| Fact checking the "Fact Checkers" | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 1 2012, 08:06 AM (1,119 Views) | |
| Joan Foster | Sep 1 2012, 08:06 AM Post #1 |
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The Obama campaign is lashing out at Paul Ryan, claiming that his fantastic convention speech last night was packed with falsehoods and lies. Here's their hysterical response video: To the surprise of no one, the ad's "rebuttals" are misleading and wrong themselves. Point by point: (1) They begin with video of CNN reporters discussing accusations of Ryan's "lies." This is proof that the Obama campaign sent out a lot of angry emails, and nothing else. (2) Medicare - Sorry, guys, but it is 100 percent true that Obamacare raided $716 Billion from Medicare to pay for itself. It does cut benefits to current seniors. And Paul Ryan's plan took the president's Medicare "savings," and re-routed them back into Medicare to shore up the program. Mitt Romney's plan would undo those cuts altogether. Obama took those cuts and used them to pay for Obamacare. He has admitted this on camera: (3) The GM Plant - Part of the factory Ryan mentioned was shut down under Bush, despite the initial GM bailout (which Senator Obama supported). The plant finally fully closed in April of 2009, during Obama's presidency, as this report clearly states. Obama's problem is that he showed up and made empty promises to pander for votes. Ryan never said Obama was personally responsible for the plant's closure, but he accurately stated that it closed down within a year of candidate Obama's hope-filled speech and remains closed today. Obama goes on and on about "saving" the auto industry and his economic recovery. That boarded-up Janesville plant tells a different story. (4) The Stimulus - Pointing out that Paul Ryan asked that his district receive a slice of a giant, wasteful pie after it was passed -- and despite his opposition -- is at worst an instance of hypocrisy. It does not disprove anything that Ryan said in his speech, and it does not change the empirical fact that Barack Obama's borrowed stimulus has utterly failed based on the metrics for success Obama himself set out for it. (5) The debt commission - What Ryan said is absolutely correct. The Obama ad quotes Chris Wallace, who notes that Ryan was on that commission and voted against it. True. He refused to abide the section maintaining Obamacare, and voted no on its final findings. Still, he was intimately involved in the group's deliberations and proposed solutions. Not fully happy with the final outcome, he went on to craft two budgets of his own, with numerous elements based on the Simpson-Bowles framework. The commission's Democratic co-chairman (Bowles of Simpson-Bowles) has praised Ryan's proposals to the hilt. Barack Obama, who convened the commission in the first place after deriding commissions on the campaign trail, completely ignored its recommendations and proceeded to propose to wildly reckless, debt-busting budgets that received a total of zero votes in either house of Congress. Correctly asserting that Ryan opposed the final Simpson-Bowles recommendations is no way absolves Obama for his demonstrable abdication of leadership on these issues. It's more smoke and mirrors -- and more petty Obama blame, another central theme of Ryan's address. (6) Chris Matthews called the speech "nasty." Stop the presses! If this is all they've got, it's no wonder they're freaking out. Paul Ryan told the truth about Barack Obama, and the president's campaign can't handle it. Edited by Joan Foster, Sep 1 2012, 08:10 AM.
