Free Republic

WASHINGTON – In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up." But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones. Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of...

CNN is receiving criticism, of many different kinds from many different places, for a segment Monday on "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." The segment "fact-checked" a Saturday Night Live sketch. The sketch, which has been deemed the show's first viral hit of the season, cataloged Pres. Obama's supposed lack of accomplishments. The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto called the idea "a bizarre exercise." The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote, "Fact checking a comedy sketch -- I will say no more." FNC's Greg Gutfeld showed the clip on Red Eye and joked, "Seriously, reviewing an 'SNL' skit for accuracy is...

One of President Barack Obama's health care "horror stories" is about a woman who, he says, lost her health insurance on the verge of breast cancer surgery because she didn't disclose a case of acne to the insurer. That's not what happened. Robin Lynn Beaton, 59, of Waxahachie, Texas, indeed had her insurance suspended and then terminated when she needed it the most. Hers is a cautionary tale about how an insurance company can act in a seemingly arbitrary manner to revoke coverage for lifesaving treatment. But not for the reasons Obama cites.

Please excuse the vanity. Could anyone verify if Fact Check is legitimate? It was recently discovered that some internet fact checking website was nothing but two liberally biased individuals putting their spin on the information they were checking on and posting it to their site. I thought it was Fact Check. If this is not correct, I apologize for giving the wrong impression, but it would also be an opportunity to set that straight in the responses. If anyone could help me out and provide a link I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

By my count, they fact-check 7 of his statements last night and find that he was lying or obfuscating on 5 of them, which means he was telling the truth 28% of the time.

ED - UPDATED 4:20 PM - Factcheck.org endorsed analyst caught scrubbing false data after original publication of this report. See update below with screenshots and Google cache. We have retained a copy of the original cached web page. Screenshots are below.] Yesterday, Factcheck.org admitted they reported a false fact concerning the alleged expiration of President Obama’s Kenyan citizenship. They gave credit to this blog for correcting them: Our Aug. 29, 2008, Ask FactCheck item asking whether Obama has Kenyan citizenship… stated that Obama did have dual citizenship as a child but that it expired as an adult. But Leo Donofrio,...

We’ve burned through rather a lot of pixels combating the claims of those who deny that Barack Obama is eligible to be president of the United States. He is, by virtue of having been born in Hawaii, as attested to repeatedly by state officials and even by the flagship of conservative publications, the National Review. And, for the 10 percent of you out there who aren’t entirely sure, yes, Hawaii is part of the United States. We’ve given the denialists a lot of grief for the times they’ve been wrong. But we’d be remiss not to note when they get...

Back on November 20, 2008, I had reported on a posting from attorney Leo Donofrio in which he brought up the concept that an individuals’ at-birth citizenship is what counts when it comes to determining an ambitious individual’s eligibility regarding Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5. It has recently been shown — first via TheBirthers.org and then by Mr. Donofrio — and even reported in the Sonoran News that there appears to be a few problems in FactCheck.org’s reporting over whether or not Mr. Obama did, in fact, lose his Kenyan and/or British citizenship. From TheBirthers’ main page: Something FactCheck...

As far as I can tell, President Obama himself never publicly stated during or after the election that he isn’t a Kenyan citizen. In a now famous report, Factcheck.org, in response to a story originally published in The Rocky Mountain News, attempted to lay rest to allegations that Obama was currently a Kenyan citizen. In that report, Factcheck.org. stated that Obama had been a Kenyan citizen up until August 4, 1982 when they allege Obama’s Kenyan citizenship expired. Obama republished – at his web official site, Fightthesmears.com – only that part of the Factcheck.org analysis which stated that the President...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A nonpartisan web site that routinely serves as a watchdog for public officials, the media and political groups says President Barack Obama has it wrong. FactCheck.org says the current health care plans pending in Congress do authorize abortion funding, contrary to Obama's claims otherwise. "Despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plan," the web site concludes.At issue are concerns from pro-life groups that the government-run health care plans would include abortion funding and coverage. Obama has said they don't and...

