Planned parenthood

Its absolutely amazing.  Senator Kyl's speech claiming that abortions are well over 90% of Planned Parenthood's business is incredible.  When it was pointed out to him that is actually much less than 10% of their business his response was that his statement was never intended to be factual!  What the hell is a statement that it is more than 90% supposed to be if not factual? I thought numbers like this are specifically designed and intended to be facts.  And he got away with that.  How can this be?  How can we possibly allow our congressmen and other politicians to purposefully spew out bold faced lies without in any way holding them accountable?  How in hell do we ever expect to get this country under control if it is acceptable for anyone to say anything with total disregard for any aspect of the truth so they can make a political point?  Doesn't reality and truth count in any way?

We are caught in the most bizarre situation that I can imagine - actually, as I think about it I guess it was imaged and I read all about it.  Some of what we are seeing is "double speak" as in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell. Kyl statements were pretty close in Orwell's story line, but missed the date by a couple of decades.  Actually, 1984 seems like a pretty good prediction - Ronald "Raygun" Reagan was President in 1984.  That was the beginning of "voodoo economics" with the crazy idea that cutting the taxes of the rich would help "everyman" and was the beginning of other popular forms of double-speak concerning subjects such as war and peace, financial health, universal health care, and more have invaded our current political environment and discussions to the point that they aren't even visible to us any longer. 

The speech by Kyl fits nicely into the definition of "double-speak" because what he said was that abortion was MORE than 90% of the business while what is true is that it is LESS than 90% of their business.  "More" being substituted for "less" now seems to be perfectly normal and acceptable when it comes from the mouths of politicians (especially conservatives and Republicans).

It intrigues me that we have wandered into this particular garden where it is acceptable to claim absolutely anything as true as long as it supports your political agenda - and that there are no repercussions of any sort.  I am certain that a very large number of people who heard (or heard about) that speech still believe what he said, even though he publicly admitted that it was false.  What he didn't do was say something like, "I lied to make a point."  Rather, he said that,  "it wasn't intended to convey factual information." Once the words are out they become fact for many and there is no pulling them back.   The idiots who still believe his words probably took that to mean that it is close to the truth, and he just rounded off his figures.  Rounding 10% off to 90% - that seems like a reasonable thing to do. He said what they wanted to believe, so that is good enough.