The REAL difference between Obama and the republicans.

Obama has obviously sinned many times and come short of the glory of god. As has every human who has ever lived.

And Obama is a slick politician. That is never that good, as any thinking person would grant.

That being said - BUT..... and it is a very large BUT:

Obama does not lie or distort in his ads against republicans running for their party's nomination for president.

But he doesn't get that much credit for this because, as a slick politician, he knows he doesn't have to be mendacious - the truth suffices quite well, thank you very much.

Obama and his reelection team can obviously see that just quoting Romney, Gingrich, Cain, Perry, Bachman, etc. exactly and in context is the way to "attack" and destroy his opponents. IOW, if quoting your opponents exactly is the most efficient way to show they are unqualified, out of touch and just plain big booby heads, then that is what you do. And that is what team Obama has been doing and will continue to do.

OTOH -

Obama's republican opponents have no effective way to attack him except lie. They figured this out a while back and it is their only chance.

But, unfortunately for them, this is 2011, not 1981, and all electronic recordings, videos, audio, etc. NEVER go away and the full context can always be recalled and shown to everyone. Any attempt to lie will get blown away - especially by someone who will have a half billion dollars to spend to "correct" the lies - and Obama will have that much money eventually to spend on the campaign (or so I hear).

Here are two prime examples of what I am talking about, i.e., republicans lying out their bungholes - but the truth will come out, and is coming out, and liars like Romney and Perry will be required, in the end, to eat their own feces of lies, distortions, and misrepresentations of truth:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/adwatch-rick-perrys-new-ad-lazy-attacks-b...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/obama-campaign-romney-tv-ad_n_1106832.h...

See what I mean? These republican A-holes believe they can just lie and get away with it.

What a bunch of idiots. Team Obama, once they get geared up, will pound these fools into the ground just using the lies of said fools.

Only about forty or forty-five per cent of Americans MIGHT buy into republican lies. I think a majority will see though the lies and go with the lesser of evils - Obama.

But I could be wrong. Maybe the lying scumbags will win.

We shall see.

While I agree that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates is lackluster, I'm concerned about the tone you take in your attack. Rather than presenting the evidence for their problematic tactics with an even and rational voice, you spice it up with "A-holes", "What a bunch of idiots", "lying scumbags", "to eat their own feces..."

This is symptomatic of the brokenness of our political process. Rather than having level-headed debates about actual policies, about actual problems and actual solutions, we descend to the level of teenagers lobbing scatalogical barbs at one another. Instead of trying to fix our country, we heap blame on those we disagree with and pretend that that is sufficient.

Why don't we agree to lay off the screeds and have constructive conversations about where to go from here? I'll start.

I have here proposed that a major roadblock to our country's success is partisan bickering that engages in uncivil name-calling. What are some concrete steps we can take to promote a civil discourse composed of rational arguments?

Name-calling, lies, exaggerations, and other such tactics have been with us for a LONG time. So, although your request for civility is certainly reasonable, political rhetoric hasn't changed that much in the last 200 years. Given that, I think the problem must lie elsewhere.

>3 BruceCoulson:: Your argument boils down to this: People have been doing bad things for as long as we have records of human civilization, so there's really no point in trying to change that. We should just accept bad behavior and the muck in which it leaves us stuck. There's no hope for making the world better.

I don't accept that argument. I have hope that we can make the world better. Here is one concrete way in which I am going to promote such action: I am going to take time with my students next semester and discuss the ways in which the people we will study made the world a better place. We will discuss what they did to listen to the angels of their better nature and bring kindness and compassion to the world rather than cruelty and indifference. And they will have a homework assignment: go out of your way to do something kind for somebody else, something you wouldn't otherwise have done.

Now it's your turn. Tell me what things you are going to do to make the world a better place.

> 2

So you're into form but not substance, particularly?

Sounds like a radically boring conversation to me.

I'll pass - I'm plebeian, not patrician.

But maybe you can find a McDonald here to chit-chat with about, oh, stuff, and perhaps share some tea and crumpets. LOL.

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A442667

>5 JGL53:: If you'll read what I wrote in #4, you'll see that I am interested in both form and substance. Acts of real kindness that change the world only do so because their substance is informed by kindness. On the other hand, our Congress spends its time mired in the filthiest of rhetorical forms while not accomplishing anything of substance.

