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I really don't want to pick on liberals with this, but a fact of life is they (as compared to conservatives) are more often lawyers.
Our legal system is adversarial -- that means there are at least two sides to an issue. The lawyer for one side does not feel compelled to state the complete truth, but rather select a subset of all facts which, when presented, lead to a specific conclusion favorable to the side of the issue they represent. The theory being, it seems, that the opposing side will do the same -- and that whatever is "truth" will be determined by a judge, jury, or in this case the electorate as a whole.
Certainly one factor of the adversarial system is to also cast doubt upon the oppositions subset of facts and its conclusion. In the political arena I guess we call that 'mudslinging.'
Roll those thoughts forward to politics. The opposition is not really "lying" - they are presenting a few facts which then lead to the conclusion they wish to promote, and pointing out that their opponents are dangerously wrong in their conclusion.
Both sides of the political spectrum do this, of course, but my view is that liberals do it better.
Couple that thought with the reality that the media is largely inclined to support the liberal position and the result is that the American voter only hears one side of the policy argument.
A good example of this is the recent AP story that President-elect Obama is considering using executive orders to quickly reverse what is described as the Bush opposition to funding stem cell research because that was the position of the anti-abortion groups.
What we voters are actually reading here is a subset of fact and a summation, coupled with a dig at the religious right.
The facts are that George W. Bush's administration was the first presidential administration to fund embryonic stem cell research - hardly opposition to funding. The administration did however halt the creation of new stem cell lines on the grounds it was unethical to do so. In fact, not long after that, science found other ways to create stem cells for the same purpose of embryonic cells. And it should be pointed out that according to the National Institute of Health, embryonic stem cells are created from human material left over as a result of artificial fertilization procedures, and are grown in vitro (think: in a test tube) for five days before they are ready for use in research.
Now - putting all the facts together, we can see the bias in the media and that the issue may indeed be a "tempest in a teapot." More on the Right to Life, versus the Right to Abortion controversy at another time.
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And another which shows how cleverly the liberal-lawyer makes his case to pillory the Bush administration in front of an accommodating press.
Actual text from HR 5501 (from Thomas.gov): `Section II 45(C) Research indicates that many youth benefit from full disclosure of medically accurate, age-appropriate information about abstinence, partner reduction, and condoms. Providing comprehensive information about HIV, including delay of sexual debut and the ABC model: `Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms', and linking such information to health care can help improve awareness of safe sex practices and address the fact that only 1 in 3 young men and 1 in 5 young women ages 15 to 24 can correctly identify ways to prevent HIV infection.
And today's report from Bloomberg News link
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aKrIK33ovrk8&refer=politics
Public-health policies of President George W. Bush's $45- billion PEPFAR program have brought AIDS drugs to almost 3 million people in poor countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, more than under any other president. Still, requirements that health workers emphasize abstinence from sex and monogamy over condom use have set back sexually transmitted disease prevention and family planning globally, said Susan F. Wood, co-chairman of Obama's advisory committee for women's health.
``We have been going in the wrong direction and we need to turn it around and be promoting prevention and family-planning services and strengthening public health,'' said Wood, a research professor at George Washington University School of Public Health in Washington.
The liberal-lawyer inverted the order of the clause so that 'condoms' comes first, and then argued his summation that this somehow proves that the Bush administration, and by implied extension any moderate or conservative is moving in the wrong direction and - tah dah - Obama and the far left fixed that!.
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