netherlands. (One sample headline: “The new Trump Ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, lies about his own lies.”)
Jon Kyl was definitely behind the times. He didn’t have to admit that his comments on the Senate floor were not intended to be factual. He could have just said that it was fake news the he had made those assertions and then, presented with the video proving otherwise, he could have denied ever saying it was fake news.
In the end, Kyl used to his senatorial privilege to “revise and extend his remarks” to have his Planned Parenthood lies expunged from the congressional record. Poor Peter Hoekstra doesn’t have that option.
After running interference for the excesses and torture of the Bush administration during his time as House Intelligence chair, it seems like we might have expected something like this from our new ambassador to the Netherlands. But who could really anticipate lies this brazen?
From now on if you are caught in an outright lie, you can just say, “I didn’t use the words today.”
Face it, integrity is long gone. Honesty and dignity are words from the past. The Republican has rewritten their beloved Ten Commandments to such a degree that they wouldn’t recognize the truth if it slapped them upside their heads.
Lying is now “hyperbole” or “creative phrasing” or “nudging up to the truth”. Republicans “misspeak” or missremember” or “can’t recall”.
They’re so brazen that they can tell a lie and inmmediately deny it, all in one soundbite. They should have zero credibility, but their followers continue to accept whatever lies they tell, whether they believe them or not. It’s an upside down world and Trump and the Republicans are the ones who flipped it.
I don’t know how we flip it back.
“I really didn’t say everything I said.”
— Yogi Berra
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
— Yogi Berra
LOL
. . . not realize that when a reporter’s asking you such a question, he almost certainly has the goods on you saying it.
It’s likewise amazing how frequently the rightwingnut response is to just lie . . . deny saying what the documentary/audio/video evidence proves beyond any reasonable doubt you did say.
But most sickeningly amazing is how their voters/supporters not only don’t punish them for this raging dishonesty, they instead frequently reward it. They, the supporters, are the root problem. If GOPer politicians paid some price for such behavior, they wouldn’t feel so free to do it.
When I turned 40, I wanted to remain on my birth control because I did not want any “oops” babies. My regular doctor would not allow it. So, I went to Planned Parenthood, which cost a pretty penny; but, was worth it.
Did your doctor claim health reasons, or just play Doctor God for whatever ideological cause?
LOL and ick, Pete Hoekstra. I’m embarrassed to admit that he’s from Michigan. Worse yet, he served in Congress for 18 years including a stint as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2007, making him about as Establishment Republican as one gets around here. He came in second to Rick Snyder in the Republican Primary for Governor, as a lot of independents and Democrats crossed over to keep someone they saw as too conservative from winning the nomination. He then ran for U.S. Senate in 2012, losing to Debbie Stabenow. He showed his ass then, as his campaign hired the same ad firm that made the Christine O’Donnell “I am not a witch” spot. They made a commercial that used Chinese ethnic stereotypes and aired during the Super Bowl. It pissed off a lot of people, including a Chinese-American Republican County Commissioner who promptly donated to his primary rival. After that loss, I thought I’d never hear about him again. Ha! He’s back!
The worst part is that Hoekstra’s not a bad pick for Ambassador to Holland on paper. He was born in Holland, he has governmental experience, he has foreign policy experience, he has Establishment credentials, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and all kinds of people who look good on paper are disasters in person, Hoekstra included.
It’s official!!! The PostTruth era is upon us!!!
AP FACT CHECK: Tax plan shows 2 things can be true at once.
It turns out that Kyl, Hoekstra, Trump, Clapper, HRC’s “public/private” stances and most other contemporary pols and officials are not lying liars and/or stupid fools. On the contrary, they are in the vanguard of contemporary thought!!! The Associated press says so, and who are we to doubt the accumulated wisdom of the dominant neocentrist news service?
George Orwell knew what was coming; it’s just that his calendar was a little off.
Yup.
And Trump is the reincarnation of Gandhi, taught the ropes by Saint Roy Cohn.
Rape is lovemaking.
