I guess we should be glad Sara Palin doesn't have a hair-lip. Imagine what Sally Quinn, Us Weekly and the AP could do with that?
BChumm

  So, let me get this straight...the next Ronald Reagan is a "Ronette"?
BChumm

      Moses Sands predicated his entire vision of America on the single idea that you don't have to have a law degree to understand the Constitution.
      Sara Palin is also proving you don't have to have an accounting degree to understand a budget.
      Sara Palin is also proving you don't have to have an engineering degree to understand highway, bridge and pipeline construction.

      Feel free to add to this list. We'll edit and post it with your links.
Cheers

   We cannot fully grasp the disdain Europe's political elites' have for America without first understanding that form the very beginning, back to our founding, they have despised the very idea that the dregs of their own societies, their lower classes, people who could only dream to rising to the position of groom, or nootman, or petty tradesman, could instead come to America and sire children who would build empires.
   Frank Capra was right, it was always about class.
   To read the entire essay, visit thesandsinstitute.org.

    We posed the question here just a couple of days ago maybe that M'Cain people really didn't know what they had done. Maybe it was the  Invisible Hand.
    Make no doubt about it, the current smears targeted at Gov Palin are not so she will withdraw. They are directed at M'Cain so he will dump her.
    After all, for the past eight years, M'Cain had made his reputation on the backs of a preening press, where the schmoozing was entirely reciprocal. Now, they are calling in their cards, themselves perhaps not quite aware of the stakes even as they named the ante.
    To be sure, the national media sees events these days in their own self interests, and while there are even larger national issues at risk, the press has over-played its hand. I see it as a lose-lose for them.
    On the one hand, if they push too hard, not only will they break up with M'Cain, but they will find themselves confronted with one of his darker sides once he ascends to the presidency and that is his vaunted get-even vindictiveness. If they think Nixon had an enemy's list, they ain't seen nothing yet. And worse, when M'Cain  goes out after them, the public will approve.
    Or worse, M'Cain can pull the plug on Palin. You see, even as his candidacy is dashed and Obama sworn in next January, there will be a slow, imperceptible but irreversible movement by about fifteen million people getting up off the couch and removing Ol' Betsy from over the fireplace. Then it won't be over til it's really over. That's what Sara Palin suddenly means.
VassarBushmill
    

   OK, it wasn't her intention, and she has by no means settled the controversy politically, but at least everyone now knows exactly what the issue is now:
   Which is more preferred: An Abstinence Only policy with the occasion failure, or a Pass Out the Condoms Policy, and a "Go get it, Kids", with a 100% success rate?
Vassar Bushmills
  

     It's been awhile but we're excited that a citizen-leader has become prominent in national politics again. It would be ungracious not to thank Sen M'Cain.
     These aren't talking points, but they are thinking points and we hope both Sara Palin's staff and the M'Cain staff will take heed to the enormous gift they can give the American people not only in this election cycle, but for a long, long time. I hope they play this card right. After all, once upon a time, Sen M'Cain, too, was a citizen-politician.
     Most voters want their political leaders to be their political betters, but no doubt would prefer that fewer were self-appointed. We believe the Founders would have said so if they preferred a professional political class over politicians who were instead the class of their fellow citizens. It used to the norm, as Louis Brandies suggested, that real success consisted of men and women who went out and succeeded on their merit, then turned the rest of their lives over to public service. Nowadays men and women go to Washington seeking wealth rather than sharing the wealth of their experiences and knowledge that made them worth listening to in the first place.
    Even Senator M'Cain had a full career and notable before coming to Wsahington. The differences between M'Cain/Palin and Obama/Biden are stark.
    Take the Citizen-Leader theme and run with it, Mrs Palin.
    
    

      Bill Buckley would have been proud. Heeding Buckley's advice M'Cain got no further than page one of the National Phone Book to select a candidate stand with him against the Washington elite class.
      Moses Sands must be proud, too. The Common Man...er Woman...once again is represented in the halls of power. (Can anyone name the last one?)
      The Sands Institute (thesandsinstitute.org) is all about the Common Man and Woman but Sara Palin is no ordinary C-Student. We have no idea how the M'Cain organization came up with the criteria, if they did at all (even blind pigs can come up with an acorn from time to time). Perhaps it was the hand of Providence. Moses thought He thought we had abandoned Him. Seems He hasn't recripocated. 
      But the notion of Citizen-politician is out there again, as is the model. We'll be taking notes.
      So far, good show, John M'Cain. We'll be watching.
Vassar Bushmills

