It's hard to stay non-partisan in a heavily polarized environment


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Guest Scott
9 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Dude... "routine audit".  He stated in the campaign several times that there has not been a time in (can't remember # of years) that he was not under audit.  Every year he gets audited.

In any case... WHERE IS THE LIE?  Do you have some information that he is not being audited anymore?  

Trump said on multiple occasions that he would release his tax returns, not just after the audit.  You really can't look these up (I'm on the phone in the middle of nowhere and linking is a pain)?   

Fact check my statement and see if it is true.

9 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

And in any case... if Trump releases his tax returns then he is stupid.  There is NOTHING in that action that is of benefit to him.  Nothing at all. 

There is one reason why Trump should have released his returns.  Because he said he would.

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On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2020 at 11:22 PM, Scott said:

You can't say that Politifact is a left wing website.  They have been really good at calling out all public statements by politicians and they were calling out plenty of things about Obama too.

Well...er...uh...:::cough::: Politifact is a left-wing website. It is routinely labeled as such--yes, but conservative media...and, of course, its victims. The site will occasionally call out liberal errors, but in its subject choices and interpretation methods it leans left. In one of the more humorous cases, according to Newsmax, Politifact said Senator Cruz had lied when he said Iran had a holiday celebrating American deaths (can't remember if Cruz said it was rooted in the hostage crisis of the late 1970s, or some event afterwards). In context, Cruz was engaging in hyperbole and was humorously pointing out that Iran could not be trust. Politifact, with straightened face, and utmost seriousness, suggested that Cruz had lied--that no such holiday existed. :guilty: I guess they showed him.   

Edited by prisonchaplain
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6 minutes ago, prisonchaplain said:

Well...er...uh...:::cough::: Politifact is a left-wing website. It is routinely labeled as such--yes, but conservative media...and, of course, its victims. The site will occasionally call out liberal errors, but in its subject choices and interpretation methods it leans left. In one of the more humorous cases, according to Newsmax, Politifact said Senator Cruz had lied when he said Iran had a holiday celebrating American deaths (can't remember if Cruz said it was rooted in the hostage crisis of the late 1970s, or some event afterwards). In context, Cruz was engaging in hyperbole and was humorously pointing out that Iran could not be trust. Politifact, with straightened face, and utmost seriousness, suggested that Cruz had lied--that no such holiday existed. :guilty: I guess they showed him.   

Hopefully politifact doesn't find about The Onion or we're all in big trouble.

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1 hour ago, Scott said:

Trump said Obama was the founder of ISIS.  Was this true or a lie?

Context.  

If you quote that as a literal quote then it is a blatant lie.  When you consider the context, then it is a figure of speech.  Obama's policies in Syria DID open up the field for the rise of ISIS.  It's pretty clear what Trump meant when he said that.

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Obama’s lies were meant to persuade; Trump’s are meant to justify.

Obama was trying to convince centrist Americans to do things his way.  His lies were carefully constructed, nuanced, layered, and (superficially) data-driven.

Trump is primarily trying to reinforce the zeal of folks who are already either intellectually converted to his cause (and thus already looked at the evidence and aren’t going to waste time looking at it again), or are emotionally converted to his cause (and don’t really care about the evidence anyways).  Trump’s lies don’t need to even facially comport with facts, and so he doesn’t bother trying.  Thus his falsities tend to be easily disprovable with quantifiable data (inflating the number of people at his inauguration, inflating the margin of victory in the electoral college versus past presidents, claiming he never said stuff that there is literally video of him saying, etc).

Moreover, Obama was constrained generally by the publicly-imposed necessity of seeming to be a good person.  Trump has signaled from the get-go that he will not consider himself bound by such constraints.  Why confine yourself to half-truths, when complete fabrication is so much easier and serves your purposes just as well?

