Fact-checking Obama's State of the Union

Political Lore Blog ^ | January 28, 2010 at 3:36 pm | Josh Painter

[Josh Painter]

The Associated Press found ten whoppers in President Obama's State of the Union address. they are detailed here.

Ed Morrissey was surprised, not that AP found errors, but rather that it found "only ten" in the speech:

Maybe the Associated Press got as tired as everyone else listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union speech last night and stopped paying attention after an hour.

Or perhaps AP only found ten because it assigned less than half the number of fact-checkers to the task than it detailed to delve into Sarah Palin's book with a fine-toothed comb. Indeed, Morrissey discovered at least one other whopper that seems to have eluded AP's crack team:

Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class. Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats. In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years. And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

Erick Erickson showed how Obama's claim that "We’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions” is pure fabrication...

-snip-

The CATO Institute, in an analysis of Obama's address, said that the president was using "the fuzziest of fuzzy math":

Actually, the U.S. economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since the stimulus passed and 3.4 million total since Obama was elected. How he attributes any jobs gains to the stimulus...

(More)

[Berlin_Freeper]

Ed Morrissey was surprised, not that AP found errors, but rather that it found "only ten" in the speech

AP was having their nightly cocaine fueled homosexual romp when a "Fact Check" suddenly broke out.

[JIM O]

bump

[camerongood210]

ping

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

CNN has been pretending to fact check the stimulus money distribution and now Obama’s state of the union speech. IAmazing Wolf Blitzer and the rest can keep a straight face; their careful cherry picking and distortions to cover for Obama are transparent. I have it on good authority that they have been soliciting positive human interest stories from government and other managers in leftist professions that support their “news” that the stimulus has done good.

[BerryDingle]

I went to a fight the other night,
and all of a sudden, a hockey game
broke out!

[Rickster GloucesterVA]

"CNN has been pretending to fact check the stimulus money distribution..."

I rarely watch CNN but happened to catch one of these "Stimulus Watch" episodes and it almost made me lose my lunch. Such breathless excitement as the reporter wandered over to the producer's desk and he stopped what he was doing (!) to report that they'd just found another one... can't recall the details but it was all just so transparent and phony it could make you puke.

This is supposed to be the Fourth Estate, an unbiased entity who is reporting facts. The fact is, it sounded like a White House Press Release.

Rush is right when he refers to this as the "State-controlled media." Except that they're whores, and willing and voluntary ones at that. So, wait... the White House doesn't even have to pay them. So that takes them down from the more honorable prostitution to just plain sluts.

If they can't keep the news and opinions separated, maybe they need to go back to journalism school. Or ask any junior in high school what the meaning of "journalism" is.

[beefree]

I cannot abide a liar, therefore, I did not watch SOTU.

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

“If they can’t keep the news and opinions separated, maybe they need to go back to journalism school. Or ask any junior in high school what the meaning of “journalism” is”

Sorry, friend, but journalism schools today don’t value or teach objectivity; they were taken over by Marxist ideologues also. I have heard journalism professors of today say that students today go into journalism “to save the world” and that’s the kind of student they seek. No joke. Any wonder why main stream newspapers and news organizations are going rapidly down the tubes?