Pathological lying, also called pseudologia fantastica and mythomania, is typical of people suffering a from a dysfunction that drives them to lie, mercilessly, and sometimes entirely disproportionate to any end in view. Pathological liars, depending on the severity of the disorder, may be aware they are lying, or may believe they are telling the truth being unaware that they are relating fantasies. That being said, when Republicans lie according to their pathological dysfunction they are certainly aware they are relating fantasies and certainly know they are not telling the truth; because they lie to profit themselves and their wealthy donors.
For a little over four years this column has closely followed the rash of lies from Republicans hoping to profit from a foreign corporation’s cross-border construction project over 1,179 miles of American soil. Yesterday, acting on behalf of the Earth’s population and America’s environmental and economic health, President Barack Obama cemented his legacy as a crusader against global climate change and summarily rejected that foreign corporation’s construction permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
Now, what proves that Republican mendacity is purely pathological is that despite the preponderance of evidence that they have been lying viciously over the course of four years about the pipeline’s benefit to Americans, and the President’s seven minute explanation debunking the GOP’s lies, Republicans persisted spewing the same lies to express their outrage. Instead of graciously admitting that the President’s justifications for rejecting the pipeline were valid, and in America’s best interest, they just repeated the dirty lies because they are functionally unable to tell the truth.
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The new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, picked up the mendacity mantle from his predecessor, and investor in seven different Canadian tar sand companies, and repeated Boehner’s lies about why rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline is an existential threat to America’s economic and energy survival. Ryan said,
“This decision isn’t surprising, but it is sickening. By rejecting this pipeline, the president is rejecting tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. He is rejecting our largest trading partner and energy supplier. He is rejecting the will of the American people and a bipartisan majority of the Congress.”
Since Republicans have opposed, out of hand, any and every opportunity to create even one job, it is curious that Ryan complained the President is “rejecting tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.” Ryan’s filthy lie has been debunked by nearly anyone with knowledge about the jobs required to build a pipeline; including the foreign corporation, TransCanada, that admitted Keystone will create about 1,200 temporary construction jobs for two years, and between 35 and 50 permanent jobs.
Ryan’s claim that the decision is “sickening” reveals the Republican mindset that protecting the environment and American people’s health is “sickening.” The President did not “reject” Canada as a trading partner or energy supplier; he rejected a foreign corporation’s construction permit. What is truly pathetic, and something one desperately wanted the President to comment on is just how despicable, and sickening, it is that Republicans are willing to help contribute to devastating climate change and endanger Americans’ health simply to profit their primary campaign donors, the Koch brothers and dirty fossil fuel industry.
TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer Russ Girling accused President Obama of “choosing misplaced symbolism over merit and science, and allowed rhetoric to win out over reason.” There is nothing “symbolic” about the President’s decision, and the preponderance of science informs he made the right decision. Even mentioning the word “merit” in referring to TransCanada’s horrible pipeline safety record is absurd. Girling did not say whether the foreign corporation would mount a court challenge against the United States Constitution giving the Executive Branch purview to reject a foreign corporation’s cross-border construction permit; particularly one to build an environmental hazard on American soil. Still, Girling said his foreign corporation will be spending a fair amount of time “reviewing the decision and its rationale.”
There is nothing about the President’s rejection for TransCanada to review because the decision is made by the only man with the Constitutional authority to “just say no.” If the corporate foreigners are seriously interested in “reviewing the rationale” behind the President’s decision, they can either peruse the President’s rejection signing statement, watch a video of the President’s remarks from the Roosevelt Room with Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, consult TransCanada’s own internal documentation, or the CEO can listen to himself make remarks about the lack of benefits to America to see the exact same rationale that informed President Obama’s decision.
Even the new, so-called “liberal,” Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau revealed his disdain for the climate and contempt for Canadians living in and around the Alberta tar fields by saying he was disappointed that the leader of the free world actually cared about the Earth’s climate and all the world’s citizens by rejecting KeystoneXL. Despite Trudeau’s wish that the project could have went forward, at least he did not take the Republican and TransCanada path and lie about the fabricated benefits to Americans if the pipeline was constructed. But he still really wanted the project to go forward to benefit the oil industry; likely because the Koch brothers signed lease agreements with Canada to control over 1.7 million acres in and around Alberta’s tar fields.
One of the disappointing critics of the President’s rejection is the general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Terry O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan is either a Koch brother operative, a desperately uninformed moron, or a pathological lying Republican. He had the temerity to claim the President’s action “is just one more indication of an utter disdain and disregard for salt-of-the-earth, middle-class working Americans. The president may be celebrated by environmental extremists, but with this act, President Obama has also solidified a legacy as a pompous, pandering job killer.”
No, the President rejected a project that would have created, at most, 50 permanent and 1,250 temporary jobs; and “pompous, pandering job killer?” Seriously, O’Sullivan is confusing Republicans who have not created one job throughout the President’s tenure and killed millions with drastic budget cuts. President Obama has created 13 million jobs; nearly every one for the “salt-of-the-Earth, middle class working Americans.” O’Sullivan is a disappointment as a union president because he should reserve his outrage for Republicans who, besides assailing unions at every turn, will not even consider infrastructure improvements that would create hundreds-of-thousands of permanent jobs for union labor; “the salt-of-the Earth, middle-class working Americans.”
The President obviously gave all the fact-based reasons for rejecting a foreigner’s construction project that does nothing whatsoever to benefit America, or Americans. However, one of the most prescient was demonstrating that as leader of the free world, he could not possibly expect, or demand that, other nations do everything in their power to combat global climate change if his Administration was not doing its part. Now, if any nation’s leader had any doubts about whether Barack Obama is serious about taking action to halt climate change, all they have to do is listen to the mountain of lies from pathologically lying Republicans who are furious that while they are doing everything in their power to exacerbate climate change; President Barack Obama made a decision that crushed their tar sand fantasies.
Photo: CBCNews/Calgary
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
