If you ignore the facts, right.

I asked you for examples of lies. You didn't respond. I can guess the reason. If you can show me where Bush lied, I will address it. But if you can't give an example, you can't use it as evidence. That's pretty damned obvious.

And regardless, if you were following me the past several years, you did hear words from me criticizing Bush for many, many things, as I mentioned in the previous comments. I have a journal on here the very week that the warrtantless wiretapping thing came out, saying it was likely unconstitutional and wrong. I criticized taking away due process from Jose Padilla. I criticized NCLB as an unconstitutional taking of states' rights. I attacked the high deficits.

I even criticized Bush, during the 2004 campaign, for criticizing Kerry over the war funding stuff. I defended Kerry, saying it was perfectly reasonable for him to vote against the war funding based on the method of funding, and that it was false to claim this meant he was against the funding itself.

Yes, I criticize Obama more, because I disagree with him more. But I did not withhold criticism from Bush because he was on my side, and do not give extra criticism to Obama because he's on the other side. I base my posted criticism solely on three criteria: whether I disagree, the depth of my disagreement, and my availability to comment on it. That's it.

Similarly, I've defended Obama. I demand evidence that he has killed many civilians with drones, before I condemn. I shut down people, including personal friends, who incorrectly claim that Obama's proper birth certificate has not been released. I defend Obama exactly as I defended Bush.

Yes, I will do the same thing to them as I did to Bush. Exactly. I will criticize them when they do something I disagree with sufficiently, as I did with Bush, often.

Agreed. It is inevitable that I will treat the next Republican the same as I have treated both Obama and Bush.

You're just full of it, and the sad thing is, you know it. That's why you backed down. But when I brought it up again, your pride wouldn't let you admit it.

It was presented precisely as a statement of how you feel.

Yes, your vote does not "downplay" things you didn't say your vote was associated with. So?

Look: your entire series of comments is based on a lie. From the beginning you tried to make the case -- without any evidence -- that I was holding Obama to a different standard. This has been reasonably proven false. Why did you not even make mention of this fact? Instead, you just try to avoid the fact that you were completely wrong. Again, why?

Heh.

False. Nothing I say seems like that at all. It is not that you don't see him as worse than his predecessors, it is that you are downplaying the things he has done wrong. Worse for you and your claim that you don't like Obama better, you say Obama's lies are no big deal, while making a big deal out of Bush's alleged lies.

I never said you did. Please stop making things up. I said you were saying they were no big deal, which you explicitly did.

Evidence? This is often alleged, but the claims are highly biased and almost completely untrustworthy. I am not saying it's not true; I am saying I, as an intelligent person who is objective on the subject -- I dislike Obama and much of his foreign policy and would love to see the drone program ended if it was wasteful and ineffective and harmful -- have no reason to believe it.

Frankly, this makes you seem nonserious, because you believe the worst about the drone program even without serious evidence to make you believe it. That says a lot about you, you know.

Yep, as the rightwing media has pointed out, and the leftwing media refuses to even mention. Especially the fact that Obama signed executive orders explicitly allowing the sale of guns to certain nations who use child soldiers, which is by default illegal under U.S. law. If Bush had done this, it would've been impeachment time. But Obama means well.

And I already told you that you're wrong, and you've provided no evidence to back up this claim. So why should we, or anyone else, take this claim of yours seriously?

Shrug. You're a liar. I stood up against Bush immediately after the warrantless wiretapping was made public, for example. I stood up against Bush in all the same ways I've stood up against Obama, given the same circumstances. And I have defended both, given those same circumstances. I attacked both for high spending and deficits (although it's been much worse under Obama, I heavily criticized Bush's $450B deficit at the time), for unconstitutional expansions of government power (NCLB for Bush, and ACA for Obama), for violations of civil liberties (wiretapping and ignoring the rights of citizen "terrorists" and national security letters and so on under Bush, and similar under Obama).

It's funny that you falsely accused me of misunderstanding your positions (when I actually wasn't making any assumptions about you), but you're the one actually, and explicitly, doing that to me.

