National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer
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@raphjd said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
It's not just many years into the future, but also the rampant theft from Medicare and SSI for the last 7 decades. Ike started the trend and most if not all Presidents after him also raided those accounts.
If those accounts had what the UK calls "triple locks" then they would be safe. Since they don't, we keep hearing how SSI won't be around much longer without a miracle, despite everyone paying into it.
I know I would be banned from most gay sites since I am not a liberal.
I can't argue that you're not a liberal - but I would argue that you're not a conservative, either!
- liberals are known for their pie-in-the-sky predictions (often based on the most favorable predictions all piled on top of each other)
- conservatives are known for their pragmatic, truth-based evaluations
And you, sir, have serious problems with the truth...
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I love when conservatives bitch about the debt, citing Medicare, but then conveniently forget that it was their boy, George W. Bush, that created the last, large entitlement program, Medicare Part D.
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@hubrys said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
I love when conservatives bitch about the debt, citing Medicare, but then conveniently forget that it was their boy, George W. Bush, that created the last, large entitlement program, Medicare Part D.
True Conservatives know that both "pure" Capitalism and "pure" Socialism are equally impossible and implausible. The key isn't blindly following one or the other... there are parts of our economy that are best-served by capitalism (e.g. most commerce), and others that are best served by socialism (e.g. basic healthcare).
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@raphjd said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
Ah, so I'm a liar. How nice of you.
Then again, you are a RINO swampie.
No, I said you had problems with the truth...
When you are deceived and then propagate that deception, it is not "truth"...
But to be a liar, you would have to KNOW what you said was untrue.
The fact that you're factually wrong does not make you a liar... it just makes you wrong. When you then refuse to acknowledge facts when they are presented, well... then, you have a problem with the truth!I would never presume to know whether you know that the disinformation you regurgitate from right-wing extremist media is false when you post it... so I would never presume to call you a liar... just wrong... and just (at least often) unwilling to accept when that is pointed out to you.
NOTE: I'm not talking philosophical differences here - I'm talking facts: like Trumps inauguration being the largest crowd ever, like Trump's election losses in 2018 being fake, like Trumps election loss in 2020 being "stolen"... and those are just the easy ones!
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It's only disinformation because you don't like what is being said.
You believe everything that CNN, Rachel Maddow, and Joy Reid pull out of their asses because they hate Trump nearly as much as you do. You don't care that they have been proven to be liars several times.
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@raphjd said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
It's only disinformation because you don't like what is being said.
You believe everything that CNN, Rachel Maddow, and Joy Reid pull out of their asses because they hate Trump nearly as much as you do. You don't care that they have been proven to be liars several times.
There you go again with the inflammatory and incendiary ranting...
For something to be a lie, it doesn't just have to be wrong, the person stating it has to KNOW - right then and there - that it is wrong... AS they are saying it!
When I walk into the door of your home and smell the dinner in the oven, I can honestly, say "dinner smells wonderful"... when I later learn that dinner is going to be Swansons in the microwave, and that what I smelled was your neighbor's BBQ... I didn't lie! But I sure as hell was wrong!
I don't watch Rachel Maddow (or any other show on MSNBC) - any more than I watch the non-news shows on Fox News... I generally don't look to the "talking heads" to tell me what I should think.
I honestly don't know who Joy Reid is at all...
I happen to know about the "national debt" (and the paper-tiger that it is) because I studied it during my MBA education. Yes, I would say my professor was a liberal... no, I wouldn't say he was wrong (at least not about everything).... He had some ideas I thought were liberal (and wacky), but the majority of the class was about economic facts - and how to tell the fact from the opinion. Also, how to detect "spun" facts.
It was the 2nd time I'd heard the Mark Twain quote:
"There are 3 types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, & Statistics"
(Mind you, he didn't invent the phrase - but he did popularize it!) -
@bi4smooth I like the Swanson's dinner vs. BBQ image--thanks for sharing it.
The issue of lying vs. truth-telling gets muddled in political circles: The classical definition of "knowing something" is that one "knows" a proposition for which one has (1) justified, (2) true (3) belief. ("Belief" here means intellectual assent; it has nothing to do with religion.) All three ingredients need to be present for one to know something in the strict classical sense. I could say, "It is sunny in Paris," which might be true, and I might believe it, but I haven't looked it up and thus I have no justification for believing it...thus I don't "know" that it's sunny in Paris. Conversely, your BBQ-smeller has justification for believing that "dinner smells wonderful," but it happens to be false, and thus strictly speaking he doesn't "know" the proposition that he has made...but as you note, he's not a liar.
