29 January 2008

Fact check?

I tried to listen to the State of the Union Address last night. Unfortunately, when I hear his voice I cringe and have to change the channel. Merely the sound annoys me. I did however toast to this being the last one.

This morning on the way to school I caught up with the BS he spewed over some NPR.

Check out their Fact Checking of the Speech. The big guy said a lot of stuff that a lot of people will believe unless they look at the facts. List list of topics is down a bit but includes the areas he touted as doing really well in this nation -- such as education, the economy, and climate change.

I know, just hearing those words would not lead someone to believe that they were applauded as currently doing well, but we aren't the ones giving the speech, right. His writers can really make anything look good. Especially when they have him talk without giving data or without talking about the negative things.

2 comments:

  1. I am really disturbed by the trend toward lying in the presidency. President Bush may be the most recent example, but the trend toward lying is more series than the American people recognize. First, we have to deal with the consequences of the lie, or blatant misstatement of the truth. President Bush had two very obvious lies that come to mind: the proposed tax cut that he stated was for working families and the indisputable presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Not only have these misstatements of truth got our country in an awful war and a mushrooming federal deficit and debt in this presidency, they are undermining the substance of democracy.

    The democratic process is dependent upon people having access to truthful information, so that they can influence the democratic process with their input. But with false information, people make bad decisions and support actions that may not be in their best interest. As a champion of democracy, President Bush should know how important it is that he tells the truth.

    What I find more troubling is that President Bush is not the first to lie. Clinton lied about his affair, LJP about how awful things were in the war in Vietnam, and Nixon about his connection to Watergate. We have held some accountable, but others we haven’t. The problem is that by getting away with it, each president gives the next permission to misstate the truth.

    This legacy of lying needs to stop.

    Rachel

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  2. I agree. But I think that even though we live in a society where information can be found fairly easily, people do not check to see how accurate that info is. I think that people just listen to the people on the news, or worse yet, their friend who heard it from a friend.

    Basically I think a lot of people do not care. You gave a good example with Clinton. Why is it that people seemed to care more about his extra-marital actions which, really do not impact the nation, than they do about what is going on in this administration? Problems that like you said influence people's lives seriously - taxes and interest rates for example.

    It does not make sense.

    Maybe one day I will have answers and solutions to make people care.

    Then I can make a workshop about it and make lots of money.

    ReplyDelete

I share my thoughts and would love to read your thoughts, too.