Originally Posted By jonvn If people simply ignored his constant stream of falsehoods and dishonesty, it'd do a world of good for the discussion.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Amazing. The topic at hand is Mitt Romney and instead some try to derail it and shift focus to Obama or John Kerry or Ronald McDonald.... anything to misdirect or talk about anything BUT Mitt Romney.
Originally Posted By jonvn NO. What is amazing is that people keep falling for this junk and keep pandering to it. That is what is truly amazing. Supposedly inteliligent people, and yet they keep falling into the same trap and playing the same game in topic after topic. People, wise up already.
Originally Posted By jonvn bad to have a typo on intelligent...ohw well. The idea is the same. If you folks want a board where nothing can be discussed because you let one poster disrail every single conversation, you've got yourselves one. If you actually want to discuss the events of the day, you need to learn how to not respond to people who are not here to discuss the topic, but to simply derail. This last week has shown that people here from all different political viewpoints can and will discuss the topic at hand without this nonsense. That it immediately falls back into this insanity is not just the fault of the person wrecking these conversations, but that of those who keep replying to his off topic comments. PLEASE STOP DOING IT. It is ruining this section.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder This section has survived beau. It'll weather Douglas. And me. And you.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Great post #40, ecdc. Ironic that in trying to show Obama's "dishonesty," he actually shows his own.
Originally Posted By DAR The issue should not be if Mitt Romney is a long time hunter or when Barrack Obama was born. The issue should be are they best equipped to lead this country. And judging by the results of the last few leaders, it doesn't take much.
Originally Posted By jonvn "It'll weather Douglas. And me. And you." He wrecks every conversation he enters. That's all.
Originally Posted By ecdc In all fairness, he didn't always wreck conversations with meaningless arguments over the clearest of explanations and definitions. I think he's just a dyed in the wool Republican who has no leg to stand on these days. As I watch political talk shows like Hardball, or even Bill Maher, the token conservative's tunes have changed. Now most of their focus is on defense and explaining why we can't leave Iraq. They (unlike Dick Cheney) are aware of the political climate and know that the days of calling Democrats "Defeatocrats" and questioning the patriotism of everyone who disagrees with them are over. Douglas has nothing to tout from Republicans these days, so it's all defense, and it's all discrediting the other side any way you can, even if it's quibbling over the simplest explanations. After '08 and a better President (because just about anyone will be better, regardless of party), I suspect Douglas can return to better arguments.
Originally Posted By alexbook Sorry for being late to this thread, but I had to comment on this: >>I seriously doubt we have any candidates who are truly honest and forthcoming about anything these days. It's amazing that the honesty of our country's founding fathers and great political figures is the stuff of legends and lore -- George Washington and the famous cherry tree, "Honest Abe," etc. -- these days we just shrug our shoulders and expect lies and deceit from our politicians. How disappointing is that?<< The whole George-Washington-cherry-tree story is fiction. It was debunked a century ago. It's a great story, but it just isn't true. Here's a link from the Mt. Vernon web site: <a href="http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/382/" target="_blank">http://www.mountvernon.org/vis it/plan/index.cfm/pid/382/</a> ----- I really believe most of our leaders are honest about most things most of the time, and I think most of them always have been. So what's changed? Our attitude. We used to venerate political leaders. The media of previous centuries pandered to the public's desire to hear only the best of their leaders. Today's media panders to our desire to hear only the worst.
