Political discussion thread

HackettFan wrote: thellama73 wrote: I have a question for the Democrats in this thread, and I assure you I ask not to be antagonistic but because I am legitimately confused about this.What political principles does the Democratic party stand for (besides "Democrats in power")?Do they stand for peace?-Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, attacked Libya and uses drone attakcs that blow up civilians more aggressively than any other president.-He has authorized the execution of an American citizen without a trialDo they stand for civil liberties?-Obama campaigned on a platform of being against gay marriage, and has not lifted a finger to legalize drugs or offer illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship-The man who made the youtube video that didn't start riots in Libya is now in jail on trumped up charges, but really because his exercise of free speech offended Muslims.Do they stand for social justice?-Obama used your money to bail out big banks and the auto industry-He extended the Bush tax cutsI understand the "meh, he's better than the other guy" mentality, but the deafening silence of criticism of these policies by Democrats who are supposed to steadfastly opposed them makes it seem like those on the left don't really care about anything except political power. Good observations. I said it before and I'll say it again. Obama is not a liberal.

Then why are liberals so enamored with our incumbent?  It doesn't make sense.

Were George W. Bush doing what Barack Obama has done in office, the liberals and the media would have been crucifying Bush daily.

thellama73 wrote: AlexDOM wrote: What determines a lie, we all have our biases, so where is the standard to call something false, not truth? Is a lie subjective to each individual and their interpretation? This is an easy one. A lie is a statement that the speaker believes to be untrue uttered with the intent to deceive. Some people call any untruth a lie, but this is wrong. A person can be mistaken without being a liar. Similarly, a person can say something hey know to be untrue, but not attempt to deceive and this is not a lie. "A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says 'why the long face?'" Everyone knows that didn't really happen, but since you're not trying to convince anyone, it is not a lie.

So, by that definition are Obama and Romney liars or people who said what they believed to be true at the time?

thellama73 wrote: HackettFan wrote: The debt is a long term problem to be dealt with in the long term. In hard economic times, we're supposed to worry about jobs not debt. I keep hearing people say that we should wait until the economy is booming again to worry about the debt, seeming not to realize that if we don't start worrying about it now the economy isn't going to boom again. The more debt we accrue, the more we have to pay in interest, which necessitates the devotion of more and more of our resources to the unproductive activity of making interest payments.Furthermore, the worse our debt gets the less confidence people at home or abroad have in our country to ever be able to pay it back. This will a) cause interest rates to rise (they haven't yet, but it's coming, especially when some other countries get their houses in order and the world realizes that they are a better bet than the US,) b) decrease foreign investment into our companies, further hurting the economy, and c) decrease the incentives for eager young talent from other nations to immigrate here, leaving us with a dearth of innovation compared to other nations.The use of a crisis to expand federal power and spending "temporarily" or to delay the solution to urgent problems is an age old tactic, and should always be met with suspicion.

Which countries are going to get their act together? Most every country of note has a debt that occupies a higher percentage of it's GDP. You can Pay off the debt. You can also increase the GDP and grow your way out of the debt. Governments can promote this by investing in things that will have a positive effect on the nation's well being. Education, roads and bridges, research and development, and, dare I bring it up again, the space program, to name a few. Bad investments would be pencil pushing insurance companies and oil companies. Conservatives also have a growth solution, which is to lower taxes to encourage investments from wealthy individuals. Both solutions add to the deficit and the debt in the short term with a promise that it will appreciate into something greater than it's loss. Therefore, one should think long term long term, not short term. The problem is liberals and conservatives do not believe in each others growth solution. I am on the liberal side, but I do agree with those conservatives who think we can grow ourselves out of the debt, just not with their supply side solution.

What determines a lie, we all have our biases, so where is the standard to call something false, not truth? Is a lie subjective to each individual and their interpretation?

Politicians now a days, are all using any means to get the win, no matter how.

"I will cut the deficit in half."

Exaggeration?
Left out bits and pieces?

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: thellama73 wrote: I don't really care about who is the bigger liar, but it is demonstrably true that the Obama administration knowingly lied about the Libya embassy attack on television for a week after they knew what happened. Anyone who says otherwise has not looked at the facts or is being dishonest with themselves. I haven't followed this issue closely because it's not my country, but do you have any evidence that the administration was deliberately lying rather than trusting the findings of investigations that were later found to be incorrect? That said, I find it tasteless to compare Romney to Hitler just on the basis that he lies. The dangerous thing about Htiler wasn't that he lied. While he did hide his full intentions and actions from the public, he was always openly antisemitic, and as the video says itself, people knew or at least heard rumors of what was happening to the Jews. And regarding lies: Until we stop believing them, lies will remain one of the most effective campaigning tools. One can hardly fault politicians for deceiving us when we're all stupid enough to be deceived.

