This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The Washington Post newspaper has showed up with a list of the most egregious lies told by political figures in the last year.

The story, labeled “The biggest Pinocchios of 2022,” was reported by the Post’s Fact Checker column writers and editors.

Reading the list reminds that the lies were so profound that no one would likely believe them.  Right?  Well, no.  Many Americans do.

No surprise here, but presidential aspirant Donald Trump, U.S.Senator Ron Johnson and media wacko Tucker Carlson made the list.

But topping the list?  Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.  He got the “special hypocrisy” award from the Post – for this:

“Mark Meadows, as Trump’s last chief of staff, helped spread Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and fanned fears of voter fraud.  He asked in one interview:  “Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with people just moving around?”

“But the Fact Checker revealed that in 2022, he was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina.  He lost his North Carolina registration after the New Yorker magazine reported he had registered to vote at a home where he did not reside. He then voted in the 2020 election via absentee ballot.

“In November, state investigators submitted to state prosecutors the findings of a voter fraud probe into Meadows’s actions but the state’s attorney general has not yet announced whether he will bring criminal charges.”

Meadows, like Trump, has talked incessantly about election crimes.  He was guilty of one himself.

I have heard of duplicity, but this tops the list.