National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer
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It's only disinformation because you don't like what is being said.
You believe everything that CNN, Rachel Maddow, and Joy Reid pull out of their asses because they hate Trump nearly as much as you do. You don't care that they have been proven to be liars several times.
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@raphjd said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
It's only disinformation because you don't like what is being said.
You believe everything that CNN, Rachel Maddow, and Joy Reid pull out of their asses because they hate Trump nearly as much as you do. You don't care that they have been proven to be liars several times.
There you go again with the inflammatory and incendiary ranting...
For something to be a lie, it doesn't just have to be wrong, the person stating it has to KNOW - right then and there - that it is wrong... AS they are saying it!
When I walk into the door of your home and smell the dinner in the oven, I can honestly, say "dinner smells wonderful"... when I later learn that dinner is going to be Swansons in the microwave, and that what I smelled was your neighbor's BBQ... I didn't lie! But I sure as hell was wrong!
I don't watch Rachel Maddow (or any other show on MSNBC) - any more than I watch the non-news shows on Fox News... I generally don't look to the "talking heads" to tell me what I should think.
I honestly don't know who Joy Reid is at all...
I happen to know about the "national debt" (and the paper-tiger that it is) because I studied it during my MBA education. Yes, I would say my professor was a liberal... no, I wouldn't say he was wrong (at least not about everything).... He had some ideas I thought were liberal (and wacky), but the majority of the class was about economic facts - and how to tell the fact from the opinion. Also, how to detect "spun" facts.
It was the 2nd time I'd heard the Mark Twain quote:
"There are 3 types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, & Statistics"
(Mind you, he didn't invent the phrase - but he did popularize it!) -
@bi4smooth I like the Swanson's dinner vs. BBQ image--thanks for sharing it.
The issue of lying vs. truth-telling gets muddled in political circles: The classical definition of "knowing something" is that one "knows" a proposition for which one has (1) justified, (2) true (3) belief. ("Belief" here means intellectual assent; it has nothing to do with religion.) All three ingredients need to be present for one to know something in the strict classical sense. I could say, "It is sunny in Paris," which might be true, and I might believe it, but I haven't looked it up and thus I have no justification for believing it...thus I don't "know" that it's sunny in Paris. Conversely, your BBQ-smeller has justification for believing that "dinner smells wonderful," but it happens to be false, and thus strictly speaking he doesn't "know" the proposition that he has made...but as you note, he's not a liar.
The question arises whether someone (such as a politician) is lying if they make statements about which they have no justification. They might not know that they are false, but they have no justification to believe that they're true. Such a thing might not count as a lie, but it's still not responsible to make the assertion. Most sources assert that Mr Trump lied 30,000+ times whilst in office, but there's likely a chunk of those in which he wasn't willfully being deceptive--he just didn't know what he was talking about and said something that was politically expedient. I'm not apologising for him, just focusing the terminology. I think government officials--especially a head of state--have a responsibility to have justification for what they say. Speculating that coronavirus would simply "go away" or that it could be cured by injecting bleach is irresponsible because such statements had no justification--and also happened to be be demonstrably false.
People sometimes refer to Mr Trump's continued assertion that he actually won the 2020 election as "the Big Lie." I think that's only a lie if he knows that it's false, and it's hard to assess what's actually going on inside his dysfunctional toddler's brain. It's possible that he believes it, but since it's (a) not true and (b) he has no justification for it, he cannot be said to "know" that he won the election. But he is certainly well-versed in the Goebbel's Principle (named for Hitler's propaganda minister) that says, I think accurately, that if you tell people something enough times, be it true or false, many will believe it.
A quick search shows that "Joy Reid" is a talk/news host on the cable network MSNBC. I don't watch her programme as I don't have cable TV, and I don't know if that channel is even offered where I live. (I get television the old-fashioned way--with an antenna--and it's free!)
Perhaps I'll prepare some BBQ this evening...
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Wow - an intellectual, factual, analytical response.
What happened to the Universe? Did someone (as they clearly did in 2016) figure out the why's and wherefore's and, thusly, an infinitely more complex Universe (one in which Donald Trump - yeah, THAT Donald Trump - is actually, literally, elected President... of the United States!) was created?
