So Was This The Biggest Political Lie of 2012?

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So Was This The Biggest Political Lie of 2012?

December 15th, 2012 12:00 am @LaurieInQueens

As is always the case when there is a presidential election, 2012 was a banner year for political fabrications—from misleading little fibs to OMFG whoppers, there was something for everyone who knows how to tell fact from fiction.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning falsehood fact-checkers over at PolitiFact.com put their famed Truth-O-Meter™ to work to root out the biggest untruths of the year, and invited its readers to weigh in. The Truth-O-Meter rates political statements as Half-True, Mostly True, True, Mostly False, False and the illustrious “Pants on Fire,” awarded to lies of obscenely gargantuan proportions that contain not a single shred of truth.

An evenly split collection of red and blue malfeasance (five Republican lies, five from the Democrats, plus one “other” category –all rated either False or Pants on Fire), the list contains the greatest hits of 2012, from “you didn’t build that” to “apology tour,” and PolitiFact’s readers were invited to vote on which massive distortions were the most shameless.

Not surprisingly, the Top 5 come from the right, an impressive three of the five scoring a Pants on Fire (Dems, by contrast, earned a measly one POF). Perhaps even more impressive, though, is that tall tales emanating from that side of the aisle garnered a whopping 88.8 percent of reader finger-wagging.

Sitting proudly atop the heap of big, fat liars is, predictably, Rush Limbaugh — who, with trousers ablaze, claimed that “Obamacare is… the largest tax increase in the history of the world.” A combination of that piece of fiction and the fact that Rushbo is generally considered to be, well… a big, fat liar earned the radio gasbag 26.6 percent of the vote.

After having put this array of skulduggery up for public scrutiny, the powers-that-be at PolitiFact deliberated, and emerged from sequester (we like to imagine) to announce their own choice for Lie of the Year. And the winner is…

The Romney campaign’s blatant lie about Jeep moving its production to China.

“It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign — that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China,” says PolitiFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan. “It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

“And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.”

The choice of the Romney campaign’s brazen, barefaced lie — one told in a swing state right before the election, no less — was turned over, once again, to the readers for their opinions. The gravity of Romney’s flagrant foul was perhaps best summed up by the reader who said, “I’m from Northwest Ohio where we build Jeeps and where we knew Jeep had just pledged a mega-million dollar upgrade to their facility. This lie was personal to all of us in the region.”

The award — like the eventual consequences of the lie that earned it — is richly deserved.

Image: PolitiFact.com

Tags: big lies, jeep, lies, Mitt Romney, Pants on Fire, politifact, Rush Limbaugh

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_B6RROC4IUESHT322QS5VJVPYRM Lynda

It was nice for a change that political lies were not victorious this time. There were so many to choose from, and so I suppose that Romney’s was right up there with the most disingenious. How do we choose when the competition was so fearsome? Santorum, Newt, Paul and that idiotic women from Wisconsin, just to name a few all, had whoppers in contention. What happened to the best and brightest? Out of fashion I suppose.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Jones/827014412 Daniel Jones

They mixed up “brightest” with “most glaring”…
amazonfan

I completely agree. BTW, which women from Wisconsin are you referring to?

Sabyen91

She probably meant Minnesota. It isn’t the first time someone has blamed Wisconsin for Bachmann. I guess there is no difference between the two states.

idamag

Sab, yes, like you have to wonder about the people in Minnesota, sending a nut like Bachmann to congress.

Sabyen91

To be fair it is just the suburbs of an upper midwestern city. The suburbs of Milwaukee are the same. I don’t know what makes suburbanites so crazy and stupid up here.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Joseph-Glackin/100000892011713 Joseph Glackin

It’s either the chemicals they put on their lawns rotting their minds, or the coffee at the PTA meetings.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_B6RROC4IUESHT322QS5VJVPYRM Lynda

My mistake.

Sand_Cat

Please don’t use euphemisms, of which “disingenious” (isn’t it disingenuous?) is one of the most abused.

