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Michelle Bachmann could be our next president.

Can we all just agree that the occasional verbal gaff doesn't necessarily make you a troglodyte?

Repeatedly lying and misrepresenting the facts also doesn't make you stupid, but it does give one pause at least.

Bachman is obviously not stupid. You don't get to the positions she has by being dumb. But she does lie. And lie. And then lies just to make sure. That should make anyone, republican, democrat, or independent take note and watch them very carefully.

Then again, if politicians didn't lie, we would've in bizzaro world I think.
 
Brainster said:
I don't want her to be the Republican nominee. And the Democrats elected somebody who thought there were 57 states.
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You do know that Obama corrected himself, admitted he made a mistake and joked about it the same day, don't you?

He didn't try to double down on the it like Palin and Bachmann have.
 
Grizzly Adams said:
Fixed that for you.

Don't think silly voting is endemic to Republicans. (Though it may be Minnesotans have a propensity for it - Al Franken, Jesse Ventura...)
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I'll grant you that Ventura is a flake, but I have seen no evidence that Al Franken has been "silly."
 
Alferd_Packer said:
I'll grant you that Ventura is a flake, but I have seen no evidence that Al Franken has been "silly."
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I have, but I am a fan of his work prior to joining the senate and much of that is quite 'silly' (intentionally so).

However, I agree, that Senator Franken has worked hard to keep things serious. I am sure that this is in part due to his previous career and expectations that he would not.
 
nvidiot said:
Can we all just agree that the occasional verbal gaff doesn't necessarily make you a troglodyte?
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Regardless of one's intelligence or views on matters political, occasional oopsies, misstatements and bloopers ought to be expected.
nvidiot said:
Repeatedly lying and misrepresenting the facts also doesn't make you stupid, but it does give one pause at least.
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A person's credibility is affected by a number of things, including but not limited to:
  • whether the person utters an outrageous falsehood, even an occasional one, when I could not ever see myself on my worst day ever saying something so preposterous in public;
  • whether the person repeats a falsehood especially after being given notice of its falsity and opportunity to correct it, the inability to admit an error being in my judgment a serious flaw in integrity and good moral character;
  • whether the person repeatedly utters false statements on a number of unrelated topics;
  • whether the person utters a false statement in circumstances in which truth is of essential importance, such as when a person is testifying under penalty of perjury;
  • whether the person fails to give a straight answer to a straight question, or is evasive, or tries to answer a question other than the one that was asked;
  • whether the person holds others to a higher moral standard--such as a standard of factual accuracy--but holds him/herself to a significantly lower standard;
  • whether the person tries to excuse his/her own ignorant or rude remarks as "jokes," even though the remarks had no discernable wit or punch line;
  • whether the person professes to understand a subject about which the person has no expertise, and perhaps not even basic knowledge;
  • whether the person tries to pass off unsupported assertions or blatant absurdities and unquestioned fact.
nvidiot said:
Bachman is obviously not stupid. You don't get to the positions she has by being dumb. But she does lie. And lie. And then lies just to make sure. That should make anyone, republican, democrat, or independent take note and watch them very carefully.

Then again, if politicians didn't lie, we would've in bizzaro world I think.
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George Carlin said it best (although for various reasons I must paraphrase him here). Some people who utter falsities are stupid, some are full of [fertilizer], some are [extremely] nuts, and some are a combination of all three. My take is that Bachmann is all three. I think she is stupid, because she says and does stupid things. I apply the "Stupid is as stupid does" rule, and hold that regardless of IQ, a person who says and does stupid things may properly be called "stupid."

But she is also enormously full of [fertilizer] (what major politician isn't?) but she also gives every indication that she actually believes in some of the nonsense she spews, which indicates that she is also not fully rational.

There were those who catalogued the inane things that gushed with sickening frequency from the pie-holes of Reagan and Quayle and Palin and Little Bush and it's fair to expect that a similar catalogue is going to be compiled for Bachmann if she remains in the spotlight and continues to utter verbal excrement.

