Comments

Obama: Oh, what’s another lie… — 101 Comments

1. I don’t think morality as a character trait is high on Obama’s list.

2. Good Lord!

   The Gibbs portion reads like pure Monty Python (but not as funny).

   –

3. I’m sure you’ve pointed out the lies in the past, Neo, but I find it interesting that in this post you don’t actually give any specific examples of a particular lie. I mean, the photo-op issue is hardly much different from Bush stopping photographs of returning coffins from Iraq, etc.; this is just basic political spin that every Administration does. Where’s the outright lie?

   As for your last paragraph: obviously I totally disagree that this is what Obama or Democrats in general actually want. It certainly bears no resemblance whatsoever to my politics. I don’t believe it characterizes Obama’s “secret” views whatsoever, nor do I see any concrete evidence that his politics in any way resembles your characterization.

   Yes, Democrats and liberals in general believe that there ought to be some mechanisms to help people who have been unlucky as you put it — but we also believe that putting some of these policies into effect will have a general long-term positive effect on the economy as a whole. For example, consider the children of parents who have suffered a medical mishap and are currently uninsured; rather than seeing them fall into poverty and go bankrupt from medical costs, their parents will be able to afford medical care, and their children will then be able to afford to go to college, and become productive citizens, etc.

   In other words, liberals tend to think that society is interconnected, not composed just of isolated islands of individuals whose welfare doesn’t interconnect in some ways. Benefitting my neighbor can in some ways, in the long run, also benefit myself. But I certainly have no interest in totally leveling the playing field and make all outcomes exactly equal. I do think the American penchant for having some diversity in economic outcomes leads to a more dynamic society. I just don’t think that there’s *no* value in social safety nets at all, as some libertarians think.

4. For some reason this posting made me think of this exchange Labyrinth:

   Top Red Guard: No. You can’t ask us. You can only ask one of us.
   Top Blue Guard: It’s the rules, and I should warn you that one of us always tells the truth, and one of us always lies. That’s the rules too. He always lies.
   Top Red Guard: I do not! I tell the truth!
   Top Blue Guard: Oooh, what a lie!

   Notice they are red and blue. Wonder if there’s something in that.

   At any rate that is a very stunning exchange between Gibbs and the press. I hadn’t seen that. The President’s conduct from day to day has been shocking, and has only be emboldened with the passage of the Healthcare bill, as the account of his treatment in your other post on Israel demonstrates. He’s like Freddie Bartholomew at the beginning of Captain Courageous

5. Mitsu:

   You’re as bad as Gibbs! It isn’t about a freakin’ photogragh. And it’s more than even the transparency issue although that is a promise broken by Obama in the most preverse and Orwellian sense. It’s the condescension in his attitude. That little pat on the head and, “Silly boy, we can do what we want to, we won the election.”

6. Like you, I can’t bear to watch him telling the lies again and again. Obama reminds me of a salesman I worked with who was a shameless liar. It wasn’t the usual stretching the truth or amplifying the positive that people in sales sometime do – he would just make stuff up and contradict himself constantly. It seemed that he really believed whatever he was saying at the time he was saying it (as it was always something that helped him get what he wanted from the other person), but as soon as the conversation ended, so did his conviction, and a lot of times, his memory of having said it. Even when it became a joke – we used to attribute past statements he denied as having been uttered by his “evil twin” – the man simply had no capacity for shame or remorse.
   And this is the real concern for me: Obama has no shame, no remorse, no concern about the consequences. Imagine the damage he can – we won’t have to for much longer.

7. Obviously it’s message control. But like I said, what do you really expect? Bush did this in all sorts of ways, Clinton did it, every president has done it. I mean, it’s not as though his signing of the executive order was a secret. I don’t really see how this is any more “Orwellian” than Bush not allowing people to photograph returning coffins from Iraq.

8. >make stuff up and contradict himself

   Are you referring to what people in the punditocracy call “flip-flops”, where he stakes out one position and later changes his mind? I’ve never really understood why people get so up in arms about this — people evolve their views.

   If he said one thing, then the next day said the opposite, then the next day said the opposite again, that would be something pretty worrisome. But saying one thing then several months later changing his mind — how is that “lie”?

   This is not to say I don’t find some flip flops rather hard to swallow: Romney’s current lambasting of HCR when he himself pushed through a similar (though more flawed) plan in Massachusetts — there’s a flip flop that is pretty strange, it seems to me.

9. Misrepresentation is not changing your mind. And his campaign on HCR is full of that.

10. Mitsu, that’s really disingenuous. Someone with your stated IQ can surely read well enough to understand that Neo did not offer the Gibbs photo exchange as an example of a lie, but of his snarky, condescending, unprofessional tone. As for the specific lie Neo wrote about, finding it requires you to click on the link in the first line, which leads to Obama’s false claim in Iowa that the new legislation will immediately require coverage of preexisting conditions in children — something that it will not do until 2014, as he must have known by then. That’s not spin, it’s not a flip-flop, it is nothing but a false statement of fact, intended to sell the bill to his audience by misleading them about it.

    (And even if he didn’t know yet about the Dem’s laughable mistake in drafting this supposedly brilliant bill, his misstatement would count as a lie under your side’s “Bush lied, people died” definition of a lie — that is, if a President makes an incorrect statement of fact, even if he does so in the good faith belief that he is speaking the truth, even if this belief is shared by intelligence agencies and other political leaders all over the world, not to mention past Democratic presidents, he’s nothing more than a lying liar who lies . . . oh wait, I forgot. That rule only applies to Republican presidents. Never mind.)

11. Mitsu wrote, “Obviously it’s message control.”

    In your message about Hayek the other day – you lied.

    There is a certain part of your brain that is missing – a conscience.

12. Clearly Obama sees the passage of HCR as proof of his integrity, doing something he said he’d do. A huge pwer grab is not a difficult promise to honor. Of course he broke a string of promise about how he would do it. And the simplest one to keep, letting it sit on his desk for 5 days before signing, what argument could you possibly offer to defend that. More evolution? Like somebody else said on this blog, “he lies when the truth would do.”

13. Obama message controlled and the country rolled?

14. Nope, the man has no moral center at all. He’s very much a “means justify the ends” type of guy.

    Couple that with a compliant/complicit press, unable or unwilling to ask hard questions and demand accountability, and we have a perfect storm on our hands.

    I’m at the point where I can’t even look at Obama, much less listen to anything he has to say anymore. Same with Pelosi. There have been plenty of politicians I’ve found to be revolting, for various reasons. But these two literally make me sick to my stomach.

15. I wonder if Tiger Woods used the message control excuse on his wife? If shes a liberal she probably would have felt a lot better about the whole ordeal.

16. For example, consider the children of parents who have suffered a medical mishap and are currently uninsured; rather than seeing them fall into poverty and go bankrupt from medical costs, their parents will be able to afford medical care, and their children will then be able to afford to go to college, and become productive citizens, etc.

    Actually, Mitsu, that’s a terrible example. If the parents fall all the way into poverty, they’ll be able to get Medicaid, they won’t be uninsured, and they won’t have to worry about medical costs. Furthermore, kids with penniless parents are in a better position when it comes to applying for college financial aid than kids whose parents have a little money — too much to qualify for significant aid, not enough to pay tuition. That’s one of the many ways our society rewards poverty and penalizes the industrious.