We’re talking about LIES, i.e., deliberate and knowing falsehoods uttered with malicious intent, or – even worse – selective use of the truth with knowledge and intent to deceive. Perhaps the biggest lie of all is dressing other lies up as “disingenuous” or “misleading” or other words which imply error or other lack of intent.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_B6RROC4IUESHT322QS5VJVPYRM Lynda

I stand corrected. I was trying to be as kind as possible which may have been a mistake.
http://profile.yahoo.com/BEKQKDHQCDR7CNBD46XHTJWT4Q James

Sand Kitty, what are you trying to say?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellery-Tuck/100000121509965 Ellery Tuck

For the Far Right, it is all about winning, how they do that does not matter. For them, the ends justifies the means. Limbaugh put out a new one a week or so ago, “Obama’s tax increases for the top 2% are punishment”

Why anyone wastes their time listening to him is imply incomprehensible.

http://profile.yahoo.com/BEKQKDHQCDR7CNBD46XHTJWT4Q James

Hey Tuckey, you must be the stupid one. From what you just said you had to be listening to the great one.

archabsurd

Wow james, you have a strange description of “great”, unless you mean Huge, gigantic, fat, wide-load, bloviated slob.

archabsurd

…at least Ellery Tuck heard Limbaugh’s bald-faced lie first hand. When is the last time you listened to a progressive talk show to get a ‘fair and balanced’ view of the world. Like most of you dittos, the left is too fast and smart for you to grasp and you’re intimidated by that. You have a ring in your nose attached to a chain around limbaugh’s ankle.

angelsinca

I though Mark Levin was The Great One. lol. The left hates Rush because he is right wing. The right ignores the left wing because they are hatefully biased and always wrong about conservative values.

nobsartist

The biggest lie occurred after the unemployment rate dropped below 8%. Thats when the romney liars started stating that their bought off polls were showing him ahead when in reality, he had NO chance.

Pelu Maad

They believed the lies they told…..astounding!

ExPAVIC

Scary

Just a scant three million votes out of over 100 million votes cast saved the country from a horrific plight should RoMoney been elected.

Of course he did loose eight out of nine critical states so we can also thank the knowledgeable voters in those states for saving us from a path that is really too scary to imagine.

For one thing, the rich old white guys of the old, old, used up and dying GOP found out they don’t run this country any longer.

Pelu Maad

…so they took it out on Susan Rice….

idamag

like bullies.

angelsinca

We’ll never know how bad that supposed nightmare might have been. But we do know a little about this one. As of today, 54-64% of the country feels the country is headed in the wrong direction. They must be the uninformed conservative ‘minority’.

howa4x

Republicans have lied to the middleclass for so long that they don”t even know what the truth is anymore. How about Bush adminsitration lies that got us into Iraq, or Johnson(another Texan) told about to get us in Viet Nam. Truman even lied about why he dropped the A-Bomb on Japan. Lying by politicians is second nature to them. The problem is we as citizens put too much faith in one party or another to do the right thing. The republicans always need a boogey man to point to. Creeping communism, gays converting children, Black men only want to rape white women. These were some of the same lies that were told about immigrating Italians, or Irish, Poles, or Jews. Republicans have to get the public afraid of someone so that they can transfer wealth to the upper classes. Nixon’s law and order campagin which was targeted at the white southerners afraid of the black power movement of the 60′s-70s. It is all meant to scare you. Bush used to lie of WMD’s to create a tax cut for the rich. The media gives an outlet to the lying, and now bolggers make it go viral. We live in a era where political parties look to reward their friends and stakeholders rather than what’s good for the country. The goal has become to stay in power by any means necessary, and lying is the pathway to success. It is not only their fault, it is ours for beliveing them.

Pelu Maad

“Conservatives” have an unnerving ability to believe their own lies. It takes a seriously insidious insanity to lie to yourself.

idamag

As Polonius advice to his son, Laertes, went, “To thine own self be true for if you are true to yourself it follows you cannot be false to any man.”

John Pigg

Truman is awesome…..
No comment on the rest.
angelsinca

LBJ was a democrat.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1710087686 Bob Shipp

My nomination to PolitiFact for biggest lie of the year was Sarah Palin’s claim: “I am a journalist.”

Pelu Maad

Palin has a degree in sports journalism…backed by intensive study at five institutions. Her most noteworthy reporting was that Hawaii was nice except there were too many Hawaiians.

idamag

Love to see a list of those institutions so I can do some fact checking.

Pelu Maad

I don’ t think I’ve ever seen them listed.
idamag

Pelu Maad, excellecnt job of research. Six colleges to get a bachelor degree. The award was given after she ran for VP. That college in Coeur d Alene is a small community college and I guess they were impressed by a celebrity status of one of their own. She might be a good journalist, I don’t think she has any credentials to prove that, so far. She is not a brilliant person.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_B6RROC4IUESHT322QS5VJVPYRM Lynda

Very true, and we knew just what she was saying. That woman is an idiot.