We already knew this, thanks to Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Barack Obama himself, but it’s nice to get confirmation from those fine folks at Factcheck.org — an Annenberg project, no less. After Obama tried to paint it as a lie, the National Right to Life Committee insisted that ObamaCare would use taxpayer money to fund abortions. It turns out that they were right: The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation...

We already knew this, thanks to Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Barack Obama himself, but it’s nice to get confirmation from those fine folks at Factcheck.org — an Annenberg project, no less. After Obama tried to paint it as a lie, the National Right to Life Committee insisted that ObamaCare would use taxpayer money to fund abortions. It turns out that they were right:

We already knew this, thanks to Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Barack Obama himself, but it’s nice to get confirmation from those fine folks at Factcheck.org — an Annenberg project, no less. After Obama tried to paint it as a lie, the National Right to Life Committee insisted that ObamaCare would use taxpayer money to fund abortions. It turns out that they were right: The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation...

Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone. Obama's claim depends on what employers would likely do under several legislative scenarios. Summary President Obama has repeatedly said that under the health care overhaul efforts in Congress, "if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan." But he can’t make that promise to everyone. In fact, under the House bill, some employers might have to modify plans after a five-year grace period if they don’t meet minimum benefits standards. Furthermore, some firms are likely to buy different coverage for their workers than they have now, or simply drop coverage and...

Palin says Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy. Not true. Not even close.

The W.H. web address flag@whitehouse.gov, set up for the public to report 'fishy' information regarding health care reform, has become inactive today...

They’re not terribly enthusiastic about it, but USA Today corrects the record — in a sidebar — on a number of assertions made by Barack Obama yesterday at his Portsmouth, NH forum. They leave out the biggest whopper, which is Obama’s claim that he has never favored single-payer health-care systems, but they do catch a couple of other big fibs, including Obama’s snow job on AARP endorsement. One of the best catches from USA Today concerns Medicare Advantage, about which Obama has lied for over two years: “Insurance companies basically get $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that...

WASHINGTON – Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a "death panel." Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong. Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes.

Most kids learn early that there is a terrible price to be paid for lying: no one believes your words, no matter how much you insist that - this time - you are telling the truth. “I swear to God,” says the perennial liar, “I swear on a stack of Bibles.” And, at first, the emphatic oath may convince us to give them the benefit of the doubt - until experience teaches us that the very strength of the oath is a red flag for dishonesty. With the explicit adoption of “advocacy journalism” (AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier's preferred...

President Barack Obama's assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric. Even now, nearly half the costs of health care in the U.S. are paid for by government at all levels. Federal authority would only grow under any proposal in play. A look at some of Obama's claims in his prime-time news conference: OBAMA: "We already have rough agreement" on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: "It will keep government...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

Summary President Obama's first speech to a joint session of Congress was stuffed with signals about the new direction his budget will take and meant-to-be reassuring words about the economy. But it was also peppered with exaggerations and factual misstatements. He said "we import more oil today than ever before." That's untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are substantially lower today. He claimed his mortgage aid plan would help "responsible" buyers but not those who borrowed beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program including Fed Chairman Bernanke and FDIC chief Bair concede foolish borrowers will be aided,...

Q. How can you tell when a politician speaks to the tune of focus groups? A. The overall tone and meaning is at odds with their actions. Focus groups have one purpose: to find the exact set of words that make people happy. However, the facts clearly disagree with Obama’s action, records and at times—plain facts. http://www.butasforme.com/2009/02/24/fact-check-obama-speech/

I was recently engaged in an exchange of emails with my buddy Fred Nerks from Oz that prompted me to revisit FactCheck.org, where the Annenberg-funded website has published a web page entitled, "The truth about Obama's birth certificate." The information on this page is 100% bovine excrement. FactCheck.org's Summary 1. "In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate..." This statement is false -- the campaign released a "Certification of Live Birth." The document presented on this website is not now and never has been a birth certificate, and FactCheck.org knows it. So why did...

Part One: Factcheck fraud continues taking cheap shots at patriots One day before the six-month anniversary of Obama's forged birth certificate posting, Factcheck.org packed up its tent, hopped back on its high horse, and rode out of Dodge. In the wake of their run for cover, Factcheck left behind a cutesy video titled, the "Circus is Still in Town," likening what's left of the 2008 election cycle to a three-ring circus -- and who knows more about a circus than a bunch of clowns pretending to be a nonpartisan research group? Here is a link to the video: "Good-bye for...

