Two Wunderkinds Take on New Jobs, Great Challenges

(Composite photo.)



Last week, two rising stars in their respective fields both assumed new roles with tremendous opportunities following sudden, unexpected events.

On Monday, it was revealed that Baylor quarterback Seth Russell will undergo "season-ending" neck surgery. Russell, whose performance as starting QB this season for the 2nd-ranked Bears has been nothing short of amazing, suffered a fractured bone in his neck trying to run for a first down in the fourth quarter of Baylor's Homecoming game against Iowa State. BU won the game but lost Russell.

That means that what Yahoo! Sports columnist Pat Forde called "the most fun position in football" will now be filled by 19-year-old true freshman Jarrett Stidham, a highly-prized recruit from Stephenville High School. (Yes, the same Stephenville High School whose football team won four state championships under Coach Art Briles. They won a fifth state championship in 2012 when Stidham was a sophomore.) The FBS's top offense will be depending on young Stidham to deliver as they pursue a berth in the college-football playoff and, God willing, a national championship.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was elected and sworn in as the new Speaker of the House on Thursday, succeeding the leathery, emotional John Boehner, who had held the post since January of 2011 and shocked the nation last month when he announced his sudden resignation.

Like Stidham, Ryan is taking on huge responsibility with the support of a team that is excited to have him but can't be certain how he'll fare in his new role. Fans of both (or either) have reason for confidence, however, as neither man is a neophyte. Ryan is currently serving his ninth term in Congress and has already chaired two important House committees: Budget and Ways & Means. Stidham has played in every game this season, thanks to Baylor's habit of building up runaway leads well before the end of regulation.

 

Actually, not only are Ryan and Stidham experienced, but both already have some exceptional accomplishments on their resumes. Stidham put up crazy numbers in his senior year at Stephenville, passing for 2,934 yards and 35 touchdowns and running for an additional 969 yards and 15 TDs, and Ryan took on the third rail of politics--entitlement reform--as a little-known congressman from a Democratic-leaning district when Republicans were the minority party. Sports writers, analysts and college coaches around the country took note of Stidham's prowess and achievements and dubbed him one of the top recruits in the country, just as Republicans recognized Ryan as the asset he was and moved him into position to take over as chairman of the House Budget Committee when they regained the majority in that chamber five years ago. Ryan saw his first bill become law as a freshman. Stidham's first-ever pass in a college game was a touchdown.

 

Similarly, both men will face tests early on in their new roles, as greater challenges loom large in the near future. Stidham will debut as Baylor's starting QB this Thursday against the Kansas State Wildcats, who are 0-4 in conference play this season. This is a game the Bears should win, and a decisive victory will probably be necessary to show that Stidham can handle the upcoming Big 12 tilts against Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and TCU, all of whom have defeated K-State this year. Ryan's first real test as speaker will likely be passing a long-term bill to fund highway programs. Beyond that, he will have to deal with his own fractious conference, troublemaking Democrats and a hostile White House on weightier necessities, such as an omnibus spending bill, as one of the most critical elections of our lifetimes draws nearer.

 

Both men also have the advantage/burden of taking the helm at a time when their party/team is enjoying historic success, with their sights set on even higher goals. Republicans started this year with their biggest congressional majority in 84 years, and they'd like to keep that majority and win the presidency next year to boot. Baylor's football team is gunning for their third consecutive Big 12 title and first-ever appearance in a national championship game. Their offense has led the FBS in both yards per game and points per game the past two seasons and is currently first in both categories this season.

 

The similarities are not endless, however. For example, Ryan never desired the position he now holds and only sought it after much cajoling and pressure from his party, whereas Stidham was already contemplating getting "the starting job" when he committed to Baylor last December. Then there are the stark differences between their predecessors. While John Boehner turned out to be a disappointment (and, some would argue, a traitor) to his own people as speaker, Seth Russell proved himself worthy of the position he inherited from Bryce Petty. As reported by Graham Watson (“Dr. Saturday”), “Russell leads the FBS in passing efficiency (189.7), passing touchdowns (29), passing yards per completion (17.68), points responsible for per game (30.0) and passing yards per attempt (10.52).” He threw for 2,104 yards and ran for 402 more for a total of 35 touchdowns this season, stats that are made all the more impressive when you consider that he did not even play all four quarters in any of his seven starts.

 

So, Stidham has some big shoes (or cleats) to fill, but I for one am confident he's capable of delivering for Baylor just as Russell was prepared to do. As for Paul Ryan, there is a reason—or two (or several)—that his image was one selected to grace the banner of this blog and our web site. His intellect, work product and passionate advocacy for conservative policies has earned him a place alongside the late, great Edmund Burke, Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, Jr. Here's hoping these two white knights exceed expectations and that the best is yet to come for the Baylor Bears and the GOP.

Once Again, Paul Ryan Speaks My Mind

(Photo: The Christian Post/Napp Nazworth)

 



This is one of the problems with blogging as a hobby, as opposed to a full-time gig. I don't publish my thoughts as soon as I have them.

 

Once again, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) demonstrates why his visage belongs on the banner atop this blog (and our parent web site). From the Christian Post:

With references to some of the recent government scandals, such as the Internal Revenue Service's harassment of pro-life groups, Ryan said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority 2013" conference, "big government is bad enough in theory, look what we see in practice."