Similar catalogues were not compiled for Obama or for Clinton. Some may wonder: why not? The knee-jerk reaction is perhaps to say that there is some sort of nefarious partisan motive, yet similar catalogues were not compiled for Elder Bush, or Bob Dole, or John McCain ... and a catalogue of sorts IS being compiled for windbag Joe Biden who lately has had to be more careful ....
 
AlBell said:
Speaking of missing facts:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ference/2011/06/29/AGpQMPrH_blog.html?hpid=z2

Most of you lefty nit-pickers have no trouble supporting the current liar-in-office.
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but Obama is misleading when he suggests that closing this loophole would make much of a dent in the federal budget.
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This is true, but the same can also be said for many of the other programs and proposals pitched by both sides. How much of a dent is slashing PP going to make?

He also should made clear that he would like to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000, rather than just “millionaires and billionaires.”
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Around 98% (maybe a little more, I haven't checked recently) of US households fall under the $250k mark, so I really don't see the huge deal the author is making about the president's choice of words.

If you look at any politician's speeches, you're going to be able to nitpick rhetoric. It's politics, it's what they do. This is hardly analagous to Bachmann coming across as potentially batcrap insane.
 
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AlBell said:
Speaking of missing facts:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ference/2011/06/29/AGpQMPrH_blog.html?hpid=z2

Most of you lefty nit-pickers have no trouble supporting the current liar-in-office.
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OH, yes, please DO point out where the lies are in this because unless I put on my rush limbaugh/ Ann Culter coloured glasses I sure don't see it!

Or is your argument simply the lame repugnican BS that well it's such a small amount that since it won't make a real difference we should not take it away from people who have the lowest level of taxes since the 50's, made more profits off of stealing and cheating than anyone in history EVER and and continue to surrender patriotism for profiteering at the expense of the middle class.


“If you are a wealthy CEO or a hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. They're lower than they've been since the 1950s.”
This statistic comes from the 2010 Economic Report of the President (page 154), and it’s basically right. The top tax rates have declined significantly over the past half-century.
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In addition, the median income for a family of 4 - that's 2 parents working full time in the US is $60K. You are delusional, a liar, or your expectations of legitimate wealth is skewed from the 2 and a half decade of republican wall street rape and pillaging going on if you think that a person making $250K by themselves is not rich in this country.
 
cwalner said:
ETA: My Governor, Mitch Daniels, is a prime example. He used his family as a convenient excuse not to run, but as a moderate Republican, I suspect he is just waiting for a better time to run and does not want a failed attempt on his record when he does.
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A bit of a derail, but I think it really was his family that prevented him from running. First of all, his wife divorced and left the family for several years, then came back and they remarried. My guess is that she knew that the reason she left her family would have to become public (and I'm guessing that maybe she had an affair or something and then it didn't work out). Also, Daniels was pushing a far-right agenda (defunding Planned Parenthood, etc) before he finally announced he wasn't running even despite previous calls for a Republican "truce" on social issues. So I'm guessing he really was planning to run.

That said, Daniels is a moderate and has said publicly that if he ran he wouldn't sign Grover Norquist's pledge to never raise taxes. I believe that Huntsman may be the only current candidate who said he wouldn't sign the pledge, but Norquist insists that he'll sign it eventually.

-Bri
 
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AlBell said:
Speaking of missing facts:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ference/2011/06/29/AGpQMPrH_blog.html?hpid=z2

Most of you lefty nit-pickers have no trouble supporting the current liar-in-office.
Click to expand...


There are some people who seem more interested in scoring debate points than in discerning what is true. One technique often used by such people is this: when they have good examples to support a point they are making, they will provide the actual examples, and when they don't have good examples to support a point they are making they simply provide a link and defiantly challenge opponents to debunk what is found there.

In reading your post, I couldn't help notice you didn't provide any examples of what is to be found at the site you linked to.
 
Magyar said:
OH, yes, please DO point out where the lies are in this because unless I put on my rush limbaugh/ Ann Culter coloured glasses I sure don't see it!
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Obama lies plenty:

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/

Obama doesn't lie with the regularity of Bachmann, but nearly a third of his statements are rated "barely true," "false," or "pants on fire" (over 85% of Bachmann's statements fall under the same categories).

