Lies, Damn Lies, and Scumbag Politicians
 

For those who can't be bothered to click the link, the disclaimer here is that not every statement is checked for fact. They only check statements that sound fantastic or that are controversial. And they haven't been doing it forever, so Bill Clinton was hardly ever checked and his statement sample size is so small as to make his ranking unfair to include.

I'd take ol' Slick Willie over any of the others.

The evil you know, y'know?

What a load of crap. Thats like posting a Fox poll.

Why, you don't believe PolitiFact, or you don't think it's fair because they don't check the same number of facts for each candidate, or because it doesn't jib with your opinion?

Speaking of lies, I got an email forwarded to me today. She sends them and waits for my rebuttal, usually just a snopes link, rather than checking herself.

This one was a beaut, "6 times in 70 years"

It was sent from wop308@aol.com to rickrice10@yahoo.com, on 12-17-15, so not internet flotsam from years ago.
From Richard in went to 27 other people, many of them businesses, then to her, then me.
Usually they have many more addresses, because nobody bothers to strip them.

It's a long one, laid out all theatrically to build anticipation even though I know what's coming, but the bottom line is in the last 70 years, only six times the US president didn't visit the D-Day memorial in France on D-Day.
Then it goes on how the Nigerian in the White House accounts for all six, and doesn't honor fallen Americans, outlines his schedule on each D-Day, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, let me check that.
The truth is US presidents who went to the D-Day celebration at the D-Day Memorial in France, on D-Day were;
Ronald Reagan on the 40th anniversary
Bill Clinton on the 50th anniversary
George W Bush went to the Virginia memorial on D-Day for the 60th and France for a different celebration on Memorial Day, so we'll give him a yes.
Barack Obama on the 65th anniversary
Barack Obama for the 70th anniversary

Actually the accusations are more convoluted and the links go into it, but I've given you the basics.
But none of those people check, just forward, because these lies serve to reinforce their hate a couple times a week.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/dday.asp
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-president-no/

They are extremely biased & they check the most ridiculous things for "their" candidates. My opinions don't jib with any side, party or group.

Biased? If a politician says the sky is falling, it is or it ain't. If it ain't that's a pants-on-fire. If you want to say rain qualifies as the sky falling, then it's true somewhere, but still misleading and partly false. They check what's currently in the newspaper and internet headlines, which is why the have so many for Trump and much less for Carson and the rest.

They're as bad as snopes. They'll check one person who said the sky is blue and check another on the 130,000,000 decimal of pi.

the reporting chooses to cherry-pick an entire Ben Carson speech to focus on his odd belief that the pyramids were built to store grain. results: liar. and crazy

~

because it is the aim of a "gotcha" media to repeat only statements which attract a lot of attention; and to downplay context, attitude, etc. in favor of a narrative they construct, which rarely accurately represents the candidate

~

do the results of this poll actually indicate how carefully controlled each candidate's messages are - how likely they are to speak off-the-cuff, or to offer unvetted statements?

Snopes is checking what is being said, or people are saying that was said, mostly in emails. I didn't see any blue sky today, so is it right or wrong? The 130,000,000 decimal of Pi is a known quantity, easy to verify if someone is wrong. Why would they check, unless someone uses it to make a point, like a state legislature wanting to make Pi officially 3.0

More than they were used to store grain, that the are not solid but hollow to store grain because the Bible tells him so. That's crazy.

Then the public starts Googling to see if the statement the candidate asserts are true or not. In the middle of a speech, statements are usually to lay groundwork for, or as evidence of, another point. If the statement is untrue, it affects that whole point. Trump has so many checked because he's the king of outrageous statements.

Is anyone running for president not have a bunch of speech writers to craft the message and handlers to make sure it's delivered in the most favorable way? If so then off the cuff remarks are outside the plan and likely to reflect the candidates gut feelings which might be more revealing than all the speeches.

From the department of L,D L, and S P:
Interesting spin war but Hillary found a way to keep Bernie from accessing DNC voter information.

How?
Nevermind, found it. Wasn't Hillary, it was the DNC.

Heh, praising with faint damnation.

Um... there's a difference? Not according to Jim Webb.

Jim Webb, one of Bernie's cheerleaders? That's your source?
The DNC bought the fucked up software from NGP VAN. Through that fucked up software one of Bernie's helpers found he could get into Hillary's files, and did. He was fired by Bernie's group. But the DNC cut Bernie's group's access rather than, or until, the software is fixed. What they're going to do isn't clear. If the DNC was playing fair they'd cut everyone off and fix the software. But I don't see how this is Hillary's group's fault. I'm sure the DNC would rather have Hillary than Bernie since he's not one of them, he's an independent. But that doesn't make the DNC a tool of Hillary.

DWS is a Killary lapdog. Hope that poodle gets shaved.
This is all about Killary and her overwhelming lust for power and control.
How soon some forget. Sad.

They don't check everything - that's the point - They CHOOSE to check some far more critically than others. Also, when they cannot disprove something said by one of "their candidates", they use lots of words and then claim its unverifiable or grey or some other bullshit. They all do it. Again, no more credible than Fox nor MSDNC.

