Comments on: 'No President has lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably'

'No President has lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably'

acrobat — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 03:42:40 -0800

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything." So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Now, who still believes the P(L)OTUS?

By: Witty

Witty — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:16:18 -0800

I don't get it.

By: damnitkage

damnitkage — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:18:44 -0800

Here, let me help this thread. "This guy is obviously just a fucking liberal. He's an asshole, all liberals are assholes. Anyone who would dare to question the great and all powerful George Bush and his minions is an asshole Bush rocks." "This guy is right. Bush is a fucking liar. We're all screwed". Just copy and paste as you see fit.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:24:29 -0800

We're all screwed.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:27:06 -0800

shrieking and gibbering.

By: Witty

Witty — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:27:16 -0800

wait....

By: acrobat

acrobat — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:48:59 -0800

Case for war confected, say top US officials

By: nofundy

nofundy — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 04:55:16 -0800

I don't get it. It's OK, we understand. No one expects you to 'get it.' Now let the adults talk dear and you go outside and play.

By: Witty

Witty — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:18:10 -0800

nofundy: I'm not sure what you're saying. Can you be more clear? What is your source... links perhaps?

By: angry modem

angry modem — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:34:32 -0800

I'm pretty sure you could a president who lied more. The ones who were really good at it never had their lies called into question. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a hairy moose.

By: Kiell

Kiell — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:38:05 -0800

"...far worse than the false premise that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War - a reported second attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place. 'The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that.' " So, he worked for the CIA but never studied American foreign policy? Whether Tonkin happened or not, I think there was a little more to it than that.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:38:20 -0800

> no other President of the United States has ever lied so > baldly and so often and so demonstrably... Except for Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson and the rest of the gang...

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:53:48 -0800

Who What When Where Why? OK, everyone loves calling each other a LIAR these days. You've got that "LIES and the LYING LIARS who tell them" book, Michael Moore gets called a LIAR for "Bowling for Colombine" editing and his response that, surprise, his accusers are LYING LIARS, etc etc. Except the thing is that some of these LIES actually are lies, and some of them are just spins, matters of presention, etc. To pick one example: using stock footage of Charlton Heston at an NRA rally to illustrate another rally is only debatably a LIE. How about going back to the unfashionable basics of journalism: Who What When Where Why. Every time you call someone a LIAR, supply the five W's. Then you can actually prove that the LIAR is LYING. I dunno about everyone else but I'm getting somewhat desensitized to the work LIE, especially when it's used purely generically, rather than applied to any particular statement by the LIAR.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:56:32 -0800

The worst thing about this article, in my opinion, was that he pegged his hopes on the press, which to my mind has been nothing but coddling to the POTUS and his team. Facts don't get checked, his word is taken as gospel, and god forbid if they find something damaging against him, as that'd just display their bias. I'd put more hope in another year of american casualties without noticeable progress in Iraq will wear down the public's adoration of the president who was determined to place those soldiers in such danger.

By: CrazyJub

CrazyJub — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:21:34 -0800

How about going back to the unfashionable basics of journalism: Who What When Where Why. Every time you call someone a LIAR, supply the five W's. Then you can actually prove that the LIAR is LYING. Having actually read the Al Franken book in question, that is exactly what he does. He states the LIE, and provides examples of the truth, and then goes to the trouble of verifying the source of the truth, and the LIE itself. Very thorough, and at the end of the book provides end notes and footnotes so you can go check the LIE and the research sources he and his team used. If this is not the "unfashionable basics of journalism", I don't know what is.

By: kablam

kablam — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:25:28 -0800

CROSSFIREFILTERFODDER.

By: Witty

Witty — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:42:43 -0800

Having actually read the Al Franken book in question, that is exactly what he does. He states the LIE, and provides examples of the truth, and then goes to the trouble of verifying the source of the truth, and the LIE itself. Satirically, as I understand it. Right? I mean it's just satire. No?

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:59:53 -0800

TheophileEscargot: Except the thing is that some of these LIES actually are lies, and some of them are just spins, matters of presention, etc. To pick one example: using stock footage of Charlton Heston at an NRA rally to illustrate another rally is only debatably a LIE. No they weren't. Here is the actual speech, given 10 days after Columbine, from which the footage was taken. Seems to be the same speech that I saw in the movie. More Moore rumors debunked here.

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 07:01:29 -0800

Sorry... More Moore rumors debunked HERE! *ducks*

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 07:05:32 -0800

Does the link instigating this thread have anything going for it other than an editorial of some sort where someone accuses Shrub of being a liar? Is there an amusing anecdote about kittens or maybe a recipe for vegetarian lasagna? Something? Anything?

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 07:14:20 -0800

VulcanMike: The issue they I was thinking about was the bit where he took a bit of stock footage of Heston brandishing a rifle and bellowing "cold dead hands", and using that to illustrate the post-Colombine rally where he was apparently more restrained. From the page you linked to: As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image – hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media... Now to me, that's pretty standard documentary stuff, and I'm not offended by it. But if you don't like Moore, it's a handy excuse to shout "LIAR LIAR LIAR".

