I wonder what Kaosium thinks of the Priorities USA Action anti-Romney
attack ad featuring Joe Soptic. The Romney campaign complained about it mightily, calling it dishonest. Fact Checkers also agreed that is was dishonest:
The same fact checkers that Kaosium is now complaining about.
Even I think it was a low blow, and yet nothing in the ad was "technically" untrue. He never actually said that Romney killed his wife. The ad just gave that general impression. It seems if we applied Kaosium's standards, however, the ad would pass muster.
It looks like they did a better job then. On
this one they blew it, perhaps because it appeared to me there was almost an
instantaneous accusation through a misrepresentation of what Ryan said. I was watching PBS and I don't recall seeing anything about it there, but I switched over to one of the obnoxious political channels and they were already talking about it being a 'lie' and that couldn't have been much more than an hour after the end of the speech. They might have just 'followed' the herd along, perhaps confirmation bias blinding them to the actual words he said and the context.
On the 'Paul Ryan' page they put it this way:
"Says President Barack Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing."
First off he
didn't say that! Secondly even if he had that wouldn't be an entirely unfair charge, being as Obama
did go there and say that was the sort of thing government could help with and that the plant could be there in a hundred years. What the hell do you suppose the people who lived there might have thought? That plant is a big part of their community, there's no real reason to go to Janesville
and to the plant itself and say something like that if you're not at least trying to suggest voting for Obama would keep the factory open, especially the way he put it. From that site here's what Obama said:
President Obama 2/08 Polifact site said:
"And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your president."
Well, I guess government wasn't there to support us and didn't give the assistance to re-tool and make the transition, so I guess the plant isn't going to be there in a hundred years! I guess it's too bad Obama doesn't have anything to do with what the government does, nor ever had a chance to talk to GM about it either!
To add insult to irony they (apparently) turned down those green energy proposals to the Energy department and suggested Paul Ryan was a liar for daring to forward the proposals! Or maybe they (Obama Administration) just said he was hypocritical and now the 'fact-checkers' have upped the ante to 'liar' because they're having too much fun like they did on 'journolist' last time.
At any rate here's how it gets 'rated.'
Polificact said:
Our rating
Ryan said Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing. But we don't see evidence he explicitly made such a promise -- and more importantly, the Janesville plant shut down before he took office.
We rate Ryan's statement False.
First off, again,
Ryan didn't say that at the convention!
Paul Ryan Convention Speech 8/29/12 said:
"My home state voted for President Obama," he said. "When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.
"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
He's talking about the 'recovery,' using something close to home as an illustration. If Obama
had never even shown up the GM plant in Janesville would be the
obvious thing a Congressman from Janesville would use to illustrate that. Look how it reads if you just take any reference to Candidate Obama's appearance:
"My home state voted for President Obama," he said. "When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. (...) Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
That Obama happened to show up there and talk about government helping and it being there a hundred years from now is just
irony especially as he ended up getting that government job (a good one too I heard!) and talking to GM about their future as well. Ryan could have hammered him harder for that and been within the bounds of the typical political debate without dishonest semantic parsings of statements and misrepresentations of what was said trying to make Ryan out as a 'liar.'
Polifact said:
Our rating
Ryan said Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing. But we don't see evidence he explicitly made such a promise -- and more importantly, the Janesville plant shut down before he took office.
Again,
'most importantly' (
)that the Janesville plant didn't actually shut down until after Obama took office, but that still doesn't matter as that's not what Ryan was getting at. That's just proof of how sloppy and/or dishonest this 'fact-check' was. A more relevant point is the plant
is still there! It didn't just go away, they didn't bulldoze it or anything, that would have cost money too! Just because it closed doesn't mean it couldn't re-open, (making anything--maybe to do with green government jobs!) thus making a huge deal about when it closed is
moronic--especially when they got it wrong and tried to pretend Paul Ryan 'lied' about it. It's been four years now and it still sits there, people would go to work there even now (I
promise! )
doing anything, even making cars again even though few hold out hope for that.
Polificact said:
We rate Ryan's statement False.
This 'fact check' is so incompetent you almost hope they're corrupt.