    The irony is that because of Medicaid (and many state-based programs that provide medical insurance for poor children) the problem of the uninsured isn’t all that well correlated to poverty in its most severe form; it’s more of a problem of the working poor, the lower-middle class, and the self-employed. That doesn’t mean that the unaffordability of health coverage for such people is not a problem — but playing the oh-think-of-the-poor-poor-children violin really has nothing to do with whether Obamacare is the right solution.

17. From Hansen’s paragraph, “We know privately all this is not sustainable, but assume the better off will find a way to save themselves and thus us, before we bankrupt ourselves….”

    I diasagree. They are true believers in the notion that they can make things more fair – create equal outcomes. They have no idea what spending money like they have been doing does to the currency or borrowing ability of the nation. They remind me of college kids who have gotten credit cards and have no notion that there is a limit to what they can spend.

    Those of us who believe in fiscal responsibility look at the examples of Chile under Allende, Peru under Allan Garcia, and even Zimbabwe under Mugabe as cautionary tales. The progressives look at those examples and think that those “rubes” just didn’t do it right. They truly believe that under their guidance it’ll be different. Yeah, just like the housing boom – no way housing prices could ever go down. It is a form of denial. I have seen it in individuals who have ended up deep in debt and eventual bankruptcy. Only with Obama and the dems it is a form of group think.

    Unlike you, neo, I agree with Hansen that they consider it highly moral or altruistic to do what they are doing. In the book, “HOW WE DECIDE,” by Jonah Lehrer he points out brain imaging experiments that show some people get greater feelings of reward or a sense of pleasure when they are being altruistic than when they are being creative or receiving rewards. Their brains actually get maximum pleasure from being altruistic. I suspect that many, if not most, progressives are these kinds of people. If they can be altruistic and gain power at the same time – would that not be an more pleasurable feeling?

18. Edit: in my last sentence: “would that not be an even more pleasurable feeling”

19. J.J.

    The trouble with altruistic liberals in government is they don’t spend like drunken sailors. Sailors spend their own money.

20. Is Mitsu a paid poster for Obama.? They certainly have an answer for every single criticism of Obama and his policies. I hope this poster gets a good salary from Axelrod because it certainly isn’ t convincing me, and at this point I’m so bored by the “Evil George Bush. Evil Republicans:” posts that I’m ready to bang my head against the wall-and I haven’t even read all of Mitsu’s posts.

    I congratulate you on trying to get through the liberal wall, neoneocon. You have much more stamina than I ever would. :^)

21. Even Hiraldo Rivera quotes Obama’s numbers as if they were real and trustworthy. There is no arguing with fools (for soon you can’t tell which one is the fool). See above. All you can say to yourself is “Another Stupid Democrat” and move on.

22. Mitsu: the specific example of the lie is in the first link! Pay attention!

    [Hint: the link occurs on the words “among friends.”]

23. I shouldn’t feed the troll, but…Mitsu, Obama makes up stuff when he speaks off-prompter, such as mentioning evil doctors that regularly remove tonsils for profit or amputate limbs for $50,000. And if you are really interested in reviewing Obama’s contradictions, I suggest that you search the Nation Review Online archives for the following statement: “All Barack Obama Statements Come With an Expiration Date”.

24. you are right about the lying. The end justifies the lie.http://inversions-and-deceptions.blogspot.com/2007/10/end-justifies-lie.html

25. .

    I just looked at the picture in question.

    Which one is supposed to be Judas, again, and sell out Obama for silver?

    .

26. > people evolve their views

    Yes, and these people evolve them one way, then they evolve them the other way, then they evolve them back again, and…

    You get the picture? More relevant, are you getting seasick?

27. Mitsu (1:49 pm ) above,

    You write: “I certainly have no interest in totally leveling the playing field and make all outcomes exactly equal.”

    Therein lies the fallacy of socialism/communism. Everyone THINKS that’s what socialism strives for, but show me one single socialistic or communistic society where all are actually equal.

    Brezhnev had an antique auto collection while the average Russian stood in line for bread and milk–some equality there.

    No. Socialism uses an egalitarian posture to push consolidation of power. It’s a scam accepted by the lowest economic classes because they have no further economically fall and many of them resent the successful. It is adopted by the elite because it gives them an air of moral superiority and they are the beneficiaries of this consolidation of power. The middle class is cut out of both ends, but like the worker drones, they are the actual force which keeps the economy moving at all.

    An example of just this principle? Social Security. Passed in 1933 with a full retirement age of 65. At that time most people didn’t live that long. It is funded by payroll taxes. Who is on the payroll? Workers. Not the wealthy whose income is largely unearned income not subject to social security tax(dividends, interest. rental income and capital gain).

    Thus, from the get go, the government, devised a way to reach into the middle-class workers pocket in return for the promise of future income which most workers would never collect. That’s why the govt raided the SS Trust Fund; it never expected to need the money for retirement benefits and saw it as a windfall to fund more govt.

    In a nutshell, this is socialism, or, as Paul Krugman called it “FDR’s most enduring legacy.”

28. Neo: sorry, I didn’t realize the “among friends” link was to the lie. It’s pretty obvious, however, clicking through to the “subsequent coverage” link in there that this was simply a mistake, and the Administration believes the law should be interpreted in a way consistent with Obama’s statement, so they plan to issue a regulation to clarify the matter. I’m not sure how one could characterize this as a “lie” — a lie would be saying something that someone knows to be false, but evidently the Administration believed it to be true at the time, and they are advancing the view that Obama’s statement is a correct interpretation of the law. The snafu seems to do with the interpretation of the phrase “pre-existing exclusions”. Obviously this was a bit of a mess up.

    Baklava, regarding Hayek, I don’t know what you’re referring to vis a vis my “lying” about it. I may of course be saying incorrect things, I certainly don’t claim never to make mistakes, but nothing I wrote about Hayek is an intentional falsehood. And I think, by the way, that our little discussion of Hayek and the economic calculation problem is very interesting (in the other topic), as it really gets to the meat of the matter. (To summarize that: I agree with Hayek that his analysis of the economic calculation problem indicates that central planning will never work — but I disagree with his notion that this implies government should do nothing but enforce contracts and root out fraud, for reasons I outline in that discussion: government shouldn’t micromanage, but it can and should handle larger-scale issue through biases to the market because the market by itself can run into dead ends because it only follows local information, locally optimal paths.)

29. Mr. Frank said, “The trouble with altruistic liberals in government is they don’t spend like drunken sailors. Sailors spend their own money.’

    Yep, but that is another chance for them to feel good because they are taking the ill gotten gains of the “rich” and helping the “disenfranchised.” They see themselves as modern day Robinhoods. They are so convinced of their moral high ground and so high on the dopamine rewards, that they are unable to see the financial consequences of their actions. IMO, that is why it is so difficult for us, the commenters here at neo’s, to understand why they seem so blind to fiscal reality.

30. mitsu: Obama stating something as a fact does not make it so. Obama thinking it will end up that way does not make it so. But believe me, the lie linked here is quite small and unimportant compared to the far bigger lies he has told. It was just the lie du jour.

    You can parse words all you want about what’s a lie and what’s a mistake and what’s Obama’s wishful thinking, but (except for his die-hard supporters) a lot of people have learned to discount nearly every word he says. His word has lost all meaning, except as spin.

    Just Google “Obama lies” and start reading. For me, the most curious lies have to do with misrepresenting history in very basic ways. For example, his entire speech about the Berlin Airlift was essentially a lie.

