[Rushy]

I'm not shocked.

We need a law making it illegal for political figures to spread outright lies.

Might as well say politics is now illegal.

[AATW]

I'm not shocked.

We need a law making it illegal for political figures to spread outright lies.

Might as well say politics is now illegal.

It's not unreasonable to expect politicians to stop lying to our faces.
I find it increasingly bizarre that they are able to do that with no consequence.
Well, often the consequence is them getting elected

[Dr David Thork]

I think a politician should be able to say what they like.

But a manifesto should be a legal document. And if you are elected, everything in your manifesto should be automatically passed. So manifestos should not over promise as you will be legally obligated to honour them. Failure to do so, should be considered a voter fraud. You defrauded people of their vote by promising things you didn't deliver. This should come with a life sentence (15 years) for the party leader and 5 years each for senior members of the party who hold positions in departments where a promise was broken.

[Lord Dave]

I think a politician should be able to say what they like.

But a manifesto should be a legal document. And if you are elected, everything in your manifesto should be automatically passed. So manifestos should not over promise as you will be legally obligated to honour them. Failure to do so, should be considered a voter fraud. You defrauded people of their vote by promising things you didn't deliver. This should come with a life sentence (15 years) for the party leader and 5 years each for senior members of the party who hold positions in departments where a promise was broken.

What if enough people oppose your manifesto to block it from passing?  Makes a nice way to destroy someone, no?

[Rushy]

It's not unreasonable to expect politicians to stop lying to our faces.
I find it increasingly bizarre that they are able to do that with no consequence.
Well, often the consequence is them getting elected

It's up to the electorate to determine what sort of politician they want. A system that checks whether politicians are "lying" or not would be incredibly dangerous as you now have some magical committee that can determine what is and isn't true. Worse, you've now made it illegal for anyone to hide or lie about national security interests.

While yes, I would prefer politicians not lie, I also understand that it's a natural part of politics and there's no realistic way of preventing it without making the solution worse than the problem.

[Rama Set]

Lying about matters that are demonstrably true shouldn’t be permitted as it can run counter to the public good. Hard to say that a candidate has any responsibility to the public good, but once elected they should be held accountable. For example, claiming that Iraq had WMDs was a lie and cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. That should be prosecutable.

[AATW]

It's not unreasonable to expect politicians to stop lying to our faces.
I find it increasingly bizarre that they are able to do that with no consequence.
Well, often the consequence is them getting elected

It's up to the electorate to determine what sort of politician they want.

Sure. That's how it's always worked. I think what worries me lately is that politicians are lying to our faces.
And it doesn't seem to matter.
Some people (like lackey) refuse to accept they're lying when it's clearly shown they are.
Other people know they're lying but just don't care. It's odd.

A system that checks whether politicians are "lying" or not would be incredibly dangerous as you now have some magical committee that can determine what is and isn't true. Worse, you've now made it illegal for anyone to hide or lie about national security interests.

I didn't say there should be a system but I wish people cared more about truth. Maybe the attitude now is "they're all lying anyway so let's just pick the one we hate least". But also even if there was a system, I don't think that would stop them dealing with national security issues. Asking people not to lie is not the same as asking them to answer every question completely truthfully. Saying you can't answer a question for various reasons is perfectly valid, just stop blatantly lying to us about all kinds of silly things like what states a hurricane is going to hit (Trump) or that the EU are trying to ban prawn cocktail crisps (Johnson). Just stop it! Because if you're lying about the silly stuff, how can we trust you when you talk about important stuff.

And while Thork's solution is typically extreme, having more accountability for the things they put in their manifestos would be a good thing.

[Rushy]

Lying about matters that are demonstrably true shouldn’t be permitted as it can run counter to the public good. Hard to say that a candidate has any responsibility to the public good, but once elected they should be held accountable. For example, claiming that Iraq had WMDs was a lie and cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. That should be prosecutable.

And if the intelligence consensus at the time was that Iraq had WMDs, does that make it still a lie? Is it lying for politicians to just repeat what the intelligence community told them? Are facts proven to be lies in retrospect still lies? Prosecuting politicians for what we perceive to be lies is opening up a big can of worms, especially when the original source of the lie is difficult to trace or actually just a result of bad intelligence.

