how can you tell if a politician is lying?

The answer to that old question, of course, is “his lips are moving”.

E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic dug into this topic in more depth this morning. If you do not have a subscription, you will not be able to open the link, so I’ll post the entire column below:

 ************************************************

Steve Benson was the whitest white person I had ever come across.

That’s what I told my friends back east.

Benson, who died this week at 71, started at The Arizona Republic a few months after I did in 1980.

He was a buttoned-up, short-sleeved, necktie-wearing Mormon (the first one I’d ever met), and I was a black T-shirt, blue jeans, moustache and shaggy-haired steelworker’s kid from Pittsburgh (the first one he’d ever met).

Neither one of us could decide which of us was from another planet, and we argued about that until we finally figured out the answer:

We both were.

A newspaper is a lot like the Island of Misfit Toys

It is the nature of the news business.

Benson was the grandson of Ezra Taft Benson, who had been secretary of agriculture during the Eisenhower administration and became the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which Benson defined for me (given my Roman Catholic roots) as “the Mormon pope.”

He was born into LDS royalty, and he chose as his life’s work … cartooning.

I was the grandson of Italian immigrants whose father, uncles, cousins and brother worked in a steel mill, and who also worked in a steel mill, but only to save money for college tuition, so instead of using his shoulders and backbone for work he could use his fingers … typing.

A newspaper can be the Island of Misfit Toys for people like us. A safe haven. A home.

Benson and I shared an important thing in common

Benson was wrong about everything in those days — an unyielding arch-conservative who somehow believed that I was wrong about everything. We talked just about every day, agreeing on nothing except that the other guy was misinformed, if not completely nuts.

Then, in the late 1980s, along came Gov. Evan Mecham, who was impeached and removed from office, and we found out that one thing we had in common was that a person’s honesty and integrity mattered more to each of us than anything else.

Political persuasion. Race. Religion. Anything.

For a time, we even took our show on the road, appearing at public gatherings where we spoke and answered questions, almost always about how wrong the other guy was, yet at the same time showing — without saying so — that it was possible for people who disagreed vehemently with each other to coexist.

To be friendly. To even be friends.

He never stopped using his pen as a stiletto

Of course, this still included over time Benson mocking me in caricature drawings and even lambasting me in a published editorial cartoon after I criticized Charles Barkley (then playing with the Phoenix Suns) over his politics.

When Benson became disillusioned with his church, discovering that his ailing grandfather was being manipulated, his personal, political and religious views did a 180, and we argued even more, only now with him complaining that I was nowhere near the fire-spewing liberal he thought I should be.

We saw each other only a few times after he was laid off, joking about how the journalistic island we’d washed up on had become a little less inviting for misfits.

“The two of us might have to find real jobs when we finally decide to grow up,” he told me. “At least you would.”

Ever profession has its share of crooks, even though the majority of the people in that profession are honest and hard work.

Having said that, though, it IS true that some professions are not respected as well as other professions:

According to the lates Gallup poll, nurses remain the most trusted profession.

Americans’ ratings of nearly all 23 professions measured in Gallup’s 2023 Honesty and Ethics poll are lower than they have been in recent years. Only one profession -- labor union leaders -- has not declined since 2019, yet a relatively low 25% rate their honesty and ethics as “very high” or “high.”

Nurses remain the most trusted profession, with 78% of U.S. adults currently believing nurses have high honesty and ethical standards. However, that is down seven percentage points from 2019 and 11 points from its peak in 2020.

At the other end of the spectrum, members of Congress, senators, car salespeople and advertising practitioners are viewed as the least ethical, with ratings in the single digits that have worsened or remained flat.

gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx

2019	2022	2023	2023-2019
	%	%	%	pct. pts.
Advertising practitioners	13	15	8	−5 −5 −5
Bankers	28	26	19	−9 −9 −9
Business executives	20	14	12	−8 −8 −8
Car salespeople	9	10	8	−1 −1 −1
Chiropractors	41	--	33	−8 −8 −8
Clergy	40	34	32	−8 −8 −8
College teachers	49	--	42	−7 −7 −7
Dentists	61	--	59	−2 −2 −2
Engineers	66	--	60	−6 −6 −6
Insurance salespeople	13	--	12	−1 −1 −1
Journalists	28	23	19	−9 −9 −9
Labor union leaders	24	24	25	1 1 1
Lawyers	22	21	16	−6 −6 −6
Medical doctors	65	62	56	−9 −9 −9
Members of Congress	12	9	6	−6 −6 −6
Nurses	85	79	78	−7 −7 −7
Pharmacists	64	58	55	−9 −9 −9
Police officers	54	50	45	−9 −9 −9
Psychiatrists	43	--	36	−7 −7 −7
Senators	13	--	8	−5 −5 −

You probably noticed that politicians are the least respected profession, even tough there ARE some honest politicians.

