PolitiFact Embraces Equivocation, the Truth Gets Squeezed

I've been writing about Politifact for months, and that Politifact only recognizes 19 broken promises & cuts Obama much slack.



Politifact has gamed its way of measuring Obama's "promise-keeping"; its categories ('NO ACTION', 'IN THE WORKS', 'STALLED' or 'NOT YET RATED) are misleading. Many a campaign promise or pledge (hundreds of them) has been generously placed in these categories to languish.



As Politifact claims, "Once we find action is completed, we rate them 'PROMISE KEPT' 'COMPROMISE' or 'PROMISE BROKEN'". By Politifact's own definition, it enables Obama to keep these issues in limbo for 4 years.



One of many examples of Politifact's gaming its list is that Politifact doesn't even list in its "Promises Broken" category Obama's campaign promise to impose 'Windfall Profits Taxes on the Oil & Gas Industry" - Obama immediately reneged on it once in office, saying, "The prices have now dropped - We'll see about doing that if or when they rise again." Oil hit over $80/barrel (the amount that, had Obama kept his promise, the windfall profits tax would have been triggered) months ago. Politifact has conveniently ignored this issue.
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

MADDOW: And it is just all spread out and ripped open. And people are going through it to see if there‘s anything valuable in the trash?



ENGEL: Yes. I mean, kids - here are some kids right here. They go through it. And it is quite sad. I mean, they‘ll go to through it and pick through anything that can be recycled or used again - or of any value, metal things. So in a way, it is its own environmental - but it shows there is a lot of poverty here.



MADDOW: Yes. This corner is like the microcosm of the war. This and this -



ENGEL: And these kids.



MADDOW: And us, too, because we‘re here as Americans covering this because of the American initiative here that created the economy that made this all possible.



Watch the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5BHnN__5M



Americans are losing our Social Security, Medicare, police, firemen, teachers, and we're going into debt to China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, that even our grandchildren won't be able to pay off, for wars to protect an oil pipeline that Americans don't derive any benefit from, don't get profits from, but that Dick Cheney, the Bush family, the Establishment Elites, all get profits from.
About Afghanistan
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

ENGEL: It can breed corruption. Just having so much money injected into an economy. Afghanistan is very poor and it was isolated from the world except for the last 30 years of war which was an unpleasant interaction with the world for hundreds of years. And now, you have a totally different scale of economy coming in, billions of dollars a month. This country never saw anything like that.



MADDOW: It is going to people who are - it‘s not going to build the country. It is going to people who have private armies. It‘s going to people who are -



ENGEL: Next to giant houses, these streets are not even paved.



MADDOW: Yes.



ENGEL: I think that gives you an idea of how much the social services are spreading.



MADDOW: So when you hear the government, when you hear the leadership say, “We don‘t want the Americans to leave. We don‘t want the war to be over” -



ENGEL: There is an incentive -



MADDOW: Think about this neighborhood.



ENGEL: There is an incentive because war is a profitable business for many people.



MADDOW: Yes.



ENGEL: I think this neighborhood is actually very symbolic of a lot of the problems with this entire world, frankly. And here, next to an incredibly big house is an open garbage pile, because no one cares about the common space. Nobody - it is not anybody‘s problem. That is what you see everywhere. You know, you have a giant -



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About Afghanistan
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

MADDOW: America, it‘s your tax dollars at work. This is the war economy as translated to land-locked Central Asia. We dump a ton of money thinking that we are paying for our military effort. Everything that goes along with our military effort ends up letting - or in this case, directing like a squirt gun, instead of flooding -



ENGEL: The streets become rivers of mud.



MADDOW: But the money doesn‘t go to the country and trickle down its economy. It just goes to the elites and power brokers who can keep it for themselves.



ENGEL: A war lord system. There is a lot of money in war - contracting, supplying, shipping. And if you have been in power, you keep those contracts for yourself and you build neighborhoods like this. And maybe, you don‘t even live here. You live somewhere else, in a foreign country.



MADDOW: This is what it is like in Kabul. This is the exact same dynamic that we saw in Kandahar where you‘re talking with these counterinsurgency doctors and soaked military officers who are incredibly smart and have far reaching thinking about this sort of thing and they can because of that, they can see the basic contradiction at work that we‘re trying to do.

If the whole effort, all the money and everything, is to establish governance and - if the whole effort is to establish governance, all of our money, all of our spending here is only supporting the elite, the warlordism -
About Afghanistan
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

ENGEL: Exactly. And the reason the streets are still unpaved is that these government officials refuse to pay any taxes to the government. They are in a fight so the government won‘t come and pave the roads or connect it to any kind of sanitation system at all because the same government ministers won‘t pay to register the neighborhood.



