Those of you who support Gore: I want you to defend supporting such a compulsive liar! This man lies about everything, and some of his lies are down right retarded!
(Have any of you seen the Snickers commercial? Hillarious!!:p)
How can you support a man who lies, lies, lies, LIES ALL THE TIME!! 
If you agree with his position on the issues, what if he’s lying about what he’ll actually do! How can you cast a vote for a man that lies almost every single day? Justify this!
Sometimes the best defense is a good offense…
That being said… ::ahem::
Well, look at BUSH! The guy occasionally flubs a word, which is a clear indicator that he’s mentally deficient!!
You’ve know of a politcian whose been honest? Did you read Al Franken’s bit on political apocryphal stories? (from 'Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot)
Reagan told some whoppers. Bush told some whoppers. Clinton made it an art form. Gore’s told a few. You think Dubya hasn’t?
Tell us some specific things that Gore has said that you think are lies and then we’ll know what you’re talking about.
It’s not clear to me that Gore has told any lies or been obviously and intentionally deceptive. In fact, he strikes me as being a little TOO forthcoming, relative to typical politicians. As with any political candidate, there are a lot more things that are attributed to Gore than he actually said. For instance, Al Gore never said he invented the internet. Wired magazine said Al Gore said he invented the internet. However, what Al Gore actually said was that he established legislative initiatives that supported the internet while he was in congress (a verifiable fact). Wired twisted the words into the now-infamous claim. It makes for good press, but not particularly responsible reporting…
As for general intelligence, it’s no contest. Al Gore is one of the smartest people we’ve ever had in politics in this country. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t know. Why he would waste his time in politics, I don’t know that either. However, Bush is neither a savvy politician nor a particularly bright businessman and what he knows about technology wouldn’t fill the backside of his business card. He is one hellava fund raiser, though…
Being a Texan I can say that the little hands on ‘Governing’ that Bush has actually undertaken in Texas has been mostly an embarassment and I’m kind of thankful that he’s been distracted by the Presidential race so that competent officials can run the show in his absence.
When he told those anecdotes during the debate, it reminded me of Raegan doing that way back when.
Oferchrisake.
Here pkbites. Read this and this and then check here for “Gore + lies”, and then maybe you’ll be a bit more informed than you were before, m’kay?
Slate has a good article on political lies. My favorite part refers to the media’s penchant for assigning one attribute to each candidate, then only reporting facts (or rumors/ULs) that support that attribute. Gore is a liar, Bush is a dumbass, Lieberman is a religious fanatic, etc.
All politicians lie. It is part of the job. Gore’s fabrications sometimes make me cringe, but it’s probably partly because the press is hitting them so hard. In the end, I know whoever becomes president will be a liar, so I might as well vote for the guy who allows that an atheist could be president, and who would appoint liberal Supreme Court Justices.
It’s a crappy choice, but what can you do when most Americans will vote for someone who tells them he’ll lower their taxes while increasing government services to them? People demand lies, and that’s what they get.
Whether or not Gore intentionally lies, intentionally exagerates, or is just simply misunderstood in what he attempts to say (I think it is a combination of all three, BTW), the man has a problem. There is barely a word out of his mouth that one group or another feels they have to fact check. Increasingly it’s his own campaign, and the left-friendly press that look into it. As far back as his campaign for president in '88, his own campaign had to warn him about his ‘embellishments’.
There is a credibility problem when nothing he says can be taken at face value. He either needs to back up what he says with facts, or his supporters need to explain what he really meant. Think about it in terms of this board. If someone came in here saying half the stuff Gore has been caught lying or exagerating about, he’d have been hounded like no one since HWSBN (isn’t that how he’s referred to now?) in the SD-Pounder fiasco. Everyone here is held to a level of accountability for the words they post, yet there are so many here who don’t want to hold the man who would be placed in the highest office in the land to any level of accountability for his words.
We’ve already had 8 years of someone who can’t be trusted at his word, we don’t need more.
Where to start, where to start? AerySun was most recent so I guess that I’ll start there…
You acknowledge that he’s a liar, but will vote for him because he says that an atheist could become president? The implication is that you don’t want an atheist for a president.
And it’s not a crappy choice. Both Kennedy and Reagan cut taxes, increasing federal revenue which made more federal programs affordable.
