It turns out that the actual number is 3%, a mere rounding error of 87%. But it was presented to the American people and enshrined in the Senate Record as a means of arguing that Planned Parenthood should be entirely defunded in the current budget.
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The news wasn't that Kyl made a mistake; it was his staff essentially acknowledging that in the current hyper-partisan environment, facts are a secondary concern, even on the floor of the U.S. Senate, even when they are paraded as statistics. The important thing is to scare the hell out of people so that they remember your political point and pass it on.
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In this absurd spin cycle, there's one dependable place to look for sanity: satire. And on cue came Stephen Colbert, who took Kyl's statement as a challenge and dialed it up to 11. Using the Twitter hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement, Colbert unleashed a steady stream of Jon Kyl mistruths with the requisite denial. Among my favorites:
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No wonder "people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke," as Will Rogers once said and Colbert increasingly embodies. But we can't keep depending on comedians to be the voices of sanity.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/15/avlon.kyl.truth/index.html?hpt=Sbin
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