Ryan's words were an abbreviated version of the sentiment he expressed last month on Fox News Sunday, when he said of President Obama's agenda., "Now, we're seeing big government in practice. Now, we're seeing the arrogance. We're seeing the cronyism in practice in this second term, and that is even uglier than big government in theory."

He added that he and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney "had a challenge in the campaign against empty rhetoric," but "now the country is seeing what this kind of big unlimited government does in practice," which "is not a pretty picture."

 

Before I had heard/seen Ryan's remarks, I told someone that one reason the left-wing media was so desperate to downplay/bury the IRS scandal was that it manifestly exposed a critical flaw in their ideology's policy agenda. The malfeasance at the IRS (and the incompetence in other parts of the government that allowed this malfeasance to continue, unabated, for two straight years) was not an anomaly. Rather, it was an example of something that is inevitable when government grows as big as the federal government has gotten. There's no such thing as big government without a trace of incompetence or corruption.

 

It's good when someone with Paul Ryan's stature says what needs to be said, and it's even better when people listen. Whenever I feel I have an important contribution to make on topic of public interest, I try to find the time to churn out a blog post or YouTube upload. If someone has a similar thought, then I would hope he/she expresses it, especially if that person happens to be articulate and easy on the eyes and has a large audience.

Column: Obama and Biden were winning—until they faced actual opponents | Washington Free Beacon

Matthew Continetti, the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and one of my favorite journalists, has penned another excellent column that I urge you all to read (especially if you're going to vote for Obama).

Truly, reality is the poison that will kill Obama and Biden's chances of victory next month (if only we can administer it to enough voters in time).

Oh, OH...

If you haven't seen last night's debate between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), then, well, I don't really care. Frankly, if you're like me and already know who you're voting for but tuned in hoping to witness an epic clash between a skilled, experienced debater with a propensity toward making gaffes and a policy wonk engaging in his first one-on-one, nationally televised debate, then you probably were disappointed. I don't care to talk about it; instead, I want to focus on the presidential race in that most critical of battlegrounds: Ohio.

Back in June, I made a short video about the 2012 presidential campaign in Ohio and highlighted what I though were each candidates' strengths and weaknesses as they tried to sway voters in the state. Long story short: it was a toss-up then, and it's a toss-up now.

There was a time, though, when it looked like Obama might be running away with Ohio, leaving the Romney campaign trying to fathom a realistic path to victory without what has long been the sine quo non of a Republican electoral majority. From Labor Day through the first presidential debate last Wednesday, every public poll of the presidential race in the Buckeye State showed Obama leading. All the pollsters who had been regularly polling the state had Romney losing ground to the president, who had begun to crack 50% in some surveys.

According to polls released in the last week, however, the race in Ohio is back to a dead heat. Five different pollsters--WeAskAmerica, ARG, SurveyUSA, Gravis Marketing and Rasmussen Reports--published survey results showing the presidential candidates within a single point of each other in the state, a statistical dead heat. Given this consistency among reputable independent polling organizations, a Marist poll of Ohio voters conducted for NBC and the Wall Street Journal that has President Obama leading Governor Romney by six points, 51%-45%, deserves some skepticism. But this even without these five large grains of salt, the Marist poll should be difficult to digest. Look at the crosstabs, and you'll find that the sample of likely voters was 40% Democrats and only 29% Republicans. To put that in perspective, exit polls indicated that, in 2008 (the historical zenith of Democratic turnout in modern times), 39% of voters in Ohio identified as Democrats, 31% as Republicans, and the rest were independents. So the question this poll begs is: Do you really expect the Democrats' turnout edge over Republicans this year to be 22% greater in Ohio than it was in 2008, especially considering there are now 67,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state?

Even with the Marist poll (and a CNN/Opinion Research poll showing Obama up four points in the state), the president's advantage in the RealClearPolitics average of the seven most recent Ohio polls is only 1.3 percentage points. That's down from 5.5 percentage points just eight days ago.

If accurate, then these numbers represent a statistical anamoly: Obama is running ahead of his national poll position in Ohio. As of today, the president trails Mitt Romney in the RCP average of national polls by one percentage point. Yet, in 2008, he won the Buckeye State by a 4.6-point margin, well less than his 7.3-point margin of victory over John McCain in the nationwide popular vote. In fact, in the past nine presidential elections, the Republican candidate has received a greater share of the vote in Ohio than he has nationally. Are we to expect that, with no advantage in party identification and no recent shift toward their side in statewide elections (Republicans pretty much ran the table in 2010.), the Democrats are poised to pull off what would be a historical aberration in Ohio? 

The troublesome sign for Romney is that he has yet to break 50% in the state. Obama may have a lower trough, but he also seems to have the higher ceiling.

Still, with the race this close, candidates doubt polls at their own peril, and that's probably why both candidates are treating Ohio like it's the key to victory. Romney and Ryan appeared together at a rally in Lancaster today; it was the second time in three days the former Massachusetts governor had campaigned in the state. Obama hasn't been in Ohio since Monday but has made more visits to the state this year than Romney has.

101 Reasons to Elect Mitt Romney (or, to replace President Obama with a President Romney)

Recently, National Review published a list of 689 reasons to defeat Barack Obama. It was very good, but I wanted to give voters who were still on the fence as many good reasons as I could to not just vote against President Obama in 2012 but to vote for Mitt Romney, so I set about making a list. Admittedly some of the reasons on the NR's list are also reasons to vote for Romney, but I decided not to reuse any of those reasons. So, here now is my list of reasons to elect Mitt Romney president of the United States:

1. He’s actually balanced a budget.

2. He signed a balanced budget into law every year as governor.

3. His signature health-care reform law is popular.

4. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include over 20 different tax increases.

5. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include a single tax increase.

6. He read his signature health-care reform law.

7. He never disavowed his popular health-care reform law that didn’t raise taxes, despite numerous entreaties from the Right to do so.

8. Because he doesn’t kowtow to the Right.

9. Because the people who claim he kowtows to the Right need to be smacked upside the head with reality.

10. Because his health-care reform law was a constitutional exercise of the state government’s power to regulate commerce within the state, so he didn’t have to lie and tell people it wasn’t a tax, then send his solicitor general before the Supreme Court to argue that the individual mandate is constitutional because it is a tax.

11. “Corporations are people.”

12. The Left’s reaction to “Corporations are people.”

13. Because corporations are founded by, run by, owned by and employ people.

14. We’ve never had a bad president from Massachusetts.

15. Nobody else in this race is serious about balancing our budget. (No, Gary Johnson doesn’t count.)

16. Massachusetts’s credit rating was upgraded under his tutelage.

17. During his term as governor, household income in Massachusetts increased.

18. During his term as governor, Massachusetts’s unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% to 4.7%.

19. He cared enough about the family dog to bring him on vacation instead of dumping him in a kennel somewhere (or eating him. Let’s not forget Obama ate dog.)

20. Paul Ryan

21. Vice President Paul Ryan

22. President Paul Ryan

23. Because the next Supreme Court appointment should be made by a president who actually respects the Constitution.

24. Because he never said he likes firing people.

25. Because we like being able to fire our bank, our insurance company, our long-distance carrier etc. if we’re not satisfied with the services they’re providing us.

26. Because we ought to fire our president and hire someone who understands what it means to be accountable to people.

27. We need a president who understands the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

28. He used money people chose to invest with him, knowing the risks they were taking, to help create jobs here in the U.S.

29. Barack Obama used taxpayer money to stimulate companies that expanded their overseas operations. (Union members: that means “companies that ship our jobs overseas.”)

30. He knew that GM and Chrysler would eventually have to go through bankruptcy before they could “come roaring back.”

31. Obama didn’t.

32. Planned Parenthood has spent millions slandering a man who stood by his wife through her battles with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.

33. That wife donated $500 to Planned Parenthood.

34. Make Planned Parenthood regret their smear campaign even more than Ann Romney regrets that donation. (Ideally, their regret should be magnified by the ratio of their total ad spending this year to Ann Romney’s donation.)

35. Enough “Recovery Summers”; it’s time for a recovery presidency.

36. Forcing Lawrence O’Donnell to cover the defeat of President Obama by Mitt Romney is the second-most fitting just dessert for his vicious attack on Ann Romney. (A kick in the head from Rafalca would be the most fitting, for those of you who were wondering.)

37. Mitt Romney donated a greater share of his income to charity in 2011 than did President Obama.

38. Paul Ryan donated a greater share of his income to charity than Joe Biden, the man who said it’s “patriotic” for people to pay higher taxes.

39. Paul & Janna Ryan actually made less money in 2011 than Joe & Jill Biden but gave more to charity.

40. Because charity comes from the heart, not from the Dept. of Health & Human Services.

41. It’s time for Kathleen Sebelius to get rejected by Brookings and wind up teaching at some third-rate university.

42. Because nearly 47% of wage earners in this country pay no federal income taxes.

43. Because most of the people voting for President Obama really do consider themselves “victims” who are entitled to “free” stuff.

44. He gave an honest answer when asked about security concerns ahead of the London Olympics.

45. When it comes to being a leader, candor is more important than tact.

46. We shouldn’t reward voyeurism.

47. To teach Barack Obama that lying doesn’t pay.

48. To teach the mainstream media that they are not puppetmasters.

49. To teach Priorities USA that we’re not that gullible.

50. He’s the most experienced executive to be nominated for president by a major party since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

51. He was a success as the head of Bain Capital.

52. He was a success at running the Olympics.

53. He was a success as governor of Massachusetts.

54. Obama has been a failure as president.

55. If Obama’s presidency has been a success, then it would mean that he was trying to weaken us as a country, in which case we need a different president.

56. Lech Walesa endorsed him.

57. Hugo Chavez endorsed Obama.

58. Ann Romney won’t chide Olympic gold medalists for eating at McDonald’s.

59. He can tell the good components of Dodd-Frank from the bad parts.

60. He will approve the Keystone Pipeline.

61. He's a self-made (multi)millionaire.

62. The Left hates that fact.

63. Joe Soptic

64. He doesn’t want the United States to be a “major customer” of foreign oil.

65. He has a serious plan to wean us off foreign oil.

66. His plan to wean us off foreign oil doesn’t involve dumping billions of tax dollars into “green energy” scams.

67. Prove to the world that we can be counted on to choose style over substance.

68. Because economic policies based on principles of economic freedom, limited government and “rugged individualism” actually do work.

69. Because he understands that, and Obama apparently doesn’t.

70. For Gibson Guitar.

71. For the 90,000 U.S. troops currently serving in Afghanistan.

72. For the millions of seniors who will lose their Medicare Advantage plans if Obamacare is fully implemented.

73. For every policyholder who has seen his/her insurance premiums increase since Obamacare became law.

74. For every worker who has lost or is going to lose his/her health-care plan because of Obamacare.

75. For the children trapped in failing public schools.

76. He actually has a record of working across party lines to get things done.

77. Because he’s willing to work with a guy who stood on the Senate floor and told untenable lies about his taxes and said he’s “not the face of Mormonism”...

