MFM "Fact Check:" Obama Didn't Say What He Said When He Said It
— Ace

Ah, Obama has a new problem gaining media traction -- Geoff from Innocent Bystander's now-ancient observation that Obama said the jobless rate would not go above 8.5% with his stimulus but would go over 9% without it. (In fact, with the stimulus, it's gone over what he said it would go over with the stimulus.)

Problematic, huh? Not for the MFM!

Watch as we will now parse whether Obama actually said this, or merely his chief economic advisor, and whether it was actually a promise or merely a prediction, with caveats, because, you know, predictions are inherently difficult so why don't you just STFU and let the man eat his waffle.

First, we could find no instance of anyone in the administration directly making such a public pledge. Rather, it comes via a Jan. 9, 2009, report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economic adviser.

Oh well, she doesn't count. She acted stupidly. (In fact, below, you will see it took Slublog all of ten minutes to find Obama making a similar promise.)

Their report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also included a chart predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

As Will rightly noted, it went higher. The unemployment rate peaked around 10 percent in late 2009 and is now around 9.5 percent. And Will is also right that the cost of the stimulus rose dramatically.

But what we saw from the administration in January 2009 was a projection, not a promise. And it was a projection that came with heavy disclaimers.

"It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error," the report states. "There is the more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a program. Our estimates of economic relationships and rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly in any given episode. Furthermore, the uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity."

There's also a footnote that goes along with the chart that states: "Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action."

The administration has acknowledged its projections were wrong.

Now let's see them parse Obama. Pay attention to the bolded words.

"Now, every economist who has looked at it has said that the recovery did its job," Obama said. "It put a brake on the collapse of the economy. We avoided a Great Depression. We are now growing again. The problem is, No. 1, itÂ’s hard to argue sometimes, things would have been a lot worse. Right? So people kind of say, yeah, but unemployment is still at 9.6. Yes, but itÂ’s not 12 or 13, or 15."

That comment was ridiculed by the Daily Show's Jon Stewart who commented, "I believe we can all agree as Americans there are many numbers bigger than nine."

Obama is correct that many independent economists agree that the stimulus has created more than a million jobs and kept the unemployment rate from going even higher than it has (though in fairness, not every economist agrees with that).

Note that Will is taken to task for this absurd parsing between "promise" and "prediction" and yet PolitiFact only offers a parenthetical about Obama's claim about every economist as opposed to many.

Further, PolitiFact is just wrong -- Obama himself did trumpet this promise, or wait, was it prediction? Or projection? Let's agree it's a word beginning with "pr."

From Obama's own speech in Elkhart, Indiana:

Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, all across the country. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse.

Will approach. Sounds like a promise to me. Not "may approach, subject to asterisked caveats about the inherent difficulty of forecasting into the future."

And what if we pass the stimulus, President Predictions Are Always Subject To Uncertainty?

So we can't afford to wait. We can't wait and see and hope for the best. We can't posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. (Applause.) That was what this election was all about -- the American people rejected those ideas because they hadn't worked. (Applause.) You didn't send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same; you sent us there to change things -- (applause) -- the expectation that we would act quickly and boldly to carry out change. And that's exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States of America. (Applause.)

That's why I put forth a recovery and reinvestment plan that is now before Congress. At its core is a very simple idea: to put Americans back to work doing the work America needs to be done.

Sounds to me like President Asterisk is setting up a very clear promise -- wait, prediction, no wait, projection -- between what will happen with his stimulus vs. what will happen without it.

But PolitiFact -- in some arrangement with water-carrying ABC -- finds that Obama is somehow vindicated in all of this, and that George Will and other critics making this charge are waaaayyy off-base.

Didn't they read the footnotes?!!?! For God's sake, there was a disclaimer right in the footnotes!!

Thanks to Slublog for all of this, every bit of it.

Predictions or Mere Projections In Iraq? Seems to me the media took a decidedly different view on parsing promises and predictions as regards Bush and Iraq -- despite the fact the guy said every other day the war would be long and hard.