    And you, Mitsu, will probably excuse him by saying some version of “he didn’t know and was just mistaken,” or “it’s a difference of opinion” or “it’s a matter of emphasis” or “it’s only an omission.” The problem is there are too many lies, too well documented, too overwhelming—big and small and in-between. And if they are all merely ignorance than he is too stupid and ignorant to be president. But his lies are not random; they are in the service of his message and his goals, and much too strategic to be the result of mere ignorance.

    Another interesting example was Obama’s SOTU statement when he misrepresented the Citizens United case ruling and used it to criticize the Justices sitting in the audience. Any first year law student could read the facts of that case and see that Obama was wrong (that is, if that student wasn’t already an Obama shill). But Obama the great con law scholar understood how to twist it to make the point he wanted to make, knowing that the Justices were a captive audience and couldn’t fight back. So he’s not only a liar, he’s a classless bully.

    Obama lies as a matter of course. It is a sad thing, and there has never been another president in history who has done that, or even come close. I include Democrats and Republicans in that list, ones I have liked and ones I have disliked. They certainly have lied here and there, some more than others—but Obama goes far far beyond any of them.

31. I mean, the photo-op issue is hardly much different from Bush stopping photographs of returning coffins from Iraq

    Other than the fact that one is about, grudgingly, paying lip-service to live babies and the other is paying earned respect to dead soldiers….

    Other than that, they’re just the same.

32. I hate to say this but I think you give Obama too much credit. I don’t see his lying as being strategic, rather I see it as being tactical. I’d like to think he’s playing chess but I think it’s actually checkers.

    I think this is so based on the results. A strategic liar wouldn’t have this ‘all statements come with an expiration date’ problem. A strategic liar lies judiciously and in a manner to avoid future discovery. Obama lies like a bull in a china shop (methaphor implosion but you know what I mean) – all snort and swagger. He doesn’t care about discovery because anyone that points his lies out is called a liar and racist.

33. Mitsu says:

    “….I’m not sure how one could characterize this as a “lie” – a lie would be saying something that someone knows to be false, but evidently the Administration believed it to be true at the time,…”

    Wonderful, we can finally agree that Bush never lied about WMDs in Iraq since apparently nearly everyone in government (ours and external) assumed there were such weapons in Iraq. Surely the lefties now see…oh wait yeah, logic and liberals. lol

34. For example, consider the children of parents who have suffered a medical mishap and are currently uninsured; rather than seeing them fall into poverty and go bankrupt from medical costs

    WTF!? Nobody took over for John Edwards?!

    That family just won the lottery.

35. I don’t believe John Edwards’ vocation is available anymore. I forget the specific disease but the hypothesis at the time was that a C section delivery would increase the changes of the child getting that condition or disease. Doctors were sued becaue they did not do a C section, presumably to save money or due to doctor incompetence, and the child had the condition. Science later proved that C sections had no impact on the incidence of this disease.

36. “But he doesn’t bother to divide the world into “truth” and “lies” because the distinction is not important to him.” Spot on.

    Mitsu isn’t stupid. He sees this as similar to what other presidents do because it is comforting. Matters of degree mean little, because one can point and say “well look, it’s exactly the same thing. No difference whatsoever.” There is in fact an enormous difference between Bush & the photos of coffins vs. Obama’s lack of transparency. There is a difference between a torturer and a surgeon as well, though persons determined to see no difference can describe them in similar terms. Or as Buckley once described, rescuing an elderly female pedestrian from a speeding car is quite different from pushing her in front of it, but both can be seen as merely shoving old ladies in the street.

    Be always, always wary of such equivalences Mitsu, when you find yourself thinking them. I find in myself that they hide all sorts of mischief. The policy on coffin photos at Dover had been in place since 1991. The rationale given for continuing was privacy, and specifically that families had expressed being hurt by opponents of the war who were using photos of their sons’ coffins to score political points. This was roundly pooh-poohed by progressives, who insisted that no, of course it was only Bush who tried to score cheap political points like that, managing the message, as you say. They believed he had other motives, not because they had any evidence for this (how could they?), but because it fit their picture of him. Further, the Senate voted to approve this action, with bipartisan support. (You will notice that the NYT and WaPo were careful to say “Republican-controlled” Senate, while the phrase “Democratic-controlled” has been missing from their reporting of HCR votes.)

    I write this as one who disagreed with that decision, who believed that the photos should be allowed because on balance it was real information, whatever unscrupulous people might choose to do with it.

    As to Democrats believing that things are interconnected, and some government rescue is necessary, please try and avoid such Manichean stereotypes. There is broad agreement in favor of limited public assistance, and has been since colonial times. The objection to Obamacare has centered around the facts that it would cost a great deal, increase government intrusion, and produce little, if any, general health improvement for the nation. I’m not sure it’s us being simplistic about how the world works when thee accuses us of kicking puppies.

    As to Obama’s motives and exonerating him by comparison to your own, there are two problems with that argument. 1. You have no evidence he or other Democratic leaders are in fact like you in this, despite their use of rhetoric that moves you. 2. You do not give evidence here of actually examining your own motives much. Your tendency to stereotype those who agree with you is actually a red flag of the precise opposite.

    I have often noted that the escape from liberalism often turns on issues of personal courage. Please dare.

37. Mr Gibbs’ many appearances show him to be conceited and condescending. He should reflect that he does not have a job for life.

38. A.V.I. (at 5:17 PM)

    Wonderful comment. Bravo!

    Jamie Irons

39. While I agree that Obama is a world class liar, I think most of the time he just makes stuff up. Examples would include his assertion that surgeons make tens of thousands of dollars amputating a foot or that employers would save 3000% (later changed to dollars, but still from thin air) on health care premiums.

40. mitsu the dim doth protest: “I’m sure you’ve pointed out the lies in the past, Neo, but I find it interesting that in this post you don’t actually give any specific examples of a particular lie.”

    Ah my poor little newbie. Here let me help you out with a basic internet technique tip. It is called “Search.” Neo makes it easy for newbies such as you with a “Search” box in the right hand margin of the page. Look carefully and you’ll see it.

    See it?

    Good.

    Now here’s what you do.

    Put your cursor into the rectangle.

    Got that?

    Okay. Now on your keyboard type:

    Obama lies

    Done that? Excellent.

    Now press your return key.

    Just once.

    And there you are. Click wildly on the links and don’t forget to click on the links for older entries too.

    There. Now we’ve mastered basic internet technique #1.

    This is a good thing for you to learn Mitsu since you will discover if you take what you have learned here today and go to someplace like, say, Google.com it will be of immense help to you in finding many things.

    Don’t you feel better now? Practice makes perfect.

41. EBJ,

    I believe it was Cerebral Palsy, in the Joh Edwards casees.

    And even worse, I read that on occasions he would ‘channel’ or imitate the spirit of babies killed by the lack of oxygen that babies would have recieved, had they been given a c-sectin.

    “Yet Edwards won his cases not because scientific evidence favored him but because of his smooth-talking “trust-me” demeanor — and heart-wrenching pleas in which he ghoulishly sometimes pretended to be the voice of the unfortunate child crying out for justice. ”

    From: http://www.fumento.com/fumento/edwards2007.html

    Classy. That’s Joh Edwards. Classy.

