I have a question for everyone: Do you know Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama well and can vouch

[Writer]

for their personalities? Can you personally attest to Hillary Clinton being a liar? Or Barack Obama being a clean soul? Or vice versa, for that matter.

I will be the first to admit that I know neither. And with that, I cannot say that either possesses any sort of quality. I can only listen to what they have to say and, calculating in my own phenomenological experiences that color my perceptions of people, form my own opinions.

Can anyone personally attest that they are well acquainted with Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama enough to be an informed judge of their characters?

~Writer~

[MonkeyFunk]

1. Hillary clipped my dogs nails, and did a great job.

Obama tried to install my new router, but he fucked it up. But I give him props for trying.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. I had John McCain watch my dog once...

But he fell asleep and my dog ran away.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. That's why its good to pay attention to tangible things, like corpses.

How many corpses were produced by Hillary's bookbag or Obama's sweetie comment? None. How about Bush's lies on WMD's being in Iraq? hundreds of thousands. Its funny how things come into perspective when we lay the BS personality judgements aside and look at facts.

[Maddy McCall]

3. Hillary fit me into a new bra.

She showed me that my old bras were not the right size, and her bra fitting really changed my form. I'm getting whistles and woots the first time in my lfe, thanks to Hillary.

Obama came over for dinner last night. He did not place a napkin in his lap. I was astonished at his terrible table manners. I had to send my children out of the room.

That's why I'm supporting Hillary...because she supported my tatas!

[Radical Activist]

6. This comment is useless without

oh nevermind.

Funny :)

[Maddy McCall]

7. Sure!

I love it. I can even sleep in it.

And I never wear shirts anymore...I want everyone to see my beautiful tatas!

:P

[Writer]

8. And of course those hands were molded from Hillary's.

I wear one myself, and I have never had a better fit. :thumbsup:

[Maddy McCall]

9. Yes, they were!

She's ready to hold my boobs on Day 1!

:D

[MonkeyFunk]

15. I think she'll be pretty busy

she may delegate that job to Bill.

[Maddy McCall]

24. I won't complain.

:D

[Radical Activist]

13. I'll send my own thank you letter to her Senate office.

haha

[Maddy McCall]

29. Woot!

:rofl:

[A-Schwarzenegger]

5. I wish Chauncey Gardner was running.

Only the Shadow knows.

[sandnsea]

10. I can discern someone's behavior

She lied. Repeatedly. We know it as well as we know Bush lied. What is so hard about accepting reality?

[Maddy McCall]

11. Malarkey.

[Writer]

12. And this is what you're apt to believe about her. n/t

[Maddy McCall]

14. They believe the worst they can imagine...

because they want to believe it.

They are no better than freepers in the 1990s who made the "murder list" of victims who were supposedly killed by Bill and Hillary.

They live in the same toxic distorted world as those freepers.

[Radical Activist]

16. The Ohio NAFTA lies are pretty clear.

She lied about her stance on NAFTA when it was up for debate. She lied about meetings with Canadians. She lied about Obama's position. She won that primary based on lies and distortion.

And what has she said about NAFTA since the Ohio primary?

[Writer]

20. Those Canadian meetings never took place.

Like, not at all. And Obama sent flyers lying about Clinton's position on NAFTA from Iowa all the way until she called him on it before Ohio.

[Radical Activist]

26. You mean the meetings Clinton said Obama advisors had with Canadian officials

never took place? That would make what her campaign said about those meetings a lie.

Sorry but news stories have come out since then about her public remarks in favor of passing NAFTA in '92. And the only thing Hillary can say is that supposedly she opposed it in secret. Convenient since you can't prove or disprove that. What Obama had in his flyers about Clinton supporting NAFTA is true and there's a long list of documents to back it up.

[Writer]

30. Okay, RA, I'll bite. Let me demonstrate how Obama's camp deflected bad news.

First, accuse your opponent of the same misstep:

http://wizbangpolitics.com/2008/03/06/clinton-campaign-told-canada-nafta-threats-were-political-posturing.php

Two days later, the CBC reveals that the Clinton meeting never took place:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/03/07/clinton-nafta-gate.html


And that's how you deflect bad news from your candidate, but the revelation of new information doesn't quite get the same press as the first erroneous news. And now there are people still walking around with the misbelief that Clinton did the same dirty deed that Obama's camp did.

