When Did the Lie Become a Virtue?

I don’t care what your politics are!  
I don’t endorse anyone and you wouldn’t care who I endorsed anyway…
But I want to open up a discussion with you dear reader. 
For the purposes of this discussion, I don’t care if you are Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, McCain, Clinton or Obama supporter…  My question has nothing to do with your politics.  My question goes directly into your core beliefs…  

Do you feel that having someone lie directly to your face is actually a virtue worth rewarding ?

I have been watching the Mini-Series on TV called The Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, which concluded last night with a fairly lame cliff hanger.  So while the Democrats may not be able to conclusively choose who their candidate is going to be in the voting booth, it seems clear that the American people seem to have decided that having someone lie in their face is not only OK, but makes them worthy of a potential presidential nomination.

Back in the distant 20th century, the Republicans in our Congress felt that Bill Clinton’s lies while under oath (I believe this was related to his testimony regarding the sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones.) rose to the level of High Crimes and Misdemeanors worthy of Impeachment!  
Now, if you are a true believer in our system of law, allowing a lie during testimony breaks down the foundations of our method of Justice.

That same Republican Party decided it was OK for the Bush Campaign in 2000 to represent the heroic service of John McCain to his country not worthy of consideration.  (This made it particularly ironic and empty to watch George finish his little tap dance for the press and then endorse McCain in 2008.)  
The King George machine did the same in 2004 when they managed to present John Kerry’s service on a Swiftboat actually in Vietnam as less of a commitment to our country than the Presidents sometimes missed flight training in the Texas Air National Guard during the same war.

(I interrupt this rant to again remind you that I don’t give a crap about your politics…  I’m going after the other side also, you just have to hang in there because there is enough of this hypocrisy on all sides to go around!  You have come this far… follow me to the point if you would be so kind.)

Scooter Libby, as a member of the Vice President’s staff was actually convicted of Purgery by a jury of his peers, yet the political leadership felt that just having to go thru the experience and pay a fine was punishment enough.  So The President uses his Constitutional Authority to commute his sentence. (It is good to know that there are some parts of the Constitution that the President thinks have value…  But that is for another rant8-) )   I’m sure you feel that these same folks would do the same for you!

And I’m not even going to go into the various other lies that have led us into war, or deny a looming recession or declare us safer if we just give up our civil liberties…

So to prove my unbiased lack of political agenda… Let’s now look at the Hillary Clinton Experience…

First we get treated to her Righteous Indignation over the Florida and Michigan primaries being discounted because of the stupid decision of the Democratic Party leadership to protect Iowa and New Hampshire’s right to be first (I somehow missed that in the constitution also I guess).  But be careful not to look behind the curtain dear reader or you may see Hillary signing off on the aforementioned agreement to disenfranchised those voters!  
Then while Hill tells us all how anti-democratic this really is (especially in light of the fact that she actually ran and got some votes in those 2 primaries that might help her catch up on elected delegates), she talks about how delegates to the convention should vote their consence and not feel bound by anything else (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Gee…  Let’s see… If the popular vote and majority of elected delegates support Obama, wouldn’t it effectively disenfranchise everyone who voted in a primary across the entire year if she managed to talk the superdelegates into making her the nominee ?

Then we have the issue of her service while under sniper fire in Bosnia…  

Listen…  If I meet you at a cocktail party and in the process of chatting you up I talk about my service as a Navy Seal in World War II, you would look at my 42 year old, 250 pound frame and tell me I was full of crap. If I then said, oh… Sorry I misspoke. Hey it just shows how Human I am!   You would walk away as quickly as possible and look for the host to have me ejected from the festivities.  
Yet Hill throws the Sniper in our face, somehow forgetting the invention of video tape and YouTube and tells us that she was tired and misspoke, while at the same time advertising that she is the one to answer the call at 3AM (at which time she will hopefully not be tired and order the bombing of Cleveland).   

Doesn’t all this make you feel like these folks see you as a chump ? 

We live in a time where we either believe if it is on some form of media it must be true, or we think that everything on the media is crap that should be ignored.  Combined with a 5 minute attention span, truth becomes a moving target and I guess that is why it doesn’t seem to matter what anyone says anymore.  

So in light of that…  How do you select a Leader ?  Shouldn’t we demand better ?

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