What are the FACTS about the use of words and phrases like “Fact Check” and “Fact Checkers” in and by the Left-tipping “Main Stream Media”? Left-leaners like Chris Matthews and Soledad O’Brien ignored outright lies to the American people by President Obama and Obama surrogates like Susan Rice, but they take their quibbles over Republican talking points to the stratosphere of high indignation and hypocritical moralizing.
Last night on his MSNBC “Hardball...” program, Chris Matthews went on and on about the big unreported story that the Republican Campaign(s) in 2012 were largely based on “lies” and dishonesty, whereas President Obama’s and other Democratic partisans’ speeches, adds and talking points were far more factually based. Matthews and his guests, Salon’s Joan Walsh and Mother Jones’ David Korn started by doing a paean to Norman Ornstein and his recent book (“It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein); and how Republican’s had once been comfortable with Ornstein, but now treated him like a pariah.
The segment then swung to Joan Walsh’s commentary about one of the arguments being urged by Ornstein in recent blogs and on recent talk shows, notably brought home by Dan Froomkin in his post, "How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign" in the Huffington Post. A particular moment in that segment focused on an August 2012 statement by Romney pollster, Neil Newhouse, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by Fact-Checkers...” Chris Matthews morphed those words and said this meant that Republicans had openly told the world that they were not going to be governed by “the facts”. Then there was a litany of the supposedly non-factual charges that were made in 2012 by many different Republicans about various Democrats, until David Korn made a subtle shift back to the Romney campaign by specifically mentioning what he thought were oft-repeated Romney “lies” about Obama --- Korn saying the worst being that Obama had taken $500 million out of Medicare to help fund Obamacare, and that the Obama Administration’s had issued new rules that removed the work requirements from the Clinton-Gingrich era welfare reforms.
On tonight’s Fox News “The Five” show, there was a bit of a push back against the cult of the “Fact Checker” when Andrea Tanteros asked these very simple questions, “Just who are these self-appointed fact checkers and who are they to tell us what the facts are?”
An interesting look back into the “Republicans against the Fact Checkers” issue was the “take away” put out there by Colin Campbell in his “Evening Read: ‘I Don’t Care What Factcheck Says!’ ” in the Politicker blog for 9/17/12. Mr. Campbell was referring to a specific Soledad O’Brien interview with Republican Congressman Peter King back in September shortly after the Benghazi attacks of 9/11. Soledad O’B..., who is an empty suit with a very pretty face and an ethnically pied name, even by early-21st Century American standards, did her best to ambush the Long Island Republican Congressman over his negative comments about Obama’s Middle-eastern foreign policy failures’ having led to the Benghazi fiasco.
King ducked and evaded O’Brien’s each and every verbal missile, in what had turned from an interview into a clearly partisan debate about whether Obama ever had anything like an “Apology Tour.” Then, like a latter day Diana, Soledad the huntress, drew the most potent arrow from her quiver that there never was any Obama “Apology Tour” and let it fly in the direction of the Congressman, “... and if you go to Fact-Check.Org., ... they’ll say the same thing; they’ve fact checked this...” To which King rightfully and intelligently replied, “I don’t care what ‘Fact-check’ says ... any common sense interpretation of those speeches, the President is apologizing... that is an apology...”
There is no doubt among real Americans that President Obama certainly did do what the Republicans have called an “Apology Tour” to various Middle-eastern destinations and European venues in 2009. And Congressman Peter King’s exclamation, “I DON’T CARE WHAT ‘FACT-CHECK’ SAYS...” is an intellectually and rhetorically superior position to the leftists like Soledad O’Brien’s resort to the weak and unreliable authority of un-named fact checkers. The so-called “Fact Checkers” and commentators, such as Soledad O’Brien are not competent or worthy of any credibility whatsoever. So-called fact checkers whose grasp on the use of the English language is so narrow that they can state absolutely that there is no description or interpretation of Obama’s earliest foreign policy foray as an “Apology Tour” is factually flawed and it is itself a falsehood. Thus, they shouldn’t have anything to say about constitutes "facts" whatsoever.
A description of the very same 2009 presidential excursions as Obama’s “Surrender-Monkey Tour” would be equally valid even though: a) I doubt that Barack Hussein Obama announced any surrender whatsoever in any of the Islamic lands where he was speaking; and b) the president neither handed over any monkeys to any foreign dignitaries nor did he have any monkeys imbedded in his entire entourage.
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