And they even attributed a quote by a guy who wasn't an official in the Bush White House to Bush -- Ken Adelman claimed the war would be a "cakewalk," but he was some kind of consultant and media figure, but damn, if that wasn't attributed to Bush.

He lied us into war, you know.

Did Obama lie us into bankruptcy? No, of course not; he just projected some shit.

Even More Obama Quotes! Remember, PoltiiFact couldn't find a single instance of Obama (or any administration official) making this promise/prediction/projection/"wish-lie."

Here are three statements implicitly referencing that chart that no one in the administration really is responsible for.

Again, thanks to Slublog.

Slublog should lend his Lexis/Nexis password to PolitiFact. They apparently don't have the cash to spring for an account.

And So Mighty Achilles Did Tie Hector's Body To The Chariot, And Drag Him Around Troy's Walls:

From "Face the Nation," CBS
January 18, 2009

SCHIEFFER: Do you think we'll see unemployment actually get to 10 percent?

Mr. SUMMERS: I don't--I don't--I don't think so, Bob. I think that while we're going to see substantial job losses, frankly what's important about the president's program here is that it is going to contain what would otherwise be a, just a vicious cycle: people spend less, therefore they earn--therefore others earn less, therefore they spend less. We're going to stop that vicious cycle and we're going to contain--we're going to contain this problem. The president's going to do whatever it takes to achieve that objective.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (201)
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Phew!, Pew: Poll Shows ObamaCare Remains Unpopular
— Ace

Which is good, because a pair of polls covered at Hot Air (and skipped by me, because I choose to cocoon myself from bad news) showed it increasing in popularity.

Pew casts doubt on that.

And it's actually gotten more unpopular since April:

In more good news, Fiorina leads Boxer within the MoE, 47-45, but that's some good stuff right there.

And Whitman leads Moonbeam Brown 46-39.

It gets worse for Obama: the miracle non-stick space-age Teflon coating is abrading off at a perilous pace:

...with less than four months to go before his first midterm election, a growing number of voters appear to be preparing to take political revenge for such White House inattention.

The same poll shows approval of Obama's job on the economy has dropped 7 points in only one month, from 50% to 43%, his lowest level yet.

Meanwhile, 54% disapprove, a new high.

And the same ABC news poll shows the public has lost confidence in Obama.

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

Regard for Obama is still higher than it is for members of Congress, but the gap has narrowed. About seven in 10 registered voters say they lack confidence in Democratic lawmakers and a similar proportion say so of Republican lawmakers.

Overall, more than a third of voters polled — 36 percent — say they have no confidence or only some confidence in the president, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans. Among independents, this disillusionment is higher still. About two-thirds of all voters say they are dissatisfied with or angry about the way the federal government is working.

When you've lost America, you've lost the EU and other countries that actually matter.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (297)
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Althouse: If You Really Believe In Global Warming, How Come Yo Ass Is So Fat?
— Ace

And that's just Point One.

She goes on to suggest that everyone live their lives as if they're nineteenth century hardscrabble farmers.

It's a good list, as it gets to the heart of the matter: What the global warming sin-eaters urge, essentially, is for everyone to live a much poorer existence than they can afford, demanding that everyone live their lives as if they are just above poverty level.

And by "everyone" they mean "everyone else," because if they can get other people to voluntarily live lives of want, then they've created a parcel of "carbon credits" they can then use to justify their own middle-class-comfortable-to-world-class-luxurious lifestyles.

If I ever get rich, I'm using this blog as my carbon offset, as I urge this crap on you -- you will just have to make do with less -- while I jet off to Tahiti to pay high-price call-girls to make me pulled pork because I'm too frickin' obese to have sex.

In other words, I will do exactly as Al Gore and Laurie David do.

Other Suggestions:

7. Stop Watching Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. You know what she's going to say and you already agree with everything she could possibly say. This is a complete waste of electricity, and electricity kills the earth. So stop.

8. Stop Visiting Leftwing Sites and/or Trolling Rightwing Blogs. Again, pure self-indulgent carbon production for no other purpose except trivial, sinful pleasure. As Althouse suggests -- re-do old jigsaw puzzles to entertain yourselves.

