Presidential Debate Lies

The presidential debates, both Republican and Democrat, have been followed closely by millions of voters with great anticipation towards the first primaries and caucuses. Likewise, these debates have also been followed very closely by various media outlets with an excess of fact checks. Very often do candidates get their numbers and statistics a little off, or sometimes a lot. Most of these situations can be written off as mistakes or exaggerations, but all of these misquotations are by far overshadowed by outright lies. All mistruths and exaggerations aside, one candidate has told a great deal more lies than the others. Do you have any clue who I’m talking about? I’ll give you three hints: he said he’s going nuke ISIS, achieve what is physically impossible, and will add $10.2 trillion to the debt. If you guessed Trump, you assumed correctly.

Aside from many misquoted figures, Trump has told three very memorable lies during the debates. The first one occurred at the very beginning of the first debate, where Senator Paul accused Trump of buying politicians and Trump retorted that he gave the Senator plenty of money. In this context, this claim by the Donald is blatantly false: the total contributions of Trump to Paul’s campaign amount to zero. Trump had previously given $10,000 to the Moran Eye Care Center at the University of Utah as part of Dr. Paul's mission to provide eye surgery to those who cannot afford it in Guatemala. 

Next, Trump got into a fight with Jeb Bush where Jeb claimed that Trump tried to buy him out on the issue of casino gambling. The Donald then claimed that he never wanted casino gambling in Florida, a statement that could not be more dishonest: Trump’s company is on record for trying to get casino deals in Jeb’s state for 21 years, with Trump even quipping in the past, "If Miami doesn’t get casinos, that would be a terrible mistake."
The third most memorable moment occurred in the third debate when the moderator asked him, "You have talked a little bit about Marco Rubio. I think you called him Mark Zuckerberg's personal senator, because he was in favor of the H-1B visa," to which Trump cut him off and responded, "I never said that, I never said that." However, a simple trip to Trump's website reveals the exact quote: "Mark Zuckerberg's personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorites."
If Trump is this eager to lie to millions of Americans right to their faces for political gain, how quick will he resort to familiar habits to cover his a** in the Oval Office? According to Trump supporters, he's the guy that's not afraid to tell it like it is. Apparently, he's not afraid to tell it like it isn't, either.

In light of the recent attack in Paris we have seen Obama taking a stand against most of Congress including members of his own party.  Today the House of Representatives passed a bill that would stop Syrian refugees from coming into the country until national security agencies can certify refugees will not pose a threat.  This stance by Obama shows him taking on many different roles of the presidency.  He is trying to take on a legislative lead as he threatens to veto the bill and work with Democrats in the senate to block and kill the bill.  He is acting as a party leader, unsuccessfully, as he tries to get Democrats to follow his position of accepting refugees.  Finally one can argue this is as much a foreign policy decision as a domestic one, depending on how America responds and acts it will shape how people view us around the world.  With France saying they will accept 30,000 refugees this could be embarrassing for Obama as we were not even the ones attacked or directly affected by the attack.  The only nations devoted to openly accepting refugees into their borders in the Western world right now are Germany and France, with most other nations making it hard.  Obama’s actions will shape the way in which other world leaders will deal with us in response to the refugee and Syrian situation.  The problem is though we are seeing Obama loose his grip on the Democratic Party as 47 Democrats voted in favor of this bill to restrict the flow of refugees.  On top of that many governors have already stated they will not accept Syrian refugees at all or until a more intensive screening process is implemented.  This is another test for Obama as refugee relocation is a federal power.  He can easily ignore governors and put refugees in their states but he runs the risk of lowering his opinion polls and threatening the next democratic presidential candidate’s chance of being elected.  A very complicated human right crisis has arisen and now is the time to see if America will step up to the plate and respond accordingly to it.  The only problem is like most things in America there are two sides and they will fight forever until the problem ceases to exist and both sides claim they win.  Obama’s actions can help to steer the nation away from the fear that currently grasps it and hopefully he will be able to keep fighting until people come to their senses or the tides sway back to his view.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/19/politics/house-democrats-refugee-hearings-obama/

GOP vs. Obama

An update on the ongoing debate throughout Washington... 



As of Monday November 16, the GOP is 'bashing' President Obama and his allowing Syrian refugees in the United States. Since the recent Paris terrorist attacks, the Democratic party has been put on the defense after reports that one of the terrorists involved in the attacks entered Europe as part of the wave of Syrians fleeing civil war. In response, Obama stated that the United States has to remain committed to its values of tolerance and accepting immigrants in the country. 

