Monday, March 24, 2008

Mis-spoke Is What Exactly?

I generally am pretty careful with my words, but I've been known to mis-speak, meaning one thing and saying something else. I accidentally referred to Sen. Ron Wyden as Ron Walden (our Republican Representative - someone I spent a lot of time talking about) and corrected without embarrassment. I didn't mean Walden and nobody was supposed to think I did and no one did. This happens to people all the time, especially if they talk a lot about any subject, the brain/tongue connection just shorts out. To call somebody on the carpet for such a thing is nonsense.

There is such a thing as exaggeration, a politician claims to have helped create 'many thousands and thousands' of jobs when the number is actually 2050. We wink at it, we pretty much expect it, "new and improved" is on the box now so it is "new and improved." A car part that you can't get from the original dealership is "rare and hard to find," despite being common in salvage yards. We know this and we just wink. I'm pretty much not in favor of it, but I sure won't blow a gasket over it, either.

Then there is the current - today - version of mis-spoke or mis-statement, the Hillary version. Her repeated version of the landing at Tusla, Bosnia was of one under fire and a hustling off the tarmac. The fact is that there was no fire and the General in charge states there was no threat of it and the film of the event shows Hillary calmly walking down the loading stairs, stopping for a poem from an 8 year old girl as Chelsea ambles at her side and off the tarmac. Plainly there was absolutely no threat, not even an impression of one in her mind at the time, unless you propose that her daughter was dismissed as cannon fodder. This is not a dropped word or a mangling of the English language, it is not mis-spoken, and it is a mis-statement in exactly one sense of that word.

A mis-statement is inaccurate in the face of the facts, although the connotation is accidentally inaccurate, ie: four hundred US troops have died in Iraq when four thousand is the fact. This mis-statement is the stringing together of a number of factually inaccurate statements in a narrative that was repeated. It was repeated as evidence of superiority in credentials for Commander in Chief several times. It was repeated after questions started to be asked. It was, in plain fact, a bald faced lie told repeatedly and today minimized as a mis-statement, one out of millions of words. Fine, millions of words, then how many of those were mis-statements? Is a 3:00 AM phone call a mis-statement? Is a NAFTA re-negotiation a mis-statement? Is a prompt withdrawal from Iraq a mis-statement? Is I'm a Democrat a mis-statement?

Ok, here you go. I've stated repeatedly that Hillary is not and has not been trustworthy nor of the caliber of character generally attributed to her. She is a liar, in the most basic meaning of the word and its nastiest connotations. She lies for personal gain, publicly and repeatedly. It is, right now, smack in the middle of your face a fact that Hillary R Clinton will repeatedly tell an egregious and outlandish falsehood for her gain. When she was caught in it, she lied again, saying that they had to hurry because of the threat, and clearly was not in any hurry; whatever. You cannot mis-remember something to this extent, not with a somewhat sane mind. Being shot at and running for your life is not even comparable to sauntering down a tarmac in any memory storage system of a sane person, not amongst thousands of occasions or lots and lots of years. You cannot get there, not from anywhere.

The media seems determined to be as noncommittal on this as possible, going along with the characterization of mis-statement. She rode in an airplane to Bosnia and got off of it, that much is true, nothing else connected with it is true or remotely an exaggeration of facts. In order for it to be an exaggeration there has to be some inflated element of truth. The English language has a clear word for it, it's short and to the point. Lie. The polite way of putting it is lie. Letting this stuff go makes it difficult to consider any politicians as honorable and that is a serious dis-service to those who are. Both personally for them and for voters.

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