  Our friends at GreatAmericanzeroes.com just hung John Murtha, TIME Magazine and Tim McGirk the original Haditha story-writer. None of this is new, but their take on the lies involved (vanity) is instructive.
VB

   Obama rewarded Joe Biden for being the first to notice that he was "clean".
Of course, that before anyone knew that Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright had made him "dirty".
BChumm

  A month ago I asked Sen M'Cain to raise the issue of American Exceptionalism and our willingness to risk our lives to free others. Last week he did that, and as much as we have reservations about M'Cain's candidacy, I have to say "Attaboy!"
   In fact, give them more, and more and more. I still want to see a ModLib answer the question why they no longer believe in laying down one's life for one's brother.
   VB

   If I didn't know any better I'd swear God had put Jews here to remind us just how the most civilized among us can be seduced, or frightened, every 50 years or so, into killing them.
   Against this America seems to stand alone...but we seem to becoming wobbly.

                                                                    GREATAMERICANZEROES.com

                                                                          YOU LIE, WE HANG YOU

 

       In the 1970’s I came up with a great title with an idea for a book about the “great” Americans who had done harm to the American Indians. It was called Great American (Z)Heroes then. Custer was up there, as was Rev Spaulding, Andy By-God Jackson, Chivington, the whole town of Tucson, Kinzua Dam, a lot of people you never heard of, and yes, several members of Congress.

       But such a volume would still have been thin, and the list never grew for many years, so I looked beyond forked tongues with Indians to the palace of forked tongues in general, Washington. Into the late 1990s I had only added John Glenn to my list, who, as a statue the size of Rushmore when it comes to heroes, had allowed such tiny people (the Clintons) to chisel him down to their size by selling out some of our national interests in exchange for a second trip into space. Some of the hero-worshipping kid in me died then.

      So I decided that while screwing Indians might be too narrow a subject, Washington politics was just too broad to spotlight the Great American Zero. It would be like trying to publish a list of all the people in hell, when the far easier job would to become friends with Gabriel and obtain a list of those who weren’t.

      I pocketed the concept…until this past July 4^th, when two friends called me about a recent Townhall.com post about how individual citizens can begin taking back their government. My short answer was that citizens should begin firing anyone who lied in public.

      So, after thirty years I’ve come full circle, and have decided to open a website that does just that one thing and that one thing only…call out public liars. It’s called GREATAMERICANZEROES.com and it will be headed up by our station chief in Virginia, St George Frederick.

     

     The single purpose at GREAT AMERICAN ZEROES.com will be to inform and encourage direct political involvement by citizens to let their elected and appointed public officials know they will not tolerate lies, above all other things. A few reporters, newscasters, lawyers and jurists, entertainers, athletes, scientists, and others who aren’t but stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, need to be reminded as well.

                                                      *       *     *

      After discussion with our ethicists I found this wasn’t such an easy matter, as there are all sorts of lies out there, not to mention liars. And sorting out the lie from a mistake of fact or other causes for uttering untruths is more difficult in these politically charged days. And in recent years lying had been carried to such terrifyingly new heights, and become so routine as to become a standard part of the nation’s political arsenal. In the past we’ve pointed out the social impact of the Lie directed toward the Left in general, but it seems to have crossed over to the other side of late. (This happens when the river that divides Good and Evil, liberty and servitude, democracy and socialism, etc, etc, etc, is dammed high up in the mountains so that downstream it becomes a trickle so narrow one can step across easily without even getting his feet wet. We’re going after the dam builders.)

     Worse, the Lie has been insinuated into the culture. As the culture goes, so goes the Constitution and this wonderful American experiment, so you can appreciate our sense of foreboding.

     For you cynics, time will prove us not to be an anti-Democrat Party site, or even an anti-Left site…on the few things they can be honest about. It will just seem that way, for reasons which may require a trip to your closet to sort out. We will find liars in the lairs they made for themselves. So if Glenn Beck lies, we’ll treat him the same as we would Harry Reid.

                                                       *       *     *

      GreatAmericanZeroes.com will be built mostly by the efforts of citizens around the country, as they (you) can submit a Complaint and evidence of the lie and the liar in your hometown or state…and after a fair trial, we’ll hang the Guilty Varmint. Well, some of them, at least. Our standards will be stricter than many of you will want them to be, but hopefully you’ll find a common sense wisdom in how we judge lies that you may even want to pass on to your kids, as the young seem most susceptible to the notion of the self-revealed truth.

     GreatAmericanZeroes.com will be built with humor (liars hate being mocked) but also with dead seriousness, as it is no accident that public lying has reached new highs just as public decency and morality have reached new lows.

