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[Presidential Election 2012] Batmitt vs. Bain: Whitefall
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As a centrist and(I'm going to get flack for this.
Sending your kids to foreign countries to convert people to your religion and actively campaign for political issues is not a public good
therefore I do not view it as "charity"
So leaving all the detainees locked up without trial until they die is the more humane option?
Huh.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Hmm, ahh... I don't know...
January 7, 2011?
But what if your religion is the best one?
But, yes, he does deserve blame for trying new cases there. Its a different issue, though similar, but it doesnt mean its any less damning. Really, this administration has succeeded in a lot of ways to me, but GITMO is its biggest, most glaring failure.
But, I dont really care THAT much about the issue. Doesnt impact me directly, and wont ever. Its one of those "moral" "we are better than that" issues that I can get behind in theory, but when push comes to shove, meh. I dont think GITMO has too much of an actual impact on the day to day lives outside of the prisoners held there. And lets face it, their well being is what most folks care about, its the principle. But I tend to care about more tangible issues than that.
I wish GITMO wasnt a blemish on our country, but I dont feel it will ultimately have any sort of actual ramifications one way or another. Some people may be slightly more mad at us, some extra information may be gained from it... i dunno. Tangibly, its a wash.
The Defense Authorization act? Can you clarify how preventing old cases from coming to the US to be tried would force Obama to allow new trials in Guantanamo? Please don't just quote a date. Give a reason.
I don't see how this is a knock against Obama.
All right. I'm not going to fight this one particular case: The point is: Obama is just as guilty of lying as Romney to get elected. There are many examples. If you want to harp on that one, feel free. I respect your right to disagree.
because if obama would just pretend like it was closed all the people there would die and then it would be closed
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
You have completely failed to show how that was a lie and not simply lack of success.
And there comes that awesome false equivalency stuff.
Romney is misrepresenting or just plain lying multiple times every time he speaks before an audience.
Obama maybe broke a campaign promise he made 4 years ago.
EXACTLY THE SAME!!!
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I gave other examples as well, Tofy. If you think that wasn't, there are two others. If you don't like those, there are many others as well. I could go to any one of a few hundred anti-Obama sites to roll them out. I don't think it's necessary, however, as I'm not anti-Obama. I'm pro-civil discourse.
It doesn't bother me that there is a prison that exists in Guantanamo Bay.
It bothers me that people are held there without trial for years and years, many on evidence that is little more than hearsay.
My understanding of the matter is that Congress kept Obama from closing the prison and relocating everyone to a new prison. That's not a great solution that addresses any of the human rights problems with the original prison. It'd be like if BP went under after the oil spill and opened up a company with all the same management that was now called Clean Oil and resumed drilling in the Gulf Coast.
All the particulars of what's actually keeping Obama from either trying or releasing these prisoners are rather unknown to me, but I don't think Congress is standing in the way of either. And even if they were, they certainly can't be blamed for bringing new detainees in and holding them indefinitely.
I acknowledge that the practice has been found legal due to ever expanding interpretations of "war" and "enemy combatant" but I still find it pretty reprehensible.
But guess what? He did try.
He was told no.
This is not a lie.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Other examples of Obama lying? I can't find any. The only statements I could find from you about Obama were these:
There is a difference between having goals and not fulfilling them, and lying. I would argue that Obama has done quite a good job on making good on promises he has made compared to other politicians.
I think it's a pretty lousy issue to demotivate the voting constituency, though.
Right now, I think the imperative political motivation for Democrats, progressives, and rational independents is to consider the alternative.
Is Romney going to close Gitmo? Or will he support the policies of George W. Bush that put it there in the first place?
That's a lie.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
That wasn't intended to portray the President as villainous, but merely to point out the similarities in promises between Obama and Romney. More specifically: The argument that Obama couldn't close Gitmo because he was blocked by the legislative branch is exactly what will stop Romney from fulfilling his promises. One cannot say, "Romney is a liar! He can't do the things he promised." and then turn around and say, "Obama isn't a liar! He just couldn't do the things he promised."
That is simple silly goosery, you understand.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I would agree with you, but I'm having trouble recalling any campaign promises Romney has made up to this point other than beating Obama.