    And Hong,

    I was goin to bring up the ‘Bush lied, People died” angle too. Although I can’t say Mitsu ever espoused such a thing (because I haven’t read everything he’s written) it does seem a good point to make regardless.

42. One explanation for Obama’s blatant lying was given by Ali Sina before the election in his analysis of Obama as a pathological narcissist. I think it’s still appropriate as a guide to understanding our president.

    “Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer”
    http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html

43. “(G)overnment shouldn’t micromanage, but it can and should handle larger-scale issue through biases to the market because the market by itself can run into dead ends because it only follows local information, locally optimal paths.”

    Could you please give a concrete example of a market running into a “dead end” and what you mean by “locally optimal paths”?

    It seems to me that most politicians add pork expenditures to business-related bills because THEY are the ones most focused on their local paths. As a result, we have government money subsidizing big agriculture e.g. California rice growers, paying Midwestern paper mills to install low-carbon petrol products when they used to use their own waste byproduct as fuel (which lowered both the carbon footprint and was a more ecologically-sound way of waste disposal), and closing the GM-owned Saturn line (which was getting 36 mpg even in the ’90s!)

44. Oh come on. I’ve read that speech where Obama refers to the airlift; where was the “lie” in that? In the section at the end where he invokes the airlift, he is specifically talking about how America should not turn inward, how America should help Europe and vice-versa. I mean, give me a break — he was giving the speech *in Berlin*. Do you think Germans don’t know that the Berlin airlift was an American operation? To characterize the speech as “a lie” is just, I’m sorry, absurd.

    Regarding foreign corporations and the SCOTUS ruling, as I understand it, American subsidiaries of foreign corporations do now have restrictions lifted:

    http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/07/nation/la-na-foreign-corporations7-2010mar07

    I am assuming that’s what Obama was referring to. Scalia may have simply misunderstood the reference.

    Regarding whether Bush lied about WMD’s: I have never been one of those who claimed he was lying, though certainly many on the left do think he was lying. I just think he was mistaken, and sloppy in his reading of the intelligence.

45. I should also note — the Berlin Airlift was not ONLY an American operation — it was an Allied operation, including RAF and other air forces from many Commonwealth countries.

46. Obama’s named Hussein for a reason. Muslims are granted dispensation by Allah and/or his prophet for lying to the dhimmi (that’s us). It’s called ‘taqqiya’.

    And bless me, I swept thru Mitsu’s many posts without a read. I feel better for that.

47. Gray said: Other than the fact that one is about, grudgingly, paying lip-service to live babies and the other is paying earned respect to dead soldiers….

    Thank you, Gray. You said it much better than I was about to. I have close relatives in active duty service, and Obama’s dead-soldier photo-op disgusted me.

48. “The problem is there are too many lies, too well documented, too overwhelming–big and small and in-between. And if they are all merely ignorance than he is too stupid and ignorant to be president.”

    Neo, I don’t disagree that he doesn’t care to distinguish between truth and falsehood. However, don’t discount the ignorance angle – I’ve never previously had the experience of discovering an American adult who did not know there are 50 states. So ignorance is way up there as a causal factor in my view.

49. “Oh come on. I’ve read that speech where Obama refers to the airlift; where was the “lie” in that?”

    A core lie: “history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

    The world was *not* standing as one – that was the REASON for the airlift. The world was entirely divided into an evil totalitarian socialist/communist Soviet block and a free West. This was a deliberate, unbelievably large lie, or ignorance stunning even for one who pledges allegiance to the 57 states.

50. Treachery, Mitsu. You walk on an icy slope. Defending the indefensible. It is the deceiving of oneself — over and over again — which is the most destructive. Mitsu loses a piece of soul with each self deception. The fact that it is intentional self deception only makes it worse.

51. As I said before: give me a break. Obviously the speech was about the Cold War; do you seriously think anyone could have heard that speech and not realized he was talking about standing against Communism and the Soviet Union? As I said before, he gave the speech *in Berlin*. Of COURSE it wa about the Allies standing against the USSR, and these were Berliners who obviously know their own history! It’s basic English comprehension.

    Look, I’m open to the idea that Obama lies but these three examples, particularly the Berlin speech, are really pretty silly. This really is a sign of the polarization of the Net; if you only read conservative sites I can see how you could get the impression “people” think Obama is a serial liar; but if these are the examples, it’s really weak.

52. He deliberately (or ignorantly) elided the truth of what happened because it would have meant reminding listeners of the evil socialists/communists – with whom he self-identifies, based on his cabinet – and the valiant free west.

    There is no other reasonable explanation for his miscasting of the entire effort, and memory-blackholing of the US source of the airlift (yes, there were Allied bit players).

53. It’s really amazing to me how far apart we have come in this country; it leaves me quite shocked. Defending the indefensible? Only the most obtuse, bizarre reading of the Berlin speech could bring one to the conclusion that it was a “lie”. I mean you’re basically claiming that Obama was somehow implying the Berlin airlift was some international relief effort which was done entirely outside the context of the Cold War? And that Berliners would somehow interpret this speech that way by being taken in by this “lie”? It just boggles the mind. It was in Berlin, folks; that’s where he was giving the speech. This weird reading of the speech I have never seen before and I know no one who read it that way: who would?

54. And by the way — the Allies were not “bit players”. The RAF played a HUGE role in the airlift. By no means was it an American-only effort in any sense. Go read your history, don’t just rely on claims by conservative pundits. I mean, this is the big problem with the Internet today — conservatives only read conservatives, liberals only read liberals; spin and bias are rife everywhere.

55. But Mitsu reads both! Wow. Maybe she just tacks all over the ocean: port tack, now starboard, quick back to port.

56. I’m a guy (why do people always think I’m a girl?) Well, I’m one of the only people I know who goes to right-leaning blogs once in a while to check them out. I think people on both sides ought to visit the other side more often, however.

57. This is a portion of Obama’s comment about the Citizens United case during the SOTU

    This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.

    The CU case did not deal with contributions to politicans but with independent expenditures, which by law can not be coordinated in any way with a political campaign. I believe this is why Justice Alito was so moved to register his disapproval. By avoiding a direct statement of the real issues in the case and throwing in a reference to personal political contributions, Obama’s comment leaves anyone not familar with the case with the clear impression that the SC allowed direct corporate contributions to candidates. It leaves anyone familar with the case, such as Justice Alito, thinking that either Obama is so ignorant that he shouldn’t even be making a comment, or he is willfully misconstruing the facts.

58. Well, that’s a different reason than the link Neo provided, but really, that’s the whole reason the decision is upsetting to a lot of people: because small contributors’ influence, they believe, will be drowned out by ads from big organizations. I am not as certain the decision is terrible — there is a First Amendment issue and even the very left-wing Glenn Greenwald agrees with the SCOTUS ruling. So I am on the fence about it. But I think it’s reasonable to characterize it the way Obama did — I mean, what’s the difference if a corporation can’t make a direct contribution if they can make a political ad explicitly supporting the candidate anyway? It’s a pretty minor distinction.

59. Every thing that comes out of Obamas’ mouth has an
    expiration date on it.

60. To the obaminators, “morality” is just one more handle to manipulate other people with.

61. “Only the most obtuse, bizarre reading of the Berlin speech could bring one to the conclusion that it was a “lie”.”

    Color me skeptical of your assumptions of what constitutes ‘obtuse, bizarre readings’ when you reject the obvious historical revision Obama is guilty of in omitting the central role of the United States during the airlift.

