I seem to vaguely recall that the media and the Democrats were obsessed with Trump’s lies. I will admit that he did lie on occasion, but no more than the average politician and very often his lies were more a matter of him misunderstanding something rather than him deliberately lying.
Nevertheless, his many enemies focused on this issue because they believed it was a ace in the hole for justifying his impeachment or at least his electoral defeat.
Fast forward to the present. I just watched President Biden attempt to reassure us that everything is fine in the banking sector. Leaving aside that I will trust him about as much as Kevin Bacon’s character in Animal House, who famously told a rampaging crowd, “Stay calm, everything is fine.” Biden has knowingly and mendaciously lied on so many issues at this point, there’s simply no reason to trust anything he says.
But I can’t let his continued lies about the economy go un-remarked on.
In his little speech this morning about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Biden couldn’t help himself and used the opportunity to try and promote his accomplishments in office. He said that his administration had created 12 million jobs, had increased take home pay for the working class, and had caused there to be more new businesses (10 million) in the last 2 years than ever before.
I get it that politicians like to take credit for stuff they had nothing to do with, but Biden’s continued victory lapping for the new jobs is about as credible as his claims that his son’s laptop was “Russian Disinformation.” The surge in “new” jobs happened naturally due to our collective recovery from the pandemic. In fact, the reason there are so many new jobs is that the government destroyed so many in its misguided shutdown of the economy.
So to claim credit for a natural restoration of employment that was in fact hindered by Biden’s same policies is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism.
Same goes for his taking credit for newly created businesses.
But what’s most galling is his claim about wages. Yes, they have gone up about 5% in the past couple of years, so technically there is more money going into back accounts. Problem is that inflation is at about 9% specifically due to Biden’s spending blowout, which means people are making about 4% less in terms of real dollars.
Again, here is the guy is primarily responsible for creating an inflationary spiral, that hurts the poor and working class the most, acting as if he’s done a favor to these same people.
I guess if you’re parsing his words, then yes, he’s not lying about the number of jobs or the increase in wages, but he’s lying by omission in leaving out the very important points that job growth happened almost automatically and that the wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.
Add to that his assertions about the viability of the Afghan government, the perfect effectiveness of the Covid vaccine, the “Jim Crow 2.0” voting law here in Georgia, and his criminal dissembling on the border, and you have yourself the worst, most mendacious president in history.
I really can’t understand how my friends on the liberal side of the equation can think Biden is anything more than harmful buffoon. I was always willing to admit Trump’s faults and foibles, even while he was falsely accused of far worse by the media, the FBI, and the Democratic machine, but with Biden, the media simply carries his water and let’s him off the hook for far worse abuses of the public trust.
Just remember: when you see that your bank account is lower than it was 2 years ago, even though you’re fully employed and may have even seen some raises in that time period, there’s one person to blame: the “Big Guy.”
Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”
Can’t remember who said that but it certainly fits here.
There are politician lies, and then there are BIG politician lies – – the ones that have serious implications and potential consequences.
This week, Biden denied receiving any payments from China to him or his family, yet there is a recently uncovered bank statement showing Hallie, Jim, Hunter and “Biden” (The Big Guy?) received $1,300,000 from China funneled through a business associate. There is no known product or service by the Bidens to earn the cash.
Joe on several occasions also claimed to have never discussed Hunter’s business deals with him, yet Hunter flew with VP Joe on Air Force 2 to China and Ukraine for business meetings. And then there are the pictures of Hunter, his business clients . . . and The Big Guy.
Or the 150 recently released Suspicious Activity Reports on Hunter and James Biden’s bank transactions with foreign entities that Joe hid from Congress as one of his first Presidential actions . . .
Just pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. C’mon, man!
Good. Let’s see the indictments and let the chips fall where they may.
However, if you want to talk about the BIG LIE, you’re focused upon the wrong president.
C’mon Trey, you appear to have forgotten the basics of economics (101) or you must be getting your information from an untrusted news source (once again) and then later feel the need to blame others. Today’s inflationary times, both here and around the world, occurred after the said global economies slowed to a crawl in 2020. When the respective economies did pick up soon afterwards, this rapid acceleration the following year was quickly met with sharp declines in supply (domestically and globally) that could not meet the pent up and ramped up demand for goods and services.
Hence, prices for said goods and services skyrocketed across the board and of course this led to other economic factors that are now seen and reflected within the financial sectors across the global markets. But make no mistake here Trey, the GOP had no answers or solutions for the aforementioned, just like when it comes to healthcare in this country today. You see, if they did have an economic plan or any kind of plan for that matter, we’d no doubt hear of it and we’d see it as well. And … they would be campaigning on it as a counter proposal instead of playing the blame game which is all that they seem to offer these days.
I think I’m going to have to start having my own letter to the editor here just to respond to the pure insanity that takes up most of this section.
Quick fact check:
Who decreased regulation of banks with values of 50B – 250B? Trump. Had SVB been required to meet the same standards of banks greater than 250B, the implosion would either have never happened or not been as bad as it was.
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/what-to-know-about-trump-era-bank-deregulation-and-bank-failures/
Also – the primary mechanism the US Gov has to control inflation is the policy dictated by The Fed, of which is chaired by Jerome Powell. So it follows, the entity with the most delegated authority to control inflation (how effective monetary policy is on that regard, is another topic) is helmed by someone who was hired by…..Trump!