(Source)
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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So, building on your notation above - and looking at how the valid application of the label "liar" (or just "lie") changes:
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On Nov 3, 2020 Donald Trump said that he won re-election. The votes had not yet been counted, so he could not have known - for a fact - that he was the winner. Thus, the statement was conjecture, and while eventually proven false, it was not a lie
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On Nov 10, 2020 Donald Trump said he that he won re-election. There were still some (enough) states who were still (re)counting, but it was clear that Biden was ahead. The probability (given what was known at the time) was that he had lost, but there was still a possibility... Thus, this was still conjecture - albeit a "wishful thinking" one - and therefore, not a lie
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On Nov 15, 2020 Donald Trump said (Tweeted) that Biden "only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA". This is a little harder to evaluate for a "lie". Clearly, Trump would have known the entirety of media - including Fox News - had reported his loss. Still, the choice of language like "the only" qualifies this as more hyperbole combined with continued wishful thinking. Again, at least in my opinion, not a lie (maybe self-delusional, but not (yet) a lie!)
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On Dec 15, 2020 Donald Trump said (again, via Twitter) that he won the election. However, by this time all 50 states and DC had certified their election results. Even though the final Electoral College vote would not occur for 3 weeks hence, this statement - in the face of the certified results clearly falls into the lie category. It would be different (again, choice of words matters!) had he tweeted that he should have won, or that he would overturn the results - but the statement - after the certification of all of the results that he had, in fact, won was not hyperbole or even wishful thinking. It was a lie
Every explicit claim of victory thereafter... has been a lie.
The question of the election being "stolen" is another matter. Trump can believe (regardless of his inability to convince anyone else in authority) that nefarious forces colluded against him and that he was the "rightful" (if not "legal") winner... that is not the same as saying he WAS the winner... delusional or not, that's just saying he should have been the winner, and I think some 70M supporters agree that they wish he had won, but that's not the same as saying that he DID win - which is a lie.
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@bi4smooth I very much like your chronological staging of these events. If one takes my view that one lies if and only if one "knows" that what is being said is false (which is not the only way of defining lying), then indeed it would seem that Mr Trump would not have been lying on November 3 or 10, as there was still some (shrinking) ambiguity about the actual election result. By late November, it would be difficult for a rational person to not believe that Mr Biden had won, so assertions by Mr Trump of victory at that point are close to being lies.
But applying the analysis here needs to assume that Mr Trump is being rational. It's possible that he actually believes, even today, that we won the election, even though state and federal government processes have declared and finalised otherwise. If he does actually believe the (irrational and untrue) proposition that he won the election, then by my narrow definition of lying, it wouldn't be a lie for him to say "I won the election." But if he were to say, "I know that I won the election," then that would be a lie, because to "know" that he won means he has justification for believing that--and clearly there is none. Perhaps I'm stretching the analytical framework beyond where it works. It's not easy to apply rational categories to someone as "unique" as Mr Trump.
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@raphjd No - as usual...
It's not disinformation because someone doesn't like it... it's disinformation because it's demonstrably not true.
I know this is beyond you... it has been for as long as I've seen you here... but just because someone disagrees with you, they are not 'ignorant of reality'... they might be right and you are wrong. In your case, this is always the case - you have never managed to post anything here that is of any value or worth at all... all you do is post garbage that is so obviously stupid and wrong that even a child could see that... but you... can't.
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@eobox91103 @bi4smooth You guys are talking way way way above Raphjd's head here... he won't be able to understand any of this! Believe me... I've tried before...
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Typical liberal shite, from a know-nothing liberal.
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@calatar You're quite right, although I enjoyed the exchange with Bi4Smooth--that's the kind of discussion that shows the potential benefit of a forum like this. It's unfortunate that good discussions get poisoned by a childish brat.
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I thought you were quitting the forums.
So, I'm a "childish brat", am I?
As I said before, you don't have to stay here. You can always go to one of the leftist echo chambers you clearly love.
Just because you don't like my non-leftist sources, does not make them wrong.
