Ambulatory Sears mannequin Mitt Romney made a swing through the Sunshine State this week, kissing ass (“Gosh! The energy. The Cuban American energy and passion is so wonderful!”) and collecting a couple of mill from wizened snowbird socialites for his campaign war chest.
He also delivered speeches containing scads of well-documented lies. So what does PolitiFact do when a big fat liar comes to its hometown to tell big fat lies?
It sifts through the veritable mountain of bullshit disgorged from the Romney gullet and finds a meaningless, minor pebble of a point to subject to its high-powered scrutiny. It finds Romney wrong in a minor way on the facts and disingenuous in a major way on the substance and renders its verdict: MOSTLY TRUE!
Don’t ever change, PolitiFact: You are the appendix of our political intestines.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
ant
you’re MOSTLY TRUE! link doesn’t lead anywhere
NobodySpecial
The link, like Romney, don’t work.
Jamey
nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us/politics/gop-super-pac-weighs-hard-line-attack-on-obama.html
If you have any money–deposits, investments, IRAs, etc–in TD Ameritrade, get it out NOW. I am incensed–my money is going to fund this race-baiting shitheel? No.
Betty Cracker
@ant: I fixed it. Thanks for letting me know!
MattF
Actually, finding a line in a Romney speech that’s ‘mostly true’ is quite a feat. So, maybe it’s time to give them a medal– they deserve something, I guess– and move on.
balconesfault
I have a hard time figuring out which politician is the most brazen in his lying – Dick Cheney, or Mitt Romney. Both sort of make Dick Nixon seem pedestrian, and GW Bush seem kind of like a naive bumbler, despite how dangerous both were to the nation with their mendacity.
I think the GOP has just broken the Politifact meter. It’s like taking an instrument calibrated to test for parts per thousand, and dumping a 70% brine solution into it. They’re kaput, and probably need a long, thorough cleansing before they’re capable of actually producing useful data.
Someguy
This tit-for-tat arguing about talking points is a waste of time. You can debunk one set of lies, and they just come up with a new set. We should be spending a lot more time and money exposing the people who donate money to pay for this.
It wouldn’t be too hard for local bloggers to to go through OpenSecrets.org and cull out the names of local yokels in a given city or state who donate to right wing causes and politicians, and then publicly shame them, orchestrate boycotts, etc. Local grassroots organizing groups could really help by putting the word out about businesses to be avoided, which neighbors to shun, etc. Let’s see how these folks feel about the Randian wonderland when their business is failling or they’re being shunned by neighbors.
redshirt
What is “Truth”? How can we even know what’s “Real”?
middlewest
@Jamey: They’re bringing back Jeremiah Wright?! Oh yeah, guys, let’s make this about religion, no way that can backfire.
sam dobermann
Off topic, slightly — As you may have seen/heard Romney pivoted today to the debt — which President Obama has supposedly exploded — on his own. At the same time Boehner has announced that starting NOW we must get to work on the cuts to justify raising the debt ceiling. This is the most important thing in the universe.
Big coincidence : new group planning new massive air buys to stop Obama spending us into destitution. With a glossy as campaign — featuring Reverend Wright repeatedly. New York times is featuring it on its front page with a storyboard — nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/17/us/politics/super-pac-storyboard.html#/#cover
following. I don’t know how long it will be up. Ahh, I think this is the link to the story
Sorry for the interruption. The nuns are in a hard place. I think they should go on strike. All of them — at least stay away for a day.
The really serious problem for the rest of us is the RCC is buying up a lot of hospitals around the country. They do not believe they have to honor right to die statements even if the family wants to allow their relative to “pass over.” Of course they collect more money that way.
kwAwk
Bring attention and page views to Politifact when they do what you want and deny them attention and page views when they don’t and you’re more likely to get more of what you want.
Have liberal bloggers forgotten the lessons of Pavlov’s dog?
Ken
collecting a couple of mill from wizened snowbird socialites for his campaign war chest.
Did anyone else think of that scene in The Producers where Bialystock is romancing all the little old ladies with walkers?
