SERIAL LIARS: They’re Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

They say Marshmallow Mittens is full of vitamin BS— like it’s a good thing.
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The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.
—Stephen King

The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle— these
constitute falseness.
—The Urantia Book

BATTLE CREEK — Back in the day when breakfast often came out of a cereal box, the kids read the box adds for fun and toys, while mom and pop read something that arrived on the porch in the morning called “the paper.”  And if your pop was anything like mine, as you gulped down your mushy Frosted Flakes you occasionally heard him complain about politicians being “liars.”

Mitt Romney is a serial liar.  Rachel Maddow has been ripping Romney a new one on her program this week— a powerful segment you will want to take the time to see— confronting what increasingly appears to be Romney’s pathological willingness to lie his ass off in public and ignore the fact that everyone is watching— and documenting it.

Porn Flakes: You know them when you see them,* and Rick Santorum is a Porn Flake.
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But Rick Santorum is a serial liar, too:  The Dutch elderly are euthanized against their will.  Porn causes “brain changes” in children. Your access to health care under “Obamacare” will be rationed by the government based on an assessment of your “usefulness” to society.  And do Google him.

Gingrich is the goldbricking prospector of serial liars.
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As far as I can tell, Newton Leroy Gingrich lies almost every time he opens his mouth, so just Google “Newt” and “liar,” and take your pick.

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For years, Ron Paul mostly just lied to himself;  until he got caught.
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How is it your signature goes on racist newsletters and you can still claim you never laid eyes on them? Well, that’s a lie.

David Frum:

[P]eople close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

There’s also the story that Paul claims he was drafted into the Air Force.

So the Republicans are toying with the idea of running one of these serial liars for the presidency of the United States.  But to Republicans, not all lies are per force created equal. That’s why Wikipedia breaks down the ninth commandment this way:

• 1.1 Bad faith
• 1.2 Big Lie
• 1.3 Bluffing
• 1.4 Barefaced lie
• 1.5 Butler lie
• 1.6 Contextual lie
• 1.7 Economy with the truth
• 1.8 Emergency lie
• 1.9 Exaggeration
• 1.10 Fabrication
• 1.11 Haystack answer
• 1.12 Jocose lie
• 1.13 Lie-to-children
• 1.14 Lying by omission
• 1.15 Lying in trade
• 1.16 Lying through your teeth
• 1.17 Minimisation
• 1.18 Misleading and dissembling
• 1.19 Noble lie
• 1.20 Perjury
• 1.21 Polite lie
• 1.22 Puffery
• 1.23 View from Nowhere
• 1.24 White lie

Enjoy your lies while you can, monkey boys.  The worm is turning.

*  United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described his threshold test for pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio.  Obscenity is not protected speech under the Miller test, and can therefore be censored.

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”