Look in the mirror. It is, in fact, "pure politics" that is driving your false claims about me.

No, he is not. Please try to keep up.

No one wished any such thing. On the contrary: the fantasy here is that you and other leftists want to believe that the right wants the country to fail to win political points. There's no evidence of this, and there never has been. But you keep looking, because you're disgusting people.

Sorry, how is that HIS trick?

I've already listed various crimes committed by Obama here.

You say they don't matter. And then claim you don't like Obama and are not picking sides.

And then you wonder why people don't believe you.

I don't understand the question. "Yeah, John Doe killed 13 people. So what?" Please explain.

Are you implying that makes it acceptable behavior? I don't understand.

I imply, nor insist, any such thing. I do insist that Obama is treated differently by the most of the mass media and much of the public in large part because of his party affiliation, and probably also because of his "race." (Well, half of it.) Again, if this were Bush, the press and public would be all over him, in much greater numbers and volume, as they often were for far, far less.

No argument here. In a sane world, John Kerry would be a tough challenge for Secretary of State, because of many of his missteps and terrible statements about America. I mean, honestly, a Secretary of State who accused, without evidence, his fellow soldiers of rape and murder and other terrible acts? That's ridiculous to consider, no matter how long ago it was. But because he is a Senator, he will pass muster without any serious opposition, because Senators stick together, in large part because they all know where each other's bodies are buried. Yet another argument for term limits.

No, he didn't. He didn't do any of them, that I am aware of. Maybe he lied about some national security thing, but I can think of no instance of it. He certainly didn't try to scapegoat private people in America, nor jail them to help cover it up. I suppose he certainly did try to spin the evidence of 9/11 so no blame would fall on him, but that story is mostly true: very little blame was deserved by him or his administration. At most, in my opinion, you could say Bush should have done better than Clinton had in listening to Richard Clarke ... and while that was certainly a failure in retrospect, it is not at all clear to most people that it was reasonably considered an obvious mistake at the time (unless you are Richard Clarke).

What crack are you smoking? This was one of the biggest topics of the 2004 election, and the sad thing is that Bush was telling the truth -- that we had intelligence failures, essentially -- but no one wanted to believe it, just because there was an extremely vague memo that such an attack as that could happen at some point, but no real way to act on it. But in Benghazi, we had the intelligence, and it was specific, and we could easily have acted on it, and there were specific pleadings from the ambassador to do so, and we didn't.

Such as? (This oughtta be good.)

Even if that is true -- and it's not, as the media was by far mostly against Reagan, whereas they are by far mostly for Obama -- so what?

Except for the extremely obvious fact that Obama is getting the kid gloves treatment by the press where Bush would not have, I have not tried to show that anything changed.

I thought no such thing. The only thing I said directed at you was that you are a sad parody of yourself, which you are, because you told him to "cut his losses" on a topic where there's actually a lot of things Obama has done that are very, very wrong.

Romney would have made an excellent President. I do not expect you to be wise or smart enough to see that, no.

Hopefully, someone who, unlike almost every Democrat, loves liberty. Yes, Republicans love liberty significantly more than Democrats do. There is a marked difference. Republicans say, "you cannot do that because it violates liberty." Democrats say, "we don't care because it accomplishes some other goal we find to be more important." That's the real difference between the parties, frankly. That's not to say Republicans all love liberty, but they do in far greater numbers and to far greater degrees. Romney is a great example: he was a big government guy in some ways, but compared to Obama, he was freaking Ron Paul.

I don't know what smitty said, but I do know the administration lied repeatedly about what happened, tried to divert attention away from what happened, and generally covered it up.

We knew immediately that this was a planned terrorist attack that, if related to the video at all, only was using the video as a proxy. Yet the White House said, very plainly and repeatedly, that this was only about the video and had nothing to do with American policies. In fact, it had nothing to do with the video, and everything to do with American policies.

They lied. We knew it at the time, and we know it now. The question is, why did they lie?