They check what they are asked to check in their forum. If they find it unverifiable, all those words they use are saying why.

NGP VAN is a Clinton connected operation.

I started going through the wiki revisions to see what's been dropped.
from 12/19/15
NGP VAN was created in November 2010 by the merger of its two predecessor companies, NGP Software, founded in 1997 by Nathaniel Pearlman, who later served as chief technology officer for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign,[6] in his attic in Washington, D.C, and Voter Activation Network, founded in 2001 by Mark Sullivan, in his study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[7]

They left this in.
Its current president and CEO, Stuart Trevelyan, was a veteran of the 1992 Clinton-Gore War Room, providing research, analysis, and whip counts to the Clinton Administration as a member of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.[5]

Current DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was co-chair of Hillary's 2008 campaign.

It is good to remember that the parties are private organizations which have gained control of the public elections. These Democrats make the GOP look weirdly democratic.

That's pretty convincing, but you certainly had to go looking to find it. I just couldn't damn her(this time) with the information in the papers, and assume anyone on Bernie's team would blame Hillary if it rained... and vice versa. However there are damn few democrats in Washington who are not connected to the Clintons in some way, and many who are beholdin'.

Bernie's team were not innocent babes in the woods on this but the DNC has been working hard to tamp down non-Hillary Democrats. There are still a lot of registered Dems who think Hillary is inevitable. Keeping them blinkered, I think is her strategy but Bernie had a huge fund-raising day when this latest spat developed so it may not hold up.

Speaking of damn lies and scumbags...

Pure mean-spiritedness.

The caption on the photo is pretty funny.

View the picture carefully. Who more wants to make that deal?

In the same vein(no pun), buprenorphine, this is really sad.

I wonder if I can even be outraged anymore; it just makes me sad.

So the Washington Post reveals that Trump acted as his own publicist ~25 years ago and writes a story. Totally silly stuff, if true, which it probably is. There's even a recording that sounds like Trump.

But what I don't get is why Trump is denying it. Given the number of things to which Trump has been accused, this is nothing. He could just say "yeah, I did that 25 years ago. I'm my own best publicist, what's the big deal?" and move on. But instead he's stonewalling, denying, and now hanging up on reporters asking him about it.

Weird. :rolleyes:

Distraction? Keep reporters digging on a non-story?

Yeah, maybe Trump leaked the story to get people to quit talking about his non-released taxes for a few days.

Because we're still talking about trump. The biggest attention whore ever. Ever.

The content is.... Irrelevant. Just so that we're saying trump.

Exactly; this is the first troll Presidential campaign.

I don't read any of the stories - I only read headlines - but from this perspective, the people are being trolled, and they are losing.

We know the troll - we are familiar with how this goes. We have been trolled for 30 years, some of us; sometimes we have lost, and we have learned from it. But our aunts and uncles only got on Facebook in 2012, and most of them haven't figured out this dynamic.

The classic troll: say something provocative and get as much reaction from it as you can; now you've disrupted everything, you are the topic, which was the goal all along.

This guy's a pro and has been chumming the water for years and years. But at some point there's a feeding frenzy, and the fish generate their own chum. So now he doesn't even have to say anything. Posts will be written about what he said earlier. Or who supports him and who doesn't. Or pure speculation.

Did you spend any time thinking - seriously considering - whether or not he acted as his own spokesman 25 years ago? Did you consider the implications of the story? Did you wonder whether it would have legs? At lunch with J today, and she got a notification on her phone for it. The NY fuckin' Times had it as "breaking news".

Breaking news? They sent an alert for this?

The traditional online response is, YHBT. YHL. HAND.

You Have been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day.

Well, at least Hillary is enjoying the cover and the complicit media can use this/him as an excuse not to cover her "issues"

I'm wondering if they're just trying to limp Clinton into the convention before indictment, so they can switch to Biden...

There isn't going to be any indictment. Thats whats taking so long,
they're still burying/destroying the evidence and getting their cover story straight.

this

Unless Barry (Obama) and Joe are keeping straight faces just waiting for their moment. It would be odd, a totally undemocratic process leading to a most likeable insider candidate. The Romans would have nothing on us.

What makes you think they do? Heck, there are a lot of R's who are probably in this as well. Many/most of them hate the threat of Trump as much as the D's. He's a potential threat to their way of life.
The sham of an electoral process continues - just ask a few superdelegates like Kerry and Franken who openly admit they'll vote how THEY want, not how the people they represent vote.

I wrote that in May 2016. Three and a half years later...

He tweeted the picture of his head on Rocky's body yesterday and everybody lost their shit.

He's not just any troll, but the world's greatest troll. The guy always loves to say he's the greatest "whatever", but there's one thing that he really is the greatest at: he's the greatest troll of all time.

You think of the weird wild emperors and "big man" dictators who plastered their face all over every street. Those weren't trolls, not at all. The troll gets YOU to put his face up there. And it doesn't matter if it's out of admiration, or because you used it for target practice. The troll's market is in attention. If you're paying attention, you have lost.

How about don't even use his name? I'm thinking tactics here, big media.

Big Media likes getting paid. Big media loves a troll.