      Despite the cute dotcom title you will find we are a serious single-issue group, mining each and every facet of the public lie and the role it plays in debasing and diminishing a free people in their house, the community, the nation, and civilization.

      There will also be a hint of sociology in our site, as I am sure, since Travelgate, many have asked the searing question: What do politicians fear most, being outed as incompetents, or being outed as liars? GreatAmericanZeroes.com may answer that.

      As for the meat and potatoes of the site, a brief framework is included below, with a 30 day period for comment and suggestions. We invite any suggestion or criticism. An Attaboy wouldn’t hurt, as this will be a paycheck-to-paycheck affair for a bit. Our gallows, (the Galleries and the Lie-Brary) won’t open for about 60 days while we search for technical assistance in indexing and cross referencing out inmates and their dossiers.

     Contact numbers can be found below (no phone calls for the time being, until a dedicated line can be established).

      Their immediate duties will be to hang some rogues from History, including recent history, so that the Gallery will open with several men and women already hanging. That would be seemly, I think. But they will also have to handle the submissions from around the country, which could prove a handful as we pick up steam. We hope this will be our growth division. (While picking on known nationally known liars may seem like more fun, the chances they’ll be removed from office because of anything we do at GreatAmericanZeroes.com is remote. We believe our value will be in the long-term impact it will have on local and state-wide office holders. Remove the lie from their ammo belt and we believe the trickle-up effect can be dramatic.)

     Our fact-checking process is in place, but it takes a few hours (we’d like to get it down to 3-4) to fully vet a Complaint before rendering a verdict. Fairness requires notice to the accused and a chance to respond or defend. By our accounting, one case worker can only manage 10-15 claims a week. Hell, we probably need one full time Hangman for Nevada alone.

     The good news is that as we grow, there should be a reverse effect in public lying. Moses Sands told me he had known Soros, and always believed that one could remove his ideas from their perch for only a fraction of what he spent to get them there. He called them the “house odds”. Our plan is to put ourselves out of business, more or less, within 6-8 years. “When you’re working for the wrong side, you should never over-estimate the power of money. Soros has. That’s his biggest weakness.”

 

Framework:

       In my accompanying article, “Public Lying Should be a Hanging Offense, and We Mean to Oblige” (posted here, our home website TheSandsInstitute.org, and on my Townhall.com blog, Your House and The US Constitution) we associate having one’s photo placed in one of our Galleries as a public hanging. We will also maintain easy-to-access and index dossiers, national and state-by-state, on individuals and factoids about lies and lying in our Lie-brary. We will post notices of pending cases, as well as acquittals, new hangings, a state-by-state register. We will also post essays on a whole range of issues about lies, and have enlisted the support of a science ethicist who will treat the myriad of issues about science-based lies, such as surround and shroud the global warming debate. His specialty is Darwin, so get ready. A blog site will probably be included as our ethicists are looking forward to “debating” lies in general as well as how we’ve applied our rules to the poor schmuck in Sioux who spit in some local citizen’s Cheerios. I wish we could afford the services of some of the folks at The Onion, who write splendidly, but we do hope to have some guest RN (real name) writers who will add a comment from time to time. St George is a very good, witty writer.

       The heart of GREATAMERICANHEROES.com will be the Complaint, which anyone can file, along with supporting corroboration. A picture would be nice, which we can doctor here, in the interests of justice of course. Speed will be of the essence, especially in local cases where a Lie can lose its legs more quickly. We will try to adjudicate a claim within 7 days, including opportunities by the Accused,  to deny, explain, revise and amend, CHA (Cover His/Her Arse) or apologize.

       The Accused may be acquitted, or be rolled over into a pending file, or be convicted and sentenced to be hung in one of our galleries, as a Guilty Varmint. As of this writing we have not decided whether to publish the name of an Accused until convicted, but for instructional purposes, we do plan to publish some written opinions as to why a Complaint was rejected.

       We anticipate more than one Gallery since, as Mark Twain said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” And there will be wings, such as a Duranty Gallery for journalists. There are also mistakes of fact, stupidity, and these days, self-delusion, which, even though a lie (to one’s self) we’re having debates as to whether it is a defense to the crime of the damned lie or another category altogether. Nor are we sure yet where to place the flip-flop, the broken campaign promise, the open-mic/congressional hearing lie, the obfuscation, the dissimilation, the gratuitous lie, so we’ve moved beyond Twain to Aquinas and the science of ethics to help sort out these rather ubiquitous handshakes with untruth that no one really pays attention to but quite frankly, degrade the culture. The commonplace Lie is like skin cancer, it too can kill.

