Fact Checks

SOTU: President Obama on shouldering the burden and redistributing the wealth

“We can’t ask senior citizens and working families to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and the most powerful.” –President Obama   Overview The Facts In discussing Medicare reform during his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said the following (bold emphasis added):   Yes, the biggest driver of our…
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Harry Reid and the death toll from delay

“I would remind Leader Cantor and his Republican colleagues of the seriousness of delay. Every minute House Republicans wait to act, another 24 Americans will become victims of domestic violence. Every day House Republicans stall, another three women will die at the hands of their abusers. Every year House Republicans put off action in order to please extremists within their…
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The House Republicans and the sequestration blame game

“FACT: It’s President Obama’s Sequester” –The United States House of Representatives Republican Conference   Overview President Obama proposed the sequester.  But Republicans who agreed to or voted for the sequestration deal get to share ownership of the policy once implemented. The Facts Reporter Bob Woodward reported in his book “The Price of Politics” that the budget sequestration idea, particularly for…
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Harry Reid says GOP bill decouples U.S. credit from spending cuts

“This bill surrenders the hostage Republicans have taken in the past by decoupling the full faith and credit of the United States from cuts to Social Security and Medicare, or anything else.  …  By passing this bill, Republicans are joining Democrats to say we will not hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, and we will…
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PolitiFact Texas vs. Louie Gohmert

PolitiFact Texas:  “Contrary to Gohmert’s characterization … Washington was not speaking about citizens arming themselves in case of government tyranny. Quite the opposite: The president and former general was calling for disciplined troops to fight on behalf of the government.” Overview PolitiFact Texas builds a dandy straw man in honor of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). The Facts The line from…
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Ne’er the Twain did speak it

Attributed to Mark Twain on Facebook and elsewhere:  “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” The Facts: Mark Twain was the pen name of American author Samuel Clemens (1835-1910).  Quite a few quotations disparaging religion came from Twain, though he was apparently a Presbyterian.  So what about the above quotation that often accompanies a picture…
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PolitiFact vs. Marco Rubio

PolitiFact Florida:  “Marco Rubio tweets that GOP didn’t support Social Security changes”   Overview Fact checker commits fallacy of equivocation in posting false headline. The Facts Marco Rubio’s tweet from 1:16 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2012:   Report that #GOP insisting on changes to social security as part of #fiscalcliff false.BTW those changes are supported by @barackobama.   PolitiFact reports…
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Fact checking the White House infographic about Plan B

On Dec. 26, Zebra Fact Check published an evaluation of claims by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi about the Republicans’ “Plan B” for resolving fiscal cliff negotiations. In that article, we noted that the White House put forth a statement similar to Pelosi’s on the official White House blog, and did it with “Get the facts” in the headline. The…
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Does the Republican ‘Plan B’ raise taxes on working families while giving millionaires a tax break?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: “As I’ve said to you before, Plan B is to send a bill to your children and grandchildren in order to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in our country, and still those making over a million dollars get a $50,000 tax cut, we’ll add nearly a half a trillion dollars to the…
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Atwitter about the framers and guns

Attributed to Thomas Jefferson on Twitter:  “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.” Attributed to Benjamin Franklin on Twitter:  “Never trust a government that doesn’t trust its own citizens with guns.” A massacre at a Connecticut elementary school last week has led to a great deal of news about gun control proposals along…
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