Yes you are a dreamer. Do you not think Democrats do the same thing?

The Right lies, the Left lies—I daresay the purest person in politics (get the alliteration?) lies to advance his or her views and agenda. That’s why it’s called politics. I think the best we can do is not take any politician’s or commentator’s side on any issue without studying it from as many sides as possible. And also remember that just because something appears in a printed on broadcasted medium or the Net doesn’t automatically make it the truth.

I agree everyone on the planet will “twist” the truth to suit his or her agenda at the moment . But why aren’t more people willing to investigate? And since when is it ok to manufacture bald faced lies solely with the intent to cause harm? I isn’t right and I don’t like it, and I think something ( not sure what the law will allow) should be done to put an end to it.

First off everyone lies. Left and right alike..that’s what they do. They’re politicians! I myself am a “lying republican” thank you very much. I feel for the woman, but did you hear her speak at the black panther rally? Her comment on the situation was rude and made the situation a lot worse. If she wanted to drop it she could have spoken to the man about it and left it at that. No more had to be said on that matter.

A poorly educated populace will believe anything they are told because they don’t know any better. Look at the state of our education system; look at how many people don’t know history and can’t even count out correct change. It’s already been proven that on average, more intelligent people are less likely to be Conservative. (The really smart ones are apolitical.)

A lazy populace won’t bother to look at facts and think for themselves when some blowhard is perfectly willing to hand them pre-digested “truth”. Just take a look around you and you will see a lot of lazy people. You won’t see too many here on Fluther since this place seems to attract people that can use their brains and actually enjoy doing so, but Fluther is not really a good representation of society at large.

As long as people are dumb and lazy, any well-organized entity can get them to beleive anything, and the Right is better organized than the fractious Left; they are better at creating party unity. And uniting the Left won’t help. That will only make us more polarized than we already are. What we need is to get people to use their brains and to make sure that that brain is filled with objective facts and capable of assembling those facts logically.

It should tell you something that most educated people are either Moderate, Liberal, or apolitical. While there are some smart self-labelled Conservatives, many of them are unhappy with the Republican Party for the way things have been going within that party lately, so I lump them in with the Moderates since the colloquial definition of “Conservative” has become less like Reagan and more like Limbaugh.

@jerv GA!

Nice and divided, strait down the middle. Instead of being encouraged to be diverse, we get passionately grouped into two. Easier to control. There are lies in most things said to the public from official stations, if not literal than in the subtext. You’re not on anyone’s side. Everybody lies. although the republican culture is generally more depressing to look at, and the lies seem to be more obvious, I guess. But the apparent contrast between the sides, is the greater lie you should worry about.

Isn’t this question the same as this question that was just asked yesterday? Is it really a question, or just an attempt to bash republicans, yet again. republicans are not the only people that lie.(btw- I’m not republican.)

@jonsblond It seems earnest, even if it is a non-question.

I will echo @jerv Politicians in a democracy are only as good as the people who vote for them. If the voters are apathetic, uninformed, lazy or stupid, they will tend to wake up one day to find liars, cheaters, and even killers and dictators in places of power. Right now, people on both the left and the right seem to be somewhat clueless about the nature of man, markets and history. Our current group of Democrats and Republicans (I think each party is equally worthless) reflect this shallowness of the electorate. I blame it on public education, but I am sure everybody has their own bogeyman.

@zophu I’m just in a bad mood this morning. I shouldn’t take it out here. My apologies to the op.

Because Obama has been so fucking honest…..I suggest you do a little more research on politics.

Great question. If the so called Liberal Media would expose each lie, it would soon force the Great Oz behind the curtain to at the worst churn out talking points that are a spin on real facts, not total fabrications. Politicians lie when their real agenda is one that, if disclosed, would doom their chances of getting the power to put it into action. If the Nazi Party had told Germans they wanted to take Germany to war with the rest of the known world, exterminate Jews, homosexuals, the Romani (Gypsy) people and other undesirables, and eventually exterminate all who were not pure Aryan perfection, they would not have gotten power, they would have gotten jail sentences.

The real agenda of today’s Pepublican Party is converting America into a corporatocracy and transferring virtually all the wealth of the nation to the top 1%. If they disclosed that, their chances of winning another election would be ever so slightly above Zero.

I would not say lying. I would say making more promises that they can keep and I do not think that this is limited to any one party.

