Liar, liar, Pants on Fire! (Or, Joe Wilson Versus the Truth)

Maybe he believes it takes one to know one.  Seems like Joe Wilson himself may well be acquainted with shading the truth.

Wilson of course is the South Carolina Congressman who outrageously disrespected US President Obama in his recent health care speech to Congress.  Leaving aside the fact  he also disrespected the office of the President of the United States, Congress itself, and his own personal office, Wilson also disrespected the American people. Obama after all was elected to his office by a vote of the American people.
But,  Joe Wilson has his facts wrong on his claim the president lies.


But much worse, afterwards, in attempting to justify his outburst Wilson apparently told a whopper himself, claiming:  " I'm for immigration, legal immigration, I've been an immigration attorney."

'Not so!' claim those who took the time and trouble to check his statement.  Wilson and his office have declined further comment on this statement., although they have been quite vocal on everything else, if you'll pardon my sarcasm.

I don't know Joe Wilson, but I am quite familiar with his type.  His is the type who is utterly convinced of the 'rightness' of his own opinions and dogma.

Dogma is defined as 'the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. . . . . At the core of the dogma concept is absolutism, infallibility, irrefutability, unquestioned acceptance (among adherents) and anti-skepticism. These concepts typically invoke criticism from moderate and modulated conceptual approaches, and thus "dogma" is often colloquially used to indicate a doctrine which has the problem of claiming absolute truth, when other concepts may be superior.'

We should not be surprised by Joe Wilson.  We've seen all kinds of wildly accusatory statements coming from conservative true believers who have utterly convinced themselves of all sorts of bizarre 'facts', just a few, to wit:

"Barrack Obama is not a US citizen"
"Obama is a Muslim, socialist, communist, nazi" (take your pick)
"Health care reform includes 'Death Panels'"
"Obama plans to seize everyone's guns"
"Obama is setting up concentration camps for dissidents all over the US"
"The economic crisis in the US is all the fault of Obama"
"Our country was founded as a Christian nation."
"The earth is 6000 years old."
"Everything on earth was created in place, by God, just as we see it today."
"There is no such thing as evolution."
"Global warming is a liberal myth."
"No one could have predicted the levees would break in New Orleans."
"The best way to boost the economy is thru tax cuts for the rich."
""Deregulation of the financial sector will be beneficial for the economy."

"Fox News is an unbiased source of information"

And, my personal favorite:  "If you're not with us you're against us."

Here's a link to some other commonly passed around 'conservative' myths. 

In other words, if you don't follow the dogma 100% you are an enemy.  Implacably.   This is well illustrated by some Arizona Republicans who once wanted to take arch-conservative Barry Goldwater's name off a building named for him.  Why?  Because In 1989, Goldwater said the Republican Party had been taken over by a ''bunch of kooks,'' a reference to forces supporting TV evangelist Pat Robertson and Mecham.

''It's typical of those people. If you're not with them 100 percent, you're not with them. Therefore you're persona non grata. But that never kept Barry Goldwater from speaking his mind.''
    ~ Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz.

A huge problem with this approach is that such an inflexible dogma tends to further radicalize those who are already on the edge.  That's why we're seeing such an increase in violence and belligerency from the people commonly called 'Wingnuts' these days, giving rise to what is being called 'right wing terrorism' complete with guns at public meetings, in-your-face-screaming-and-shouting, threats and outright physical attacks.

"If you assert the opposite, that eliminates mountains of evidence demonstrating that what you are saying is false. That's what power means. And the way we assert the opposite is by just saying that the media are liberal."
     ~ Noam Chomsky

"It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society, it is belief."
     ~  George Bernard Shaw

The Conservative Whopper Factory

We recently saw SC Representative Joe Wilson disrespect the President of the United States by crying out during a presidential speech, 'You Lie'!  Wilson later apologized, under pressure from his own party,  and the President graciously accepted his apology. 

Never before in my memory have I ever witnessed such  continuous and relentless, venomously acidic assaults on any US president.  It is ominously paranoid and downright pathological.  As I watch the Far Right relentlessly attacking President Obama and accusing him of 'lying', two paramount facts continuously pass through my mind:

First, just who are these folks who so implacably believe they are so 'right', but whose leaders are responsible for the greatest political, economical and foreign policy disasters in US History?

Secondly, just where do these people get off accusing ANYONE of lying, when their own leaders operated a veritable 'Whopper Factory' out of the White House for years?

Here's just a few proven examples:


"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
~VP Richard P. Cheney,  Aug. 26, 2002

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq".
~ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,  Sept. 19, 2002

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there".
 ~White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer,  Jan. 9, 2003

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people 
now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida."
~President George W. Bush,  State of the Union speech, Jan. 28, 2003

"We have also discovered through intelligence 
that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."
~President George W. Bush,  State of the Union speech, Jan. 28, 2003

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent.... The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
~President George W. Bush,  State of the Union speech, Jan. 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
~President George W. Bush, March 17, 2003

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
~US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,  March 30, 2003

"We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." 

~President George W. Bush, 5/29/03

"But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5th talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that–dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described. … This was a program that was built for deceit and concealment."
~ US Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice, 6/3/03

"And I have yet to hear from our commanders on the ground that they need more troops. "
~President George W. Bush, 11/04/04

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." 
~President George W. Bush, 09/01/05

"It really caught everybody by surprise" and was a major reason for the delay in the government's emergency response." 
~ US Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff (09/04/05)

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." 
~US Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff (09/05/05)

"We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture."
~President George W. Bush, Nov. 7, 2005

"We’ve never been stay the course, George!"
~President George W. Bush, 9/8/08

There are hundreds - likely thousands - of others, but this gives the gist of just some of the production from the GW Bush Whopper Factory  In fact, the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit/non-partisan research organization has recorded 935 'whoppers' on the Iraq War alone!

For further reading:

http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#spy