Examples include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

It’s also not hard to find politicians who have no integrity at all, which SHOULD make the voting process easier,

During his first terms of office, the Washington Post kept trace of the number of lies told by Trump.

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection. This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day. What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth. Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and an additional 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FD/FD00/20240515/117301/HHRG-118-FD00-20240515-SD003.pdfdby Trump,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

When Walter Cronkite was on the air, there were fewer shows on the air, a sharp contract to today when there are hundreds of channels to choose from in addition to the dizzying number of broadcasts – but it is still an easy choice.

It does not matter what a politician’s opinion is on immigration, gun control, abortion, religion, or taxes.

All you need to know is "is he honest?

That, my friends, is all you need to know.

 

Big Brother is watching you

 

 

George Orwell’s novel, “1984” was first published in 1949.

 

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centers  on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviors  within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist and an anti-Stalinist, modelled an authoritarian socialist Britain on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and the practices of censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany.More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.

It has gone through several revisions since then, including a 75^th anniversary edition in 2024, a revised edition in 1977, and a graphic novel version by George Orwell and Fido Nesti in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Censorship - Trump has sued a variety of news outlets if they publish anything that is critical of him. 

Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, said it has agreed to pay $16 million to President Trump's foundation for his future presidential library to settle a lawsuit he filed over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during last fall's elections.

The settlement includes Paramount paying Trump's legal fees, according to a statement from the company late Tuesday. The settlement does not include any statement of apology or regret, Paramount said.

As part of the settlement, Paramount said, 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in the future after they've aired. They may be redacted due to legal or national security concerns. The suit also settled all claims by Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, who had joined Trump's suit. The White House referred comment to the president's legal team.

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-paramount-cbs-60-minutes-kamala-harris

He also has sued Harvard  - 

In an April 11 letter to Harvard, the Trump administration had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university and changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs. The administration has argued universities allowed antisemitism to go unchecked at campus protests last year against Israel's war in Gaza.

Harvard University announced Monday that it has filed suit to halt a federal freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants after the institution said it would defy the Trump administration's demands to limit activism on campus.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5372214/harvard-sues-trump-administration-research

Since we have been living in a dystopian society since January 20, I thought it would be interesting to compare the ideas in the novel to the world we are living in today.

I decided to borrow the graphic version from the local library for a little variety.

Although the book DOES have about 35 pages of printed material, the majority of the book is made up of illustrations that were reminiscent of the novel “Maus”.

A quick skim of the book today mentioned three key phrases:

1) War is Peace

2) Freedom is slavery

3) Ignorance is strength

Here is how they apply today:

1) Trump just ordered massive bombs to be dropped on Iran, ostensibly to end the conflict between Israel and Iran - and now he wants the Nobel Peace Prize

2) America has a long of history of supporting unions, but his administration has been trying to discourage unions

3) Educational institutions have been forced to eliminate courses on CRT and DEI, since the administration only wants a sanitized view of history taught. 

Like “Maus”, “1984” has been banned. Ironically, the book was banned in the USSR for being anti-communist, and it was banned in America for being PRO communist.

For starters, the first paragraph shown above sums up where we are today.

Propaganda  

Throughout Trump's first term, he complained about "fake news", was largely "main street media" - and he spent a lot of time o FOX, which ultimately was fined $787 million for lying to the public about the 2020 election.

In his 2ns term, he created "Truth Social", which is little more than a propaganda network. In addition, he has muzzled the Voice of America, and has tried to force it to broadcast news that supports his agenda.

Totalitarianism – Donald Trump, a convicted felon, has little regard for the law, since he has disregarded court orders numerous times. In addition, the Supreme Court gave him at least some immunity on July 1, 2024.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/key-facts-from-the-supreme-courts-immunity-ruling-and-how-it-affects-presidential-power

In a landmark ruling with potentially major impact on the 2024 presidential campaign, a U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled that presidents — including former President Donald Trump — have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.”

If you remember, the Nazi concentration camps were also official acts.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” the court wrote. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The July 1 decision in Trump v. United States fell along partisan lines, with the six conservative justices voting in the majority and the three liberal justices dissenting.

The ruling follows the June 27 presidential debate and comes amid a campaign in which both political parties have cried foul over perceived abuses of presidential power. This issue is sure to become an issue on the campaign trail.

 In effect, Trump is trying to rule like a king, which prompted hundreds of “No Kings” rallies in over 2100 locations across the country on June 14, which happens to be Trump’s birthday. On the same day, he scheduled a military parade in D.C.  in order to emulate the military parade what was held in France in Bastille Day, but his vision was to have one more similar to what you would see in North Korea.

Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people participated, but attendance for Trump’s parage was only a few thousand people

 Project 2025 is a blueprint published by the Meritage Foundation that literally spelled out how to destroy the government.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

 Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in April 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.

