Tag Archives: fact-check

Clarification On Some Debate Points

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Late Tuesday, MPR News posted an article to clarify some of what was said in Tuesday’s Vice-Presidential debate about Minnesota’s abortion law.

The article reports:

While they are allowed, abortions late in pregnancy are exceptionally rare. According to Minnesota data, in the last five years for which data is available just seven induced abortions have been reported in the third trimester of pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are generally sought due to serious or fatal fetal anomalies, risk to maternal health or life or barriers that delay abortion access such as policy or financial need. It is illegal to kill a baby after birth as former President Donald Trump claimed in the presidential debate in September.

The 2023 law also dropped some state reporting requirements for abortion providers and ended the so-called “Born Alive Infants Protection Act.” Doctors and patients who’d pressed for the law change said the new law doesn’t prevent providers from trying to save the life of a child. Instead, they said it would let them bypass previously required medical interventions in situations where parents want to bond with their infant born with a fetal anomaly that is typically fatal.

These are basically wiggle words. As reported, the Minnesota law does allow abortion in the third trimester. The law also does not require providers to try to save a baby’s life. So Tim Walz did sign one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country.

There were other moments during the debate where the moderators made comments that were misleading or outright lies. One has to do with the fact that the moderators stated that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were here legally. That statement is technically true, but very misleading.

As The New York Post reported, Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance provided some details:

Sen. JD Vance was accurately describing the migrant crisis fueled by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden when CBS moderator Margaret Brennan decided to insert herself with a “fact check.”

“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status,” she said smugly.

Vance was rightly annoyed by the interruption and said, “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

He then proceeded to truthfully, forcefully explain what “legal status” means:

“So there’s an application called the CBP One app, where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”

At which point CBS decided to CUT OFF HIS MIC.

This was the most shameful moment in a long history of shameful moments by moderators biased against Republicans. They “fact-checked” the truth, then stopped the politician from responding.

Well played, sir. well played.

Words Have Impact

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On Sunday, Miranda Devine at The New York Post posted an article about the attempted assassination of President Trump. She mentioned the rhetoric the political left consistently uses to describe President Trump. Aside from the fact that at least three quarters of what the media says is false, almost all of it is inflammatory.

The article reports:

Donald Trump was targeted Sunday in a second apparent assassination attempt in as many months.

An eagle-eyed Secret Service agent reportedly spotted the barrel of a gun in bushes a few hundred yards from where the former president was playing golf and shot at the would-be assassin, who was later arrested.

It’s a frightening development that highlights the recklessness of the hateful rhetoric constantly aimed at Trump by his political opponents, even after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Last week, Kamala Harris falsely accused Trump of calling Nazis “fine people,” promising a “bloodbath,” and being responsible for “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

She and Joe Biden and their surrogates constantly exaggerate the J6 Capitol riot and use it to frame Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

Biden has labeled Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascists” and domestic terrorists.

Tim Walz called Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to Democracy” who will “put people’s lives in danger.”

On Saturday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Trump as “a candidate explicitly running on the promise of political violence.”

The article concludes:

CNN host Dana Bash even accused Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on Sunday of “causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats” in Springfield.

What will it take for these demented partisans to lower the temperature?

Whoever said, “Accuse others of what you do,” would have been very happy in today’s Democrat party.

At Least They Admitted That They Were Wrong

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There were a lot of problems with the fact-checking at the Trump/Harris debate. One problem was that all of the fact-checking was done on President Trump and there was no fact-checking on Kamala Harris. Some of the fact-checkers got it wrong. That is starting to come out.

On Thursday, Fox News reported that Time Magazine had corrected one of its fact-checks.

Fox News reports:

Time magazine was forced to correct its coverage of the ABC News Presidential Debate after implying former President Trump’s statement that Vice President Kamala Harris supported free gender-transition treatment for detained migrants was “false.”

During the debate on Tuesday night, Trump remarked on Harris’ old position as one of many left-wing issues she appeared to have walked back on since running for president.

“Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison,” Trump said.

Though Harris pledged she would support taxpayer-funded gender care for detained migrants in an ACLU candidate questionnaire during her first presidential campaign, Time first reported the statement as “false.”

The article notes:

CNN brought Harris’ position back into the spotlight Monday night after senior editor Andrew Kaczynski reported to host Erin Burnett about the recently uncovered 2019 ACLU candidate questionnaire featuring Harris’ policy position.