78. ...but we’re supposed to believe Obama can’t work with congressional Republicans because their floor leader in the Senate acknowledged that they want Obama to be “a one-term president.”

79. He’s actually saved and created jobs.

80. Because, while government can create jobs, it’s better to let the private sector do that.

81. Jack Black

82. His detractors claim he wants to “cut” education.

83. Even though he cut spending as governor, the Commonwealth’s schools were ranked first in the country.

84. People respect him enough to spend $50,000 to dine with him at a friend’s house; no appearances by George Clooney, Beyoncé or Jay-Z necessary.

85. Let the Obamas spend their next anniversary in the romantic seclusion of private life.

86. He won’t lambast you for going to Las Vegas.

87. So that our nation can begin to heal.

88. Because, while Osama bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is very much alive.

89. He wants to sign the repeal of Obamacare.

90. He will grant waivers to all 50 states until Obamacare is repealed.

91. He won’t be distracted during important meetings by a recurring nicotine fix.

92. He’s willing to touch the third rail of American politics.

93. He’s offered specific reforms to save our entitlement programs from bankruptcy.

94. He keeps track of the promises he makes.

95. He’s never raised taxes.

96. Because it is possible to balance the budget without raising taxes...

97. ...which he did as governor of Massachusetts.

98. Nancy Pelosi said, "Mitt Romney is not going to be president of the United States. ... I think everybody knows that."

99. Sandra Fluke

100. He did more to create jobs as one man in the private sector than Barack Obama has done with all the power and resources of the presidency.

101. We need a president we can trust.

This list may grow as time passes, but with only a month to go before Election Day and early voting already underway in most states, I decided to go ahead and post what I had. Check back often!

The Washington Post Needs Better Fact-Checkers

Following Paul Ryan’s address at the Republican National Convention last month, self-styled “fact-checkers” went nuts, seizing on what they perceived as false and misleading statements in the vice-presidential candidate’s speech. Their critical analyses provided much fodder for Ryan’s detractors, who tried to make him out to be a liar who couldn’t be trusted. Whether or not they were successful is hard to tell, but that’s not the focus of this article.

The Washington Post has had a mixed record this election cycle when it comes to fact-checking. A completely unbiased and disinterested observer with no dog in the fight might fairly conclude they’ve been overly harsh on both the Obama and Romney campaigns. I’ve noticed multiple mistakes in the paper’s sundry “fact checks” conducted this year, but they’ve also done a lot of good work. Of late, however, they seem to be getting sloppy...or lazy...or maybe they're just dropping the mask and letting their bias show. Whichever it is, I’ve decided the time has come to catalogue some of the most egregious malefactions I’ve seen.

Before I commence castigating individual fact-checkers, I should identify who’s who. Glenn Kessler writes the Post’s “Fact Checker” column (the one that uses the "Pinnochio" rating scale). He is assisted in this endeavor by a reporter named Josh Hicks. Post columnist Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog, a blog under the newspaper’s aegis. Suzy Khimm, Sarah Kliff, Dylan Matthews and Brad Plumer are all contributors to Wonkblog.

Now then, a couple weeks ago, I challenged anyone who accused Paul Ryan of lying in his convention speech to identify one actual lie he told. To date, no one has brought such a lie to my attention. (Brief caveat: I don't consider a statement a "lie" if the person making the statement doesn't know/realize it's false at the time.) Somebody referred me to this post on Wonkblog, and while it didn't expose an actual lie in Ryan's speech, I did notice several errors the author, Dylan Matthews, made in his "fact check". For starters, he labelled the claim that "[a] GM plant in Ryan’s district shut down on Obama’s watch" FALSE and attributed the claim to Ryan. The problem is that Paul Ryan made no such claim. Surprisingly, Matthews actually admitted this--sort of--as he quoted what Ryan actually said: 

My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

Now, if you've done your research, then you should know that all of those statements are/were true. Matthews, however, didn't fact-check these statements. Instead, he wrote, "Ryan says that Janesville was 'about to' lose the factory at the time of the election, and Obama failed to prevent this." According to Matthews, this was "false," but Matthews is wrong; the plant was "about to close" when then-Senator Obama came to Janesville and made the remarks Ryan quoted. Notice also that Ryan never said "Obama failed to prevent" the plant's closing, though I suppose one could infer that from what he said, but even if he did, it's true; Obama didn't prevent the plant from shuttering. The issue is not whether he was in a position to save the plant; it's whether the plant closed or not. 

Matthews also distorted Ryan's claim about the stimulus. Here's what he wrote, exactly as it appears on Wonkblog:

The stimulus was the biggest expenditure in government history – The stimulus, Paul Ryan writes, “cost $831 billion – the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.” This is false any way you cut it. By comparison, the Congressional Research Service estimates (pdf) that World War II cost $4.1 trillion in 2011 dollars. That was the biggest one-time expenditure ever, not the stimulus. Ryan is simply incorrect.

Notice that, again, the "claim" Matthews attributes to Ryan (in bold) differs substantially from what he quoted Ryan as saying. (This odd behavior is not unique to Matthews; see below.) Even aside from this glaring analytical error, however, is his premise that World War II "was the biggest one-time expenditure ever."' The stimulus was one bill that became one law, PL 111-5; it was a "one-time expenditure". By contrast, the $4.1 trillion "cost" of World War II was authorized through multiple appropriations bills, none of which reached anywhere close to $831 billion.