[Writer]

17. After the heat of election is over, I think they will be able to look back at this election...

and consider what's truly happened here. I'm not going to say that we ourselves won't do the same when the smoke clears, but I also am woman enough to admit it.

[sandnsea]

23. No, the Hillary supporters will

and realized we dodged a bullet. Since the day she lied about students not being able to vote in Iowa, she's been lying on a regular basis. The Bosnia lie is just the most blatant and inexcusable, that puts the rest of them in the light they should have been in all along. Some of you are really embarrassing yourselves with your support of her.

[Writer]

27. And again, this is what you're apt to believe. n/t

[sandnsea]

28. It's proven fact, not belief

I would think you would know the difference.

[Writer]

34. Okay, show me then.

Show me that she's a constant liar. Give me articles. Draw me diagrams. As it is, you don't know her, you only know what you've heard and how you've applied your already held prejudices to what she says.

So show me how nothing this person says is true. Demonstrate it to me. Show me the evidence.

[sandnsea]

46. You've seen the evidence

You've seen the articles. Bosnia. Ireland. NAFTA. MI & FL. Pledged delegates. Iowa students. Who can remember all the lies.

[Writer]

47. You're just listing words. I want to see some evidence.

Show me that nearly every word that comes out of Clinton's mouth is a lie. So much so that you can brand her entire character as a liar.

[sandnsea]

52. You've seen it

You know what the evidence is on those lies. Why won't you deal with it?

[Life Long Dem]

54. Not only does Hillary keep moving the goal post so do her supporters.

First the OP said "Can you personally attest to Hillary Clinton being a liar". Then the OP moves the goal post and now wants to be shown that Hillary is a constant liar."

[JayFredMuggs]

69. She lied, yes, lied several times, and had Mark Penn on her payroll.

More than enough there to fill a book about "character".

[Solon]

18. They are politicians, that's enough to call either of them liars...

does anyone know any politician that has never lied before? If you mention Abe Lincoln, well, he could be an exception, or our perception of him was colored by what he did to hold the nation together.

I cannot take anyone seriously who shows such naiveté about either Democratic candidate as to call them honest!

[Writer]

21. That's a statement indicating a loss in public trust, not about the candidates themselves. n/t

[Solon]

25. Actually its both, with a dash of cynicism and realism...

I just find it amusing when any supporters of either candidate calls the opposition candidate a liar as if their candidate is "oh so pure" and vice versa. Hell, its almost as amusing as supporters calling either candidate Progressive!

[Writer]

32. Yyyyyup.

I support Hillary Clinton. She might be the Succubus of Beelzebub, but I personally don't see it. But I'm also not going to pretend that I know Barack Obama, either.

[Solon]

35. I technically support Obama, by that I mean I no longer actively oppose his nomination...

to be honest, I don't see much of a difference between either candidate, and either of them would sell their own mothers' organs for a few votes. I'm just frankly puzzled at most supporters of either candidate saying their candidate is the best thing since sliced bread. At best, they will be mediocre presidents, but still better than McCain, and that's pretty much all that counts.

[Writer]

38. That's right. They're both politicians and I expect them to act like politicians.

For me, I support Clinton because of her intelligence, her experience, and her practicality. I think Obama would also be practical, but I'm just not wowed by him.

[Solon]

42. I'm not wowed by him either, in fact, if I were "wowed" by a politician, of all things...

I'd have to go to a shrink to make sure I don't need meds for my cognitive break from reality.