“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates,” Harris pledged.

Time Magazine has admitted it was wrong. Will any other mainstream media follow suit?

Something The Moderators Overlooked

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During Tuesday’s Presidential debate, the moderators were very quick to fact-check President Trump and did not seem to fact-check Vice-President Harris. One area where the moderators fact-checked President Trump was in the area of late-term abortions and the babies that survived those abortion attempts.

On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about that issue.

The article reports:

One of the ABC News debate moderators on Tuesday fact-checked former President Donald Trump on babies who survive botched abortions, saying that they aren’t killed. But Minnesota records show eight babies in recent years have in fact survived botched procedures but then died after being denied life-saving care.

Trump said that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s “vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born is okay, and that’s not okay with me.”

ABC News’ Linsey Davis pushed back on Trump’s statement, saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

However, in Walz’s state and on his watch, five infants were “born alive” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none was provided life-saving care though two got “comfort care,” the Minnesota Department of Health reported on July 1, 2022.

The article concludes:

Minnesota was the rare state to require such born-alive abortions to be publicly reported, creating a powerful statistic for pro-life and anti-abortion forces to draw upon.

But in 2023, Walz worked with his new Democrat-controlled Legislature to eliminate both the reporting requirement and the state’s legal obligation for doctors, nurses and medical professionals to administer life-saving care to infants born alive during an abortion procedure.

That is barbaric.

 

The Lies Kept On Coming

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I watched the Trump/Harris debate last night. I watched Kamala Harris dismiss comments by President Trump as lies and the moderators fact-check President Trump. Somehow the moderators never fact-checked Kamala Harris. As she accused President Trump of lying, Vice-President Harris told 21 unfact-checked lies that were cited in an article at Breitbart.

This is the list:

1. “Very fine people” hoax

2. Project 2025 hoax

3. False claims on Trump trade deficit

4. Putin can “do whatever the hell he wants”

5. “Dictator on day one” hoax

6. Blaming botched Afghanistan withdrawal on Trump

7. Putin “would be sitting in Kyiv”

8. “Bloodbath” hoax

9. Abortion “monitor” hoax

10. Rental property hoax

11. Central Park Five “execution” hoax

12. “Suckers and losers” hoax

13. False fracking claims

14. False oil production claims

15. National Sales Tax

16. Distorting unemployment figures

17. “I was raised middle-class”

18. “Terminating” the Constitution

19. “Sold us out” to China

20. “Not one” troop in any war zone

21. Taking guns away

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The relevant question to voters is simply, “Do you really want four more years of what we have now?”

 

Sometimes It May Not Be Wise To Run As Part Of A Current Administration

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Vice-President Harris is attempting to run her campaign as someone who will come into the White House and fix everything that is currently broken. Unfortunately for her, she has been working as part of the White House for the past three and a half years. It has also become apparent that the current President has probably not been making a lot of the decisions. That doesn’t help her case.

On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about the idea that Kamala Harris represents a change from the current administration.

The article notes:

JD Vance is torching the Harris-Walz campaign over this simple fact: they’re the incumbent party. It’s become a laughable exercise regarding how Harris’ campaign and the media treat her as if she isn’t in the White House right now. Every aspect of Harris’ agenda is Joe Biden’s; the reversals don’t count. We all know what type of politician Kamala Harris is at heart. Yet, the media is doing everything they can to make her not seem like she’s part of the current administration. The most brazen attempt was by Politico, which had this headline: “Our corrupt leadership’: Vance tries to tether Harris to Biden during Michigan rally.” 

The screenshots of Tweets in the article are quite entertaining:

The article concludes:

This ill-fated attempt at interference is probably one of the funniest chapters in the media’s concerted effort to cast Harris as some outsider. She’s not. This election is there for Trump’s taking—but he needs to tighten things up a bit on the messaging.

The entire Harris-Walz campaign is stating that they will fix things on day one. Both have been involved in politics for years. Why haven’t they fixed things before?

 

The Truth About Censorship

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On Monday, The Daily Wire posted an article about some recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg regarding censorship under the Biden-Harris administration.

The article reports:

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter on Monday that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured his company — which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and more —  to censor content that is protected free speech.

