freeman

‘extreme makeover’

lies, lies, lies…..

Glenn Kessler (Washington Post): Another lengthy presidential debate, and more bogus claims and counterclaims to check…..

Rick Perry: “I got lobbied on this issue. I got lobbied by a 31-year-old young lady who had stage-four cervical cancer. I spent a lot of time with her. She came by my office. She talked to me about this program…..”

Perry is being misleading when he discusses his controversial vaccine order. He makes it sound like he was lobbied by a cancer patient, not his former chief of staff working for a drug company, and that’s why he made his decision.

But he has the story backwards. He met Heather Burcham, a 31-year-old woman who died from cervical cancer after contracting HPV, after he signed the mandate ordering vaccinations for children.

Perry: “When we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F- 16s, we chose not to do that.”

Perry gets this story backwards. He may have been focused on the F-16 because it is built by Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas, but India made the decision to not buy F-16s and instead go with another military jet. It was not the U.S. choice. The Obama administration actually lobbied hard for the sale, and the aerospace firm had assured India that its F-16s would be “much more advanced” than the fighters provided to Pakistan.

Romney: “The president went about this all wrong. He went around the world and apologized for America….”.

Regarding the supposed apology, we have repeatedly called this out as a Four-Pinocchio falsehood. A careful review of all of Obama’s overseas statements found that they had been taken out of context or had been misquoted.

More here

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Bill Kristol: The Weekly Standard’s official reaction to last night’s Republican presidential debate: Yikes.

Reading the reactions of thoughtful commentators after the stage emptied, talking with conservative policy types and GOP political operatives later last evening and this morning, we know we’re not alone. Most won’t express publicly just how horrified – or at least how demoralized – they are……

The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” ….

…. no front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry. It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him. And Mitt Romney remains, when all is said and done, a technocratic management consultant whose one term as governor produced Romneycare….

…. we do ask (again!), with a month left before filing deadlines: Is that all there is?

More here – but be warned, it’s right wing territory 😉

race to the bottom

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‘i did not hear those boos’

‘one shot at a decent education’

‘house gop pushes for another shutdown crisis’

Steve Benen: When the House Republicans’ temporary spending measure failed on Wednesday night, the GOP leadership effectively had two broad options. House Speaker John Boehner could move to the middle, stop playing games with emergency disaster relief, pick up Democratic votes, and resolve the dispute. The threat of a government shutdown would disappear, and lawmakers could enjoy a week off.

Or Boehner and Republican leaders could move to the right, make the spending bill worse, pass a plan they know will be rejected, and invite another government shutdown crisis.

Which course did the GOP leadership choose? Take a wild guess.

…. Boehner and Republican leaders followed through on their threat to hold disaster aid hostage …. they deliberately chose to invite yet another standoff that threatens to shut down the government….

… Americans, for whatever reason, have elected ill-tempered, right-wing children to run the House of Representatives, and the result is not only one crisis followed by another, but a government that struggles badly to even complete the most basic of tasks …. they made matters worse on purpose…..

Full post here

‘a lot of reasons not to elect them’

‘no journalist sets off my bullshit alarm like ron suskind’

Jacob Weisberg (Slate): His book about Obama is as spurious as the ones he wrote about Bush……

As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter …. There’s no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind …. Issues of accuracy, fairness, and integrity come up nearly every time Suskind publishes something. Key sources claim they’ve been misrepresented and misquoted, that basic facts are wrong, and that the Pulitzer-winning reporter has misconstrued the larger story as well…..

If you wrote about the Bush Administration, as I did, you soon learned to avoid relying on Suskind’s reporting absent strong independent corroboration. What his three books had in common was the way they grabbed onto some interesting nugget and hyped it into something that, while bait for the news cycle and the bestseller lists, was fundamentally untrue…..

….Suskind has now turned his egregious writing and dubious technique on the Obama administration in his new book, Confidence Men. Once again, his work is strewn with small but telling errors. Here are a few: see link

… his bigger points are equally inaccurate …. He uses two key quotes to support his claim of sexism ….. In Dunn’s case, Suskind spliced her actual words in a way that distorts their meaning, leaving out the crucial phrase “if it weren’t for the president”….

…. The most interesting claim in Suskind’s book is that Geithner blocked the breakup of Citigroup against the wishes of President Obama, exemplifying the supposed problem that “the young president’s authority was being systematically undermined or hedged by his seasoned advisers.” The problem with this tale is that it, too, is plainly wrong.

…. In the book, Suskind claims that the president confirmed his version of the Citi episode in an interview. He has been repeating this claim on his publicity tour. But a transcript of that part of their conversation that the White House Press Office released to me shows nothing of the kind….

Suskind loves disputes like this, as do his publishers, because they sell more books. If the victims of his terrible reporting respond publicly, he wins. But at this point, Suskind should no longer be treated as a “controversial” journalist as much as a disreputable one. His fellow journalists no longer trust him. Readers shouldn’t either.

Full article here

Thank you ‘africa’