"The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism," Obama said in Antalya, Turkey, at a meeting of the G20. "It is very important ... that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism."

Republicans are however stressing and advocating for the importance of national security. The large influx of war-ton immigrants into the country has risen numerous security concerns, which has subsequently led GOP lawmakers and governors to announce that they would not allow Syrian refugees into their states and are encouraging stronger control of the U.S. borders. 

What do you guys think? Close up the borders to Syrian refugees? Or should we continue to allow immigrants into the U.S., especially those fleeing war-torn countries?

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/politics/republicans-syrian-refugees-2016-elections-obama/index.html

Obama and Israeli Prime Minester

Today (Monday November, 9) President Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister met at the White House to further discuss their original disagreement over the deal between the world powers and Iran in regards to its Nuclear program. This disagreement unfortunately had set back the relationship between the United States and Israel to its "lowest point in decades." Obama had previously back Prime Minister Netanyahu in their most recent conflict with the Palestinians, while the Israeli leader continues to fight for settlement with the Palestinians. This fight, as it seems as if it will never end, has already been through two peace initiatives put together by the Obama Administration, which subsequently, failed. Today's meeting at the White House seemingly resulted in both men trying to find common ground and subsided any mutual frustration between the two leaders. What do you guys think will happen with their relationship? Do you see a mutual agreement between the two leaders being kept in tact? Or do you think more disagreements are bound to come before President Obama leaves office? 

"It is no secret that the Prime Minister and I have had a strong disagreement on this narrow issue, but we don't have a disagreement on the need to make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon and we don't have a disagreement about the importance of us blunting destabilizing activities that Iran may be taking." -President Obama 

Source: 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/09/politics/benjamin-netanyahu-obama-meeting/index.html

Marco Rubio Police Rhetoric

The amount of police brutality has either gone way out of proportion or has just been in the national spotlight. Marco Rubio did talk a lot about police brutality and how it has escalated to very violent measures. He does say, "'The overwhelming and vast majority of law enforcement officers in this country are just trying to do their jobs," Rubio told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. "It is troubling that there are groups and rhetoric out there now that is encouraging people to demonize law enforcement, to target law enforcement or in some cases, quite frankly, to misrepresent what law enforcement is trying to do.'" I agree with him here on how law enforcement is just trying to do their jobs, there are instances where there are definite evidence of people being brutalize, but the attention it is getting doesn't seem to be reaching the white house. This seems to be a national issue that we need to focus on since it's starting riots and people causing chaos in the streets. It's getting a little ridiculous and I definitely think that all the presidential candidates should be talking about this and worrying about the future of law enforcement. 

Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/politics/marco-rubio-police-rhetoric/index.html

America only recently left Iraq a few years ago and in that time frame we have seen the rise of ISIS.  With the entire region in disarray trying to deal with ISIS and how to fight them US troops may end up in Iraq and the Middle East in some capacity to help fight and contain the threat of ISIS.  As the fight against the Islamic State seems to have come to a standstill President Obama has been pressured to increase American military presence and involvement.  The recent involvement of Russia and its apparent targeting of US backed rebel groups only adds to the dangerous mixture and time constraint to fix the problem, if America waits too long with Russia’s help Assad could regain control of Syria.  This problem went from simply being a Middle East conflict into a power play between two world powers.  Over the past few months Obama has been meeting with his military advisors to discuss his options, ranging from moving forward with boots on the ground, establishing a no fly zone, continued training of Iraqi soldiers, small strategic strikes against ISIS with US special forces in conjunction with Iraqi security forces etc.  All the options at the president’s disposal shows the expanded role of the branch has acquired over time.  Go back a hundred years no one would believe the president could basically start a war around the world without the approval or even a vote by congress. I personally hate the idea of the president wielding such power as this.  I understand in times of crisis, such as America being attacked, the president would have to use the military without congress but for actions like this congress must be involved.  We wonder why people around consider America to be a bully this is why.  We act unilaterally and without a lot of help.  Recently Obama has done better with forming coalitions to deal with international crises but recently America has been taking a larger role as it considers devoting combat troops.  How can America champion democracy when we have presidents who are so apt to use force instead of negotiating in instances, granted the problems with ISIS would not be able to be solved with diplomacy.

Source

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-weighs-moving-us-troops-closer-to-front-lines-in-syria-iraq/2015/10/26/4ae2f36c-7bec-11e5-b575-d8dcfedb4ea1_story.html  

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