I would say that purveying falsehoods is far worse than being mean to your opponent. If you want to be cerebral, you should first focus on accuracy.
A blatant lie that makes its way into Romney’s speeches is that Obama started his Presidency by apologizing for America. When asked to substantiate it - you know, offer evidence - the campaign doesn’t. But Romney repeats the lie anyway. Most politicians stretch the truth, but Romney is unusually dishonest, alas. And the press won’t call him on it.
Doesn’t that last paragraph sound shrill? But what if it’s accurate? Would it be cerebral to replace “lie” with “inaccuracy”? Actually no: euphemism doesn’t fight ignorance, though politeness can.
greenslime: Civility is over-rated but not unimportant. But if you really want to raise the quality of discussion, you have to be willing to dig into the details. That means mucking around with citations. If a candidates numbers don’t add up (eg Ryan’s 2010 budget) that’s a technical claim that requires a little investigation. So it’s inappropriate to eschew citations while calling for civility: it gets the priorities wrong.
That Soptic’s wife didn’t have health insurance after Bain shut down GST Steel. In fact, she remained with health insurance until two years after her husband lost his job at Bain, because she remained employed (not by any company related to Bain), according to Soptis.
That there was a causal link between the shutting down of GST Steel and Soptic’s wife’s death from cancer. She was actually diagnosed in 2006, and had had health insurance from her own employer in 2002-03. There’s no particular reason to think that Soptic would still have been employed five years later had the plant not been shut down in 2001 (factories are usually shut down for good reasons, including no longer being efficient).
That Romney was the driving force behind the plant’s shutdown. In 2001, as Romney has repeatedly explained, he was no longer responsible for the day-to-day operation of Bain. He was the nominal CEO but was not involved in management after 1999, when he left to help manage the SLC Olympics.
Soptic’s wife wasn’t killed by Bain or Romney, but from her own refusal to disclose her worsening symptoms to her own husband, for fear that their finances wouldn’t be able to handle the cost of treatment. Heartrending, to be sure, but hardly a direct Romney-Bain-Death link; even uninsured, the Soptises would still have had options, and if Mrs. Soptis had visited a doctor when she first noticed symptoms, her cancer might have been easily treated (Soptis doesn’t elaborate on this in the ad).
I heartily disagree. Without civility, any debate is worse than pointless. If you’re going to have a reasoned discussion, there have to be some ground rules, such as that neither side will call the other an evil, insane asshole.
Much as I dislike the sometimely overly zealous meddling of the moderators here, with them and the rules they (unevenly) impose, these boards would be like the chimpanzee cage at the zoo, with everyone screeching and throwing feces at one another.
Edit: The constant calling for citations is often more a manifestation of chimpanzee mode than anything else; it’s just another form of screeching.
They don’t because it’s easily accessible in the public record for anyone who was too ashamed for Obama to actually remember it.
I do remember it, and I was disgusted as Obama kowtowed before leader after leader after despot after nutjob, expessing shame for our evil actions. But as I noted before, the apologies weren’t sincere; they were a continuation of his campaign tactic of tarring GWB with the blackest possible brush (“Don’t worry, I won’t be as big of a jerk as that guy was.”).
Nope, specially when one side brings cites to support what they say. What me and many others notice is just a clear lack of support for what you claim.
The ROmney campaign should respond to the challenges about Obama’s apology tour by just playing the segments they interpret to be apologies and let the public decide. I felt that Obama was apologizing for America as well, although it was kinda justified.
Heritage has listed what they consider the top 10 apologies:
we can disagree on whether these constitute apologies or not, but it is just not a lie to think that he does this.
I call it the “nukular” syndrome: Liberals define what is truth, and any disagreement with that view is tantamount to dishonesty, bad faith, and general malevolence. Why do I call it the “nukular” syndrome? After liberals’ constant attacks on GWB for supposedly mispronouncing “nuclear”, and calling that obvious evidence of his stupidity. Problem is, not only does Merriam Webster recognize it as legitimate, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, being southerners, also used the “Nucular” pronunciation.
Likewise, liberals define truth and then define all challenges to that truth as lies. It’s common to nearly all the top liberal bloggers and is a syndrome found on all the major discussion boards I’ve seen.
And coming from a partisan source like the Heritage that is not impressive at all,
Politifact, that does criticism to both sides also look at them and they are not really apologies, frankly it is what one can see when politicians that do claim to make an apology do. Many do laugh at the politicians claiming that they did apologized for something when they just report that mistakes were made.
