There are times when the reading of a newswire report generates storms originated by a biased or predisposed approach.
On Oct. 22, 2012, at 11:10 a.m. ET, the Bloomberg News report “Fiat Says Jeep® Output May Return to China as Demand Rises” stated “Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley (President and CEO of the Jeep brand) referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.”
Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.
Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
Mitt Romney didn’t say he read the story. He said he saw it. BIG difference, libs.
I admire the fact these dreamers still think they can “set the record straight.” Romney’s probably repeating the lie right now. By 5 PM tonight it will be “true.”
Petorado
Kay, do you mind if Politifact plagiarizes that line for their “fact checking” of Romney’s statement? In their frantic search for an excuse to avoid a pants on fire verdict, any port in a storm, eh?
Kay
@Petorado:
I love how crazily naive they are. “Let’s set the record straight” Hah! They have no idea.
Tractarian
Are you sure this is trustworthy? It was written by someone named Gualberto Ranieri. Sounds brown; probably in the tank for Obama.
(What, he’s Chrysler’s Senior VP for Communications? So what?)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
We have always been building cars in eastasia.
red dog
How about Professional Bullshiter as I’m sure Mittster is paying himself to run as a professional candidate.
blingee
I think the Obama campaign can get some good mileage out of this the same way they did with the pre-emptive Benghazi attacks as another example of “point, shoot, aim”
kansi
If this nation elects a man to be BS-er in chief, after all the lies and dodges, it will be thanks to a supine, obsequious press. It’s not like they weren’t warned. Way back when the Romney campaign ran its first ad against Obama, they distorted what he said in the 08 election re: McCain and “if we talk about the economy, we lose.” When called misleading, they defended the ad, continued to run it, and said that, well, the message is true, even if Obama never really said it.
cervantes
There is no penalty for lying. Lying is what works for Republicans. For the most part, the corporate media just channels the lies. To the extent they do correct them — normally in a separate “fact checking” section of the newspaper or web site — hardly anybody sees it. TV news, of course, never fact checks or even corrects its own falsehoods. To the extent the voters Republicans are talking to do happen to come across an assertion that the Republican candidate lied, it’s just presented as a he said/she said and they believe what they want to believe.
Lying works, it’s risk free, so they’ll just keep doing it. Rant and rave all you want, that’s how the world works.
blingee
Politifact rates it “mostly true” since they only check the statements, not the facts behind them. See Rmoney said he saw it. Doesn’t matter if he saw it on Drudge, he still saw it so there!
eric
You libtards are desperately trying to stave off the Romney momentum machine as it starts to crush your precious Obamabi. Because the government now owns Chrysler and the executives owe their jobs and bonuses to the Chicago Thugs, they will say anything to keep the golden government goose happy and laying eggs all over the american people. Just wait until Romney undoes the corrupt auto-bailout, then you will really see how the free market was meant to operate. Perhaps then some of greatest will come back after having gone Galt following the election of the Kenyen usurper.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@cervantes: I still prefer that we keep ranting and raving against it.
Mnemosyne
Wait, a company that sells its product to international markets wants to build factories inside one of its biggest markets to (presumably) make it quicker and less expensive for them to get their products to those customers? What kind of stupid company would do something like that, amirite?
blingee
I personally will believe a story on Drudge about Chrysler than I will a press release directly from Chrysler any day. I mean they are Chrysler. Why would they want to tell the truth about themselves. No, it’s these right wing bullshit factories and their crack journalists who spend hundreds and hundreds of minutes googling this stuff who give us the real facts.
JCT
@eric: If this wasn’t basically word-for-word what these asshats say and believe it would be funnier. But at this point it is depressing and getting more so every day.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@kansi:
The MSM press want Romney to win. Why exactly, I’m guessing there as many plausible explanations for it as there are for the outbreak of WW1. But the basic fact is undeniable at this point.
mds
@eric:
[Applause]
blingee
@Mnemosyne: Typical inefficient big gubmit thinkin.
Kay
@Tractarian:
I wondered about that: “We can’t do business in the US any longer. They all lie constantly. They’ll say anything, those people, and no one seems to be able to stop the spread”
First Jack Welch and now Mitt Romney.
Fred Wertham Jr
Please note the “NO BULL” tag on the Chrysler post.
? Martin
Politifact will label this as ‘mostly true’ because it shifts potential jobs to China in lieu of building the Jeeps in the US and exporting them to China.
Just watch.
DK2012
I’d say the fact that Obama has been less than accommodating to the press is the reason they want him out. He has hurt their fee-fees and can’t be having that.