Choose your rapist…DemRat or RatPub… and then relax and enjoy it. ‘Hit’s the ‘Murrican way!!!
WTFU.
Later…
AG
. . . pollute this place with is redundant, glib, trite, numbingly repetitive, utterly lacking insight, almost always off-topic (the actual topic just providing an excuse to launch into spewing the same tired, tiresome, Reality-challenged shit yet again, regardless how NOT apropos), . . . I could go on.
It’s been the same act for about a decade now. Aside from some clickbait diaries, there is no value added to this blog from AG’s comments. Never really was.
. . . “2 things can be true at once.”
Even more than two, in fact!
For example (since you’re obviously struggling with the concept), it’s true “at once” that “1 + 1 = 2” and that “2 + 2 = 4”. Wow! How ’bout that?
Actually, to my knowledge, there is no limit to the number of things that “can be true at once”.
[This followup comment is prompted by having come across the linked fact-check elsewhere, reading it through start-to-finish, thereby confirming as expected that, whaddayaknow, nothing in it remotely resembles]
“Never mind” that it doesn’t say any such thing.
To put it bluntly, you’re a liar.
If I could find anyone dumb enough to take the bet (and with any way to verify the truth), I’d make a substantial wager you didn’t read past the headline (which you also couldn’t comprehend) of the fact-check you linked before vomiting the shit above out here.
Oh, and about those two things AP says “can be true at once”? Guess what! They are true! At once! Both of them! [from your link!]:
(There are huge issues with AP’s egregious both-siderism in there, but that’s not the matter at hand.)
Actually, oaguabonita…it’s neither-siderism that i am advocating here, not “both-siderism.”
And…of course “two things can be true at once.”
Depending on which “two things” they may be.
So nu?
And…given that idea…there is indeed limit to the number of things that “can be true at once”.
For example…to take your lead-headed approach to its logical conclusion:
“1 + 1 = 2” and “1 + 2 = 4”.
Or HRC’s “public” protestations of alliance with the common man while simultaneously “privately” assuring the thieves who run this system that she is just hustling votes, that they have nothing to fear from her.
You write:
To put it even more bluntly, you are a fool!!! This whole hustle is just more doublespeak/newspeak from the controllers.
It simply doesn’t work that way, oaguabonita. On the evidence of the gradual but incessant tumble of the lives and and finances of the middle and working classes since 1992 under both RatPublican and DemocRatic rule. It doesn’t work that way.
And…there is a bubble brewing now that will make the Obama era “bubble” and subsequent collapse look like the burblings of an infant.
You think not?
Go buy some Bitcoin.
AG
You prove my point.
You have no “point,” opaqueabonita. These is no “opaque” in a blinding shitstorm.
You are lost in an essentially pointless, totally opaque neocentrist system.
Ain’t no “points” if both sides are in on the fix.
Just more opaque-based, zero-sum hustling.
Can’t see through the shit if it’s dense enough.
You can’t, anyway.
You and your allies.
Bet on it.
WTFU.
AG
You are betting with counterfeit coin and paying yourself of in same.
A nice racket, oaguabonita, but isn’t it a little…circular?
AG
. . . is fact.
Except it isn’t! See my refutation of your output this thread for verification of that.
Sucks to be you.
Thank you, oaguabonita. And best Holiday wishes to you as well.
AG
That is the only relevant question here:
Of course, I never said it does, so this is completely irrelevant and unresponsive to anything I did say, thereby proving my point yet again (in addition to being a tacit admission that you’re a liar).
Blockquoting what I didn’t say exactly the same as what I did say — thereby implying I said what I never said — is disgustingly dishonest, though, above, beyond and independent of its irrelevance and your stupidity.
. . . pollute this place with is redundant, glib, trite, numbingly repetitive, utterly lacking insight, almost always off-topic (the actual topic just providing an excuse to launch into spewing the same tired, tiresome, Reality-challenged shit yet again, regardless how NOT apropos), . . . I could go on.
. . . reposted where it belongs, as reply to ag.