[Writer]

48. Are you a Gen X'er, by chance?

[Solon]

51. Yes, born in 1978...

The first president I voted for was Bill Clinton, for his reelection campaign, and I didn't much like him either. I'm a voracious reader, and if someone challenges me, I'll read every aspect of an issue. Given that, I read as much as possible about Bill Clinton, and found I disagreed with him on so many issues, it wasn't even funny, and back then I was a mild civil libertarian with some economic conservatism. My stint working at Wal*Mart, and getting my Overtime stolen from me by those unethical fucks really shifted my economic outlook to the left. I started reading Debs, Keller, Marx, Engels, etc. and became a Socialist. Making friends with several Gay people(including my best friend) solidified my stances for civil rights for everyone.

The fact is that I only agree with the Democrats about 20%-40% of the time, most of the time I think they are full of shit, but I agree with the Republicans 0% of the time, so I'm forced into voting for the lesser of two evils, the only consolation I have is the Democrats fuck up less often, but they still fuck up.

[leftofcool]

31. Abe Lincoln lied many times

Some were lies by omission of course, ie a man named Simon stole about 20 grand from the BIA/Indian Trust. Lincoln asked him to resign just before the Civil War ended but when later confronted about the missing money, Lincoln claimed to not know what happened to the money. There were other lies as well. I agree with your point on lying politicians.

[Solon]

40. Yeah, "Honest Abe" wasn't so honest, I figured that, but didn't have the info myself...

I figured I wasn't wrong, his mystique increased mostly because of his assassination and the really difficult task of guiding the nation through the civil war. This isn't minimizing the guy, in fact, he was most likely the best president we ever had, and was definitely better than the top candidates of either party today.

[leftofcool]

63. We can also add suspending habeas corpus to his

list of not so wonderful ideas as well as putting females in prison where they were raped and tortured if he suspected they were southern sympathizers, and of course the Lincoln/Douglas debates pretty much tells us how he really felt about Black people. He was both good and bad as a president and a Republican as well.

[Solon]

64. To be fair, on the racism issue, he somewhat evolved from the Lincoln/Douglas debates...

Lincoln, at first, didn't really care about black people themselves so much as he thought slavery was degrading to white people. He thought to ship all blacks off to Africa, for crying out loud, and he used racial epitaphs and thought black people were inferior. In ways, he was the typical white man of the time, whether from the North or South, a white supremacist. It wasn't until later, when he became embroiled in the Civil War and actually had contact with many black abolitionists and activists that his views evolved. He was a typical 19th century white man in many ways, except one, he was mature enough to abandon views when faced with contradictory evidence. I'm not saying he supported full equality, at least not before he was assassinated, but I believe he was beginning to view blacks as human beings deserving some rights and a place in the nation. Whether those views would have further evolved to the Radical Republican position in later years is unknown, for his life was cut short, but its not outside the realm of possibility.

[leftofcool]

65. Possibly

But I think that his emancipation was a more a political move than over whether his views evolved. You are right though, it is hard to say since he was killed before we can know what might have happened later on.

[Solon]

67. His emancipation was for public consumption, and was purely political...

His private thoughts, in the form of correspondences with close friends and such, revealed quite a bit more of course. The fact is that Lincoln was actually a political chameleon when it came to black suffrage, slavery, and other issues. In one speech, he would say that black are, and will never be equal, to whites, and in others he would say that blacks should be citizens. It would depend almost entirely on his audience, and a historian notes:

During his presidency, Lincoln took a reasoned course which helped the federal government both destroy slavery and advance the cause of black suffrage. For a man who had denied both reforms four years earlier, Lincoln's change in attitude was rapid and decisive. He was both open-minded and perceptive to the needs of his nation in a postwar era. Once committed to a principle, Lincoln moved toward it with steady, determined progress. As Maria Lydia Child remarked: "I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually." Lincoln himself told Frederick Douglass: "I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it."

[JohnnyLib2]

19. Writer, , surely you are kidding!

We have assembled here the world's greatest experts on all primary candidates, their families, their staffs, their histories, their ties to Sinister Shadowy Forces, and the exact 10 to 28 meanings of any sentence they utter.

Recommended.

[Writer]

22. Each day I'm astounded by our prescience, our brilliance, and our great ability to shoot ourselves

in the foot.

[JVS]

33. Let's take your logic to the next step. Who here knows Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld personally?

Or is personal knowledge not necessary to establish if someone is a liar?

