The website PolitiFact is going to be truth-squadding the Republican convention speakers this week, delivering verdicts on which claims are "mostly true" and which deserve a "pants on fire" rating. Our advice: Pay no attention to those ratings. PolitiFact can't be trusted to get the story right.
Its recent rulings on Medicare have demonstrated the point thrice over. PolitiFact said that Romney's comment that Obama had "robbed" Medicare of $716 billion to pay for Obamacare was "mostly false." Among its reasons: "The money was not robbed in any literal sense of the word." So if Romney led anyone to believe that Obama had held Medicare at gunpoint and ordered it to hand over its wallet, they can now rest easy, because PolitiFact is on the case.
PolitiFact's other arguments are that Medicare spending will continue to rise and that Obama's spending reductions are "mainly aimed at insurers and hospitals, not beneficiaries." Leave aside the economic naïveté of that argument, and focus instead on the irrelevance. Romney said that Obama had taken money that was going to be spent on Medicare and instead spend it on Obamacare, and suggested that this was a bad thing. In other words: an absolutely true claim, and an opinion based on it. If PolitiFact disagrees with that opinion, let it publish its views under a different name.
PolitiFact zinged Paul Ryan ("mostly false") for saying that Obama "puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors." Those bureaucrats aren't "unaccountable," says PolitiFact, because they can be removed for "malfeasance in office" -- which obviously isn't what Ryan was getting at. "Their recommendations can be rejected by Congress," it continues. Sure. But their recommendations can also become law without any congressional action: a process that can reasonably be described as lacking the accountability some people find worthwhile in lawmaking. PolitiFact complains as well about "bureaucrats": "They become members of the bureaucracy by definition once they join the board. But they won't all start that way."
Confronted with a real falsehood, however, PolitiFact gets soft. An Obama ad had claimed that Paul Ryan's Medicare plan could raise costs for senior citizens by $6,400 -- and PolitiFact rated it "mostly true," and then backed down to "half true." It is wholly false. Ryan's most recent plan was designed so that seniors will never have to pay more for Medicare than they would under Obama's budgets. PolitiFact claims that Obama is giving an accurate characterization of an older version of Ryan's plan. It justifies Obama's attack on this outdated plan because the Congressional Budget Office has not evaluated the new one. Yet no evaluation by the CBO is needed to reject Obama's attack. Ryan's plan guarantees that seniors would always have at least one insurance option that will cost them no more than Medicare does, and at least one option that will leave them ahead.
PolitiFact sometimes rates Democratic claims as false and Republican ones as true, and Republicans on those occasions are often tempted to cite the organization in their defense. They should resist the temptation, or at least preface any comment with an acknowledgment of PolitiFact's limited credibility. (As in, "Even PolitiFact saw through the latest Obama ad.")
PolitiFact has just introduced a new "Settle It!" app which it calls, with amazing gall, an "argument ender." Maybe it's liberal bias that explains PolitiFact's blown calls. Whatever the reason, it is no good at distinguishing between truth and falsehood, which is to say at its professed mission. It should therefore give itself a "pants on fire" rating and shut itself down.
Special Iowahawk Guest Commentary
By Barack Obama, Stargazer-in-Chief
When I learned of the untimely passing of Neil Armstrong I was, like all Americans, deeply moved and saddened. I share your sense of loss for this American hero, even if his fame had been eclipsed by others over the years. But in our shared moment of grief, let us also celebrate his historic accomplishment in becoming the first astronaut eulogized by me, Barack Obama, our nation's historic first African-American president.
For one thing, it inspired me to venture off on a historic twilight photo mission in a Maryland cabbage field. There I stood, gazing into the night sky, providing a dramatic backlit silhouette of inspiration for generations of future space explorers. In the centuries to come, space fans around the world will look to this indelible dorm poster image of Barack Obama, representing humankind's enduring pioneering spirit of exploration, and be spurred to dream their impossible dreams of Obama-like accomplishment.
