Why does the Obama campaign continue to lie about McCain's position on Iraq? It's not like they haven't been called on it before, multiple times. Do they think we're stupid?
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Senator Joe Biden wrote:
"Knowing when our troops can come home from Iraq is vitally important, because the costs of staying with 140,000 or more troops are getting steeper every day: the continued loss of the lives and limbs of our soldiers; the strain on our troops and their families due to repeated, extended tours; the drain on our Treasury - $3 billion every week; the impact on the readiness of our armed forces; and the inability to send enough soldiers to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 have regrouped and are plotting new attacks. It is long past time to refocus our foreign policy on the many challenges we face, not just Iraq."
Bullet points:
# - the strain on our troops and their families due to repeated, extended tours;
# - the drain on our Treasury - $3 billion every week;
# - the impact on the readiness of our armed forces; and
# - the inability to send enough soldiers to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 have regrouped and are plotting new attacks.
Rand Simberg wrote:
I see that you don't actually have a defense of the Obama campaign's lies about McCain's position on Iraq.
Robert wrote:
Rand, you, or more likely, someone else, is missing a link. Maybe I'm missing the only one who is missing something, but I when I click on "continues to lie" above, I don't get a quote from Obama. When I click on the links in the referenced material, I don't get a current quote from Obama. Where is the link that shows that Obama is continuing to lie? (Maybe he is, but I don't see the evidence that would ordinarily be provided in a blog.) (This was a good faith request - sorry if I'm missing something obvious.)
Rand Simberg wrote:
Where is the link that shows that Obama is continuing to lie?
Why would I need to provide such a link, when I never claimed that he (personally) was?
Robert wrote:
Ok, you asked "Why does the Obama campaign continue to lie about McCain's position on Iraq?", which presupposes that it has lied in the past (which I'll stipulate), and that it is currently lying (which I'm asking for evidence for).
If you are making the distinction between the Obama and the Obama campaign, that's fine, no problem, but I still have the same question -- are there any direct quotes from Obama's campaign regarding this?
Rand Simberg wrote:
Robert, go argue with Marc Ambinder. I take him at his word.
And I'm pretty sure that I've heard Obama say that McCain wants a hundred years of war in Iraq. If not, his surrogates surely have, as the FactCheck.org notes.
Leland wrote:
Hmm, when I click Rand's link, I go to Instapundit where I find three links. One of the links takes me to Factcheck.org, which provides multiple examples of lies and distortions by the DNC and Obama campaign. Direct quotes are clearly provided.
Rand Simberg wrote:
Robert, if (as you stipulate) the campaign has lied about this in the past, why should we give it the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it has stopped doing so? If it thinks it works, it will certainly continue.
Carl Pham wrote:
Knowing when our troops can come home from Iraq is vitally important, because the costs of staying with 140,000 or more troops are getting steeper every day...
Senator Biden is quite right about all this, which can be summarized as the opportunity cost of keeping the war machine in Iraq. Simply put, since it's there and we're spending lots of money and lives on it, we can't use it elsewhere, or spend the money on other things. That's worth considering.
But I rather suspect Senator Biden doesn't believe the principles underlying what he says, and that what he is saying merely borrows the words of more responsible and thoughtful observers. Why? Because he doesn't use the same principles to critically assess proposals from his side of the aisle., viz.:
Knowing we'll have the income to pay for the wave of future entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, as the boomers retire, is vital. That's why we should be careful about deploying our economic resources elsewhere, e.g. in such populist nostrums as "free" universal health care, which the experience of other nations suggest will gobble up monstrous amounts of GDP, and that's why we should be exceedingly careful about any government action, e.g. a purely vengeful "windfall profits tax" on oil, which historical data unambiguously prove will put the brakes on economic growth.
Yeah, taxing hard working poor young people (my kids, once grown) to pay for rich old people to lie around (me, once retired) is such a morally unambigous good thing, right?
Yours,
WInce
Robert wrote:
Rand, at first at least, when I saw the question "why does Obama continue to lie?", I thought to myself "Uh oh, what now?" But when I followed the links, I didn't see any new examples of this.
As someone who prefers Obama, one of the reasons I like your blog is because it *is* anti-Obama - it is good window into what intelligent Obama opponents are thinking. But if you're just going to make stuff up, the blog loses some of its value. And I think you are actually against just making stuff up, so I find this surprising. Again. (Re: the Clintonian post)
Leland, the fact-check site is all old news while Rand's post is about what Obama supposedly continues to do. As I've said here before, I thought Obama, Hillary, and their surrogates were all wrong to mischaracterize McCain's comment about "100 years" as "wanting 100 years of war". I thought this post was about an example of Obama doing it again, but I guess it isn't. It appears it is just fantasy.