I agree that Trump’s getting ridiculously unfair treatment from the media—so much so that they’re damaging their own credibility more than his, and especially now at this time of national crisis.  Now more than ever we need trustworthiness and predictability and political neutrality from the popular media; and we aren’t getting it.  

At the same time:  it’s a crying shame that we don’t have someone in the White House with a record of self-restraint, even self-sacrifice.  It’s a shame that we can’t say *for sure* that our choice is fundamentally an honest, wise, and/or good person.  It’s a shame that, back in 2016, both parties made it a point to pass over better choices and select, as their nominees, people who pointedly did not have those qualities.  It’s a shame that when some of us kept warning about the Lord’s advice in D&C 98:10, we were pooh-poohed, lied about, or even attacked as closet statists and assured that God’s scriptural pronouncements about defunct monarchical governments from three thousand years ago were more relevant to us than His scriptural pronouncements about the antebellum American democratic-republic.

Well did Cyrus Wheelock write, “O Babylon, O Babylon, we bid thee farewell/We’re going to the mountains of Ephraim to dwell.”  This is not a time for freedom lovers to grit our teeth and swear fealty to Rapin’ Don.  This is a time for us to redouble our allegiance to Christ and His Kingdom.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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1 hour ago, Scott said:

Trump said on multiple occasions that he would release his tax returns, not just after the audit.  You really can't look these up (I'm on the phone in the middle of nowhere and linking is a pain)?   

Fact check my statement and see if it is true.

Everybody in Trump's rallies know he is not going to release his tax returns. 

You can claim that his excuses for not releasing his tax returns is a lie.  It would be better to just say I'm not releasing the returns period.

 

1 hour ago, Scott said:

There is one reason why Trump should have released his returns.  Because he said he would.

Conceded.

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2 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Obama’s lies were meant to persuade; Trump’s are meant to justify.

Obama was trying to convince centrist Americans to do things his way.  His lies were carefully constructed, nuanced, layered, and (superficially) data-driven.

Not quite.  Benghazi and the youtube video was not anything about convincing.  It was a blatant lie to make cover on an election.  He even got Susan Rice to repeat the lie several times on national tv.  He then got Candy Crowley to cover for that lie on the Presidential debates.

The Russian Collusion narrative is a lie.  It is a blatant lie to make cover for the Trump campaign wire tapping with the FISA warrant.  It was such a blatant lie that only stands because MSM worked 24-hours-a-day to keep the cover.

I don't count as lies consequences to policies that he implemented - I grant him the benefit of the doubt that he simply "didn't know" the consequences of his policies.

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Guest Scott
6 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Context.  

If you quote that as a literal quote then it is a blatant lie.  When you consider the context, then it is a figure of speech.  Obama's policies in Syria DID open up the field for the rise of ISIS.  It's pretty clear what Trump meant when he said that.

ISIS existed before Obama, so even if Obama's actions did strengthen ISIS (and they did), the statement still wouldn't be true, literal or not.

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1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

Do you also call him Rapin Joe?

I’m not aware of any accounts of him nonconsensually penetrating anyone except for Alexandra Reade, whose credibility I’m still considering (certainly if the accuser goes under oath and/or Biden sends out a minion to tell the papers that it’s not legally possible to “rape” your employee, I’d consider those as strike against him; as I do with Trump vis a vis Michael Cohen’s defense of him).

In the interim I’m happy to call him “creepy Joe”, “gropey Joe”, “cop-a-feel Joe”, “bad-touch Biden”, or anything else along those lines; because those are more in harmony with the sorts of stories I have seen thus far. 

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9 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

How many accusers (including ex-wives speaking under penalty of perjury) do there need to be before it becomes “fair”?

Which ex-wife accused Trump of rape? I am aware of only one, who clarified that she didn't mean "RAPE rape", but just that she didn't think he was very nice. Are there other claims I'm not aware of?

