Trying to fool all of the people all of the time
Bookworm on Sep 04 2008 at 9:17 am | Filed under: Media matters, Republicans, Sarah Palin
I periodically check out Yahoo’s most popular news to see what AP articles are getting the most play according to the Yahoo picks (which, except for including Ann Coulter, skew liberal). It’s fascinating to see the AP headlines, each of which is snarky, dismissive or critical of Palin in some way, even the “positive” ones:
- Palin provides a “perfect populist pitch” — While it’s true that “populism” can simply mean “appealing to the people,” it also has a more negative connotation: “any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.” I leave it to you to decide which meaning the AP headline writer had in mind. As it happens, the article is flattering.
- Attacks praise, stretch truth at GOP convention — Translation: the GOP people lied.
- Palin: Iraq war “a task that is from God” — And remember, don’t get so carried away with her rhetoric that you forget that she’s a religious fanatic who will listen to the voices in her head to take us into war.
- Analysis: GOP contradicts self on Palin family — We’re all hypocrites.
- Few minorities on GOP platform — We’re racist pigs, too. (I don’t think the AP et al realize how frustrating it is to conservatives that the Democrats have locked down minorities despite the fact that conservatives firmly believe that minorities would benefit more if they could shake off the liberal shackles of victimhood.)
- Cindy McCain parts with Palin on abortion, sex ed — Watch out: There’s division in the ranks at the highest level. (Or, more optimistically, maybe we conservatives are a Big Tent.)
Perhaps the above headlines might explain the latest Rasmussen poll, which is headlined thusly: Poll: 51 percent say reporters are trying to hurt Palin.
Let me leave you with Abraham Lincoln’s words: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.“
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16 Responses to “Trying to fool all of the people all of the time”
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Luckily, we have people like Jon Stewart to cut through the smoke and mirrors and point out media foibles.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card&byDate=true
You forgot one:
Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.
Some examples:
PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.”
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”
PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: “She’s been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply … She’s responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. I’m entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,” he said in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain’s phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she’s no more “responsible” for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.
MCCAIN: “She’s the commander of the Alaska National Guard. … She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under “federal status,” which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska’s national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin “got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.”
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor’s election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: “We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
___
Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington contributed to this report.
So are you going to address the issues raised, facts cited, arguments marshalled? Or are you going to cry like babies? The left tolerates the bogus, unsubstantiated crap put out by talk radio, right-wing blogs and Fox News, so you’ll just have to deal with it. Shooting the messenger, by the way, will not cut it. The American masses might be dumb but they are not completely stupid.
BTW, I think you’ve confused Lincoln with PT Barnum in your last quote.
dg said:
This was continuation of existing legislation, that passed on a voice vote.
“But at best it is nothing more than a continuation of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Act of 1992. That’s right folks, the program was already 16 years old and while it did contribute to the dismantling of nukes in the fragments of the Soviet Union, even that was just a part of the SALT II treaty of 1979. ”
http://www.stpns.net/view_article.html?articleId=109510843621410710420
The other major piece of legislation was?
And in the state legislature, his name was placed on legislation by the Democrat leadership.
BrianE, I did not say that. The AP reporter did. And presumably, he had to fact check it, unlike bloggers here or Ann Coulter or the news team at Fox News. Those that listen for the words of God before invading countries or believe that the AP news service is trying to fool all the people all the time should really check themselves into the nearest mental facility.
I suggest you check it yourself, and not rely on those twits for your talking points.
And the other major legislation is?
The article cites ethics reform as the other legislation. I suppose you get your international news via smoke signals. Last I checked, even Fox News uses AP wire to pick up their stories. I believe the majority of news stories globally are sourced via one of the major wires, and AP is the biggest. My Bloomberg machine at work has tons of financial stories coming off AP, and Bloomberg has its own newsroom. But call ‘em twits if you like. I’m sure you have your proprietary news sources that are much, much better.
Yeah the papers I worked for used AP also. So what. All that means is when the AP is wrong, a whole lot of people are wrong.
And the other major piece of legislation is?
Reform we can believe in!
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/09/02/palin-vs-obama-on-reform-and-ethics/
BrianE, first, saying the AP was wrong on the article and saying that it is part of some conspiracy to fool people all of the time is entirely another. Second, as you know, I didn’t write the piece, so if the reference to the ethics reform is not the second piece of legislation that you are looking for, I suggest that you email the author of the story. Third, that Obama’s name appeared as a cosponsor late in the process does not mean that he didn’t rewrite much of the bill or none of it (it proves nothing), so the AP story may or may not be correct that he had a leadership role on that piece of legislation. Thanks for the link to the non-partisan Cato Institute for their view of his work as a legislator.
You said that, not me. In fact you’ve said it twice. Does repetition make it seem more factual in your mind?
I must be part of that vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary was talking about.
Anyway, if that’s the major legislation you want to tout proving Obama’s legislative accomplishments, go right ahead.
Kuhnhenn was attempting to rebutt Palin’s statement that Obama had not moved a “major law or reform”. It was his foolish assertion that the nuclear anti-proliferation was major legislation that I question.
The extent of Obama’s involvement in reform legislation– at least Obama’s assertion he worked across the isle with McCain on it is also suspect.
If you remember that prompted the famous letter to Obama in 2006 from John McCain which closed with:
“As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal (ethics reform). But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.”
Dg and Oz think they are trying to tear down the status quo in the form of Palin and the Republicans. But Dg and Oz are the status quo.
There’s some self-destructive Leftist ideology for ya.
The Democrat part are full of character assassins that will sacrifice anything in their way for power and wealth, Book. Palin is a threat to their visions of a better world. Palin must be destroyed, as soon as possible. Or else, they might actually have to compete on equal terms with the competition.
BrianE, check the title of this blog section. That’s what I’m talkin’ about… As for McCain’s parting shot in the letter, I guess that’s the pot calling the kettle black since the McCain of 2000 has been replaced by the cynical, disingenious McCain of today.
dg, you sly dog. You were agreeing with bookworm’s analysis of the Kuhnhenn propaganda piece.
All this time I thought you agreed with it.