    So which is it? An uneducated misreading of history or a deliberate distortion? It has to be one. The first makes him an incompetant boob, the second a hack determined to water down the pivotal role of the United States in a pivotal time. Was it done to further ingratiate himself with the Left to further the doctrine of moral relativism they worship so blindly? Well, leaving aside his motivations I credit him with more than enough intelligence to know the actual details so it must be that he omitted details complimentary of American exceptionalism to further the narrative that there is no such thing. A breach of full disclosure wouldn’t you agree?

    “And by the way – the Allies were not “bit players”. The RAF played a HUGE role in the airlift.”

    If what you say about the RAF participation is 100% accurate it further proves my point that Obama stretched facts to fit a false narrative, so thank you for that. Two nations where one takes leadership of the issue doesn’t constitute a ‘united world’ now does it?

    “Of COURSE it wa about the Allies standing against the USSR, and these were Berliners who obviously know their own history!”

    And just how much of their history do Germans really know in this celebrity soaked era when many Britons don’t even remember who Churchill was according to one survey? And just how much true history of Stalin and communism was taught in East German schools for all that time? Are you perhaps giving too much credit they’d remember correctly events of a sensitive period of time? Questions questions…

62. Just go read up on the Berlin airlift.

63. He will become more buffoonish with each passing day.

    He thinks he’s won, you see. The damage already done is so catastrophic that his continued appearance on stage really isn’t even necessary; he could just smoke dope in the Oval Office from here on out.

    But what he’s involved in now is something of a victory lap exercise. He’s already convinced the Democrats to suicide AFTER they’ve killed the republic. They don’t even realize what they’ve done.

    Unlike the Alec Guinness’ character at the end of the movie “The Bridge On The River Kwai”, they will be powerless to atone for their folly.

    If they were interested, I mean.

    Buffoons, thugs, and idiots.

    Buckle up.

64. I’m a guy (why do people always think I’m a girl?)

    You can’t really ‘bite your tongue’ posting, can you? So I bit my keyboard….

65. You know, Neo is a woman, in case you hadn’t noticed.

    I’m sorry, but the Berlin speech — it’s just ridiculous. Here’s an example of a lie: I am wearing purple undershorts. It is straightforwardly not the case. Obama’s speech was a straightforward reference to the Berlin airlift, IN BERLIN, where obviously everyone there is going to know precisely what happened. You guys are complaining that Obama didn’t fill in all the historical background to the Berlin Airlift, IN BERLIN, TALKING TO BERLINERS. I mean, that’s like saying Chancellor Merkel should have come to the United States and talk to us about the Declaration of Independence, but not explaining the whole background of it, the fact that we were having a war with Britain, etc., and then complaining that she didn’t mention that it was signed while we were at war with Britain, so it must be some sort of evil pro-British Empire conspiracy! The whole thing is so crazy it’s really hard to fathom.

    The RAF did not play a minor role, they were crucial. They were already engaged in a small airlift operation. They provided a vast number of planes. So did many other countries. It was, in fact, an Allied operation. Yes, the idea originated in the U.S., but not mentioning the entire history of the operation to the satisfaction of right wing pundits does not make his speech a “lie”. I mean, it just boggles the mind.

66. Moral? That may well be the term with which self-proclaimed elites clothe their conceit, but it ultimately comes down to arrogance and insecurity, which go hand in hand. When one combines those deadly sins with narcissism, real and lasting damage can be done.

    The disjointed logic of the elite works like this: They are supremely arrogant, thus whatever they say, regardless of how false, unrealistic, plainly stupid, must be correct, and more, brilliant. Because it is brilliant, it is correct and true. And they cannot abide disagreement, particularly when that disagreement so clearly, logically and obviously unravels the brilliance. Thus does arrogance slip and slide, side step, ignore, condescend, berate, call names, demonize and play the race card, even where no rational person could possibly believe race is involved, because remember, brilliance is truth and cannot be false or even possessed of the tiniest error.

    Yet there is constant stress and adrenaline pulsing fear because arrogance is seldom born of ability and logic, but of bullying and weakness, of insecurity to the bone. The closer those who oppose brilliance come, the more relentless their logic, the more insightful the actual truth they bring to the argument, the more violently and vehemently they must be attacked.

    Thus do we see the President of the United States taunting not only every Republican and at least 34 Democrats in the Congress, but the majority–a substantial majority–of the American people. Thus do we see The One behaving like a petulant juvenile, repeatedly telling opponents and supporters “I won,” and “elections have consequences.” In management theory, when a manager resorts to threats, intimidation, and telling subordinates that they are the boss, they have lost all credibility and respect and are behaving like juvenile bullies. They are, in short, not managers, not leaders, not trustworthy.

    Moral? No. Weak. Arrogant. Narcissistic. Juvenile. Stupid. Dangerous. Destructive.

67. “Just go read up on the Berlin airlift.”

    Why not take the trouble to provide a real answer the questions I posed instead? I thought I deserved that after taking the trouble to counter your longish posts. Now’s not the time for brevity. Sorry it’s just bad form on your part Mitsu to retreat to the role lazy chicken this late in the game.

    “I am wearing purple undershorts. It is straightforwardly not the case.”

    Of course we know this because of our psychic remote viewing of your present condition. A Lefty who presumes the supernatural from us. Interesting…

    ” IN BERLIN, where obviously everyone there is going to know precisely what happened.”

    You assume without offering proof, try again.

    “You guys are complaining that Obama didn’t fill in all the historical background to the Berlin Airlift, IN BERLIN, TALKING TO BERLINERS.”

    Assuming they know. TRY AGAIN.

    ” I mean, that’s like saying Chancellor Merkel should have come to the United States and talk to us about the Declaration of Independence”

    Sadly too many Americans (your fellow Democrats?) really wouldn’t know much of what she was talking about. NEXT…

    “at war with Britain, so it must be some sort of evil pro-British Empire conspiracy!”

    No we’re not demanding a long, complex explanation but really just one word ‘America’ in the speech. See how easy that was? lol

    “The RAF did not play a minor role, they were crucial. They were already engaged in a small airlift operation. They provided a vast number of planes. ”

    Of course with American backing the airlift might’ve become stillborn. Let’s not be lazy again and leave that detail out.

    “Yes, the idea originated in the U.S., but not mentioning the entire history of the operation to the satisfaction of right wing pundits does not make his speech a “lie”. I mean, it just boggles the mind.”

    A simple acknowledgement of our leading role isn’t too much to ask for now is it? It just boggles the mind doesn’t it?

68. I mean ‘without’ American backing. Please continue now with your obfucation…

69. I mean ‘obfuscation’?, darn it, sorry for the repetition folks. I’m sounding like our pet troll here.

70. Hong, the reason I didn’t respond to your post was because I doubt we are going to be able to have a reasonable discussion on the subject. If you really think it is plausible that Berliners, listening to Obama or anyone else referring to the Berlin airlift, would not remember or realize that the airlift was made necessary by the actions of the USSR, then we really are not going to be able to have a rational debate about this subject. As for the airlift being an example of “American exceptionalism” — that is just a ridiculous assertion as well, but there’s obviously no way for me to prove that unless you go and read history for yourself. Finally, in context, Obama was talking about the importance of American engagement with Europe, as well as the world coming together to solve problems (and there was heavy Allied involvement, just go read the history), and there’s nothing like a “lie” in that speech whatsoever.