In answer to  your question, a man generally needs to be tried and found guilty in a court of law before being branded a rapist. Such stringent requirements may not apply to general conversation, but a "fair" accusation of rape should necessarily include strong evidence, certainly more than an ex-wife's casual and admitted misuse of the term.

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Just now, Scott said:

ISIS existed before Obama, so even if Obama's actions did strengthen ISIS (and they did), the statement still wouldn't be true, literal or not.

ISIS was nobody before Obama.  That statement has a clear context.  It's the exact same thing when people say IBM invented the PC.  They did not.  We (at least we in technology) understand what people in technology mean when they say IBM invented the PC even if PC-tech predates IBM.

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2 hours ago, Scott said:

Fact check my statement and see if it is true.

BZZZZZZT!   You lose ten points for that.   And I'm adding a new rule: 

Unalterable truth of the universe #3 that you must accept in order to have your opinions taken seriously:  Understand the burden of proof.  If you level an accusation, it's on you to prove it.  It's not on others to disprove it.   When someone does what you just did, it does the exact opposite of persuade.  It makes people who do it, look like they're just spouting unsubstantiated nonsense. 

BurdenOfProof.jpg.c732483f5579ef4e0aeb98d70db8f5a0.jpg    ILLEGAL PROOFREVERSAL ATTEMPTED TOSHIFT BURDEN OF PROOF ONTO THE ...   image.jpeg.bc57828b2a96a8b81f49a305053ad653.jpeg

Burden of proof mk2 | Atheism | Know Your Meme   

 

Come on Scott.  I assume you'd like to have an impact with your opinions.  You think your points are valid, you'd like others to see how valid they are too, right?  You need to be more like Darth Vader:

Burden of Proof fallacy. - Imgflip


 

So make with the source.  Do more than say "trump said X", show us where.  Link the tweet.  Cite the source.  Otherwise, you're basically giving us all good reason to just dismiss anything you have to say on the subject.

On some forums, when someone can't/won't cite a source, it's cause for moderator action.  (Not this one, I'm just sharing because it really is that universally-understood a concept.)

Edited by NeuroTypical
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29 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

. . . they say IBM invented the PC even if PC-tech predates IBM.

I'm not sure what the context is, and I don't care. IBM had nothing to do with it, and I'm not sure why this age-ist slight needs to be directed my way! :cry:

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49 minutes ago, Vort said:

Which ex-wife accused Trump of rape? I am aware of only one, who clarified that she didn't mean "RAPE rape", but just that she didn't think he was very nice. Are there other claims I'm not aware of?

In answer to  your question, a man generally needs to be tried and found guilty in a court of law before being branded a rapist. Such stringent requirements may not apply to general conversation, but a "fair" accusation of rape should necessarily include strong evidence, certainly more than an ex-wife's casual and admitted misuse of the term.

Here's the "clarification":

Quote

When Lost Tycoon was about to be printed, Donald Trump and his lawyers provided a statement from Ivana, which was posted on the first page of the book. In it, Ivana confirms that she had “felt violated” and that she had stated that her husband had raped her during a divorce deposition. But Ivana sought to soften her earlier statement.

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the Ivana Trump statement said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

The statement, according to a “Notice to the Reader” in the book, “does not contradict or invalidate any information contained in this book.”

Note this closely.  Ivana did not recant the factual content of the allegation (which itself was made under other and before Trump seriously aspired to any electoral office).  She simply backpedaled from the legal ramifications of what she had formerly stated—and that, under legal pressure.

You can read the gruesome details of the allegation at  https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-wife-donald-trump-made-me-feel-violated-during-sex.  I think that if it were your daughter, or mine; or if the aggressor had the surname of “Clinton” or “Kennedy”; that you wouldn’t be nearly so squeamish about calling it what we usually call nonconsensual, deliberately painful, penetrative sex that leave sthe victim fleeing to a locked room where she sobs the night away. You’d call it rape.  And you’d be right.