One thing I have finally learned from this election, the “liberal media”(by liberal, I mean MSNBC,some liberal blogs,etc) is nothing compared to the right wing noise machine. You never see the right wing try to eat their own, whereas some “liberal” pundits seem to think that is the best way to do business. It makes me sick.
Realist
SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENT TOWARDS ROMNEY in latest polls, Wisconsin TIED, Nevada down ONLY TWO NOW, UP +5 IN FLORIDA, the voters are swinging towards Mitt with only ELEVEN DAYS LEFT until PRESIDENT-ELECT ROMNEY!
RedKitten
Jeez…so the “business-friendly” Romney has no problem getting up on a national stage and spreading damaging rumours about an American manufacturing company, solely to further his own political ends?
With friends like that…
JPL
It could happen cuz it could, so Romney’s right.
aimai
Oh, I guess Realist is Political Observer. Its the all caps spittle flecked poll picking that tips you off.
aimai
nellcote
The MittZine, coming soon to an Ohio Sunday paper near you.
rlrr
@nellcote:
Paper, how quaint.
Yutsano
@RedKitten: Willard’s “business experience” consisted of starting a hedge fund with a huge pile of seed money and the guatantee of his old lucrative job back if the ventutre failed. Totes like the modern small business owner!! Oh wait…
eric
@Realist: accoring to the “Silver Wang” aggregators, don’t measure for curtains.
btw (and not that you, the reader, cares). i am so using the Silver Wang for the rest of the cycle as my euphemism for polling aggregators.
Patricia Kayden
“Romney’s probably repeating the lie right now. By 5 PM tonight it will be ‘true.'”
It will never be true. Everyone isn’t taken in by The Bot’s constant lying.
Paul
@aimai:
Or Dick Morris. Or Baghdad Bob. Facts be damned.
gnomedad
@aimai:
Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to single-handedly body-English the election. Even with UNLIMITED SPITTLE!!
Somewhat OT, another bump at 538, to 73.1% probability for Obama. Yay! I love Rachel Maddow, but she’s all into “it’s soooo close” lately. It’s still too close to suit me, but …
rlrr
@eric:
“Silver Wang” – only 32 protons away from an Austin Powers reference…
debbie
Let’s really set the record straight: Auto exports to China have increased from $1 Billion to $5 Billion during the Obama administration.
But bullshitting isn’t limited to Romney. In a Franklin County, Ohio judicial race, the Democrat O’Neill is being accused of sympathizing with rapists in an ad by the local Republican party. The Republican candidate, Cupp, said that the ad had nothing to do with him. They’ve been asked to pull the ad, but they refuse to unless their candidate tells him to. And now, there’s nothing but crickets from Cupp.
pseudonymous in nc
I see that the blog comments at Chrysler are already filling with Jeep Truthers.
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, I mean it’d be totally idiotic to use the profits from selling Chinese-made cars at a premium in China to invest in US company infrastructure.
Kay
@debbie:
O’Neill is really interesting, just as a character. He’s a nurse and a Vietnam vet and (of course) a lawyer. He takes no donations. None.
He was so openly critical of the Ohio Supreme Court’s fealty to monied interests (true, BTW) they slapped him with a trumped-up ethics charge, which he defeated on 1st amendment grounds.
burnspbesq
Silver Wang? Sounds like the head of a triad. Somebody Sheldon Adelson would do business with on Macau.
var
I love how RCP leaves polls they don’t like out of averages…. consistent with the entire Repugnicant strategy of ignoring facts they don’t like.
rikyrah
keep on his lying ass, Kay
Mark B.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Romney peaked about October 13, just after the first debate. The polls have been drifting back towards Obama since then, and his win probability is up to 73%. If you cherry pick polls, you can find some where Romney is doing well, but the overall picture for him doesn’t look very positive.
burnspbesq
@pseudonymous in nc:
I’m guessing from that comment that you have little or no experience in trying to repatriate profit earned by a Chinese subsidiary to a U.S. parent.
The term “massive pain in the ass” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Far, far easier to reinvest in China.
Kay
@Mark B.:
I love how Nate Silver is standing firm against the Right wing hordes/campaign industrial complex. I don’t know if he’s right, but I don’t think anyone can fairly say he’s been “co-opted” or whatever, at this point. Him and his beloved model, just chugging along.