I never, ever, ever, ask for a cite. You know why? They almost never cut through bullshit, they add to it. If a fact catches my eye and doesn’t sound kosher, I research it myself. The request for a cite is motivated 99% of the time by the poster not liking the fact. The provided cite doesn’t generally get the poster to like or accept the fact any better, and tends to make the debate descend into a linking war with ad hominem attacks on sources and appeals to authority.
Besides, anyone who has debated politics or science or whatever before the internet age should recognize that internet cites aren’t exactly the most reliable way to cut through crap. They can contribute to each side’s arguments, but they do not settle or cut through anything.
See, I agree with everything Politifact says up until “Pants on fire”. I recall many liberals praising Obama’s speeches on exactly the same grounds as conservatives hating them, until it became a political hot potato and the talking points had to change.
Nah, I learned on this board that Jimmy Carter used that pronunciation, and it was not because the use of the pronunciation showed Bush was stupid, it was that some posters suspected that Bush was even faking that pronunciation, (I still think that Bush had huge street smarts, but not much else), in any case most here thought it was a very very lame item to criticize the president; so, so much for your “syndrome”
Here in the Rhenus Sports Arena in Strasbourg, I’ve just witnessed what is surely a very important – I hesitate to say historic – moment in transatlantic relations. Barack Obama went further than any previous president in apologising for American behaviour.
And the response of the blogger linking to that story:
I’m having a very hard time trying to maintain an iota of cynicism about this man.
greenslime: Compare post 124 (yours) with post 127 (adaher’s). You delivered a set of memories: adaher gave me a cite. If I was your Mom, your therapist or your parole officer I might be interested in your perceptions of the world. But if we’re interested in fighting ignorance, such subjective stuff is just twaddle.
Now Heritage is a notoriously partisan operation. But at least now we have something we can affirm or refute. Citations are key: they aren’t just ways of tripping your adversary up.
OBTW: I read a couple of the Heritage examples and I found them laughable. The words, “Sorry”, “Apologize” and “Regret” never appeared in any of the quotes. They did sound like Obama though: he likes to express empathy with his audience before delivering a challenging remark. Heritage presented half of that.
All the same, now I have an idea about what the hell the wingers were talking about. So a tip of the hat to adaher.
The other benefit of the cite is that they encourage posters to be constrained by fact, rather than just spouting whatever horsepucky materializes in their head.
Nonsense. Cato has more credence than a blogger. The Economist has more credence than Cato, though the former quotes the latter. And primary source material such as statutes and regs can be best of all.
Sure, if the cite is a primary source, but how often is that? Most disputed facts are from studies or analyses of basic data, like the Nutting cite that claims Obama spent less than any President since Eisenhower. Needless to say, that cite does not cut through anything, it further confuses people.
As for me providing that cite, it really shouldn’t have been necessary. Is there anyone here unaware of the gist of Obama’s speeches, especially the ones most cited as apologies? And did my cite really clarify anything? Greenslime remembered what he remembered, I remembered the same thing, and I think you remembered the same thing, you just took away something different from it than we did.
If we have a debate over what exactly the President said off mic to the Russians over having more flexibility we’ll run into the same issue.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, are the words that made the loons apopleptic:
Obama wasn’t apologizing for America. He was laying a marker down: the days of boneheaded chickenhawk posturing were over. No longer would those who love war -up to the point of participating in it on the field- no longer would they run US policy. It will be replaced by an America that doesn’t shirk from tough-minded analysis. So out with color coded alert hysteria. Instead, we will combine quiet intelligence with a ruthless focus on those who have actually attacked America. And so Bin Laden was slain.
The wingers can’t handle this of course: so they make things up.
And the context follows what Politifact reported, once again a non apology, just a change in policy and a blame to the past administration, that as also Politifact noticed, also “apologized” when needed, and this does remains a very silly point.
I think it’s fair to say the argument is wrong, but hardly phony, and saying that it’s phony makes those who read or heard those words and think he was apologizing more stiff-necked in their view. Portraying something that is merely wrong as a lie causes those who believe the wrong thing to see an attempt to delegitimize a view they regard as not only legitimate, but correct, and makes them think that the mainstream media is trying to cover for the President.
While we’re on the subject of cites, I nominate this statement as the most said thing that is never supported by cites, yet accepted as fact even though it’s probably very wrong:
All very, very true. “CITE CITE CITE!!!” is just another way of saying, “I disagree with you, but I’m too lazy to state a cogent reason why.” I also agree with you that you won’t change the cite-chimpanzee’s mind no matter what you cite.
I also agree that internet cites are worthless anyway as you can selectively mine the immense load of crap out there to support almost any position. So all you’ll get is a chimp-screech: “Well, that cite’s bullshit!” because it, like your post, won’t agree with the chimp. Pointless exercise.