[Writer]

36. You know, the funny thing about Bush is that in the beginning we believed that Gore was the liar...

not him. We followed along with the lie that Gore invented the Internet, but believed that Bush would be a uniter.

Oh my - look how wrong our judgments were.

Think we're capable of making the same mistake again?

[JVS]

43. That's not a mistake I made. Gore never struck me as a liar. Eager to claim credit, but no liar.

[Writer]

45. So you believe you're a better judge of character than the average Republican?

If so, did you vote for Bill Clinton in 1996?

[JVS]

49. Had I been old enough to vote, I know that I would not have voted for Bob Dole.

Although I really don't see what the relevance of this is to the discussion.

[Downtown Hound]

55. Maybe you believed those things

I sure as hell didn't. I've known from the moment Bush started appearing on my TV that he was a slobbering dry drunk with a frat boy mentality and completely devoid of human compassion or remorse. Not to mention an illiterate dumb fuck to boot. You actually thought that a man who denied global warming, deserted the military, says things like, "Is our children learning?" and gives tax breaks to the wealthy would be a uniter? Now I can see why have a difficult time seeing Clinton's lies for what they are...lies.

The one thing about Bush that I was wrong about was that he turned out to be even worse than I expected. Bush proved me wrong there. Probably the only true victory he's ever had. Way to go Mr. President!

[mythyc]

56. for such a clever debater that's one hell of a red herring to swat the Bush question away with

why not just answer it if everything's empirical?.... side note-- ever hear of Samuel Johnson kicking the rock and saying about George Berkeley (who had argued that only perceived things are real & without a perception things do not exist), "I thus refute Berkeley"? this thread is that rebuttal to a T...

[JTFrog]

58. No WE didn't.

I'm sure you're capable of making that same mistake again tho.

[hfojvt]

39. yeah, I don't get that

If I catch Hillary in 5 or six lies doesn't that tell me something about her character? Especially when I am dealing with numbers. Can't I look at her record with regard to the Iraq war and see her promoting it and enabling Bush until about mid 2005?

[JVS]

44. The premise of this thread is epistemological suicide.

It posits that because our knowledge is limited, we cannot attempt to use what observations we do procure as a starting point for making informed decisions about things. Congratulations, we've rejected rationalism. 400 years of thought down the toilet.

[mythyc]

59. ssshhhhhh... ask for legitimate philosophy and you'll just get crickets

... or logic or rhetoric for that matter. you can tell the OP and its clique don't know that (to mention just a few) decartes, rousseau, kant, hegel, nietzsche, heidegger, peirce, bergson, russell, husserl, saussure and finally (and especially) derrida debunked and obliterated every angle of this fallacy and washed all this grit out of the gears for centuries running already....

even locke would snort at this epistemology for dummies; hell, Socrates with all his skepticism would still allow a simple deductive syllogism...

[Skittles]

37. no I cannot, which is why I do not assume such asinine things about either

YOU KNOW IT, WRITER

[Hippo_Tron]

41. Yea, I just posted a thread about this and post people don't agree with me

But go figure...

[A-Schwarzenegger]

50. Besides, what is reality?

Energy cannot lie.
Everything is energy.
Therefore, politicians cannot lie.

[JVS]

53. Oh come on you can do better than that.

When Ctesippus heard this he got very angry (as a lover well might) and said: Stranger of Thurii-if politeness would allow me I should say, A plague upon you! What can make you tell such a lie about me and the others, which I hardly like to repeat, as that I wish Cleinias to perish?

Euthydemus replied: And do you think, Ctesippus, that it is possible to tell a lie?

Yes, said Ctesippus; I should be mad to say anything else.
And in telling a lie, do you tell the thing of which you speak or not?

You tell the thing of which you speak.
And he who tells, tells that thing which he tells, and no other?
Yes, said Ctesippus.
And that is a distinct thing apart from other things?
Certainly.
And he who says that thing says that which is?
Yes.
And he who says that which is, says the truth. And therefore Dionysodorus, if he says that which is, says the truth of you and no lie.