       These deserve mention but perhaps in a lesser gallery, sort of a minor league waiting-to-be-called-up-to-the-Bigs gallery, not the Big Lewinsky (one name put forward for our main gallery), but perhaps a Little Lewinsky.  Whattaya think?

 

        In my accompanying article, “Public Lying Should be a Hanging Offense, and We Mean to Oblige” you will be able to see where we place our emphasis on lying and the public impact of lying. The bald-faced lie is actually rare among national politicians. What is more common is the stating and restating of an opinion as fact, which is a damned lie in our opinion for it is attached to the sins of vanity, arrogance and usually, avarice. The same goes for the taking of scientific evidence, statistics, theories, etc (since we know how scientists report “facts”) and turning those theories into stated truths.  These are all damned lies and are all hanging offenses. And we plan to publish every one we run across. (The internet is a funny place…it never seems to run out of ink or shelf space.) Finally there are some lies of omission which may seem redundant, or cumulative, but in our eyes are separate offenses, as when a politician shouts out the truth of a fact not yet proved, then suddenly falls silent and cowers in his closet when the “fact” was later shown to be untrue and the obvious duty would have been to than oblige us with a mea culpa. (After the genocide in Cambodia, and the boat people, remember Joan Baez calling on some of her fellow chanteuses and actresses…Hanoi Jane, et al…to recant for having been wrong about the virtues of Hanoi and Pol Pot, even if they had been right about the evils of America?)

        Imagine how many laws around the country have been enacted based on that single United Nations report that was taken and (in our opinion, intentionally) misshaped by politicians from the day it was issued to prove a non-existing danger about second hand smoke. That’s the kind of lie we’re talking about. These are damned lies because they are not only attached to the sin of vanity, but cowardice. We hope to hang every one before we’re done.

 

      Beyond the Lie, we take no particular stand on other standards for public service, such as incompetence, theft of funds public or private, infidelity with a secretary, waitress or in a water fountain with a stripper, narcissism, nepotism, cronyism, pimping, coveting, treason, craven cowardice, acts of omission, and a myriad of other sins, except to say we’re against them all. We just leave those to others to disclose and crow about.

      We believe that a public made aware of lies as lies, and not as something benign and less dangerous, will become annoyed, and less inclined to support a sitting official in the future…since citizens hate having their noses rubbed in their own mistakes in judgment in electing the b*****d in the first place.

      Likewise, we know that persons in the both the public and private sector spotlight hate having their foibles made public and will move mountains to prevent such revelations from happening. Local police and fireman’s benefit fund cups runneth over with donations from notable citizens wishing to keep their names out of the local Thunderstorm. This may be a marriage made in heaven, for lying, like VD, has only one 100% sure-fire preventative. Abstinence. We want them to stop. And if they stop, a lot of other things will just take care of themselves. We believe a public hanging can make abstinence more appetizing.

 

     As to vitae: In the interests of full disclosure all our principals work under aliases here, a practice started by Moses Sands a few years ago to protect his name (and mine) with our client base overseas. This has its advantages, it turns out, for a lot of reasons that will reveal themselves as we go along.

     St George Frederick is 40, has a degree in law, BA in history (Russian area) and Middle Eastern studies. He has worked with me in the third world since 1998 and has a killer intellect and has passed all exams concerning the Constitution. He is the next generation of true Protector.

     I am 61, a former Army JAGC and former senior manager with a Fortune 500 company. Since 1989 I have owned and managed my own consultancy specializing, in Moses Sands’ words, covert free market operations in the developing world. We’d worked with a number of other consultants, some of which you’ll see on this site, and who have come in from the cold as least part of the time.

      Bernard Chumm is in Oregon, a historian, ethicist and financial planner, also over 60, advanced degrees, and dabbles (with a group of younger contributors) in internet scatology. (They’re against it.) Merv Donnelly is an Atlanta-based 38 year old graduate naturalist/zoologist, and science ethicist. You’ll hear from him often. Finally, Natasha Ivanova is our 35 year old émigré from Kharkov, Ukraine. She knows something about just about everything, and has a wealth of perspectives about life under “imperial communism”. She is also very easy on the eyes. All are Protectors.

 

      GreatAmericanZeroes.com is organized under the auspices of The Sands Institute for the Constitution and Common Man, a 501 (3)(c) non-profit organization (in progress), so you won’t be bothered by banner ads for Viagra or home mortgage loans while searching out the latest quotes from Al Gore.

     St George has asked for a skeleton staff of four and he’s lined up a nice inexpensive office site above a pesticide company. Public obscurity is all but guaranteed. If you’d like to see a copy of our working plan and profile for GreatAmericanZeroes.com just let StGF or me know and we’ll send a copy as it stands today. It is a work in progress.

