Media Bias–Newsweek Style
Check out this headline at Newsweek: “FACT CHECK: Obama charges against McCain debatable”:
Democrat Barack Obama’s “closing argument” speech Monday included a sweeping accusation against GOP rival John McCain: “Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy.”
But the charge is debatable — McCain has several ideas that are different than Bush’s policy, which he touched on as recently as a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
So, it’s not really debatable as much as it’s a lie, right? But leave it to the loyal Obama media to add some “doubt” that the Messiah might be wrong.
A better headline might have read, “FACT CHECK: Obama charges against McCain so facile they might turn your brain to mush”. Even if I accept the rediculous idea that McCain and Bush have never differed, it’s completely irrelevant. Tell me about how you and he differ, not the guy who can’t run again.
Archived in: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Economy, George Bush, John McCain, Media Bias, Presidential ElectionOctober 27, 2008 at 8:00 pm | Trackback
40 comments
Hey, man, found your site while gloomily searching for Obama pics. Good luck to you over there in blue country East from us in blue country, MN. If you want a laugh with one week to go check out the humor here.
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/.....6077#46077
Good luck and God speed.
FactCheck.org is very conservative (not the political meaning) when it comes to declaring something false or a lie.
In fact, they *never* declare something a lie. Why? Because in their own words, to know if someone’s lying you have to be inside their head. They could just be wrong.
But even so, politicians tend to use enough weasel words or opinion-based words to avoid that fully. The key word here is ‘major’. Whether the differences are major is an opinion, and therefore can’t be even marked as “wrong”.
FactCheck.org is a great resource, and has numerous examples of misleading, half-truth, and false statement from both candidates and groups on both sides.
“In fact, they *never* declare something a lie. Why? Because in their own words, to know if someone’s lying you have to be inside their head. They could just be wrong.”
Then they are saying that there is no objective truth, that everything is merely a differnece of opinion. At that point, what is the use of debate and discussion of the issues.
As to Snoozeweak’s title wording, it is obviously meant to convey that Barry’s charges have some valid points rather than being untruthful (i.e. old-fashioned lies)
Not exactly. They declare things false. Meaning there is a truth and this is not it.
They just simply say that in order to be “lying”, you have to be saying a falsehood knowingly. Its impossible to know for sure if the person is knowingly saying something false, if they mistakenly believe it, or if they’re just writing what someone wrote down for them.
On the contrary, the existing of factcheck.org is a big help in keeping check of the actual facts and truths behind a matter. But politicians say what they say and get away with it because there’s often a grain of truth in it, horribly misused or taken with extreme assumptions. FactCheck is often very honest with an explanation of the questionable assumptions or tenuous connections that a candidate is using to back up their ‘facts’.
Almost no statement consists of a single verifiable or falsifiable “fact”. All political dialogue is the judicious use of facts, non-facts, conclusons and distortions, exaggerations and evasions and denials. Fact Check must be supernatural in its ability to distill these constructions to their basics, while ignoring wilfull mendacity.
Moreover, if as fred says, “…the existence of factcheck.org is a big help in keeping check of the actual facts and TRUTHS behind a matter”, then avoiding the subjective matter of untruth, or LIES, is simply a conceit.
Factcheck might see itself as above the process of evaluating honor or truthfulness or differing perceptions..and a little snooty purity does no harm…but the fact of dishonesty remains. Because they choose not to recognize it, makes no difference at all.
I don’t understand why the Republicans have been so uncharacteriscally quiet in their attacks on Obama? Are they afraid of the biased media calling them racist? Probably. If I were McCain, I would be screaming from the rooftops that voting for Obama would be voting for socialism. Socialism will be the death of this once great country of ours. Just look at what it’s done to Europe.
Everybody:
Your answer is, they’re Republicans, a weak and obsequious species of political hacks and wonks who wouldn’t fight a Mayfly.
