Know your facts before you spout off
Ok, I rarely discuss politics on here, and I hope to keep it unbiased. But something has been bothering me for a long time, and I want to get it off my chest.
I REALLY wish people would take the time to learn the facts about an issue before they form an opinion, and especially before they spout off about it in public. I don't care if you are Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, Communist, pick your poison. But please try to be a little educated about an issue before you make a fool of yourself and lose friends in the process.
For example (I will bash McCain in my next example, so don't get mad before you read the rest of the post), I live in the US and during this last election I paid close attention to the Presedential race. Some of my Liberal friends complianed that McCain was always lying and attacking Obama. Well how about this quote from Obama (which is a flat out lie, and probably the basis for some of my liberal friend's comments): "And 100 percent, John, of your ads . . . 100 percent of them have been negative.", Please, Mr. President Elect, check your facts before you spout off. McCain ran plenty of non-negative ads. A quote from the politifact.com article I linked above: "73 percent of McCain's ads have been negative, to date. That's far short of 100 percent."
Now for a McCain bash (to keep it fair, because I am not pushing any political party with this post). Bill Ayers was a prominent figure in the Presidential race, and few people disagree that he was involved in terrorist activities. McCain's campaign tried their hardest to tie Obama to Mr. Ayers. Here is a quote (again, a flat out lie) from a McCain political ad: "(Bill) Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together." First of all, Ayers didn't even help run that foundation, at most he could be called an advisor to the foundation. Secondly, it's debatable that the foundation could even be called radical (read the politifact article I linked above for all the facts).
Now, these are two high profile examples, but my real beef is with the followers of political liars. If you want to support a candidate from your favorite political party, fine. However, PLEASE check the facts before you spout off in public, and even better, before you vote for them. It only takes a few minutes of your time to research an issue. Please help make the world a better place and vote with your mind instead of your emotions.
</political rant>
Jake Munson
38 Yrs old
First of all, I was only stating facts, not revising history. I pointed out an innacurate statement from both Obama and McCain, and the source of my information was politifact.com which is a non-partisan organization, often quoted by both sides of the political spectrum. In fact, their site states that McCain spoke more innacurately than Obama overall, so I am not pulling info from a republican/conservative attack network.
The point of my post was that I hope people will be more informed about their political choices. I suspect all politicians make inaccurate statments at times. Sometimes it's probably because they have false information, and they aren't intentionally lying. But sometimes the politician repeatedly states a "lie", even after the truth has been publicly proven. I don't care if it's a republican or democrat, I hate it when politicians knowingly lie.
As far as your assertion that "the country consistently relies on its progressive side to rebuild and repair the damage done its republican side", one of our recent major economic crisis occured during the Carter administration (due to energy prices, inflatation, record high interest rates, etc.) and that is one of the reasons that Reagan won in 1980. In fact, many political pundits compare Obama's win to Reagan's, because they were both very similar. The sitting president had been struggling with an ecomonic crisis. The candidate from the opposing party was popular because of his message of change. Both Reagan and Obama promised to lower taxes to stimulate the ecomony as well. Obama won 53-46 (popular vote), Reagan won 51-41.
I for one am hopeful that Obama will be able to turn this economy around. Because I don't care who is the president, nobody likes to suffer through an economy like this.