…not only that Berg’s Seventh Law is universal and immutable, but that Democrat politicians can and do count on their voters being unthinking lemmings who know neither history nor critical thought.
Barack Obama:
Barack Obama – who won a Nobel Peace Prize before spending eight years making “Hellfire” a more common precipitation in the Middle East than rain, and who did more to clamp down on critical media than anyone since Woodrow Wilson – bags on Trump, who made the first serious progress on Middle East peace in decades, and who ramped down military adventurism..
…the way the increasinly Wilsonian-looking Obama promised, and failed, to do.
Woolly wrote: “You can safely ignore the Left’s complaint’s about Trump lying”
Trump has dangerously normalized lying. In order to be a liar you have to recognize what is true. The problem isn’t that we no longer share truths. We do. It’s just that Trump and Republicans in Congress don’t care if something is said that is not true as long as the lie is useful. Truth is still there. It’s honesty that’s in danger.
Trump has dangerously normalized lying.
Huh.
All of those were from before the 2016 election.
Add in:
But do go on about how Trump “normalized lying”.
Well put, Mitch. Good list worth stealing.
MBerg— I find it troublesome that you had to think for a second whether telling lies was wrong.
We all know that it is wrong to lie, and most of us know a lie when we hear it. I knew that Trump wasn’t the healthiest President ever, that Bill Clinton lied when he wagged his finger at us, that Nixon was in fact a crook and the Gulf of Tonkin incident relied upon by LBJ wasn’t a legitimate basis for initiating the US war in Vietnam.
Presuming that the American voter is incapable of differentiating truth from fiction is nothing more than arrogance. Suggesting the media should be the only arbiter of truth is even worse. To paraphrase Justice Brandeis, the remedy to bad speech is more speech, not enforced silence.
You might also reconsider your view of the biblical provenance for the prohibition against lying. Exodus 23:7 tells us that’s not only a sin to lie, it’s an equal prohibition to associate with a habitual liar.
Seems to me Emery has a history of wanting us to believe that plagiarism isn’t lying.
Lying to the public is an old American tradition. All politicians do it.
But being a tyrant and an authoritarian is not an American tradition. Obama was the worst in my lifetime. Obama killed American citizens without a trial. He claimed that this was his right as commander in chief. Obama prosecuted more people under the espionage than all other presidents combined. He routinely threatened journalists who published leak information that reflected poorly on his administration.
I find it troublesome that you had to think for a second whether telling lies was wrong.
Troublesome, from Mr. Pants-in-Fire himself.
Woolly wrote: “Lying to the public is an old American tradition.”
Trump is quite different — he takes to another level. He is a pathological liar and has been a national embarrassment. His post-election conduct is fully within expected behavior.
OMG, really? Exodus 23:7?
The children at the Emery Collective learned their Alinsky; they know they’re supposed to “make the enemy live up to it’s own book of rules.” But to do that, kids, you have to know which translation of the book of rules we consider authoritative.
If God admonished Mankind not to commit perjury during a death penalty case, and you’re citing that rule to shame us for supporting President Trump’s litigation in a stolen election case, your attempt to shame us with hypocrisy results in gales of derisive laughter.
You BADLY need some kindergarten coaching in debate tactics.
You can’t even cite a single instance of lying, properly defined.
To the Emery Collective, ‘lying’ mean ‘saying something I don’t like.’ That’s not lying. Lying is making a false statement of fact, known to be false, with the intent the listener be deceived thereby.
Saying “It’s 2:00 o’clock” when it’s actually 1:00 o’clock is false but it’s only a lie if it’s not a mistake but instead is a deliberate attempt to deceive someone.
Saying “It’s gonna be Yuuuge” is not a lie because Yuuuuge is an opinion, not a fact.
Saying “We’re gonna build a wall and Mexico will pay for it” but Congress and the Court blocks construction, is not a lie because circumstances beyond your control prevented you from performing.
EC, you guys are so dim, so small-minded, so closeted in your ignorance that you actually believe the readers at this site don’t instantly see through your risible canards.
Saying stupid things repeatedly doesn’t make them smarter. It validates our low opinion of your intellectual abilities.
And I’m still waiting for you to cite that single instance of any nation that successfully managed a virus.
“We all know that it is wrong to lie, and most of us know a lie when we hear it.”
☝️ This from a 1/4 witted troll who’s specialty is plagiarizing inane bull shit from the swamp web.
This isn’t a lack of self awareness; its pure simple mindedness.
You BADLY need some kindergarten coaching in debate tactics
I’m intrigued by this idea you have that the Emery Collective is here to debate. If by debate you mean the exchange of ideas, thesis and antithesis, so as to arrive at a mutually agreeable synthesis, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the EC engage, much seem interested, in such behavior.