My opinion? They’re convinced that the tides of change are against them anyway, so rather than stand for something and lose, they’ll hope they get eaten last.
Rhod, untruth isn’t the same thing as lies anymore than truth is the same thing as honesty.
I could swear up and down to you that home prices would never fall. Or that bankers are smart enough to manage their risks appropriately. I may be wrong… I may be off my rocker… but if I believe it at the time I said it, I wasn’t dishonest, I wasn’t lying, just wrong.
Just like that crazy woman who said Obama was an ‘arab’ at a McCain rally. She was wrong, but I can’t say she was lying, she probably believed it. You can be honest and false. Another example… Bush’s claim of WMDs in Iraq that were ready to go. Sure, he was wrong, but saying he was lying requires proof that he knew otherwise, which is nearly impossible to prove and may very well not have been the case.
You can even be dishonest but correct (if you intend to lie but accidentally get it right) - unusual but not impossible.
But more often when it comes to politics, you can just say things that take things out of context or use a statistic in a misleading way. There’s a fact behind what you say, but its misinterpreted or misused. There are plenty examples of that all around.
Everybody’s… not sure what election you’re watching. McCain/Palin are shouting from the rooftop that Obama’s a socialist. The problem is the voters are smart enough to know desperate attacks when they see them, and now that a small tilt in the income tax structure doesn’t invalidate capitalism.
What is truth, fred?
PS: Your first paragraph is fascinating. The nouns “untruth” and “truth” describe conditions that result from the acts/predicates of lying or truth-telling. Untruth and truth are results, not acts. Of course they aren’t the same. Parts of speech matter, fred. I rarely see such a silly and confused fallacy…unless it’s from you.
Good political speech, too, fred.
You introduced the word untruth as a synonym for lies. I just kept the same terminology in an attempt to be clear.
Of course I forgot you’d just criticize my wording no matter water. Must be more fun than the subject matter at hand. Lovely talking to you as always.
Sniff. There you go again, fred. Feeling sorry for yourself. You didn’t keep the same terminology in order to be clear, you thought you were making a refined philosophical point.
As for “the subject matter at hand”, I’m doing a quick post about our latest encounter. Feel free to comment. You have the floor.
Its not a refined philosophical point to say that being wrong and lying aren’t the same thing. Or that one is provable and the other is not. Its pretty basic as things go.
It takes an ideologue like you with an agenda (namely, disagreeing with anything I say) to make an issue of it. If I said the sky was blue, you’d either attack my grammar or go on some diatribe about my liberal agenda.
Poor you.
Thanks for you concern, but I’m doing just fine.
This is beyond the bleeding-eye stage, fred.
You committed a falsehood, probably a willfull lie, in comment 13, and are typically unaware of it. I had nothing to say about your liberal agenda; in fact said almost nothing about your little Obama swoon, and even more, I ignored your incomprehensible reduction of socialism to conform to a fatuous definition of your own choosing. You, fred, are not honest, and confirm at least one of your points, which is that many people are unaware that they’re speaking untruthfully. I’m sure you aren’t.
What a little girl you are, fred.
Hotspur, that is fredct to you! There will be no such familiar uses of the diminutive allowed.
Rhod/Hotspur, learn to comprehend what you read. Or calm down a bit so your inner anger doesn’t overwhelm your ability to understand… although I fear its probably far too late for that. Your attack and anger are typically well off the mark. Poor you.
Re: socialism… - n. - 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
(source: m-w.com)
Damn liberal biased elitist dictionaries!
FYI fredct, I read the same items that Hotspur did and I fail to see where he said anything about your agenda. Seems you are a wee bit sensitive.
While you are looking up socialism, look up national socialism. Two peas in a pod except for the “stated” ownership of production. When the owners of the business are the handmaidens of the government, no difference except words.
Stop with the quibbling and parsing.
I never said he said anything about my agenda. Not this time he didn’t. The key word in my comment 13 you’re missing is ‘either’.