The right way to attack McCain's 100 years comment and today's similar comment is to ask how Iraq can be transitioned into a situation like West Germany or South Korea.
Rand Simberg wrote:
Rand, at first at least, when I saw the question "why does Obama continue to lie?"
In other words, you saw what you wanted to see, and not what I actually wrote.
Robert wrote:
Oh, right, sorry. The "Obama Campaign", not Obama. But they are both equally innocent! Biden, Emanuel, and Reid aren't in the Obama campaign.
Carl Pham wrote:
Wince, I said nothing about the morality of entitlements. Why should I? Biden says nothing about the morality of the war, right? (At least in this quote.) He's not saying the troops should come home because it's not moral for them to be there, he's saying they should come home so we can save the money for a rainy day that we would otherwise spend keeping them there.
In the same sense, he ought to say that, leaving morality out of it, and speaking purely practically, we should not load up taxpayers with new obligations, or constrain the economic growth on which rises in future taxable income will depend, so that we have sufficient tax resources to fund our existing obligations.
Morally speaking, is it right to tax your kids to pay for your retirement? I would say not. If you have not raised your children in such a way that they voluntarily take care of you in your old age, then who am I (and the rest of society) to force them to do so at the point of a gun? You'll just have to work until you die, or eat cat food and live in a box, whatever.
The question is a little trickier for childless people, or more precisely people without any younger caring family at all (nephews, neices, cousins), but since they are in the very small minority, a little bit of charity can take care of them. Or we can just expect them to save for their own retirement, since they never had to fork out the large amounts of cash, time and energy necessary to raise children.
Furthermore, it's been argued, I think fairly persuasively, that putting a big wealth transfer program in place that shifts money from young to old people tends to discourage family formation. Not only do you remove the need of older people to have children (and raise them right), because they no longer depend on children for their security in old age, but more significantly you really burden young people at the precise moment when they are most in need of every penny of their capital to get started in life.
For example, a young couple just starting out at age 23 will get whacked 15% of their income to pay for mom 'n' pop's retirement. What if, instead, they could set aside that 15% to build up a down-payment on a house? Arguably that would be a better investment for all concerned, as they could have children sooner, build their own family wealth faster, and be in a better position later on to help mom 'n' pop more directly and efficiently than any government program.
Rand Simberg wrote:
Biden, Emanuel, and Reid aren't in the Obama campaign.
Ah. I see.
You want to play that Clintonian game.
So, OK. when will we hear the campaign denouncing Biden's, Reid's and Emanuel's continuing lies about John McCain's position on Iraq, and his attitude toward the troops? Do you recommend that we hold our breath while waiting?
Robert wrote:
The Obama campaign consists of people working for Obama - people Obama can fire, people who Obama is responsible for. It is reasonable to hold Obama accountable for his campaign. It is not reasonable to hold Obama accountable for every elected Democrat, or in other words, half of all elected politicians. Biden and Emanuel are known for speaking their own minds, and do not represent Obama.
You can ask when Obama will condemn his independent political allies, but that only obscures the fact that you aren't willing to admit that you were wrong, and if anyone was lying, it was you, although I would hope to be more charitable and simply conclude that you were mistaken (and,oddly, you don't want to own up to it). It is ok to make mistakes. When you mistakenly call people liars, you should own up to it.
Rand Simberg wrote:
OK. So it is all right for other prominent elected Democrats to lie about John McCain's statements and attitude toward Iraq? And Obama has no responsibility to say anything about this? McCain has called out his own supporters on much less (e.g., using Obama's middle name, something that Obama has done himself).
When I see some umbrage from the campaign about this, I'll assume that they don't support it. I won't hold my breath.
Also, has Obama ever apologized about his lies about McCain's Iraq stance? Not holding my breath for that one, either, Robert.
Wince, I said nothing about the morality of entitlements.
Yes, you were making the different point that Biden should apply the same fiscal standards to the programs he favors that he does to the programs the does not like. I was making a new point, which I should have made clear by using at least the minimal intorductory phrase "Yes, and".
Your analysis of the morality of retirement entitlements was quite good.