Matthews also cut out a couple of statements Ryan made--to wit, “The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst,” and ”We got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.”--that I would call fair characterizations of Obama's policies that others may disagree with and dubbed them "false". He then listed a few claims from Ryan's speech that he called "misleading," but only one of these (that “President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him.”) was truly misleading. (The National Debt has grown by $5.4 trillion under President Obama--a greater increase than other any one president in U.S. history--but Obama is not solely responsible for this.) The other two--about the Simpson-Bowles debt commission report and S & P's downgrade of our credit rating--were true and not even misleading. (Matthews strained credulity by asserting that these statements in Ryan's speech "impl[ied]" things that no reasonable person would have interpreted the congressman as saying.)

You would think a responsible editor would have caught at least one of these slights and rebuked Dylan Matthews for his sloppy work and lack of journalistic integrity, but Klein himself admitted that, before posting Matthews's piece, he re-read Paul Ryan's speech, "this time with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the 'true' category. And I did find one." One?!? I wasn't sure how Ezra Klein defines the word "true," but then he told us:

I want to stop here and say that even the definition of “true” that we’re using is loose. “Legitimate” might be a better word. The search wasn’t for arguments that were ironclad. It was just for arguments — for claims about Obama’s record — that were based on a reasonable reading of the facts, and that weren’t missing obviously key context.

Yet, in spite of that supposedly lax standard, Klein would have us believe that, after reading Ryan’s speech in an advance text, watching it on television, then reading it over again twice more, he "simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true." (Perhaps he should have told us what he considered "major claims or criticisms," though as we can see from Matthews's post, Ezra seems to have no problem labelling as "false" claims that are plainly true.)

According to his profile on Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews has written for The New Republic, Salon, Slate and The American Prospect, all left-wing rags (except for Slate), so perhaps the blatant mistakes in his Wonkblog post weren't mistakes at all but deliberate attempts to deceive readers. I wanted to know, so I read his post entitled "Fact-checking Bill Clinton on the economy" the following week. I myself noticed no fewer than seven obvious lies Clinton told in his convention speech, as well as other statements I suspected were false but couldn’t be sure of at the time. Yet, Matthews branded only one of the statements he examined from Clinton’s speech “false,” and it wasn’t one of the seven I noted while watching the speech. (Four of those seven, however, had to do with Medicare, and Matthews did acknowledge that this particular post of his didn’t cover the former president’s statements about Medicare; those were dealt with in a separate post, which I also examined.) He actually did address two of the statements I recognized as lies as soon as I heard them, but his "fact check" of the statements left a lot to be desired:

1. “...the Senate Republican leader said, in a remarkable moment of candor, two full years before the election, their number-one priority was not to put America back to work. It was to put the president out of work!” Not only did I know this was false, but Matthews actually used the same thing that proves this statement false to explain why it's "TRUE". Here is the video--which Dylan Matthews embedded in his Wonkblog post--of what Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said:

As you can see/hear, Senator McConnell clearly said that "our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term." Now, the difference beween "top" and "number-one" is de minimis, as is the difference between denying President Obama a second term and putting him out of work; I'll not fault the Big Dog for that, but there is a hugely significant difference between one's top priority and top political priority. (If you don't think the Democrats' top political priority this election cycle is to get President Obama re-elected, then you are in such a deep state of oblivion that I don't see any point in continuing.) Furthermore, there's a big difference between saying what something "is" and saying what it "should be". (We know President Clinton has been unsure of the definition of the word "is" in years past; it seems Dylan Matthews was as well.) Even if McConnell thought the GOP's top priority and top political priority were one and the same, that's not what he said. Clinton's statement was false.

2. “The Recovery Act ... cut taxes for 95% of the American people.” I interpreted this as a reference to the stimulus, and apparently Matthews did, too, so let's just go with that. This statement is also clearly false, as the percentage of Americans who pay federal taxes is far less than 95%, unless you take into account how the people who pay the taxes pass them on to others, but that's so tenuous and not supported by the context. Dylan labelled this statement "TRUE" and offered only this one sentence as support:

The “Make Work Pay” tax credit in the stimulus helped 94.3 percent of Americans.

I clicked on the link because I was willing to spot Slick Willie 0.7% if his claim otherwise held up. Matthews's source for the 94.3% claim was Politifact, which as I've demonstrated ad nauseum has some serious credibility issues. Nevertheless, even if you take them at their word in this instance, the piece Matthews linked to doesn't support his claim, nor does it entirely validate Clinton's. According to Politifact:  

The stimulus included tax cuts for many Americans, including a broad cut known as "Making Work Pay" intended to offset payroll taxes, which are automatically taken out of most workers’ paychecks and are not refundable.

Because of the stimulus, single workers collected a $400 tax credit, and working couples got $800. The credit didn’t come in the form of a check; it worked out so that most workers had about $400 less in federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks.

This raises the issue of what you consider a "tax cut"; most people think of tax cuts as cuts in tax rates, but I think it's fair to interpret Clinton's use of the term "cut taxes" to include reducing the tax burden or simply "reduced taxes". Still, that leaves the issue of the 95(or 94.3)% number. Whence did that come? Says Politifact:

Ahead of the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center analyzed the effects of Obama’s tax proposals for workers. The center determined about 95 percent -- more precisely, 94.3 percent -- of tax filers would receive a tax cut under Obama's plan based on the tax credit to offset payroll taxes.