Zuckerberg made the admission in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) this week in which he said that his goal moving forward was to “be neutral and not play a role one way or another” for either any political party or ideology. He said he doesn’t even want the appearance of playing a role and will not be making political contributions.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” he said in the letter. “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”

The censorship during Covid probably resulted in people unnecessarily dying from the disease. We now know that there are some serious risks associated with the vaccine–that was kept quiet. We now that ivermectin used correctly can be an effective weapon against the disease–that information was suppressed. We now know that Hunter’s laptop was real–that information was censored. How much information about the current Democrat party candidates for President and Vice-President is being censored?

The article notes:

He (Zuckerberg) said that the company made a mistake by temporarily demoting a New York Post story during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop after officials falsely suggested that it was part of a “Russian disinformation operation.”

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he said. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S while waiting for fact-checkers.”

We are living with the results of an election that was probably stolen in more then one way. Let’s not let that happen again.

Wiping Away The Past To Create A Fictional Character

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The media fact-checkers are engaged in fact-checking anything the Republicans say about Kamala Harris. There are claims that she was never the Border Czar while anyone call go to YouTube and find newscasters hailing her as the new Border Czar. The latest fact=check says that she never encouraged people to donate to the bail fund for the 2020 rioters.

Well–look what I found on Twitter:

Maybe she forgot.

You  can add this effort to deny her past with the one reported here.

The fact-checkers have already shown that they have no connection to reality. As the campaign continues, please keep that in mind.

 

I’m A Little Late On This, But I Think It’s Important

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On July 1st, Townhall posted an article about the presidential debate. All of us who saw the debate drew our own conclusions, but I want to talk about some things that happened after the debate. Jill Biden revved up the crowd at Waffle House by calling President Trump a liar. Generally speaking, that is the charge that Biden supporters make against President Trump. They never quite get down to specifics, but that is the talking point.

Townhall reports:

Although news articles often call Donald Trump a “liar,” I don’t think I have ever seen that term used when discussing Joe Biden. Following the first presidential debate in June, fact-checkers at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal accused Trump of numerous falsehoods. But they couldn’t find a single Biden falsehood. 

…With respect to Trump, they can’t see the forest for the trees. With respect to Biden, they can’t see the trees.

Immigration. Let’s start with the most blatant falsehood in the entire election season. Last January, Biden claimed, “I’ve done all I can do” to secure the border. He has taken almost 300 executive actions on immigration. Nearly all of these actions made immigration easier, including revoking some of Trump’s policies on his first day in office.

The second worst falsehood is his claim that he needs Congress to act. “Just give me the power I’ve asked from the very day I got into office,” he told reporters. Yet he operates under the same congressional laws as presidents Obama and Trump.

Trump states correctly that innocent young girls have been raped and killed by illegal immigrants. He is justified in saying that those girls would probably be alive today if the Trump immigration policies were still in place.

We are not vetting the immigrants we apprehend, to say nothing of all the got-aways. We don’t really know who they are or where they are. Some are connected to terrorist organizations. FBI Director Wray has testified that there is a serious fear of another 9/11.

…In the debate, Donald Trump claimed that Democrats in general and Biden in particular believe in the legality of killing babies after they are delivered. Even though a Democratic Virginia governor once seemed to suggest that, it is probably not factually correct. But it is very, very close to being correct. For most Democratic candidates, abortion should be legal one minute before delivery, and possibly even during delivery.

…Deficit spending. Some fact-checkers claim that when Trump attacked Biden for running up debt, that was another falsehood. It is true that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget claims that Trump accumulated twice as much debt as Biden. Yet, this claim has been refuted by the House Budget Committee. Moreover, the official scorekeeper on this question is the Congressional Budget Office, whose ten-year projection finds that Biden’s policies will add far more to the national debt than Trump’s policies.

Please follow the link to the article for further examples. Remember, when you can’t win on policy, attack your opponent personally. It’s not an honest way to run a campaign, but it often works.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Will Be Accepted As Truth

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The Biden campaign is at it again. They must assume that the majority of voters are low-information voters, because they keep repeating lies that are easily debunked. One of the latest lies has to do with the events of June 2020 in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.

On June 2nd, Breitbart reported:

CLAIM: The Biden campaign is repeating a lie that former President Donald Trump tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered outside of the White House in Lafayette Square for a photo-op.