9. Pay 30% Above Your Correct Level of Taxation. The earth isn't going to heal itself -- that's where you come in. Plus, you'll be saving money on food, transportation, cable, electricity, and housing (you can afford to downgrade) so you'll be rolling in the dirty filthy money. Tithe heavily to your church so that we can subsidize research into a car that runs on love.

10. Buy and Eat Only Highly Processed Food. Why? Because it's cheaper and has a very long shelf life. Fresh meat and produce cost a lot of money because they need to be swiftly transported and sold and if they are not, they are wasted, utterly, thus contributing excess carbon to the world. It is far more earth-friendly to buy only foods saturated in artificial preservatives and of a low general quality. These foods are cheap for a reason.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (165)
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Megyn Kelly-Kirsten Powers Cat Fight! UPDATE: Video Added
— Jack M.

The 10 Minutes fight between Megyn Kelly and Kirsten Powers on FNC may be the greatest ten minutes of television, ever.

I mean it.

Somebody please send me this clip. Not only did Kelly reveal Powers to be a know-nothing mouthpiece for the left (something I've always asserted), but she further owned her for knowing next to zero about the New Black Panther case.

Now I know why Dylan named his album "Blonde on Blonde". That's shorthand for "so awesome it hurts", isn't it?

UPDATE [DrewM.] Because I'm a giver. It starts about 2:45 in. Not sure what the history is between them but there's got to be some because Megyn just ripped into her from the get go. Either that or it's the greatest set up for attention ever. more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 09:42 AM | Comments (441)
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Reid To Introduce Energy Bill Before August Recess
— Ace

Full-court press.

Two parts of the bill will be relatively noncontroversial: 1, reforming deep-drilling standards and raising the liability cap, and 2, some kind of nonsense about pushing more energy from solar and wind, which, you know, we've been doing since 1975, and simply doesn't work. I hate this crap but if Soccer Moms really want to pay more on electricity bills to subsidize nonworking technology, and they'll vote out anyone who doesn't agree to so waste their money, what can you do.

The third part...

The third, biggest and most contentious piece is a price on greenhouse gas emissions — a policy at the heart of the climate change debate. In a nod to how heavy a lift this would be, it’s likely that the carbon-cap piece will be limited to pollution from power plants and will not apply across the economy.

Despite that concession, itÂ’s almost certain that two, if not three, of the five leaders meeting with Reid will object to including any kind of carbon cap in the final package. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) fear that a carbon price will hurt their home-state economies. And Bingaman, although a strong supporter of climate change efforts that cap carbon, has said many times in recent weeks that he does not believe the votes are there to pass a climate measure this year.

As Captain Awesome once said, your electricity prices will "necessarily skyrocket."

A Two-Fer: The Democrats need this, badly, because they need new taxes.

The carbon tax has great appeal to them because it's partially disguised (in that it will be your gas station and your power company extracting the tax from you) and because they can claim it's doing something besides taking money out of your pocket. See, by taking money out of your pocket, we're saving the world.

I think this is going to be a serious push, and not just an abortive pretend-bill to appease liberals.

These guys are growing a monster government and they need a monster tax base.

Posted by: Ace at 09:21 AM | Comments (69)
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The Rise And Fall Of The Left's New Black Panther Strawman UPDATE: More Lefty Collateral Damage And Bonus Adam Serwer
— DrewM

Oh they were so happy on the left yesterday! Seemed Adam Serwer of the American Prospects had the goods on how it wasn't the Holder/Obama Justice Department who let the baton wielding thugs of the New Black Panthers off the hook. No, it was Buuuuush they squealed with delight.

Serwer yesterday....

All of which kind of puts a rather large wrinkle in the right-wing fantasy that the decision to pursue a civil rather than criminal case against The New Black Panther Party members was a racist decree handed down from the racist leadership of the Obama administration. None of the Obama administration's political appointees who have been attacked as having mandated this decision were even working at the Department of Justice at the time the case was downgraded!