 

You can contact us at Vbushmills@thesandsinstitute.org, StG@greatamericanzeroes.com, fax: 866-253-0016, or GAZH, PO Box 3916, Chester VA 23831.

    

 

 

           PUBLIC LYING SHOULD BE A HANGING OFFENSE

                                                    And We Mean to Oblige

Vassar Bushmills, Exec Director 

           With the publication of this article we announce the launching of a new website GREATAMERICANZEROES.com that will host a Gallery of public lies and liars from around the country. Details of our Gallery and how you can participate can be found by visiting our site at GREATAMERICANZEROES.com. Our station chief in Virginia, St George Frederick will manage the operation, although you will see reports and analyses from Bernie Chumm, Natasha Ivanova, dozens of others and myself.

           What follows are the standards we use in hanging individuals and groups in our Galleries and posting their sins in our Lie-brary.
           As we’ve stated time and again no society can endure when lying becomes acceptable in the normal course of human conduct. Erode the foundation of truth and you erode everything you stand on. In time, everything of importance to the individual, the family, the House and the community simply rots away.
           The ordinary citizen, the common man especially, can ill afford to get caught up in the regularness of lying. It must be kept away from his front door…with a gun, if necessary…or his House dissolves.
           Mark Twain once said “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” With the help of Thomas Aquinas in analyzing the lie, and Dante Alighieri in properly placing the lie, we’ll use Twain’s guidelines.

           When a person says something that is untrue it is because that person is 1) misinformed, 2) stupid, 3) lying, or of late, 4) delusional*.
           *This last defense is a qualified defense, as some have suggested we include it in our Galleries as a special category of lying all by itself since the kinds of delusion most often found in the political spheres are self-inflicted, born of arrogance (a kind of lie itself), vanity, really rotten parenting (usually only one…guess which one?) resulting in a kind of paranoia much like some of the Sonnenkinder of the 60’s, who neglected to space out their trips to the Peyote cache between their trips with the LSD. Like the difference between an alcoholic and one who drinks too much, it is difficult to discern without professional help which is which simply by watching them air their shortcomings in public. We know one can’t help it while the other can, but we’re never sure.
            But a case can be made for the type, as there are some notable applicants, such as Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and possibly even Barack O’Bama. It’s hard to conclude how much of the swill they spew they actually believe. I recall in the 1960s when Jonathan Winters checked himself into a clinic for a few weeks of therapy and rehab. Upon leaving, a newsman asked why he had gone there. Winters aid, “Because I started believing my own stuff.” (See my note below.)  

           There is an old common sense adage that you should never blame on conspiracy what you can blame on stupidity. The lie is the last, not the first culprit we should seek out, even when ranking political officials are involved. Most politicians, though not all, can be presumed not to be stupid, and none have any real excuse for being misinformed…still, they are usually less smart and twice as uninformed as they appear to be. State service seems to encourage a kind of stupidity unknown in the private sector..unless your uncle owns the company,
           Fairness therefore requires that when a public person is caught in a misstatement of fact, he/she be given a chance to apologize or recant (revise and amend).
           But just once. Two strikes and they’re out.
           Then they’ll be brought in here and hung.

           For our purposes at GreatAmericanZeroes.com, a lie is a knowing misstatement of fact, with the intent to decieve, (if only to oneself) after the other defenses have been dismissed. A liar is one who utters, broadcasts, or purveys a lie (the bald faced lie) or proclaims as fact a thing he does not know to be true, or knows he cannot prove to be true (the damned lie.) This can include hearsay, opinions, and facts-still-in-debate, as most commonly found in scientific arguments.

          We consider most of these lies to be moral lies and worthy of being hung in our main Lewinsky Gallery and its several wings.