Good score, xeno. Here’s another extensive piece from salon that destroys the myth that Gore flubbed the story about the girl with no desk in Sarasota.
People like pkbites amuse me. Two days after the debate, the stories surface that Gore’s anecdotes are untrue. Instead of waiting another couple of days to see if those follow-up stories are themselves accurate, people just assume that the media must have gotten it right the first time.
I mean, it’s not like {cough}[sub]Jon Benet Ramsey[/sub]{cough} initial media reports are ever unverified rushes to judgment {cough}[sub]Arabs responsible for Oklahoma City Bombing[/sub]{cough} or that the media might ever be wrong {cough}[sub]Richard Jewel[/sub]{cough}or anything…
…when later administrations recovered from their financial stupidity. Cheney didn’t think that Reaganomics made federal programs more affordable when he systematically voted down nearly every federal program that crossed his desk, especially the minimal HeadStart legislation.
MR
The mental image I get here is the Far Side panel with the genius kid trying to open the door for the “Midvale School for the Gifted.” Sometimes one can be so smart that one becomes very, very stupid.
I’ve heard that Gore is smart, but he doesn’t act smart. He was a mediocre student, at best. More important for a politician, he certainly doesn’t learn from his mistakes. A smart politician would have listened to his campaign managers back in '88 when they told him to knock off the exaggerations.
Not only that, but a smart politician would learn from his mistakes in illegal campaign fundraising. He first did it in his first congressional campaign. Not only did he not learn from it, after claiming to support nearly every campaign finance reform bill over the past 15 years he was part and party in the worst abuses of campaign finance laws in the '96 campaign.
I’d say Gore’s statement regarding atheists is reliable to an extent, since it is really against his interest to say it. He’s going to alienate a lot more people with sympathy for non-believers than he’ll attract. Most non-believers interested in SOCAS issues will vote for him anyway. I notice you didn’t dispute my comment on Supreme Court appointments - that alone wins my vote in any case.
As for your second statement, please explain to me how cutting taxes creates greater federal revenues. I don’t mean that sarcastically, I really am interested in how that could possibly be.
I didn’t look back at who actually said this, but the answer is actually pretty simple. When the tax burden is lowered - especially on capital gains on invenstments and such, people are more willing to cash them in knowing they’ll have a more left over. But, by cashing them in, they still pay taxes. When more people cash in more investments and pay taxes on those investments, the tax revenue goes up.
This is what happened under both Reagan and Kennedy’s tax cuts. People and corporations were sitting on money knowing that it was not advantageous to move it. Once their tax burden was lowered, they felt it was advantageous to move it, and at the same time creating tax revenue on it.
There is another aspect too. When corporations tax burden is lowered, they have more money to expand their businesses. When they expand, they hire more people. Those people pay taxes.
vanilla:
A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.
Precisely! I’m urging all my liberal friends to vote Nader.
MKM, I find your reasoning to be highly simplistic, but I admit that the sheer volume of our economy and the myriad of factors that determine its course make this matter extremely difficult for anyone other than Alan Greenspan to debate. But I do feel the need to add my .02.
Lowering the taxes does not necessarily generate revenue for several reasons. When corporations move large amounts of money, they do so in as expedient a fashion as possible, exploiting every possible loophole. If the income generated on the transfer of capital were high enough, we would not need federal income tax in the first place. No matter how much money is unloaded into various economic concerns, the government is never going to excise what it feels to be its fair due. Hence there is taxation in other areas.
Furthermore, even if your argument were the truth, remember that the newly generated income from the transfer of funds does not happen overnight. But the government still needs capital to maintain this country. So when taxes are cut in the expectation of future gain, the government must borrow enormous amounts of money to maintain its existing budget.
Although I think the jury is still out on the precise relationship between foreign debt and inflation, to me it doesn’t look good. This anticipated income is used to pay for past expenses (plus interest) while the government must continue to borrow to maintain its current needs. Our national credit rating declines, and the dollar becomes less valuable overseas, resulting in a lower return on international investments. Ergo, less US tax revenue is generated from such transactions.
MR
Yes, it is a simplistic answer, I admit that. But its the best explanation I could come up with in words of what happened. Those things all did happen. Much more was involved, to be sure, but I was purposely trying to be simplistic.