And I'm quite perplexed as to why you would bring up Glencoe. What do the snivelling actions of corrupt clansmen more than three hundred years ago have to do with our concrete actions today to make the world a better place? I would not respond by demanding that you make reparations for the actions of a Virginian named Lee in the War to Save the Union, would I? Indeed, I am trying to have a serious conversation about the problems our world faces and the ways in which we are going to fix those problems. I am trying to have a conversation of substance.

You, on the other hand, seem to glee in petty barbs of ancient petty rivalries. I had thought by your first post, however imperfectly cloaked in substanceless zingers of formal name-calling, that you wanted to have serious discussion. I was, apparently, in error; I shall leave you to your cathartic rants.

4 -- You expect too much rationality from people. People aren't dominated by reason but by feeling. Reason is further down the list. I try not to descend into the muck, but here it is very difficult. There are many provocateurs and temptations.

What I did today was have the audacity to wander into Pro and Con and read a link to NY mag which contained an article by David Frum criticizing the Republicans. I continue to evaluate my positions all the time and concede Frum, whom I've read many times before, has made some good points.

For example, I never thought tax cuts, in all times and places, were a panacea. To be convinced that tax cuts are an Absolute, an idea sold by Grover Norquist among others, is silly to say the least. Read my lips never worked for Bush 41. And what really did the Reagan administration have in mind when it cut some taxes only to raise others? Isn't that worth a look? Everyone wants to claim Reagan but few recall just what happened during his administration, just the facts I mean, however you feel about them.

My question for people, politician or not, is always: I know you want it. How are going to pay for it?

I have here proposed that a major roadblock to our country's success is partisan bickering that engages in uncivil name-calling. What are some concrete steps we can take to promote a civil discourse composed of rational arguments?

The rules of decorum in the Senate (and, I believe the House) expressly prohibits name calling. For a reason.

I think the roots of the issue go much deeper.

Democrats have not really known what they stand for since Reagan. He effectively made Liberal a dirty word, and they are pretty much united in name only. Republicans had a coherent ideology, but a) when in power they proved themselves as capable of pandering as the D's and b) there is the perception, if not the reality, that it is a failed ideology.

All either party really has left (and by party, I essentially mean "People in Power" --the rest of us do not count) is their insistence they are not the other guy. Now, throw into that mix racial issues (the growing tide of Hispanics especially, making for vicious xenophobia and shameless pandering), the recession, Tea Party on the Right, and now OWS on the left, and the incredible complexity it takes to even think about some of today's issues, much less try to solve them, and we have devolved into a process that values certainty over facts, especially if that certainty stems from having one's head... in the sand.

Think about some of the issues we face:

a) evolving an economy that is not based on manufacturing, or the production of goods, whose complexity exceeds anything previously known by humans.

b) growing issues surrounding lack of water of crucial areas of the country (Los Angeles and Central California specifically.)

c) a "war" against an enemy that is not geographically located, wears no uniform, and whose idea of victory is killing their opponent, not invading them.

d) an education system that is run by the consumers, not the providers, and many of the providers have confused the outcomes (grades, standardized test scores) with the product (education).

e) A global interconnectedness where the strongest are adversely affected by the weakest, not vice versa.

To solve these issues we have:

a) an overwhelming mass of information, most of which is worthless, and much of which is wrong, or wrong headed.

b) an inability to deal with problems that are more than five minutes out, or to put it another way, the more complicated the problem, the more we demand a simplistic solution.

c) a broken political system

d) yesterday's solutions, which actually did not work so well then.

The name calling is a product of our inability to REALLY deal with things that we know in our guts are pretty important things, but which we also know are, at this point, unsolvable.

My two cents.

> 6

Gen. R.E. Lee was an honorable christian gentleman who would have been morally outraged by the slaughter of innocents, including women and children. IOW, he was no Campbell.

Though Lee was into slavery so there IS that.

As an atheist cousin of the late general who happens to be forswear against slavery I suppose I might consider myself his moral superior. But I guess the Zeitgeist counts for something also.

But switching rants, I stand by everything I averred in my OP. There is a moral difference between outright lying and whatever Obama has ever participated in when running for public office.

