Mithrall

Obama - His great-uncle helped liberate Auschwitz: I would guess that the info did not come to Obama directly from his great-uncle. Soldiers tend not to like to discuss that sorta thing and by the sounds of it he was pretty messed up by the experience. Gonna guess that it was 3'rd person info at best, many years after the fact. Basis in fact? His great uncle served in the US Army in Europe and served in a unit that liberated a concentration camp. It just wasn't Auschwitz. Motive: Really can't ascribe any clear motive to saying Auschwitz vs Buchenwald, there really wasn't any gain by using one vs the other, both were horrors on earth beyond imagining.

Hillary - Bosnia snipers: First person account, no basis in fact. She did visit Bosnia but there were no snipers firing at her, she did not run for cover under a hail of bullets as she claimed. There was video that proved beyond any doubt that it just did not happen. Motive: There are a few that come to mind right away but I am just gonna go with this; Street cred. She is the first woman to have ever gotten this close to running head to head for president of the US and if she had gotten the Democratic nod, she would have been running against a Navy pilot who had been shot at and who was a POW.

If I were to attempt to equivilate Hillary's lie to Obama's "lie" I would have to create a scenario where Hillary was actually was shot at but by a 7.62 sniper rifle which she then, many years later, went on to remember it as being a .50 cal. Either way, a sniper rifle is a sniper rifle is a sniper rifle and a Nazi concentration camp is well... a Nazi concentration camp. As I have said before, if you have ever been shot at, you remember it. I have to believe that it goes the other way too, if you have never been shot at you wouldn't all of the sudden recall being shot at, unless you have some sort of psychological defect.

Jonesy

All these little details only work on left-brain people. Right-brain people are more prone to seeing the big picture.

EvilMonkey

Great comparison but yeah, the Obama haters will twist and justify Hillary's lies like a mother.

guest1234567

I compare it mostly to when McCain lost track of what role the Shiites and Suniis are currently playing. I believe they were honest mistakes that they each should have gotten correct. And predictably their supporters are claiming neither of them did anything wrong and the haters are jumping all over it.

Come on! Admit it! He made an honest mistake in the heat of the moment.

Liberal types always seem to fall back to comparing which one of anything is worse about every little thing. Even the name of this thread is an exact example of what I'm talking about.

Don't believe me? I've lost count how many times Tex and the other nimrods say things like "The war is so and so and the war is such and such." Invariably the response will degrade to "Well we shouldn't be in the war in the first place." See what just happened, they lost the moment and had to fall back to a starting point that was gone years ago and has absolutely nothing with moving forward and changing the current state of things.

I see it happen here and saw it at HBO countless times.


This is a symptom of why the Dems have a hard time organizing compared to the Repubs. It's all about how folks feel personally rather than how the group can move forward.

HarperLee

You are all over the place on this, insisting that you are a libertarian who is neutral about Obama and Clinton.

Barack Obama was telling about how a family member reacted after returning home from service in World War II. He got the name of the camp wrong. The story is true. But last night you were
insisting that what Obama did was as bad as Hillary Clinton telling a long, elaborate lie at least four times about dodging sniper fire and missing a welcoming ceremony. (The fact that she is
lying is documented by videos of the actual
occasion and the welcoming ceremony.)

Now to you Obama's mistake is no worse than McCain's "one time slip of the tongue" about Sunnis and Shi'ites. Do you not understand
that on several occasions McCain has confused Sunnis and Shi'ites and added al Quaeda into the mix of names he really is not sure about. Joe Lieberman's assignment is to stand beside him and
explain what he was trying to say.

John McCain Repeats Al-Qaida Shiite Confusion - Politics on The Huffington Post

The difference here is that Obama was telling a story about a family member in the context of a discussion of post traumatic stress syndrome. The incident happened 60 years ago. John McCain
wants to be our Commander-in-Chief and he has supported this war most of the last 5+ years. He should be conversant about the country he wants to occupy for the next 100 years. My guess
would be that his aides have tried to educate him, but he cannot remember.

Rollerball

This is an important point that seems to have slipped by a lot of people. Obama wasn't telling the story to WOW the crowd, bragging about his dear uncle who was so heroic he went around liberating concentration camps.... he was talking about post traumatic stress, about his family's personal experience with it, and how we have to do more to help the vets coming home NOW.

When you take the point of his speech into consideration the name of the concentration camp is meaningless. It's all about helping the vets... something McCain is opposing btw.

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guest1234567

I'm not a libertarian. I believe in government. I don't believe you'll find a green party member ever classifying themselves as a libertarian. I am however, fairly neutral between the two candidates, but would rather have Obama. I just want McCain to lose decisively.

I did not say that last night. I said it was silly to jump all over Clinton for her shit. Just let it go. Repeating yourselves over and over and over again is not going to change anything in real life. Move on and fix what's wrong, don't dwell on it.


And you realize that by adding al Quaeda is just following the Republican play book. This is what I'm talking about, the Repubs actually have a playbook. You have been an example of saying how McCain should have been outraged because of how he was treated during the last time he ran for prez. But you fail to see he knows the playbook. He has stuck with it, and he is now the beneficiary of knowing the rules of his party.


Joe can do whatever the heck he wants. He is on his own team, and he was elected by his state to be a state representative. He answers to no political party anymore. He got fucked over by a blogger and he has every right to be pissed off. If he benefits from this, he accomplished it all by himself despite folks from another state trying to influence a Conn. state senate run.


John McCain Repeats Al-Qaida Shiite Confusion - Politics on The Huffington Post

If you don't know your family history, don't talk about it. There are things my father alluded to in WWII also that he never gave me details about. I can only say what he told me. (I know more about his father's exploits because I found a history book that he is mentioned several times.) What I can say is in general terms, my dad also liberated a concentration camp and he was in the heat of battle in the Battle of the Bulge. I can't mention any specifics, but I can say generalities like that. Perhaps Obama should have done the same.



Which is the reason you should just ALL show up and vote AGAINST him, and stop saying you won't support the Dem who won the primaries.

guest1234567

And here is another aspect that's been stretched to become a talking point to fit the argument du jour. McCain does oppose the new GI Bill, and he gave his reasons. He feels his first duty as a senator is to preserve the integrety of the fighting force. His opinions are as valid as the next because he realizes the truly great importance of non-commisioned officers in the military. My own experience aside, many people do not achieve this status until they reenlist.

Richterscale

Just a couple comments on the McCain flub. As has already been mentioned, this was not a 'heat of the moment' screw up. It happened many times, with plenty of time between episodes to get the facts straight.

Second, the knowledge of who is Shia, and who is Sunni, is not some esoteric point of fact that can be easily dismissed. It goes to the very heart of the number one issue facing our nation. And to think that after the more than five years that McCain has had to get these minor details straight in his head, he still can't manage it, speaks very poorly of his ability to understand at all what is happening in the Middle East, or how to fix it.

And let's not forget, this is a man who is being touted to have major foreign policy chops. Frankly, his inability to get such basic facts correct, speaks volumes about his ability to lead, and makes one wonder about the strength of his mind.

I'm sorry, but there is just NO comparing Obama's mistake to McCains repeated mistakes. One is inconsequential, and the other is a danger to our nation.

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Mithrall

I take more than a bit of offense at some ex-navy officer/pilot telling me that they can't afford to be too generous to ground soldiers, who have been getting shot at on a daily basis, because it might make them choose to leave the service instead of re-enlisting... Officers, pilots in particular tend to develop an above-it-all mindset where they don't have a good grasp of the suffering on either side.