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| Joan Foster | Sep 1 2012, 08:11 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.examiner.com/article/top-ten-media-fact-checker-lies Demonstrating yet again that liberals cannot compete on a level playing field and must constantly resort to scamming, intimidating or coercing the American people into supporting their widely-rejected ideas, the left's Lie, Cheat and Steal 2012 campaign has decided to completely immerse itself in the sleazy practice of hiding non-stop DNC smears and propaganda behind the fake mask of neutral media "fact-checking." Here are the top ten most egregious examples of media "fact-checkers" like Politifact and FactCheck.org peddling blatantly erroneous DNC misinformation: Video: Limbaugh: Democrat Fact Checkers Were Wrong Ryan Was Right On GM Claim 10) Smearing Mitt Romney as a liar for correctly noting that Obama had not gone to Israel. 9) Lyingly insisting that Obamacare will guarantee coverage for more than 30 million uninsured (fixing a 'problem' that never existed in the first place), when even the CBO admits it will leave 30 million uninsured with zero coverage. 8) "Debunking" the claim, repeated recently by Paul Ryan, that Obama has added more to the national debt in less than four years than every other president in U.S. history, by misrepresenting his argument as being that Obama added more than every president in U.S. history combined, and then pretending to set the record straight. For the record, Obama did add more to the national debt in his first 19 months in office than every president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan combined. 7) "Debunking" Paul Ryan's criticism of Obama's utterly failed "stimulus" program by citing the CBO's ridiculously fraudulent "report" on how many jobs were "created or saved" and then misrepresenting only the absolute upper limit of the wildly-inflated estimate as the official number of jobs created. 6) Blasting a conservative advocacy group as dishonest for correctly claiming that Obamacare could cost up to $2 trillion, when even the CBO's own estimates put the number at $1.76 trillion...just for the first few years. 5) Falling over each other to attack Paul Ryan as a liar for correctly pointing out that Obama gutted Medicare by $716 billion...a fact even Obama himself is on the record openly admitting. 4) Hysterically excoriating Mitt Romney for correctly observing that Obama stripped the work requirement from the wildly popular and successful welfare reform bill of 1996. 3) "Debunking" GOP arguments criticizing the left's astronomical explosion of federal deficit spending...by hilariously insisting that Obama has increased the deficit less than any modern president. This flies in the face of all known data on the national deficit. 2) Vilifying Sarah Palin as this scandalous fear-mongering liar for correctly asserting that Obamacare would give the Federal Government the power to ration health care for seniors (i.e., 'death panels'). 1) Indignantly condemning the accurate description of Obamacare by conservatives as a government takeover, smearing it as "simply not true," "inaccurate," and even "ridiculously false," when all the evidence shows unmistakably that there is no other way to describe it. Liberals have mastered this game of using fake or laughably biased "experts" and "fact-checkers" to silence whichever debate they can't win on fair terms at the moment. They did it during the Obamacare debate. They do it routinely with global warming. And they also regularly conspire with journalists to prop up their arguments with bogus propaganda that pretends to set the record straight. But the good news is that conservatives are no longer putting up with this all-out war on the idea of open, honest debate. As Breitbart.com recently highlighted, conservatives poured out of the woodwork to confront the abrupt avalanche of media "fact-checker" lies, smears and misinformation that was unleashed on Paul Ryan recently after his masterful acceptance speech at the GOP convention on Wednesday. We finally seem to have learned that the left is an insatiably greedy, dishonest, self-serving monster that stands for nothing and will do anything for Democrat power...and that the only way to stop it is to thoroughly confront its relentless scams, smear campaigns and blatant abuses of power vigorously and immediately, as they are being launched. Edited by Joan Foster, Sep 1 2012, 08:12 AM.
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| Joan Foster | Sep 1 2012, 08:14 AM Post #3 |
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We not only need a thread on this.. we need to be proactive. We need to make sure our personal email lists receive rebuttal to this media "fact check" nonsense. We need to be the "liestoppers." Edited by Joan Foster, Sep 1 2012, 08:47 AM.
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| wingedwheel | Sep 1 2012, 08:55 AM Post #4 |
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Democrat and their opertives lie and make stuff up. The media takes it as gospel once again. And like Clint I am crying because there is 23 million people unemployed and this is all the democrats got. |
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| Baldo | Sep 1 2012, 08:55 AM Post #5 |
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The economic facts are simple. 47 million on food stamps 23 million unemployed (U-3) . Real underemployment as high 50 million(U-6) 5.5 Trillion Deficit in the Obama Administration for his term 40% plus of current Federal Govt spending is Borrowed money & HAS to be repaid Gasoline Prices have doubled since Obama took office We have operated for three years without a Federal Budget Worse yet is our future. The deficit under a future Obama Administration will continue to grow as we degrade further into economic oblivion. By any measure Obama is an Epic Failure as the CEO of the USA. His vision for America is quite evident by his performance. Stay on Target with our friends and family. Obama & his Administration do not want your attention on this. They & the MSM will do anything to distract you. Edited by Baldo, Sep 1 2012, 09:05 AM.