As I stood looking into the night sky, at the billions upon billions of stars twinkling across their celestial field, amid the clicking of the photographer's shutter, I couldn't help but wonder if there were other life forms - perhaps other civilizations - out there. If so, were they looking back at us? Could they have powerful enough telescopes to see our planet in detail, and to observe the many ways I have worked tirelessly to make Earth a better place? Has my example served as an inspiration to the faraway aliens to work for their own extraterrestrial hope and change?
It was a moment that drove home to me just how significant I am in the grand scheme of things. As a result, I returned to the Oval Office with a renewed spirit to push the envelope, to strike out into the unknown, whether it be the vast expanses of space or the 2013 federal debt ceiling.
Yes, it is true that only a select few of us can ever aspire to be a Neil Armstrong or a Barack Obama. But I hope Neil and I have encouraged you to enrich yourselves from that vast, rich, empty blinking array of stars.
Which reminds me, I have another fundraising trip to George Clooney's house next week.
#1
Long is the line of those fixated with power and domination over their fellow man. Equality under the law is but a stepping stone. Domination and enslavement are the goals.
Did you read the article? It wasn't written by Johann Hari, it was written by Dr. Scott Lively. Admittedly, I haven't followed either mans work closely.
But the gist of the article was the differences in how Hari's article was received by the Left as opposed to Dr. Lively's, when they were both saying pretty much the same thing.
Oh, and are you suggesting that Naziism wasn't a hotbed of homosexual activity? Are you saying there isn't a connection between sexual deviancy and political tyranny? What are you saying?
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
08/28/2012 10:36 Comments ||
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#5
Paging Emperor Caligula to the white courtesy phone.
#6
I'm saying that when I read something on WND I take a pinch of salt.
When I read something by Johann Hari, I taker a bucket of salt.
When I read someone using Johann Hari as an authority on WND I use a sea of salt.
#9
I'm saying that when I read something on WND I take a pinch of salt.
A wise precaution, indeed.
When I read something by Johann Hari, I taker a bucket of salt.
You weren't reading something by Johann
When I read someone using Johann Hari as an authority on WND I use a sea of salt.
Dr. Lively wasn't referencing Johann Hari as an authority. That is why I questioned whether you actually read the article, because you seem to have completely missed its point.
Gay Nazi's = Godwin's law ^ googol.
So you're saying there were no homosexual Nazi's? I don't think Godwin applies here, nice try at deflection though.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
08/28/2012 17:20 Comments ||
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VDH
Put Sean Penn or George Clooney in a socialist Hollywood (one in fact, not in mere name), where the state ran the industry and the profits were divided evenly among actors, crews, and janitors (who is to say that Clooney "built" a film any more than the guy who swept the set after he got in his Mercedes and headed home?), and soon you would have a suddenly conservative Penn or Clooney, netting about $70,000 a year before taxes and without the wherewithal to jet to Caracas or hold a fund-raiser in Geneva -- and furious that they were making the same as the guy who swept the set (as in most can sweep sets, but not all can be Sean Penns).
Affluence and poverty are the twins of liberalism. The former allows one to both dream and to escape that dream. The latter provides the fodder for liberal artillery.
#1
Affluence and poverty are the twins of liberalism.
More like the hypocrisy of liberalism. Affluence is OK for the elite but not for the regular folks. Liberalism has just about wiped out the middle class. Freedom, the desire to change, and the will to take risks can lift a person out of poverty.
The Declaration of Independence stated: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
#3
But there are guarantees.....that those who scheme to take your money will conspire with those who make laws. Witness the birth of big government tyranny dressed up as social justice and other such nonsense. Marki Levin in Liberty and Tyranny has it right, the essence of the whole issue between Progressives (Statists)and Conservatives is the limits on "private property" rights. Robbery is theft, but "taxing" beyond the enumerated powers of government contained in the contract (Constitution) is tyranny. Where do you think Chamnp wants to take us on the range of this dynamic?.....Anyone...Bueller?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
