The key word there is ‘if’. Not saying she is the brightest bulb in the factory, but my default position is that if the person in question is a politician then don’t attribute to ignorance when hyperbole is an option. To me the ‘death panels’ thing is pure hyperbole, though I have no doubt that, like insurance companies, governments who run their own health care have to make some decisions about who does or doesn’t get the finite resource.
Who’s defending him? Just because you feel the comparison is invalid doesn’t mean that it’s okay for Obama to straight out lie about what McCain “wants.” McCain was quite clear about what he wants. You can disagree all you like. I disagree as well, frankly. But at least I can admit when someone I generally support perpetuates a falsehood. Why can’t you?
I guess I just don’t follow what you would consider a lie.
The sun rises in the west comment isn’t a good comparison, because it is a phrase that draws upon a common cliche to call others untruthful, whereas “sickos drop dead” has no similar associations. It also wasn’t a joke, since it doesn’t seem funny and pointed in the way “noun, verb, 9/11” does. The comment wasn’t a work of fiction (like an SNL skit or something) produced for entertainment value. It didn’t seem to be satire, like “let’s eat orphans,” because his speech wasn’t clever and had minimal subtext (he pretty much said it all). Had he restricted his comments to the Republican health care plan being a blank paper (which he said several times in the same speech) I would say that’s a metaphor. But he went on to make up something entirely untrue for no other apparent reason than to incite and inflame the debate. So, I put that comment squarely in the lie category.
I’m really at a loss for what can be considered a lie if we take it to be so devoid of facts that it is no longer a lie. Being totally devoid of believability doesn’t make it NOT a lie, it makes it an outrageous lie. Why aren’t “death panels” so patently unbelievable that we shouldn’t just disregard Palin’s comments as not-a-lie?
Start a thread about Republican lies about Democrats, and you’ll get the same unwillingness from some on the right to accept any lies in the same way we’re seeing the left defend the Dems here. The standard seems to be have set way to high.
I can’t imagine any election in which both candidates don’t end up telling some lie about the other. Call it an exageration or sarcasm or whatever, buy it’s still a lie.
I agreed that McCain didn’t say he wants 100 years of war.
Already on it!
I did. My exact words were “He didn’t say he wanted 100 years of war, true, but I think he’d be okay with 100 years of uncontested conquest.” I posted not to defend Obama, but to disagree with the claim that McCain wanted peace. All he said was he wanted no American casualties. At no point have I said Obama didn’t lie. What I disagreed with is the idea that McCain wants peace in Iraq.
McCain explicitly said it would be budget neutral, and explicitly said that it would make a $1.2 trillion cut, and explicitly said that it would not cut benefits. You’re saying it is permissible to disregard the claim of budget neutrality, but not permissible to disregard the claim that it would not cut benefits. I see absolutely no rationale for that distinction.
To me, it seems much more sensible to say that when three statements are inconsistent, an opponent may in good faith disregard that which he deems most likely to be false.
Why does he have to believe it uncritically? Why isn’t is sufficient that he accepts their arguments? And did Obama actually say what you quote him as saying? Because that’s a bit different from what factcheck reported, but I don’t have the transcript of the ad in front of me.
Says you. You’ve made no argument for why it was not in good faith.
I told you what I believe. I think the Obama team agreed with the CAP analysis in good faith, but decided not to cite CAP. I further think that the language “X plan would do Y” is misleading, and perhaps deliberately so. (Though I’m now not sure they used that language based on the quote you offered above.)
In short, I disagree that citing the WSJ was in some way improper, and that any impropriety is in the lack of citation to CAP and in the weasel wording used.
I’m amazed at your puzzlement. I know from other threads you are intelligent so I am genuinely surprised at this blind spot as these two hardly merit comparison.
Yes, I agree, Grayson was not truthful in the words he uttered. Thing is Grayson himself would admit as much and did. In later interviews he said, “What I mean is they [Conservatives] have got no plan.” That actually is not correct either but the conservative health care proposal was pathetic. Whether that was just loose language on his part (i.e. “they have a plan but it sucks so bad may as well be no plan”) or he really did not know they had put forward a plan I cannot say (I would certainly hope he knew it).
FactCheck.Org calls his statement “iffy” and points out the falsity where it is. PolitiFact.Com does not even list this statement of Grayson’s.
Now compare that to Palin. She is touting a thoroughly debunked notion and is doing so repeatedly despite its debunking. Jon Stewart destroyed Betsy McCaughey on this and both Politifact and Factcheck ranked it as the biggest lie-of-the-year.