The question arises whether someone (such as a politician) is lying if they make statements about which they have no justification. They might not know that they are false, but they have no justification to believe that they're true. Such a thing might not count as a lie, but it's still not responsible to make the assertion. Most sources assert that Mr Trump lied 30,000+ times whilst in office, but there's likely a chunk of those in which he wasn't willfully being deceptive--he just didn't know what he was talking about and said something that was politically expedient. I'm not apologising for him, just focusing the terminology. I think government officials--especially a head of state--have a responsibility to have justification for what they say. Speculating that coronavirus would simply "go away" or that it could be cured by injecting bleach is irresponsible because such statements had no justification--and also happened to be be demonstrably false.
People sometimes refer to Mr Trump's continued assertion that he actually won the 2020 election as "the Big Lie." I think that's only a lie if he knows that it's false, and it's hard to assess what's actually going on inside his dysfunctional toddler's brain. It's possible that he believes it, but since it's (a) not true and (b) he has no justification for it, he cannot be said to "know" that he won the election. But he is certainly well-versed in the Goebbel's Principle (named for Hitler's propaganda minister) that says, I think accurately, that if you tell people something enough times, be it true or false, many will believe it.
A quick search shows that "Joy Reid" is a talk/news host on the cable network MSNBC. I don't watch her programme as I don't have cable TV, and I don't know if that channel is even offered where I live. (I get television the old-fashioned way--with an antenna--and it's free!)
Perhaps I'll prepare some BBQ this evening...
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Wow - an intellectual, factual, analytical response.
What happened to the Universe? Did someone (as they clearly did in 2016) figure out the why's and wherefore's and, thusly, an infinitely more complex Universe (one in which Donald Trump - yeah, THAT Donald Trump - is actually, literally, elected President... of the United States!) was created?
(Source)
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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So, building on your notation above - and looking at how the valid application of the label "liar" (or just "lie") changes:
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On Nov 3, 2020 Donald Trump said that he won re-election. The votes had not yet been counted, so he could not have known - for a fact - that he was the winner. Thus, the statement was conjecture, and while eventually proven false, it was not a lie
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On Nov 10, 2020 Donald Trump said he that he won re-election. There were still some (enough) states who were still (re)counting, but it was clear that Biden was ahead. The probability (given what was known at the time) was that he had lost, but there was still a possibility... Thus, this was still conjecture - albeit a "wishful thinking" one - and therefore, not a lie
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On Nov 15, 2020 Donald Trump said (Tweeted) that Biden "only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA". This is a little harder to evaluate for a "lie". Clearly, Trump would have known the entirety of media - including Fox News - had reported his loss. Still, the choice of language like "the only" qualifies this as more hyperbole combined with continued wishful thinking. Again, at least in my opinion, not a lie (maybe self-delusional, but not (yet) a lie!)
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On Dec 15, 2020 Donald Trump said (again, via Twitter) that he won the election. However, by this time all 50 states and DC had certified their election results. Even though the final Electoral College vote would not occur for 3 weeks hence, this statement - in the face of the certified results clearly falls into the lie category. It would be different (again, choice of words matters!) had he tweeted that he should have won, or that he would overturn the results - but the statement - after the certification of all of the results that he had, in fact, won was not hyperbole or even wishful thinking. It was a lie
Every explicit claim of victory thereafter... has been a lie.
The question of the election being "stolen" is another matter. Trump can believe (regardless of his inability to convince anyone else in authority) that nefarious forces colluded against him and that he was the "rightful" (if not "legal") winner... that is not the same as saying he WAS the winner... delusional or not, that's just saying he should have been the winner, and I think some 70M supporters agree that they wish he had won, but that's not the same as saying that he DID win - which is a lie.
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@bi4smooth I very much like your chronological staging of these events. If one takes my view that one lies if and only if one "knows" that what is being said is false (which is not the only way of defining lying), then indeed it would seem that Mr Trump would not have been lying on November 3 or 10, as there was still some (shrinking) ambiguity about the actual election result. By late November, it would be difficult for a rational person to not believe that Mr Biden had won, so assertions by Mr Trump of victory at that point are close to being lies.
But applying the analysis here needs to assume that Mr Trump is being rational. It's possible that he actually believes, even today, that we won the election, even though state and federal government processes have declared and finalised otherwise. If he does actually believe the (irrational and untrue) proposition that he won the election, then by my narrow definition of lying, it wouldn't be a lie for him to say "I won the election." But if he were to say, "I know that I won the election," then that would be a lie, because to "know" that he won means he has justification for believing that--and clearly there is none. Perhaps I'm stretching the analytical framework beyond where it works. It's not easy to apply rational categories to someone as "unique" as Mr Trump.