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:12:00 -0800

More on thread: go to Whitehouse.Gov and type in "Disarming Iraq" in the site-search section. You'll get all the pages - which the pale, shriveled webnebbishes chained in the White House cellars, who grind out this pap and are fed moldy pizza crusts in reward, have forgotten to expunge - about the enormous stockpiles of chemical weapons possessed by Saddan Hussein, Iraq's attempt to buy Uranium from Niger, Iraq's advanced Nuclear Weapons program.... All the brazen lies cooked up by Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al - as a mess of steaming shit ladled out with a smirk to the American public - are still displayed on the White House website. Get 'em while they're hot! - Lies, lies, and more lies, brought to you by lying liars.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:16:16 -0800

Oh, and talking about Bowling For Columbine, the DVD is best viewed while listening to the commentary by some of his interns and researchers who worked behind the scenes on the making of the film. Some of the voices in that DVD included people who actually checked and doublechecked the sources from which Michael Moore got his findings for the film. One of the ways he thanked them was by letting them do the commentary, which was a much better idea than having Moore do the commentary himself, talking over his own narrative. I perpetually have this argument with a republican friend of mine offline, and have yet to get him to admit whether or not he's even seen the film himself. I think the people arguing against Bowling for Columbine 1) refuse to actually watch the movie for fear of becoming 'contaminated' or something, and 2) will not be convinced by facts and common sense, because things like blind faith and the warm blanket of ignorance are so much more comforting.

By: Slagman

Slagman — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:20:58 -0800

I wish he'd just lied about sex.

By: johnnyboy

johnnyboy — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:27:45 -0800

If lying about sexual liaisons is an impeachable offence, then what punishment is fitting for taking a nation to war on what seems to be fabricated (spun) intelligence, an offence which seems to me to be an order of magnitude larger than what teflon bill was accused of.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:28:35 -0800

Besides, I'm indebted to Moore for giving me the factual basis for supporting gun rights (assault rifles aside) - it's not the guns, it's the culture! So I can wear, in good conscience, those little pewter Sig Arms miniature 9mm automatic lapel pins my brother in law the gun salesmen keeps giving me - and I win endless points by telling him how I dropped my reflexive liberal biases on gun ownership when I learned of the facts - such as that, by simply by walking across the border from Detroit into Canada, one's chances of being murdered with a gun decline from 42 per 100,000 to about 2 per 100,000. Yet Canadians own per capita, almost as many guns as do Americans. Go figure. All these years, my snickering at the "guns don't kill people. People kill people." slogan.........

By: UncleFes

UncleFes — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:29:14 -0800

because things like blind faith and the warm blanket of ignorance are so much more comforting. Indeed. And such comfort crosses ideological lines with impunity

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:31:18 -0800

Meanwhile, about the lying liars, One Bush to rule them all, One Bush to find them......

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:40:49 -0800

"As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export." President George Bush, Friday, November 7th. "It's quite clear to me that al Qaeda wants to take down the royal family and the government of Saudi Arabia" Senior Bush Administration Official, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage speaking on behalf of the Administration is Saudi Arabia, Monday, November 10th.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:05:56 -0800

That would be in... "in Saudi Arabia."

By: matteo

matteo — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:09:30 -0800

U.S. Opposes Money for Troops Jailed in Iraq (nytimes link, blah blah blah) WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein. In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American prisoners should be overturned. If the administration succeeds, the former prisoners would be deprived of the money they won and, they say, of the validation of a judge's ruling that documented their accounts of torture by the Iraqis — including beatings, burnings, starvation, mock executions and repeated threats of castration and dismemberment. "I don't want to say that I feel betrayed, because I still believe in my country," said Lt. Col. Dale Storr, whose Air Force A-10 fighter jet was shot down by Iraqi fire in February 1991. "I've always tried to keep in the back of my mind that we were never going to see any of the money," said Colonel Storr, who was held by the Iraqis for 33 days — a period in which he says his captors beat him with clubs, broke his nose, urinated on him and threatened to cut off his fingers if he did not disclose military secrets. "But it goes beyond frustration when I see our government trying to pretend that this whole case never happened." Another former prisoner, David Eberly, a retired Air Force colonel whose F-15 fighter was shot down over northwest Iraq and who said his interrogators repeatedly pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, said he was surprised by the administration's eagerness to overturn the judgment. "The administration wants $87 billion for Iraq," he said. "The money in our case is just a drop of blood in the bucket."

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:39:42 -0800

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:11:47 -0800

Take it away, specialk... post goatse, but not that. For pity's sake. I implore thee! Have mercy! Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

By: Beansidhe

Beansidhe — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:06:24 -0800

Regardless of the number of lies, since most of us agree that Shrub is (insert personal destestation here), what are we actually going to do to make sure he doesn't get "elected" again? Do many people on MeFi go out and work for their party of choice before the elections?

