Guilty by Imagination

The truth does not come from your imagination.

It's on the left. It's on the right. I too often get in to discussions, well maybe arguments, about things political. And almost always, my counterpart is just making it all up.

Some examples.

Bush lied.

I have never seen any cojent argument on this other than, "well they didn't find any, did they?".

What is a lie?

Dictionary.com's definition is:

"a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood"

Seems like the definition I grew up with. Intent is of course difficult to prove, but the preponderance of evidence could be telling. So what do we know? Sadam Hussein gassed the Iranians and the Kurds. So he had WMDs at some point. I have seen reports of IEDs that contain chemicals of some sort. So where is the evidence that the president knowingly and purposely lied?

I heard on the radio today a comparison of how the left or maybe it was the white house is out to get Rush Limbaugh. They were compared to the Nixon enemies list. We the audience are asked "What is the difference?" Well the difference is that Nixon did have a list and the right pundits are speculating. Maybe the Obama does have a list, maybe not. I'll perk my ears up when there is some hard evidence.

I was watching one of the cable news channels a week or two ago and listened to how the simtulus bill had all these earmarks. Now I'm one of the few voters who actually have read this thing. Not all of it, but a lot. Probably more than any of the representatives or senators if reports can be believed. I specifically looked for earmarks and couldn't find any. The cable guy was arguing that this or that really amounted to giving money to Nancy Pelosi's mouse. Well I did search for 'mouse' and a couple other possible keyords mentioned at the time.

Hits: none.

So did the commentator tell us what it was? Did he provide any proof? Any link to show what piece of the bill was really going to the mouse? Not a chance.

I recently had an argument in a forum with another poster. This is an anonymous board, but I happen to know the poster. And to be fair, he knows who I am as well. The argument was about unemployment. He claimed that near the end of the senior G Bush term, unemployment was over 10%. Apparently he had lost his job at the time. Well I went to a federal government site and found it simply was not true. So I posted that and asked where he got his numbers from. The response was that well it must have been in New Jersey and he got his numbers from a county employee. So I went to the official New Jersey site and dug up those numbers. Again, unemployment did not come close to double digits. I think I even found the numbers for his county and the results were the same.

I am really tired of arguing with people who make this stuff up. If you are really right, your guy is better than my guy, your policy ideas are better than mine, try arguing based on facts and the truth.

If you are interested, take a look at my unemployment figures. Take another look. See those national debt numbers? So which year did Clinton have a surplus? And if we actually had a surplus, how come the debt goes up and not down?