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@raphjd No - as usual...
It's not disinformation because someone doesn't like it... it's disinformation because it's demonstrably not true.
I know this is beyond you... it has been for as long as I've seen you here... but just because someone disagrees with you, they are not 'ignorant of reality'... they might be right and you are wrong. In your case, this is always the case - you have never managed to post anything here that is of any value or worth at all... all you do is post garbage that is so obviously stupid and wrong that even a child could see that... but you... can't.
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@eobox91103 @bi4smooth You guys are talking way way way above Raphjd's head here... he won't be able to understand any of this! Believe me... I've tried before...
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Typical liberal shite, from a know-nothing liberal.
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@calatar You're quite right, although I enjoyed the exchange with Bi4Smooth--that's the kind of discussion that shows the potential benefit of a forum like this. It's unfortunate that good discussions get poisoned by a childish brat.
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I thought you were quitting the forums.
So, I'm a "childish brat", am I?
As I said before, you don't have to stay here. You can always go to one of the leftist echo chambers you clearly love.
Just because you don't like my non-leftist sources, does not make them wrong.
3 liberals telling me I'm wrong and calling me names, means that I am correct.
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@raphjd I am not quitting the forums, I'm only quitting making responses to you. This post is an exception. I enjoy thoughtful engagement with forum participants.
It is ironic (and that's a polite word) that you are a "forum administrator," when you frequently engage in venomous and childish name-calling. That would not be permitted in most forums, and even goes against the rules of this site. It's amusing (again, another polite word) that you violate the very rules that you have posted.
You're not fooling anybody. People who read your postings have this all figured out. If grownups are having a discussion on here that you don't understand, perhaps you should stand down.
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@bi4smooth Arizona just spent $150,000 proving Biden won Arizona.
It doesn't bring me joy to say that as I hate Biden almost as much as I hate Trump and didn't vote for either of them, but it is what it is. When people were saying trump stole the election from Hillary because russians got on facebook and called her a bad person, I rolled my eyes vigorously at that notion as well.
Hillary lost because she was a soulless piece of shit for stood for nothing. People wanted to try a wild card like trump because trump wasn't a politician so they thought he'd bring something new to the table. Instead he put corruption on steroids and ran the united clown show of america for 4 years. After 4 years of seeing what incompetent rich man buffoonery looks like people went back to standard scumbag politicians. This is not that hard.
the fact that Trump continues to con his base to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars perpetuating the lie that the election was stolen is just chef's kiss. Rudy Giuliani was laughed out of court 60 times after he himself told the court they had no evidence.
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@chanelkokoro I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, "Americans will always do the right thing--after they've tried everything else." It looks like they thought, in 2016, "let's try this new guy," and that didn't work. Then last year, they thought, "let's try this old guy," and the jury is still mostly out on that one. (Note, though, that more people voted for Mrs Clinton than for Mr Trump in 2016.)
That whole Arizona thing is so bizarre. I saw an interview the other day where one of the "vote counters" who said they thought 40,000 ballots (presumably marked for Mr Biden) were air-dropped in from "the southeast part of the world" (whatever that means), and that they had special technology to look for bamboo fibres in these illicit ballots. I'm sure they will convince themselves that they have found them.
One also notes that those who speak of "election fraud" only mention the presidential election, not any of the other contests, from senator on down to dog-catcher. It seems that all of those must have been in order.
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@eobox91103 No the jury is not still out of Biden. Biden has been a lying pos for 30 years, who only became president after his third try because he stood next to the country's first black president for 4 years. Biden only looks like he's doing a good job because trump spent 4 whole years ramming that bar into the dirt.
Biden has already gone back on several campaign promises which include him killing 15 minimum wage, refusing to repeal the trump tax cuts, refusing to decriminalize marijuana by taking off the schedule 1 drug class, a move that biden could have done unilaterally by himself on his first day if he wanted.
Biden and Kamala is the one who empowered these cops to start butchering people in the streets like animals in the first place. While his own son was busy getting high off his damn face and committing drug crimes of his own, he helped his child, he wanted empathy for his child, he sent his kid to rehab, and got him a nice cushy job, all while working his ass off to make sure that other people's children went to jail for making the same mistakes his son did.
Biden fought the desegregation of schools and school busing and is quoted as saying "I don't my kids going to school in a racial jungle." If you don't know this, Biden is a racist sack of shit human being on two legs, who only got elected because America doesn't deserve nice things.
Biden only won by 43,000 votes in 3 states, that's it. If trump wasn't such an incompetent jackass who didn't bungle a global pandemic in 18 different ways, he would've sailed to re-election, because again, America doesn't deserve nice things.
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