CNN, the most trusted name in the obvious

Greg Sargent comes to a perfectly sensible conclusion regarding FactCheck.org and Politifact's hand-wringing over Democratic charges that Mitt Romney's "plan" (such as it is) will raise taxes on the middle class: "This"--the hand-wringing--"is a bit silly."

Indeed it's thumping preposterous. No, of course Romney hasn't vowed to raise taxes; it's just that he'd have no choice, since he has vowed to remain revenue neutral in all his tax-cutting gimmickry. And in that case, necessity would become the royal mother of really reaming the middle class.

But if Sargent thinks that's silly, he should check out CNN's apparently sincere, deeply grave "Fact Check" of Obama's job creation, mentioned frequently last night:

The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category for the administration [which is the period from which Obama's policies had had time to kick in]. But overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession [my shocked emphasis].

And that's a fact. Duly checked. By CNN. The most trusted name in news. Which is here to tell us that if one counts the number of jobs created under the Obama administration since the day he took office--when we were hemorrhaging like a gazillion jobs an hour--well, then Obama's net gain doesn't look nearly as good.

Now that's silly.

Comments

[Turgidson]

Utterly predictable. The GOP convention, and of course the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver speech in particular, was such an unprecedented cascade of shameless lies that even the both-sides-always-do-it media had to say something.

In order to restore their precious equilibrium, they must...MUST! find a roughly equivalent number of things to diligently fact-check from this convention. Even if there is no comparison between the two (GOP = demonstrable, quantifiable, verifiable lies; Democrats = taking the occasional liberty in framing facts in as favorable a light as possible).

The welfare lie is a lie. The "Romney is gonna raise your taxes unless you're rich" statement is grounded in actual analysis of what empirically has to happen to make his promises work mathematically, even if it wasn't enunciated in a precisely 100% accurate and verifiable way. These things are not the same, but bless em, CNN and factcheck and politifact and Glenn Kessler will try their damnedest to make us think so.

on a semi-related note, I know there is some nervousness about Bill Clinton's speech tonight, but I'm not at all worried. The guy loves the game - far more than Obama does in my view, and while I view his presidential legacy as a bit of a mixed bag, his vision for America is a good one and he's always been a good speaker when he's dialed in. Hillary isn't running against Barack, so I don't think he has any interest in giving a speech that's anything but great in support of Obama - I'd be shocked if he says anything to undercut BO's campaign message in this setting (off the cuff is a little different for Bill). And I think he'll take it right to the Romney campaign for lying about welfare and trying to coopt the Clinton years for their own foul uses. And I think he'll nail it.

[SueMe]

I noticed that the CNN "factcheckers" made no mention that the job losses are government jobs many in the Republican states...but increasingly in most areas of. government