The ninth iteration of the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory that states that the entire executive branch is under the complete control of the president. The project's proponents say it would dismantle a government bureaucracy that is unaccountable and mostly liberal.  Critics have called it an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy.^] Some legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

The project calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers by people loyal to Trump and to take partisan control of key government agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Commerce (DOC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled. It calls for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels and proposes making the National Institutes of Health (NIH) less independent while defunding its stem cell research. The blueprint seeks to reduce taxes on corporations, institute a flat income tax on individuals, cut Medicare and Medicaid, and reverse as many of President Joe Biden's policies as possible. It proposes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism instead. The project recommends the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and deploying the U.S. Armed Forces for domestic law enforcement. The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right such as criminalizing those who send and receive abortion and birth control medications and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.

During his campaign, Trump threatened to deport 10,000.000 people, which is a really bad idea , since it has cost $330 million so far. It is estimated that "Alligator Alcatraz will cost $450 million a year to operate. Ironically, the original ALcatraz was shut down in 1963 because it was too expensive to operate. Stephen Miller, the Nazi in the White House, wants ICE to increase the number of arrests to 3000 people a day.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/here-s-how-much-the-trump-administration-s-mass-deportation-scheme-has-cost-so-far/ar-AA1C1Q2d

Most of Project 2025's writers and contributors worked in either Trump's first administration (2017−2021) or his 2024 election campaign. Several Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program. Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan After he won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his second administration. Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.

 If you follow the news closely, you will have noticed that many of the items in Project 2025 have already been implemented, and the recent passage of Trump’s lates budget (which he signed on July 4) provides further proof that we are already aligned with the Project 2025 ideas.

 Trump threatened enough GOP representatives that both the House and Senate versions passed with very thin margins, despite the fact that the budget was opposed by at least 60% of the voting public.

 I’s hard to pick which idea is worst, but the immigrant policy should be at the top of the list, since ICE members with masks and guns are latterly kidnapping people from immigration courts and private employers, and they just opened a detention facility in Florida surrounded by alligators. It will hold 5000 people, and will cost $450 million a year to operate. Coincidentally, the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau also held 5000 people. In addition, Trump ordered the National Guard to go to Los Angeles in order to discourage protestors, despite the fact that Governor Newsom objected to their deployment.

 The “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump just signed increases the ICE budget to $175 billion a year, which is more than the military budget of Russia.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

 

Mass surveillance –

 Taking number one place for the most watched country in the world is China. It might not surprise you to know that China has more CCTV than anywhere else in the world. With over one camera for every citizen in its major cities, it’s almost impossible to go unnoticed here. Online life is no different, with Facebook, Twitter and Google forbidden, personal data requests from the government to these platforms are low. Citizens are made to use a tightly moderated government social media site where everything is monitored, gaining China people the title of ‘The Most watched citizens”

Perhaps more surprisingly is who comes in second place. The leader of the free world, The United States of America, has an average of two cameras for every 10 people in its major cities. With the country’s security on higher alert than ever after the recent attack on the Capitol building, surveillance has never been tracked more carefully as law enforcement look to limit the risk of domestic terrorism. Online surveillance is no different, despite tense debates over online manipulation, the government indulged in requests for over 800,000 of its citizens personal data in 2019 alone.

 

 https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveilled-countries/

In addition, DOGE now has access to more of our personal information.

 

The Supreme Court, on Friday, for now gave the DOGE team launched by Elon Musk unfettered access to information collected by the Social Security Administration, data that includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information.

In an unsigned order, the court, acting at the request of the Trump administration, temporarily overturned actions by two lower courts that had limited the DOGE team's access to sensitive private information at the Social Security Administration. The high court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to rule on the merits.

 https://www.npr.org/2025/06/06/nx-s1-5422283/supreme-court-doge-social-security-records

Sadly, most people have never heard of Palintar, a company that has the ability to consolidate information from various sources, which has enabled ICE to more easily track down illegal immigrants.

The company’s founder, Peter Thiel, has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. His support helped J.D. Vance get elected in Ohio.

The company has four main projects: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and Palantir AIP. Palantir Gotham is an intelligence and defense tool used by militaries and counter-terrorism analysts. Its customers have included the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and United States Department of Defense. Their software as a service (SaaS) is one of five offerings authorized for Mission Critical National Security Systems (IL5^]) by the U.S. Department of Defense. Palantir  Foundry has been used for data integration and analysis by corporate clients such as Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Airbus, Wejo, Lilium, PG&E and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Palantir Apollo is a platform to facilitate continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) across all environments.

Palantir's original clients have been federal agencies of the USIC. It has since expanded its customer base to serve both international as well as state and local governments, and also to private companies

The company has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software. Former employees and critics state that the company's contracts under the second Trump Administration, which enabled the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans across administrative agencies, are particularly problematic.

           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

 

These are perilous times, and will take DECADES to reverse the damage that Trump has already done to our country. For now, all we can do is to continue to protest. Most importantly, though, be sure you vote as often as you can so that we can get our country back.