PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'A government takeover of health care'

I would say the biggest was "pass the stimulus and unemployment won't rise above 8%. Without it we will all be unemployed."

digsbe said:

I would say the biggest was "pass the stimulus and unemployment won't rise above 8%. Without it we will all be unemployed."

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Granted, that was an estimation, and economics isn't an exact science, since economics is a social science.

Your Star said:

Granted, that was an estimation, and economics isn't an exact science, since economics is a social science.

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Yes, but his estimation was far off and he used fear mongering to pass the bill. It was a scare tactic tied with a false promise to push for passing the stimulus bill.

Jetboogieman said:

No much more then Republicans claiming to represent the wishes of the American People :2razz:

Seriously dude, both sides are retards, how your country is standing at all is a miracle, if you put them in charge of a ship, they'd manage to hit an iceburg off the coast of Spain :2razz:

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I'd rather they stop us with something like that than over something the size of Niagra Falls.

Gardener said:

Yes. He knew it wouldn't rain, but a consortium of umbrealla manufacturers had lobbied him to say otherwise.

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OMG! Another vast conspiracy uncovered! Could this one be all wet, like the other ones?

megaprogman said:

What would you consider to be a bigger lie?

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I don't know...I'd say suggesting that the attendee's of the "restoring honor" rally were KKK members 25 years ago would possibly be a contender at least as much as the Bachmann one.

Or, since that was more hyperbole than an outright lie, at the very least in 2009 I'd say at least a candidate for the top spot or runner up would be suggesting that the Republican Health care Plan is "Don't get sick and if you get sick die quickly". Suggesting there is "Death Panels" in the bill is a stretch...suggesting that the Republicans plan was to either not get sick, or die quickly if you get sick, is a disgusting and unquestionable misrepresentation.

Redress said:

You still have not learned the difference between a projection and a lie.

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Here's another "projection" that didn't come true:

Obama said:

"When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you, the public, will have five days to look on-line and find out what’s in it, before I sign it. So that you know what your government’s doing."

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And another...

Obama said:

"when I am President, [lobbyists] won't find a job in my White House."

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And another...

Obama said:

"I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible."

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:lamo:2wave:

By the way, this thread is fun...

Its wonderful watching Republicans take statements made in earnest and with the belief that they were ture, but in the end they were not, and calling it a lie.

Its also wonderful watchign Democrats spouting the definition of what a Lie is and making statements about "knowingly" misleading and other such things.

Its like we went back in time 5 years and both sides swapped places.

Conservative said:

Political lie of the year and every year, "If you like your doctor or insurance plan you can keep it!" Your premiums doubled, why?

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They gave him a half-truth, whatever...
PolitiFact | Health insurance stays in place under reform proposals

digsbe said:

Yes, but his estimation was far off and he used fear mongering to pass the bill. It was a scare tactic tied with a false promise to push for passing the stimulus bill.

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I wouldn't call it fear mongering, more like they thought it would help, and it did, just not as much as they thought, and thought it was important to pass.

BWG said:

Republican strategist, Frank Luntz, is credited with PolitiFact's 2010 lie of the year.

This comes on the heels of PolitiFact's 2009 Lie of the Year winner - Sarah Palin's posting of 'Death Panels' on her Facebook page.

:lol:

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ROTFLOL... I thought it would be the same one that won last year: "Hope".

Krugman basically confirmed Palin's Death panel statement, and government takeover of healthcare. I don't know what you call it when the government forces people to buy a service, and if you don't they'll fine you.

Newt Gingrich nails it home:

"The bill's 1,000 pages of setting up mechanisms," said Gingrich. "It sets up 45 different agencies. It has all sorts of panels. You're asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there clearly are people in America who believe in -- in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.

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ObamaKare:

Milton Friedman called the Pre-ObamaKare system as Communist.
LA: Is there an area here in the United States in which we have not been as aggressive as we should in promoting property rights and free markets?

MF: Yes, in the field of medical care. We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care.
Hillsdale College - Imprimis Issue

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Of course ObamaKare has made the Commi system better.

.
This is only the beginning... one or another. Either it's the beginning of the end of this madness called Obamakare, or it's the start of failed Kanuckistanikare.

You know them Libs. They'll just keep on keep'in on.

Dittohead not! said:

OMG! Another vast conspiracy uncovered! Could this one be all wet, like the other ones?

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There is currently a 50% chance, rising to 90% by morning.

PolitiFiction: True 'Lies' about Obamacare

So the watchdog news outfit called PolitiFact has decided that its "lie of the year" is the phrase "a government takeover of health care." Ordinarily, lies need verbs and we'd leave the media criticism to others, but the White House has decided that PolitiFact's writ should be heard across the land and those words forever banished to describe ObamaCare.

"We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover," the editors of PolitiFact announce portentously. "'Government takeover' conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees," whereas ObamaCare "is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies and the free market." PolitiFact makes it sound as if ObamaCare were drawn up by President Friedrich Hayek, with amendments from House Speaker Ayn Rand.

.This purported debunking persuaded Stephanie Cutter, a special assistant to the President. If "opponents of reform haven't been shy about making claims that are at odds with the facts," she wrote on the White House blog, "one piece of misinformation always stood out: the bogus claim . . ." We'll spare you the rest.

PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and "facts," rather than differences of world view or principles. PolitiFact wants to define for everyone else what qualifies as a "fact," though in political debates the facts are often legitimately in dispute...

Evidently, it doesn't count as a government takeover unless the means of production are confiscated. "The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors," the editors write, and while "it's true that the law does significantly increase government regulation of health insurers," they'll still be nominally private too.

In fact—if we may use that term without PolitiFact's seal of approval—at the heart of ObamaCare is a vast expansion of federal control over how U.S. health care is financed, and thus delivered. The regulations that PolitiFact waves off are designed to convert insurers into government contractors in the business of fulfilling political demands, with enormous implications for the future of U.S. medicine. All citizens will be required to pay into this system, regardless of their individual needs or preferences. Sounds like a government takeover to us.

PolitiFact is run by the St. Petersburg Times and has marketed itself to other news organizations on the pretense of impartiality. Like other "fact checking" enterprises, its animating conceit is that opinions are what ideologues have, when in reality PolitiFact's curators also have political views and values that influence their judgments about facts and who is right in any debate.

In this case, they even claim that the government takeover slogan "played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health-care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections." In other words, voters turned so strongly against Democrats because Republicans "lied," and not because of, oh, anything the Democrats did while they were running Congress. Is that a "fact" or a political judgment? Just asking...