A "who said it?" mystery

The national press seems to have missed the point when it comes to “Fake News.”

I was watching a press conference with the new Trump spokeswoman - the brunette, not the blonde - charging that the media gives fake news all the time, and using the latest CNN flap as proof that they all do it all the time, running stories without naming sources or naming names.

I was aghast. Not because I used to do it all the time myself - you might guess that a lot of the information came from insiders who would be fired if their bosses knew that they were talking to me - but because the Trump people do it all the time as well.

“Hypocrisy,” someone said. I won’t say who, but probably some Greek.

What do I mean? Well, she was asked about Trump’s warning about serious consequences if the Syrians use chemical weapons again, and the charge that Trump made his little tweet without consulting the military or the state department.

Oh no, she said. We talked to the top people about it.  (I have not used quotation marks just to prove that I was not quoting her word for word, only trying to get at the essence of what she said. It’s a small point, but I don’t want to have to fire myself for making a single mistake in this rant.)

Well, Trump may well have talked to people in those agencies. Top people, maybe. But, how will we ever know unless she names the people, and we can talk to them and see if they are being quoted correctly, or if their opinions are being reflected fairly and accurately. That’s three different things we can’t know unless she names them.

There is only one conclusion to make. Fake Official Comment.

But, wait. What if the press conference was behind closed doors, and recordings were not allowed. And what if she later denied saying whatever it was that she said.

It would just be her word against the words of a pack of journalists who whine about everything and always support each other anyway.

You can see where this is going. Maybe it’s time to start asking her just who in State and the Pentagon were consulted about the twitter threat, and what it actually means, and what they said. And, maybe, when they said it and what the context was and what Trump originally said to them - was the proposed tweet mentioned word for word? - and all the other follow-up questions that would be appropriate to ask.

Or, do we just learn to live with Fake Official Comments.

Flyover Country

I just got back from a gaming convention in central Pennsylvania, about a five hour drive from New York City.

Lancaster is flyover country. Literally. You can take a plane to Harrisburg - the state capital - but it’s a flight that costs just over $400 one-way from my local airport, and the trip (which includes a stop at another airport) takes just under three and a half hours.

Lancaster is in Pennsylvania Dutch country - its thriving summer resort program counts on that to draw tourists - but if you drive around a bit and spend some time talking to locals, you get the feeling that flyover really means fly out.

You look around, imagine growing up on the beautiful farms or in the quaint local hamlets nearby, and wonder just where you could find a job. Any job. The amusement parks are seasonal, the shopping areas - the same big discount stores and strip malls you find all across the country - don’t pay enough to buy a house in those quaint hamlets, and the only real signs of construction work seem to be the big public works projects that are expanding roads so more people can get in and out of Lancaster.

I talked to one girl who was working at a dead-end job at the motel where I was staying for my gaming convention. She told me about her part-time job, the one she needs because she doesn’t make enough money serving the tourists.

You can understand why Hillary’s campaign slogan - remember “It’s her turn” - doesn’t resonate in Lancaster. Her turn to do what? Let’s take turns doing the same thing? More of the same?

The local newspaper had a story about a batch of new businesses that had gotten state permission to start selling marijuana, and another story about how the local school board had reached a closed-door deal with its superintendent to leave early, and may lose state aid as a consequence. The school board’s response was that everything was just fine, according to a local editorial.

It reminded me of other stops I have made over the years in small towns just off the Interstate, little places with fast food restaurants and beautiful scenery, where a steady flow of travelers come and go and drop off some money as they pass through.

In good weather, and in the busy seasons, it’s enough to let the owners get through the slow times. But you can’t keep a big staff all year long if you don’t have customers all year long, which explains why so many of the jobs are taken by high school kids or by retirees.

Small stores close. Kids go away to school or the Army and often don’t come back. Many of the local Amish families long ago sold their farms and moved to much cheaper land in upstate New York. You don’t see nearly as many horse-drawn wagons on the road, which is good for traffic.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned in flyover country. Someone who comes along and promises to change things is someone you can vote for, because more of the same isn’t going to help you a lot. 

But don’t tell people in flyover country that Congress hasn’t passed a public works bill, or changed health care or balanced the budget. It’s just “blah-blah-blah” when nothing really happens. Politicians can keep all the bright shiny balls they want floating in the air, but in a couple of years - when they run for office again - flyover country will still be right where it is now.

And, the Republican party will be just more of the same. Kind of like the Democrats were.

Half Lies

So what’s worse, a lie or a half lie?

We have been treated in recent weeks to a truly world-class demonstration of half lies, something which sounds as if it were half as bad as a complete lie, but which I think is twice as bad. Or maybe thrice.

That’s because there is a pinch of truth in a half lie. Sometimes, it is mostly true. And, nowadays, the engine driving the half lie is not itself a lie, just a glaring omission. “Everything I say is the truth,” the half-lier can proudly say. And, they are correct.

Technically, that is.

The only time it is really a lie, in the legal sense at least, is when the half-lier has vowed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is a concept rarely upheld in courts. After all, the whole truth can’t be told because of things like admissibility, and omission is usually not considered a lie unless you are caught red-handed.

Let’s look at an example. “The President was never the target of an investigation. This proves he is innocent.”

Well, if your investigation is to see if Russia worked behind the scenes to influence our election, you wouldn’t start an investigation by looking at the President. You would look for signs that the election was being influenced, and if any members of his administration had any secret meetings or private discussions with any powerful Russians.