Born in the U.S.A. August 21, 2008 Updated: November 1, 2008 The truth about Obama's birth certificate. Summary In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake." We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets...

Right as I'm about to wrap up Part Two of my final report, lo and behold, what do I find on FactCheck's website, in their story, "Born in the U.S.A." that they first published on August 21?? Another update. This one, dated November 1, is not just any update, mind you, but one that presents their take on what the Director of Health and State Registrar said to the media, on Halloween (how fitting), about Obama's original birth certificate. Factcheck, as you should know by now, compounded their role in the birth certificate conspiracy (Yes, Virginia, there is a conspiracy)...

A new story by Brooks Jackson on the FactCheck.org website once again shows that FactCheck cherry-picks “facts” to suit its anti-NRA, anti-gun, anti-self-defense agenda—an agenda that the American people do not share. The story claims an NRA advertisement on Barack Obama’s votes against a pro-self-defense bill is misleading because (Jackson claims) Obama did not vote for a “general repeal of the right of self defense.” Of course, that’s not what the ad said. The ad referred to a case where Wilmette, Ill., homeowner Hale DeMar was prosecuted for owning a handgun—a fact that was only discovered after he used the...

In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false. In a Web ad and in repeated attacks from the stump, McCain describes the two as associates, and Palin claims they "pal around" together. But so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the...

CHICAGO--John McCain's campaign ads use "false and misleading statements" about the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, according to an analysis by FactCheck.org. FactCheck.org conclusion Voters may differ in how they see Ayers, or how they see Obama's interactions with him. We're making no judgment calls on those matters. What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters - in ads and on the stump - with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never "lied" about this, just as he never bragged about it. The foundation they both worked...

October 06, 2008, 9:20 a.m. Shame of the Fact-CheckersBy the Editors American journalists take pride in policing political debates for inaccuracies. During the last few election cycles, many news outlets have institutionalized a “factchecking� feature that grades politicians’ veracity during campaigns. Over the last few months, a number of journalists have suggested that John McCain is running a particularly dishonest and dishonorable campaign and that journalists should not allow the desire to be even-handed keep them from saying so. That judgment, by our lights, tells us more about journalists’ political inclinations than about the campaigns. Neither the Republican nor...

Fact check needed. That red-haired Obama Suck-up is on Fox proclaiming that in 2006 Obama introduced legistation in the US Senate to rein-in and better control sub-prime loans backed by Fannie May and Freddie Mack. Can anyone corroberate this or is this just another Obama lie? (I also note that she looks rather distressed at the moment -- a result of today's wailing of Obama by McCain and Palin?)

The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." Get the facts! The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.SNIPCNN's review of...

Main Bullet Points: Palin Trips Up on Troop Levels Biden Fudges on Troop Funding Palin's False Tax Claims Biden's False Defense Palin's Health Care Hooey McCain in Spain? Palin's Small Business Balderdash Defense Disagreements Killing Afghan Civilians? Out of Context? McCain in the Vanguard of Mortgage Reform? And There's More...

(Not bothering with the goop. Go to the link if you can stand it.)

* Palin mistakenly claimed that troop levels in Iraq had returned to “pre-surge” levels. Levels are gradually coming down but current plans would have levels higher than pre-surge numbers through early next year, at least. * Biden incorrectly said “John McCain voted the exact same way” as Obama on a controversial troop funding bill. The two were actually on opposite sides. * Palin repeated a false claim that Obama once voted in favor of higher taxes on “families” making as little as $42,000 a year. He did not. The budget bill in question called for an increase only on singles...

Garbage. Pure garbage.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Factcheck And Brady Campaign Share Same Sugar Daddy Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Impartial? Independent? NO! FactCheck and Brady Campaign in Bed with Annenberg Foundation FactCheck supposedly exists to look beyond a politician's claims. Ironically, in its analysis of NRA materials on Barack Obama, these so-called "FactCheckers" use the election year campaign rhetoric of a presidential candidate and a verbal claim by one of the most zealous gun control supporters in Congress to refute facts compiled by NRA's research of vote records and review of legislative language. There's another possible explanation behind FactCheck's...