-Bri
 
Since conservatives/Republicans seem to think the first lady is an important consideration when choosing a President, I'll just leave this here.
 
Nova Land said:
One technique often used by such people is this: when they have good examples to support a point they are making, they will provide the actual examples...
Click to expand...

Maybe AlBell didn't provide them because there are so many.


"What I have done -- and this is unprecedented ... is I've said to each agency ... 'look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them.'"

"If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

"And 100 percent, John, of your ads . . . 100 percent of them have been negative."

Obama ad contends that John McCain endorses Rush Limbaugh's comments about immigration.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States has "doubled our exports."

Says stories about his birth certificate drowned out media coverage of the Republican and White House budget plans the week of April 11.

The president’s proposed budget "will help reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next decade to the lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president."

Under the White House’s budget proposal, "we will not be adding more to the national debt" by the middle of the decade.

Twelve judges have thrown out legal challenges to the health care law because they rejected "the notion that the health care law was unconstitutional."

"I didn't raise taxes once."

The Bush administration had been "giving (auto companies) billions of dollars and just asking nothing in return."

"The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.''

"We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."

When Obama was interviewed by American reporters in Asia, "Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy."

Insurers delayed an Illinois man's treatment, "and he died because of it."

Health reform will "give every American the same opportunity" to buy health insurance the way members of Congress do.

Preventive care "saves money."

(No earmarks in spending bill)

"If we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars."

"I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter."

Stimulus tax cuts "began showing up in paychecks of 4.8 million Indiana households about three months ago."

Health insurance companies are "making record profits, right now."

"We import more oil today than ever before."

"In eighth grade math, we’ve fallen to ninth place."

"There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy."

"Senator McCain would pay for part of his (health care) plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare — $882-billion worth."

"The centerpiece of Senator McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots."

Under John McCain's health care plan, people get a $5,000 tax credit to buy a $12,000 health care policy, and "that's a loss for you."

John McCain accused Barack Obama "of letting infants die."

"Oil companies ...currently have 68-million acres that they're not using."

McCain "has opposed stem cell research."

"But if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week."

"The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.''

Oil companies "haven't touched" 68 million acres where they already have rights to drill.

Fully inflating tires is "a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent."

John McCain refuses to support a new bipartisan energy bill "because it would take away tax breaks from oil companies like Exxon Mobil."

The U.S. government spends less on energy innovation "than the pet food industry invests in its own products."

"Our National Guard, as we saw in the Midwest flooding, can't function as effectively as it could. I was talking to National Guard representatives. Fifteen of their 17 helicopters in this region were overseas during the flooding."

"I think we came down here (to Florida) one time ... but we weren't actively fundraising here."

"I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins."

"He's promising four more years of an administration that will push for the privatization of Social Security..."

"We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years."

"Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was a 'boon' to our economy."

"As has been noted by many observers, including Bill Clinton's former secretary of labor, my plan does more than anybody to reduce costs."

Americans "have never paid more for gas at the pump."

"She said, you know, 'I voted for it, but I hoped it wouldn't pass.' That was a quote on live TV."

"I know that Hillary on occasion has said — just last year said this (NAFTA) was a boon to the economy."

"Gas prices have never been higher, and Exxon Mobil's profits have never been higher."

"If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars."

"John wasn't this raging populist four years ago" when he ran for president.

"Right now, an employer has more of a chance of getting hit by lightning than be prosecuted for hiring an undocumented worker. That has to change."

If African-Americans vote their percentage of the population in 2008, "Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state."
​

Source: www.politifact.com

-Bri
 
Bri said:
Maybe AlBell didn't provide them because there are so many.


"What I have done -- and this is unprecedented ... is I've said to each agency ... 'look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them.'"

"If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

"And 100 percent, John, of your ads . . . 100 percent of them have been negative."

Obama ad contends that John McCain endorses Rush Limbaugh's comments about immigration.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States has "doubled our exports."

Says stories about his birth certificate drowned out media coverage of the Republican and White House budget plans the week of April 11.

The president’s proposed budget "will help reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next decade to the lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president."

Under the White House’s budget proposal, "we will not be adding more to the national debt" by the middle of the decade.