Oops they go us!

Turns out, not so much.

From the beginning the story has been about the dropping of the civil remedies and that most certainly was done by Obama, Holder, et al.

Here's what Serwer writes today...

So, I just wanted to clear something up: I wrote my post yesterday about the Justice Department's decision not to pursue criminal charges against the NBPP during the Bush administration because I had seen conservatives arguing that it was made by the Obama administration. It wasn't. I did not mean to suggest that the civil case, which the DoJ dropped in May of last year after receiving a preliminary injunction against the only NBPP member in Philadelphia who was walking around with a baton, was dismissed during the Bush administration. I apologize if any of my writing has been unclear on this point or any confusion has resulted because I misstated the accusation of who wanted the criminal case dismissed.

Yeah a little thing like misstating the accusation. That's not good.

Of course this is a little inconvient for some folks on the left who ran with the "Crazy Wingnuts Caught" story.

Our old buddy Dave Weigel filling in for OBGYN extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan wrote...

The conservative narrative goes like this: Eric Holder's DOJ got into office and skunked a successful case against the racist fringe New Black Panther Party because it doesn't want to defend white voting rights. (If anyone has a bunch of examples of white voters being repressed in the Obama era, please, send 'em my way.) In several segments about the case, Glenn Beck has tied the Panthers to Bill Ayers, Charles Ogletree, and Van Jones as the latest "militant group" pulling the strings on Obama policies. A simple issue -- whether the Panthers should be prosecuted further for briefly showing off their nightsticks and glowering at voters outside of a mostly-black Philadelphia polling place -- has been conflated into a catch-all storyline that really makes no sense.

On Countdown, Keith Olbermann said....

Adam Serwer of “The American Prospect” found the smoking gun in the testimony last May of the head of the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division. Thomas Perez was talking about this new Black Panthers nonsense to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in May and he said this, “After reviewing the matter, the Civil Rights Division determined that the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the criminal statutes. The department did, however, file a civil action on January 7th, 2009, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief under 11b against four defendants.” .

January 7th, nearly two weeks before Obama took office, nearly a month before Holder was confirmed, nearly three months before the Fox News main target in this, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, was confirmed. There‘s also a deputy assistant attorney general whom Fox claims ordered that no lawsuit against the black or other national minority ever be brought. Unfortunately for the conspiracy fantasy, she didn‘t even get to the Justice Department until the end of June, five months after criminal prosecution was dropped.

So here‘s the real story Fox and the other malefactors of mankind will not tell you, based not on rumor nor innuendo, but court and congressional records. New Black Panthers, intimidating voters, killing cracker babies, Bush didn‘t prosecute.

Yeah, Serwer found the smoking gun and Olbermann used it to shoot himself in the foot. Again.

Good for Serwer (I guess) for correcting/clarifying his story. So far nothing from Weigel at St. Heartache's place and I won't hold my breath for Olbermann to follow suit.

More Collateral Damage: Obama booster Marc Ambinder also fell for Serwer's misdirection.

No, the decision not to pursue the Black Panther case from election day was not made by political appointees. The political appointees who would have made the decision had not been confirmed yet, reports Adam Serwer

Funny but that ran in a catchall post called "Myth-Busting Monday" Ooops.

Thanks to Gabe for the heads up on that one.

Ben Smith who doesn't seem to think there's any 'there' there with this story to begin with did seem to find Serwer's contribution helpful. Thanks to MayBeeTweet for that.

Bonus Serwer: This tweet from Serwer is too great....

Wonder what would happen if GOP rejected Limbaugh/Beck race baiting as quickly as black people reject Jesse Jackson race baiting

Put aside the de rigueur "Limbaugh/Beck are racist" and focus on the idea that "black people reject Jessie Jackson race baiting". Really? Like?

Who is more likely to reject Jackson's race baiting...Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas or Barack Obama and Eric Holder?

What world does this guy live in?

Posted by: DrewM at 08:32 AM | Comments (90)
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FOX: Rachel Maddow is "Voice Of Reason" at MSNBC
— Purple Avenger

THE. VOICE. OF. REASON. Go ahead, try to get your head around that one. I double dare you.