@ETpro By your example Obama is lying about not being a Socialist, not wanting to take American into a world government, and not trying to destroy capitalism with cap and trade. Thanks for showing us that about our current administration. (sarcasm noted)

@missingbite A picture is worth a thousand words.

@missingbite No, Obama is not lying about those things. He’s not a socialist, the Republicans that call him one are lying. Look up the word. Does everyone in America now work directly for the Federal Government? Do we all get our pay from the government on government checks which we cash in Government banks? No. That would all be happening if Obama were a successful socialist.. There has been no move to take America into a world government, and cap and trade is designed to save the world and capitalism from global warming, not destroy capitalism. It’s legitimate to argue about whether it is needed or not, or whether it’s a good policy, but to claim it is designed to destroy capitalism is a baldfaced lie.

Now, on the Republican side. Tax cuts always stimulate the economy and increase federal revenue. They do not. Reagan slashed taxes for the rich from 70% to 28% and tripled the National Debt. The National Debt had been paying down till his tax cut, and it immediately skyrocketed after it.

Bill Clinton actually raised taxes and with that raise began paying back down the national debt. We had eight years of prosperity and created 23.1 million jobs. George W. Bush said he could keep paying down the National Debt by cutting taxes for the rich. He lied. He doubled the National Debt Clinton had been paying down. Three million jobs were created during his 8 years, and the population grew by 22 million. So we actually had a net loss of nearly 20 million jobs. And the 3 million figure doesn’t count nearly the 1 million jobs lost during the recession beginning in 2007.

Republicans say government spending can’t stop recessions, and that Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression, WWII did. That’s two lies and the second one is the silliest. The New Deal did end the Great Depression. The GDP was back to where it should have been in early 1941, months before Pearl Harbor was hit. And WWII was nothing if not the most massive Government Spending program in US history. Saying spending can’t work but WWII did is not just a lie, it is a self contradicting lie.

Let’s look to modern politics. Obama is a socialist is a lie. The health care bill called for death panels is a lie. The health care bill was a massive government takeover of the private healthcare institution in America was a lie.Did your Doctor and Hospital suddenly become a government entity when the bill finally passed? Obams is not a US citizen is a lie.

Taken in total, the lies are aimed at one thing. Give us power, and let us cut taxes for the rich. The inheritance tax had to go so dynastic wealth could survive. It was attacked with the lie that it was a death tax, as if that applied to us all. It only applied to large estates and helped stop the US from heading toward an oligarchy.

Tax cuts for the rich are pushed with the fantasy that they don’t create deficits, they bring in more revenues; and they create more jobs. Well, we’ve cutting taxes for the rich now for 30 years. The National debt grew from $2 trillion to $13 trillion and where are the jobs? They are offshore, where the truly wealthy, who don’t earn taxable wages but earn through investments, largely put their money because returns are higher and they can better dodge US taxes.

The top 10% now own nearly ¾ths of all the wealth in the USA. The top 1% own over /13rd of all the wealth. And Republicans want them to have way more.

@ETpro You obviously don’t get it. Your first post is totally one sided against Republicans and makes it look like you think Democrats do no wrong. Again, do you think Democrats don’t lie? On top of that you lectured me on something I don’t even believe. Did you not notice the last two words of my post?

@ETpro Let us not forget that Obama is Muslim :P

@jerv Let’s not forget that Obama is a puppet and to be for or against him is a distraction and waste of energy.

I have never seen so much hate and fear mongering come from any camp as I have seen from the right in recent years. Whatever excuses and redirection those who blindly serve the republican agenda want to feed us, cannot change the fact they have become vicious and uncivil in their behavior. I think it is unacceptable, I think our citizens deserve better behavior from those we send to washington to represent us and not their fool agendas.

@missingbite I think all politicians lie, spin and stretch the truth from time to time in attempting to win office. Some also say things they truly believe to be true, make promises, but later can’t deliver on them because of political realities. I used to be a Republican before Reagan and seeing where the party was now trying to take America. It used to be the Grand Old Party and now it is the Greedy Oligarchy Party.

I want there to be a viable alternative to Democrats, because one-party rule stinks and breeds terrible corruption regardless of which one party rules. But the point of the Republican lies is that they are so numerous and that they are all aimed at transferring all the wealth to the top 1%. For right now, if you are in the top 10%, you win with Republicans in office. If you are making more then $100,000 after taxes, you’re winning for now. But even the bottom 9% of that top 10 are set up to lose.