    But the truly bizarre aspect of the claims that this speech was a “lie” comes in the claim that because he didn’t mention the USSR that somehow people in Berlin would have forgotten that the USSR was responsible for the conditions that necessitated the airlift. Again, if you really believe that, there’s nothing for us to discuss, because clearly rational discussion has left the building.

71. I think people on both sides ought to visit the other side more often, however.

    I meant to check out the leftist blogs after the passage of Hell Care, aka The Big F***ing Deal, but I never got around to it.

    I doubt that I missed much other than, “WE WON! SUCK IT, RETHUGLICANS! WOO HOO!”

72. mitsu: is it possible that once again you actually did not read the link I provided? In my comment at 4:43 PM I linked the words “entire speech about the Berlin Airlift” to an article about the speech, by Jeff Jacoby, that appeared in the Boston Globe. It discussed the strange deceptions-by-omission embedded in Obama’s speech. My guess from looking at your responses is that you did not follow the links. If so, that’s twice in one thread you did not follow important links.

    I suggest you do so, if you haven’t. But here’s an excerpt:

    Indeed, Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America’s military might. Save for a solitary reference to “the first American plane,” he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all. He spoke only of “the airlift,” “the planes,” “those pilots.” Perhaps their American identity wasn’t something he cared to stress amid all his “people of the world” salutations and talk of “global citizenship.”

    “People of the world,” Obama declaimed, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.” But the world didn’t stand as one during the Cold War; it was riven by an Iron Curtain. For more than four decades, America and the West confronted an implacable enemy on the other side of that divide. What finally defeated that enemy and ended the Cold War was not harmony and goodwill, but American strength and resolve.

    Obama’s speech was a paean to international cooperation. “Now is the time to join together,” he said. “It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads.” No – it was a Democratic president named Truman, who had the audacity to order an airlift when others counseled retreat, and the grit to see it through when others were ready to withdraw.

    And your excuse for Obama’s misstating the facts of the ruling in Citizens United doesn’t wash. Understanding the exact dimensions of a ruling is one of the very first things you learn as a law student. There is no excuse whatsoever for Obama—the supposed legal intellect and constitutional law “professor”—to get it wrong, whether through ignorance or purposeful lying. It is, quite simply, shocking.

73. Neo: I didn’t listen to Obama’s Berlin speech when it happened, but the quotes you provided: “a wall came down”, “a continent came together”, “planes appear[ed] in the sky” are downright chilling. They suggest a man who is not quite rooted in reality.

74. Neo: Yes, of course I read the article you linked. First of all, the article implies that the airlift was an *entirely* American operation, when it simply wasn’t — it was a joint operation between the RAF, the USAF, and a number of other countries, as I noted repeatedly, above. Secondly, he criticizes the fact that Obama didn’t explicitly mention the fact that the world didn’t “stand as one” but rather was “riven by the Iron Curtain” — but obviously Obama was referring to the Allies standing as one against the USSR. Anyone even slightly familiar with history knows that of course the world was “riven by the Iron Curtain” at the time — as he was speaking to Berliners in Berlin, as I keep pointing out. I mean, honestly, Neo, that second “omission” is quite a stretch — it’s not a point at all. Everyone knows the reason for the airlift was the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain — particularly Berliners! Otherwise, what possible point would there be in having an airlift at all?

    But again: the article you linked to is simply wrong when he implies the operation was an entirely American operation. It just wasn’t, that’s not history. This example of Obama’s “lying” isn’t a lie at all, it’s not even remotely problematic.

    >doesn’t wash

    It may not “wash” for you, Neo, but it makes perfect sense to me, and is obviously what Obama was referring to. Foreign corporations can influence American elections via their American subsidiaries — something a number of people were concerned about after the ruling — and obviously what Obama had in mind when he made that reference (clearly he made pointed reference to the fact that *foreign* corporations can do so because of the loophole in the law opened by the SCOTUS ruling).

    Look, what you’re pointing out here simply aren’t lies. In the first case, the article you linked to simply gets history wrong (it was an Allied operation, not merely an American one) and then gets bent out of shape because he doesn’t mention the USSR — something that everyone who has ever heard of the Berlin airlift obviously already knows. That’s like saying someone is “lying” whenever they omit any obvious thing from anything they say — that is simply not a lie, that’s just ordinary use of language.

    Similarly, what Obama said in the SOTU speech was not wrong — it was correct. There is a loophole in the ruling, and that’s what he obviously was referring to — as many people were concerned about after the ruling was issued. If that’s why Scalia mouthed “not true” then it is he who has missed an elementary interpretation of the law. Of course, we’ll never know precisely why Scalia mouthed that.

75. Sorry: Alito, not Scalia.

76. (If you stretch the definition of the word “lie” in this way, for example, then the author of that article about Obama’s “omissions” ought to be accused of “lying” for mysteriously omitting the fact that the airlift was a joint Allied operation with massive participation by the RAF and other countries. Surely most people would have come away with the impression that it was a solely American operation because that’s what the author clearly implied — but it wasn’t. Using this highly fungible definition of “lie”, this author was far more guilty of misrepresenting the airlift than Obama. But even I wouldn’t use the word “lie” in this case — either the author of that article was mistaken, which I suspect, or was misleading. Those are two far more precise words to describe the misleading omission of the RAF’s participation in the airlift.)

77. “In his piece, Hanson yearns for just a moment of honesty from the Obama administration or Congressional leaders”

    Huh?!? You’re supposed to lie to your enemies, so of course they lie to the people.

78. Gotta love it, Mitsu. You stand firm in your belief those of this blog are a prime example of a one sided view.

    Ahem.

    And Gray, I almost coughed up a lung. Humor!

79. The common definitions of “lie” and “truth” are not applicable to thinking process of postmodernists, since the heart of this philosophy is blurring the distinction between these. In the traditional Marxist orthodoxy as practiced and preached in Sovient Union, this blurring was termed “dialectic”; Orwell coined the term “doublethink”, meaning essentially the same. So when dealing with Progressives do not expect any honesty or logical coherency: they praise themselves most for the lack of it, as a signature of advanced conscience, unattainable by the rubes.

80. “If you really think it is plausible that Berliners, listening to Obama or anyone else referring to the Berlin airlift, would not remember or realize that the airlift was made necessary by the actions of the USSR, then… ”

    You seem to miss the point again Mitsu. The entire point everyone here is making seems to be on how Obama omitted critical American leadership for reasons suspected but unknown. Really, how can a reasonable discussion be possible when you refuse to engage in the arguments honestly?

    “As for the airlift being an example of “American exceptionalism” – that is just a ridiculous assertion as well, but there’s obviously no way for me to prove that unless you go and read history for yourself.”

    Having read the history, it’s clearly an example of just that. Without American leadership the airlift probably would’ve failed. I’m doubtful you actually studied the event and are now dodging quite inartfully.

    “Finally, in context, Obama was talking about the importance of American engagement with Europe, as well as the world coming together to solve problems (and there was heavy Allied involvement, just go read the history), and there’s nothing like a “lie” in that speech whatsoever.”

    The sin of omission is a from of dishonesty that’s ultimately nothing short of lying. Reset that moral compass Mitsu, you’re getting sloppy again.