          There are also lesser lies and liars that are worthy of hanging, so we have a secondary Gallery that is still several cuts above a misdemeanor, but not worthy of a 1^st Class hanging. These include the flip-flop, the broken campaign promise, many forms of open mic (press conference) lies, as well as the ubiquitous congressional hearing lie. These have become like a pox, they are so prevalent, and are therefore worthy of hanging, even though almost everyone knows they are lies the moment they are uttered. Also included are the lies of omission and some forms of statistical lies, and even some flagrant gratuitous lies (usually exempt from a gallery hanging) if they reveal a pernicious pattern.
         Recalling an old George Carlin comedy bit about how many sins the Catholic Church imputed to one liaison in an alley to “feel up” Wanda…one for thinking about it, another for wanting to, still another for planning it, etc, etc. “Seven sins in one feel!” we give notice that there can be many lies and liars associated with one simple misstatement of fact…just so you’ll know our Galleries were are geometric in design. We cut ourselves a wide berth, for the seriousness of the lie at GreatAmericanZeroes.com is its impact on society and the American House. We leave the liar’s soul to God.
       Finally, there are lies for which we believe have no place in our gallery, such as many gratuitous lies (e.g. burning churches in Arkansas, had it stood alone), and the CYA.  In fact, we even believe many types of perjury, usually being CYA’s of one sort or another, do not belong in our Galleries at all, and prefer not to place Clinton’s Paula Jones lie under oath in the Gallery, nor Scooter’s lie under the most uncertain of legal standards. John Dean went to jail for lying, and Gordon Liddy went to jail for refusing to.    
      This is because we believe, unlike modern laws to the contrary, that citizens have an inalienable right to lie to police and investigators…unless under oath…and will remain steadfast in this belief until Congress is also required to speak to the public on the same terms it requires the public to speak before it.
      Also included in non-hanging lies are the flattery and self-preservation lie. “Honey, do I look fat in this dress?” invokes both. But in the interests of full disclosure, here at the Sands Institute we all use aliases to protect our names, faces due to our (unrelated but serious) work overseas and elsewhere.
     Lastly, there is the Viral Lie, which, along with the lie we tell ourselves in the mirror each day, perhaps the darkest of lies. We cannot include this lie since by definition, as it is a lie known only to one other person, and to God. (Like Original Sin, we consider this to be Original Lie, begetting all the others, and will include a brief essay on the subject in due course.)

     First, we have to get the rules straight about lying, since for some years now the political world has been awash with all sorts of people calling errors in fact and opinions lies while at the same time referring to theories and speculations about fact as unshakable truths. Like a disease, this has progressed to such an extent that we are now bombarded with individuals being called liars for things they never said, and for committing crimes for which there are no known legal offenses
     It seems these new definitions of lying are not put forward to highlight the evils of the lie, but rather to make it so any utterance can be classified as one if the situation calls for it. Obviously there are some people who take benefit in this new reality, and, personally, I smell a hint of sulfur, for (recalling the old saw that the devil’s greatest victory over man was to make us believe he didn’t exist) it seems evil takes the high ground away from good people when we stop believing everything that is so is so.
     Remarkably, these usually come from the same people, even more remarkably, in our more educated communities. Only two generations ago one would have found this curious. But it has become manifest much like the high incidence of hemophilia and other genetic disorders associated with in-breeding in royal Europe before World War I. When a society finds its so-called betters in such lamentable condition, a conflagration of vast proportions cannot be far behind. As this disease seems hell-bent on infecting the broader population, we believe it is time to sound the alarm.  
     A lie is a specific act. In some people it has even become a state of being. When people can get away with chronic lying they can become infectious like any other disease, for they relay to a broader audience that this sort of conduct is not only acceptable, it pays off.
    A lie does not rest on the truth or untruth of the fact. That 2 + 2 = 5 is a not a lie, it is only wrong. You could also be stupid or under 4 years of age. Or you could just have had a slip of the tongue, as with O’Bama’s 57 states.
    I know you can think of all sorts of lies out there that seem to stand alone. This is not so, as each, even the more complex lies found imbedded in the many scieintific debates, have a flashpoint, where a proposition or opinion had been converted to “fact”. That act of lying is usually political, not scientific, and we hope to create on GreatAmericanZeroes.com, a down-loadable program a person can use to trace a truth, fact or opinion from its point of origin as it’s is dragged through the public mud puddle.
    A lie rests in the intent of the person who utters it. A lie is of the heart and mind, (mens rea) and these are often things that are difficult for another to discern. Humility requires that we be very careful when trying to look inside another man’s heart, for it would be a lie to say we know another’s heart when we cannot possibly know any such a thing. In fact, this is one of the most common lies abroad these days, and easiest to prove and we are without mercy in exposing it. You can see that if we were too casual in this, we would cancel out any credibility we might wish to gain.