I guess there is a continuum in lying. If you ask me what we are doing tomorrow and I say “nothing” when in reality I have a surprise party planned for you I suspect, while it is a lie on my part, you will not be fussed by it. If you ask me if I ran over your dog and I say “no” when in fact I did then I think you have a capital “L” lie on your hands and would care a lot.
Grayson = Lie but one he would admit was not strictly the truth. I think he would claim hyperbole to illustrate his point. Fair? Judgment call on that. Misrepresentation of the other side? Yes but not miles off the mark.
Palin = Lie and a willful one. A lie that has been disproven at every turn yet a lie she continues to peddle as truth.
Not if there isn’t an American occupation involved, no. I have little faith in the good intentions of Republicans regarding Iraq. The Bush Administration soured me somewhat.
Which conflates malice with stupidity. I quite believe that the Bushivik fantasies about Iraq were entirely real and tangible to them, they believed it, they believed that we would be greeted as liberators, and we could transform Iraq into a free-market paradise just like the miracle of the Soviet Union. The gratitude of the Iraqi people would be so total and universal, they would rush at the chance to be our best friend forever,and positively giddy with joy at the prospect of permanent American bases there.
Yes, I think that’s exactly what they thought was going to happen.
You people are conflating exaggeration for effect with lying. During the primaries the dems savaged each other with attacks that would not withstand scrutiny. It is done in politics. The truth is bent and warped to make sure a political point is not ignored or downgraded. Is it lying to say McCain wanted to pursue a policy that is not unlike the Korean policy that has resulted in a half century of occupation. Then to say it might last 100 years. What if it lasted 90 years? Would that make the statement a lie?
McCain didn’t say he wanted the war to continue for 100 years, regardless of what we think he wants. I’m not apologizing for him, I don’t especially care to see bases enduring in Iraq for one more year, let alone 100. But he didn’t say he wanted the war to last 100 years. I certainly don’t get the impression Obama was lying about this Republican ad absurdum in the mode of the Bush Administration’s fearmongering over Iraq or the blatant mudslinging of campaign ads or Fox News, but Obama was certainly wrong.
I don’t know exactly what McCain said about the 100 year period, but Obama did refer twice to McCain’s “100 years of war.” Then he denied that he had said it that way. Whether or not he was just mistaken about what he said or intentionally lying, I do not know. I think he would have been foolish to lie since everything he says is taped and he knows that.
At any rate, this counts against the Democrats.
The Democrats’ ad about funding for troops was misleading. The funds weren’t actually delayed and it wasn’t the final vote that the Republicans voted against. 33 Republicans voted against cutting off their filibuster and that delayed the final vote. The Democrats aren’t dumb though. They knew the difference and their ad was misleading. Thumbs down for the Democrats on this one too.
Two lies about Republicans in all these years. Not bad. But they don’t have to lie. Democrats just watch how the Republicans behave and vote and speak and then take notes. There is enough material there to last for several campaigns.
Like Bork. The little detail that I remember most about him was that when he bought the property where he lived, he signed an agreement in the deed never to sell the property to a black person. The devil with his legal views!
I think you’re confusing Bork with Rehnquist, who’s vacation home in Vermont had a restrictive covenant saying that the home couldn’t be sold to Jews or blacks. To be fair, to him, the covenant was no longer enforceable, and it wasn’t Rehnquist’s idea. It was an existing covenant dating back to …he claimed that he just didn’t notice the provision when he signed the closing documents. And he’s certainly not the only politician whose house had a provision like that in its contract. People as diverse as George Bush, Richard Nixon, Joe Biden, and Dianne Feinstein have owned houses with restrictive covenants.
I have to admit, I didn’t really read the closing papers on my house either. Probably irresponsible, but those docs are boring as shit. I wonder what percentage of people really read them thoroughly.
If I’m smart and I don’t understand what you’re saying, have you considered that you may not be advancing a very good argument?
As I read it, FactCheck called Grayson’s STATISTICS iffy, not his “die quickly” remark. They clearly state in the first paragraph that the Republican plan introduced two months before the speech did not include getting people to die quicker.
Yes, there are white lies to protect people’s feelings, and lies to cover one’s ass. But Grayson’s lie wasn’t a white lie, it was exactly the opposite. It was in the category of lies intended to hurt, anger, or insult other people - even if they are Republicans.
Okay, so it was a lie. I guess, after all that, we agree that Grayson lied, and also that other people have told bigger lies, and still others have told smaller lies.
It’s basically just ribald partisanship. Tiresome. Yes, I’m one to talk. Anyway, too much off-the-cuff style exaggeration gets called “lying.” To me, that’s just really silly.
People’s tin-eared loyalty to politicians and political parties just astounds me.