The worn out, far-too-common claim that 'both sides' are equally to blame for everything can be disproved when we finally admit that one of those sides fabricates their own facts and propagates lies exclusively. When we hear of this "aisle" that has "two sides," we think about what differentiates Liberals from Conservatives. That is, provably not the case. The truth is utterly trivial to the Republicans, they lie effortlessly and likely don't even care if they're caught. They own the media, and can spin it any way they'd like. It is a FACT: the GOP is fully involved in fraud, malice aforethought, or any unethical tactic that will advance their agenda.
When you look at the track record of a particularly unpleasant creature like Kansas Representative Mike Pompeo, it's easy to see he is quite the connoisseur of fallacy. Ironically, he sits on the House Committee on Intelligence, but is devoid of any intellect when making laws that usually hurt the same Republican voters who were duped into putting him into office.
It is a well-known fact that the Iran Deal, which succeeded in curtailing the Iranian nuclear program (among other benefits for the US), had conditions which included returning the money that we collected for armaments they never received, thanks to the 1979 hostage crisis which severed diplomacy between our two nations. This money had to be repaid.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
The repayment, which settles a suit brought under an international legal tribunal, is separate from the tens of billions of dollars in frozen foreign accounts that Iran can now access after the end of nuclear sanctions.
The Obama Administration, after seven years of Republican treachery, knew that the Republican traitors would try to make a false assumption that this was ransom. But there's nothing they can do, because they will always take the low road to profit politically. They will always lie, lie and lie some more.
Therefore, we have to entertain, in perpetuity, that this ransom claim has legs. The host of the show actually came to the right conclusion, eventually. Had he begun with this statement from the end of the segment, this whole pointless discussion with this pompous, disrespectful liar could have been avoided.
RICHARD LUI: the $1.7 billion that is originally Iranian money for a certain transaction with the United States that never came to fruition, so it's a return of that money, therefore not a ransom. Because it is not U.S. taxpayer money.
What actually drove this crazy train from the starting line was the host who actually asked Pompeo for his interpretation of the State Department briefing, and wouldn't you know it? Pompeo's accusations point the finger at the "lawless" President Obama, who else? The quote below actually reads more pleasant than it sounds. It is so upsetting, the unprecedented disrespect President Obama has endured.
POMPEO: This was radically different from what President of the United States told us for months. Back in January, the president talked about this transaction and then again, recently he condescendingly spoke to the nation and said we didn't pay ransom. There it was, State Department admitting $400 million would not have left the United States had their not be prisoners released. Pull out a dictionary, any ordinary definition of ransom would read exchange of value for release of hostages. That's what happened here. The president lied to the American people about the fact there was a ransom payment made for the release of the four American hostages.
You'd never know that Pompeo knows the truth, because he's so silver tongued with his self-righteous assertions. But Republicans like Mike Pompeo want more than the rebuke of the Democratic POTUS, they want him impeached, imprisoned and ineffective. So he fabricates a criminal charge that the administration broke the LAW.
POMPEO: The illegal part of the transaction, the transfer of U.S. Assets to the Islamic Republican of Iran. That happened here, we have to figure out exactly who did it, why they did it and who authorized it.
Lui reaffirmed that Pompeo's premise of the assets being U.S. taxpayers' monies was false, but the Kansas Republican's evidence is sufficient. It's simply his opinion that the truth is just not true, and no one will ask for any facts to back that up.
You can expect more costly investigations while Congress neglects the CDC's plea for funds to curtail a Zika outbreak, for example. If the Republicans didn't own the majority of mass media, they would look so inferior to their Democratic political rivals and no one would elect them. Reagan and his cohorts were pretty damned diabolically brilliant to totally revamp the FCC and do away with the Fairness Doctrine. Why should we be fair. Republicans surely aren't.
If both sides are equally at fault, does the side that gets its sustenance from treachery and deception equally share the blame with the side that is far more honest? There's no way that could be possible, unless we all eschew reality and defect over to the Dark Side. Lying misanthropes in the party of dishonesty are completely to blame. Period.