What I did say is… no matter what I say he’ll *either* attack my grammar or rant about my liberal agenda. This time it was grammar/parts of speech. Other times its been his conspiracy interpretation of who I am. The behavior is typical, predictable, and repetitive.
Funny, when I look up ‘national socialism’ (aka: nazism), I get the following (emphasis mine):
While it incorporated elements from both political wings, it formed *most* of its alliances on the *political* *right*.[9]. Among the key elements of Nazism were anti-parliamentarism, Pan-Germanism, a pseudo-welfare state for “fit” Germans,[10][11] racism, collectivism,[12][13] eugenics, antisemitism, *opposition* *to* *economic* *liberalism* and political liberalism,[14][15][13] anti-communism and totalitarianism.
fred’s creepy self-love and sanctimony is in high gear today.
Stealing someone else’s description of fred, partially recalled…”fred’s a tract reader. When he encounters opposition, he just goes back and reads that paragraph over again…”
fred, your lengthy and belabored explanation of human misperception started this entire exchange. Any reasonably intelligent kid could have said what you said in ten words and moved on to more complicated matters. Instead, you pronounced again on some trivial point and thought you were being deep.
fred, the pol sci/economist went on to say “a small tilt in the income tax structure doesn’t invalidate capitalism”. I sometimes wonder, fred, if your commentary doesn’t result from some private conversation you’ve had with yourself, and when you comment here we’re coming in halfway through it.
The “tax structure” has nothing to do with capitalism. It can influence and even control capitalistic decisions and behavior, but “invalidate capitalism?” I don’t question your grammar and usage for the fun of it, fred. I question your knowlede of the language and the things you’re explaining to yourself.
Several West European countries are effective socialist/capitalist democracies. Most of them do some things well, and lots of things poorly. The issue with Obama is how much of our private national wealth can be appropriated by government, used in some quest for the public good without consequences for liberty, incentive and economic health.
Damn, fred. I wish you could explain something yourself. Then I wouldn’t have to bother.
By the way, fred. I don’t need to look up socialism, and can comprehend things sometimes as well as you can. If socialism as described in definition 1 in Fred’s Picture Dictionary, is “any of various economic and political theories advocating….etc.” That means there’s more than ONE explanation, and modified forms at that.
Collectivism is the operative term. Things that benefit everyone. Spreading the wealth, Social Security, Payroll Taxes, all of them are collectivist solutions to individual problems.
Everything is nuanced, fred. Oh bother.
Sounds like the Rodina at it’s height! Just shift a couple of words around and you have the samo-samo, Liberalism at it’s finest.
None of this is linear, the view is circular. National socialism/socialism are both BIG government entities at 270 degs., with liberalism in the left quadrant about 180 degs., conservatism at 360 degs and Libertarianism at 90 degs. The more social constraints applied by the liberals and conservatives the farther they plunge into the lower quadrants. The fiscally conservative they become the higher they rise into the upper quadrants.
They is no totally unfettered free markets. That produces cartels. Free regulated competition is the only answer to wealth for all with the state reduced to delivering mail, coining money collecting user taxes as set by the voting public and providing for the national defense.
As for political office holders, the longer they stay in office, the less they get paid per annum. Bureaucratic office holders are shot after 4 years.
VW, all of it true, but Obama has a truly weird and frightening view that the country can be made “moral” by observing the Brother’s Keeper passage in The Book of Matthew.
Theologians should have time to discuss this one, since it enforces a form of collective salvation and virtue on everyone, where (unless I miss something), Judaeo-Christianity and also Islam stress a personal, observant relationship with The Creator and not one coerced by the state.
When the administrators of the state obtain the power to make us good in the eyes of one or another God, it’s not just a theocracy, it’s totalitarianism.
I know of no Judeao-Christian God by any name that DEMANDS man to be his brother’s keeper. The only coercive force used is that of salvation by one’s own choice.
