It sums up to me saying, I’m okay with a politician promising X and getting it for most except a small subset. Specifically I said I’d give it a, “meh”.
But TOWP has decided that I must be okay with a politician making laws that single out Muslims, since they’re a small subset. I know he’s trying for a gotcha, but it’s just so stupid.
He’s gone on about that for many posts, and I’ve just decided to not engage. Has he always acted like this? I don’t really recall him being such a knob.
No, I haven’t. I don’t think you’re okay with that. You’ve repeatedly said you aren’t. I’ve repeatedly agreed that you aren’t. Why do you keep claiming otherwise?
Lobahan, you’re wrong. He’s not saying you’re OK with targeting Muslims, he’s saying that you wouldn’t always excuse a lie, as you said you would, if it is true for most people. He pointed to a specific example when you wouldn’t. But you want to have it both ways.
What was said: Lobohan: If a GOP guy said, “You can do X” and in some small subset, they couldn’t do X, I’d say, “meh.”
TOWP: Well, “unless you’re a citizen of this country who happens to be Muslim” is ~1%. Izzat a small enough subset?
He’s saying that my being okay with someone getting most of the way to completeing a promise should equal someone getting the most of the way to a promise, with specifically targeting Muslims as those who fall short.
He’s saying that the small fairly random subset not getting the promised whatever, is the same as Muslims specifically by design not getting the promised whatever.
They aren’t the same.
Which is why I clarified with collateral damage, killing some children randomly when attacking a military target isn’t the same thing as attacking a school o purpose.
It’s not hypocrisy to find a difference between the two, wouldn’t you agree?
That would be you. Hypocrisy is behavior that is not in comport with stated positions, right? You claim that I state one thing, and cut out exceptions when I find it expedient. That’s pretty close to hypocrisy as I see it.
As I’ve mentioned several times, what you find issue with is being okay with a promise making it the most of the way (which I clarified that those who are failed by the promise must be randomly affected, not specifically targeted). And yet you find issue when your hypothetical that isn’t like the above situation, isn’t treated the same way.
You said:
and
and
and
and
Seems like you’re suggesting that I’m acting out of comport with my stated position.
Also, I’m not okay with lying. I’m okay with a promise falling short. Which is a different thing, I’d say.
::shrugs:: When asked, you clarified your position. I accepted your clarification.
What do you mean, I “find issue”? The way you worded things at first was absolutist; once you clarified your position, I simply accepted your clarification.
Well, not if he knew – at the time he made the promise – that it would ‘fall short’. Or, one supposes, if he didn’t know, but promised anyway. And given what he’s said afterward, even he doesn’t seem to be on board with it being an accidental untruth. So I took your “it’s not much of a lie” and “I’d say, ‘meh’” responses literally.
Seems like the sort of thing we could’ve discussed civilly there instead of in here, but I guess that’s a matter of taste. Still, isn’t it possible that I’m taking you seriously and treating you fairly while accepting your claims and clarifications at face value?
What was the original issue that provoked this snark exchange? I don’t want to search through the other 3400+ posts in that thread to satisfy my need for context.
BobLibDem argued that Obama’s famous If You Like Your Plan You Can Keep It lie was in fact – well, here, I’ll quote him: “Was your old plan compliant? If not, you couldn’t keep it. Was your old insurer going out of business? If so, you could hardly keep it, could you? Almost everybody kept their old plans. For a very limited number, they could not keep their plan. Since the statement is true for many more people than it was not, it cannot be said with a straight face to be a lie.”
I disagree, since by my reckoning it’s a lie regardless of whether it’s true for many more people than not. And, as Lobohan puts it in the OP: It sums up to me saying, I’m okay with a politician promising X and getting it for most except a small subset. Specifically I said I’d give it a, “meh”.
By contrast, I, of course say it’s a lie regardless of how small the subset, or how the subset is chosen.
Trump says: If you like your religion, you can keep your religion.
But it turns out this is true as long as you’re not a Muslim, only a tiny minority of Americans. But that religion wasn’t really serving your religious needs, so we’ll be upgrading you to a better religion. The key thing is, you’ll still have a religion, it’ll just be a better one.
There seems to be no distinction between “lie” and “mistake” here. A lie is a falsehood intended as a deception. Obama’s error was that he didn’t foresee the inevitable tidal wave of bureaucratic SNAFUs that result with policy change. Ergo, a really embarrassing mistake and shortsightedness on his part, and not an intention to deceive.
As per Politifact, he kept saying it after the bill was signed, and kept sticking to that line even after the HHS regulations came out, during his re-election campaign (which maybe helps explain why it was Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” in 2013, not 2009).
So even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama originally just made a promise without knowing if he’d be able to keep it – instead of presumably knowing whether his plan was to simply ban policies that didn’t pass muster – then do you figure there’s some point in that process where that falsehood becomes a lie?
(I note in passing that Bush earned a “READ MY LIPS . . . I LIED” newspaper headline back when, because of course he did.)
I like to read pit threads like this without following the link to the underlying thread first (when the OP is bright enough to provide one) just to see if I can figure out what the argument is from the pit thread posts.