‘Twas several nights after Christmas and a few nights before the New Year of 2023 when I first heard the news about George Santos. A recently elected Representative from NY to a very narrow Republican Majority in the US House of Representatives. Santos has been caught in a series of lies regarding his background and credentials. Tulsi Gabbard conducted an interview with him on the Tucker Carlson show this past Tuesday night (12-27-22). The transcript of this interview was published in “The Hill” by Emily Brooks on 12-27-2022. I would like to add my commentary to the views that were published regarding this interview. First, I must give my congratulations to Ms. Gabbard for her interview. She asked some hard questions and literally kept the lying Santo’s feet to the fire.
My prologue to this interview is simply this. Lying starting with Trump has become endemic in the Republican Party. They seem to have no qualms or shame when it comes to telling lies. They will do little or nothing to sanction Santos for two reasons. First, because lying is the norm for Republicans today, and it is not illegal. Second, because they do not want to risk losing Santo’s seat in the house. With this preliminary insight out of the way, I want to add my comments to the following transcript. I shall try to make my comments obvious by bolding my opinions and viewpoints.
I have one caveat to make before I start. I am not kicking a sleeping dog. This dog refuses to stop biting. He is not giving up his seat and he refuses to accept any responsibility for his lies. Instead, he says he is ready to serve his constituents and wants the world to just forget his transgressions.
Tulsi Gabbard tears into George Santos during Fox interview: ‘Do you have no shame?’ — BY EMILY BROOKS – 12/27/22 9:38 PM ET
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) ripped into Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) over his embellishments and fabrications about his background, asking him point-blank, “Do you have no shame?”
“If I were one of those in New York’s 3rd District right now, now that the election is over, and I’m finding out all of these lies that you’ve told, not just one little lie or one little embellishment — these are blatant lies — my question is, do you have no shame?” Gabbard asked while filling in for Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview with Santos on Tuesday evening. “Do you have no shame? And the people who are now, you’re asking to trust you to go and be their voice for them, their families and their kids in Washington?”
“Tulsi, I can say the same thing about the Democrats,” Santos responded. “Look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been lying to the American people for 40 years. He’s the president of the United States. Democrats resoundingly support him. Do they have no shame?”
Here we have the time-honored way of deflecting the blame by attacking someone else. It is a version of the philosophical “Ad Hominem” fallacy, where you attack another person to avoid taking any responsibility for your own problems. Santos attacks Biden and avoids answering the question regarding his lack thereof of any shame. If he was going to mention a President who lied, he should have mentioned Trump who undoubtedly broke all records for lying to the American people.
Gabbard interjected, saying that her question was not about the Democrats.
Three cheers for Gabbard who stepped on his strategy.
Santos has emerged from days of silence following reports from The New York Times and other outlets this month that revealed misrepresentations, fabrications and lies about his personal background.
In various interviews with the New York Post and elsewhere this week, Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume, including saying that he did not graduate from college and that he did not work directly for financial giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
I love this. He did not graduate from college. He did not work for one of the major financial giants. But he just calls adding these lies to his resume an “embellishment”. I wonder if you went in for a job interview with lies like this on your resume whether the interviewer would see it as a simple embellishment? If they found out after you were hired, do you think they would keep you on the job? Where else in the world can you lie repeatedly and keep your job except for the US House of Representative and US Senate. The present salary for a US Representative is $174,000 a year.
Santos says a poor choice of words led to confusion about his work history, insisting that he did business with both companies and helped make “capital introductions” through “limited partnerships.” He relayed some of that explanation in the interview with Gabbard.
I did not lie says Santos, I merely chose my words poorly. Like me saying that Santos is a lying sack of putrid excrement instead of a lying sack of shit. Sorry, I just chose my worlds poorly. I hope I did not offend anyone. I promise I will choose my words more carefully in the future.
He has also come under fire for representing himself as an “American Jew” and saying that his maternal grandparents fled Europe during World War II, even though reports have emerged that those grandparents were born in Brazil before the war.
This is truly unbelievable. He is on record and on video as lying to a Jewish assembly about his religion and heritage. He claims he is culturally Jewish but was raised as a Catholic. I was raised as a Catholic but was culturally Italian since my father was Italian. I cannot see how any Catholic could be culturally Jewish. As many Jewish people will tell you, for many years, Catholicism treated Jews as “Those killers of Christ.” I remember being told that it was a mortal sin to step into a synagogue. I am sure my Catholic priest would have had a heart attack if he found out that I attended a “Seder” or Passover rite with some Jewish friends.
Gabbard pressed Santos on those points.
