Lying Fact Checkers

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cegman

Scott Walker Supporter
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Original Story

I sent the Politifact team an e-mail letting them know that the Janesville plant officially closed on April 19th 2009. Therefore part of their premise is wrong.

This is the reply I received back.

Thanks for your email.

We've received many about this fact check and have reviewed the concerns.

First, we believe we correctly interpreted Ryan's point. He said very clearly in his speech on Aug. 16 that "I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open. One more broken promise." His wording at the convention was slightly different, but we think the underlying point was the same: Obama broke a promise to keep the plant open.

Second, some have noted the plant is "on standby." We don't think there's a substantial difference between a plant closing and being on standby. It seems to us a closed plant can reopen -- isn't that pretty much the same thing as being on standby?

From what we've seen, the evidence is clear that GM suspended operations in December 2008 -- one month before Obama became president. It also seems relevant that the decision to close the plant was made even earlier -- even longer before Obama became president.

Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...

Now this is interesting since the what Paul Ryan actually said was

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: "I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years." That's what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.
Click to expand...

This is from the transcript of his speech http://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160282031/transcript-rep-paul-ryans-convention-speech about 15 paragraphs down. Next to a video.

Here is a link to the video of President Obama and what he said in Janesville. http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/...ll-thrive-will-be-here-for-another-100-years/. Sorry it is from hotair, I know they are biased but the video in there isn't biased.

I also sent this information to the "Fact Checker" and haven't heard back since. I thought these fact checkers could at least try to be truthful. I guess what can you expect in politics.
 
It is quite clear that Obama didn't promise to keep the plant open at all.

Ryan is the liar yet again and he got caught at it.
 
So would Ryan have handled things different if he had been elected President? Would he have taken even more government control over GM that the Obama administration? Or does he think Obama was right in letting GM have final say rather than the government?
 
Jolly Roger Don't know don't care. I'm more interested in the fact that "Fact Checkers" are out their lying.

Formy I am not quite sure if you are serious. This is what the "fact checker" claimed Ryan said "I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open. One more broken promise."

This is what Ryan actually said "A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: "I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years." That's what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight. "
 
Right . . .the government (under the Bush administration) wasn't there to support them. That makes Obama's statement true. So what was the point of that statement in Ryan's speech? To give the false impression that the plant was shut down on Obama's watch. If Ryan wanted to be honest, he would have picked a plant that was shut down during the Obama Presidency, though I still don't underestand Ryan's beef - it's not like Ryan is for government intervention to tell GM which plants to keep open.
 
No I'm not going to leave that reply.

My point isn't to defend Ryan. The fact checker put quotes around a sentence and claimed that Paul Ryan said that. Paul Ryan never said those words. This is about the Fact checker and his lying not about Paul Ryan who said things that were factually true even if people claim they are open to interpretation or misunderstanding.
 
I'm not surrendering the thread. I'm not letting the thread be sidetracked. This isn't about Paul Ryan it is about Greg Borowski, PolitiFact Wisconsin editor. Who claims to be fact checking even while he is lying to people.
 
That's the best you've got. Here we have a media person who is obviously biased and lying to the readers and you're blaming Paul Ryan.
 
That's the best you've got. Here we have a candidate for vice president who is obviously lying to the American people and you're getting hypertechnical with some state-level journalist.
 
After being caught in a lie, Ryan clearly should have completely dropped the story instead of subtly changing it. By doing so, he was just being his disingenuous self while still insinuating that Obama made a promise he never did.

That is what the politifact people told you.
 
Runner's World also lied about Ryan's marathon time. They claimed they could find no proof that he ran a marathon under 3 hours, yet they produced a marathon that he ran in 4 hours and one minute, clearly establishing that he ran under three hours for a full 2 hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
 
This seems easy to resolve.

Let's say you worked at a company that employed you, 1999 other people, & 50 custodians/janitors/security guards.

In December, they laid off you & the 1999 other people. They kept the other 50 on 'til April to keep out the vagrants, basically.

When would you say they shut down? In December or in April?

When you're sitting in the bar, talking 'bout the good ol' days, when would you say they closed? December or April?
 
As far as I understand it, the article is about whether Obama broke a promise to keep the plant open. I think it's pretty clear that he didn't, because he never made such a promise. So the central point of the article is beyond question.

Part of the article is PolitiFact claiming that Ryan accused Obama of breaking his promise. Now while Ryan didn't specifically claim that Obama promised to keep that particular plant open, he claimed that Obama promised recovery and used that particular plant as evidence to show that he broke this promise. Note that PolitiFact didn't attack Ryan's point that Obama didn't manage to achieve the promised recovery - only the implicit accusation that this promise was already broken in the case of this particular plant. I don't think it's really relevant if Ryan actually meant to imply that; you can read this into his statement, but that would be wrong.

I have no idea where their false quote comes from, or if they meant to paraphrase him and failed to make that clear. This is probably a mistake, but it doesn't detract from the general point of the article.

I don't really see how this relates to the time of the plant's shutdown you mention in the beginning of the post. Without you providing further evidence, I don't see any reason to disbelieve PolitiFact's claims that the decision to close it was made before Obama took office.
 
Only it isn't a "false quote". Ryan made it in a speech on August 16th about the very same plant:

"I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open. One more broken promise," Ryan said.
Click to expand...

But they primarily decided to rate the campaign speech statement as false because the plant was actually closed before Obama even took office.

Ironically, the government wasn't there to support the plant during the GWB administration. And it closed.
 
I took Cegman at face value there.
 
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