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[Rolepgeek]

One can speak nothing but truth and still be dishonest.

[Sergarr]

You'll note that Gary isn't on that list, hence I'll assume that he's completely honest and therefore the best candidate. Feel the Johnson 2016!

Gary "What is Aleppo?" Johnson is nothing before the true might of "Literally Dark Horse Candidate" McMuffin!

So, what, you want a politician to never lie, ever? I seriously don't get your end-game here other than to sit around and mope about how everything's terrible.

You want to know what I want, then, huh?

First-past the post voting is awful. It's a large part of the reason why you're stuck between choosing to get shot in your left eye or shot in your right eye. Try, through whatever method necessary, to scrap what you have by now and enact something along the lines of single transferable vote.

You say it as if proportional voting is somehow better. Look at UK, look at Germany. Hell, Germany is a pretty fine example. Formally a multi-party system, de-facto Merkel is non-negotiable with no end in sight.

[UXLZ]

One can speak nothing but truth and still be dishonest.

That's certainly true, but I was implying she was a liar (which she is. Technically. Marginally less-so than others who lie a lot.) So I am wrong. Hillary Clinton is absurdly dishonest (in my view), but she has the capacity to generally avoid outright lies. Instead, she'll just warble around the point and never actually answer the question, so to avoid technically lying. (Trump does it too, but I think that's just because he has no answer rather than trying to avoid lying, which he obviously doesn't care about.)

[UXLZ]

You say it as if proportional voting is somehow better. Look at UK, look at Germany. Hell, Germany is a pretty fine example. Formally a multi-party system, de-facto Merkel is non-negotiable with no end in sight.

Single. Transferable. Vote. Not necessarily proportional, though it usually is. The idea is to stop the "Trump effect" so that you can actually vote for what you want rather than trying to avoid what you really don't.

Regardless, the US is destined to be an eternal two-party-system unless they change that system. It's basically a mathematical certainty. At least alternatives have the potential to be better.

[mainiac]

stop squandering its potential on senseless bullshit and incompetent individuals barely worth a fraction of our attention

Great, so let's elect Hillary Clinton, an extremely accomplished and qualified candidate and just ignore Donald Trump for the rest of the election.

Seriously, you are bitching about the quality of candidates but your attitude is exactly the problem.  Because you are acting like there is no difference between the hardworking woman who is the standard bearer for an enormous amount of progress and the reality tv clown.  When you do that you are eroding the support for serious candidates in our democracy.  The attitude you are showing is why four years and eight years and twelve years from now more candidates will try to replicate what Donald Trump is doing.

So I am wrong. Hillary Clinton is absurdly dishonest (in my view), but she has the capacity to generally avoid outright lies.

You know just an hour ago you were creating a strawman where you accused Hillary Clinton supporters of excuse making.  Now that you are shown to be wrong, you are making excuses.

[UXLZ]

So you want... election reform. We had a candidate running on exactly that: Lawrence Lessig.

Also, if by "whatever means necessary" you mean start a civil war over, of all things, election reform... that's not exactly the best thing.


I recommend seeing if Justin Trudeau manages to push through his election reform proposal in Canada some time next year. If he does, there you go; you have somewhere to move to from Australia that has what you want.

Good luck getting election reform through a totally corrupt system that has every incentive to avoid it through the normal channels. And no, not necessarily civil war.

[Mephansteras]

Really, every single politician in existence is going to lie, or say something incorrect, at some point. It is inevitable. Even those with the best intentions and most honorable character are going to run into it.

1) They are Human - They cannot know everything, and like all of us will say what we think is true regardless of reality
    1a) They have speechwriters and staff who give them information - These people may lie to them or feed them incorrect information unwittingly.
2) They have legitimate state secrets to keep safe
3) There are consequences to telling the whole truth about everything. Pretty much no one tells everyone the whole truth about everything all the time. Sometimes it's just an omission to save time, sometimes to save face, sometimes to manipulate the situation.


So when someone tries to tell me that Hillary Clinton has lied about something...so what? I know that. Of course she has. She's been in politics for decades now. If she hadn't I'd wonder if she really was some sort of strange robot or alien or whatnot.

