Tag Archives: Politifact

My Head Is Spinning!

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The Covid pandemic has brought us a lot of information and a lot of censorship of information. Oddly enough, a lot of the information that was censored is now being reported as true. Currently the difference between a conspiracy theory and a major news story is a few months.

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights reported the following:

This disinformation business sure has gotten complicated lately.

In the past few days, a key federal agency concluded that COVID was likely the result of a Chinese lab leak. A prestigious medical journal reported that natural immunity is better than vaccines against COVID. Another that mask mandates were worthless. And President Joe Biden’s advanced age is now, according to Biden, a legitimate issue.

All of these claims had been labeled as “disinformation” by the mainstream press, by “independent” fact-checkers, by social media platforms. Anyone who espoused them was attacked as a crazy anti-vaxxer, QAnon racist, Russian stooge who deserved to be de-platformed, demonetized, and discredited.

Take the lab-leak story. The Energy Department, “citing new intelligence,” changed its view on the origins of COVID-19 and now thinks it did, in fact, escape from a lab in Wuhan, China.

The article notes how the lab leak theory was treated in the past:

A-list journalist Anne Applebaum once compared Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to a Soviet propagandist for suggesting that COVID came from a lab. A New York Times reporter said the lab-leak theory had “racist roots.” The editor in chief of Scientific American called it a “conspiracy theory.” CNN said it was “like something out of a comic book.”

Politifact, one of the supposed independent guardians against disinformation, said that any such claim was “inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!” Facebook banned posts mentioning the lab-leak theory.

The article concludes:

One of the articles that Google is right now targeting is our Feb. 23 editorial applauding Congress for investigating COVID vaccines (Congress To Probe COVID Vaccines — And It’s About Time).

Apparently, merely calling for a congressional investigation “promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus,” according to Google’s thought police.

So, let’s review.

The stuff labeled as dangerous disinformation keeps turning out to be true. The supposed guardians of credible information turn out to be some of the biggest peddlers of actual disinformation. And groups that are supposedly targeting disinformation are really just out to defund conservatives.  

In all this confusion, one thing is perfectly clear. If you want to know what will be labeled as disinformation tomorrow, just look at whatever is on the left’s agenda today.

The mainstream media is simply pointing out the need for Americans to find alternative sources for their news.

This Sounds Good, But It Is A Mistake

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If a camel’s nose gets under the tent, the rest of the camel will soon follow. That is actually a good warning. It’s a shame our Republican legislators in Washington have either not heard it or choose to ignore it. They are also choosing to ignore the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’

On Sunday, NewsMax reported the following:

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including enough Republicans to overcome the chamber’s “filibuster” rule, on Sunday announced an agreement on a framework for potential gun safety legislation.

The bill included support for state “red flag” laws, tougher background checks for firearms buyers under 21 and a crackdown on a practice called “straw purchases” but not other limits Democrats and President Joe Biden had advocated such as raising the age for buying semiautomatic rifles to 21 or new limits on assault-style rifles.

Ten Republicans signaled their support for the preliminary deal, indicating the measure potentially could advance to a vote on passage and overcome roadblocks by other Republicans who oppose most gun control measures.

The talks that led to the framework followed a series of high-profile mass shootings in the United States, including one at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last month that killed 19 young children and one also in May in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that killed 10 Black victims.

What the Senators do not seem to realize is that people who are intent on breaking the law (murder is, after all, against the law), do not follow gun laws. All that will happen as a result of this bill (assuming it will be passed) is that it will be more difficult for law-abiding citizens to get guns. That is the scenario the Second Amendment was passed to prevent. Red flag laws are unconstitutional because they do not allow for due process. They are also very easily abused. This is a bad bill.

The article continues:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, issued a statement calling the plan “a good first step” and one that would “limit the ability of potential mass shooters to quickly obtain assault rifles by establishing an enhanced background check process for gun purchasers under age 21.”

Schumer said that he wanted to move a bill quickly to a Senate vote once legislative details are worked out.

The United States has the highest rate of firearms deaths among the world’s wealthy nations. But it is a country where many cherish gun rights and its Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms.”

According to a Politifact post of March 20, 2018:

The main study of intentional homicides is performed by the United Nations’ Office of Drug Control. The UN warns against cross-national comparisons because of the differences in legal definitions of intentional homicides and recording practices.