We wouldn’t shy away from that word just because there had been no conviction.  We wouldn’t shy away from that word just because the perp held high elective office.  Nor would we softpedal things merely because the perp had offered us money—either directly, or in the indirect form of a (formerly) robust economy.  Donald Trump did what he did, and if we’re going to turn a blind eye because we happen to feel safe with the conservative judges he’s appointing for a government that we know (by prophecy) must inevitably fall anyways-then we deserve every plague we’re suffering, and every scourge we have yet to suffer. 

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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19 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Note this closely.  Ivana did not recant the factual content of the allegation (which itself was made under other and before Trump seriously aspired to any electoral office).  She simply backpedaled from the legal ramifications of what she had formerly stated—and that, under legal pressure.

Seriously, JAG? You are my hero for logical, reasoned thought. Do you really believe that a statement that Ivana had "felt violated", which she made during a divorce proceeding, and which she later explicitly clarified was not "to be interpreted [as rape] in a literal or criminal sense" by explaining that, "As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent"—do you honestly believe this is "rape" in any criminal, or for that matter reasonable, sense of the word?

Edited by Vort
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17 minutes ago, Vort said:

Seriously, JAG? You are my hero for logical thought. Do you really believe that a statement that Ivana had "felt violated", which she made during a divorce proceeding, and which she later explicitly clarified was not "to be interpreted [as rape] in a literal or criminal sense" by explaining that, "As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent"—do you honestly believe this is "rape" in any criminal, or for that matter reasonable, sense of the word?

First off--I've reformatted my prior post, which was doing some weird HTML blockquote stuff, which messed up the flow.  Apologies if that left things somewhat opaque; hopefully it's clearer now. 

Second off--I've avoided specifically quoting the initial depositon due to forum guidelines.  The language is quite graphic.  I have linked to the Daily Beast article which quotes the deposition (and even doing that, I'm probably flirting with the edge of what ought to be permitted due to forum rules).  My prior post does summarize Ivana's initial factual allegations, which she did not recant:  nonconsensual, deliberately painful, penetrative sex that leaves the victim fleeing to a locked room where she sobs the night away.  There's more detail, if you care to read it.  And again, I would challenge you to imagine your daughter--or mine--in that situation.  

Ivana told her story, Trump found it it was about to go to press, he deployed his lawyers and tried to get her to tweak her story, and she did--to a point. But the factual details remain, they are damning--and they are not the fabrication of a biased liberal press, having come out long before Trump had become the face of the GOP.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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Guest Scott
57 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

BZZZZZZT!   You lose ten points for that.   And I'm adding a new rule: 

Unalterable truth of the universe #3 that you must accept in order to have your opinions taken seriously:  Understand the burden of proof.  If you level an accusation, it's on you to prove it. 

I was on the phone and it was hard to post a bunch of links.   That Trump said he would release his tax returns is common knowlege.   I thought it would be pretty easy to do a quick Google seach, but apparently not.

Here you go:
 

There are a bunch of other quotes in the video above.  

Here is just one of many in the video (2014):

Start at 0:14 if you are too lazy to watch the whole video.

If I decide to run for (presidential) office, I'll produce my tax returns.  Absolutely.   

Was it a lie or not? 

This is a simple yes or no question.

Quote

On some forums, when someone can't/won't cite a source, it's cause for moderator action.  (Not this one, I'm just sharing because it really is that universally-understood a concept.)

And where is the proof that Obama lies more than Trump?

Where are the sources and why haven't you called it out?

Edited by Scott
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Guest Scott
22 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

CitationNeeded.jpg.e0d3bb194e8378f877e814bdb6a4faf5.jpg

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-rape-allegations-wife-ivana-marriage-interview-fox-and-friends-time-magazine-a7993041.html

PS, I was just answering a question asked by someone esle with one word asked by someone else about something that was common knowlege.   

Do you quote a source for every single post you make?   Where are your source quotes for the Coronavirus graphs you post, for example?

 

Edited by Scott
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