VERDICT: FALSE. This has been debunked countless times and has been proven false. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Interior released a report in June 2021 that exonerated Trump from claims that he had tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered in Lafayette Square in June 2020 to walk through the park to have a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The Biden campaign posted a video in a post on X on Saturday night, claiming that “four years ago,” on that date, “Trump tear gassed peaceful protesters outside the White House.”

The article notes:

The inspector general’s report confirmed Trump’s and former Attorney General William Barr’s version of what had happened that day.

Protests began in and around Lafayette Park on May 29, 2020. On May 30, the USPP [U.S. Park Police] and U.S. Secret Service established a unified command to coordinate the law enforcement response to the protests. From May 30 to 31, at least 49 USPP officers were injured while policing the protests, and Federal and private property was vandalized.

On the morning of June 1, the Secret Service procured antiscale fencing to establish a more secure perimeter around Lafayette Park that was to be delivered and installed that same day. The USPP, in coordination with the Secret Service, determined that it was necessary to clear protesters from the area in and around the park to enable the contractor’s employees to safely install the fence. The USPP planned to implement the operation as soon as the fencing materials and sufficient law enforcement officers arrived at the park. Six other law enforcement agencies assisted the USPP and the Secret Service in the operation to clear and secure areas near the park.

The operation began at 6:23 p.m. and was completed by 6:50 p.m. Shorty thereafter, at 7:01 p.m., President Trump walked from the White House through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Church. At 7:30 p.m., the contractor began assembling and installing the antiscale fence and completed the work by approximately 12:30 a.m. on June 2.

“We did not obtain evidence suggesting that the USPP cleared Lafayette Park so the President could visit St. John’s Church,” the report continues.

This lie has been used before:

In July 2020, Biden, the then-presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, had falsely claimed Trump had held the Bible upside down.

The Democratic National Convention claimed in August 2020 that Trump had used tear gas on peaceful protesters “across from the White House.” Bowser, who was being introduced as the speaker, repeated this false claim and failed to mention that St. John’s Episcopal Church had been burned and damaged from a fire the night before.

During a debate in September 2020, Biden claimed that Trump had cleared “peaceful protesters” gathered in Lafayette Square to walk through for a photo-op.

Most recently, Biden questioned what Trump “would have done if black Americans had stormed the Capitol” on January 6, 2021.

Biden then referenced the debunked tear-gas claim, telling the audience that “this is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder.”

I really wish that we had a mainstream media that had some respect for the truth and would call out the continuing lies of the Biden campaign.

Don’t Believe The Fact-Checkers On This One

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about a new feature that will be on American cars beginning in 2026.

The article reports:

Soon the government might shut down your car.

President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power.

You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.”

Rep. Thomas Massie objected, complaining that the law makes government “judge, jury and executioner on such a fundamental right!”

Congress approved the law anyway.

A USA Today “fact check” told readers, don’t worry, “There’s no kill switch in Biden’s bill.”

“They didn’t read it, because it’s there!” says automotive engineer and former vintage race car driver Lauren Fix in my new video. The clause is buried under Section 24220 of the law.

USA Today’s “fact” check didn’t lie, exactly. It acknowledged that the law requires “new cars to have technology that identifies if a driver is impaired and prevents operation.” Apparently, they just didn’t like the term “kill switch.”

But it is a kill switch.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants that.

I say to Fix, “It would save lives.”

“Are you willing to give up every bit of control of your life?” she asks. “Once you give that up, you have no more freedom. This computer decides you can’t drive your vehicle. Great. Unless someone’s having a heart attack and trying to get to the hospital.”

There are also new proposals to further control American’s driving:

California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It contains information on the information our cars collect on us. Remember when we thought OnStar and things like it were a great thing? They generally are, but like most electronics, they are easily misused.

President Biden Has Announced He Is Running For Re-election

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Why would an 80-year-old man run for President? He has obviously lost some of his mental abilities, and he is not likely to regain them. On Tuesday, Townhall posted a fact check of President Biden’s announcement that he was running for President in 2024. The announcement was in video form–it was not live, which in itself is curious.

In the video, the President noted:

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer,” the 80-year-old stated. “I know what I want the answer to be. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.”