But most of the wealth is flowing to the very top, with the top 1% doing very well and the top 1/10th of 1% gaining wealth at an enormous pace. If we let this continue, we will destroy the middle class it took so long for America to build, and we will be like a Latin American Banana Republic, with a handful of families owning everything including the government, and all the rest of us condemned to generational poverty with a life of crime the only hope of escape. That is not what I want for my children.

@zophu I thought every POTUS, regardless of party, was a Wag the Dog type of guy; that’s practically in the job description!

The real agenda of today’s Pepublican Party is converting America into a corporatocracy and transferring virtually all the wealth of the nation to the top 1%. If they disclosed that, their chances of winning another election would be ever so slightly above Zero

@ETpro Those sneaky, lying Republicans. And I thought that strategy was top secret. They all lie all the time…except for me, of course. Do you ever NOT speak in superlatives? Given our last exchange, I’m going to cut you a lot of slack. But rave on. Don’t let me hinder you.

@jerv I would agree with you that the less intelligent a person is the less likely he is to be liberal (which I think makes an incisive statement about liberalism) and the more likely he is to side with the right. However, it would be a mistake to think that they are being led astray. Those whom you and I call the “unintelligent” often have some pretty keen insight. I never underestimate them.

I would just also note that although I am a political conservative (hopefully intelligent), I do not identify with Limbaugh at all. I have never even heard his radio show.

@plethora They may have insight, but I have noticed a profound inability to do the math, so I question their stance on economic matters. However, you are correct in that many people who lack “book smarts” have a healthy dose of common sense… though common sense is uncommon today too. There is more to intelligence than learning; I know many stupid people with college degrees and many smart people who never even got a GED.

As for whether you are a Conservative, like I said, the standards have changed. It used to be that people like Colin Powell and John McCain were seen as Conservative, but by today’s standards they are Pinko Commies. (Well, at least according to Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, who kicked Powell out ot the Republican party.)

@jerv firstly the charge of Obama as socialist is an insult to socialism, secondly the Republican agenda is synonymous with the capitalist agenda, which is synonymous with the agenda of the first European excursion into the Americas; self aggrandizement, prospecting, proprietorship, status and so forth. In a vast region populated relatively sparsely by people with less territorial ambition, the necessity to lie about ones own ambition was unnecessary and nothing to feel ashamed of, but of course as the Population began to swell and the conflict of interests inevitable erupted, well, then the tongue forked the blood cooled, the dissimulation began and the Reptilian party was conceived to oversee and manage the continuation and expansion of the whole sorry process.

So now the second part of my question is what can we do to make them stop. The slanderous bilge spewed into the media must step over some legal lines? Why do we allow this to continue? There is a huge difference between having an opposing opinion and outright lies about what is going on. It is the ignorant belief in the lies that have caused people to be attacked both verbally and physically. Death threats to families with little ones at home, calling horrible names etc. etc. etc. How can these things be sanctioned by anyone that still call themselves human beings? Don’t these folks look at themselves in the mirror?

@mammal After a little studying, I have yet to see a difference between “monopolistic Capitalism”, which for all practical purposes we have now, and Fascism except for the PR spin. Of course, many of those in power are elected by a Board of Directors and don’t have an office in DC, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have power.

@flitter54 The First Amendment is a double-edged sword, so there really isn’t anything we can do along those lines unless you can prove in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt that their behavior is harmful to our national security. And, because of the First Amendment, that will be a serious uphill battle to say the least.

However, when it comes to death threats and physical assault, there are laws covering those, but as long as they keep it to non-threatening words, there isn’t much we can do without giving the government more power than our forefathers ever wanted them to have.

Of course they look at themselves in the mirror; how else could they appreciate how superior they are over the rest of us?

@jerv I am thinking your last sentence was sarcasm because as we are all created equal, their superiority can only be in their own minds. They act like they know what is better for me than I do, but they are sorely mistaken.

@missingbite That they are, my friend. That they are.

@jerv @missingbite The sickest thing is that they might actually become superior to us just by having the delusion that they are. Well, not truly superior, but who do you think is going to have access to the inevitable immortal-technology? The public? Ha. They’ll make physical gods of themselves before they realize on their own that they’re broken in ways that render them spiritually inferior to a child. Actually, I’m sure they already know that about themselves. It must be what drives them so fanatically. They would own every child of every generation, systematically render them as broken as they are, just to keep feeling superior—they’ve been fairly successful.

