So you, like Lord Ashtar, think all lies are equivalent?
No. Kerry’s ad discussed Bush’s plan. The onyl way you can turn this around is to show that Bush is lying. You can’t say, “Oh, Bush is a liar.” You must provide the evidence. Evidence is not inchoate accusations of lying. It’s a demonstrated difference between two sets of facts. Your argument relies on Bush being a known liar, and invites us to conclude that he is therefore lying about this issue – and, moreover, is lying in exactly the way that Kerry’s ad claimed his position would be.
Kerry told voters that Bush’s plan was to cut benefits. Kerry urged voters to vote for him based on his representation of Bush’s plan.
But this was not Bush’s plan. Bush presented a plan that did not include 30-45% benefot cuts, and was not secret about the privatization.
So Kerry’s ad was a lie. Now, you come along and say, “But Bush has no credibility! SO Kerry is right!”
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT KERRY IS RIGHT? “Bush is a liar.” That’s evidence, at most, that Bush might be lying now. But where is the evidence that Kerry’s lies about Bush’s plans were not lies at all, but true?
Not relevant. The issue was Stoid saying that Kerry did not lie. Period. It is on that claim that this discussion is focused.
That certainly would be your preference. I can entirely understand why you would prefer that, rather than deal with some rather uncomfortable facts, such as the candor impairment of the candidate you backed, whose victory you cheer.
Walter Mondale tried truth once, I remember it well. He said that the facts were stark and clear, there was no other option, the Pubbies would have to raise taxes. And that he, given the circumstances, would have to say that he too would raise taxes, because that was the truth.
He got creamed. And then the Pubbies raised taxes.
Lies are lies, Elvis. The severity of Bush’s mistruths don’t make Kerry’s any better.
Anecdote, attributed to Shultz of the Nixonistas, but maybe not…
“Steal just once, and people don’t necessarily call you a thief for the rest of your life. Lie just once, and people don’t call you a liar for the rest of your life. But suck just one little cock…”
Nobody said they did - only that it is silly to dismiss the topic altogether when you’re deciding who runs the government. Given your view that all politicians are liars, you indeed do have to consider who’s the worse one when you’re deciding who to entrust with the responsibility of running the government. Your approach, of dismissing the subject altogether, is simple evasion of the realization that your support of Bush is a rationalization.
Now for your latest contortions, Bricker:
But you can call Kerry a liar with impunity? Bush has established his near-total noncredibility in the court of public opinion on many topics, despite your strenuous attempts to say otherwise. That does have to be considered in this context. If you want to say that Kerry is a liar, you do have to buttress it with something comparable. But, as you know, you cannot. Ya know, december used to do this all the time too, try to invert reasoning so as to make the burden of proof always fall on the other guy. It isn’t any more acceptable coming from you, either.
Now you’re simply being obtuse. Kerry was insinuating that Bush wasn’t telling the whole, or real truth about what Bush really planned. The plan Kerry was referring to was, clearly enough to those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid, the one he believes Bush really has, not the one he’s offered campaign rhetoric about. This has been explained to you sufficiently often and clearly that for you to continue your approach is prima facie a sign of bad faith on your part, okay?
We’ll know soon enough. What is your evidence that he’s wrong? Bush’s word, offered during a political campaign at that, and that’s all. It’s enough for you to call a man who dares question it a liar, QED, though. Tell us, how well does that argument work in court?
If you insisist, tou can keep giving your absolute trust to a man who has shown he will lie to you about anything at all, including war, but only at the cost of having it continually shown to you on this board and wherever else you profess it.
I don’t support Bush. See my responses to elucidator a page or two ago.
This is why it’s so tough when you’re both outnumbered, and debating against dishonest people. Rather than conceding the point after they lose it, dishonest debaters simply shift the debate to another topic without ever conceding defeat on the first.
An honest poster would say: “Yes, Kerry lied. Stoid was incorrect to claim otherwise. But, this doesn’t matter, because {not all lies are equally bad | as Mondale’s example shows, telling the truth when the other side is lying is not a winning strategy | whatever the next topic is}.”
Just out of curiosity, elucidator: how many times have you conceded a point in debate on these boards?
OK.
We’re going to kill this horse once and for all.
The following all come from www.factcheck.org:
Kerry falsely implied Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and is profiting from the company’s contracts in Iraq. The fact is, Cheney doesn’t gain a penny from Halliburton’s contracts, and almost certainly won’t lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt. The ad also falsely stated that Cheney got $2 million from Halliburton after becoming Vice President, when in fact all the money was deferred compensation earned in 1999, and most of it was paid just before Cheney was sworn in. (A recent Michigan Democratic Party mailing accuses Cheney and Bush of being “in Halliburton’s pocket” because of Cheney’s compensation.) See "Kerry Ad Falsely Accuses Cheney on Halliburton" from Sept. 30.