3 liberals telling me I'm wrong and calling me names, means that I am correct.
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@raphjd I am not quitting the forums, I'm only quitting making responses to you. This post is an exception. I enjoy thoughtful engagement with forum participants.
It is ironic (and that's a polite word) that you are a "forum administrator," when you frequently engage in venomous and childish name-calling. That would not be permitted in most forums, and even goes against the rules of this site. It's amusing (again, another polite word) that you violate the very rules that you have posted.
You're not fooling anybody. People who read your postings have this all figured out. If grownups are having a discussion on here that you don't understand, perhaps you should stand down.
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@bi4smooth Arizona just spent $150,000 proving Biden won Arizona.
It doesn't bring me joy to say that as I hate Biden almost as much as I hate Trump and didn't vote for either of them, but it is what it is. When people were saying trump stole the election from Hillary because russians got on facebook and called her a bad person, I rolled my eyes vigorously at that notion as well.
Hillary lost because she was a soulless piece of shit for stood for nothing. People wanted to try a wild card like trump because trump wasn't a politician so they thought he'd bring something new to the table. Instead he put corruption on steroids and ran the united clown show of america for 4 years. After 4 years of seeing what incompetent rich man buffoonery looks like people went back to standard scumbag politicians. This is not that hard.
the fact that Trump continues to con his base to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars perpetuating the lie that the election was stolen is just chef's kiss. Rudy Giuliani was laughed out of court 60 times after he himself told the court they had no evidence.
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@chanelkokoro I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, "Americans will always do the right thing--after they've tried everything else." It looks like they thought, in 2016, "let's try this new guy," and that didn't work. Then last year, they thought, "let's try this old guy," and the jury is still mostly out on that one. (Note, though, that more people voted for Mrs Clinton than for Mr Trump in 2016.)
That whole Arizona thing is so bizarre. I saw an interview the other day where one of the "vote counters" who said they thought 40,000 ballots (presumably marked for Mr Biden) were air-dropped in from "the southeast part of the world" (whatever that means), and that they had special technology to look for bamboo fibres in these illicit ballots. I'm sure they will convince themselves that they have found them.
One also notes that those who speak of "election fraud" only mention the presidential election, not any of the other contests, from senator on down to dog-catcher. It seems that all of those must have been in order.
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@eobox91103 No the jury is not still out of Biden. Biden has been a lying pos for 30 years, who only became president after his third try because he stood next to the country's first black president for 4 years. Biden only looks like he's doing a good job because trump spent 4 whole years ramming that bar into the dirt.
Biden has already gone back on several campaign promises which include him killing 15 minimum wage, refusing to repeal the trump tax cuts, refusing to decriminalize marijuana by taking off the schedule 1 drug class, a move that biden could have done unilaterally by himself on his first day if he wanted.
Biden and Kamala is the one who empowered these cops to start butchering people in the streets like animals in the first place. While his own son was busy getting high off his damn face and committing drug crimes of his own, he helped his child, he wanted empathy for his child, he sent his kid to rehab, and got him a nice cushy job, all while working his ass off to make sure that other people's children went to jail for making the same mistakes his son did.
Biden fought the desegregation of schools and school busing and is quoted as saying "I don't my kids going to school in a racial jungle." If you don't know this, Biden is a racist sack of shit human being on two legs, who only got elected because America doesn't deserve nice things.
Biden only won by 43,000 votes in 3 states, that's it. If trump wasn't such an incompetent jackass who didn't bungle a global pandemic in 18 different ways, he would've sailed to re-election, because again, America doesn't deserve nice things.
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@chanelkokoro As for the jury not being out, I suppose that depends on which crimes we're looking at. It can take a while for campaign promises to be fulfilled, although as you say he could have legalised cannabis on day one. (It's legal in my country, and also in California, where I visit often.)
The best thing going for Mr Biden is that he's not as horrible as Trump, which is of course a low standard. I do hope things improve for the US in the years to come...the country that did moon landings, the Internet, and the Pontiac Aztek (j/k) deserves better.