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| wingedwheel | Sep 1 2012, 09:02 AM Post #6 |
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Bravo Baldo! Seriously this is a weak recover at best. Some people think we are going to slide back into recession. We might also get another downgrade. Ryan and Romney are not the problem. |
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| kbp | Sep 1 2012, 11:38 AM Post #7 |
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It is my opinion that they look like complete idiots going after this topic. Medicare is funded from a 2.9% income payroll tax, which will jump to 3.8% on all income >$200k after 1/1/13. With the baby-boomers adding to the number of those covered and health costs going up, that increase does not even cover what is needed to keep the program running. Barry & Crew, mostly Harry Reid, stole the $716 billion from Medicare by with some convoluted plan to “save” that much over time. Of course the plan numbers are imaginary, but even if you go with them we are still stuck with a HUGE problem. After Medicare runs out of funds in 8 years, or whenever, the imaginary savings translates into nothing more than a reduction in the deficit necessary to pay for Medicare. Then you MUST face reality. Do we face covering a shortage in Medicare to treat the retired, or Do we cover a shortage in Obamacare because there are no Medicare funds to save? That’s like trying to determine if a gap in a circular line that falls short because of the side that runs clockwise or the side that runs counter clockwise. My answer is it simply does not complete the circle; you must make the area encompassed smaller and/or find (borrow!) more line. OT I wonder why nobody touched on the tax reductions Barry & Crew passed? Stealing from SS with the temporary reduction in payroll taxes is another hole (incomplete circle) to fill later. |
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| Baldo | Sep 1 2012, 12:12 PM Post #8 |
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People have to understand what is happening in DC and what has happened for the last 3-4 decades The argument that Medicare isn't going broke is disingenuous at best. It is actually deceitful. The revenues from Medicare taxes go into the US Treasury as an inflow, the same goes for Social Security. Does it go into a Trust Fund as they say? Well not exactly. That money is loaned to the US Govt General Spending to meet current spending demands. Currently we have been running deficits over 1.2 Trillion a year. Those Medicare & Social Security Trust Funds receives a bond at an extremely low interest rate. Great huh, they get our tax revenue to use now and promise to repay it back for the future beneficiaries of Social Security & Medicare. What do we get in return? Some bonds locked in a safe that the US Govt promises to repay. These are called Intergovernmental Transfers. They are Debts that have to be repaid back to the Trust Fund when those funds are needed. But what happens in the future if we start having trouble selling those bonds to finance current expenses. BTW where are these bonds kept? Social Security bonds stored in filing cabinet in downtown Parkersburg, W.Va. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2010/03/14/social-check.html Welcome to the future & the world of Obama Administration & Uncle Ben now. Truthfully it has been going on for a while. Remember that claim of the Clinton Administration & Newt that the budget was balanced in the late 90's? Hogwash! They didn't count Intergovernmental transfers. It wasn't balanced. As long as Govt Spending didn't overwhelm our ability to borrow the scam of kicking the can down the road worked. Currently the Fed has to buy newly issued US Treasury bonds in ever larger amounts to finance our current expense because the private & world market isn't buying them as much as needed.. Great so the Fed buys bonds to finance the US Govt to pay the old bonds already issued. Current standings as of July 31 2012 from the Treasury in Millions of Dollars. Total Public Debt Outstanding ................................. 11,122,282 Intergovernmental Transfers............................4,810,953 Total Debt.......................................................................15,933,235 http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2012/opds072012.pdf It's Hinky Dinky Accounting & how our Govt finances. Every once in a while somebody complains and out trots some governmental economist who explains the full faith in the US Govt's ability to repay and those bonds are really assets so the Trust Fund isn't insolvent. BS! Nobody gives a crap in the MSM, nobody cares on Wall Street, few care in DC. Paul Ryan is one of the good guys. He gets it. Edited by Baldo, Sep 1 2012, 02:40 PM.