Xrlq points us to this ridiculous FactCheck.org piece on Obama and gun rights. I am by now completely disenchanted with FactCheck.org and virtually every other “fact checking” site out there, and this piece does nothing to dispel my depression. The summary version: FactCheck ridicules the NRA in this piece. But the NRA is careful to say: look at Obama’s record and not his rhetoric. And at least two of the NRA claims are backed up by references to Obama’s record. Yet FactCheck.org goes on to minimize or completely ignore Obama’s record on these points, choosing instead to concentrate on citations...

Posted by Dirty Harry on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 Most every time you turn on MSNBC or CNN — or click on over to the likes of the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, Factcheck.org, and ABC’s Jake Tapper – they’re constantly proclaiming themselves the high and mighty arbiters of truth with their so-called “Truth Squads,” and I’m telling you this is the single most insidious thing going on in the campaign right now. Obviously they are taking hammer and tong to McCain with much more frequency than Obama, the result of which effectively undercuts both McCain’s legitimate criticisms of Obama and...

That's right. They replaced all of their high-res, image files with lo-res image files that are 90% smaller than their originals. BUT, they have the gall to leave their original file sizes listed on their links. So, like instead of getting a 2 MB image file, you now get a 200K image file. In FactCheck's original story, posted, August 21, they made specific references to a few of my discoveries I made about the COLB forgery in an attempt to dismiss them out of hand: Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are: * No...

Summary A new Obama ad characterizes the "Bush-McCain privatization plan" as "cutting Social Security Benefits in half." This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all. The ad refers to a Bush proposal from 2005 to hold down the growth of benefits for future retirees. Compared to the buying power of benefits paid to today's retirees, that would not have been a "cut" for anybody. It would have been a "cut" of half only in relation to benefits now promised to retirees...

I have seen some factcheck.org reports on McCain ads that just appeared to me to be superficial and outwardly wrong. Out of curiosity I went to their web site and under "About" looked at some of the biographies of the staffers. Seems they like to hire some very politically active interns from the left and throw in a couple of RINO's to make it appear balanced. This makes me wonder about the politics of the rest of the staff.

The reason I am asking because there is this guy at work that is telling everyone to go check out political rumors at factcheck.org because they are middle of the road.

An independent watchdog group says that Republican John McCain's campaign aired a negative TV ad on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but a tracking company says there's no evidence of that yet. The group Factcheck.org said Friday that the Campaign Media Analysis Group, an advertising data and analysis firm, found a negative ad from the McCain campaign airing on Denver television on Thursday. That would be a violation of the pledge both the Democratic and Republican camps took to take a one-day break from attacks and traditional campaigning. But Evan Tracey of CMAG said the company's data...

A new ad from McCain attacking Obama's army of lawyers.

For two straight days, CNN repeated liberal rumors about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s political record – rumors that had already been debunked by their own correspondents, as well as the respected FactCheck.org, a group led by former CNN reporter Brooks Jackson. During Monday evening’s Election Center program, CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin claimed that Palin "wants to ban all abortions," despite a September 2 report by his own network which included a quote from the Alaska governor that she is "pro-life... [w]ith the exception of a doctor's determination that the mother's life would end if the pregnancy continued."...

Summary We’ve been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain’s running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading. * Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn’t cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years. * She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has...

In a rousing speech at last night's Republican National Convention, vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, touted her record, attacked the opposition, and in some cases bent the facts. PALIN: "[Obama] is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign." FACT: On July 15, in a speech in Washington, D.C., Obama twice used the word "victory" in reference to Iraq. "In fact," he said, "true success in Iraq -- victory in Iraq -- will not take place...

I revisited the "Born in the U.S.A." story that FactCheck produced which shows digital photos of OBama's alleged genuine paper birth certificate, or COLB, taken in a number of angles. I found something new: A note that the story had been "updated August 26." Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn't tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama's father's race listed as "African"? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father's race and mother's race are supplied...