[1]Right From the Start
Monday’s Wall Street Journal contained an article by L. Gordon Crovitz regarding the new use and abuse of “fact checkers” by the mainstream media. It was a “pox on both your houses” article which broadly condemned the use of “fact checker” opinions as if they were facts themselves. As Mr. Crovitz noted:
“The political season brings out the worst in many, but it’s still surprising that some journalists are reliving the good old days when the media claimed a monopoly on the truth.
* * *
“Reporting as ‘fact checking’ might have started as a check on outright falsehoods, but it has morphed into a technique for supposedly nonpartisan journalists to present opinion as ‘facts.’”
The biases evident in the print, broadcast, cable and talk radio media are well established and widely known and the “fact checkers” each one uses reflect those biases. So if you see something on MSNBC ballyhooing a Democrat statement as “mostly true” it simply means that the spelling was correct regardless of the accuracy of the content.
But there is a difference between a “political lie” – Gov. Mitt Romney was responsible for the death of a former worker at a company owned by Bain – and a “damned lie”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never.”
Neither is acceptable and our politicians should be held accountable for their proliferation. Unfortunately, political lie seem to have become the nourishment for campaigns and even when the lies is demonstrably false, many politicians refuse to renounce them or apologize for the gaff. Take for instance President Barack Obama’s steadfast refusal to renounce the lie about Mr. Romney’s responsibility for the death of a worker at a company owned by Bain.
To be sure, the Democrats do not have a lock on “political lies” or even “damned lies” but there is something unsettling about a political convention built on a series of “damned lies.” I’m not talking about the reckless or slanderous political oratory repeated regularly by one speaker after another. I’m talking about foundational lies that seek to avoid responsibility for some very real acts.
Let’s start with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Mr. Obama’s handpicked head of the Democrat National Committee. It often appears that she was chosen primarily for her ability to bray the party line at a volume that drowns out the interviewer and darkens the skies. Ms. Wasserman-Schultz lacks even a nodding acquaintance with the truth in most everything she says but back-to-back lies regarding the Israeli ambassador set a new high in lows for politicians. First, Phillip Klein of the Washington Examiner reported Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, during a training session to instruct Jewish Democrats how to influence other Jews to vote for Mr. Obama stated,
“We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.”
When that quote was reported and attributed to Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, Ambassador Oren denied it emphatically:
“I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”
When confronted with the denial by Ambassador Oren, Ms. Wasserman-Schultz denied to FOX News that she ever made the statement:
“I didn’t say [Oren] said that. And unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper. It’s not surprising that they would deliberately misquote me. What I always say is that unfortunately the Republicans have made Israel a political football, which is dangerous for Israel. And Ambassador Oren has said that we can’t ever suggest that there is any daylight between the two parties on Israel because there isn’t. And that that’s harmful to Israel. That’s what I said, and that is accurate.“
And when the tape of the actual presentation by Ms. Wasserman-Schultz at the training session confirmed that original quote by Mr. Klein was accurate and that Ms. Wasserman-Schultz was a practiced liar, there was dead silence – silence from Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, silence from Mr. Obama, and silence from the Democrat National Committee.
But that wasn’t the only foundational lie. The Democrat Platform Committee reported out a platform that pointedly changed past Democrat platforms by removing any reference to God and by eliminating a reference to Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. Ms. Wasserman-Schultz claimed the omissions were a technical oversight but later members of the platform committee stated that the changes were made to reflect the “current position” of the Mr. Obama’s administration and that Mr. Obama had reviewed and personally approved the platform before its presentation to the convention. It was only after the firestorm erupted that the White House asserted that Mr. Obama personally intervened to restore the omitted sections regarding God and Jerusalem.
Then came the lie about the “big event” – Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday evening. In an attempt to re-create the adoration event of Mr. Obama’s first ascendancy at the Denver convention in 2008, Mr. Obama’s team had arranged to use the 74,000 seat Bank of America football stadium – home of the Carolina Panthers. The organizers intended to bus in people from Atlanta and other Southern cities to fill the stadium. But when enthusiasm for attendance at Mr. Obama’s next coronation waned, organizers were forced to return to the smaller Time Warner Arena. Mr. Obama’s White House claimed that change was due to inclement weather. But at the time of that pronouncement meteorologists were reporting clearing weather with minor chances of rain and, in fact, on Thursday the evening broke warm (in the mid-seventies) and clear skies – ideal conditions for a crowd that would not gather to honor Mr. Obama.
And finally, add to that the lies of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that Mr. Romney deliberately invited boos at the NAACP convention to incite racial tensions and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s assertion that Mr.Romney did not pay taxes for ten years and you can justifiably conclude that the national leadership of the Democrat party will lie even when the truth would serve them better, or that lying without accountability has become so regular that they are no longer able to distinguish between the truth and a lie.
Dis regard President John F. Kennedy’s admonitions about “the best and the brightest” these Democrats have devolved into “liars and scoundrels.”