That data certainly deserves consideration, but the problem is that neither Politifact nor Dylan Matthews pointed to an analysis of the actual stimulus, so we don't know how many people actually received a credit as a result of the "Make Work Pay" tax credit. Further, concluding that President Clinton's statement was true requires the additional assumption that, by "the American people," he meant "American tax filers" or "taxpayers" or some other term that's not synonymous with "people". (Indeed, Politifact said that "Clinton left out an important qualifier: It’s a tax cut for 95 percent of working families.")

Matthews didn't fact-check the other lie I noticed--that “This Republican narrative, this alternative universe, says that...every one of us in this room who amounts to anything, we’re all completely self-made.” Not only have I never seen/heard any Republican say any such thing; this statement goes way beyond a permissible paraphrasing or reasonable interpretation of anything Repbulicans have actually said. As for Wonkblog's "fact check" of Clinton's Medicare claims, I think that Sarah Kliff deserves some credit for a basically good job; she caught three of the four lies about Medicare I heard Clinton say and even exposed a couple more. I don't know why she didn't mention the other obvious lie Clinton told on this topic--that Republicans’ plan to block grant Medicaid will “end Medicare as we know it”--but I'll not fault her for that. If this one post is any indication, then Messers. Klein and Matthews can learn a lot from Ms. Kliff about how to do a proper fact check.

Now, then, on to "The Fact Checker" himself, Glenn Kessler. I've previously faulted Glenn for what I deemed an unfair analysis of Mitt Romney's claims about how many jobs he created through his work at Bain, but I've noticed that he also does some good work, too. Kessler assigns claims that are anything short of true anywhere from one to four pinnochios; four-pinnochio ratings are reserved for what he calls "whoppers". My one big riff on his "fact checking" is that he and Josh Hicks seem to apply their ratings indiscriminately and arbitrarily. I'll give you an example: Remember that awful Priorities USA ad featuring the "steelworker" whose wife "died of cancer"? Well, Kessler analyzed the claims (many of which were downright false) made by the man in the ad, a Mr. Joe Soptic, and appropriately gave the ad "four pinnochios", concluding, "Soptic is welcome to his opinion on possible reasons for his wife’s death, but that does not mean Obama supporters should exploit it. On just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency."

That's very charitable; I think a fairer and more honest reaction would be that this man, Joe Soptic, is a horrible person who was trying to deceive people. Regardless, the Priorities USA ad clearly deserved four pinnochios, but according to Kessler, so did the Romney campaign's ad attaking President Obama for his "plan to gut welfare reform." Kessler called this ad "over-the-top", but as Robert Rector, who helped draft the work requirements in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (a.k.a. Welfare Reform), has explained, "The law has indeed been gutted." The ad does bend the truth by saying that, under President Obama's plan, "you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They'd just send you your welfare check...." Reasonable people might interpret that as saying that unemployed people would receive welfare payments without having to work or look for a job, and that's not the case. This ad deserved one or two pinnochios, but none of the statements in it compare to the utter mendacity of the Priorities USA ad. Nevertheless, Kessler apparently thought the two spots were equally dishonest, writing that "the Romney campaign is asserting an extreme interpretation of what might happen under these rules, but it is certainly not based on any specific 'Obama plan.'"

Hmm...a campaign asserting an extreme interpretation of what might happen if their opponent's policy proposals are enacted? That sounds exactly like what the Obama campaign did with this ad: 

This ad is full of lies and deceptions. The voice-over says "chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than [Mitt Romney]," and "Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010 but paid only 14% in taxes, probably less than you." I'm not sure who this ad is speaking to when it says "you", but "chances are" not good that you pay a lower tax rate than Mitt Romney. First, notice that they're only using one year to reference Romney's effective tax rate. (The candidate reportedly paid 15.4% of his income in federal taxes in 2011.) We don't have data from the I.R.S. for 2010 indicating what percentile a 13.9% tax burden would place Mitt Romney in, but even counting just the people who filed returns, 14% is higher than most Americans' federal tax rate in 2009. As Kessler himself has explained: 

For all the rhetoric about high taxes in the United States, most Americans pay a relatively small percentage of their income in taxes. Romney had an effective rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and 15.4 percent in 2011. That gives him a higher rate than 80 percent of taxpayers if only taxes on a tax return are counted and puts him just about in the middle of all taxpayers if payroll taxes paid by employers are included.

So we can agree that, at the very least, the Obama ad contains some shading of the truth. That should earn it at least one Pinnochio, right? Not according to Kessler, who called the commercial "[a] tough new Obama ad that — surprise! — is accurate." That's quite an about-face from the man who less than a month earlier had given the president's campaign team three Pinnochios for tweeting, “FACT: In 2010 and 2011, Romney paid less than 15% in taxes on $42.5 million in income—much less than what many middle-class families pay.” Kessler alluded to that fact check in this analysis but distinguished the two claims, saying "the language in this ad is much more accurate." (More accurate, possibly, but still dishonest.) He also found ways to justify the ad's mendacious assertions that Romney "has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year." (Notice the use of the qualifier "up to"; I could say that Obama has cheated on his wife Michelle up to 100 times, and even if the actual number of such adulterous trysts was zero, I'd technically be telling the truth.) This claim is based on a single study that exemplifies shoddy analysis, but aside from that, the ad misleads people by saying that Romney's plan "would give millionaires another tax break", even though Romney has been quite clear that his plan would not result in a net tax cut for people at the high end of the income spectrum. However, he has proposed lowering the top federal income tax rate to 28% and eliminating or reducing deductions and tax credits. The Tax Foundation piled assumption upon assumption and inference upon inference to reach the conclusion that "a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed ... would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers." Also, the Tax Foundation qualified their "study" by acknowledging, "We do not score Governor Romney’s plan directly, as certain components of his plan are not specified in sufficient detail, nor do we make assumptions regarding what those components might be." (emphasis added) So, when the Obama campaign says Governor Romney "has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year," they are simply lying.