I think the evidence is clear.

That's all I'm saying. Obama = lesser of evils.

For a politician Obama is an honorable man. But that is an easy achievement for him in comparison to the lying scum that is the present day republican party - and their scumbag "base". And that is what I am using as a comparison. Compared to the Buddha or J.C. then Obama, like the rest of us mere humans, falls short. So, then, DUH.

> 9

Pretty much agreed.

But my point is that out-and-out lying by misquoting your opponent on purpose to make it seem he said one thing when he was talking about something completely different - that is something specialized in by republican scum.

I would be interested in seeing one example of Obama doing this. Or even any Democrat running for national office doing this.

Can anyone provide an example of this?

I am sure someone will come up with something, because politics is politics and saints rarely get elected. (Micky Leland is the exception on this.)

But my point was that NEITHER side is capable of really coming up with any solutions to the major problems facing us. But then, i am feeling pretty damn pessimistic today.

Name calling merely perpetuates the problems.

>9 Arctic-Stranger:, first point d:

As one of the "providers", I can tell you I set little stock by standardized tests and grades. Do I test my students and assign grades? Yes, that is part of my job. But are those tests blindly written and administered, their grades then blindly accounted and awarded? No. Most of my tests are in the form of essays that require my students (college freshmen, for the most part) to compare, contrast, and analyze ideas presented in the form of texts written by men and women throughout history. And my students do not "get" grades; they must earn them. Just showing up is not enough; they have to show me that they are actively thinking about and engaging with the material I am trying to teach them.

For example, on an essay exam where they are presented with passages from the Qur'an and from the writings of twelfth-century Crusaders, they will fail if they simply recite some nonsense about jihad they learned from Fox News. On the other hand, they will earn good grades if they lucidly articulate some of the complexities these texts reveal in the relationship between war and peace in both Islam and Christianity.

I understand my role as an educator to be co-explorer with my students of the human story. While Arctic-Stranger points to some ways in which the complex problems we face are new creations of the twenty-first century, the majority of problems that we encounter in living human lives are still those with which countless generations before us also struggled. My example here, of Christian and Muslim ideas about war, peace, conversion, and co-existence, is ample proof that these are not newly-invented problems. And there is value in exploring the ways in which past humans have dealt with those issues.

>10 JGL53::

I apologize if I seemed to mischaracterize the general; for what it's worth, I've a maternal uncle of some number of "greats" who was the stablemaster in charge of Traveller for a while. I still haven't the foggiest idea why Glencoe has anything to do with the current discussion, but I will let that pass. You may have a valid point that the President "is an honourable man", to quote Antony; but to dismiss all Republicans as "scumbags" does little to advance a civil and productive discussion. I know many liberals to whom "liberal is a bad word" does not apply; I know many conservatives who are as disgusted with lying as you are, whether the liar is a Republican candidate for president or is the Democratic President himself, lying about illicit activities in the Oval Office. But then, Clinton too "is an honourable man."

O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.

#1--'I don't understand why it is necessary to spread slander. To damage someone, all that is needed is to speak some truth about them.'--Nietzsche.

I'm not happy with Obama but he does take the high road and he may lose battles here and there but that kind of strategy wins wars. He's made to campaign but maybe not so much to govern. He's gracious to opponents even after they've ranted and vented at him--that gives people more the tendency to see him as reasonable. The Republican nominee may make it uncomfortably close but I don't really see any of their current prospective nominees (apart from Paul and Huntsman) as really serious in their viewpoints at all and it's not so much that someone like Gingrich doesn't have the intellectual capability but that in his case it seems like he is willing to compromise that capability even when he knows better meaning at least to my view that he lacks integrity. I think a lot of other people think the same--even a decent % of conservatives--but maybe I'm wrong.

I deliberately said "many of the providers" because I think most teachers are doing their damnedest to education kids. But between parents, who are demanding a good outcome ("Why is my kid not getting As?") and the people who make the budgets, teachers are often put in untenable positions.

I wrote a floor speech for a politician to defend our bill for funding increases which asked, "How many of us sitting here today would want our job performance evaluated by the performance of adolescent boys?"

