Written by karla rove   

Lies, lies and more lies. Another email arrived recently from someone I know to be a loving person of integrity, calls them self a Christian, and practices Christian principles. This particular email was about President Obama suspending National Prayer Day. Sadly, the email is full of lies. In July, another friend forwarded an email from the GOP government website saying the middle class would be paying for the Affordable Care Act with a 3.8 percent tax on all real estate. All lies. I wrote about this in "A Half Truth is a Whole Lie" - Or is it Propaganda?".

The tragedy of the bombing in Libya and Romney's response puts this in a much broader perspective. The Romney campaign saw an opportunity to promote its own lie spinning the "Obama-Apologizes-For-America" narrative with the bombing in Libya. One lie Romney has made repeatedly is President Obama "went around the world and apologized for America". Just because you keep repeating a false statement/lie doesn't make it true Mitt. This is willful militant ignorance, and to use this tragedy in Libya is immoral.

I am putting in the dictionary definition of "Lie" since our media doesn't seem to know what to call the spin:

Lie: Noun

a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
something intended or serving to convey a false impression.
an inaccurate or false statement.
" You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".

If the truth sets you free, what does telling lies do?

With the help of main-stream media, a lie isn't a lie anymore. We have entered the "Post-Truth Age" where political players lie, where pundits lie, where the media lie, where individuals lie passing around emails full of partisan lies disguising their personal opinions with lies they call truth. We prefer to white wash the truth, tell a half lie, or an outright lie or create a jazzy new way to spin a lie. A favorite of both parties is to selectively edit audio tape and create sound bites made to order. As Mitt Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said in late August, "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” He gets points for telling the truth!

A TV ad for Romney opens with “When a president doesn’t tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?” So, what about the republican presidential candidate lying to become president? I am still trying to understand why its OK for Romney to lie, but not Obama. Fifteen Pants on Fire for Mitt Romney. President Obama has told some lies of his own, six rate as "Pants on Fire!"

Our country is in serious trouble. If Mitt cared to articulate specific plans, presenting details would help us understand why we might want to vote for him. Vagueness, lies and “trust me” aren’t cutting it. As the Wall Street Journal said “The GOP candidate just might try explaining his policies. Just a thought.” Like any successful, experienced CEO would do if he was hammering out a business deal, or maybe all he said to his partners was "Trust me, just sign here." Really, Harry Reid said that’s how Mitt does all his deals.

Paul Ryan, who for 14 years voted for all the bills which piled on the enormous debt our country now has, is blaming Obama for all the votes that he, Ryan, and every member of Congress made to spend that money. How does Ryan make President Obama responsible for his actions? By the lies Ryan tells. "He made me do it Mom." Ryan also voted for the Bush tax cuts, so he voted for reducing revenues and increasing spending, not President Obama. Paul Ryan has his own "Pants on Fire" Ratings too. Many people forget Congress is the body of elected officials who vote and pass budget bills, not the President. Again, someone please tell this to John Boehner, I heard him again today saying there is nothing he can do, it's all "Obama's fault". If you're interested in more lies, "Mitt Romney tells 533 lies in 30 weeks, Steven Benen documents them."

The writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck thought that the primary root of most human evil is 'malignant narcissism' and further characterized it as 'militant ignorance'. After reading an article on Reader Supported News last night Romney Got Osama bin Laden? "15 percent of registered Republicans in Ohio think Willard Romney deserves more credit for killing Osama bin Laden than does the president. Another 47 percent aren't really sure who does. In North Carolina, 29 percent of them give the credit to Romney while a whopping 56 percent of them find it too difficult to answer the question of whether the credit should go to the guy who actually gave the order, or to the guy who forgot to mention the troops in his acceptance speech not long ago.” Some pretty deliberate willful ignorance going on.

According to Dr. Peck, an evil person (from Wikipedia):

Is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets (scapegoats) while being apparently normal with everyone else ("their insensitivity toward him was selective" (Peck, 1983/1988, p 105[7]))
Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
Abuses political (emotional) power ("the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion" (Peck, 1978/1992, p298[6]))
Maintains a high level of respectability, and lies incessantly in order to do so
Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)
Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim (scapegoat)
Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

Does that sound like anyone you know?