Clinton Really? Did she just say that? What was she thinking?

[theHawk]

I just clicked over to CNN to see a clip of Hillary Clinton speaking. She said, "America is great because America is good, and we have to make that true." That's truly what she said. Did she have too many cocktails in the "green room?" I'm not used to hearing her make such incoherently inane remarks.

What about her statement confuses you?

Really? Okay, I'll explain.

• If America is great, then making that be so has already happened; we don't need to make so that which already is so.
• "America is great because it is good" is illogical for multiple reasons:
  • Circular: It's great because it's good, which, by implication, makes it great.
  • Affirming the Consequent: Though her remark isn't presented in the textbook "if-then" form, it's substance is that of "If P, then Q. Q. Therefore P." All she's done is discard the the conditional via the modus ponens technique which allows one to say the same thing without the "if-then."

Mrs. Clinton is a lawyer, which means she's well aware of what is a logically fallacious statement is. Why she'd make a statement as blatantly irrational as the one noted in the OP is surprising. Maybe she wasn't thinking about what she was saying? Maybe she thought nobody in the audience would notice? I don't know. I just know I was listening and I noticed the absurdity of the statement.

Hillary is no longer a lawyer. She failed to keep up her education requirements so she lost her license to practice.

 

[320 Years of History]

I just clicked over to CNN to see a clip of Hillary Clinton speaking. She said, "America is great because America is good, and we have to make that true." That's truly what she said. Did she have too many cocktails in the "green room?" I'm not used to hearing her make such incoherently inane remarks.

What about her statement confuses you?

Really? Okay, I'll explain.

• If America is great, then making that be so has already happened; we don't need to make so that which already is so.
• "America is great because it is good" is illogical for multiple reasons:
  • Circular: It's great because it's good, which, by implication, makes it great.
  • Affirming the Consequent: Though her remark isn't presented in the textbook "if-then" form, it's substance is that of "If P, then Q. Q. Therefore P." All she's done is discard the the conditional via the modus ponens technique which allows one to say the same thing without the "if-then."

Mrs. Clinton is a lawyer, which means she's well aware of what is a logically fallacious statement is. Why she'd make a statement as blatantly irrational as the one noted in the OP is surprising. Maybe she wasn't thinking about what she was saying? Maybe she thought nobody in the audience would notice? I don't know. I just know I was listening and I noticed the absurdity of the statement.

Hillary is no longer a lawyer. She failed to keep up her education requirements so she lost her license to practice.

Okay fine, but whether she's a currently practicing attorney has nothing to do with the essence of the point I made. She didn't lose the knowledge one needs to be an attorney and she hasn't stopped thinking like an attorney would in such situations.

 

[Care4all]

We're one of the good guys in the world....

we allow a melting pot in our nation

we take in the refugees who need help, a new beginning

we help the poor

we help other allied Nations that need help, with our Military

We have a Judicial system where we are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

we donate more than any other Nation and their citizens within, to world wide catastrophe victims, we are generous

we say, "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

WE ARE GOOD!

I suppose this is old timer thinking, and I am probably one of these old timers though I am much younger than Hillary...

When I grew up, we all grew up to be proud of America... we KNEW from the bottom of our hearts, we were GOOD, china was Bad, The Soviet Union/russia was Bad.... America was where you could go from rags to riches, if you worked hard enough....America is where you could become all you could be.... America was good.

Not all of this rotten stuff that Trumpsters spout.

 

[Onyx]

I just clicked over to CNN to see a clip of Hillary Clinton speaking. She said, "America is great because America is good, and we have to make that true." That's truly what she said. Did she have too many cocktails in the "green room?" I'm not used to hearing her make such incoherently inane remarks.

She has said it half a dozen times, so it definitely is not impulsive.

Clearly her campaign does not see a problem with the statement, but I thought it was odd every time I heard it.

 

[ChrisL]

She's probably going senile.

 

[Slashsnake]

America used to be great. We used to lead the world in lifestyle, money, and technology. I honestly have no idea what Hillary's talking about.

Then suddenly America became a bunch of cry baby wussies that are highly resistant to change while companies have started tightening up and caring only about their bottom lines and not their customers.

-If I go to other countries (like Italy) I can see naked girls on regular TV. I come to America, I see people being offended because a girl's belly button is showing while she's walking down the street with her friend.

-If I go to other countries (like Australia, Canada, and the England) they have free healthcare because everyone that works pays into the system depending on how much they make. Our (Obama's) idea of everyone paying into the system is providing expensive healthcare plans nobody can afford, and the fining the American people of their hard-earned money they let the government borrow (interest free) at the beginning of each year out of their tax return BECAUSE they don't want to pay for those expensive plans. MD's only come here because they can make a lot of money... Not because the healthcare system is terrific.

