Those two quoted lines were actually written by me, not NotfooledbyW.
Ugh, back to taking multiple log-ins to post. 
Anyway, it must be a formatting error on his part then…it looked like his post, not quotes from you in his post. Sorry HA…my bad.
You make the false assumption that those who trust President Obama aren’t influenced by lies of another kind. For example, Obama claiming that the NSA programs are “transparent”.
The OP is exhibiting an incredible amount of denial.
Let me clue you all into something: unlike the citizenry, the government must prove it’s not corrupt. This administration has responded to every controversy by covering up rather than being transparent. Take the IRS thing: Now 47% of Americans believe that the White House ordered the targeting, as opposed to 37% last time CNN asked the question. Is there evidence of this? No. But the White House keeps on changing their story, keeps on slow walking investigations, and appear to be hiding things. So the public naturally figures there’s something important to find out since the White House doesn’t want us to know.
The FBI director doesn’t know who is in charge of the IRS criminal investigation, nor have any Tea Party groups been contacted as part of the investigation. Which would lead a reasonable person to wonder if there even is an investigation. A reasonable person would also be getting really suspicious about that.
There you go, that is what I am looking for. I want all of your suggested examples of Obama lying that could have contributed to his 8 point drop in honesty and trust numbers from mid-May to mid-June.
Oops! the ‘transparency lie’ was not mentioned until last Monday so there can be little connection to the poll I cited.
But what was this perceived ‘lie’ in context:
I believe he meant that there is oversight and review on this Secret for Security Reason program… But we’ll see in the coming days … perhaps Obama will further explain what he meant…
Many in the public are convinced that the US Government is ‘reading their emails’ and listening to content in phone conversations - OR WILL BE…
IS not the ‘will be’ a CT?
How many of you agree with the “WILL BE” CT that has gained so much traction with this Snowden as Whistleblower ‘so-called scandal’ then?
I’ll stick with Obama on this issue/controversy.
I for one am not ready to label this a scandal or accept that Obama lied when he said there was transparency in the program.
He is talking about judicial and congressional review and oversight that is already in place and he is talking about improving it.
I don’t think the NSA thing is a scandal either, at least not on the government’s part(Democratic voters suddenly supporting this thing is a scandal of another sort).
However, the President did lie when he said that everyone in Congress was briefed, either that or he just didn’t know what he was talking about. This President lies a lot, actually, and it was a wonder that voters thought he was trustworthy for this long.
So you admit that it’s unfounded.
Once again blaming everyone but the lying Congressional Republicans, I see.
Or a reasonable person could notice that Rep Issa has been dragging his feet about releasing the IRS transcripts, and when Cummings made good on his threat to release the key transcript from Cincinnati it showed that “the group manager centralized cases for consistency, the Cincinnati agent developed inappropriate screening criteria, the manager didn’t learn of the criteria until a year later, and perhaps most importantly, no witnesses have identified any White House involvement.”
Why aren’t you pointing the finger at Issa, especially after the Benghazi fiasco which ALSO involved the GOP lying in order to make Obama look bad? All you’re doing is proving NotFooledbyW’s unsubtly-made point, which is that the GOP’s mudflinging is starting to stick regardless of the truth of the matter.
It is unfounded to the extent that there is no evidence. It is well founded in that the administration responded by first trying to throw low level employees under the bus and then lying about whether high administration officials knew about it. Reasonable people would think there’s something more to hide.
The mudslinging isn’t sticking. They’ve been doing it for months to little effect. The voters tune the Republicans out on the scandalmongering. Guess who they don’t tune out? The media. And of course the administration itself constantly getting caught not telling the truth, omitting vital details, dribbling out damaging information slowly rather than just being transparent from the start.
On the IRS thing, they said, “Low level employees, we didn’t know nuthin’”. Then the media reports that well, that’s not true. Then the administration admits it’s not true, but only after being busted.
And once again, there’s no “innocent until proven guilty” when we’re talking about government. We provide stiff oversight of the government for a reason: because we know that that kind of power is corrupting and that corrupt individuals are drawn to it. So while we never put an individual in jail unless they are proven guilty, the public has no such qualms, and should have no such qualms, about believing their government is doing corrupt things. As a matter of fact, a government that responds to accusations by covering things up instead of being transparent should be assumed guilty. The Bill of Rights is for the people, not the government as an entity.