Pelu Maad

That’s an idiot party.

idamag

Pelu, you said “backed by” that means there should be proof and a listing, otherwise it is just an urban legend.
Pelu Maad

After graduating from high school in 1982, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.[22] Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin transferred to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982, and then to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d’Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983.[23] In June 2008, the Alumni Association of North Idaho College gave Palin its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.
She enrolled at the University of Idaho in Moscow for an academic year, starting in August 1984, then attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in the fall of 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in January 1986, and received her bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in May 1987

Wikipedia is at least as reliable as FOX…..right?
angelsinca

Excellent Pelu. How about the same for Barry Soetero?
Pelu Maad

I don’t usually respond to racists who use “Soetero”. What would be the point? You obviously aren’t prepared for intelligent interaction…are you?
angelsinca

Proof to back up the racism accusation, please?
Pelu Maad

“Soetero”…pure racist disrespect….
angelsinca

That’s odd to assume disrespect is racist. There are ample things to dilske without resorting to the vulgarities of racism.
Pelu Maad

You guys aren’t fooling anyone but yourselves.
Pelu Maad

So why do you do it?

Pelu Maad

The lie that Susan Rice lied as part of a cover-up was easily the equal of Jeep moving to China.

idamag

Pelu, there is no proof that Susan Rice lied. She was given a briefing on what to say by the CIA.

Pelu Maad

“The lie that Susan Rice lied….”

angelsinca

Fiat’s Marchionne had announced the intent to move Jeep production to China. Romney echoed this announcement. Fiat changed direction because of pressing domestic concerns in Italy affecting the car maker’s ability to finance the move. Please explain how Romney intentionally lied about this.

Pelu Maad

Romney who?

angelsinca

You know, the same Romney that liberals have beenusing as the new whipping boy after someone in the democrat party emerged to realize the public was no longer buying the Blame Bush excuses for Obama’s dismal performance.

Pelu Maad

Romney the 47% LOSER…..that goofy mother fucker?
angelsinca

Spoken like a true representative of the party for all people. When you get over Romney’s boneheaded truthful proclamation about the 47% that weren’t going to support him no matter what he did, maybe you can focus on the 49% the president has repeatedly dismissed and declared the enemy. GW was bad, but he didn’t just set you adrift along with all your liberal hater friends because you were not republican. The irony is you people simply cannot understand why half the country won’t support Barry, no matter what he promises to buy for them.
Pelu Maad

Half the country is racist…where’s the mystery? The GOP is the KKK is suits. Obama really sucks…..but at least he’s not a goddamn Republican.
angelsinca

You continue to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of racism, the GOP, and republicans. If you add one part bleach, your reason would be a threat to mildew.
Pelu Maad

That was stupid and dishonest.

RodgerMitchell

The biggest lie of 2012 (and preceding years, for that matter) is the lie that the federal deficit should be reduced. This “applying leeches to cure anemia” lie is so damaging, all other lies pale in comparison.

Today, this monstrous lie (aka “austerity”) is responsible for Congress and the President debating the best way to destroy America — whether by cutting federal benefits or by raising taxes.

The result will be less Social Security, less health insurance, poorer education, poorer infrastructure and an overall poorer nation.

So long as the politicians won’t acknowledge, and the people don’t understand, Monetary Sovereignty, America’s lifestyle will drift downward in an accelerating helix — a “death spiral” of our own making.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KWMCTLJJ2FHD3NPDJG6TAD467I Jesse Fell

What’s an intelligent comment like you doing in a place like this?
Lorehead

This is a normative, rather than a positive, claim. There are certainly direct lies about factual matters that people tell to support it; for example, that Barack Obama’s tax cuts could not possibly have helped the economy because Republicans choose to call them “stimulus,” or that Spain and Italy were running excessive deficits before the crisis hit, or that Barack Obama’s policies added more than $900 billion to the debt, a fraction of what George W. Bush’s policies did.

Another major lie is that Republicans want to cut either spending or the deficit, or that these are equivalent. Mitt Romney ran on a pledge to raise spending by $7 trillion, to cut only trivial amounts of discretionary spending, and not to even begin cutting entitlement spending for ten years, that is, until after a hypothetical Romney administration was over. That shameless, unprincipled pandering won the votes of the old people he promised gifts, but failed to win the election because his incompetent strategists and pollsters couldn’t count. So, the people who came up with this dishonest strategy now pretend they did the opposite, and promised something called “entitlement reform,” at great political risk, which is a blatant lie. And this lie is now being used as a justification to stab the old people who voted for them in the back.