      Our purpose at GreatAmericanZeroes.com is to identify and hang the liar and deal with the lie as we can, for a liar can come out upon the public stage and make a perfectly honest statement. This does not make him less a liar, but it does sully the truth he is trying to put forward.
     It is he who needs to be defeated and run off the stage. There will always be facts and rumors of facts. Let honest men debate the probabilities of truth. We wish to send a message at GreatAmericanZeroes.com to whoever might send, or bring a liar out onto a public stage to help sell their truth; this does that truth no good. This is the greatest disservice we can do to any truth for it is tarred by the messenger. Hang the liar and the lies tend to take care of themselves. But the truth always comes away limping.
     For example, global warming: While we have access to a lot of scientific information about climate change, and the probabilities of each side’s positions are fairly easy to quantify in terms of probabilities (90%, 45% etc), we are not in a position to say any of those positions are lies, i.e. have been falsified, for that is beyond skill of any but the most qualified of peers. Raw data is always subject to peer review.
    We leave that debate to the scientists’ who almost never say a thing is wrong unless it is unqualifiedly wrong, and who, as a matter of their science and their nature, ask far more questions than they resolve. Scientists are required by their professional creeds to present their cases always couched in the language of speculation, such as “the facts suggest”, “possible links”, etc. A “maybe” is not a lie, and although one may find from time to time some data that has been jimmied, it is almost never the scientist who carried the crowbar.
    Our targets are the political secondary and tertiary sources that take these speculations and report them as fact, often after re-working them. Our target is also the media and others who purvey that lie. Consider the UN report on second hand smoke. You know the old axiom that a lie repeated often enough takes on the trappings of truth. The second hand smoke lie has resulted in thousands of local anti-smoking ordinances which, notwithstanding the lie now being laid bare, will never be repealed…for they have achieved their political objective. Before we’re finished we plan to hang every liar involved in that hoax.
    Today, global warming, in all its manifestations also has passed the fail-safe point of recall, for it has become a common terminology even in advertising. We see it everywhere even though the terminology represents a giant lie when considered in any depth. (Somewhere in our stack of essays I have an old one about what happens to a civilization when science is subordinated to the political process and science is made to call Science a liar. We’ll try to have that up soon. I think I also have one that alleges advertising to be the greatest of all threats to the First Amendment. I’ll try to dig that out too.)
    In any case, any restatement or interpretations by secondary sources (whose opinions are never allowed into evidence in court anyway) are not just lies. They are damned lies, and worthy of being hung in our gallery. This is the stuff dossiers are made of. Just look at what the Huxley’s did with Darwin.
    Almost everything is subject to debate, especially science. Few things are 100%, but almost always something less. Beyond a mathematic certainty or physical law, such as the “leg bone connected to the thigh bone”, or your birth date, 1492, 1066 and all that, “facts” are measured in terms of probabilities, from 99% to 1%. Only math and physical laws are 100%. That a bullet found in a dead man’s heart killed him (“COD” if you watch CSI) is 99.99% probable. He still could have had heart attack before the bullet ever hit him, so doctors’ ethics require them to state the bullet killed him “within a medical certainty”, which is actually a statement of professional humility that he can’t know everything. (Ethics is kinda nice, huh? Interesting, lawyers helped impose this rule on doctors, yet are probably its greatest offenders.)
    At the other end of probability would be that the pyramids were built by space men, which is less than 1% probable, or, highly improbable. This is the realm of Flat-Earthers and Holocaust-deniers, a type of un-religion religion, and the realm of most conspiracy theorists, whose fancies unlike true religions, can and have been dis-proven over and over again.
    True religious beliefs (including secular religions such as Darwinism and Environmentalism) are things which generally can neither be proved nor disproved, and we will not be wasting time posting names or pictures of religionists, secular or transcendental, unless they otherwise engage in a public lie. That God is great, good, alive and well, dead, or goes by another name “Allah” or “Iehovah” is not a lie. That Jesus lived and walked, died on the Cross, or was just a figment of ten or so known martyrs’ imagination is not a lie, or that He ran off to raise a family on the Cote d’Azur with Mary Magdalene…although it seems some of the “facts” used to establish these conclusions may very well be. That polar bears, snail darters, and cats are more likeable or more important than humans is not a lie. That the polar ice cap will melt within ten months or ten years, or a hundred years if we don’t something now…is.
    People associate high levels of probability with “fact”, while the lowest levels earn the title of non-fact, or untruth, or as they say in the Valley, “Duhh!”  It’s the mid-levels of probability, called plausibility, where most fractious debates over facts take place, and where people lacking discernment or good sense can be convinced to try to turn a 45% probability into a fact, and thence, a lie. At some point a fact-in-debate simple degrades into a lie if pushed too enthusiastically. We can’t say where, but common sense usually dictates where “me iudice” (in my opinion) should be a part of the argument. It is probably the most important three words in American political language, especially, yet is almost unheard in the halls of Congress. It is impossible to yell, scream or incite, when using the term. Who would buy a bumper stick that said. “Bush lied!...in my opinon.”?
     Since we believe public derision works, it’s the squeaky wheels who deny this term, and the shrill and inane, we will be targeting here.
     In the end, never forget, that almost everything, including the original builders of the pyramids, either is 100% fact or 100% un-fact, just like the weather forecast that calls for 60% chances for rain. It either rained or it didn’t. There was no lie involved when it didn’t and everyone involved seems to understand, so probabilities are not really hard to grasp, at least for the common man. Maybe even dailyKos readers can grasp it. We can only hope.
    Our mission once again, is to remove the secondary and tertiary lies from these debates for they are, as often as not, put forward by people with hidden agendas, from drug companies who sponsor medical studies to organic nut cases who want us all to go back to fertilizing with our own shite and living in sod huts, while never having completely worked through whether they will be living in that sod hut too, or inside the gates of that shining city on the hill where all the political elites will be staying once their Brave New World kicks in. Stick a flashlight in some peoples’ faces and the first thing they lose sight of is any understanding of human nature. (I blame the spared rod.)
     Science (the Method), Law (the Rules of Evidence), and Ethics (Reason and Logic…also called common sense in Tennessee) all have strict rules of determining facts. They are all based on observable truths. A criminal conviction requires ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ but a civil case is determined by a preponderance of the evidence. Peer approval is required in the scientific community. Even argument and debate has its rules.
    Our society exists on all sorts of laws of physics and mechanics. Every time you turn the ignition in your car you are invoking thousands of them. When an airliner takes off, a million or more such laws of physics are proved and reproved. These laws are so rigid that we can feel safe enough to pay $24,000 for a four door version of those laws and put our kids in them for a weekend at the beach.
     Our standard at GreatAmericanZeroes.com is the preponderance of evidence, and we will hang any person whose mis-use of the language appears to put forward a hidden political agenda. This arises from my favorite over-statement of liberalism by Mary McGrory, in the 1970s, when she stated (I paraphrase) that modern liberalism stood for the proposition that all human behavior should be subject to the political process. Science subject to the political process means we will see a day when we can no longer safely drive across a bridge for fear it may fall down, let alone feel any security about our next plane ride. This is why, in the last days of the USSR, AIDS was primarily the result of dirty needles…in hospitals and clinics! I can say without any doubt that this is how liberty dies, the dream and hope of liberty meekly going elsewhere. When the light of common sense is driven under a bushel, freedom is not far behind, to stay another 200 years before re-emerging.
     We here at the Sands Institute were sort of hoping we could push Evil back into the dark for another 200 years…but it could be the other way around. At least you know the size of the struggle. It’s them or us.
      It’s the laws of argument and debate that are falling apart, and we believe they should be reestablished, and since it’s politics and politicians that have caused this breakdown, we believe the people should reestablish those rules…by yanking the chains of the politicians.