There is a big difference between someone who lies about stuff sometimes (for whatever reason) and someone like Donald Trump who lies about what he said just the other day. On camera. Repeatedly. It's not even the same league of dishonesty.

[mainiac]

We could have election reform in a year if people put as much effort into it as they did into nihilism.

[Lord Shonus]

The main difference is that Trump lies about trivial bullshit too rather than just the important things.

That chart shows me that all the politicians (even Sanders is guilty of this) say something "true" only about 20-25% of the time. "Mostly true" another 25-30% of the time. Everything else ranges from half-truth to hilariously wrong. Am I supposed to find it surprising that someone with a Law background knows to keep the flagrant bullshit to a minimum?

Under Politifact's rating system, "True" means 100% accurate, "Mostly True" means "Correct in essence, but gets some details wrong or has the numbers slightly off (claiming 75% support for a policy when the actual support ranges from 65%-75% in polls, etc.) and "Half True" means "Correct, but lacking important context (such as claiming massive job growth but omitting the fact that these are jobs being reaquired after massive job loss). "Mostly false" means the central thesis of the statement is wrong, but there's elements of context that give it some validity, "False" means there's no truth to what is being said (such as claiming that a jobs policy will produce massive job growth with no study to back it up) and "Pants on Fire" is for bold-faced lies.

[Max™]

Really, every single politician in existence is going to lie, or say something incorrect, at some point. It is inevitable. Even those with the best intentions and most honorable character are going to run into it.

1) They are Human - They cannot know everything, and like all of us will say what we think is true regardless of reality
    1a) They have speechwriters and staff who give them information - These people may lie to them or feed them incorrect information unwittingly.
2) They have legitimate state secrets to keep safe
3) There are consequences to telling the whole truth about everything. Pretty much no one tells everyone the whole truth about everything all the time. Sometimes it's just an omission to save time, sometimes to save face, sometimes to manipulate the situation.


So when someone tries to tell me that Hillary Clinton has lied about something...so what? I know that. Of course she has. She's been in politics for decades now. If she hadn't I'd wonder if she really was some sort of strange robot or alien or whatnot.

There is a big difference between someone who lies about stuff sometimes (for whatever reason) and someone like Donald Trump who lies about what he said just the other day. On camera. Repeatedly. It's not even the same league of dishonesty.

I'm pretty sure if you showed him footage of him saying something after he denied saying it, and he said "I'm not me" literally nobody would be surprised at this point.

You expected me to say "that's not me" didn't you? Yeah, he's way past that level of cognitive dissonance by now.

This single picture does a better job of explaining politics than any of our politics threads

Discuss.

"Why can't everyone just be nice?" doesn't overlap Anarchists, but I overlap both, I'm not temporary radicalizing and vegetarians are what people eat, vegans aren't fit to be food, that compass sucks. It doesn't have Trump far enough to the lower end either, same spot rightward as Hillary is a stretch, but he is pretty clearly in favor of getting rid of things that keep him from setting up sweatshops in lifeless wastelands like Detroit and Omaha.

[RedKing]

Y'all are forgetting the penultimate law of the Intertubes.


Anyways, I think this is beautiful.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, it made me realize that I'm pretty much a North Carolina nationalist (I'd say "statist" but that has a whole different conventional meaning). MY STATE IS BEST STATE BECAUSE IT IS MY STATE.

[UXLZ]

stop squandering its potential on senseless bullshit and incompetent individuals barely worth a fraction of our attention

Great, so let's elect Hillary Clinton, an extremely accomplished and qualified candidate and just ignore Donald Trump for the rest of the election.

Seriously, you are bitching about the quality of candidates but your attitude is exactly the problem.  Because you are acting like there is no difference between the hardworking woman who is the standard bearer for an enormous amount of progress and the reality tv clown.  When you do that you are eroding the support for serious candidates in our democracy.  The attitude you are showing is why four years and eight years and twelve years from now more candidates will try to replicate what Donald Trump is doing.