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@eobox91103 well i suppose that if he means what he says about pulling our troops out of afghanistan he'll already be a better president than war criminals bush, obama, and trump were. Plus we are 100% surviving the pandemic because of his leadership so that's something. That alone seems to make his election worth it. But I have 0 faith in him beyond that. He does have a well documented history of being a corporate prostitute, something he admitted himself:
Trust me, when Biden hit 40 he did hit that electric slide straight to Goldman Sachs and has never left ever since.
Biden's been in office for nearly half a year. It's not a question of him not being there long enough, Biden has ALREADY killed 15 dollar minimum wage, something he said was a campaign guarantee, by taking it out of the must-pass covid relief package. Then he along with 8 other democratic senators, including the 2 senators from delaware his own home state, killed 15 dollar minimum wage again when Bernie introduced it as an amendment to the bill. Then they punted the ball to the senate parliamentarian an unelected busybody whose opinion can easily be overruled by the vice president.
Of course Kamala Harris, another two faced lying pos who ran on 15 dollar minimum wage chose not to overrule her and now here we are. Now it won't even be discussed for the next 4 years while there are people in the country making $7.25/hr and tipped workers are making $2.13/hr. The dems promised this over and over again. 15/hr minimum wage was a core promise. Now we are likely to lose the senate to the republicans in 2022, because people will always prefer the party of bad ideas, to the party of no ideas.
Biden has some good rhetoric on the environment but this is the same guy who has supported fracking and pipelines, and the empowered the banks to screw over their consumers and fund the pollution of the environment, so I'll believe it when I actually see it.
I voted for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party because I didn't want to have to choose between a climate change denier and a climate change enabler. We could've had a real president for once, like Bernie Sanders, but the fox news and the older generation of geriatric losers and has beens banded together to ruin the dreams of a generation by running a smear campaign against a man who simply wanted to bring America universal healthcare and making him out to be a Bolshevik commie.
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@chanelkokoro I will continue to be optimistic that things will get better for Americans in the coming years. I can understand the expediency of dropping the minimum wage from the COVID relief package, in order to get the needs passed. It remains to be seen whether the $15 plan will resurface. I do think it's a bit odd to have minimum wage on a national level, as there's considerable difference in the cost of living in different parts of the US. There's even a large difference in cost of living within individual states. I don't know what the right solution is here.
Healthcare policy seems to be a mess in the US. I think many people want universal health care, but there are different ways of going about it. Mr Sanders was strong on advocating this, but rather on short on details, which left him open to criticism. Ms Warren had a more detailed plan, but I don't think many read it. People want simple solutions to complex problems--which would be nice--but it rarely works that way.
I will remain optimistic. There are 330 million people who deserve better than what they're getting.
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@eobox91103 said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
@chanelkokoro I will continue to be optimistic that things will get better for Americans in the coming years.
You probably don't live here. I don't mean it in a condescending or demeaning way, I just mean if you lived here you wouldn't say this.
I can understand the expediency of dropping the minimum wage from the COVID relief package, in order to get the needs passed.
First off, expedient? we've been fighting for 15/hr for more than a decade. This is what the damn liar ran on. And prevent it from passing for who? the majority of constituents in every single state want to see the minimum wage increased, dems are just actively going against the will over the voters.
Covid relief was a must-pass bill. Any dem that voted against it would lose their seat and spark national outrage. And even after taking out the minimum wage not a single republican voted for it. But the republicans are out of power and wholly irrelevant right now. That's why this guy who created the thread is losing it and screaming into the ether everyday, because the republicans can't do shit. This is 100% proof that democrats are the ones that killed the very 15/hr minimum wage they campaigned on, depressing their own vote and leaving the senate vulnerable for republicans to retake it in 2022. We are barely getting anything done now, when republican regain the senate it will be gridlock for the next 2 years till 2024. Meaning we only have these first 2 years to pass it.
