Originally posted by snowdragon
The basis for your argument was leveraged on a position trying to show that another political figure lies more then our president.................so that makes the president OK.
The basis of my argument is Obama's done a good job of being president and spends noticeably more effort in being honest than the others who would try and lead the country, thus making him the most-honest choice, and your focus on the one scoring least-bad makes your arguments that you're focusing on honesty sound very hollow.
Note, this is a thread started by an article lying about Obama. Obama didn't lie here, the article lied about him. And other politicians in the incident turned out to be lying.
I'm pointing out people in the same incident that you're criticizing Obama on, there's far worse liars and Obama was honest, and yet you're still focusing on the one who was honest here and not the ones who turned out to have been lying.
You're the ones trying to make honesty the be-all and end-all measure. I also care about stuff like 'how well he actually runs the economy, positively affects US quality of life and foreign relations and interests, and so on,' but what I'm doing here is holding you to your stated standards of honesty.
And you're failing. The standards you set for how you judge politicians, and you clearly aren't holding them consistently.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Very solid is not "31% lying rate." That's not very solid. Maybe closer to 90 to 95%? As long as the major platforms are not lied about, I think I could handle smaller broken promises. But I would like to see politicians actually stick to their promises (unless they made a stupid/silly promise and later realized their error).
Here's the thing, politicians do not have complete control over their rate. Outside forces affect a lot.
And 31% includes being wrong, i.e. not lies, and changing stances due to new information. "I thought I could do this but I couldn't," and "I thought this was a good idea but with more information I now think otherwise."
I'd much rather have someone who can change their mind without being punished for it than whoever is in the position being locked in place to the stances they came in with.
Obama's major platforms have been quite honest, it's mostly the minor stuff he's had to fudge on too.
And, again, very notably, in the opening post subject, on Iran? He was honest, Republicans were lying. You started out with one key example of a lie, and when it turned out to be exactly backwards, you're still acting the exact same.
Who actually lied, ironically, does not seem to play any role on who is getting the most tut-tutting for lying.
You opened up by complaining about Obama's 'absurd level of lying'. I showed you his level of lying was below-average with heavy evidence.
.Lots of war threats to Iran (childish)
Are... are you thinking of GWB?
Obama's been noted for not responding to Iran's saber rattling and taking a much calmer approach, which has made Iran's 'they're provoking us' rhetoric fall flat, which has helped bring them to the negotiating table.
Obama just made a deal with Iran that significantly reduces chance of war.
This is literally where he just made a major success for doing the opposite.
Your willingness to hold flat-out false things against him hurts your credibility as a critic.
I'm beginning to think that you will not fault Obama for anything no matter how obviously he broke a campaign promise.
Ah, now that's jumping to conclusions big-time. You're leaping to the 'because I defend Obama's honesty at all I must be unwilling to attack him at all'.... even when what I'm doing is pointing out how you lot are holding double standards, and using third party sources that by no means paint him as perfect, simply better than the people who you're ignoring.
I say Obama is better than his foes by a good measure, keeps the important things that matter to me, and is generally better than the alternatives by a wide margin.
Which is true.
This does not mean 'perfect,' this does not mean I don't want better, but the "let's focus on Obama when other people are not just the same level, but significantly worse," is a position that encourages lying by punishing the ones lying the least.
That's counter-productive and, frankly, dumb.
So there's one major campaign promise that woefully under-delivered. What about ending foreign wars? Nah...we have more military campaigns than when he took office.
Notably *smaller* ones, and one of the things he doesn't have control over in the major causes. While he does do too much for my tastes as well, overall, his trend has been to dialing them down considerably compared to his predecessor, and additionally, the big ones are the ones that the US's prior leaders committed us to, and a sudden yank would screw stuff over.
And, very notably, in the very subject of the opening post, Iran, he is taking the steps most likely to prevent war and you're criticizing him for it. Rather a double-standard there!
Here's a brief history of this thread, to refresh you:
A thread was started accusing Obama of lying.
It turned out he wasn't the article was a lie.
Goalposts were then shifted to his general honesty/lying level, saying, and to quote you, dadudemon, "This is sarcasm for those who are not familiar with my strong distaste of Obama's absurd amount of lying."
General levels of lying were shown to be about 30% better than his opponents, and level of kept pledges also higher than his opponents.
Goalposts have shifted again saying that his better-than-his-opponents level of lying is still too high, and still focusing entirely on him, and still not acknowledging the original situation was very much not as presented.
We are on our third level of standards for the thread. Third.
And there seems to be no acknowledgement of when Obama is, indeed, telling the truth, and no retraction of anything said that turns out to have been wrong.
Basically what I'm saying is you're demonstrating that what Obama says or does is unrelated to how much you go after him.
And if what he says and does is unrelated to your level of criticism, what use is your criticism? Criticism willingly to stick with known-wrong points and which doesn't change when the facts turn out to be different, is useless criticism.
Will the standards just continue to change endlessly so that Obama must be considered the one in the wrong, and any points that don't agree with that and the shifting standards to make it happen are 'Obama can do no fault' strawmen? That's what it looks like.