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:18:43 -0800

Beansidhe, it depends largely on which of the ten losers.. er, uhm I mean candidates with which the democrats eventually settle. It also depends on what third parties, if any, are going to rear their ugly heads next election. If the Non-Shrubs spend all of 2004 arguing over which is the best course of action, their votes will be split, and this time Shrub won't need to count on his brother and other strings to pull to get him in there another four years. We'll practically give the election to him because we couldn't agree upon a suitable alternative. Right now, Shrub's got more money for his campaign than all the major democratic candidates combined, and his name recognition is already out there as the incumbent. The money for his opposition is spread out far too thin. I doubt the Bush Administration is worried.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:03:29 -0800

his name recognition is already out there as the incumbent. And you count this in the for category?

By: LouReedsSon

LouReedsSon — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:23:48 -0800

his name recognition is already out there as the incumbent. That didn't help dad.

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:28:52 -0800

So far as the Greens are concerned, I think they've decided not to run a presidential candidate, encouraging their constituency to get Shrub the hell out of office. Instead they plan to focus time and resources on local issues and candidates. One interesting effect of this is that a couple of states, like Oregon, were very close in 2000 almost entirely due to a huge turnout for Nader. So Oregon is being percieved as a 'swing' state, from what I've heard, but to this man on the street, Republican dollars are going to be wasted on trying to win it. So there are some small long-term benefits gleaned from the horrors of 2000...

By: LouReedsSon

LouReedsSon — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:39:23 -0800

Instead they plan to focus time and resources on local issues and candidates. Question: Can someone running for president accept nominations from multiple parties? (I have noticed this at local levels before)

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:39:46 -0800

"CYRIL: What is the subject? VIVIAN: I intend to call it "The Decay of Lying: A Protest." CYRIL: Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that habit. VIVIAN: I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb responsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie ? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians won't do." - Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying -

By: kablam

kablam — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:26:07 -0800

The funny thing is that W is going to get majorly re-elected, and most likely by a large margin. He will also have coattails enough to increase the republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Why? Money. But also because the democrat candidates are such an incredible bunch of weebles. The democratic party is in shambles, and is now relying on "good luck" to get back into power. And all the Mefilterites who HATE, FEAR, LOATHE and CALL HIM A DUMMY are going to have four more years of him doing just about everything he wants to do. So give up. You don't convert anybody by being pendantic Bush-haters. It doesn't improve the topic of "The Better Squirrel Feeder", by logging in repetitive off-topic comments that Bush is a squirrel, *and* that he hates squirrels, *and* he lies about squirrels, for the sole purpose of letting everybody know again how very much you HATE. Nor does posting every damn news item or commentary that slams Bush. Just get yourself a doggie toy and chew it furiously, instead. It accomplishes the same thing.

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:57:03 -0800

You don't convert anybody by being pendantic Bush-haters. the numbers don't lie. a number of independent voting, red blooded, grease under the fingernails, dirt bike driving fellows i know loath bush and are working to see he is not reelected. all the we need is little piece of the center and your guy is gone. - please turn off the computer and go back to your "pedantic" shows, kablam.

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:57:43 -0800

The funny thing is that W is going to get majorly re-elected, and most likely by a large margin. Most polls show Bush's job approval ratings no higher now than a month after his inauguration. All polls show the majority of respondents with no opinion now disapproving of his performance. on preview, damn you, k.

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:00:25 -0800

damn you, specialk420, not damn you, kablam.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 06:53:53 -0800

You don't convert anybody by being pendantic Bush-haters. nor do you convert anyone by having a crappy prez.

By: mitchel

mitchel — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:10:50 -0800

or by insulting your opponents, telling them to "get doggie toys." neither funny, nor intelligent to say such things. but we know where you learn such childish argument style: watching your commentators and THEIR brilliant put-downs.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:49:08 -0800

"KABLAM!" went the car bomb, as microscopic bits of the Boy King rained down on the crowded street.

By: squirrel

squirrel — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:20:23 -0800

Bush is a squirrel, you say? Alright, Kablam, now it's personal.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:38:50 -0800

"KABLAM!" went the car bomb, as microscopic bits of the Boy King rained down on the crowded street. Wait, the boyking bits were raining AS the bomb exploded?! I'm flashing back to the grassy knoll!

By: kablam

kablam — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 15:38:52 -0800

What is the sound of a bunch of squeaky dog toys being chewed in the wilderness?

By: squirrel

squirrel — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:01:06 -0800

get yourself a doggie toy and chew it furiously, instead. It accomplishes the same thing. Chewing a doggie toy doesn't make me feel less isolated, kablam. Interacting with people, expressing anger and frustration, reading other people's perspectives, realizing that I'm not alone in my disgust... these things help me a lot more than a doggie toy. If you are tired of posts of any specific theme, stop reading them, and certainly stop posting to them. But something tells me that's not enough: you don't want us reading or writing to them, either. Why not? Do they threaten you? Veterinarian, heel thyself.