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| kbp | Sep 1 2012, 12:57 PM Post #9 |
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I moved this over from the RNC thread.
If only I had more time! Before I even get to the "30 instances" cited there, the introduction seems to hold the Dem's claim of false facts they just can't get past. ...Kevin Drum was thinking along the same lines responding to Romney's lie on welfare policy, which the candidate has vowed to continue repeating, even after it's been proven false.
From the HHS: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families - Information Memorandum
State of Nevada / Dept HHS Director's Office (Page 2, 5th bullet)
That's what Barry is doing for the welfare work program passed under Slick Willie. It's a little like borrowing more money to pay back later, in their efforts to delay that "work" thingy another SIX MONTHS. Lord knows, if they're on welfare they'll need SIX MONTHS of 24/7 time allotted to get their furniture arranged properly. As time permits, I'll address each of the 30 instances cited. I'll move this post over to the fact check thread. ADD: I'd think you'd want or have to get an income (job) squared away before you could concentrate on the "household" fulltime. Edited by kbp, Sep 1 2012, 07:40 PM.
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| Joan Foster | Sep 1 2012, 04:10 PM Post #10 |
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Bryan White, who co-founded PolitiFactBias, compiled a tally showing PolitiFact had assigned 119 "pants on fire" ratings for Republicans and conservatives, as opposed to only 13 for liberal or Democratic claims. "In considering all rulings where a claim is found untrue (False and Pants on Fire rulings combined), two things are obvious: First, that PolitiFact thinks Republicans are wrong far more often than Democrats and, second, when Republicans are wrong, they're often said to be lying, while Democrats are just mistaken," Jon Cassidy wrote in a lengthy analysis at Human Events. In one rating, PolitiFact rated whether Romney was right to say, "Our navy is smaller than it's been since 1917. Our air force is smaller and older than any time since 1947." PolitiFact conceded the claim was true but gave Romney a "pants on fire" rating because the claim was "meaningless," "glib" and "preposterous." "You can believe that Republicans lie more than three times as often as Democrats. Or you can believe that, at a minimum, PolitiFact is engaging in a great deal of selection bias, to say nothing of pushing tendentious arguments of its own," Mark Hemingway posited at The Weekly Standard in 2011. "At the most basic level, the media's new 'fact-checkers' remain obdurately unwilling to let opinions simply be opinions." The Atlantic's Clive Crook also criticized fact-checkers in 2011, saying, "whether they realize it or not, PolitiFact and other fact-checking outfits rarely confine themselves to checking facts. They're judging claims purportedly based on facts or interpretation of facts. Not the same." "The giveaway is their grading system," Crook wrote. "You check a fact by asking whether it is true or false. If true or false is not good enough to assess the thing you are checking, then the thing you are checking is not a fact. PolitiFact has a six-point grading system: true, mostly true, half true, mostly false, false, and pants on fire. These are grades you might apply to bundles of facts or claims based (with more or less validity) on bundles of facts, but not to facts." http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765600809/Fact-checkers-tackle-Mitt-Romneys-RNC-speech-fact-checker-checkers-caution-readers.html?pg=5 |
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| Joan Foster | Sep 1 2012, 05:06 PM Post #11 |
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If you missed Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week and tried to play catch-up the next morning, you could be forgiven for concluding that nothing the Wisconsin congressman said was true. Twelve hours after the speech, Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo, popular among journalists, asked: “Will the Paul Ryan Lying Thing Break Through in the Mainstream Press?” Um, yes. It would. The mainstream media “fact checked” Paul Ryan’s speech with alacrity. At the Washington Post, for instance, four of the five most-read articles were, in effect, accusations that Ryan had lied. The New York Times published an article under the headline: “Ryan’s Speech Contained a Litany of Falsehoods.” The Associated Press accused Ryan of taking “factual shortcuts.” The Week magazine published not only “The media coverage of Paul Ryan’s speech: 15 Euphemisms for Lying,” but also “Why Paul Ryan thought he could get away with lying: 6 theories.” Here’s the funny thing about most of these articles: They fail to cite a single fact that Ryan misstated or lie that he told. In most cases, the self-described fact-checks are little more than complaints that Ryan failed to provide context for his criticism of Barack Obama. For example, virtually every one of these