Coming off what may be a record week in the history of fact checking, Bernie goes for a blow out. In less than a week, Sanders has garnered 10 pinocchios from the Washington Post and a ‘false’ and ‘mostly false’ from Politifact. In just 5 days. But that wasn’t good enough for Sanders. He decided…
Tag: lies
Romney’s Own Website Refutes His Claim About Tax Cuts For The Rich
Tax cuts for the rich are unpopular, unaffordable and have repeatedly failed to deliver any measurable economic benefits to the rest of the country. So it’s no wonder that during last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney didn’t want to embrace a policy of massive new tax cuts for the rich. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,”…
The Biggest Lie Of The Debate? Romney’s False Claim About Clean Energy Bankruptcies
“And these [clean energy] businesses, many of them have gone out of business, I think about half of them, of the ones have been invested in, have gone out of business.” The New York Times, one of the few mainstream organizations to follow up on this claim, called Romney’s comment a “gross overstatement.” Actually,…
Romney Goes On Offense, Pays For It In First Wave Of Fact Checks
Here is a sample of what’s being reported about the truthiness of what Obama and Romney had to say Wednesday night on stage at the University of Denver: — One of the biggest disputes was over tax cuts. Obama argued that Romney’s plan to stimulate the economy includes a tax cut totaling $5 trillion…
The Problem of Conservative Intellectuals
Alas, all of the alleged crimes these conservative “intellectuals” attributed to Obama and the MSM were imaginary. The ineptitude of the Romney campaign—as well as their own commitment to the ignorance (and ideological obsessions) of their respective constituencies—has led them to make themselves appear ridiculous before the world. Television and radio bookers, university lecture agents,…
Mitt Romney: Barack Obama may lie in debates
“This is a campaign which I think will come into focus as the debates occur,” Romney said, according to a transcript released by ABC of Romney’s sit-down with “Good Morning America’s” George Stephanopoulos. “The president got a bit of a bump after his convention. I got a bit of a bump after ours. It’s going…
How Muslim Unrest Has Created a Crisis for Romney
That the left heaped scorn on Romney’s gambit came as no surprise. But the right reacted almost as harshly—with former aides to John McCain, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan creating an on-the-record chorus of disapproval, while countless other Republican officials and operatives chimed in anonymously. “This is worse than a Lehman moment,” says a…
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America’s federal borrowing. “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation,” he declared. “Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.” Our collective debt is…
Republicans, the Post-Truth Party
The acceptance speeches by Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney at the GOP convention were only slightly more grounded in reality than Clint Eastwood’s conversation with an empty chair. Ryan is infamous for his pack of lies, from the attempt to blame President Obama for the closing of a Wisconsin GM factory that began shutting down…
Since When Did Paul Ryan Become a Liar?
Ryan seems to have fallen victim to circumstances he didn’t quite foresee. The Romney campaign has spent the last several weeks practically daring the national press corps to call out its lies. Well beyond the usual exaggerations of a national campaign, Romney has built its entire message around two accusations — “you didn’t build that”…
How The Media Soft-Plays Paul Ryan’s Lies: ‘Factual Shortcuts,’ ‘Perceived Inaccuracies,’ ‘Questionable Claims’
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters…
Romneys Top Six I Know I Am But So Are You Moments
Mitt Romney has a way of deflecting criticism that is uniquely his. Where most politicians tend to pivot to another topic if they don’t like what someone is accusing them of, Romney takes an I’m-rubber-you’re-glue approach to attacks, accepting them as true but then simultaneously making the same accusation of his opponent. Just today, the…
Want to read the over 300 lies Romney has told in the past few months?
For those who are watching the 2012 presidential race closely, Mitt Romney’s penchant for falsehoods is hard to miss. Michael Cohen summarized the issue nicely this week in a piece for The Guardian: Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it’s pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different…
House and Senate Unanimously Reject Obama Budgets — Or Do They?
While the Sessions and Mulvaney bills put forward the same topline numbers as those in the president’s budget, neither offered any specifics. The Sessions legislation was 56 pages long; actual budgets are closer to 2,000 pages long. Thus, a White House official said, the Sessions proposal was a “shell that could be filled with a…
ALEC to Right-Wing Bloggers: We Need Your Help!
As PR Watch reported, Caitlyn Korb, ALEC’s director of external relations, told attendees at a Heritage Foundation “Bloggers Briefing” on Tuesday that the campaign against ALEC was “part of a wider effort to shut all of us down.” She asked the bloggers for “any and all institutional support” in ALEC’s fight against progressive groups, especially…
Why Hasn’t the Right Condemned Ted Nugent and Allen West’s Comments?
Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief David Corn and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson joined host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball to discuss the controversy over incendiary remarks made against the Democrat party by US Rep. Allen West and right-wing rocker Ted Nugent. At a town hall meeting in Florida last week, Rep. West told voters…
Romney Adviser Struggles To Defend Campaign’s Major Economic Claim
Gillespie doesn’t even attempt to defend the substance of the claim because there is little substance to it. The 92 percent figure obscures the fact that many more men than women lost jobs in the recession, as Wallaces forces Gillespie to admit. The key is timing. Men tend to be concentrated in industries that were…
This American Lie: Is It O.K. For Climate Science Deniers To Lie And For Journalists To Quote Those Lies?
Revkin’s headline was “When Narrative Comes Before Truth.” Obviously that isn’t Gleick. It is, however, the Heartland Institute. As several leading climate scientists have explained, it is Heartland who spends their time “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals.” Who is guilty of wanting their narrative to trump scientific truth? That would be…
GOP Construction of a Fictional “Obama” Has Taken a Turn to the Absurd
Contrary to the fictional stories told by Republicans, the president has cut taxes (taxes are lower under Obama than they were under Ronald Reagan, and the tax burden on Americans is the lowest it’s been since 1950), raised the military budget, been more aggressive in fighting Islamist militants than his predecessor (bin Laden and numerous…
The Hannity Challenge: How To Make The Case That The Economy Is Improving
Sean Hannity pushed the myth that President Obama has made the economy worse, arguing that you could not “make the case” that it has improved during Obama’s watch. In fact, when Obama took office, he inherited an economy that was shrinking faster than it had in 50 years and that had lost 2 million jobs…