OK, now that we've gotten past that bizarre and incomprehensible gibberish out of Fox, let's move onto something a tad more believable. Apparently government "scientists" are bitching about the Ogabe junta being no more responsive to their plaintive wailings about various dire things that threaten the very survival of the planet than the evil Bushitler Reich was.

...Many government scientists hailed the president's pronouncement. But a year and a half later, no such rules have been issued. Now scientists charge that the Obama administration is not doing enough to reverse a culture that they contend allowed officials to interfere with their work and limit their ability to speak out.

"We are getting complaints from government scientists now at the same rate we were during the Bush administration," said Jeffrey Ruch, an activist lawyer who heads an organization representing scientific whistle-blowers....

If you go read the whole article in the Sun, it becomes apparent that their scientific concerns aren't being "ignored" per se, rather people with higher level executive authority have weighed their "concerns" against other competing issues and made an executive decision to favor one over the other. This is precisely what we pay executive level decision makers to do - weigh competing issues and make the best decision based on available data.

The "scientists" are very upset that their narrow focused "concerns", that are oblivious to potentially larger other overriding concerns, aren't dictating policy.

Apparently there are still a small handful of adults somewhere in the lower levels of the Ogabe junta. That's something we can all be mildly encouraged by.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:53 AM | Comments (70)
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Top Headline Comments 7-13-10
— Gabriel Malor

What am I supposed to say when I'm all choked up that you're okay?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:35 AM | Comments (222)
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Tuesday Financial Briefing
— Monty

Equities markets were a big nothingburger yesterday. The S&P and Dow both squeaked out small gains, but investors seem to be keeping their powder dry in anticipation of quarterly earnings reports.

Via Insty, a reminder that three programs that didn't even exist prior to 1930 eat up 100% of the nation's revenues. That means that everything else: every program, every department, every bone-headed "initiative" must be funded by selling debt. (Mainly to the Chinese.) If we are going to solve this problem, we are going to have to solve it over the agonized howls of every Democrat in the land. more...

Posted by: Monty at 03:04 AM | Comments (75)
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Weigel, Rest of the Left Change the Facts on the New Black Panther Case
— Gabriel Malor

Dave Weigel, fresh from his firing over at the Washington Post, is guestblogging over at Andrew Sullivan's and pushing the latest Lefty meme on the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. Damn, they got JournoList 2.0 up fast.

Anyway, the claim -- first published at Adam Serwer's blog as a great big "Ah HAH!" -- is that the New Black Panther case was "downgraded" from a criminal to a civil case back during the Bush Administration.

[T]he case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division.

Conservative activist and former Voting Section Attorney J. Christian Adams identified United States Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli as the person who ordered the case dismissed, but he wasn't confirmed until March, three months after the case was downgraded.

To the Left and Dave Weigel (BIRM), this somehow means that Obama flunkies couldn't have been responsible for circular-filing the case in May 2009. Well, the obvious flaw with this line of reasoning is that it was the dismissal of the civil case that caused an uproar and started the US Commission on Civil Rights sniffing around.

The Left wants to change the story to something about a criminal case against the hate-stick wielding racialists playing thug for a day at a polling place. Well, that'd be nice (who doesn't love folks who brandish hate-sticks?), but that's not what the story was about.

The Washington Times broke this on May 29, 2009 (note for idiot Leftists: that's after Obama was inaugurated and after Perrelli joined Justice):

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

It was always about the civil complaint, right from the beginning. Adam Serwer is, well, an artard who wants to change the story. And Weigel uncritically repeats this Lefty meme as if it proves something.

Nobody I know is that stupid. The USCCR and Republicans in general got interested over the dismissal of a civil complaint in May 2009. The details of that dismissal are still in doubt given Obama Administration refusal to comply with USCCR subpoenas. This will be resolved, I expect, but not until the GOP regains the House and the subpoena power that comes with the majority...

Thanks to DrewM for a pointer.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:31 PM | Comments (84)
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