Comments on: Five Things Democrats Need to Shut Up About if They Intend to Run the Country Again

By: Five Things Republicans Need to Shut Up About if They Intend to Run the Country Again at Some Point (David Louis Edelman’s Blog)

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:10:15 +0000

[...] It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are going to lose at least one house of Congress in next week’s mid-term elections. Or at least, it would be a foregone conclusion if they were running against anybody but the Democrats. (See my recent blog entry Five Things Democrats Need to Shut Up About if They Intend to Run the Country Again.) [...]

By: Jose

Jose — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:55:22 +0000

The planting of the “curveball” story with Plame and the administrations response to it was a clear cut case of deciet.

Any good salesman “believes” what he’s telling you even if in the back of his head he probably knows its a lie on some level. He chooses to believe the pitch because it’s in his best interest to do so not because he’s interested in the truth. This is a decietful act even if the salesman has disassembled to the point where he doesn’t feel like he’s lying.

By: tommyspoon

tommyspoon — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:24:05 +0000

So lying to the American people to enter a war of choice isn’t a good enough reason for impeachment? If not, then could you pray tell me what reason is good enough? I want the Dems to get control of Congress so they can exercise some oversight, not just to impeach BushCo. If impeachment is a byproduct of that oversight, great.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:24:04 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, Tom… I too want to ITMFA. I just want to do it for the right reasons.

By: tommyspoon

tommyspoon — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:32:32 +0000

Any proposed changes to Social Security only affect people who have not begun to receive benefits. I believe that’s the law, but I could be wrong about that.

You really ought to read “The One Percent Doctrine”. It really lays out the case that this administration lied their way into this war.

ITMFA!

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:44:49 +0000

Jason: I think this becomes a semantic question at some point. Is it a “lie” that the administration put forth evidence that they had doubts about without fully disclosing all of those doubts? I’m not sure. What about when you’ve got dozens of people who make a consensus decision about something even though some members of the group don’t buy it?

Did people in the entire military industrial complex lie during the march to war? Sure. But I think if you look at the question as a whole — did the Bush administration intentionally deceive the nation into a false war knowing the facts didn’t support their argument? — it seems to me that the answer is no. I think they really believed that the war was warranted based on the evidence they had.

Tommy: Touché. Good point. (Although Democrats conveniently forgot to mention that Bush’s lame privatization proposals would not have affected current senior citizens’ Social Security…)

By: tommyspoon

tommyspoon — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:14:11 +0000

Until the Democrats stop rounding up senior citizens every two years and warning them that the Republicans want to take away their Social Security money, it’s really hypocritical for them to complain.

Not for the past four years, my friend. That’s exactly what the GOP wanted to do by “privatizing” Social Security.

ITMFA!

By: Jason M. Robertson

Jason M. Robertson — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:02:24 +0000

I’m going to have to challenge you on your absolution of the ‘lying to get us into Iraq’ charge. While it is clear the major players all believed in WMD in Iraq, it is also clear they lied in numerous specific instances to create a more dramatic threat. In particular the nuclear claims were known to be bunk throughout. Beyond that, many of the secondary enabling arguments are clear lies. The institutional gaze of our planning mechanisms was averted from the war aftermath to enable expectations of an easy recovery. The inspections regime was rocky, but appeared to be on course for reimplementation. Repeated claims that force was a last resort, administration insistence that use-of-force authorization was first a tool about credibility, these are all things that don’t admit of reconciliation with what we’ve learned of the intent of the actors involved. The general WMD question is interesting for being an exception to the full complex of public statements made to set the course to war.