Yours,
Wince
Obama's Lobotomized Biatch wrote:
Simberg and his stupid babbling. I really can't understand why Robert wastes his time on such a moron. It's not as if the man ever changes his mind on an issue based on intelligent unbiased analysis - it's a one way sewer - from NRO to Simberg.
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About this Entry
This page contains a single entry by Rand Simberg published on June 11, 2008 11:16 AM.
"Knowing when our troops can come home from Iraq is vitally important, because the costs of staying with 140,000 or more troops are getting steeper every day: the continued loss of the lives and limbs of our soldiers; the strain on our troops and their families due to repeated, extended tours; the drain on our Treasury - $3 billion every week; the impact on the readiness of our armed forces; and the inability to send enough soldiers to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 have regrouped and are plotting new attacks. It is long past time to refocus our foreign policy on the many challenges we face, not just Iraq."
Bullet points:
# - the strain on our troops and their families due to repeated, extended tours;
# - the drain on our Treasury - $3 billion every week;
# - the impact on the readiness of our armed forces; and
# - the inability to send enough soldiers to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 have regrouped and are plotting new attacks.
I see that you don't actually have a defense of the Obama campaign's lies about McCain's position on Iraq.
Rand, you, or more likely, someone else, is missing a link. Maybe I'm missing the only one who is missing something, but I when I click on "continues to lie" above, I don't get a quote from Obama. When I click on the links in the referenced material, I don't get a current quote from Obama. Where is the link that shows that Obama is continuing to lie? (Maybe he is, but I don't see the evidence that would ordinarily be provided in a blog.) (This was a good faith request - sorry if I'm missing something obvious.)
Where is the link that shows that Obama is continuing to lie?
Why would I need to provide such a link, when I never claimed that he (personally) was?
Ok, you asked "Why does the Obama campaign continue to lie about McCain's position on Iraq?", which presupposes that it has lied in the past (which I'll stipulate), and that it is currently lying (which I'm asking for evidence for).
If you are making the distinction between the Obama and the Obama campaign, that's fine, no problem, but I still have the same question -- are there any direct quotes from Obama's campaign regarding this?
Robert, go argue with Marc Ambinder. I take him at his word.
And I'm pretty sure that I've heard Obama say that McCain wants a hundred years of war in Iraq. If not, his surrogates surely have, as the FactCheck.org notes.
Hmm, when I click Rand's link, I go to Instapundit where I find three links. One of the links takes me to Factcheck.org, which provides multiple examples of lies and distortions by the DNC and Obama campaign. Direct quotes are clearly provided.
Robert, if (as you stipulate) the campaign has lied about this in the past, why should we give it the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it has stopped doing so? If it thinks it works, it will certainly continue.
Knowing when our troops can come home from Iraq is vitally important, because the costs of staying with 140,000 or more troops are getting steeper every day...
Senator Biden is quite right about all this, which can be summarized as the opportunity cost of keeping the war machine in Iraq. Simply put, since it's there and we're spending lots of money and lives on it, we can't use it elsewhere, or spend the money on other things. That's worth considering.
But I rather suspect Senator Biden doesn't believe the principles underlying what he says, and that what he is saying merely borrows the words of more responsible and thoughtful observers. Why? Because he doesn't use the same principles to critically assess proposals from his side of the aisle., viz.:
Knowing we'll have the income to pay for the wave of future entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, as the boomers retire, is vital. That's why we should be careful about deploying our economic resources elsewhere, e.g. in such populist nostrums as "free" universal health care, which the experience of other nations suggest will gobble up monstrous amounts of GDP, and that's why we should be exceedingly careful about any government action, e.g. a purely vengeful "windfall profits tax" on oil, which historical data unambiguously prove will put the brakes on economic growth.
Carl Pham,
Yeah, taxing hard working poor young people (my kids, once grown) to pay for rich old people to lie around (me, once retired) is such a morally unambigous good thing, right?
Yours,
WInce
Rand, at first at least, when I saw the question "why does Obama continue to lie?", I thought to myself "Uh oh, what now?" But when I followed the links, I didn't see any new examples of this.
As someone who prefers Obama, one of the reasons I like your blog is because it *is* anti-Obama - it is good window into what intelligent Obama opponents are thinking. But if you're just going to make stuff up, the blog loses some of its value. And I think you are actually against just making stuff up, so I find this surprising. Again. (Re: the Clintonian post)
Leland, the fact-check site is all old news while Rand's post is about what Obama supposedly continues to do. As I've said here before, I thought Obama, Hillary, and their surrogates were all wrong to mischaracterize McCain's comment about "100 years" as "wanting 100 years of war". I thought this post was about an example of Obama doing it again, but I guess it isn't. It appears it is just fantasy.