Do I blame Trump for inflation? No of course not, The Fed is an independent institution, independent as a non-political government entity bestowed power by Congress can be anyway.
As a Jewish carpenter condemned a pharisee very similar to Trey about 2,000 years ago, ” You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Trey, I agree with you that liars gonna lie.
I don’t understand why, unless you are hoping for Trump 2024, you want to compare President Biden’s lies to President Trump’s, but for the record, the Washington Post compiled as many of Pres Trump’s “false and misleading statements” as they could for his 4-year tenure and found he had lied 30,573 times. Four years is 1,460 days, so you can see he got in several (about 20) lies a day on average!
Whereas CNN found in President Biden’s first year in office, his false and misleading statements numbered in the dozens, not in the hundreds like President Trump’s. From the article:
“Unlike his uniquely dishonest predecessor, Biden did not bury fact-checkers in a daily avalanche of serial falseness. Biden never came close to making a dozen false claims in a single speech, let alone five dozen false claims in one address, as Trump once did. In fact, the total number of Biden false claims so far is in the dozens, while Trump delivered well over 1,000 total false claims in his own first year and more than 3,000 the next year. So Biden is no Trump. With that said, dozens of false claims from the President of the United States is not nothing.”
We are getting more honesty from President Biden than we did from President Trump, but we deserve better. Forbes Magazine found that, comparing their first 100 days in office, President Obama was far more honest than either President Biden or President Trump! So, if honesty is what we want … maybe we ought to re-think electing another old, white man in 2024? I know that feels scary if you ARE an old, white man, but it’s really not. Progressives aim to make a better world for EVERYBODY, not just minorities, so, try to be brave and look forward rather than back.
Good grief…..when you reference CNN and the WaPo, you realize you’re citing the media arm of the Democrat Party as your source of fact-checking Trump and Biden. Surely you don’t see them as an independent, reliable source of unbiased news???
You do know it’s possible to independently fact check things that the media reports? Simply scrolling Trump’s twitter and doing some reading would verify how much he was full of it.
Biden is perfect, but anyone who is taking a moment to be honest with themselves would be able to realize Trump lied more than any president in modern history.
The leftists are too intellectually lazy to do their own fact-checking and have lost their ability to critically think. All they do is emotionally react to an outlandish story that agrees with their political compass.
the_wing_t
Leftist here!
For what it is worth, and speaking only for myself, fact-checking is surely an individual endeavor. Some do; some don’t.
Ditto for your much touted critical thinking. I am happy it brings you satisfaction.
But what about visionary/idealistic thinking? The kind that acknowledges the facts…but also sees a different reality? Buddhism teaches a Beginner’s Mind. Catholic priest, Richard Rohr, simply calls it “faith”. It is beautifully illustrated in the quote by George Bernard Shaw (loved by Bobby Kennedy)–
“Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were; and ask why not.”
The key is, this leftist’s way of seeing is not aligned with any political compass, as you state; it is a MORAL compass.
“Intellectually lazy”, emotional, “outlandish”…okay. But also add that i am learning and trying and hoping.
(I can hear you already–“Your diatribe just proved my point.”! Happy to be of help!).
How ironic that “intellectually lazy” and “emotionally react” – the hallmarks of the 45th president – are projected onto others in a defense of Donald Trump.
I’m not sure that even Voltaire or Jonathan Swift would enter this fantasy world of satire, but I’m sure Freud is smiling.
Truth is always stranger than fiction!
the_wing_T says, “The leftists are too intellectually lazy to do their own fact-checking and have lost their ability to critically think. All they do is emotionally react to an outlandish story that agrees with their political compass.”
I wouldn’t accuse anyone of being “lazy” for not trying to fact-check everything Pres Trump said while in office. With 30K lies to deal with, a lazy person wouldn’t have a chance. The very idea that some reporters created a full-time job out of fact-checking #45, we can agree that pleading “laziness” only works if you are saying you DO believe Pres Trump was honest. You would have to be lazy to have missed each one of the 20 lies he told every single day of his presidency. And who is defending that [lazy] position? The right-wing, not the leftists.
As for the accusation that lefties can’t do critical thinking, tell it to Bill Ayres — a very strong leftist critical thinker. Like all people, some lefties think critically and some not so much. But in this particular arena, who cast a lot of easily-debunked aspersions with no documentation and who provided documentation and spoke sense? The right-wing Trey Hoffman wrote a lot of nonsense, and the Visionary Leftie came up with the documentation that the nonsense was clearly false. Who is the critical thinker in this case? The leftie.
As for emotionally reacting to “any outlandish story that agrees with their political compass,” I did react to Trey’s outlandish story! But my politics weren’t as offended as my critical thinking. That anyone with access to the information highway could somehow believe any president in history had lied more than President Trump? That is indeed outrageous.
(If my reaction was emotional, it was amused, and empathetic. I understand how scared Trey is, and I hope and trust he can overcome it. I don’t think I need to be ashamed of that.)
Suz has beautifully demonstrated the heart and mind of a leftie in her response, and STF has gone right to the heart of it with:
“How ironic that ‘intellectually lazy’ and ’emotionally react’ – the hallmarks of the 45th president – are projected onto others in a defense of Donald Trump.”
It’s funny when it’s just Trey Hoffman and the_wing_t in podunk PTC. It’s horrifying when it’s the mainstream GOP that derides leftists’ lack of critical thinking while they still embrace Trump’s Big Lie. God knows where it will all end.