Some churches may shun you for misdeeds, but normal Judeao-Christianity sects don’t put persons to death. The state does. There are some weird splinter groups practicing, hardly mainstream, and then there is Islam which combines religion and state as all powerful.
The points you’ve raised are reasonable - even where I disagree - but I fail to see why you thought my original comment on socialism was a non-sequetor (at least, I think thats what you’re saying, with the whole conversation-in-my-head snarky remark).
I was responding directly to “everybody’s lost their marbles” comment as to why McCain & Palin weren’t making a big deal about this ’socialism’ charge. They are, and people don’t buy it, because Obama’s policy plans are a modest tweak and not some fundamental change. So whats the big missing piece?
BS! Obama is a sock puppet for George Soros.
If by non-sequitur, you mean why does a tilt in the tax structure “invalidate capitalism”? It doesn’t - because tax structure is separate from “capitalism” - in the most obvious way, taxes are imposed by govt, and the processes of capitalism are private.
No one here said that capitalism is invalidated by changes in the tax structure. You imagine that to be the complaint of crazy right wing nutters like me, which is why you put the issue that way.
Taxes are simple revenue-getters. The tax “structure” defines tax “policy”, which represent approaches to governing, i.e., who gets taxed how much, the use of revenues and the distribution of wealth in the form of cash (earned income credits, rebates, etc), services of all kinds or the defined responsibilities of govt. It varies a lot.
Obama is already on record as noodling on what he (and others) calls positive rights, either through legislative action or his preferred way, through the Constitution - to distribute wealth and “guarantees” of material well-being. If this means taking “wealth” from one and giving it to another, it’s socialism or collectivism. Capitalism can exist side-by-side with it, but what will it look like?
I’m not going into the moral issues of any of this, as there are many. It would be a waste of time.
By the way, surely Obama is divine if he can institute a modest “tweak” to the tax system, by taxing the (now uncertain) earners over $200k, give everyone else a tax break and increase spending the way he wants to. Anyone with a functioning brain can see this is outlandish bullshit. But, liberals and lots of others are lazing about in the lush fantasy world that Obama built for them. We’ll see what happens.
Its good to know you’re a bit more grounded than the talking heads and McCain surrogates who wish everyone to believe that electing Obama would mean the end of capitalism as we know it.
I feel Obama will be a much more centrist president than you think, and that the speculation on the right of him harboring deep wealth redistribution plans will turn out to be distinctly wrong?.
Why do I feel that? First, because he’s not politically suicidal. Americans may not be very happy with the current system, but it still is a centrist country (or center-right), and while the current mood is certainly wanting things fixed, Obama would have a very unpleasant surprise for him in 4 years if he tried to throw out 250 years of American economic success.
Secondly because Obama is a smart man and is on record appreciating the power of the market, but just believing that some level of oversight in necessary to prevent the kind of greed & stupidity that is a regular market feature, and that hurts even those who are not involved. There was a great article a couple months back that you may find to be an interesting read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08.....wanted=all
And third, because the new president will be faced with significant financial challenges that will seriously curtail any great ambitions on either side. Unless they wish to go down in history as bankrupting the nation (not that its bothered Bush much), will have to deal financial solvency above all.
Obama’s plans, as stated, are nothing more than some modest changes to the tax brackets and some new programs. Agree or disagree with the ideas, the stated plans are nothing different than what we’ve done all along. If you are right, and Obama goes well beyond that, well, he won’t go very far.
What the hell is a “McCain surrogate”, or a “talking head”? Fred, your apparent reasonableness is always cursed by this dense ideological jargon. In another world, you’d be addressing your pals as “comrade”, and calling your enemies “running dogs”.
Anyway, dream on. Your man is a radical, and you wouldn’t tolerate a similar extreme background from someone on the right. You’re not concerned about it, and simply discount it because you also assume he’s practical. Some rationality. In other words, Obama’s a cynic and liar, and that’s okay.