Yes, Euthydemus, said Ctesippus; but in saying this, he says what is not.

Euthydemus answered: And that which is not is not?
True.
And that which is not is nowhere?
Nowhere.
And can any one do anything about that which has no existence, or do to Cleinias that which is not and is nowhere?

I think not, said Ctesippus.
Well, but do rhetoricians, when they speak in the assembly, do nothing?

Nay, he said, they do something.
And doing is making?
Yes.
And speaking is doing and making?
He agreed.
Then no one says that which is not, for in saying what is not he would be doing something; and you have already acknowledged that no one can do what is not. And therefore, upon your own showing, no one says what is false; but if Dionysodorus says anything, he says what is true and what is.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthydemus.html

[A-Schwarzenegger]

57. I call & raise you Plato's Noble Lie, which really wasnt a lie

because it was for the good of the people, keeping them ignernt.
I love Plato's sense of humor.

[mythyc]

60. generally it's not good to use "evidence" for personal ends.

better to make sure one fully understands the concept. This is one of scores of responses to sweeping generalizations on Plato (the writer, vs. Socrates the character)'s interpretation of the Noble Lie:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/republic.htm

from a lecture by Ian Johnston, one of the more respected philosophy and classics lecturers out there:

"Before I conclude, I wish to say a few things about a point I mentioned at the very start. We need, as we read the Republic, to bear in mind that it itself is a fiction, perhaps one of the noblest lies ever written. Unless we believe that Plato wishes to condemn his own work out of hand, we must be careful not to take some of Socrates's more emphatic strictures about art entirely at face value as all that needs to be said.

Furthermore, it is clear that the development of the argument in the text relies heavily on fictions. In fact, the best known parts of this text, things that will remain with you long after you have forgotten the particular details of this or that philosophical argument will, I suspect, be those moments when Socrates, in order to amplify a point or work his way out of a potential logical problem, launches a story: the Ring of Gyges, the Allegory of the Cave, and the Myth of Er. These stories are justly famous (and enormously influential) for precisely those reasons that Socrates discusses--they help to awaken or reawaken in us, who have no clear insight into the highest truths, a desire to search them out or, if not that, at least come to a better understanding of what such a search might entail and of the value of such an endeavour.

In fact, if we want to understand the enormously important formative influence of Plato's conception of a Noble Lie, we might look no further than the Allegory of the Cave or the Myth of Er. These fictions are vitally important contributions to The Republic, not because they establish a philosophical proof of anything, but because they awaken in the reader an understanding of what Socrates's true aim is here, to celebrate for us a new way to live one's life as a search for the beautiful and the good. Like the Apology and the Phaedo, which recounts the last conversations of Socrates immediately before his death, The Republic is, first and foremost a celebration of the philosophic life. And Plato knows that to celebrate that life most fully, the seductive charms, the "wizardry" of poesis, are essential, in spite of the fact that they are potentially dangerous. "

[A-Schwarzenegger]

61. "All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie."

Like I say, I love Plato's sense of humor, just like I love Dylan's, and Kafka's, and, oh, my own, too, while I'm at it. :hi:

[mythyc]

62. Dylan has one hell of a wicked lovely sense of humor ...

"I didn't go to classes. I just didn't feel like it."
"A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet."
"All I can do is be me, whoever that is."
"If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself."
"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything."
"When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?"
"You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever."

and my favorite answer to a dumb interview question ever: Question: “How many protest singers would you say there are today, who use their music, and use the songs to protest the social state in which we live today?” Answer: “I think there’s about one hundred and thirty-six. Either that or one hundred and forty-two.”

genius

:hi:

[Spider Jerusalem]

66. This is a stupid, stupid post.

Hillary Clinton has been exposed in blatant untruths on repeated occasions. This fact is enough to make it quite clear that yes, indeed, she is a liar. One does not need to be personally acquainted with someone to be able to tell that someone who lies repeatedly is, ipso facto, a liar. QED.

[Political Heretic]

68. I can personally attest to Hillary Clinton being a liar. Anyone can.

We have lies on record.

If you lie then you are a lie-er.