Originally Posted By jonvn To be fair, Washington never claimed to cut down the cherry tree, or throw a dollar across the Potomac, or any of that. On their face, they are ridiculous, throwing a silver dollar across a mile wide river, or cutting down a cherry tree in a story that was invented decades after Washington's death. The thing is that people simply make stuff up all the time about all sorts of things. People simply do not tell the truth all the time about whatever, and to expect it from anyone is pretty much an impossibility. So Romney sort of stretched the truth about something. Really, it's not that big a deal, until you see WHY he did it--to impress the gun lobby. The motivation behind the behavior tells me a lot more than the behavior itself. And that makes him not someone who I personally would want to vote for.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj << The whole George-Washington-cherry-tree story is fiction. It was debunked a century ago. It's a great story, but it just isn't true. >> The point isn't whether these legendary tales are true or not, but that these sorts of virtues have over time come to represent these people of historic significance. There is no way history could be re-written or any fanstasy version of history created to describe our current leadership as honest or people of great integrity. << We used to venerate political leaders. The media of previous centuries pandered to the public's desire to hear only the best of their leaders. >> I don't think it has anything to do with the media. If anything, political candidates abuse the media to misrepresent facts and try to broadcast propaganda moreso than any meaningful discussion. It's hard to figure that our political leaders of today have any decent thoughts with respect to our Constitution or the government that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. Politicians abuse the media moreso than the media abuses politicians.
Originally Posted By alexbook >><< We used to venerate political leaders. The media of previous centuries pandered to the public's desire to hear only the best of their leaders. >> I don't think it has anything to do with the media. If anything, political candidates abuse the media to misrepresent facts and try to broadcast propaganda moreso than any meaningful discussion. It's hard to figure that our political leaders of today have any decent thoughts with respect to our Constitution or the government that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. Politicians abuse the media moreso than the media abuses politicians.<< Politicians didn't used to have to worry about their every word being broadcast, or even recorded. There are plenty of anecdotes about Presidents and other candidates saying something wrong, and having reporters "clean it up" so that what was in the papers was what the candidate meant to say, or would have said if he were thinking. If a candidate were drunk or stupid or just plain wrong about a fact, the reporters would get together after the speech and decide what to tell the public. They "knew" that the public didn't want to know the dirt, so they didn't report it.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj << Politicians didn't used to have to worry about their every word being broadcast, or even recorded. >> And you can bet that when they were being reported they put a lot of effort into saying something of significance. Today, we get soundbytes and bits of nothingness that has no meaning. There can never be another Gettysburg Address in today's environment. I don't blame the press so much as I blame the politicians who continue to fill the airwaves with their hollow words and meaningless rhetoric. << They "knew" that the public didn't want to know the dirt, so they didn't report it. >> That is baloney. Scandal rags have been around for as long as there have been printing presses. Just because you can't Google "tabloid" articles from the 1700s to see this sort of thing doesn't mean it didn't happen back then as well. Heck, the term "Yellow Journalism" was coined over 100 years ago when the nation's biggest papers were well known for running sensational headlines.
Originally Posted By jonvn I still don't want to know the dirt. I'm sick of "Gotcha" politics. People make errors. We lose good leaders like this. I just want someone who can effectively govern. If we can no longer get someone like that, the nation is not headed in a good direction.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I think alexbook and mrichmondj have a point. True, scandal sheets have existed since our founding and some of the things said about Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, et al would make even a 21st century media maven blush. At the same time, the press used to have certain "gentlemen's agreements" that don't exist today; i.e. everyone in the white house press corps knew JFK was fooling around, but didn't say anything about it.
Originally Posted By alexbook >><< They "knew" that the public didn't want to know the dirt, so they didn't report it. >> That is baloney. Scandal rags have been around for as long as there have been printing presses. Just because you can't Google "tabloid" articles from the 1700s to see this sort of thing doesn't mean it didn't happen back then as well. Heck, the term "Yellow Journalism" was coined over 100 years ago when the nation's biggest papers were well known for running sensational headlines.<< Just to take one example, do you really think that no reporters knew about Warren Harding's excessive drinking, illegal gambling, and extramarital affairs? One of my favorite stories about Harry Truman involved a reporter asking him a question, HST giving an answer, then thinking better of his answer and grabbing the reporter's notepad to cross it out and substitute a better one. I don't know if it's true, but it's certainly plausible. Can you imagine any post-Watergate President even trying something like that, let alone getting away with it?
