The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Hello again, everyone...Sorry for the slow blogging pace recently. As some of you know, I do some work in conjunction with the Minnesota State Fair. It IS the nation's greatest fair, a 12-day spectacle that draws around 1.8 million people, but the fair schedule and other work commitments make it an exhausting time of the year, and blogging just seems to fall down the priority list.

But now the fair is over, and we have in front of us the spectacle of the Democratic National Convention, which is ripe for parody, commentary and just plain fun. There will be lots to talk about, but I want to focus first on the chair of the Democratic National Committee, the neither-lovely-nor-talented Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

We last visited DWS in this blog post last January, when she talked about her need to lie and exaggerate in order to generate attention.

Well, she must have been feeling particularly in need of attention this week, because she told a whopper of a lie to a group of Jewish Democrats. She told the group that she had been talking to the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and that Oren told her " what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.”

This would be a shocking thing for any diplomat to say, and so a reporter who heard the remarks got in touch with Ambassador Oren to ask why he would say that. Oren issued a very strong statement in which he denied making such a statement, saying:

"I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”

So you have an Ambassador on one hand, and good ol' DWS on the other, saying absolutely non-compatible things. The Debster went on TV last night and was asked about what appeared to be a pretty bald-faced lie. Her response was to double down and tell another lie: She said she had been misquoted.

“That comment was reported by a conservative newspaper," DWS said. "It’s not surprising that they would deliberately misquote me.”

So that was her new story: She never said what the reporter claimed she had said. It's convenient to have a reporter to blame when you're caught in a lie, and that might have been the end of it. Except that.....

It turns out there's an audio tape of the meeting. You can listen to the tape here, and what you'll hear DWS telling the group is this:

“We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.”

Gee, sounds like the reporter got the quote down pretty accurately. Like, word-for-word.

So, she first lied to the group about her "conversation" with Ambassador Oren, and when caught in that lie, she told another one in an effort to cover up the first lie.

It probably shouldn't be a surprise to learn that the Chair of the DNC is a pathological liar. After all, it was just last week that her party was calling Rep. Paul Ryan a "liar" for saying that a GM plant that closed in 2009 had been closed in 2009. The "fact checkers" in the media were quick to help the Dems spread that falsehood, but it's pretty tough to find any of them "fact checking" good ol' Debbie.

Because, after all, she needs the attention.