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<DIV id=printButton><IMG border=0 alt="The Miami Herald"
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<DIV id=storyDate-Links><SPAN class=pubDate>Posted on Sat, Apr. 16, 2011</SPAN>
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<H2 id=storyTitle>Here’s the winners of the lying contest</H2>
<P class=byline>By Leonard Pitts Jr.<BR><A
href="mailto:lpitts@MiamiHerald.com">lpitts@MiamiHerald.com</A> </P>
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<DIV class=image><IMG border=0
alt=" Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell answers reporters' questions with, from left, Minority Whip Jon Kyl, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, U.S. Sen. John Cornytn and U.S. Sen. John Thune after the weekly Senate Republican Policy Luncheon in the U.S. Capitol January 25, 2011 in Washington, DC. "
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width=316 height=210> </DIV>
<DIV class=imageByline>Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images</DIV>
<DIV class=imageCaption>Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell answers
reporters' questions with, from left, Minority Whip Jon Kyl, U.S. Sen. John
Barrasso, U.S. Sen. John Cornytn and U.S. Sen. John Thune after the weekly
Senate Republican Policy Luncheon in the U.S. Capitol January 25, 2011 in
Washington, DC. </DIV></DIV>
<DIV id=storyBody>“I <SPAN class=italic>f you want an abortion, you go to
Planned Parenthood. And that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood
does.” - Sen Jon Kyl, (R-AZ), April 8, 2011</SPAN>
<P><SPAN class=italic>“[The statistic Kyl used] was not intended to be a factual
statement…” – Statement from Kyl’s office to CNN, later that day</SPAN></P>
<P>Actually, about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are
abortion-related. The overwhelming majority of the organization’s work involves
cancer screenings, contraception, and treatment for sexually transmitted
diseases. Granted, the 3 percent figure is self-reported and Politifact, the
non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website, suggests it could
nudge higher depending on how you crunch the numbers. But it also rules that Kyl
“vastly overstated” the organization’s involvement in abortions. In other words,
he lied.</P>
<P>Conservatives seem to do that an awful lot.</P>
<P>No, the capacity for mendacity is not exclusive to any party or ideology.
Yes, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid have all, at one point or
another, been at variance with the truth. But when it comes to serial lying, to
the biggest, most brazen, most audacious lies, the lies repeated ad nauseam
until people mistake them for truth, when it comes to the most absolute contempt
for the facts and for the necessity of honest debate, it’s not even close.
Conservatives have no equal.</P>
<P>Consider: Politifact has six categories for judging veracity. A statement is
either true, mostly true, half true, barely true, false, or “Pants On Fire,”
after the old schoolyard taunt that begins “Liar! Liar!” Politifact uses this
designation for statements that are not only untrue but also make some
“ridiculous claim.” </P>
<P>I reviewed 100 such statements on Politifact’s web site. By my count, of the
70 that originated with an identifiable individual or group (as opposed to a
chain email or miscellaneous source), <SPAN class=italic>61</SPAN> were from the
political right. That includes Rush Limbaugh saying President Obama is going to
take away your right to fish, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer saying beheaded bodies are
being found in the desert, Sarah Palin claiming death panels will stalk the
elderly — 90 percent of the most audacious lies coming from conservatives.</P>
<P>And that word is used advisedly here. There is little that is truly
conservative about what we are seeing.</P>
<P>No, this is extremism, true believers so rigidly committed to their
ideological crusades that they feel justified in vandalizing reason and
sacrificing integrity in furtherance of their cause. The end justifies any
means. So, as was the case with Jon Kyl, if you can’t prove your point with the
facts at hand, make up some facts and prove it with those.</P>
<P>It says much about the intellectual state of what passes for conservatism and
the intellectual state of the union itself that this sort of behavior has become
business as usual, just another day in the Zeitgeist.</P>
<P>This cannot end well. To continue down this path is to carve out a future of
intellectual incoherence and international irrelevance, to doom ourselves to yet
more of a fractured political discourse that is loud, ignorant and incapable of
reason, much less resolution.</P>
<P>And maybe Sen. Kyl’s claim was “not intended to be a factual statement,” but
just so you know?</P>
<P>Mine is.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV><FONT size=2>
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