The right way to attack McCain's 100 years comment and today's similar comment is to ask how Iraq can be transitioned into a situation like West Germany or South Korea.
Rand, at first at least, when I saw the question "why does Obama continue to lie?"
In other words, you saw what you wanted to see, and not what I actually wrote.
Oh, right, sorry. The "Obama Campaign", not Obama. But they are both equally innocent! Biden, Emanuel, and Reid aren't in the Obama campaign.
Wince, I said nothing about the morality of entitlements. Why should I? Biden says nothing about the morality of the war, right? (At least in this quote.) He's not saying the troops should come home because it's not moral for them to be there, he's saying they should come home so we can save the money for a rainy day that we would otherwise spend keeping them there.
In the same sense, he ought to say that, leaving morality out of it, and speaking purely practically, we should not load up taxpayers with new obligations, or constrain the economic growth on which rises in future taxable income will depend, so that we have sufficient tax resources to fund our existing obligations.
Morally speaking, is it right to tax your kids to pay for your retirement? I would say not. If you have not raised your children in such a way that they voluntarily take care of you in your old age, then who am I (and the rest of society) to force them to do so at the point of a gun? You'll just have to work until you die, or eat cat food and live in a box, whatever.
The question is a little trickier for childless people, or more precisely people without any younger caring family at all (nephews, neices, cousins), but since they are in the very small minority, a little bit of charity can take care of them. Or we can just expect them to save for their own retirement, since they never had to fork out the large amounts of cash, time and energy necessary to raise children.
Furthermore, it's been argued, I think fairly persuasively, that putting a big wealth transfer program in place that shifts money from young to old people tends to discourage family formation. Not only do you remove the need of older people to have children (and raise them right), because they no longer depend on children for their security in old age, but more significantly you really burden young people at the precise moment when they are most in need of every penny of their capital to get started in life.
For example, a young couple just starting out at age 23 will get whacked 15% of their income to pay for mom 'n' pop's retirement. What if, instead, they could set aside that 15% to build up a down-payment on a house? Arguably that would be a better investment for all concerned, as they could have children sooner, build their own family wealth faster, and be in a better position later on to help mom 'n' pop more directly and efficiently than any government program.
Biden, Emanuel, and Reid aren't in the Obama campaign.
Ah. I see.
You want to play that Clintonian game.
So, OK. when will we hear the campaign denouncing Biden's, Reid's and Emanuel's continuing lies about John McCain's position on Iraq, and his attitude toward the troops? Do you recommend that we hold our breath while waiting?
The Obama campaign consists of people working for Obama - people Obama can fire, people who Obama is responsible for. It is reasonable to hold Obama accountable for his campaign. It is not reasonable to hold Obama accountable for every elected Democrat, or in other words, half of all elected politicians. Biden and Emanuel are known for speaking their own minds, and do not represent Obama.
You can ask when Obama will condemn his independent political allies, but that only obscures the fact that you aren't willing to admit that you were wrong, and if anyone was lying, it was you, although I would hope to be more charitable and simply conclude that you were mistaken (and,oddly, you don't want to own up to it). It is ok to make mistakes. When you mistakenly call people liars, you should own up to it.
OK. So it is all right for other prominent elected Democrats to lie about John McCain's statements and attitude toward Iraq? And Obama has no responsibility to say anything about this? McCain has called out his own supporters on much less (e.g., using Obama's middle name, something that Obama has done himself).
When I see some umbrage from the campaign about this, I'll assume that they don't support it. I won't hold my breath.
Also, has Obama ever apologized about his lies about McCain's Iraq stance? Not holding my breath for that one, either, Robert.
Carl Pham wrote:
Wince, I said nothing about the morality of entitlements.
Yes, you were making the different point that Biden should apply the same fiscal standards to the programs he favors that he does to the programs the does not like. I was making a new point, which I should have made clear by using at least the minimal intorductory phrase "Yes, and".
Your analysis of the morality of retirement entitlements was quite good.
Yours,
Wince
Simberg and his stupid babbling. I really can't understand why Robert wastes his time on such a moron. It's not as if the man ever changes his mind on an issue based on intelligent unbiased analysis - it's a one way sewer - from NRO to Simberg.