The article notes:

As Katie pointed out, vaccine-obsessed Biden, the so-called leader of the free world, issued a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers, ordering that all employees were required to get vaxxed against the coronavirus or be subject to disciplinary action, which included termination. Likewise, in an affront to individual autonomy and those bravely fighting for America’s freedom, Biden imposed a military-wide vaccine mandate, causing thousands of U.S. military personnel to have been discharged or sidelined for refusing the jab. Biden’s administration also sought to enforce a draconian vaccine-or-test mandate on private businesses through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but the move was deemed illegal.

The article also notes:

Attacking GOP leadership, Biden claimed, “But you know, around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away,” which the octogenarian alleged included “cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life.”

Townhall previously debunked this oft-repeated claim that Biden regurgitates in office and on the 2024 campaign trail. The majority of conservative lawmakers aren’t on board with sunsetting Social Security and Medicare as Republican top brass has repeatedly declared that mainstream GOP members have no intention of ending these generations-old federal entitlements.

…Moments after the false Social Security claim, Biden alleged that “MAGA extremists” across America are “banning books.”

Please follow the link to the article for further details. I really can’t believe that anyone believes President Biden is capable of being President until 2028. I do wonder exactly what the Democrats are setting up.

Lying Or Simply Not Knowing?

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On Thursday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about a recent speech by President Biden.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden touted U.S. manufacturing gains Thursday on a trip to Syracuse – where he claimed gas prices were down compared to when he took office, when in fact they are higher.

‘We’re down $1.25 Since the peak this summer, and they’ve been falling for the last three weeks as well as well, and adding up real savings for families today.,’ Biden said. 

‘The most common price of gas in America is $3.39 down from over $5 When I took office,’ he continued.

The average cost of a gallon of gas on the AAA site was $3.76 Thursday. When he took office, it was averaging $2.39 – or about half what he said it was then – according to the Energy Information Institute.

President Biden has a very shaky relationship with the truth. Remember how the political left was always accusing President Trump of lying? Somehow that hasn’t happened to President Biden, even when he is lying.

Yahoo News recently fact-checked another of President Biden’s statements:

Joe Biden: “wages have gone up higher, faster than inflation”

PolitiFact’s ruling: Mostly false

Here’s why: President Joe Biden defended his record on the U.S. economy while attending the international climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Biden entered the United Nations’ COP 26 summit facing supply chain challenges and high levels of inflation back home. At a press conference, he said the U.S. is still in a better place than a year ago, when the coronavirus pandemic limited family gatherings and hampered the economy.

“This Thanksgiving, we’re all in a very different circumstance,” Biden said on Nov. 2. “Things are a hell of a lot better, and the wages have gone up higher, faster than inflation.”

On inflation and wages, Biden has a point for the most recent two months — August and September 2021. However, inflation outpaced wages by so much earlier in his presidency that these two months haven’t changed the overall picture much. All told, Americans are worse off on the comparison of inflation and wages than they were roughly a year ago. (The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.)

At least someone is noticing the lies.

Something Isn’t Quite Right

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Hot Air posted an article today about some rather mundane fact-checking done by the U.K. Daily Mail. What they fact-checked was somewhat insignificant, but maybe it wasn’t.

Hot Air reports:

This may not be the biggest breaking political news story of the year, but it’s certainly a strange tale that might give you pause when it comes to the question of precisely how well President Joe Biden’s memory is doing these days. The Daily Mail was among several outlets that decided to do some fact-checking of a speech that Uncle Joe gave in Philadelphia last Friday. They weren’t looking at any of his policy claims regarding the border crisis or the pandemic or anything else that’s been occupying our attention lately, however. Biden regaled the audience with one of his famous anecdotes from his long political career. As we all know, Biden prided himself on his regular train trips back and forth between Delaware and Washington, mixing in with the common folk and being a regular guy taking public transit. But in this story, Biden gave some specifics. He talked about a time during his fourth or fifth year as Vice President when a train conductor congratulated him on reaching 1.5 million miles on Amtrak while he was traveling to visit his sick mother. It’s one of those heartwarming stories of a regular American guy doing regular American things. But there were two problems with his story. First of all, the conductor he named had retired twenty years before that and his mother had passed away at least four years earlier.

The article concludes:

Just how well is Joe Biden holding it all together these days? He rarely holds any lengthy Q&A sessions with the press or publicly engages in unscripted exchanges on camera. He generally sticks to prepared speeches and has a lengthy set of notes on the lectern when making public addresses. How is he doing when he’s in private meetings or on phone calls with foreign leaders or the top ranks of our military?