Sand_Cat

The biggest lie on this site is the last two lines of your first paragraph.

Lorehead

Nonsense. Suppose the Democrats back in 2009 had passed a law that said, on January 31, 2013, the federal government has to buy every American a pony. Then suppose Mitt Romney had won. Well, now he has to buy every American a pony. Is that government program Mitt Romney’s fault, because he was the President who spent the money, or is it the fault of the people who passed the law? The question answers itself.

By that standard, as I said, Barack Obama added less than a trillion dollars to the debt. He inherited a trillion-dollar deficit before he even took office or did anything. About a third of his stimulus, by the way, was tax cuts for every working American. He should have added even more, since we should have spent more to mitigate the effects of the recession. And if you disagree: then should the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% have been extended, as the Republican party demanded? That increased the deficit by more than President Obama wanted.

Republicans don’t care about the deficit, and haven’t for twenty years now. George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury resigned in protest of his administration’s policy that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” His Federal Reserve chairman said that he didn’t want a surplus, because that would lead to it owning more and more assets.

No one who voted for the Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D, and to put two wars on the credit card cares about the deficit. No one who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 cares about the deficit. No one who voted against Obamacare, which cut the deficit, and for the Ryan plan, which increased the deficit over the next ten years, cares about the deficit. No one who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 cares about the deficit. Barack Obama does care about the deficit and has reduced the deficit faster than any other president since World War II. Republicans found it briefly convenient to pretend they care about the deficit for the sake of the election, but they were lying.

angelsinca

I can’t help counting the millions of Amercans out of work whose potential jobs have been exchanged for payments on the nat’l debt interest.

emadis41

I will pick my five worst GOP lies:
1-The 23 million unemployed. The total employment is 148 m. (Which puts unemployment figure at 15%) and his assertion that 9 m jobs needed to reach the unemployment rate under Bush.(the diff between 7.8% and 5.4% (The unemployment rate was 7.8% Jan 09 and the 9 m jobs is 6% -not 2.4%)
2- Given the rich 20% more tax cuts will revive the economy and create 12 m jobs. (stats refute this there is no shred of truth to support this claim)
3- Barak Obama is a Muslim. (Muslim has to express his Islam to be considered a Muslim)
4- Romney created 100,000 jobs. ( As Gov of MA only 35,000 jobs were created.. his Baine net employment is negative)
5- ACA will kill jobs. (You need healthy workforce to perform the complicated tasks a new economy requires.. unhealthy workforce is less productive than a healthy workforce)

angelsinca

Excellent (though the supporting arguments are pretty weak). How about the top 5 lies from this administration? Take you time and don’t let yourself get hung up on the multi-tiered lies of the sequester).

onedonewong

Of course no mention of the worst Democratic nonsense “that barak had created 2 million jobs” even though not 1 new job had happened

WhutHeSaid

You yourself could qualify as the “world’s biggest liar” if only anyone actually cared about what you say.

onedonewong

I noticed that you offered up no rebuttal

WhutHeSaid

Sure I did- the same rebuttal that applies to all of your posts. Everything you post is a lie. What else needs to be said?

onedonewong

Fail again HIH must be trying ot your used to being a fool

idamag

Whut, I think the best thing is to ignore these tealibans. They aren’t smart enough to enter this discussion. So imagine a red X on their posts and pass over them.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KWMCTLJJ2FHD3NPDJG6TAD467I Jesse Fell

Where do you get your facts? Not 1 new job? We are eager to hear what your sources are.

