Nothing is True and All Things are Permitted

Half truths, whole truths, twisted truths and bullshit. Whether or not it takes all kinds, we get all kinds and although you'd think "fact checks" like I just saw on NBC would be there to check facts objectively, Don't Risk Offending is the operating principle. The news is not a public service, it's the entertainment business. Don't risk offending.  Checking Trumps assertion that the Obamas had launched the most vicious personal attacks against Hillary Clinton - ever, there was no way they could get around the falsehood and rated it untrue.   Did that make it necessary to call her assertion that we were now for the first time energy independent a lie?  Of course the "ever" part is, to be kind, hyperbole. We were energy independent back when oil wasn't very important and things ran by coal.

We certainly were not under the previous administrations lascivious love affair with the Saudis and Prince Bandar and the Bin Laden Bank were keeping W out of the financial troubles he had got himself into.  Remember when we were told Obama was anti-energy and his policies of forbidding exploration was going to destroy the US? Well the percentage of foreign oil used is now down to 28% from it's peak in 2005 of 68%. and on track for nearly zero in a few years. Remember all that "drill baby drill" rhetoric?  Well if you're looking for actual lies. . .

So we're nearly there and on track for 90% independence in short order, thank you, laws of supply and demand, Barack Obama's "policies" and screw you Sarah Palin and John McCain. That was all a lie. But to NBC, Hillary was lying -- just like Trump and so they're both proven liars.   That's where the bullshit part I mentioned above comes in. Do they check his indefensible and offensive facts and figures?  Not really. It's just one lie each and they're both equally guilty and any stretch, and innacuracy is the same as murder 1.

It's been that way a long time.  I remember back during the Bush Vs. Gore ordeal, one of the network nitwits looked at the camera and said "Gore lied -- he lied" in a whining tone.  The lie? he had quoted some figure as 4.6% instead of 4.8%.  In this world of grotesque and titanic lies it hardly seems to count and the tiny discrepancy was utterly meaningless, but to be fair and balanced, the Media can't actually take a stance and the truth is just a commodity. We need only a Pilatus to ask us Qui est Veritas in this sick passion play.

Is it any wonder we can no longer tell the difference? anything can be explained away, anything can be painted up as satanic and to our spinning heads the far fetched, ad hoc ad hominems and hilarious hypotheses about how he's not a rapist or a bigot or a racist or even a misogynist might just as likely be true as the unfettered conclusion that he' really is all of those things and William of Occam be damned. What, after all, is truth.