Read Between the Lies
If nothing more than for the brilliant musical score, many of us have watched the biographical movie about the life of Ray Charles more than once. If you are like me, you are familiar with a line uttered by Jamie Foxx, portraying Charles early in the film. When Ray Charles discovered his management was exploiting him, he said, “scratch a lie, find a thief.” More importantly, he followed it up with the words, “ I might be blind, but I ain’t stupid.” The news media, in its zeal to create the horse race they seem to love so much before the expected 2024 presidential election between President Biden and Donald Trump, is giving us a replay of the Hillary Clinton email story. Oh, sure, they are careful to point out the inherent and obvious differences in the veracity of Trump and Biden, but it comes about four paragraphs into the A block. They first blind us and then treat the public like we are stupid.
If one finds a dye pack of money lying on the street and returns it to the bank, you are not a bank robber. If one is caught by the police a few blocks away, hands and masked face covered in red ink, chances are you have robbed a bank. Sure, fingerprints are on both cash sets, but the difference need not be explained. Donald Trump has been proven on more than one occasion to have stolen classified documents from the government and, at one point, called them evidence. In court briefs, Trump contends he had the right to take home America’s secrets ‘the records, even if marked classified, belong to him,’ his representation wrote.
The George Santos saga
The media set aside Trump’s confession of being a sexual predator. The fact that a confessed liar, a confessed anti-Semite, and purveyor of so much false information is falling like ash from an active volcano—when it comes to Santos, one needs to read between the lies.
From trivial lies like being a champion volleyball player to the vile, stating his grandparents were prisoners in a German concentration camp. The absurd, touting his love for animals with a nonexistent pet charity, alleged check-kiting in Brazil, George Santos is even being questioned about his name. Rumors abound that Santos, who reportedly had a job that paid 50,000 dollars a year and was on the brink of eviction from his apartment, suddenly found nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to finance his campaign. As if living the life of the celebrated conman Frank Abagnale Jr., Santos, by way of his dubious election to Congress, has potential access to American secrets and confidential information, making him a danger to American security. It seems unlikely that Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans would impart any secrets his way but what is to stop him from stealing them? Scratch a lie and find a thief.
Rep.(rehensible) Santos may serve a purpose for a party, maybe in need of a new diversion. As the party desperately tries to put the lying, stealing, and distraction of Trump in the rearview mirror, Santos sits on the dashboard like a bobblehead. He distracts the public from GOP-introduced abortion bills, absurd House rules, investigations of the investigators, and subtle moves to abolish Social Security and Medicare. Sometimes you have to read between the lies.
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