    “But the truly bizarre aspect of the claims that this speech was a “lie” comes in the claim that because he didn’t mention the USSR”

    What’s actually sad to read about you and your response is how you obsess on the minor and ignore the major. Read my first response.

    “…that somehow people in Berlin would have forgotten that the USSR was responsible for the conditions that necessitated the airlift.”

    Is it so difficult when most Americans and Britons seem to have a hazy and dim understanding of our history? You ignore the selective history that’s been taught in Germany, especially the East where the communists ruled for decades.

    “Again, if you really believe that, there’s nothing for us to discuss, because clearly rational discussion has left the building”

    You claim the mantle of rational discussion but refuse to acknowledge central points in the debate. Not a rational or particularly honest thing to do now is it? So if reason has left the building it was you who’s guilty of throwing it out. But I’ll await you next non-reasoned response…this is will be amusing.

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82. I’ve got a clear Obama lie for Mitsu. Throughout the primary campaign, Obama made it very clear that he supported and intended to adhere to a publicly funded campaign and the restrictions involved. His position was very clear and it was used to buttress his claim to the moral high ground. Once the nomination was won, he dropped that position and went after private fund raising.

    Thus he was knowingly lying until he did the 180. He’s a liar.

83. “”So when dealing with Progressives do not expect any honesty or logical coherency””

    It is an ideology uniquely created by embracing the opposites of judeo/christian ethics. Which explains why progressives aren’t just wrong, but exactly 180 degrees wrong on almost every issue.

84. So that Mitsu can stop arguing a diversionary side issue and focus on the clear obfuscation of the origin and leadership of the Berlin Airlift, here, according to the Truman Library, is the breakdown of the airlift flights:

    US Flights: 68.2%
    British Flights: 31.5%
    French Flights: .001%

    US Cargo Tonnage: 76.6%
    British Cargo Tonnage: 23.2%
    French Cargo Tonnage: .00024%

    So I retract my characterization of the Allies as bit players – “minor supporting role” seems more fitting to me but feel free to apply your own label, Mitsu — call it an overwhelming Allied effort if you like. Just consider me in agreement with your arbitrary label so that you can address the topic you seem to be ignoring – why was the overwhelmingly American nature and leadership of the airlift almost entirely unacknowledged, in favor of a non-existent “world coming together”?

    This is clearly just another example of the post-modernist approach of Marxists to create a new “narrative” to replace a history which does not favor them.

85. I strongly urge you folks to remember that life is too short and time is too precious to waste any of it arguing with a block of wood.

86. So it’s okay for the false Mossiah to imply a total lack of American involvement with saving Berlin but wrong for Victor David Hanson to perhaps give them disproportionate credit? Why does that not sound hypocritical to you. Perhaps your moral compass has failed again.

    And assuming your doubtful premise is correct: that 100% of Berliners already knew the United States under Truman and General Clay were the most responsible for their rescue from Soviet intimidation. What’s the harm of reminding them of this fact? What taboo is broken to give a salute to HIS OWN COUNTRY? lol

87. Mitsu Just go read up on the Berlin airlift.

    RAF – (250 planes total including civilians)
    150 C-47
    40 Avro Yorks

    US – (441 planes total)

    so if i work for a day, doing the same job as mitsu, he would have no problem with me getting $441 dollars and ye gets $190 dollars as they are not only equivalent in his mind, but the $190 is actually larger and so he would be much happier.

    when it started the US only had about 100 planes, but in very short order, we sent over more.

    the US had incredible manufacturing ability with an economy to support it and hard working people. and so we cranked out so much material, in many ways the war was won because we could replace what we lost and add more at the same time

    The U.S. Air Force in Europe, however, had only 100 Douglas C-47 “Gooney Bird” planes available, barely enough to fly in supplies for Berlin-based U.S. personnel. But with careful planning and organization, Major General Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe, managed to deliver twice the estimated amount of supplies into the city on a test run, and Clay decided to try the airlift. LeMay told him to request Douglas C-54 Skymasters from the Pentagon. Skymasters were the air force’s largest transport plane and could carry four times as much as the C-47s.

    ==================================

    The first Skymasters arrived at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany on June 28. As soon as they landed, they were loaded and sent to Berlin. By the end of the next week, 300 C-54s had arrived from the Panama Canal Zone, Alabama, Hawaii, and Texas. The navy sent two squadrons of R5Ds (the navy’s version of the C-54). The British had already filled its bases with Dakota, Avro York, and Handley Page Hasting aircraft. By the end of the summer, civil transports and planes from Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand had joined the operation. The mission, originally called the LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery, was renamed Operation Vittles by the Americans and Operation Plaindafe by the British. The planes took off from Rhein-Main Air Base and two British bases, flying on the northern and the southern corridors. They landed in one of three airports and exited by the center corridor.

    so within a week, the US had more than double the number of planes.

    and by the way mitsu… where did England get all the food and supplies to airlift in the first place?

    not only did the US supply the lift with supplies, but we also supplies england herself for which she would have long starved and lost without that.

    it takes
    It took 7 to 15 tons of supplies to support one soldier for one year

    and not only did we supply her soldiers, but we sent our soldiers too and supplied them.

    The United States Merchant Marine provided the greatest sealift in history between the production army at home and the fighting forces scattered around the globe in World War II. The prewar total of 55,000 experienced mariners was increased to over 215,000 through U.S. Maritime Service training programs.

    in case you didnt know, merchant marines are nothing like the military marines. they are the regular people that make sure the crap you have and depend on is where you need it so you dont blow a hissy fit.

    1 in 26 mariners serving aboard merchant ships in World WW II died in the line of duty, suffering a greater percentage of war-related deaths than all other U.S. services. Casualties were kept secret during the War to keep information about their success from the enemy and to attract and keep mariners at sea.

    Newspapers carried essentially the same story each week: “Two medium-sized Allied ships sunk in the Atlantic.” In reality, the average for 1942 was 33 Allied ships sunk each week.

    unsung heroes..

    hey mitsu! read about wwii.. you have all your facts wrong about that.

    at what point will mitsu realize that his facts behind his arguments and positions are mostly all wrong, and THATS why he makes no sense but to others who also have the same wrong facts!!!! he says, go check the facts, but that only works among his idiot friends and ideological equals, who never look up the facts

    ok. mitsu… i checked the facts as to the berlin airlift, and we found out your wrong..

    now what?

88. One of the posters above is having a terrible case of gender identification and cognitive dissonance. I suggest that s/he take two aspirins and get lots of bed rest.

89. Hong, the reason I didn’t respond to your post was because I doubt we are going to be able to have a reasonable discussion on the subject.

    by reasonable he means agree with him, or at least get so tangled up in his lies (yes lies, lies of omission, lies of wrong facts, lies in that lies arent lies)…

    that is, once you get mitsu’s game, mitsu requires another player.

    bzzzz, click, whir, reboot goes mitsu’s brain. and he starts all over again…

    no matter how many times he is wrong on his own points, he keeps going. like those little toys sold in chinese markets that bump into walls loop around and hit another wall, and loop around, and hit another wall.

