Political discussion thread

dtguitarfan wrote: thellama73 wrote: I will never take a Democrat's claim to be anti-war seriously again if they praised Obama's foreign policy. Obama is like Mr. Myagi. He is against war, but if you threaten him directly, or threaten one of his loved ones he WILL stand up to you.

Yes, because Libya was such a threat to us. They were basically the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

thellama73 wrote: "I favor legalizing same sex marriages" - Barack Obama, 1996 "I am not in favor of gay marriage" - Barack Obama, 2008 "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married" - Barack Obama, 2012 Those are opposite things. If you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and make excuses for his holding contradictory positions, you should be willing to do the same thing for Romney. Your refusal to admit that a politician you like has ever told one, single lie shows that you aren't able to view him objectively.

How odd that you see these as opposites. You can be in favour of legalising something without being in favour of it specifically - I favour legalizing cannabis and I think that cannabis users should be able to buy it openly, but I am not in favour cannabis (or it's dopey users).

thellama73 wrote: You guys are unbelievable. Fine, here's a list of 70 statements by Obama Politifact has rated false or pants on fire. Have fun apologizing and making excuses for every one of those and still insisting your precious leader is the first politician in history never to have told a lie.

Actually, I followed your link and found that there are 7 (not 70) completely false statements there by Mr. Obama. Still 7 too many, methinks.  

And here would be the link for pants on fire statements by Mr. Romney, from Politifact as well:

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mitt-romney/statements/byruling/pants-fire/

Wow, that's 18! 

Edited by Argonaught - November 04 2012 at 09:16

thellama73 wrote: You guys are unbelievable. Fine, here's a list of 70 statements by Obama Politifact has rated false or pants on fire. Have fun apologizing and making excuses for every one of those and still insisting your precious leader is the first politician in history never to have told a lie.

Romney comes off just as bad (or worse if you go by percentages) - however in both cases it would be stretching things to call any of those false or pants on fire comments by either of them as premeditated lies by your previous definition. For example did Ron Paul lie when he said gas prices had hit $6/gal, or was he fed false information, or was he cherry-picking?  

Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: You guys are unbelievable. Fine, here's a list of 70 statements by Obama Politifact has rated false or pants on fire. Have fun apologizing and making excuses for every one of those and still insisting your precious leader is the first politician in history never to have told a lie. Romney comes off just as bad (or worse if you go by percentages) - however in both cases it would be stretching things to call any of those false or pants on fire comments by either of them as premeditated lies by your previous definition. For example did Ron Paul lie when he said gas prices had hit $6/gal, or was he fed false information, or was he cherry-picking?   I'm all for kicking politicians, but let's kick them fairly.

Again, I never said Romney didn't lie. All politicians lie! I don't know how to make this any clearer. dtguitarfan is the one who refuses to admit that fundamental truth. Yes, let's kick them fairly by acknowledging that they both lie.

The percentage statistic is meaningless, because the statements chosen for evaluation are not a random sample. The vast majority of what a person says is true, so it is easy to alter the percentages based on which statements you give a rating to.

But that's not the point. The point is that I am not defending Mitt Romney or saying Obama is a worse liar than he is. I am saying that, if dtguitarfan's criteria for a bad president is one who lies, he also has to call Obama a bad president.

Of course people on both sides make slips of the tongue or have bad information. Of course they change their position for honest reasons. But they also say what they have to say to get elected. The claim that all of Romney's mistatements are lies while all of Obama's are honest mistakes paints the president as the single most misinformed leader in history and is blatantly partisan.

I will keep posting here until at least one Democrat admits that Obama has lied.
Why is that so hard? Just say it and we can move on.
No one in this thread has said Romney doesn't lie, but not one Obama supporter is willing to admit the same for their candidate.
I made "you guys" generalizations, because all the Obama supporters here are tacitly siding with Geoff's ridiculous claims, and instead attack my posts. Why don't you go after his nonsense as vigorously as you go after mine?
I am trying to be fair and even handed here. You and Geoff and Argonaut keep repeating the claim that Romney lies as much or more than Obama, a claim that nobody has disputed. There's no reason to keep repeating something that nobody is disputing.

What is disputed (by me and me alone), is the idea that every one of Obama's misstatements is just an honest mistake, and until someone is willing to admit otherwise, I will keep beating this drum.

Yes, Obama has lied.  All politicians lie to varying degrees.  Although, his statements about gay marriage were not contradictory, as one can be personally against something yet still think the act should not be prohibited by law. 

My admission of the fact that he has lied on occasion is probably not what you're looking for, as I"m a progressive first and a democrat only by default as neither of the two parties really represent my views.  Both are too far to the right. 

BTW, forget the economy, forget foreign policy, forget the debt and taxes.  I'm voting for whoever promises to end this travesty known as daylight savings time forever.  Finally recovered that hour that was so rudely stolen from us in March.


Edited by The Doctor - November 04 2012 at 10:11

Obama has lied.
Romney' lies are more troublesome to me.

My, what a fine display of rational thought this morning!

Claim:

Moral: the most dangerous thing to do is to elect a politician who is lying to you. Mitt Romney is a pathological liar. 'Nuff said.

What is implied then (especially in light of follow up statements in which the author defends Obama), is this: "Obama is not lying to us / is not a liar."

All the swift reminders that Romney has lied too in no way answers the objections to that implication.

Geoff may as well have said, "The most dangerous thing to do is elect a politician who is married.  Mitt Romney is married.  'Nuff said."



Edited by Epignosis - November 04 2012 at 11:32

Dean wrote: Is he pathologically married?

All married men are.