XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.politics.usa, alt.politics.obama   
   XPost: alt.politics.media   
   From: weberm@polaris.net   
      
   PolitiFact.com, the Tampa Bay Times's "fact checking" operation, is out   
   with its "Lie of the Year," and it's a doozy of dishonesty: "If you like   
   your health care plan, you can keep it.' "   
      
   Just to show how fast the news can move, back in September this columnist   
   tweeted: "If 'I didn't set a red line' isn't named 'Lie of the Year,'   
   @PolitiFact is a state propaganda agency." "I didn't set a red line"--the   
   reference was to Syria's use of chemical weapons, in case you've   
   forgotten--didn't even make the top 10. Yet our September tweet proved to   
   be mistaken: We cannot fault PolitiFact for the lie it chose instead.   
      
   Which isn't to say PolitiFact doesn't function as a state propaganda   
   agency. For in the past--when it actually mattered, which is to say   
   before ObamaCare became first a law and then a practical   
   reality--PolitiFact vouched for Barack Obama's Big Lie.   
      
   In her lie-of-the-year write-up, PolitiFact's Angie Holan includes the   
   following acknowledgment:   
      
   	In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama's statement   
   	Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and   
   	partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave   
   	some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not   
   	guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was   
   	likely that some private insurers would continue to force people   
   	to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.   
      
   Her "half true" acknowledgment is itself a half-truth. As the Washington   
   Examiner's Sean Higgins noted last month, in October 2008 PolitiFact   
   rated the same statement, from then-candidate Obama, as flatly "true," on   
   the ground that "Obama is accurately describing his health care plan   
   here."   
      
   We're not making this up. PolitiFact actually rated Obama's promise as   
   "true" on the ground that in making the promise, he was making the   
   promise.   
      
   To be sure, there are some epistemological complexities here. The   
   cancellation letters from insurance companies provide concrete proof that   
   Obama's claim was false, evidence that was necessarily lacking in 2008,   
   2009 and 2012. Likewise, the reporting of our colleagues on the news side   
   of The Wall Street Journal established with a previously lacking   
   specificity that Obama told the lie with full knowledge and intent to   
   deceive.   
      
   One might have reasonably suspected, in 2008 and certainly in 2009 and   
   2012, that Obama was lying. But one could not prove it, because it was   
   not yet a factual assertion. In 2008 it was but a promise, which Obama   
   might or might not have intended and might or might not have been able to   
   keep. By 2012, we now know, it was a full-fledged fraud, but exposing it   
   conclusively as such would have required a degree of expertise few   
   journalists have.   
      
   In other words, it's not that PolitiFact was wrong to withhold its jejune   
   "pants on fire" designation from the Obama statement in 2008, 2009 and   
   2012. It was wrong even to make a pretense of "fact checking" a statement   
   that was, at the time, _not a factual claim_. Its past evaluations of the   
   statement were not "fact checks" at all, merely opinion pieces endorsing   
   ObamaCare.   
      
   Lots of people wrote opinion pieces endorsing ObamaCare, and some are   
   still at it. Apart from the substance of the arguments, there's nothing   
   wrong with that. But selling opinion pieces by labeling them "fact   
   checks" is fundamentally dishonest. In this case, it was in the service   
   of the most massive consumer fraud in American history.   
      
   --   
   Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?   
   A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)