Hiyooooo
like
and also
Oh and who can forget
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
George Romney was either not an immigrant or he was an illegal immigrant. He was born a US citizen on a polygamous Mormon compound in Mexico, and since he was a citizen you could say he wasn't an immigrant with some degree of accuracy. However, if he was an immigrant he was as an "illegal immigrant" or more accurately he was undocumented, crossing the border. Nevertheless, even Romney admits portraying himself as in anyway Mexican would be disingenuous
No shit, that's because the Democratic party was the hard conservative/Southern party from the early 1800s until the New Deal and the Civil Rights Era. Lincoln basically though McKinley/TR, the Republican factions were the Liberal Republicans and the Radical(ly Liberal) Republicans. Even then it became Business Republicans and Progressive Republicans. Eisenhower was a Liberal Republican. Taft implemented TR's Progressive Republican policies.
Hayek and the Austrian school is almost as big a joke as the phrase "that rap is both informative and near necessary to understand the traditional Conservative vs Liberal viewpoints.". It is ideology dressed up as economics. The reason it rejects empirical analysis of any of its policies or dogmas is that none of them stand up.
You'll find that "there are good reasons but its too complicated to get into right now" is not a sufficient answer around here. There are not in fact good reasons for opposing universal healthcare. Full stop.
"Both sides are the same" is also not good enough here either. The radicalization both of rhetoric and policy has come nigh exclusively from the right. Republicans now are far more reactionary than they were 20-40 years ago, while Democrats are politically unchanged on most issues (gay rights being the outlier). There's extensive polling and literature that demonstrates this. Fox News is undoubtedly the most histrionic large scale media outlet in the US in generations, and it acts fairly openly as a wing of the Republican party.
Obama promised to close Gitmo, yes. He attempted to, but Congress blocked him. Why didn't he do it faster? Because he was trying to compromise.
Obama is still trying to end the Bush tax cuts on those earning more than 250K a year, and has remained consistently in support of extending them for the middle class. Why didn't he force it immediately though Congress? Because he was trying to compromise!
The idea that you would try to create a false equivalence in vitriol or polarization because Obama's attempts at bipartisanship were shit upon is insulting and transparent.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
So yeah.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Just so I can confirm what the general consensus is:
Romney is a big liar who hasn't actually said anything, while Obama hasn't lied, he simply hasn't done what he said he'd do. Am I about right on that?
Doesn't that seem like there's a bit of a double standard for people you generally disagree with?
There isn't a lot of legitimate, serious discussion over whether Keynes or Hayek was right. The last seventy years have done plenty to prove that Keynesian policy is what produces viable results, whereas Hayekian policy would be literally "We can't know how anything interacts with anything else. Systems are mysterious and unknowable! Let's do absolutely nothing!"
There is an overwhelming consensus in favor of Keynesian policy (or at least neo-Keynesian policy), and people who posit that Hayek has much of use to say, policy-wise, are way out on the fringe. Ron Paul likes to quote Hayek, for example. Let's not pretend that the two positions are equivalent in legitimacy simply because they are both held by at least one person.
However, the Obamacare thing is... not really anywhere near the lies people have a problem with Romney about. Mostly it's things like him reversing his positions on abortion, healthcare, gay rights, and refusing to disclose his taxes and pretending he doesn't have bajillions of secret dollars in the Caymans. Plus the Bain thing posted above.
Campaign promises are not what people are saying Romney is lying about
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
No, Romney has said plenty of things. The problem is we don't know what he stands for. Is he the liberal Republican that was the governor of Massachusetts, and passed a health care law that is remarkably similar in every way to the ACA? Or is he a shill for the hard right wing of the party, since he has come out against the ACA once he started his campaign? This is just one example of an issue where I honestly don't know what Romney believes. This is the same problem I had with Mccain in 2008, by the way.
We're calling Romney a liar mainly because of what's going on with his taxes, which is rapidly turning into a scandal. Not because of what he's saying on the campaign trail. We dislike Romney mainly because the man who is running for president today is remarkably not the same man who was governor of a liberal state. So if he gets elected, which man will be president? We don't know.
Congress Bars Gitmo Transfers
Congress blocked his attempts to close the facility going back to 2009
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Exactly.
I oppose Romney on the same grounds I opposed Hillary Clinton: I have no idea what their politics are. I know what their political aspirations are, and what shady lengths they'll go to achieve them, but I don't actually have any idea as to how they'll act in office, or where they stand on any single issue.
What, really? I saw he was making a speech to them, thought it could be an admirable effort on Romney's part to talk to someone who wasn't uber-rich and white for a change. What happened?
LIE
LIE
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126