I’m not saying this is some sort of end of the world scenario. After all, we made it through Ronald Reagan’s second term without even learning that he was fighting Alzheimer’s at the time. As long as Joe Biden has trusted staffers at his side at all times I suppose things will work out in the end. But these traits should really be taken into consideration before Joe Biden makes a decision about possibly running for a second term. We’ve still got more than three and a half years to go on this term and it could turn out to be a bumpy ride.

At this point, many of us are wondering who is actually running the country.

The Washington Post Fact Checker Gets It Right

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On September 4th, The Washington Post posted an article checking the veracity of one of the statements the Biden campaign is making about President Trump. The statement has been made often enough that I see it frequently posted by my friends on Facebook.

The article reports:

“The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration just released an analysis of Trump’s planned cuts to Social Security. Under Trump’s plan, Social Security would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023. If Trump gets his way, Social Security benefits will run out in just three years from now. Don’t let it happen. Joe Biden will protect Social Security.”

— Voice-over in a new ad by Joe Biden, “Depleted,” released Sept. 3

Without fail during a tough election season, Democrats bring up Social Security. The ads are often ubiquitous in states with high percentages of senior citizens who rely on Social Security as their main source of income.

Trump gets mentioned in this ad three times. But there is no such Trump plan.

The article explains the false basis for the claim:

The president gave the Democrats an opening with a series of confusing remarks after he signed an executive order that would suspend the payment of payroll taxes until the end of the year.

The executive order would halt collection of the 6.2 percent payroll tax imposed on wages for Social Security, starting Sept. 1. In theory, taxpayers would still be liable for the taxes at a later date, but the executive order says “the Secretary of the Treasury shall explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the taxes deferred pursuant to the implementation of this memorandum.”

While the Trump White House has suggested this is similar to a payroll tax holiday in the Obama administration during the Great Recession, that law had a provision saying Social Security would be made whole with transfers from general funds (regular tax revenue). This executive order does not say that, but one would presume that any forgiveness would be accompanied by such transfers.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It details exactly what is being said and what has been said. Just for the record, Congress has been raiding Social Security since the 1960’s.

 

 

 

 

I Totally Don’t Understand This

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Yesterday Breitbart News reported a puzzling comment by House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat. Representative Clyburn was being interviewed on Fox Business Network by Neil Cavuto. The article includes part of the transcript of that interview.

The article reports:

NEIL CAVUTO: As you’ve been seeing with Michael Bloomberg, he’s been jumping in the polls on the heels of his very expensive, pricey ad buys if you include $125 million slated for Super Tuesday. Could you, would you back him?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: I’m going to back whoever our nominee is — Absolutely.

CAVUTO: Even with the things he’s said about African-Americans? Does that bother you?

REP. CLYBURN: Not as much as what Trump has said about African-Americans. Anytime that I go to the polls, I’m considering positives and negatives on all candidates and I try to go with the one whose positives outweigh the negatives.

CAVUTO: Let’s leave the words aside, whether you like his style or not, tweets or not, or comments or not, he’s delivered the goods for a lot of African-Americans. Does he not with record-low unemployment levels?… You don’t think that’s something that’s constructive?

REP. CLYBURN: No, because it’s not true. I’m saying that the African American unemployment is not the lowest it’s ever been unless you count slavery… We were fully employed during slavery. So, it all depends how you measure this up.

This is how blind hatred affects judgement.

On February 7, 2020, CNS News reported:

Trump loves to boast and exaggerate, so it’s easy to throw out little “Pinocchio” ratings when Trump claims we have the lowest black unemployment rate in American history, since it’s only been measured since 1972. But it’s literally the lowest ever measured in American history. What the fact-checkers are doing is littering achievements with asterisks, trying to distract from the undeniable fact that unemployment is at record lows for blacks, Hispanics, women, the disabled and undoubtedly other groups Democrats claim to champion.

This is the link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website page that has all of the unemployment statistics. You can explore that page for pure numbers. We should all celebrate the fact that the Trump economy has been good to all Americans of all backgrounds.

The Biggest Lie Told In Last Night’s Debate

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Breitbart posted an article last night which detailed the biggest lie told in the Democratic debate in Iowa.