“My heritage is Jewish. I’ve always identified as Jewish. I was raised as a practicing Catholic,” Santos said. “Not being raised a practicing Jew, I’ve always joked with friends and circles, even within the campaign, I’d say, guys, I’m ‘Jew-ish.’ Remember, I was raised Catholic.”
This sounds like some sort of Orwellian Double Speak. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” — George Orwell. 1984. Part 1, Chapter 5.
Santos uses some convoluted thought to try to convince us that deep down he is Jewish. I suppose if he were running in Alabama, he would be a Baptist and in Utah, he would be a Mormon.
“So, look, I understand everybody wants to nitpick at me. I’m gonna reassure this once and for all. I’m not a facade. I’m not a persona. I have an extensive career that I worked really hard to achieve. And I’m going to deliver from my experience because I remain committed in delivering results for the American people,” Santos said.
Boohoo. Please feel sorry for me. Santos must have picked this shtick up from Nixon. He needs a small dog in his lap while giving us this speech before I can feel sorry for him. Yes, I know he has a mother who loves him.
“Congressman-elect Santos, we’ve given you a lot of time. I think the time that is owed is to the people of New York’s 3rd. It’s hard to imagine how they could possibly trust your explanations when you’re not really even willing to admit the depth of your deception to them,” Gabbard said.
This coming from a Tucker Carlson show host really surprised me. Gabbard skewered him mercilessly. She must have forgotten that she switched parties and was now a Republican. I would not be surprised to see a rebuttal from the Republican party concerning her remarks.
Gabbard is the second former Democratic member of Congress to interview Santos this week. He also spoke with former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who resigned in 2011 after the revelation of sexually explicit messages he sent to a minor, on WABC radio this week.
My guess is that Weiner and Santos have a lot in common and it is not their Jewishness. You might remember Weiner as the man who sent a picture of his penis through a text to one of his girl friends while he was married. Birds of a feather flock together.
I have nothing more to add folks. As they say, actions speak louder than words. When are we going to demand some level of truthfulness in our politicians and trouble them for their lying ads and words? Even now, I hear people saying “Well, he did not do anything illegal.” Whatever happened to unethical and immoral? Are we willing to tolerate deceit and falsehoods regardless of the circumstances because they are not illegal.
There is a difference between justice and the law. Justice demands that people we elect are honest and ethical and moral. Any less should disqualify a person from holding a public office.
Moving on from the medical stuff, we sold our Wisconsin house. We are now year-round residents in the state where my brother-in-law said, “People go to die.” Can you guess where this is? Hint, it is not Florida, although it would be a close second. Karen and I were not offended by his claim since we have known many people who seemed to die around here. Last year, we started a Holiday Tradition of remembering departed friends and relatives on New Year’s Eve while singing “Old Auld Lang Syne” and talking about what we missed or did not miss about each of them. We hope they were listening to the good points that Karen mentioned and not their weak points that I am more prone to point out. 
How do you know if you know anything? You have two paths to answer this question. The first path involves your belief that you do know something. You can choose this path if you are fairly certain that you know something. It may surprise you, but this is not a path of science. This is a Faith-Based path. No matter what anyone tells you, science relies on faith almost as much as religion relies on faith.
The Faith Based Path could lead one to accept that hundreds of systems across America could not all have been wrong and that the tallies were accurate because someone you trust told you they were. If you do not trust the poll counters, you will reject the decisions made by election boards and cling to the idea that Trump was cheated by liars and scoundrels. Either way it is a matter of faith.
Many of you reading this may remember the time when kids went to school by themselves. Saturday was a day for playing outside with your friends and your parents seldom carried a concealed weapon unless it was a paddle to spank your butt. Today, kids spend most days with helicopter parents, sanctioned after school sports leagues or at home playing video games. The sports field in our town of Frederic has a baseball field, volleyball court and four basketball courts. After twelve years of living in Frederic, I can only remember seeing a few volleyball games and baseball games played each summer. Most days, even when school was out, the baseball field and the volleyball field were deserted. The adjunct basketball courts were idle year-round. I do not ever remember seeing any kids playing a game on the basketball courts. 
I do not blame the victim for this “paranoia” for fear. We have a fear-based society where a paranoia for fear is hammered into us every day. Each day the radio, internet, TV, newspapers, and social media outlets blasts us with mind numbing stories that would scare Superwoman or Batman. It is no wonder that we have a fear-based society. We have a society that is not addicted to fear as much as it is fed fear. We eat a daily toxic brew of fear. A fear stew that is comprised of stories that seem horrible beyond comprehension. I could list a dozen from the past week, but what would be the point. You know them as well as I do. Whether they happened in Bangladesh, Spain, Mexico, or the USA, you will find out all about them in your local newspaper or evening cable news.
Aging Capriciously 