I hope the GOP nominates Sidney Powell for President in 2024.
I find it troublesome that you had to think for a second whether telling lies was wrong.
How is it you figure you know what I think?
Also – your threadjacking is getting kinda over the top again.
I eschew echo chambers. But if you want to jack threads, start your own blog.
Regulating the content of the comment section is (clearly) down my list of priorities, but it’s moving up
The threadjacking continues.
This is a deliberate ploy by Lefty commenters to white wash Obama’s authoritarian actions.
There are two prevailing narratives competing to explain why Obama’s presidency was a lot less successful than it promised to be. The first is that, faced with a tanking economy, a determinedly obstructionist (and at times overtly racist) republican opposition
and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he didn’t want but that the military-industrial complex was keen to keep going, he was hamstrung from the offing and didn’t even have a chance.
The second that, inexperienced, sometimes aloof and apparently believing his own soaring rhetoric and optimistic campaign promises, he wasn’t interested in the dirty compromises that it takes to get things done in government.
I personally suspect that it was somewhere between the two, but I’m still waiting for the definitive history of his presidency. This book isn’t it. Good read though.
The insanity of the current year makes us yearn for a simpler time, when the most pressing question was would the First Lady dress left or right today?
Now into the corrupt pardons phase of the presidential transition.
Say, isn’t this thread supposed to be about how Obama ws actually must more authoritarian than Trump?
Did Trump order Americans killed without a trial?
No.
Did Obama order Americans killed without a trial?
Yes.
Did Trump use the espionage act to prosecute leakers?
No.
Did Obama use the espionage act to prosecute leakers?
Yes, more than all previous presidents combined.
Did Trump seize reporters phone records?
No.
Did Obama seize reporters phone records?
Yes.
At the time Obama was persecuting leakers and journalists, the Obama-friendly NY Times wrote: “The Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”
On the other hand, no other figure in this era is able to write a political journey memoir like an Obama. There’s Truman-like competence and a Reagan-like story arc.
The financial crisis had large, powerful, and malevolent forces behind it. There is a powerful plutocracy that stands behind the Tea Party movement and has vast sway over the US Senate. American politics has not mastered the times it has found itself in; the times have mastered the politics for the most part.
In the economic area, Obama seemed ultimately to be too cautious and prudent, possibly because he didn’t fully appreciate the need to go truly ‘big” on recovery. The stabilization effort was masterful; the follow-on fiscal policy less so. That also may have been the inevitable outcome of the politics of the time.
In some ways, Obama walked off and took over the lease on a political house that the Clintons had built. In late 2007, the NYT Magazine had a long and devastating article on the mismanagement of the bloated Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton lacked many crucial skills to be a true presidential contender and these became apparent yet again in 2016 and in the years running up to the election. The entire email controversy seemed indicative of endemic gaps in Clinton’s abilities. Possibly Obama felt he needed to keep the Clintons personally, and their wing of the party for sure, on board for his 2012 reelection campaign. Bill Clinton did play a key role in 2012. So the entire Clinton-Obama relationship is an area requiring further excavation by the political archeologists.
The next four years of the Biden era will also set out some new markers on what is possible and what is not in America in this era, and from that perspective, yet another look back at the Obama years will be possible. How much agency does a president have over his or her epoch and how much is shaped by mountains and valley’s of America’s difficult political terrain?
The years since the 2008 Crash remain an unsettled history. Obama will stand as the remarkable personality of the era, so smoothly competent in such a tumultuous time.
Regarding Exodus 23:7, it strikes me that the better passage vis-a-vis the “Swamp” and their attempt totake out President Trump through the Steele dossier, is Deuteronomy 19:15-19, where “the same” penalty applies to the perjurer (talkin’ about you guys, Mueller, Comey, Strzok, etc..) that the perjurer thought to inflict on his victim. In a just society, Mueller and most of his team would be in jail for inflicting horrendous legal bills on any number of innocent victims.
Good thing, by the way, that I wasn’t lifting my mug of coffee to my mouth when I saw Emery’s description of Obama as “so smoothly competent.” Someone forgets the election of 2010 and how it took Obama from a nearly filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to nearly losing it altogether, and from a huge majority in the House to a significant minority–a loss of 64 seats. Obama is a genius at getting elected, but apart from the Health Insurance Deform Act, his political heritage is a wasteland.
OK, he was also successful in further weaponizing the bureaucracy against his political opponents, but again, that’s worth jail time, not honor.
👆Trump’s actually kind of an environmentalist when it comes to swamp- draining. He’s very protective of the wetlands.