The article reports:

Blue-collar and white-collar Americans “are being clobbered, they’re being killed,” former Vice President Joe Biden claimed at the January 14 Democrat debate in Iowa.

However, unemployment is at record lows, many sidelined Americans are getting jobs, and blue-collar wages are rising at rates not seen for many years amid President Donald Trump’s new curbs on legal and illegal immigration.

The article quotes Joe Biden’s remarks:

Working-class people — where I come from in Pennsylvania, the places I come from in Delaware — I have great support. I have support across the board, and I’m not worried about taking on Donald Trump at all. And with regard to the economy I can hardly wait to have a debate with him.

Where I come from — the neighborhoods I come from — they’re in real trouble: working-class people and middle-class people. When the middle class does well, [the] working class has a way up and the wealthy do well. But what’s happening now: they’re being clobbered, they’re being killed. They now have a situation where they [believe] — the vast majority believe — their children will never reach the stage that they reached in economic security.

I love that [economic] debate because the American public is getting clobbered. The wealthy are the only ones doing well. Period. I’m looking forward to the economic debate.

The article reports the facts:

Wages for blue-collar Americans rose by 4.3 percent in 2019 — or 2.7 percent after inflation — in President Donald Trump’s tightening labor market, according to a December report by Goldman Sachs.

The wage gains come amid very low inflation of just 2.1 percent in December.

…Blue-collar wages are rising faster than white-collar salaries because of different demands from employers, said Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “White-collar wages have been moving up over time, a bit, and the demand there, because of technology and other things, is not as high as the demand [for blue-collar skills]. … It’s a reality of the market,” he said January 9.

But Biden wants to increase the flow of foreign workers who will reduce wages for Americans.

“Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages,” said Biden’s plan for legal immigration. “Then, Biden will support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs,” the plan says.

Hopefully enough Americans are familiar with the actual facts to believe this garbage.

If You Haven’t Become Somewhat Skeptical About News Photos, You’re Not Paying Attention

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today about some recent film aired by ABC News that was described as ‘slaughter in Syria.’ There was only one problem. It seems that the film footage was actually from a nighttime machine gun demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky. We’ve seen this sort of propaganda before, but it usually comes from middle eastern news sources (as in this instance).

The article in The Washington Examiner reports:

After seeing a comment from Wojciech Pawelczyk, I began making some calls. As of this writing, it appears ABC indeed aired footage recorded in the Kentucky and claimed it was from Syria. The network has since pulled the video.

“We’ve taken down video that aired on World News Tonight Sunday and Good Morning America this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy,” a network representative told the Washington Examiner. “ABC News regrets the error.”

A representative for the gun range also told the Washington Examiner that they are still investigating ABC’s reporting, adding further that the images aired by the network “look to be” from their Kentucky property.

“As of right now,” the representative added, “it seems to be our footage.”

Note that the sequence and shape of explosions is identical in the following ABC and Kentucky videos, as are some of the features of the terrain amid the explosions. But we might actually be dealing with two different videos of the same Kentucky live-fire event from slightly different angles. In the independent film of the live-fire event in Kentucky, you can clearly see taller objects in the foreground that seem to appear as silhouettes in the ABC footage:

The article concludes:

Earlier, on Sunday, ABC News anchor Tom Llamas also aired the allegedly shocking footage, claiming it showed a fierce Turkish attack on Kurd civilians.

“The situation rapidly spiraling out of control in northern Syria. One week since President Trump ordered U.S. forces out of that region, effectively abandoning America’s allies in the fight against [the Islamic State],” he said.

Llamas then described the video as it aired on-screen.

“This video right here appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town. The Kurds, who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS. Now, horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies,” he added.

The intro to the show he anchored,ABC World News Tonight, also claimed of the footage: “A border town, bombarded by Turkey’s military!”

The footage would indeed be stunning were if actually from northern Syria. It would be horrific were it actually to show a Turkish assault on Kurd civilians. But it does not show that. The footage, which appears to be from 2017, shows American gun enthusiasts putting on a terrific pyrotechnic show for an audience in Kentucky. In fact, the Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show, which involves the very popular night shoot, is a bi-annual event at the Kentucky gun range. People love the show. They love it so much, in fact, that they record it and post footage of it to social media. …

It is astonishing that ABC appears to have aired Kentucky gun range footage during prime-time news segments on the clashes in Syria and that no one at the network — not a producer, not a fact-checker, and certainly not an on-air personality — caught the errors before they aired.