So far, it seems like they lied because they knew they failed to provide sufficient security and didn't want the blame for the deaths, when they could blame someone simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. Not only is that despicable, but they compounded this error by arresting him (yes, on an unrelated charge, but only because of the video), and sending a top military general to private citizens to pressure them to not similarly exercise their First Amendment rights.

If Bush had done any of this -- failed to provide sufficient security, lied about the attack, lied with motive to cover up the failure, arrested a filmmaker as part of the coverup, sent the military to pressure citizens to be quiet -- the left would be calling for impeachment, and not without justification. They would be screaming every night for his head. It would be the top news every night, for months.

But when Obama does it, well, nothing to see here! Move along!

You're a sad parody of yourselves.

OK. So what you are saying here is that when I asked you to show the questions you asked in this discussion, it is somehow reasonable for you to provide evidence of questions asked in a different discussion, and then claim that you did as I asked.

In other words, you're admitting to being dishonest and irrational.

Not that I needed you to admit it ... but that you admitted it so unapologetically means I won't read the rest of your comment.

If you would like to admit you were wrong, feel free. Otherwise, we're done. I will not participate in a discussion with someone acting so blatantly in such bad faith.

Why do you keep saying that which is self-evidently false?

So what? I have repeatedly said that I am asking you to show where you asked questions in this discussion. That you are implying my question was about other discussions is a lie. You said you provided questions in this discussion. Where are they?

You ask a lot of stupid questions. I try my best to not answer stupid questions. I have no idea if this one was among those. Admit you were wrong -- that, despite your claim as written, you had asked NO questions in this discussion when you said you did -- and maybe we'll find out together.

You're a damned liar. Again: you has posted no questions in this discussion (except for a rhetorical one) when you said you had posted many, but had received no answer.

I don't know why you're lying about htis obvious fact. I thought you might have given up lying over the years. Guess not.

Until you either show what questions you had asked in this discussion, OR admit you had asked none, I won't even read your question.

Um. What part of "you gave no context" did you not get? You gave no links, so there were no "earlier parts of the conversation" I could read.

So say you, but since you gave no context, it was not a part of this discussion.

I defy you to point them out. I know you won't, so let's not keep this charade up for much longer, as your defiance in the face of the facts is quickly getting old.

False. At the time you said "I have posted many questions to you and you have essentially not answered a single one", you had posted ONE question, and even that one was merely rhetorical, so it doesn't really count. You're just lying. And yes, everyone else can see you are lying. Perhaps you meant to "imply" more questions, but you didn't actually post any.

This is very, very, simple. You attacked him in this JE for not stating his own goals, while at the same time attacking him for things that you wouldn't clearly state, and demanding answers to questions you didn't ask. Yes, I understand, there was other context I was not privy to. And since then, you've posted links I won't bother to read. I am just pointing out the fact that you were being stupid. And by lying about having asked questions you didn't ask, you're only compounding your error.

I figured, but you still gace no context.

... are not relevant to the discussion. You're just trying to distract.

I did. And you did not post *any* questions, except one: "You were just making a joke this whole time, right?"

It is your obligation to point to them (which, now, you have done).

I had no such conclusion. I said HERE you have not posted questions. Not ANY, in fact, except that one (plus two more similar non sequiturs, in the comment I initially replied to).

Actually, you mentioned something about Benghazi (not smitty), but you cannot even state what he said that you find objectionable.

Dude. Obama already got reelected. You can stop saying everything is Bush's fault.

Not here, you haven't.

I respect Rice in many ways, but she really screwed up on the Benghazi thing. Either she didn't know what she was saying was bullshit, or she did. If she didn't, then she was either too ignorant and naive, or too cynical, to think about whether it made any sense. It WAS bullshit, and it DIDN'T make sense, and she should've at the very least thought for two minutes about how stupid it was.

I was watching her that Sunday and knew what she was saying was nonsense, and if she thought about it at all, she knew, too. I do not think she is naive, so I think she lied.

Oops. I guess all that makes me a racist.