The Glade 4.0

Indeed. If used to excuse something, it's actually a logical fallacy ("tu quoque").

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

You win....


THE INTERWEBZ!!

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You misspelled that. The correct spelling is "TEH INTERWEBZ".

So its just another case of "More of the Same We Can Believe In" good thing that's what he campaigned on

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

So let's put apologists to the side for the moment.

Do you agree or disagree with the claim that lying is necessary in the role of the President?

I disagree.

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Dishonesty is necessary to succeed in politics to the point of getting elected to any major office, let alone president.

I don't think there's anything about the job itself that makes dishonesty inherently necessary.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

But when Bush lied, he needed to be impeached. I seem to recall slogans about how nobody died when Clinton lied.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Impeachment is for prosecuting the one impeached for illegal acts. There's nothing necessarily illegal about dishonesty, so I think that's a bit misleading.

Speaking from an international perspective, Bush's dishonestly seriously damaged his credibility with the rest of the world, telling us he had absolute proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when no such proof (or, it would seem - with hindsight - weapons) existed, and using that to try to pressure the rest of the world to participating in America's invasion.

Clinton was only caught lying about getting some trim, something that nobody cares about anywhere else in the world.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In the political environment as it has evolved in the US, lying well is a prerequisite for any elected office. And many appointed ones.

Ideally, lying should not be condoned from any official.

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Again, i think that's more a matter of getting elected/getting the job...and keeping it... as opposed to doing the job itself.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That's because there's no longer a penalty for presidential misconduct, either real or perceived. We used to have checks and balances - the judicial branch, the executive branch, John Wilkes Booth, and so forth.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I really wouldn't even call lying "misconduct" when the OCD standards of the American public for high-level elected officials are literally impossible for any real human being to meet. The only way to "meet" the standards is to lie about yourself and your positions. If we actually made it impossible for Presidents or Presidential candidates to lie, we'd have 20 extreme fringe candidates and the one that got 6% of the vote would win the election.

In addition, lies are often vindicated by history. Who knows how Obama will be viewed in 50 years. Here's an example: When the U-2 got shot down over the USSR in 1960, do you think it was wrong for Eisenhower to blatantly lie about it to the public for weeks? This one isn't like Bush's or Obama's lies where you can't really prove that they actually are lying, but where it's well known that he was knowingly stating the exact opposite of the truth.

Garnering political capital by lying should never be forgiven. Telling the truth is not, in and of itself, a virtue, but telling the truth when a lie would provide personal benefit is.

A lie used to protect someone from the overt harm a truth would bring is still a lie, but it's forgivable, while a lie that mainly serves the liar and is a detriment to those being lied to should not be forgivable.

The problem is, as I see it, personal integrity isn't as valuable today as it was years ago. There was a time in my lifetime when someone who displayed overwhelming personal integrity was almost universally respected, even by their opponents. As evidence I offer this - folks like Martin Bashir are allowed to continue their disgusting missives. If personal integrity was respected, he'd be publicly ostracized along with any who supported him personally or financially.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Not a check nor a balance.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd say "fear of being shot" is most certainly a check and balance. It's the entire reason for the second amendment to your constitution. It's not for "self defense" or "hunting" or any similar reason that the second amendment exists. It's so that the states can quickly form a militia to resist oppression from the fed. Armed citizens firing at the government is an honored US tradition dating back to the country's inception.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The states have the ability to form a militia to defend themselves and enforce the law and suppress insurrection in general, not to defend themselves from the Federal Government. The militia is mainly there to buy time until the regular army can come relieve them. The performance of militias against organized armies was not impressive even in the revolution. The real defense against the federal government getting too oppressive is the federal military itself starting to fragment and become unreliable, which would happen if there were real meaningful oppression here. We also now have the state national guards, which would be far more effective than citizens with rifles. Furthermore, any government planning to oppress people to the point where armed resistance was likely would find a way to repeal the 2nd amendment first, or just outright ignore it. Citizens wanting to defend themselves would have to do so without regard for the 2nd amendment or its absence.

In any event, that still refers to the states resisting the government, or a critical mass of "we the people". Small numbers of individuals are not a legitimate check and balance. Anyone can physically attempt to assassinate a politician for any reason; it is not a legitimate "check".

And no, "shooting at the government" is not an "honored tradition" here at all, the fantasies of some notwithstanding. Wars are not "traditions"; they're done for specific objectives when less costly methods are not practicable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Disagree. But, that's really irrelevant.

I believe the slogan wasn't Bush lied and people were Ok with it.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"