- For not getting free healthcare, free college tuition, and acceptable roads to drive on, we certainly do pay a lot in taxes. Roughly 25% of my pay comes out in taxes and I still have to pay for the above two things and pay to have my car repaired from potholes the government fails to fix. Additionally after I pay that 25%, I have to pay 8.25% in taxes every time I buy something, or other ridiculous taxes when I want to have a cell phone plan. So I pay 33.25% in taxes to not have squat provided for me that other governments provide to their citizens other than how the government changes a light bulb on a traffic light and provides a police and fire department for me. That 8.25% adds up to a lot and is better suited in a personal savings account rather than for our government's use. I'd rather pay 66.50% in taxes and not have $40,000 in college debt when I graduate, or pay $400 (more) a month for an individual's plan of mediocre health insurance, and not have these stupid taxes that shouldn't exist on my phone bill. Why am I paying a "911 fee" on a cell phone bill when I ALREADY PAY TAXES FOR THOSE SERVICES.

-You go to other countries and they have a contactless + EMV PIN standard at every merchant and every card in the country. This has lowered credit card fraud tremendously. In America we have like three issuers that provide contactless cards... None that advertise it. We have very few banks that issue both credit and debit EMV cards with a PIN, because they're greedy of course. And then all merchants want to do is complain, complain, complain, sue, sue, sue over this standard, obviously not realizing how stupid they look because they're about 15 years behind in this technology. Let's see... 25% of the credit card population in America, but 50% of the world's credit card fraud... But nobody sees what we're doing wrong. Stupid. Other countries also have free, instant transfers from one bank account to another. Here, banks call it a "wire transfer' and want to charge you $30 bucks to send it out, and the other bank wants to charge you $15 for "bringing it in", in total charging you $45 because you wanted your money when you were supposed to have it (or almost instantly) like it's 2016 or something, but I guess the government would rather just sit on their hands and not do anything to fix that ridiculous stupidity.

-Only in America would the voters be stupid enough to vote people like Hank Johnson into congress, or give a candidate like Hillary Clinton a chance of winning the election in November. The American people vote based on party love, not based on common sense or who's the best fit.

-Other 1st world countries are clean, where America is dirty. Went to Canada and you couldn't find a single cigarette butt, piece of paper, or anything on the ground that wasn't supposed to be there. Here you have ghettos and dirty streets.

-We're #9 in the world in obesity, none of the other 1st world countries come close to us.


This country will never be great again. Who's HIllary fooling? The rest of the civilized world has surpassed us.

 

[ChrisL]

America used to be great. We used to lead the world in lifestyle, money, and technology. I honestly have no idea what Hillary's talking about.

Then suddenly America became a bunch of cry baby wussies that are highly resistant to change while companies have started tightening up and caring only about their bottom lines and not their customers.

-If I go to other countries (like Italy) I can see naked girls on regular TV. I come to America, I see people being offended because a girl's belly button is showing while she's walking down the street with her friend.

-If I go to other countries (like Australia, Canada, and the England) they have free healthcare because everyone that works pays into the system depending on how much they make. Our (Obama's) idea of everyone paying into the system is providing expensive healthcare plans nobody can afford, and the fining the American people of their hard-earned money they let the government borrow (interest free) at the beginning of each year out of their tax return BECAUSE they don't want to pay for those expensive plans. MD's only come here because they can make a lot of money... Not because the healthcare system is terrific.

- For not getting free healthcare, free college tuition, and acceptable roads to drive on, we certainly do pay a lot in taxes. Roughly 25% of my pay comes out in taxes and I still have to pay for the above two things and pay to have my car repaired from potholes the government fails to fix. Additionally after I pay that 25%, I have to pay 8.25% in taxes every time I buy something, or other ridiculous taxes when I want to have a cell phone plan. So I pay 33.25% in taxes to not have squat provided for me that other governments provide to their citizens other than how the government changes a light bulb on a traffic light and provides a police and fire department for me. That 8.25% adds up to a lot and is better suited in a personal savings account rather than for our government's use. I'd rather pay 66.50% in taxes and not have $40,000 in college debt when I graduate, or pay $400 (more) a month for an individual's plan of mediocre health insurance, and not have these stupid taxes that shouldn't exist on my phone bill. Why am I paying a "911 fee" on a cell phone bill when I ALREADY PAY TAXES FOR THOSE SERVICES.

-You go to other countries and they have a contactless + EMV PIN standard at every merchant and every card in the country. This has lowered credit card fraud tremendously. In America we have like three issuers that provide contactless cards... None that advertise it. We have very few banks that issue both credit and debit EMV cards with a PIN, because they're greedy of course. And then all merchants want to do is complain, complain, complain, sue, sue, sue over this standard, obviously not realizing how stupid they look because they're about 15 years behind in this technology. Let's see... 25% of the credit card population in America, but 50% of the world's credit card fraud... But nobody sees what we're doing wrong. Stupid. Other countries also have free, instant transfers from one bank account to another. Here, banks call it a "wire transfer' and want to charge you $30 bucks to send it out, and the other bank wants to charge you $15 for "bringing it in", in total charging you $45 because you wanted your money when you were supposed to have it (or almost instantly) like it's 2016 or something, but I guess the government would rather just sit on their hands and not do anything to fix that ridiculous stupidity.

-Only in America would the voters be stupid enough to vote people like Hank Johnson into congress, or give a candidate like Hillary Clinton a chance of winning the election in November. The American people vote based on party love, not based on common sense or who's the best fit.

