Lies

There’s a lot of hay being made over the Politifact.com analysis of how truthful Conservative vs. Progressive politicians are. The non-partisan group rated their analysis of various statements made in 2009 by both sides, and it does turn out that Conservatives seem to be more reality-challenged than their brethren across the aisle.

But while Conservatives are responsible for 3 times as many “pants on fire” ratings, I’m more concerned about the other side of the coin. Averaging the two sides results in a finding that only about 1/3 of anything said by politicians is mostly true or true. We’re not talking about spin here. Legitimate spin should still be mostly true. Half true or less is mostly lying. And what this says is that 2/3 of the time a politician opens his mouth, he’s at least mostly lying.

Is it any wonder we don’t trust them?