As one of the few people in this forum who was directly responsible for an $11.7 million increase to education, I don't want anyone to think that I am anti-teacher or anti-public education.

> 12

Yes, I am into name-calling, but only if the name either literally or metaphorically fits.

I dispute your contention of moral or competency equivalence of the two parties.

E.g., Obama proposed a job bill that might help - but we can never know because it is blocked by republicans. Obama wants to raise the tax limit on the top earners from 36 to 39.6 per cent - something like that. We'll never know if that could have helped because republicans block it. republicans almost tanked our economy - and our nation - by holding up raising the debt ceiling until the last moment. And republicans insisted on continuing the Bush tax breaks for the rich by threatening to shut goverment down.
Etc.

We can't know if the Dems and Obama can do anything to make things better because of the repubs - whose publicly stated number one goal is to defeat Obama in 2012 and block EVERTHING he tries to do - and nothing else matters. Part of their strategy is to tank the economy - on purpose - in order to blame the bad economy on Obama. Their view seems to be that if the economy picks up then that is good for Obama so that a recovering economy is bad for republicans.

When Obama many times agrees with the repubs they then disagree with themselves and take the opposite position and deny they changed. republicans are scum. They are traitors, as they are in violation of their oaths to the Constitution - i.e., their priority is not the U.S. but gaining or regaining and maintaining political power - no matter what it takes - the old "by any means necessary" ploy.

This is not the way either political party saw it in the past. This is not the way Obama sees it either. Or rather I see no evidence to the contrary.

This argument for equivalence between repubs and dems is crap. Not because I just say it is crap. The objective evidence demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that it is crap.

But no doubt we will all continue to be subjected to this idea. A lot of people like the sound of it. Well, fine. What the eff ever.

> 14

Agreed.

With both you and Nietzsche

>15 Arctic-Stranger::

I didn't at all mean to impugn your support of education. Rather, I was offering an example of how I try to solve the problem you articulated. And on behalf of educators, I'd like to thank you for helping us out. We need more support, not less, despite what the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation might think (see http://swampland.time.com/2011/11/03/the-problem-with-paying-teachers-less-money....

Obama's solution, which I tend to agree with much more than anyone else's, are not not likely to bring about a major change.

>4 nathanielcampbell:

The first part of solving a problem is identifying a problem. Political slander has been a fact of life for a long time; and yet, progress was made. Therefore, political slander is not the key problem at any given point.

The key to progress, is, well, progress. Technological progress. Don't expect people to suddenly become better (barring serious advances in genetic engineering). That's why we've been able to ultimately solve social problems by throwing enough technological development at them. Not because it's the best way, necessarily, but because its the only way we have that works.

So, to improve the world, you have to encourage people to stay with difficulty scientific subjects. I'm helping to keep a teacher and nurse student sane and stable for my contribution.

yes, but we may be at the point where the need has outsized the technology.

Just a minor point but one that proves my point that republicans have a problem with the truth:

In the latest debate, going on actually right now, Romney said his real first name is Mitt.

It isn't. It's Willard.

#22--I don't know if I'd make a lot out of that. Anyone who'd watched him at all in the past knows he can't help being a pathological liar. The two kookiest republicans are Bachmann and Santorum--both Christian shariya--ists. The three leading in the polls Gingrich, Romney and Cain play about as fast and loose with the truth that they can't help resembling each other. Cain's knowledge of international affairs rivals Palin's from last time around. Uzbekistan--Libya--caught out and tried to bullshit his way through both. Granted that most people don't know much about foreign affairs either but there has to be at least several million conservative thinkers around the U. S. who could tell you something about both which should tell any rational human being he is just unfit for the job. It's a fucked up batch of presidential nominees.

If the GOP were serious they might think about someone like Colin Powell--though I doubt Powell would be interested.

Powell is too reasonable to get the Republican nomination. The far right hates him. This is what the Republican party has to work through -- that it has ceded control to a small minority. In order to win the Republican nomination, a candidate must fulfill a list of increasingly extreme demands, but doing so makes them unelectable in the national election.

Gingrich's moment in the spotlight may not last much longer. His comments on treating undocumented workers humanely was not well received by the far right. I think he'll start to slip in the next few weeks, much as Cain's support ebbed. Who's up next?