It’s not the kind of thing the President would do himself, any more that Richard Nixon would break into the Democratic offices in the Watergate Hotel himself.

Or how about “I never had sex with that woman,” which switches the whole debate to what sex really is. There’s a whole college course in that question. Heck, get thee to a law library and see how New York or California or Ohio defines sexual assault in the third degree.

Which shouldn’t be the point of a sexual assault charge. But, there goes those darn half lies again. It’s not someone saying “I didn’t do it,” and actually meaning that they didn’t do it. It only means they didn’t do one tiny bit of what the legal definition requires.

And, by this little obfuscation, about one-third of the country will actually believe the whole denial. As the comedian once said: “what a country!”

Dealing with liars is really simple. You catch them red-handed, saying something which can’t possibly be true, and yell “liar,” then stop believing them.

Dealing with half-liars is much harder, because once you catch them, they simply change the subject and talk on and on about the true part of their statement, the technical denial.

“We didn’t design this car to cheat on emissions tests,” one car company can say, quite truthfully. They designed the car for a lot of reasons, to meet a lot of needs at whatever price they decided would be best. Emissions cheating was just co-incidental.

Ever watch a commercial for a wonderful insurance plan, only to read the really small print at the bottom of the screen that tells you it’s not available in all states?

Well, these little things matter, only because we are a nation that has been sopping up half lies at a record rate.

Let’s guess how many will be told when the Senate comes out with its new health care plan.

It will doubtless be great (for some) and cover everyone who needs coverage (at a price) and even cover all your pre-existing conditions. That is, it will cover any condition that was discovered between March 18, 2015 and March 20, 2015. Or, something like that. After all, I may be half-lying.

Here We Are, Again...

Well, here we are again. The world is moving faster and faster, there are great changes being made by people who do not seem to know what they are doing, and investigations into wrongdoing are moving at a snail’s pace.

It looks like no one will ever be able to straighten things out. Just listen to the loud chorus of Trump supporters who seem to like what he is doing, but can not actually articulate what he is doing. And, they don’t care much about what Trump’s opponents think about what he is doing.

The attitude is certainly nothing like the supporters of Richard Nixon. Certainly not like the mindless support - with some reservations, of course - that Bill Clinton got for much of his time in office. And certainly not like the anguish that greeted Lindon Johnson when he showed the world that he was serious about integrating our nation’s schools and, by extension, erasing the racial barriers that held up the Democratic solid south.

That was, if you remember, what led to the creation of the racist Republican solid south.

Yes. Here we are again.

At times like this, it is really important to remember all those cliches that have become cliches because they work really well. Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t forget why you are here in the first place. Let your conscience be your guide.

The last one presumes that you have a conscience, one that can’t be papered over into silence by a clever political argument, by changing the subject or by loud voices.

Let’s see how that happens. The federal deficit is bad. The federal deficit is horrible. The federal deficit puts an unfair burden on our children.

Now a Republican comes into office. Is anyone saying “The federal deficit is bad. The federal deficit is horrible. The federal deficit puts an unfair burden on our children.” Well, not from that side of the aisle. And Democrats, who never saw a deficit they couldn’t explain away, have not taken over the roll of fiscal watchdogs. Not if it means lower taxes for the low-wage workers who badly need a tax break.

(A short commercial break here for President Obama, whose budgets actually did try to deal with our national debt. But, shhhhh, that could make some people angry. Better not say that!)

Will the current Democrats in Congress make a deal with Republicans that give big tax breaks to some people and little tax breaks to a lot of other people? Here we go again.

What about getting involved in foreign wars. Well, we don’t call them “wars” any more. 

Congress, which has the right under the War Powers Act to call an actual vote on any foreign military action our country is in, hasn’t shown any interest in holding a debate on an actual war against ISIS or against some nation in the Middle East. Here we go again. Remember Vietnam? Remember Korea? Remember Grenada?

How about a plan to fix our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Well, our magician-in-chief wants to do it without spending money. At least not federal money. His plan to repair our interstate highway system is to let the states do it, apparently using private money.

Like the idea of toll booths on every highway in your state?

Imagine how well we will deal with the need to upgrade our airports and the air traffic control system, which has obsolete equipment and not enough air traffic controllers? It’s a system that hasn’t worked properly since, well, since Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers.

Well, as I understand it, the new plan is to create a not-for-profit organization to run the air traffic control system, one that gets most of its money from private sources. We could call it the Funded Aircontrol Abomination (FAA) and let it charge aircraft what it really costs to run those control towers and computer centers and weather stations and to do safety inspections. 

It could be funded by the airlines themselves, which could set fees for private planes that use our nation’s airports and clog up the runways during rush hour - which can last seven or eight hours a day at crowded municipal airports. And, the airlines could save a lot of money by cutting back on safety inspections - after all, they already check their aircraft themselves. Any more money they need could come from raising ticket prices or putting in more seats on planes.

It would be just like our FAA today, except it would be privately run and bribery would no longer be a crime.

Meanwhile, we obsess about the United States pulling out of a climate accord - not really a solid deal, mind you, just a series of goals - and about the slow investigation into just what Russia did to get Trump elected. (And nary a probe into just what we voters did to get him elected).

Heavens, so much to write our Congressmen and Congresswomen about. So much to distract us from their non-votes on health care and on a real budget. As the past President who ordered our heroic attack on Grenada once said (look it up if you don’t know what that was all about):  “There you go again.”