Our count of the UN’s data placed the United States ninth in intentional homicides. We used the most up-to-date count for each country and territory, which included data anywhere from 2007 to 2015.

As the country with the third-highest population size, however, experts told us the number of people killed is not a very useful metric.

Controlling for population size, most criminologists use the per 100,000 metric. By that standard, we found the United States ranked 94th.

When we counted only the countries for which the UN had 2015 data, the United States ranked 73rd. That’s still far from the top ten.

Lied to again.

 

Why Many Americans Do Not Trust The Media

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about the claim made by some Republicans that the Biden administration wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. Politifact claims that the charge that the Biden administration wants to ban handguns is false, but President Biden’s words do not back up that claim.

The article at PJ Media includes a Tweet and a video with the following statement:

President Biden says he wants to ban handguns.

The article details what followed:

In response to the tweet from House Republicans declaring that Biden “says he wants to ban handguns,” PolitiFact claims “the clip doesn’t back up the GOP tweet, and the full transcript goes further to sink this claim.”

PolitiFact claims that the numbers cited by Biden “apply to assault-style firearms and high-capacity magazines. As recently as June, when Biden rolled out his strategy to bring down murders, he said he wants to ban both.”

“Experts disagree over what is or isn’t an assault weapon. States set different thresholds for what qualifies as a high-capacity magazine,” PolitiFact continued, before adding, “But regardless of the definition, neither term includes all handguns.”

Did anyone say Biden wants to ban all handguns? Nope. Yet, PolitiFact unwittingly admitted in its analysis that some handguns would be affected by Biden’s gun control proposal. So, does Biden want to ban handguns? He’s publicly indicated that he wants to ban some. There’s no doubt about that.

Yet, PolitiFact rated the claim that Biden wants to ban handguns as “False.” In fairness, they could have gotten away with rating the claim “Half True” because one could argue that the House GOP’s wording wasn’t clear, but they didn’t take Biden’s words out of context. They even showed the video of Biden’s response to the question. Biden may not have said he wanted to ban all handguns, but he clearly said he wants to ban some. Yet, PolitiFact disingenuously rated the claim false, which seems to imply that Biden never said he wanted to ban any handguns at all.

Notice how Politifact changed the words slightly so that they could claim the statement was false. Unfortunately, the mainstream media does a lot of that. Whenever you read a mainstream media article, you have to read every word. Things are not always what they seem.

The Democrats’ First Proposal Upon Taking Control Of The House Of Representatives

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The first bill introduced in the House of Representatives when the Democrats took over was H.R. 1. The bill was sponsored by Representative John P. Sarbanes of Maryland and is called the “For the People Act of 2019.” Great, only it’s really not for the people–it’s for bigger federal government and smaller state governments.

Politifact posted an article on February 8th about the bill.

The article mentions some of the demands the bill would make on states:

• Offer online voter registration;

• Establish automatic voter registration;

• Allow voter registration on the day of a federal election;

• Allow voters to correct their registration information at the polls;

• Restore voting rights to felons after they leave prison;

• Offer at least 15 days of early voting; and,

• Follow new rules before purging voters from registration lists.

The bill also has several measures related to campaign finance or ethics:

• Require super PACs to disclose donors who give more than $10,000;

• Require major online platforms to maintain an online public record of people who buy at least $500 worth of political ads; and

• Use public financing to match small dollar donations to House and presidential candidates.

There are also some other interesting items in the bill listed in a pjmedia article of January 10th:

It forces states to implement mandatory voter registration. If someone is on a government list — such as receiving welfare benefits or rental subsidies — then they would be automatically registered to vote. Few states have enacted these systems because Americans still view civic participation as a voluntary choice.

…H.R. 1 would also force states to have extended periods of early voting, and mandates that early voting sites be near bus or subway routes.

…H.R. 1 also undermines the First Amendment by exerting government control over political speech and undoing the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision.

The proposal also undoes another Supreme Court decision. In Husted, a case arising out of Ohio, the Court ruled that federal laws — known as “Motor Voter” — do not prohibit states from using a voter’s inactivity from triggering a mailing to that voter to see if they still are living at that location. H.R. 1 would undo that ruling and prohibit states from effectively cleaning voter rolls.

For further information follow the link to the pjmedia article.

Article 1 Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

States are given the authority to hold elections. To put the federal government in charge of elections is to open the door for fraud on a large scale. That is exactly what H.R. 1 does.