Kessler didn't seem to think so. He wrote that "the Obama ad correctly describes the key findings of a study by a highly credible organization." (I don't disagree with the "key findings" part of that statement, but "highly credible" is his opinion of the Tax Foundation, not an established fact, and to say the ad "correctly" described the study's conclusions is just laughable.) In an untenable act of...I don't even know what to call it...Kessler gave the ad the Fact Checker's first "Geppetto Checkmark" of this election cycle. (According to Kessler, the Geppetto checkmark is reserved for “[s]tatements and claims that contain ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’.”)

This ad--entitled "Stretch"--may have contained some true statements (such as Barack Obama saying "I'm Barack Obama...."), but it certainly wasn't the whole truth, and it contained a lot more than the truth. Glenn Kessler should be ashamed of himself.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not rebuke Josh Hicks for this atrocious piece he did on some comments Rudy Giuliani made while campaigning for Mitt Romney in Florida. The post actually combined two "fact checks" in one, focusing on two series of statements America's mayor made in the Sunshine State in July. My beef is with Hicks's analysis of the first series, to-wit:  

“Remember Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber asked [then-Sen. Barack Obama]: ‘Would you raise taxes even if it didn’t bring any more money to the government? Like the capital gains tax. If you raise the capital gains tax — the government did this once 20 years ago — if you raise the capital gains tax, you actually make less money for the government, because people stop doing investments, or they’ll do investments overseas.’ He [Obama] said, ‘Well I would do it anyway because it’s only fair.’ ”

— Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani during a pro-Mitt Romney speech at the Florida GOP headquarters in Tampa, July 26, 2012

Hicks quoted an excerpt from then-Senator Obama’s exchange with Joe the Plumber and declared, “This shows that Obama did indeed talk about tax fairness with Wurzelbacher. But Giuliani suggested that the president was talking about fairness at the expense of greater revenue, which is not the case.” Nowhere in his “Fact Checker” piece did he mention Obama’s statements in a debate with Hillary Clinton in April 2008, in which the candidate said he "would look at raising the capital-gains tax"--even if it resulted in the government taking in less revenue—“for purposes of fairness.” Giuliani said that Obama claimed he was willing to raise the tax even if it cost the government revenue “because it’s only fair.” A permissible paraphrasing? You bet. A propos? Absolutely, but conspicuously absent from an analysis by what purported to be an objective fact-checker.

These are just some of the many, many "fact checks" conducted and published by these individuals on the Washington Post's web site. I've seen other analyses that contained no obvious errors or misstatements, but as you can see, there have been multiple instances--just in the past couple months--of these so-called fact-checkers getting their facts wrong and making overt analytical errors that any competent journalist interested in discerning what's true and what's false should have caught. I suppose it would be crass of me to castigate these men without suggesting I could do a better job, so I'll close with this: if the Washington Post decides to bring in some more diligent fact-checkers, then my services stand at the ready to help them. Until then, we'll just have to see if any of these "fact-checkers" get their act together.

Recapping the Republican National Convention

Although I was reluctant to add my voice to the cacophony of reactions to this week’s festivities in Tampa, I noticed that there were some aspects of the convention on which no one seemed to share my perspective, so here's a brief rundown.

Much criticism has been heaped on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—from both the Right and the Left—for his keynote address. Most all the negative reactions I’ve heard are some version of this: He didn’t mention Mitt Romney until 15-20 minutes into his speech, and even then, barely at all. He talked too much about himself. It sounded like he was setting himself up for a future presidential run. Other rising stars who spoke at the convention, particularly the governors, received similar criticism: They were too boastful of his own accomplishments and mum on Romney’s, the meme goes. While I believe the organizing committee could have done a better job emphasizing Mitt Romney’s character and accomplishments and values/beliefs, I do not share this view that the other speakers should have spent less time on their personal records. The electorate needs to hear these Republican success stories; they need to know about these Republican governors who balanced their budgets without raising taxes; they need to know about their education reforms and their courageous fights against politically-charged lawsuits filed by an oppressive federal government. Voters who are still on the fence need to be confronted with the sharp contrast between the Democrats’ failed policies and our party’s success.

They also needed to hear New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s anecdote about realizing she and her husband were Republicans, and they needed to hear Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval's rise from (excuse the cliché) humble beginnings to the federal judiciary (and now the governor's mansion). Ted Cruz’s impassioned, podium-less appeal to Hispanics, especially immigrants, was head-and-shoulders above anything we can expect to hear from San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who will be keynoting the Democratic National Convention next week, or Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who mused on Tuesday that Republicans "can't just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname" and expect Latinos to vote Republican. (Sour grapes, anyone?) Other speakers’ personal narratives were less salient components of their addresses but no less significant. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s personal story was confined to a single sentence at the end of her speech, but it may have been the most potent. It took the normally apolitical academic 23 seconds to recount her journey from Jim Crow-era Birmingham to U.S. Secretary of State, but the standing ovation she received lasted at least twice as long. (Dr. Rice is too classy a woman to have added what some of us inferred and every educated person familiar with the history of the deep South knows: that the Jim Crow laws under which she grew up were all passed and enforced by Democrats.) I also think Rick Santorum’s speech was underrated. I’d never been a big Santorum fan, but on Tuesday night, he gave one of the most moving speeches I’ve ever heard, at a convention or anywhere.

