Is there a limit to a lie anymore?

Given all the accusations that liberals have made about lying, particularly related to GW, one might imagine that telling the truth has some modicum of importance to most people. I am not that sure about that anymore ... if you look at the Clinton situation, all 8 years everybody knew the guy was lying through his teeth about just about everything, even stuff that did not "make sense", but we really did not care since our perception of everything else in the world was that all was good (do note, I did say "perception" ... because there were a lot of real bad things building up that we got smacked with literally as der Schlickmeister was leaving office).

Back to the point about lying, most of us over the age of 40 (perhaps 30) would probably remember at some point being taught that once you have been lied to by somebody, you give them very little chance of doing so a second time.

I admit to being an old timer on this ... I am the kind of person who feels somewhat insulted when I am lied to ... something along the lines of "you are treating me like you think that I am too stupid or ignorant to know (or be able to figure out) the truth". I have responded to some of the lies perpetuated by the liberal blogs, with some admittedly inappropriate over-the-top rhetoric. For the younger reader (particularly somebody that came of age during the Clinton years) my emotional response to being lied to may seem extreme, but at risk of sounding out of touch - I dare say it was not all that far out of the norm as little as 20 years ago.

This is one of the reasons why I cannot be a democrat / liberal ... you literally have to lie through your teeth and dodge and twist facts and common sense in order to sustain the argument on any of their core issues. Actually, I might argue that establishing what a core issue is to a democrat is difficult to impossible, with the exception of abortion.

It seems now, however, that not only is exageration considered normal, but that out and out lying is just not that big of a deal. I posted recently how the incompetent democrat (is that redundant?) governor and mayor involved in the New Orleans fiasco are only too eager to point the finger at everybody but themselves (actually, not everybody ... just The President and FEMA). Often times these two are busy citing specific circumstances that they themselves are responsible for (not evacuating people, not providing supplies, not picking up bodies, etc).

On the most grotesque side of the Katrina situation, and the resulting democrat accusation glee-festival, is the projection of 10's of thousands of bodies. This was the value thrown about at the peak of the ugliest part of this, the one that the liberals (and their media parrots) were proclaiming for a death count (many of whom, of course, were a result of Mr. Bush's vacation). They literally ordered up 25000 body bags, which the press was only too eager to report when it seemed much of the blame was going to be at the feet of the federal government.

Off the subject ... does anybody beside me get a little concerned about how enthusiastically the left in this country seems to be in their desire to see americans dead? This is especially true when they can blame it on the administration; preferably somebody in a uniform. This is not even a partisan tit-for-tat : I did not like Clinton but please name me the circumstance during the Clinton administration under which it could be said that Republicans were cheering for americans being dead? Maybe "cheering" is the wrong word ... how about "enthusiastically embraced for liberal partisan purposes" ... but I digress ...

Now as we find out the numbers of dead are going to be nowhere near the 25000, or even 10000, or even 10% of that, and literally that this disaster may not even hit the top 10 as body count in natural disasters go, is it time that we give just a bit of consideration to what we were told, by whom, and most importantly why? Granted that the media often times explodes the numbers to create some excitement in the story ... that doesn't excuse them, but some amount of exageration is going to happen. One might argue that the media ignores "boring" realities in lieu of wildly exagerated speculation, for as long as they possibly can, in order to try to keep the story exciting.

Even acknowledging this tendency toward exageration in the heat of battle, do we not have to at least wonder if the exagerations were not intentional to denigrate the President? The attack against the president has been all out, unrelenting, and coming from all levels ... THINK ABOUT THIS PEOPLE ... we are talking about a huricane that came close to setting all sorts of records (wind speed, pressure, etc) hitting the worst possible place: and the standard upon which the federal government is perfection ... the ability to overcome complete (democrat) incompetence in all other levels. Do we have to at least wonder why the media is not accurately reporting the facts surrounding the contentious statements of democrats? I do not expect the media to contend with a statement like "we cannot get any help here", but when instead the statement is "FEMA is not picking up the bodies" ... is there any obligation on the part of the press to clarify the situation instead of just parroting the democrat?

Mississippi and Alabama were devastated ... and in fact the pictures of those areas are (in my opinion) far more shocking than a bunch of houses underwater. Contrary to what you see in the press, these are the places that took the brunt of the storm, New Orleans took a "side shot". Nevertheless, you can barely get an idea that anything happened to those states, and I offer up that it is because nobody there is making accusations against anybody but Katrina.

Given how common this practice of misinformation is and how much damage has been inflicted as a result, I do not think we should be willing to grant the media any "benefit of the doubt" in their motivations for the inaccuracies of their reporting. Time and time again we see totally outrageous accusations being laid forth on the front page or lead story of a broadcast, only to be retracted in a very passive way (page 10) after the propaganda value has been served.

As an example: a Newsweek article (I use that term loosely, better qualification would be "hatchet job") attempted to point out the incompetence of FEMA by telling of a federal employee who suggested to a sheriff (who was requesting assistance) that the sheriff send an email. Problem was, the sheriff's office was apparently under water and their systems inoperable. OK ... if the FEMA employee is not a real idiot, I am going to guess that they did not realize this ... common sense would dictate that the sheriff would have pointed this out and the FEMA rep would have offered an alternative. Shockingly (not really), we did not catch any more of the story ... after all the author was hoping to demonstrate that the FEMA employee was lobotomized, as were all other FEMA employees once Mr. Bush entered office ... that was the story we (as readers) were supposed to get out of this.

I believe it is about time we start holding the real liars responsible: and by that I mean not only for direct lies, but for the "derived" lies. The way I see to do so is to simply tune out ... not buy their rags or watch their channels ... and to get everybody you can to follow suit. When you hear stories like this, where you know it is so stupid as to not be real, challenge yourself to find out what really went on and then point it out wherever you can. In my case, like on these deranged liberal blogs, I respond to the articles by (openly) wondering how the person that posted could be so stupid as to take these stories at face value and not think deep enough to figure out what really happened.

Liberals hate that ... they want you to have the emotion without thinking it through ... thinking people cannot be liberal.