Lorehead

For the record, there were 111.8 million private-sector jobs in November 2012, and 110.2 million in February 2009, twelve days after he took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (seasonally-adjusted).
idamag

Jesse, you will never get any reliable sources from a couple of teanuts on this board. They have let their racism slip on other boards. They are over their heads on this board and out of their league. There are plenty of hate blogs out there for them to reinforce their idiocy.
onedonewong

Its called the Dept of Labor. There are fewer people WORKING today than at anytime during W 2nd term. Maybe it would help your understanding of the countries problems if you turned off the State Run Media

angelsinca

The percentage of workers as compared to the total workforce is so significantly BAD, the left won’t even discuss it. Not even the bold faced lying ones.

angelsinca

Your heart is the right place place, onedonewrong. But, you should never ever use statistics to dispel the left. They are better at number f–cking and claiming it as the truth.

http://profile.yahoo.com/SDOPYQEXAFU6XM6TSMI2E3ZK7A craig

love the reference to the druggie boy bloviator, lush rimshot, as being a gasbag. there is no radio host who has ever been more full of horse dung than rushbo himself, in the history of am or fm radio. the rushbots love his opinions as ‘facts’. hannity, savage, o’reilly, and levin aren’t far behind rushbo in slinging it against the wall to see if it sticks. the conservative entertainment complex is all about embellishment, distortions, and misinformation, or no relevant information at all.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Myers/100001512942781 Jim Myers

Replying to craig -

DIDN’T RUSH LIMBAUGH STATE BEFORE THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION THAT IF OBAMA WAS ELECTED, HE WOULD PACK UP AND LEAVE THE UNITED STATES?

I understand that he is still spewing the sewage that the idiots on the right keep eating up.

And keep paying him millions of dollars to keep their appetite fed.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_F3AEVYAEPTF5EQAQBKY7B4IUSU EAT THE RICH

poli= li , lawer=li , cop= li, what else is new folks? more tax breakes for fat cats? how about closing all the loopholes in the tax code? or better yet, firing all usless , life long leaches , in the house and senate?

idamag

politics = poli = many, tics = bloodsucking insects.

http://profile.yahoo.com/JMT6C3LHLJDD4RX4NB4KY5ICAE gargray

Does Rush Limbaugh ever speak the truth?
charleo1

When Romney’s very first ad was an out take from an Obama speech from his ’08 campaign.
Remember? Obama, was repeating a comment his opponent John McCain had made, “That
if we keep talking about the economy we’ll lose. A clever splicer cut out the part about McCain.
And left in, the part about the economy. As if Obama was talking about his own campaign!
Totally dishonest. Romney ran the ad for two weeks, at least. Never tried to correct it.
The most brazen attempt I ever seen of trying to lie one’s way into the White House.

idamag

And Romney would probably be willing to claim Palestine had weapons of mass destruction.

charleo1

I do believe a vote for Romney would have been a vote for war. Probably Iran.
Romney already had jumped into bed with the NeoCons. Many holdovers from
Bush. It’s really hard to get our heads around the unmitigated catastrophe
in foreign affairs as was left by Dick Cheney, and his cabal he ran from a
basement office in the White House. Scooter Libby was just the tip of the iceberg,
as Cheney cherry picked, or fed outright lies to his mentally challenged President.
How dumb was Bush? He was so dumb, as he ran on keeping Americans safe
from terrorism, Osama Bin Laden made a special video a few days before the
election. Reminding Americans he was still around, and still hated the infidels.
Bush had managed to play so perfectly into Bin Laden’s plans, he didn’t want
to see him go.

Sand_Cat

Without Politifact’s obvious distortions of their own, the Right would have probably taken the top 10 easily. If the article is suggesting Obama’s statement “you didn’t build that” is one of the lies, that’s an obvious untruth of their own. To be fair, what was meant may have been the Romney creative editing of Obama’s words; combined with other editing of the same type, Romney’s ads should have the top 5-6 wrapped up, never mind the other repugnants.

Alan8

As Rachael Maddow has shown repeatedly on her show, Politifact is a lying shill for the right wing. I wouldn’t trust Politifact if they said water was wet.
angelsinca

By your logic, this should completely discount the top ten list of political lies as republican propaganda.

Sand_Cat

Infuriating as we may find them, untruths told as a result of stupidity, ignorance (other than willful), and insanity are not strictly lies.

Pelu Maad

They are more sick than devious.
idamag

Sand, a lie told with a goal in mind is not a result of stupidity, ignorance (other than willful, and insanity.
angelsinca

Finally, someone honest enough to disclose the difference between a lie and ‘untruth’. Appreciate the example provided to drive home the point. The insanity claim is not a ‘lie’, since it is only an ignorant statement thanks again sand_box.

Sand_Cat

not empty
http://profile.yahoo.com/RFEPMKNCBVGJYV2X7LBNDGRUEY William

How nice of Mitt to talk about sending jobs to China since he and his partners sent Delfi to China, but only after robing their retirement, and collecting billions in bailout money. Typical GOP logic !

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