Paul Ryan's acceptance speech irked the Left in a way I've not seen since...well, I suppose I've never seen them react the way they did to the eye-pleasing Congressman's Wednesday night address. It was clear that the Obama campaign was incensed by Ryan's ability to disembowel their case for re-election without telling a single lie. No surprise the only response they could muster was to accuse him of--that's right--lying. I'll spare you a laundry list of examples, but if you've seen the speech, then you know there wasn't a single lie in it.

I had my own list of things I was hoping to hear Mitt Romney say during his acceptance speech, and I got some of what he wanted. (I wasn't expecting him to do anything as jaw-dropping as Ronald Reagan's silent prayer at the end of his convention speech in 1980, but I was surprised that he didn't include a sentence or two about the flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi or make hey of the president's ill-conceived "We tried our plan, and it worked." comment.) He did well to run down a list of specific policy proposals he had for addressing our economic woes. I agree with those who called this "a workman-like" address, as opposed to something heavy on soaring rhetoric and light on substance (Any guess which kind of speech we'll hear from President Obama next week?); still, I wouldn't have minded a little more bluster. It also would have been nice to hear Romney--or anyone at the convention--reassure supporters with something along the lines of, "Remember, we have the easier argument to make in this election. All we have to do is convince people of the truth. We need not lie or distort our opponents' records. Victory for them requires getting enough people to believe things that aren't true. It necessitates keeping voters in the dark." However, since I did not take care to write all this down and publish it before Thursday night, and because after-the-fact criticism always has that tinge of second-guessing someone without having been in his position, I will go no further on this point, except to offer this defense of Mitt Romney and whoever wrote his acceptance speech: When previewing something you’ve written—especially something intended to be delivered orally—it’s fairly easy to spot things that probably shouldn’t be in there or that should be changed, but it is typically very difficult to recognize everything that was left out; spotting the omissions means looking for things that aren’t there, a very tough task.

Pennsylvania in Play for 2012?

All Eyes on Mitt

I've just learned that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) will announce his vice-presidential running mate this morning in Norfolk, Va. The media is all abuzz; multiple sources say it's Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chairman of the House Budget Committee. I am skeptical; I had previously been told Romney would pick Condoleeza Rice, and I didn't really trust that source either. It's not that he wasn't credible; it's just that I've never really considered anyone's prediction of these matters especially credible--except when Bill Kristol predicts something. He seems to have been correct about this sort of thing more often than most political commentators. In 2006, he was the only "conservative" I heard who (accurately) predicted that Republicans were going to get "creamed" in the midterm elections. Four years ago, his bullishness on Sarah Palin in advance of Senator McCain's announcement sounded more like the hopeful fantasy of an enthused Republican political junkie than an educated guess of what we should expect to happen.

I bring all this up because: (1) I believe Bill Kristol's uncommon prescience about political decisions--of both voters and politicians--has not gained the recognition it deserves, and (2) Kristol and Weekly Standard Senior Writer Stephen F. Hayes wrote an article for next week's issue of their magazine urging Governor Romney to pick either Ryan, whom they dubbed "the Republican party’s intellectual leader," or Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), whom they called "the GOP’s most gifted young politician." Has Romney taken their advice? Yes! Well, maybe. Look, I'll give 10-to-1 odds that his running mate's surname begins with an "R". Then again, he's making the announcement in Hampton Roads, so it might be Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. (It isn't.)

WHAT?!?

One of the key elements of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is the so-called "Super-Congress," a 12-member congressional committee, made up equally of Republicans and Democrats from each chamber, tasked with finding a $1.5 trillion in budget savings on top of the spending reductions already enacted. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi each get to select three members from their respective chambers to serve on the committee. Reid announced his picks yesterday, and Boehner and McConnell came out with their selections earlier today. I'll post a critique of the committee's prospective membership once all twelve individuals have been selected, but today something was revealed that I just had to blog about right away.

Perhaps no one seemed a more obvious choice for one of the three slots to be filled by House Republicans than Rep. Paul Ryan (R–WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the GOP’S "Path to Prosperity." Many expected Boehner to tap the seven-term Wisconsin lawmaker, and some even called Ryan "a natural choice" to co-chair the joint committee. Yet today, when the Speaker revealed his three appointments for the super committee, Ryan's name was conspicuously absent from the list. Alana Goodman, writing for Commentary, asks:

Why no Paul Ryan? It’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have been one of Boehner’s first choices, so could it be Ryan wasn’t interested in the position?

Goodman offered her own well-developed answer, but she only needed to look at Paul Ryan's official web site to solve the mystery. The congressman released a statement today in which he said that he had asked the Speaker not to consider him for the Joint Committee. His reasoning was that "only the Budget Committee can write legislation to reform the budget process." That’s true, but it's somewhat of a shock that one of the smartest guys on the Hill would not want to participate in an endeavor where his intellect and logical acumen will be sorely needed.