? Martin
@burnspbesq:
Come on. Difficult as it may be to navigate the US tax code, any one of these companies spend immeasurably more tax attorney energy coming up with creative ways to avoid taxes than they do any kind of straight up ‘what do we really owe’ effort. Until they show that they don’t have the money to dodge taxes, I’m not terribly sympathetic to their plight regarding efforts to pay them.
I’m sure Chrysler has dozens if not hundreds of burnspbesqs running around their headquarters they can press into service to handle this.
burnspbesq
@Kay:
Speaking of trumped-up ethics charges, Matthew Diaz, the former Navy JAG officer who leaked the identities of Guantanamo detainees to the Center for Constitutional Rights, and got court-martialed and thrown in prison for his trouble, is fighting to keep his law license. The disciplinary hearing panel imposed a three-year suspension, retroactive to 2008, but the disciplinary administrator appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court, arguing for disbarment.
http://www.kansas.com/2012/10/22/2540900/former-navy-lawyer-goes-before.html
TenguPhule
I think bullshitter is too good a word for Mitt Romney. There are many fine uses for good manure.
How about Dump, Mitt Romney is a dump. Nobody likes those.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Let’s leave out the fact that China has to own at least 51% of each company that does business there. China IIRC also has a huge excise tax on money leaving the country, not to mention their insane currency valuation rules. The Chinese government goes out of its way to keep its money in country.
burnspbesq
@? Martin:
I guess today is Ignorance-Is-Bliss Day in Irvine.
trollhattan
@eric:
You’ve got your Halloween Taco costume pretty much nailed. However, can still use
trollhattan
@trollhattan: FYWP.
[should include] MOAR CAPS!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@debbie:
So its offensive and disgusting but you can’t help but watch: Two Liars, one Cupp.
PeakVT
Heh. That is about as close to “pay attention, you fucking morons” as an official corporate communication can get.
trollhattan
Friday fun–extending the Romnesia riff.
http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2012/10/26
trollhattan
@Realist:
Taco, did you sleep last night? Even at fifty cents/post for the stretch run, you gotta think of your health. Your boy wants to kill off healthcare, ya know.
Comrade Coffin
@Mark B.: If Obama’s win probability is 73%, then 100-x= ?
patrick
@eric: scary thing, is I can’t tell if this is snark or serious….
GxB
@Tractarian:
That name is too cool not to put through an anagram solver. Some of the syntax is dicked but oh well, here’s some choice hits:
Inure A Garble Riot [Today’s GoP indeed]
Re: A Laboring Uteri [that’s for you ABL]
A Urogenital Brier [sounds as funny as painful]
A Irritable Ore Gun
A Tire Lug Airborne
A Tribal Urine Ogre
A Rarebit Glue Iron [Won’t someone think of the poor Welsh varmints with so many broken items]
Burial Toe Earring [sounds like another Mormon thing]
Seriously there’s some deeply poetic shit going on in that name – too bad he’s not being a Rmoney tool.
Mark B.
@Comrade Coffin: 27%, unless you’re using Romney-style math. Then it’s either 99% or incalculable.
WaterGirl
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You know, at firtst I thought they just wanted a horserace, and then they would turn that around before it was too late. For the past week or so I have been wondering why the hell they haven’t started executing the turn. It makes no sense to me. These people are craven, but they aren’t stupid.
Ash Can
I dunno — corporate media honchos tend to look favorably upon their fellow honchos in other industries. It’s not as though this is being debunked by some pinko blog. This debunking may actually have legs.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
I’m pretty sure that pseudonymous’s comment was approving of the idea of using overseas profits to strengthen company infrastructure in the US, particularly since such improvement would probably lead to adding at least a few US jobs.
mds
@Comrade Coffin:
Oh, holy shit. Twenty-seven percent strikes again? Well, it figures that Arabic numerals would be all in for Obama.
El Cid
Since Jeep makes vehicles, and many vehicles are made in China, we rate it “mostly true”.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mnemosyne:
Our friendly attorney has a point that repatriating profits from Chinese joint-ventures requires pretty high-grade legal and accounting gymnastics; GM was very much considering just pulling out piles of cash during their cashflow woes in ’08, and taking the full hit on both sides of the Pacific.
But there’s a degree of fungibility there, in that profits in China reduce the demand on investment capital for new plant. And GM has been repatriating manufacturing of its smaller cars — more so than Ford, in fact, and much more so than the Japanese makers who import subcompacts (Fit, Yaris, etc.) and build larger vehicles, especially SUVs, in the US.
AxelFoley
@Realist:
How sockpuppets does this ass-eater have?
Brantl
@eric: Your meds are calling and saying, “Jesus, we have to go in that?