[AATW]

Lying about matters that are demonstrably true shouldn’t be permitted as it can run counter to the public good. Hard to say that a candidate has any responsibility to the public good, but once elected they should be held accountable. For example, claiming that Iraq had WMDs was a lie and cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. That should be prosecutable.

And if the intelligence consensus at the time was that Iraq had WMDs, does that make it still a lie? Is it lying for politicians to just repeat what the intelligence community told them? Are facts proven to be lies in retrospect still lies? Prosecuting politicians for what we perceive to be lies is opening up a big can of worms, especially when the original source of the lie is difficult to trace or actually just a result of bad intelligence.

I think that's fair enough. I actually don't think Blair was lying about the WMDs.
BUT, as it became increasingly obvious that there weren't any he refused to back down and admit he'd got it wrong.
That whole thing is used as an example of Cognitive Dissonance in Matthew Syed's book Black Box Thinking.
It's worrying that we have leaders who lie to us but it's equally worrying to have leaders who cannot admit mistakes either to themselves or others. It's something which is very common in more senior management.

[Lord Dave]

Mistakes are weakness.  Weakness is culled.  You're not a sheep, are you?

[Rama Set]

This is going in my giant file of left wingers wishing harm on or doing harm to people.

Add this your file for right wingers:

The USA needs coronavirus to clean out the fossils in the senate. With some luck, Biden won't make it to November.

On the topic of Trump, I’m happy he is restricting travel. Hope they continue to take the outbreak seriously.

[AATW]

On the topic of Trump, I’m happy he is restricting travel. Hope they continue to take the outbreak seriously.

Gotta say, I cannot abide Trump but I was pretty impressed by his response.
Johnson over here has been bloody hopeless.
I've been "self isolating" since Wednesday as I have a bit of a cold (pretty sure that's all it is) and on Monday we all need to work at home as a "test" although I've heard rumours it could become policy.
Our development team in Warsaw have closed their offices for the rest of the month and schools are closed all over there.
It is all getting a bit scary.

[Rama Set]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

For a country that hates socialism they certainly seem to jump in to it feet first when it involves financial markets.

[Lord Dave]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

For a country that hates socialism they certainly seem to jump in to it feet first when it involves financial markets.

Its only socialism if poor people get the money.

[Rama Set]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

For a country that hates socialism they certainly seem to jump in to it feet first when it involves financial markets.

But let’s not expand Medicaid to get help to people who need it.

[Roundy]

Gotta say, I cannot abide Trump but I was pretty impressed by his response.

Really?

Trump's response has been as spectacular a failure as you could expect from a leader who has no experience leading.

The travel ban might have been a good idea a few weeks ago, and maybe it will help mitigate the problem a bit going forward, but given that the virus is already rampant in the country it's kind of too little too late.

In the meantime he had already refused millions of tests from the WHO, dismantled the agency whose job is dealing with a pandemic, and repeatedly contradicted what experts (including his own) were saying about the virus, thus spreading dangerous misinformation.

When a leader fails as badly in a crisis as Trump has in this one maybe it would help to tally all his failures in one place as a reminder of just how badly he's failing. This article does a pretty good job:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

Yeah let's have four more years of this. 

[Rama Set]

It’s relative my man. I’m impressed that Trump went from doing nothing to shutting down European travel in a short time. The US has been the absolute bottom of the barrel among western nations in dealing with this.

[Roundy]

I mean fine I'll concede that now that he's actually in a position where it's impossible for him to ignore that there's a real problem it's nice that he's doing things.

[totallackey]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

For a country that hates socialism they certainly seem to jump in to it feet first when it involves financial markets.

But let’s not expand Medicaid to get help to people who need it.

Can you point specifically to who needs it?

And if you are for helping, then why not help everybody?

[Lord Dave]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html

For a country that hates socialism they certainly seem to jump in to it feet first when it involves financial markets.

But let’s not expand Medicaid to get help to people who need it.

Can you point specifically to who needs it?

And if you are for helping, then why not help everybody?

Essentially anyone who needs medical care but can't afford it.  While this virus has a low mortality rate for many, it does, none the less, require hospitalisation for many   many who can't afford it either due to lack of insurance or a job that does not allow them paid sick leave.