@jerv I would agree with you that standards have changed and I saw that confirmed just yesterday with Obama’s video exhorting liberals to be faithful and to continue to support him. (He was addressing liberals who are now dissatisfied with his “lack of progress”) I cannot ever remember a public speech by a president exhorting either liberals or conservatives to stick with him. Does the man not know that he is lighting the fires under the opposition?

It is this kind of bizarre behavior that fuels the bizarre behavior that liberals perceive on the right.

I see that both sides have way too many lying, fanatical, zealots. I’m getting sick of the whole darn mess.
I actually think that the Tea party may have started out being a reasonable, homegrown, sensible choice.
Now, not so much. They seem to have been taken over by the crackpots.

@wilma Isn’t that true of pretty much any group that’s been around for a while?

I have a unique and original idea: Let’s all revolt! Here’s the first step:

Do not care about what anyone with high rank says about anything whether they seem right in what they are saying or not.

Listen to the scientists and the philosophers and the people who experience the world directly. Spread their words. Make them so loud no politician or businessman can drown them out. Let people see how the words from the pedestal sound when they’re no different than the words spoken by anyone else.

@plethora Yes, we both got spanked for our last exchange. My apologies for letting the debate get personal. Let us both endeavor to debate policy, and not personal integrity. I was a Republican till Reagan redirected the party in a way I deemed damaging to the country. I am not an easy person to pigeonhole. I’m conservative on some things, liberal on others and moderate on still more.

I don’t believe I ever clained that Republicans always lie, but if something I wrote was somehow interpreted that way, let me set the record straight. I do not for one moment believe that Republicans always lie. What I was trying to say is that some of the principles party leaders are using to craft current policy are destructive for the well-being of America, and are being disgusted by talking points based on lies. If those lies are allowed to determine policy for the USA, the result will be damaging for all but the wealthiest 1% of Americans. So I oppose those lies that underpin corporatist, oligarchic policy initiatives.

I truly want to see the GOP of Eisenhower, the GOP that stood up for equality and Civil Rights in the 40s and 50s, return. I want a viable Grand Old Party. I am no more interested in one party rule under Democrats than I would be under the most despicable party imaginable, because one party rule, no matter what the party is like when it obtains absolute power, only proves the truth of Lord Acton’s saying, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But so long as the GOP stands for Greedy Oligarchy Party and not Grand Old Party I will oppose it. I will throw my weight behind either changing it back to the Party of Lincoln or seeing that some viable third party emerges. I will expose its lies. And until it abandons them, I will not salute its truths as coming from it, but will preach them independently.

@mammal Your assertion that only the far right free-marketers are real capitalists is exactly the sort of thingg I think this question is getting at. It is not true. It isn’t even accurate that Republican rule equates to economic prosperity and Democratic “tax and spend” liberalism hurts business. In fact, in the 20th century, just the opposite was the case.
http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2008/10/12/gdp-growth-by-political-party/

I don’t think all Republicans lie all the time. And neither do Democrats.

The problem are the fanatics who think there’s only one truth and of course it’s their truth. They confound passion with hooliganism. The growing number of ultra-conservative zealots in alliance with the religious right poses a serious threat to our societies. What can be done to stop them?

I agree with @jerv‘s advice. Education is key. And lies need to be exposed.

Both parties make promises that they can’t keep. This is not as bad as some of the lies and name calling that has gone on in this thread. I totally agree with the coment made bymattbrowne. Politics and religion never should have been mixed like the Bush Republicans did.

How do you respond to a specific post? I pretty much agree with several of jery’s posts. I wish that there was a third party. I do not fit in either of the two major parties, I thought I was Republican for years, but finally realized that I wasn’t rich enough to be a Republican. I am an Independent.

@NormanL The whole point of the @-sign thing here on Fluther is to indicate that you are responding to a specific post or user. After a little time here, you get used to the formatting and etiquette.

I understand what it is, I just do not know how to do it.

We could replace all politicians with scientists. Just a thought.

@NormanL When you type an at-sign then a dropdown appears containing the names of all of the people who have posted so far in that thread. If you start to type a name, names that down match disappear. If you use the arrow keys while that box is displayed, you scroll through the list. Hitting ENTER auto-completes; I typed this one by hitting the at-sign, then “n”, then enter. Three keys; that’s all.

I did not type the actual sybol since that forces a monospace font in teh same way that an asterisk formats something in bold

@zophu You already said that on this thread.

the questions are starting to blur together. time to take a break from fluther.

@zophu Nah. Just get some coffee and wake up.