-Other 1st world countries are clean, where America is dirty. Went to Canada and you couldn't find a single cigarette butt, piece of paper, or anything on the ground that wasn't supposed to be there. Here you have ghettos and dirty streets.

-We're #9 in the world in obesity, none of the other 1st world countries come close to us.


This country will never be great again. Who's HIllary fooling? The rest of the civilized world has surpassed us.

That's why we have to start concentrating on US and stop taking in those we really cannot afford and stop wasting our tax dollars on silly "studies" and foreign aid and getting involved in other countries' business and their WARS!

 

[Pete7469]

I just clicked over to CNN to see a clip of Hillary Clinton speaking. She said, "America is great because America is good, and we have to make that true." That's truly what she said. Did she have too many cocktails in the "green room?" I'm not used to hearing her make such incoherently inane remarks.

Must be the first time you've ever listened to her.

I don't mean HEARD her shrill escalating nurse ratchet voice, I mean actually absorbed and pondered what she said. She's been saying utterly inane shit for the last 28 years.

 

[JoeMoma]

Her statement was just fine if not over analyzed. It may be time to listen to some Yogi Berra quotes.

 

[OldLady]

LOL. Her statement made no sense; OP is right. I'm gonna vote for her anyway. So there.

 

[emilynghiem]

Are you a Hillary supporter, Camp?

No, but I see her as the lesser of two evils. I would have supported Kasich but my preference would have been Huntsman. I interpreted her statement to mean that confirming America as good means always doing the right thing and confirming our goodness. A good baseball pitcher has to confirm he is a good pitcher to keep that status. Once his pitching begins to fail he becomes a used to be good pitcher.

It's not about Mrs. Clinton. It's not about whether she's the lesser or greater of two evils or two goods. The thread is about exactly what the OP and title say, nothing more and nothing less. The thread is about the inanity of one thing she said. I was merely incredulous that she made such a truly stupid remark. For whatever anyone thinks about Mrs. Clinton, she's a very smart person and she rarely says things that are outright ridiculous.

You think way to highly of your ability to interpret what you think you heard. Your subjective interpretation is just that, a subjective opinion. As far as my response about whether I supported Clinton or not, that is just what it was, a polite response to an unsolicited question. STFU with your bossy attempts to moderate or lecture about how a thread works. Just because you started the thread doesn't mean you are a boss with unhindered control.

Dear Camp and 320 Years of History
I generally accept and encourage the common courtesy of respecting the consent of the person starting the thread as having more say or ownership of the thread. However, if any person including them contradicts themselves, that invites correction even if it steers off topic, so that's an additional issue.

I do think it is inviting distraction to ask if someone is a supporter of Clinton if that means veering off on a tangent.
The question could be clarified by asking to compare responses of people who support or reject Clinton, but not to judge the person's reasons or motivations for that support or rejection which gets personal and veers off topic.

320 Years of History
I see it more sad than funny at this point. If I were Clinton I'd be crushed at all the work it takes just to come in second. I'd like to set up a whole system that Clinton can manage or govern that is on the equivalent level of VP or President of the Senate. If all the parties had reps similar to the Electoral College of each state, perhaps we could create an inclusive partisan Parliament where minority and diverse input objections grievances and proposed reforms can be received and processed into workable presentable solutions to govt. Maybe some kind of electoral senate, and Clinton could be in charge to help organize it and lead it so she and other candidates representing the minority vote have opportunity to work together demonstrate leadership develop reforms, and gain experience proving programs work before proposing legislation or running for higher offices.

 

[emilynghiem]

We're one of the good guys in the world....

we allow a melting pot in our nation

we take in the refugees who need help, a new beginning

we help the poor

we help other allied Nations that need help, with our Military

We have a Judicial system where we are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

we donate more than any other Nation and their citizens within, to world wide catastrophe victims, we are generous

we say, "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

WE ARE GOOD!

I suppose this is old timer thinking, and I am probably one of these old timers though I am much younger than Hillary...

When I grew up, we all grew up to be proud of America... we KNEW from the bottom of our hearts, we were GOOD, china was Bad, The Soviet Union/russia was Bad.... America was where you could go from rags to riches, if you worked hard enough....America is where you could become all you could be.... America was good.

Not all of this rotten stuff that Trumpsters spout.

I thought that was the point the Trump base was making.

Why are both sides misreading each other as being negative? Both acknowledge the positive impact and traditions America has.

What isn't agreed on is how govt and media are abused to promote dependence instead of independent self govt.

One side believes socializing programs through govt is positive help for the people, the other side objects to this as causing dependence and killing America with unsustainable mismanagement and bureaucratic waste. One side blame rich corporations and depends on govt regulations as the solution, the other side argues its the dependence on govt enabling political abuse and corruption by corporate meddling.

They're both right!

So why not join together where we all agree to keep the good things about America, and team up to stop the corporate abuses of govt destroying America.

 

[320 Years of History]

If I were Clinton I'd be crushed at all the work it takes just to come in second.

Yes. Running for President and coming in second is quite like doing so in a game of chess. LOL