articles included a complaint about Ryan’s comments on Obama and entitlement reform. In accusing Obama of failing to lead on entitlements, Ryan noted that Obama had ignored the findings of the Simpson-Bowles Commission that the president himself had empaneled. The complaint: Ryan did not mention that he had served on the commission and voted against its findings. Could Paul Ryan have gone out of his way to disclose his role? Of course. Does his failure to do so constitute a “lie”? Hardly. There’s an additional irony here. None of those accusing Ryan of omitting important context noted in their reports that Ryan, both before and after voting against Simpson-Bowles, authored comprehensive and detailed plans to address entitlements and debt—something that might be considered important context for their critiques of Ryan. Most of the fact checking focused on a passage about a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan’s hometown. This, allegedly, is the big lie: My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it—especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.” That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact-checker, accused Ryan of lying. “In his acceptance speech, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan appeared to suggest that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin,” Kessler wrote. “That’s not true. The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.” There are two things wrong with this. Ryan didn’t claim that Obama was responsible for the closing of the GM plant, he faulted Obama for failing to do what he’d suggested he’d do: Save it. It’s an important distinction. If Ryan’s intent had been to deceive, he wouldn’t have introduced his critique noting that “we were about to lose a major factory” when Obama told workers, “this plant will be here for another 100 years.” Second, Kessler was simply wrong to claim “the plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.” The plant was producing trucks as late as April 2009, several months after Obama was sworn in. On February 19, a month after Obama’s inauguration, the Janesville Gazette reported on the imminent closure: “General Motors will end medium-duty truck production in Janesville on April 23, four months to the day after the plant stopped building full-size sport utility vehicles. About 100 employees associated with the line learned of the layoffs Wednesday.” It’s true that GM, in the summer of 2008, had announced its intention to put the plant on standby. But if announcing something accomplished it, I would have long ago announced that I’d lost 30 pounds. The plant was not, in fact, “closed in December 2008.” More here.. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/assault-paul-ryan-ii_651387.html Edited by Joan Foster, Sep 1 2012, 05:07 PM.
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| Mason | Sep 1 2012, 05:30 PM Post #12 |
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Parts unknown
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. There are the facts, laid bare. . |
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| kbp | Sep 1 2012, 07:52 PM Post #13 |
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The 2 links from that article: The WP BLOG where they cite Biden as their source. and The Maddow BLOG where Maddow links to herself(!) and others, mainly a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. The BIG news she has there is that the Reupblicans were set, after secret meetings, to not cooperate. Think about that, the Democrats had super majority, and the secret plan is to not cooperate! 'All those in favor of raising the deficit burdened budget by another $400 billion, raise your right hand' 'All those in favor of raising the deficit burdened budget by giving Barry $768 billion to waste, at a cost of $816 billion overall, raise your right hand' Yep, those darn Republicans aren't cooperating. See how they break tradition! WAIT! They did vote along to raise the debt ceiling. Edited by kbp, Sep 1 2012, 07:56 PM.
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| kbp | Sep 1 2012, 08:04 PM Post #14 |
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Link from that article: The Maddow BLOG ...she seems to like herself as a source. Evidently Barry can scoop ice cream and had a few short jobs at various law firms. Other than that trivial nothingness of a career in the private sector, where you need to actually accomplish something, she wastes the instance noted to merely argue that it doesn't matter ...not that it is inaccurate. |
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| kbp | Sep 1 2012, 08:27 PM Post #15 |
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No links sourcing herself or any others here. Barry's own words:
Skipping past all the condemnation his cronies have directed at Romney's SUCCESS at Bain, it's kinda hard to deny that one is "attacking SUCCESS" when they point blank tell you they want to take gains from your SUCCESS, spread it around, and belittle your spirit in what you accomplished. |
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