The dems didn't have a choice but to pass that bill. So the chamber of commerce used biden and kamala to pressure bernie to take it out of the bill, in order to protect corrupt dems from voting against it. Then kamala refused to overrule the parliamentarian even though she was fully within her right to. When republicans were in charge they overruled the parliamentarian all the time. When she was against funding a war in the middle east they even fired her ass and put in someone who would agree with them for optics. Yet Kamala refused to overrule her and lift millions of americans out of poverty because she's a corrupt hack. So bernie then decided to introduce it as an amendment and 8 democrats raised their hands and voted no, because they suck corporate sell outs. Kyrsten Sinema (D) gleefully voted no and watched her approval rating tank 15 points just to say 'let them eat cake.' and the cake part is literal: Kyrsten Sinema's Marie Antoinette moment
Have you ever wondered why the republicans keep regaining power even though they are awful cutthroats whose goal is to destroy government? This is why. Because both parties are straight trash.
It remains to be seen whether the $15 plan will resurface.
If it does it will be in spite of biden, not because of him. His two strongest allies who do his bidding the two senators from delaware voted down the amendment, they are proof he's not fighting for it.
I do think it's a bit odd to have minimum wage on a national level, as there's considerable difference in the cost of living in different parts of the US. There's even a large difference in cost of living within individual states. I don't know what the right solution is here.
Federal minimum wage is a MINIMUM wage. It means the lowest a person can get paid. There is federal minimum wage and state minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is there to set a baseline that says no employer can pay someone less than this anywhere in the country and then the states set there own minimum wages that are higher than that. For example federal minimum wage is 7.25 but my state's minimum wage is $10, no one in my state can get paid less than $10.
The reason why we need to raise the federal minimum wage is because wages haven't kept up with inflation in over 40 years in america. If it did wages would be more than $23/hr right now.
15 is not even enough, but it's a start. I can't find the study so you'll just have to take my word for it but I saw a study that said the kind of wage needed to live n the POOREST county in the united states is $15.10. And this was during the obama years 5 or 6 years ago.
Raising the federal minimum wage would drive wages up all over the country, as most state wages would have to increase to be higher than the federal minimum as well. All sorts of different industries would see wages increases too just by moving up the baseline.
Healthcare policy seems to be a mess in the US. I think many people want universal health care, but there are different ways of going about it. Mr Sanders was strong on advocating this, but rather on short on details, which left him open to criticism.
This is profoundly untrue. His plan was very robust and detailed. The proposal was over 100 pages:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6785499/S1129-Medicare-for-all.pdf
Because I'm a registered nurse, this affects me and so I read every word. But even at that, Bernie explained the details of his plan over and over again, and he explained how it would be payed for over and over again. the corporatized media funded by the private insurance companies that would no longer exist should this pass just chose to keep asking how he would pay for it, lie and obfuscate. The plan is actually quite brilliant. And probably the first of its kind combining aspects of the canadian system together and offers 8 different ways we can create a tax system that will pay for it all. If implemented experts say it would cut down heathcare costs by TRILLIONS over 10 years.
Ms Warren had a more detailed plan, but I don't think many read it.
You can say you prefer warren's plan but you can't say it was more detailed when it was just a 20 page wishlist she put on her website compared to the 100 page proposal bernie put on the floor of congress. Furthermore, Bernie's plan is better simply by the virtue that it seeks to end private health insurance companies entirely through an equitable tax plan, while warren's plan (while originally stellar) sought to use a public option transition plan which would've done nothing but overburden the government the cost of the sickest individuals while the private insurance companies cherry picked the healthy, thus destroying medicare for all.
I will remain optimistic. There are 330 million people who deserve better than what they're getting.
I will remain pessimistic to balance you out bro. Someone has to.
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@eobox91103 said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:
@raphjd I am not quitting the forums, I'm only quitting making responses to you. This post is an exception. I enjoy thoughtful engagement with forum participants.
It is ironic (and that's a polite word) that you are a "forum administrator," when you frequently engage in venomous and childish name-calling. That would not be permitted in most forums, and even goes against the rules of this site. It's amusing (again, another polite word) that you violate the very rules that you have posted.
You're not fooling anybody. People who read your postings have this all figured out. If grownups are having a discussion on here that you don't understand, perhaps you should stand down.
Ad Homen attacks, but I'm the childish one.
Again, if you want to a leftist echo chamber, there are plenty for you to enjoy.