Whatever.
Wait a minute!
“Obama’s plans, as stated, are some modest changes to the tax brackets, and some new programs”?
This is delusional.
And it’s also my last comment on the subject. A fantasy world this elaborate can’t be changed.
fredct, go comment on the MIT methane, global warming contradiction in “Chickens Little futile panic.” That’s another of your fantasies. You lost this one.
If you don’t know what a surrogate is, you must not be very attuned to the news. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but its not like I used any unusual language. Its not a left or right thing, there are both on both sides and the terminology is very common.
I didn’t say I’m not at all concerned about it, I just believe the odds of it being accurate are low. Please, I can find articles calling Bill Clinton a socialist - a significantly centrist president in many ways - and basically every other democratic figure around.
The shouts of socialism have become like the calls of boy who cried wolf. When you hear it about everyone every time, people stop believing you. Doesn’t mean you should stop looking out for wolves (to continue the metaphor), but you probably shouldn’t live your life assuming there’s one around every corner.
P.S. One example. Obama’s health care plan is the one that does not call for mandates, in comparison to Hilary’s. This is no general election flip-flop, its the argument he made in the primaries too. If he felt so strongly about positive rights, would he not demand it?
I suggest you read the article I linked above if you have not. They’ll be plenty for you to criticize in there. But it might also give you an interesting - and truer - profile of the man.
“Grandma, what big teeth you have!”
…”One example. Obama’s health care plan is the one that does not call for mandates, …” Without mandates, only those not paying for the “benefit” will sign up. Why should anyone pay for onesize fits all health care and be told to wait for surgery because yor not sick enough yet.
Or like that woman in Oregon, told the cancer treatment was too expensive, but they’d pay for assisted suicide.
Tell me again why the Brits fly to other countries for health care and the Canadians come down here? Tell me why, in spite of it being a FELONY to have a private medical ractice in Canada, the government allows private clinics now.
Yeah, fredct, please answer these burning questions about universal/single payer/government controlled health care!
Nice try to get the conversation on a tangent, VW, but my only point was that - as far control of the economic section and financial liberties goes - Obama’s plan was distinctly not as leftist as Hilary’s, or even the Massachusetts plan promoted by and signed onto by Mitt Romney.
If he was so radically liberal, why would he left out such a strongly socialist policy of mandating behavior? It was just those ‘demands’ that you reflected on back in post 25.
Of course, if demanding insurance coverage by law was equivalent to socialism, are we not already a socialist country? What about auto insurance, home insurance, flood insurance in some areas… which are all either legally or practically required already.
C’mon, fred. Quit wiggling around. I know what a surrogate is by definition, and I know the pejorative use made by people like you. It’s disparaging. It’s kind of like calling someone a “socialist”, isn’t it? Or is it just the ordinary hyperbole of an Obama surrogate and “talking head” (which you ignored, of course)? You’re more slippery than your usual self.
Is the socialist thing all you’ve got?
Obama’s health care plan requires insurance of the uninsured. Is that a mandate? Govt intervenes in this plan to help those who can’t afford it. Reasonable? If that’s all it is.
We’ve all posted on health care issues here, and one salient point from the Pew study is that only about 7 -9 million people have no coverage or assistance other than emergency services. Not 47 million, most of whom are temporarily uncovered, uncovered by choice, or basically covered by Federal and State plans.
What needs to be done is to establish portability for med insurance, find some way to avoid the coming Medicare calamity (which dwarfs all other healthcare issues) and extend at least some form of preventive care to the uninsured. Even if Obama wants to do this, the screwball “socialist” lefty contingent in Congress and the Senate will prevent it. I know it and he knows it, so I don’t think he’s serious.
Even more interesting, his plan promises to save people like me $2500 per year on my health care insurance. The man is indeed a god.
fredct, those questions are germane to health care Obama style. They are the core of it. McCain’s plan is total BS too.