When the mainstream media has a narrative, they will use whatever resources they can to promote that narrative. Don’t believe anything you currently see in the mainstream media. They are not interested in reporting accurate news–they are interested in remaking America into something that would negatively impact the lives of everyday Americans.

 

Fact-Checking The Lies

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I really hate being lied to. I also hate it when a source that should be reliable lies to me in order to convince me to take a stand on an issue. Unfortunately that has become a way of life for some of the mainstream media. The latest example illustrates that there might be some panic associated with having an attorney general who believes in the rule of law involved in the Epstein case.

The Gateway Pundit reported today:

The Fake News Liberal Media claimed that AG Bill Barr’s father worked with Jeffrey Epstein as a school teacher and therefore AG Barr should recuse himself from the Epstein case.  Of course, it’s just another liberal lie.

The article then goes on to report the actual facts:

The fake news New York Times reported in February 1974 that Bill Barr’s father had resigned from the elite school

…The far left Daily Beast reported that Epstein did work at the school but he didn’t work there until after the summer of 1974 –

 

 AG Bill Barr’s father couldn’t have worked with Epstein at Dalton School because he wasn’t even there when Epstein worked there.  He resigned months earlier.

So I guess there is no reason for Attorney General Barr to recuse himself. But how many people are mistakenly going to believe what they heard on the news? This sort of reporting is a threat to our republic–misinformed voters can be manipulated to vote any way a dishonest media wants them to vote.

Facts Are Such Inconvenient Things

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The biggest advantage the Republicans will have in 2020 is a strong economy. Because the Democrats know this, they are trying very hard to downplay the economic recovery that is currently taking place. They have invented some interesting facts in their attempt to do this. However, the alternative media has learned to fact check these attempts to downplay President Trump’s economic success.

Townhall posted an article today that includes some recent fact checking.

The article reports on some recent statement by Kamala Harris:

First, I’m not sure many economists or Republicans cite the stock market as the top indicator of economic health, despite her initial straw man claim. There are many other metrics that are more indicative and more helpful to building that argument, which we’ll mention in a moment.  But it’s also worth pointing out that a robust stock market is not merely good news for people who own stocks, as Harris sarcastically says.  Plenty of workers’ benefit and retirement funds, including those of many public sector employees, are tied into the performance of the stock market — so it’s not just investors who benefit when markets are humming along, and it’s not just investors who feel pain when markets sustain hits. 

Second, in her attempt to downplay the impressive, stable and low US unemployment rate, Harris recycles a claim for which AOC was slapped down by fact-checkers a few months ago.  Even left-leaning Politifact assigned her a “pants on fire” rating.  Harris’ spin is less explicitly clumsy and wrong than AOC’s, as she didn’t specifically state that the low rate is directly attributable to people working more than one job, which makes absolutely no sense — but she does use this argument to undercut the (compelling) argument that the economy is in good shape because so many Americans are employed.  While it’s certainly true that a substantial number of people are working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, it’s not accurate to pretend that this phenomenon is sufficiently widespread as to justify Harris’ talking point.

The article further reports:

The February jobs report found that just five percent of the employed population is working more than one job, down from 5.2 percent one year ago.  The experiences of the people who constitute that five percent matter, of course, but they are not evidence of a larger trend — and certainly not a trend that represents a real basis to shrug off the historically-low unemployment rate.  The jobs report that came out on Friday was a major ‘miss’ on a key number, with the US economy adding only 20,000 jobs last month; economists were expecting 180,000.  That’s a potentially concerning data point, underscoring the folly of simply assuming that the current prosperity streak will continue unabated.  But there were positive statistics, too.  The previous two months’ job creation data was revised upward by 12,000, and the overall unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent.  That marks 12 consecutive months, a full year, with the U3 figure at or below four percent, which is unambiguously good.

The article concludes:

Sustainability is a fair worry for the White House, but as of this moment, the most useful measuring sticks of the US economy are unemployment (3.8 percent), GDP growth (3.1 percent Q4 to Q4), and wage growth (3.4 percent).  All three are impressive.  Harris’ snarky point, therefore, is weak.  

As wages and jobs increase, voters will have to decide whether to believe what they are experiencing or what they are being told.