Challengers don’t often win when the economy is good, and so Kerry has systematically distorted, exaggerated and misstated facts about the economy under Bush. For more than a year, as far back as his speech Sept. 2, 2003 formally announcing himself as a candidate for the nomination, Kerry has been making bogus comparisons to the Great Depression, overstating the number of payroll jobs lost during Bush’s tenure, and (once jobs started growing again last August) falsely claiming that the new jobs pay $9,000 less than those that were lost, a claim unsupported even by the evidence he cites from a pro-labor think tank. [Cite[/utl]
The Kerry campaign has consistently implied – and sometimes stated outright – that Bush is responsible for subsidizing companies that send jobs overseas. This is at best a serious exaggeration and at its worst an outright falsehood, as in a recent Democratic National Committee TV ad running in Michigan. Of Bush and Republicans in Congress it states: “Their plan for our economy? Tax breaks for sending jobs overseas.”
Actually, the US tax code has given such tax breaks for decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents. It is most certainly not Bush’s doing. Bush does oppose Kerry’s proposal to address the tax incentive, on grounds that it would hurt some US exporters (and their workers.) But even Kerry concedes that his plan wouldn’t put an end to jobs going overseas, and economists say such “outsourcing” accounts for a tiny fraction of total job loss in any case.
For more, see "[url="http://www.factcheck.org/article225.html]Kerry Blames Corporate Tax Code for Shipping Jobs Overseas " from July 28.](http://www.factcheck.org/article228.html)
Is there anything is the above which might lead you to conclude that Kerry ads lied?
Perhaps because the debating point you are so earnestly hung upon is a matter of monumental triviality. One can certainly never fail to win a debate so long as one can define its terms to one’s own level of comfort. You are determined to wring from…someone…an admission that a politician, Kerry, made a statement that does not conform to your definition of complete truth. To what end? I have it on good authority that he once took a quarter from his mother’s purse. I gasp with horror and dismay that such an immoral creature came so close to throne of power.
Did Kerry lie more than Nader? I don’t know, and could possibly care less, because it has no significance. Did he lie more than Bush? Well, now, there is an issue that has come weight, since people are dying even as we speak, largely based on Mr Bush’s “credibility”.
This argument has grown and morphed, as they often do. By what authority do you claim do define the terms of the discussion after so many pages? Are you the OP? Does your opinion on what the true focus of the discussion ought to be carry some weight that I am obliged to respect? Have you been nominated and selected for some new SDMB position not previously recognized, that of “debate definer”? Such that at any point in the discussion, you can blow your whistle and declare a line of reasoning out of bounds?
As to your last question, I haven’t a clue. You are entirely welcome to research the issue, but that would require you to review many of my past arguments, I task I think you would find distasteful.
Good idea, Bricker! Excellent! I heartily encourage anyone who has not already been to factcheck.org to rush right over there! Yes, indeedy, you can there review all the terrible, terrible lies that awful John Kerry thrust upon the public.
You will also find a few minor mistatements from the Shining One, trivial little errors of fact, hardly worth mentioning really, if it weren’t for the fact that so many people are getting good and dead as a result.
On this point, Bricker and I are in complete and happy accord! Rush right over to factcheck.org! Check it out!
Oh, yeah!
Dammit, sometime I gotta beat elucidator to the punch. But yes, by all means, go to factcheck.org (or to factcheck.*com * as Cheney suggested instead; it’s also informative). Compare and contrast the full set of statements, then tell us who’s the more frequent and more sever liar. You can’t even compare them on the same scale. But I have little doubt that you’ll still come back to the same rationalization of “If Bush said it, it’s true; if Kerry questions it, he’s lying, and either way the entire burden of proof is on you”.
Then you can offer us how you’d offer the same apologia of Bush’s credibility to one of the families about to lose a loved one in the “liberation” of Fallujah.
What comes after “Fool me three times” and up? Anybody know?
Ever time I come to a new town, some young punk’s gotta find out if I’m as fast as they say I am. Boot Hill is full of them…
This is the exchange that prompted the argument.
Stoid seems to claim here, and in follow-up responses, that Kerry did not lie.
I claim Kerry did.
You’re bringing something new to the game: whose misstatements and lies during the campaign were more severe? This is an entirely different question than, “Did Kerry lie?”
I will be happy to address the question of whose misstatements and lies during the campaign were more severe as soon as we have put this issue to bed. I am not going to permit you to simply shift the debate away without conceding a point.
- Rick
This issue cannot be put to bed until Bush tells us what he backs.
last Thursday he gave an indication that he will back a program that will involved benefit cutting.
Maybe he won’t.
We don’t know yet.
When we do, you can crow, or you can eat crow.
Meanwhile, it remains true: in addition to all the theft that occurred on election day, Bush got the votes of good people who believed his hideous lies about very nearly everything he ever spoke about. Thousands of people are dead because of his lies. Thousands more will die.
No more vile an administration has ever run this country, and I include Nixon. His vileness could be balanced by intelligence and some serious understanding of how the world really works. Bush doesn’t even have that.
God help us.
How about the other Kerry lies I highlighted above?
Compared to the lies put forward by Bush and his goon squad, they are negligible.
Sure, sure. But I’m not comparing them just yet; I’ll be happy to do so after I get an acknowledgement that Kerry lied.
God, somebody say it, I can’t stand to watch poor Bricker suffer like this! For very much longer…
So, how about those Twins, huh?