MADDOW: So they won‘t throw their weight around to get their neighborhood taken care of, because they don‘t live here anyway.



ENGEL: They don‘t live here anyway. So you have these large homes, and some of these homes - you see this building right behind you?



MADDOW: That looks like a hotel.



ENGEL: No. No. No. They are all private homes.



MADDOW: This is a private home?



ENGEL: It‘s a private home. It probably has 25 bedrooms in it and garish, colonnades and unusual architectural features. And then, they‘ll rent that out to some western client and they‘ll charge either by the bedroom or by the floor or for the whole thing. And if you were to build this one - it‘s obviously under construction - that is a $1 million plus house in Kabul with no paved streets.



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About Afghanistan
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

ENGEL: Because this was originally just empty land. You can see there is no real pavement or anything like that. When the Americans came in with the northern alliance (the northern alliance, which was the allies against the Taliban) took this land and then gave it away to all their cronies. They created a new war wealth neighborhood out of nothing.



MADDOW: And so we‘ve still got open sewers and we‘ve still got no pavement, but we have rococo castles. Nouveau riche castles.



ENGEL: That lease for $10,000 to $25,000 a month, because it‘s a safe area. But here‘s the irony. Most of the government officials - and these are almost all owned by government officials - don‘t live in them. They rent them out to foreign companies, contractors. And they live in Dubai or have their families in Islamabad. So they are purely investment properties.



MADDOW: There‘s a sign right there in that one. It says, “house for rent.”



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About Afghanistan
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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

Where are our tax dollars going?



Last week, Rachel Maddow walked the dusty, garbage-strewn streets of Afghanistan with RIchard Engel to see what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-building actually builds:



RACHEL MADDOW: There are very few countries in the world poorer than Afghanistan where abject poverty is almost everywhere. The keyword there is almost. There are super rich folks here. We visited their neighborhood in Kabul. They‘re garish, bizarre. What it looks like to be rich in poor, war-torn, land-locked Central Asian neighborhood.



MADDOW: So we are in a neighborhood now. Kabul. Talking about the distribution of wealth, in Kabul and the effect of -



RICHARD ENGEL: There is a distribution of wealth. This is where it is distributed. This is where it ends up. All of the money from contracts and association with the government and association with the U.S. military has ended up here.



MADDOW: Why?



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General George Casey: US Could Be At War For Another Decade

Last week, Rachel Maddow walked the streets of Afghanistan with Richard Engel, who showed her how and where US taxpayer money is being spent --



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5BHnN__5M
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Despite Obama's Lofty Words, Scientific Integrity Rules Are Lagging

Obama pledged action "On day one ..." and transparency, so that citizens could see what was or wasn't being done. No sooner did he enter office than he slammed the door shut on transparency. He and his administration have borrowed Bush's style of avoiding scrutiny and questioning; in 18 months as president, he's had three press conferences, 6 questions each.



One of many examples of Politifact's gaming its list is that Politifact doesn't even list in its "Promises Broken" category Obama's campaign promise to impose 'Windfall Profits Taxes on the Oil & Gas Industry" - Obama immediately reneged on it once in office, saying, "The prices have now dropped - We'll see about doing that if or when they rise again."



Oil hit over $80/barrel (the amount that, had Obama kept his promise, the windfall profits tax would have been triggered) months ago. Obama enjoys the perks of the office (long weekends at CampDavid, first pitches at baseball games, etc.) photo-ops all day long, capped off by fundraising dinners, but hasn't used the power of his office to shepherd through Congress the real reform that he campaigned on (a real healthcare bill with a public option, single payer, a real jobs stimulus bill, would have been a real economic jumpstarter).



This is not leadership -- This is detached corporate shilling.
About Barack Obama
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Despite Obama's Lofty Words, Scientific Integrity Rules Are Lagging

Actually, he's made hundreds of promises and kept only a handful.



Politifact only recognizes 19 broken promises & cuts Obama much slack.



Politifact has gamed its way of measuring Obama's "promise-keeping"; its categories ('NO ACTION', 'IN THE WORKS', 'STALLED' or 'NOT YET RATED) are misleading. Many a campaign promise or pledge (hundreds of them) has been generously placed in these categories to languish.



As Politifact claims, "Once we find action is completed, we rate them 'PROMISE KEPT' 'COMPROMISE' or 'PROMISE BROKEN'". By Politifact's own definition, it enables Obama to keep these issues in limbo for 4 years.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...