Davis X. Machina
@Ken: Let me know when Romney’s reduced to wearing a cardboard belt.
Cacti
@middlewest:
Oh please, please, please. Let’s have a talk about the candidates’ religion. We can start with the Book of Mormon, the holiest scripture of Mitt’s religion, and described by its founder as “the most correct book on earth”.
In short Mormon theology still teaches to this day that:
1. Dark skin is a curse and loathsome to God
2. God is anti-miscegenation
gbear
@Someguy: Fox News says that you’re a financial terrorist for doing exactly what you suggest. Obama posted a web site on some of the doners and now Fox is blowing a major bloodvessel (of course the guy who is being ‘terrorized’ is part of Romney’s election team saying that the best way to fight this terrorism is to donate to his PAC). Maddow had a long segment on it on her tuesday show.
Zifnab25
@gbear: When they squel that loud, you know you’ve hit a soft spit.
Ben Cisco
@Jamey: Accounts have been zeroed out, and I posted about this on my blog this morning.
Also, this jackass is head of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs. Wonder how this will play out in the Windy City?
Ash Can
@kwAwk: Yes, because Politifact will do exactly what some obscure blogger wants. And said blogger will happily forgo exposing institutional idiocy. Uh-huh.
@gbear: I love the smell of right-wing desperation in the morning.
Ash Can
@Ben Cisco: One of his kids is a major Obama supporter/donor. Never mind the Windy City; I wonder how it plays out at their family gatherings.
(So far, the only direct involvement with the Cubs I’ve seen is with the sons and daughters, and the only activism I’ve seen of any kind has been the “It Gets Better” ad that Laura Ricketts and several of the Cubs players made.)
MonkeyBoy
PolitiFact just checks the statement “there are 49 different federal job training programs” and doesn’t mention the incoherence of the total Rmoney quote:
While PolitiFact does discuss that it might not make sense to consolidate programs that are very different in who and how they target and train it doesn’t notice the inherent incoherence between “consolidation good” and “states not federal good”.
If all federal training was consolidated into 1 agency and then “sent to the states” we would wind up with 50 unconsolidated agencies.
Villago Delenda Est
@MonkeyBoy:
Thinking, the dipshits at Politifact, they do it not.
Mike S
A good little video of how Mitt/Bain Romney/Capital get/got rich/richer using other peoples money. By Robert Reich and Moveon.org
This is how he created those phantom 100K jobs?
Forum Transmitted Disease
I can think of few cities that would benefit from being destroyed by orcs quite as much as Tampa would.
gaz
Once I’m done moving to mexico I’ll be free from worrying about US retaliation for engaging in naughty internet attacks.
It will take every ounce of will that I posses to not DoS politifact’s servers.
Cacti
@MonkeyBoy:
I’m actually less concerned with the numbers quoted by Mitt, than how it would be an improvement to have several hundred different state-level programs vs. 49 national programs.
giltay
@Ash Can: Or on the TD Ameritrade board. The vice chair, Ed Clark (CEO of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, who own TD Ameritrade) is a pretty strong social liberal (and just released an It Gets Better video today).
Nutella
I thought this was Betty mocking Mitt but that’s a direct quote from the Miami paper’s story. Who let the idiot out?
Villago Delenda Est
@Nutella:
That’s an interesting question, because there are so many suspects. Rih Santorum, Noot Gingrich, Ron Paul, the rest of the clown car posse who failed in their lame attempts to stop this parasite asshole from being foisted on the entire nation via Presidential campaign.
Origuy
Will there be oliphants, Mister Frodo?
Betty Cracker
@Nutella: The handlers probably had a cattle prod to use if he started the “Lucy, you got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do” routine.
MonkeyBoy
@Cacti:
Rmoney gave the “official” answer to that in his speech – basically that local people know what’s best for programs for local people. What that actually means for local politicians is that giving them control over federal money gives them power and the ability to create alliances through favoritism, graft, and corruption.
I think a lot of the advocates for “states better than federal” know that it is much easier to get away with corruption at a local rather than federal level.