90. Mitsu: that is just a ridiculous assertion as well, but there’s obviously no way for me to prove that unless you go and read history for yourself.

    we just did, and we called you on it. and your wrong
    now what?

    bzzzz, click, whir, reboot

91. And i forgot to throw attention to this for mitsu

    The mission, originally called the LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery, was renamed Operation Vittles by the Americans and Operation Plaindafe by the British.

    the ORIGINAL name had LeMays name on it… it was only after he showed it could work, that others signed on to what was now a known quantity. when LeMay tried it, he took the risk of failure. After he succeeded, they took over it, and the rest is history (mitsu doesnt know)…

92. From the Spirit of Freedom website:
    http://www.spiritoffreedom.org/airlift.html

    On May 12, 1949, the Soviets capitulated. The blockade was over….In total, the US delivered 1,783,572.7 tons, while 541,936.9 tons were delivered by the British….Nevertheless, even the greatest operation is not without risk. A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 31 Americans, mostly due to crashes.

    Would it have killed Obama to mention our leading role? It certainly killed 31 of his countrymen. Coward

93. Look, I don’t know what else to say, but honestly you guys are grasping at straws with the Berlin speech. As I noted before, the whole basis of this claim that this is an Obama “lie” comes from an article where the author doesn’t seem to even realize there was ANY involvement by anyone other than the United States, or if he does, he certainly creates a misleading impression. That article gave a far more misleading impression of the airlift than Obama’s straightforward speech.

    I mean, perhaps part of the problem here is that so many Americans are unaware of basic facts of history that you actually think Berliners might have been somehow confused by Obama’s speech. Or maybe some of you don’t know what the Berlin airlift was; perhaps you’re too young? I have no idea what is going on here, but this remains a totally silly example. At MOST you have a complaint here that Obama wasn’t sufficiently emphasizing the American role in the airlift, by only mentioning the American role once, despite the fact that his second mention of the airlift was in the context of America and Europe needing each other. But this is not a “lie” — this is merely you wanting Obama to phrase things in a way that suits your own personal preferences.

    On the campaign finance pledge: this is, of course, an actual example of something Obama said which turned out to be false. A clear example of an Obama flip-flop. Politicians sometimes flip flop. People get really upset about it, and I can understand that, but I don’t see much evidence Obama has done it a particularly large number of times. Also, a flip-flop is not a “lie” — it’s changing your mind. A lie would be an example of someone saying something deliberately false, something they know to be false. At least that’s the definition of the word I’ve always used. Do you have some other definition?

    You guys won’t agree, but what I am observing here is a tremendous desire to see Obama in a negative light, going to huge lengths to come up with strained examples to find a purported “pattern of lying”. I mean, psychologically we are all biased to try to find patterns which corroborate our preconceptions. I am sure I’m overly biased towards finding positive things about Obama, and it’s natural that you’d be biased in the other direction, but honestly this is pretty extreme in my view.

    I mean, if we’re going to take the most paranoid interpretation of everything, Bush was *famous* for making gaffes and stating things that were either exaggerations or downright false, not only among right wing blogs but in the mainstream press. Even in his case, however, I would not bother to call these “lies”. They were all almost certainly simply mistakes and/or lack of awareness or wishful thinking. You can Google for Bush’s mistakes and gaffes; there are whole websites devoted to them:

    Errors:

    http://pearly-abraham.tripod.com/htmls/bushlies1.html

    http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~richard/reflect/lies.html

    Gaffes:

    http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/bushquotes/a/dumbbushquotes.htm

    http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm

    However, I don’t think of these as “lies”. They’re mistakes or malapropisms or exaggerations or whatever. You can find these in any politician’s record. It doesn’t mean that much, frankly.

94. mitsu: gee, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you hadn’t read the article.

    Now I have come to the conclusion that you simply have difficult grasping the whole of certain concepts. You really don’t understand what people here are asserting, do you? It’s not just a question of disagreeing with people here; I think you only see bits and pieces of their arguments, and you offer bits and pieces in return. We talk, but at cross-purposes.

    I actually don’t think you’re a troll. I actually think you are somewhat confused by the big picture (not just this particular big picture; big pictures in general). And that has nothing to do with whatever IQ you may or may not have.

95. “creates a misleading impression.”

    You’re reaching again Mitsu, the links and factoids posted here already prove the dominant role the United States did play in the Berlin airlift. I’m certainly not shortchanging the RAF contribution but pointing out that ours was greater and ultimately decisive.

    “Berliners might have been somehow confused by Obama’s speech.”

    I think we’ve all agreed that Berliners probably don’t know the full details of the airlift since you, a supposedly educated male of high IQ, apparently also missed crucial details.

    “But this is not a “lie” – this is merely you wanting Obama to phrase things in a way that suits your own personal preferences.”

    We’re only asking for honesty instead of convenient omissions. Disguising America’s primary involvement to suit an ideological agenda is extremely poor form and amateurish.

    “A lie would be an example of someone saying something deliberately false, something they know to be false.”

    A lie can also mean deliberately omitting details that undermine your argument. Unfortuntately this President and mainstream media machine are quite familiar with it. You are free to disagree but dismissing it is an abuse of rational argument.

    “but what I am observing here is a tremendous desire to see Obama in a negative light, going to huge lengths to come up with strained examples…”

    What we can observe by judging by your responses here Mitsu? A)you have a remarkable power to ignore or dismiss facts contradicting your argument, B) you are overwhelmed by your own spin and cannot keep up.

    As for these troll websites you listed, you’re right they don’t prove lies. Nothing in the sites I’ve reviewed actively disproves what Bush said. They merely offers opposition opinion from liberal and unreliable (the UN? please) or anti-Bush sources that are open to interpretation. In the end the sensible reader can work through both ends to conclude that although Bush didn’t lie, his statements may not be 100% accurate. A human failure dealing with imperfect information we’re all guilty of. However, comparing Bush to Obama’s deliberate omission of a crucial fact that’s over 40 years old is not straining the truth but dislocating it.

96. C’mon guys. Aren’t you tired of playing liberal whack-a-mole?

97. Indeed. Why waste all this time on one lie or sheaf of lies when more are minted by the carload with every passing day.

98. We all seem to be missing Neo’s point: “But he doesn’t bother to divide the world into “truth” and “lies” because the distinction is not important to him. Utterances–true or false–are of value to him only in terms of whether he judges them likely to help or hinder the achievement of his goals.”

    Mitsu feels the same way. Barry O was trying to saying something about the wonderfulness of the world all joining hands and singing “Kumbaya” and therefore a little distortion of the historical record is just a matter of emphasis, perfectly okay — indeed, to be praised.

    It’s we conservatives with our outmoded, indeed, archaic, attitudes about “truth” and “falsehood” That are holding up progress. After all, “We have always been at war with Oceania.”

99. I agree 100% with Neo’s last post about Mitsu.

    Every. Word. She. Wrote. Is. What. I thought about Mitsu after arguing with him.

    It’s a failure of intelligence.

    I work with people like that in the computer field also.

100. It’s a failure of intelligence.

     I work with people like that in the computer field also.

     so do i…
     and i work with PHds that are that, to use a term from shock treatment, mentally crippled with a induced form of thought process disorder.

     (and unlike the left its not because there is disagreement. disagreement is the norm, and agreement is the rare thing, so obviously it cant be that. but that’s the answer their owners have given them as they act completely domesticated)

101. What is funny is that you are so damned politically blind its not even funny. You have let the two party system polarize you to the point where you as an individual doesn’t even exist any longer. You talk as if Obama was the only politician ever to lie to you. Were you equally hurt and Offended When Bush was telling you the same lie’s? Did you race to your keyboard to denounce the growing lies surrounding both wars? Or is it only the one you don’t like that lie to us?

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