There have been some leaked emails that indicate the administration knew earlier than they are letting on, and the president himself came to the right conclusion early on before changing to the wrong position. As late as a week after the attacks members of his administration were going on talk shows insisting it was a spontaneous response to a youtube video, when most of the news media had realized this to be wrong days earlier.

It was an attack on September 11, the most infamous date in our country's history (at least right now), the attackers had sophisticated weapons unlikely to be possessed by the general citizenry, and the embassy officials had requested military help earlier and were denied.

If they couldn't learn what ordinary Americans already knew after a week of investigating, they are incompetent at levels which strain belief. The Occam's Razor solution is that they were simply afraid of damaging Obama's reelection campaign and tried to use a convenient scapegoat instead.

thellama73 wrote: I don't really care about who is the bigger liar, but it is demonstrably true that the Obama administration knowingly lied about the Libya embassy attack on television for a week after they knew what happened. Anyone who says otherwise has not looked at the facts or is being dishonest with themselves.

I haven't followed this issue closely because it's not my country, but do you have any evidence that the administration was deliberately lying rather than trusting the findings of investigations that were later found to be incorrect?

That said, I find it tasteless to compare Romney to Hitler just on the basis that he lies. The dangerous thing about Htiler wasn't that he lied. While he did hide his full intentions and actions from the public, he was always openly antisemitic, and as the video says itself, people knew or at least heard rumors of what was happening to the Jews.

And regarding lies: Until we stop believing them, lies will remain one of the most effective campaigning tools. One can hardly fault politicians for deceiving us when we're all stupid enough to be deceived.

dtguitarfan wrote: Let me start this off by saying that I actually voted for Bush. Though I will turn around and say that Bush is one of the reasons I started questioning whether the Republican party was the party I wanted to associate myself with. Now, moving on from that preface - here's my problem with the Iraq war: - We used an attack that came from a group from another country to justify a war with Iraq - it doesn't make much sense. - We KNEW we weren't 100% sure of the existence of WoMD, but we went in on the basis that "heck, he's really darn sneaky!" Now, note that I think people who say Bush is the worst President ever are also being ridiculous, and I also fault the Democratic party for voting with the President on going to war and then turning around and saying "it's HIS fault!" However, the follow up of that war was that the Republican party seemed so darn insistent that we stay in Iraq forever and ever and ever! And they won't admit, no matter what, that this was a dumb idea. Romney himself criticizes Obama for pulling out of Iraq, and criticized him for "setting a date" on pulling out of Afghanistan, and then in the 3rd debate he said "if you elect me I will have us out of Afghanistan by 2014" (which was the date Obama set, and now Romney is acting like it was his idea all along).

I believe this is the first sensible post I've seen you make.

(even more sensible than the one in which you called Fox News unbiased)

thellama73 wrote: I assume you are equally willing to chalk up the "weapons of mass destruction" snafu in Iraq to a president's perogative or an intelligence failure?

Let me start this off by saying that I actually voted for Bush. Though I will turn around and say that Bush is one of the reasons I started questioning whether the Republican party was the party I wanted to associate myself with. Now, moving on from that preface - here's my problem with the Iraq war:
- We used an attack that came from a group from another country to justify a war with Iraq - it doesn't make much sense.
- We KNEW we weren't 100% sure of the existence of WoMD, but we went in on the basis that "heck, he's really darn sneaky!"

Now, note that I think people who say Bush is the worst President ever are also being ridiculous, and I also fault the Democratic party for voting with the President on going to war and then turning around and saying "it's HIS fault!" However, the follow up of that war was that the Republican party seemed so darn insistent that we stay in Iraq forever and ever and ever! And they won't admit, no matter what, that this was a dumb idea. Romney himself criticizes Obama for pulling out of Iraq, and criticized him for "setting a date" on pulling out of Afghanistan, and then in the 3rd debate he said "if you elect me I will have us out of Afghanistan by 2014" (which was the date Obama set, and now Romney is acting like it was his idea all along).