Bullsmith
It’s pretty revealing that Politifact went out it’s way to choose not only a “mostly true” sentence from Romeney to parse, but also an entirely trivial and ineffective one. They can’t actually pretend to analyze any of Romney’s key soundbite quotes because they’re so actively false even Politifact can’t spin them into mostly truths.
The destination of “mostly true” is pre-determined, but with a brazen political whore like Rom, getting there takes enormous skill, along with a heap of selective hearing.
El Cid
I’m not sure about those cookies. They don’t — they don’t look like you made them.
low-tech cyclist
Forget Mordor: if I had that sort of money to spend, I’d buy up half the billboards in Tampa for the week before the GOP convention, and have them all say “The Circus Is Coming To Town! Tampa Convention Center, August 27-30, 2012,” with caricatures of Mitt, Newt, Santorum, “Swiss Miss” Bachmann, Sarah Palin, etc.
devilham
***nerd alert***
I think you mean Osgiliath, as Minas Tirith, while taking a beating, did not succumb to the forces of Mordor. Just saying
(fyi, not criticism of the article or title, just letting my nerd show a little is all)
RalfW
@Someguy:
This tit-for-tat arguing about talking points is a waste of time.
Agreed.
One of the most effective things the right did against Gore was the inventing the internets meme, that sort of thing. They just tarred him over and over for things like the tan suit, etc.
So fvk PolitiFact. The message is Romney is Etch-A-Sketch. Romney has had three answers to every yes/no question. Pick it and stick with it.
Lying has totally lost any relevance in today’s media landscape. We’re through the looking glass now, so counting on debunking lies to ding Romney just looks pathetic.
Villago Delenda Est
@RalfW:
The problem here is that the guys who actually DID invent the internet have praised Gore’s role in opening it up beyond DoD and the academic community and creating access to it to the populace at large. In that sense, Al Gore DID invent the internet, and guys like Vint Cerf give him full credit for doing so.
Betty Cracker
@devilham: You’re talking to a woman who owns a complete set of Lord of the Rings Pez dispensers. While Minas Tirith wasn’t completely overrun, it undoubted faced an onslaught. ;-)
RalfW
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s not the problem, actually. No one cared or cares if what Gore said was even remotely true. They weaponized it very effectively. It worked to make Gore look like an ass and the truth – then as now – does not matter to these propagandists.
Mitt has done plenty of things that can be weaponized. Whining about PolitiFact is just lame. Its pointless and we’re better off on the attack against Mittens than against PolitiFvk.
Hell, we don’t even have to lie! Etch-A-Sketching has the benefit of being powerful and conveniently true.
Betty Cracker
@RalfW: I’d rather take an all-of-the-above approach — call out PolitiFact when they’re wrong, weaponize Mittens’ gaffes, etc. WE know PolitiFact is lame and untrustworthy, but millions of people assume it’s what it says it is.
If no one ever says otherwise, they get to go on being lame and untrustworthy with no repercussions. (Not that I imagine for a second PolitiFact is aware of my existence, mind you. Just sayin’…)
izzy
Does anyone else get the feeling that politifact was always playing the long con? Establishing itself as a non-partisan truth-authority only to facilitate the Republicans over the long run?
RalfW
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, in the same way that it’s worth it for Driftglass and this blog and others to keep pointing out Bobo’s bullshit, even though he doesn’t change.
I just hope the focus is on Mitt, not PolitiFabricator.
LanceThruster
@Nutella: Also too, did he not mention that the trees were the right height as well? What’s wrong with the energy of their trees??
LanceThruster
@Betty Cracker: It’s as if they were more about “PolitiFactiness” than actual reality-based facts (long known to have a liberal bias).
Tonal Crow
Yeah? Well, I rate Politfact as “mostly bullshit”.
Joseph Nobles
Yeah, Polititroll!
And this statement by Romney is hilarious. So there are 49 different government job training programs? Great. So Romney wants to divide up that money, send it to the states…
And create 50 government job training programs.