Twelve judges have thrown out legal challenges to the health care law because they rejected "the notion that the health care law was unconstitutional."

"I didn't raise taxes once."

The Bush administration had been "giving (auto companies) billions of dollars and just asking nothing in return."

"The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.''

"We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."

When Obama was interviewed by American reporters in Asia, "Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy."

Insurers delayed an Illinois man's treatment, "and he died because of it."

Health reform will "give every American the same opportunity" to buy health insurance the way members of Congress do.

Preventive care "saves money."

(No earmarks in spending bill)

"If we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars."

"I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter."

Stimulus tax cuts "began showing up in paychecks of 4.8 million Indiana households about three months ago."

Health insurance companies are "making record profits, right now."

"We import more oil today than ever before."

"In eighth grade math, we’ve fallen to ninth place."

"There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy."

"Senator McCain would pay for part of his (health care) plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare — $882-billion worth."

"The centerpiece of Senator McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots."

Under John McCain's health care plan, people get a $5,000 tax credit to buy a $12,000 health care policy, and "that's a loss for you."

John McCain accused Barack Obama "of letting infants die."

"Oil companies ...currently have 68-million acres that they're not using."

McCain "has opposed stem cell research."

"But if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week."

"The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.''

Oil companies "haven't touched" 68 million acres where they already have rights to drill.

Fully inflating tires is "a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent."

John McCain refuses to support a new bipartisan energy bill "because it would take away tax breaks from oil companies like Exxon Mobil."

The U.S. government spends less on energy innovation "than the pet food industry invests in its own products."

"Our National Guard, as we saw in the Midwest flooding, can't function as effectively as it could. I was talking to National Guard representatives. Fifteen of their 17 helicopters in this region were overseas during the flooding."

"I think we came down here (to Florida) one time ... but we weren't actively fundraising here."

"I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins."

"He's promising four more years of an administration that will push for the privatization of Social Security..."

"We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years."

"Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was a 'boon' to our economy."

"As has been noted by many observers, including Bill Clinton's former secretary of labor, my plan does more than anybody to reduce costs."

Americans "have never paid more for gas at the pump."

"She said, you know, 'I voted for it, but I hoped it wouldn't pass.' That was a quote on live TV."

"I know that Hillary on occasion has said — just last year said this (NAFTA) was a boon to the economy."

"Gas prices have never been higher, and Exxon Mobil's profits have never been higher."

"If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars."

"John wasn't this raging populist four years ago" when he ran for president.

"Right now, an employer has more of a chance of getting hit by lightning than be prosecuted for hiring an undocumented worker. That has to change."

If African-Americans vote their percentage of the population in 2008, "Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state."
​

Source: www.politifact.com

-Bri
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sorry, but i miss your point.
are you saying that all of those statements are false?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Well it's definitely patriotic to shill for cigarette manufacturers and maintain integrity by dying of lung cancer!

And apparently he held the Tea Party, true-blue American belief in white supremacy!
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According to that article:

In an interview with Playboy magazine published on May 1, 1971, Wayne made several controversial remarks about race and class in the United States. The interview became a hot topic and many stores had trouble keeping the issue in stock
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I can just imagine the customers at the newstand:

Cust: I just wanna read this Playboy for the ... uh... article on... uh... John Wayne Gacy.

Vendor: John Wayne who?

Cust: Ooops! He's not famous yet...
 
bikerdruid said:
so why is it that the repugnians are unable to come up with a reasonable, viable, and intelligent candidate?
could it be that there are no reasonable, viable, and intelligent repugnians?
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Mitt Romney's not so bad is he?

In terms of viability he's as viable as any other candidate.
 
Upchurch said:
Since conservatives/Republicans seem to think the first lady is an important consideration when choosing a President, I'll just leave this here.
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Very carefully clipped to make it appear that he was talking about gays being barbarians. In fact, he was talking about children being barbarians who need to be educated and disciplined.


(Start at about 2:40)

Again, I don't like Bachmann as a candidate. But I dislike this full-court press of lying about her by Think Progress and other liberal outlets just as much.
 
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