{"id":3997,"date":"2013-11-17T19:12:32","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T19:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3997"},"modified":"2013-11-17T19:12:32","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T19:12:32","slug":"politics-means-lying-takes-on-broader-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3997","title":{"rendered":"Politics means ‘lying’ takes on broader context"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

My American Heritage dictionary defines the term “lie” thusly: “a false statement deliberately presented as true.”<\/p>\n

That’s a commonly accepted description of a lie. Someone has to knowingly<\/em> say something that is false.<\/p>\n

Well, in politics, lying takes on a different sort of meaning. <\/p>\n

Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick “Prince of Darkness” Cheney, said just the other day that President Barack Obama lied<\/em> when he made grand promises about the Affordable Care Act. <\/p>\n

http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/senate-races\/190496-liz-cheney-no-question-obama-lied-about-o-care<\/p>\n

“No question” that he lied, said Cheney. What’s more, the former VP’s daughter has accused Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming — whose seat Cheney wants to take from the incumbent — of enabling the president to lie about the ACA.<\/p>\n

I won’t get into whether Enzi enabled anything.<\/p>\n

I am puzzled, though, why we allow politicians to use terms like “liar” and “lie” when the universe could contain all kinds of reasons for untruthful statements.<\/p>\n

Yes, the president said anyone could keep their health plans if they wanted to do so once the ACA kicked in. It didn’t happen; millions of Americans had their policies canceled, forcing the president to announce this past week that insurers could keep policies in force for another year.<\/p>\n

Pardon the verbal parsing, but for Cheney — who’s an underdog in her campaign to beat Enzi — to suggest that Obama “lied” is to become a mind-reader. She knows without a doubt, she says, that the president lied — which is to say he deliberately stood before the nation and said something he knew to be untrue.<\/p>\n

Just maybe the president believed what he said at the time to be true. If someone says something in good faith — believing they are telling the truth — does that make them bad-faced liars?<\/p>\n

Here’s an example that might hit Liz Cheney right in the gut.<\/p>\n

Her dad told us that the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Those WMD became the basis for us launching a full-scale war against Iraq in March 2003. Our troops stormed into Baghdad, captured Saddam, scoured the country from top to bottom looking for those WMD.<\/p>\n

They weren’t there.<\/p>\n

Did Daddy Cheney tell a lie? I’m guessing his daughter Liz would say “no.” Some of us likely would beg to differ. Hey, that’s politics. <\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My American Heritage dictionary defines the term “lie” thusly: “a false statement deliberately presented as true.” That’s a commonly accepted description of a lie. Someone has to knowingly say something that is false. Well, in politics, lying takes on a different sort of meaning. Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick “Prince of … Continue reading Politics means ‘lying’ takes on broader context<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[164,1380,2334,2804,3060,4069,5283],"class_list":["post-3997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-dick-cheney","tag-iraq-war","tag-liz-cheney","tag-mike-enzi","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-wmd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}