Have you noticed... it’s Speaker Gingrich, Governor Palin, Governor Romney; but it’s Barack Obama or Mr. Obama in Republican debates, speeches, and political ads. Why is that?

Back in the sixteenth century a mostly poet and dramatist, sometimes essayist, said “The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.” As far as I know, that’s the original statement that morphed into our commonly used phrase, “All’s fair in love and war.” I am dreading the time between June and November this year because it has become clear that in American politics “The rules of fair play don’t apply in love, war and politics.” Of course, there has always been a lot of stretching of the truth and a fair amount of bald faced lying by a few unscrupulous people who will do just about anything to win an election, whether it’s for a local school board or for mayor of Podunk City. A school district usually recovers eventually from the damage done to communities, families, and children from having chosen unethical, self-serving board members; a village and even a city can usually painfully dig itself out of a deep hole it sinks into under the inadequate and even criminal leadership of spurious city managers.

Just about everybody in the U.S. knows the story of Bell, California, a little city of 36,000 people near Los Angeles. In 2010 a couple of L.A. Times reporters investigated possible malfeasance in small suburban towns around Los Angeles, when they discovered that Bell’s city manager’s annual salary was $787,637 dollars (almost double the salary of the President of the United States) and with benefits received $1.5 million dollars in that year. The assistant to the business manager’s salary was $376,288. The police chief’s salary was $457,000, and all but one of the members of the city council received $100,000 for their part-time work. These people were conspiring together to deceive the citizens of their little city. Nobody believes these people should be excused for their misrepresentations.

Why then, should we be willing to excuse the obvious lying and misrepresenting of facts by people who are candidates for the office of President of the United States of America. I noted earlier that I am dreading the time between June and November this year. I dread it because I desperately do not want the people in the party to which I belong, the American Democratic Party, to resort to lying. The campaign strategies of “Speaker” Gingrich and “Governor” Romney, whichever wins the nomination, will continue right up to November 6. I desperately want President Obama and all of campaign strategists to stick strictly to the truth. Oh, I know... I know... there are those who say he didn’t tell the truth in his State of the Union message. Including something in a speech, or saying something in an interview that folks on the other side don’t agree with and is a matter of ideological opinion doesn’t qualify as “lying.” My friend who says the Social Security program won’t be available when we are long gone from the earth and our grandchildren are the age we are now is an opinion. It is appropriate for me to say I don’t agree with him, but for me to call him a liar is not. We both believe the program needs to be re-formed. Although neither of us is an economist or a politician with very much knowledge of the program beyond the amount that gets deposited each month from the Social Security program into our bank accounts, we have opinions based on what we hear and what we read. Of course, my opinion in the matter of Social Security reform has developed more subjectively than objectively. So is my friend’s opinion. I may be wrong when I say the program, or perhaps a better form of it, will be part of my country’s social net for all citizens for a very long time. But I’m not a liar for believing what I say I believe about Social Security. My friend is not a liar for believing what he believes, and it would be wrong of me to say he isn’t telling the truth. I can say that I desperately hope he isn’t right in the conclusions he has drawn from the same set of known facts that are available to both of us.

So, back to the reason for this writing. I hope the people on “my side” of the political contest that will play itself out over the next ten months will honor the truth. If they cannot honor truth, they will not honor themselves or our country.
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Now, after the rant... I move on to some images that gave me a lot of joy today... the kind of joy that comes from being out in the world with friends and family... Jerome and Jeremy and a Juggler and children.