WHY PUBLICLY HANG A LIAR:    
       If you knowingly state an untruth once, and are not openly called on it, it is mathematically probable you will try it again, in a similar circumstance. Parents know this about their children, friends know this about other friends.
       I use the word openly here as many politicians tell lies to others who know it’s a lie, (the wink and a nod) but if no one openly calls it out as a lie, it is passed as truth, or at least as normal. (Senate rules actually prohibit one senator from calling another out on a lie, which is probably the only reason Harry Reid isn’t flipping burgers in Henderson.) This is how the public becomes duped, or worse, begins to treat lying with a certain amount of normality.
       Why being called out on a lie is important is that it is sort of like a slap across the face. It stings…almost as harshly as the one across the bottom you mother gave you…or should have. Once having been caught in a lie, the probability is not high that that person will try it again.
      When a person does reach out and lie more than twice he will no longer be believed, at least in the real world. Television talking heads are exceptions to this, as for many, being wrong over and over again seems to be their chief qualification for being there in the first place. True, being wrong is not the same as lie, but the same rules apply if you’re about to take a person’s advice on a stock tip.
     How many times would a friend lie to you before he would no longer be your friend? My guess is twice. The same goes for a wayward husband. You only get to kneel at the foot of the cross once.
     In the real world, requiring that truth be kept around us is a survival mechanism. Once a friend or family member lies twice you no longer can afford to rely on them…for anything…and it sometimes takes years for any trust to be restored.
     We believe lies and liars should be outed. We believe that a public made aware of lies as lies, and not something benign and less dangerous, will become annoyed, and less inclined to support a sitting official in the future. After all, citizens hate having their noses rubbed in their own mistakes in judgment.
      We also know that persons in both the public and private sectors spotlight hate having their foibles made public and will move mountains to prevent those things from happening.
      We believe that a public posting of an official&