A couple of years ago a British satirical program called Brass Eye got a bunch of celebrities to say ridiculous things on camera while believing that they were producing PSAs on various causes. One of the most well-known of these was radio DJ Neil Fox explaining, in all earnestness, that “pedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me”, with the pay-off line “Now that is scientific fact — there’s no real evidence for it — but it is scientific fact”.
Your comments above remind me of this in the sheer ridiculousness of it all. You admit that we have no evidence for it, but seem to think that not responding to the lies in the manner you think he should have is somehow a worse sin than telling the lies in the first place. Does that sound like the thought process of a “reasonable person” to you?
You keep saying that but - wait for it - you’ve got no evidence for it.
That’s an interesting interpretation of events.
And yet you only seem bothered by the behavior of the Obama administration and not the more openly egregious behavior of Congress. I’ve having a hard time accepting this whole “I’m just holding our public servants accountable” schtick when you’re blatantly ignoring or handwaving away everything anyone with an “(R)” after their name does. Every twitch of Obama is amplified into a guilty tremor; every falsehood from (to belabor a point) Issa is simply glossed over. Reasonable people would wonder if you’re really arguing in good faith.
Congress isn’t DOING things, they are saying things. It’s not even in the same league as the administration targeting political enemies and then stonewalling.
And apparently that stonewalling isn’t evidence of guilt. But reasonable people might disagree.
Admittedly we don’t yet know if it was anyone associated with Congress who altered the Benghazi emails, but if “stonewalling” is “doing something” then why is refusing to release the transcripts which would go a long way towards clearing up who ordered what in the IRS case not “doing something”?
Reasonable people might not categorize it as “stonewalling” in the first place.
Why not? Information is only coming out as fast as the media can uncover it. That’s not transparency, that’s covering things up and only conceding what they did as the media finds out what they did. Such as the White House not knowing about the IRS targeting, until the press found out that they did.
Or Congress not knowing about the IRS targetting, until the press found out that they did?
Congress is in the quasi-enviable position of being hated like ringworm by the general public, which means that they have no reputation at stake and nothing to lose. This means they can indulge in boorish, deceptive tactics and not take a measureable hit over it; the same isn’t true of the Obama Administration.
How do you, as an individual thinker, know when an, incident, mistake, crime, controversy has achieved sufficient public mass for you personally to decide in your own mind that something such as the Republican mistake in Cincinnati should be labeled a scandal instead of must likely what it was, a mistake?
This is not about the definition of a scandal per se, it is about when an individual like you or I recognize a certain public mass also deciding as individuals that it is a scandal now.
Perhaps my threshold for calling this incident a scandal based on Obama’s wrong doing has not been satisfied with any basis in evidence so I decline to use the term as you and others hsvevwith less concern for proof as I require.
Do you not believe the NSA controversy should be called an Obama scandal or should it be called that any time soon. People are calling it a scandal, but is it not enough public mass on that one for you?
When the wiser heads here on SDMB say it is. I won’t name names, but I’m thinking of the regulars, the standard-bearers, the ones whose posts you can depend on for truthiness. Aw, heck, when Tomndebb says it is.
Notfooled, I know you’re not fooled by administration stonewalling. There’s no evidence because the administration won’t come clean. They are hiding things because they have things to hide.
The public didn’t turn on Obama at first. Dopers were crowing about how his approval ratings were unaffected. The public was giving the administration the benefit of the doubt. But now weeks later, we’re finding out that there isn’t really any effort to get to the bottom of anything. The administration just won’t reliably investigate itself. Which tells the public that there is something they are hiding.
THe IG audit never led to an investigation. The audit itself never uncovered who ordered the profiling. The lame response from the Inspector General? “They wouldn’t tell me.” Oh, well investigation closed then, they refused to rat anyone out! Shulman actually was told who ordered the profiling, but he didn’t recall who it was.
The administration needs to come clean on this and other issues. The longer the public waits for answers, the more his approval will drop.
Let me guess, another CNN poll uh?
Shoot, it was.
What I find particularly amusing is that, having been forced to abandon the position that “there is an actual scandal”, we have now moved on to “maybe there’s no scandal but if the public think there’s a scandal even though there’s no scandal, there’s a scandal, and it’s still Obama’s fault for not stopping the public for jumping to the wrong conclusions”.
Gigobuster, that’s not really true
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
The average of polls shows a definite drop in approval.
Gyrate, all the President has to do is come clean and stop dribbling out information only as the press busts him. As long as his Press Secretary refuses to give straight answers, as long as administration officials fail to recall who did what, and as long as the President pleads incompetence in the face of it all, his approval will continue to fall.