What are her accomplishments?
What are her qualifications?
Seriously, this is your opportunity.. I'm always going to think she's an amoral power-hungry sociopath, but I'll say I was wrong, I'll say you were right, I'll say Hillary Clinton is somehow competent after all.

But as it stands, it's the laughable scenario where Hillary Clinton's best attribute is that she might be better than Trump. Likewise, Trump's best (and only) attribute is that he might be better than Hillary Clinton. The only person each could possibly win against is the other.

So I am wrong. Hillary Clinton is absurdly dishonest (in my view), but she has the capacity to generally avoid outright lies.

You know just an hour ago you were creating a strawman where you accused Hillary Clinton supporters of excuse making.  Now that you are shown to be wrong, you are making excuses.

Because somehow clarifying and saying, and I quote, "I am wrong" is just making excuses.

[UXLZ]

So you want... election reform. We had a candidate running on exactly that: Lawrence Lessig.

Also, if by "whatever means necessary" you mean start a civil war over, of all things, election reform... that's not exactly the best thing.


I recommend seeing if Justin Trudeau manages to push through his election reform proposal in Canada some time next year. If he does, there you go; you have somewhere to move to from Australia that has what you want.

Good luck getting election reform through a totally corrupt system that has every incentive to avoid it through the normal channels. And no, not necessarily civil war.

And there's that nihilism again. "We need election reform." "We can never have election reform."

So what, then, is the course of action if the only way to make the system work is to have a thing that's impossible to attain, under your stipulations?

Um, what I implied was that you wouldn't be able to get it through the "normal channels" (e.g., have people run on it, have them be elected, have them enact it.) Most obvious way is mass protesting I suppose. Most of the routes that are more likely to be successful also probably aren't going to happen unless everything has already hit the fan anyway, so at that point it might be too late... Basically, you need to get the citizenship to unite over election reform and put all the partisan bullshit (all of it) to the wayside until the reform is through. How anyone could possibly do that, I have no idea.

[mainiac]

Because somehow clarifying and saying, and I quote, "I am wrong" is just making excuses.

By the standard you set out for anyone saying Clinton isn't a liar, yes, that is exactly correct.

Personally I think your standard is wrong and you should just ditch the standard, realize that Clinton isn't dishonest and we can all have a group hug.

Thinking back on it, I was conflicted over Clinton's hawkishness. Not sure I am so much any more; we had Obama's relative dove-ness and that did very little to improve global opinions nor actually help out the world all that much. I suspect the ideal that all military intervention that isn't absolutely necessary should be avoided at all costs doesn't actually do much to help the US.

Note that when I speak of Clinton's hawkishness, it's not to imply that it's particularly extreme. She's a hawk relative to Obama being a dove; she's a dove relative to many Republicans being hawks.

Yeah, personally I would say that both Clinton and Obama are hawks, but she is a little more hawkish then them.  Meanwhile the republicans are... I dunno, raptors?

[UXLZ]

The main difference is that Trump lies about trivial bullshit too rather than just the important things.

That chart shows me that all the politicians (even Sanders is guilty of this) say something "true" only about 20-25% of the time. "Mostly true" another 25-30% of the time. Everything else ranges from half-truth to hilariously wrong. Am I supposed to find it surprising that someone with a Law background knows to keep the flagrant bullshit to a minimum?

Under Politifact's rating system, "True" means 100% accurate, "Mostly True" means "Correct in essence, but gets some details wrong or has the numbers slightly off (claiming 75% support for a policy when the actual support ranges from 65%-75% in polls, etc.) and "Half True" means "Correct, but lacking important context (such as claiming massive job growth but omitting the fact that these are jobs being reaquired after massive job loss). "Mostly false" means the central thesis of the statement is wrong, but there's elements of context that give it some validity, "False" means there's no truth to what is being said (such as claiming that a jobs policy will produce massive job growth with no study to back it up) and "Pants on Fire" is for bold-faced lies.

I see. Thank you for the concise and cohesive explanation Shonus. Do you know if Politifact have some kind of system that they use to decide which statements to verify? Do they just do all of them, do they randomly select them, are they specifically chosen, etc.