Wednesday, November 19, 2014

PolitFact & Boneless Bananas


"If you're trying to change minds and influence people it's probably not a good idea to say that virtually all elected Democrats (and enablers) are liars, but what the hell." TRKOF




'PolitiFact’; Son of SNOPES

.. and other scams

The Tampa Tribune has set itself up as the arbiter of political speech through its PolitiFact.com feature that some naively take seriously.  Based upon their self-proclaimed excellence at determining the truth, the only responsible thing to do is to hold their self-described “Lie of the Year” over the past half-decade up to similar scrutiny with the benefit of time.

Finally, PolitiFact woke up in 2013 to the unavoidably obvious lie of the half-decade, President Barack Obama’s promise that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” A lie that was obvious to anyone who read the August 2010 Labor Department regulations on employer health plans.

So while PolitiFact got their Lie of the Year correct in 2013, it was at least three years after the Obama Administration itself revealed the deception – too late to have any real meaning.
In 2009, the publication declared that Sarah Palin’s assertion that Obamacare would lead to government “death panels” as the lie or the year.  Of course, subsequent review of the law reveals that the law does set up a Medicare board that makes determinations over which treatments can be provided and which cannot.  This refusal to fund certain treatments which might be life-saving or life-extending due to a cost benefit analysis clearly makes one wonder if PolitiFact issued an apology to Governor Palin for this mischaracterization of her death panel statement.

In December 2010, PolitiFact.com decided that the contention that Obamacare represented, “a government takeover of healthcare” was their Lie of the Year. Given Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s recently discovered admission that the system is designed to drive out private employer health plans within twenty years, and the knowledge that government regulations dictate what treatments can be received due to coverage terms, it is hard to hold on to the illusion that Obamacare was anything but a government takeover of health care. 

When you add in the requirements that patient information be supplied by doctors to the government, and the inability to keep your doctor if you like him/her, the case that this was a government takeover of the health care system is hard to refute, even if they use private carriers to deliver the actual services.  The only question is can PolitiFact get four Pinocchios for its Lie of the Year Award for 2010?

PolitiFact actually got their Lie of the Year right in 2011.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) deliberately mischaracterized the Paul Ryan budget proposal as meaning that, “Republicans voted to end Medicare.”  The Ryan proposal clearly left Medicare in place, albeit with some cost changes to make it more affordable  ... [Full 'PolitiFact’s tainted lie of the year']

  Boneless banana; sigh.

2 comments:

Jon said...

boneless banana ... which one? McConnel or Boner?

Billll said...

Next thing you know they'll be selling boneless crickets.

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