Battle of the Bilge

Additional Confirmation

As there were questions raised by the previous post regarding an increase in taxes due to health care costs being required on the next W2 that we rated as false, we have been waiting for other outlets to discuss the email.

From PolitiFact, which rated the email ‘Pants on Fire’:

The chain e-mail is correct that employers will be required to start listing the cost of insurance. The requirement starts for the tax year 2011, so employees will see it on the W-2s they receive in 2012.

But that amount will not be taxed. Current law excludes health insurance from taxable income, and there’s nothing in the health care law that changes that.

Several experts on health care benefits and the workplace confirmed that. “It will not affect your taxable income under the new law,” said Dallas Salisbury of the Employee Benefit Research Institute in an e-mail interview.

Since the health care law actually continues the tax exemption on employer-sponsored insurance, why include a requirement that employers report the value of health insurance on the W-2? There are several reasons.

The new health insurance law will eventually penalize people who are not insured with a tax penalty. The W-2 reporting requirement will help the Internal Revenue Service verify that people have coverage, both for themselves and their dependents.

We’ll keep you up to date and add to this post as other fact check outlets examine the issue.

Discussion

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“Television to brainwash us all and Internet to eliminate any last resistance.”
- Paul Carvel

The ‘Obama is anti-military’ talking point

You see it in your emails, hear it on the radio and watch it on TV. A concentrated effort to portray President Obama as anti-military. Using terms regarding the president’s actions that range from indifference to the traitorous, opponents of the administration pull out all the stops to make the powerful voting community of military veterans and service personnel and their families and friends firmly believe this.

We’ve seen little reduction in the number of emails circulating and pundits spewing misinformation. Yet each new allegation or poorly supported op-ed piece gets people riled up and helps to confirm the narrative the opposition has been attempting to write. But what has been the reality of how the president has conducted affairs of state since he took office as compared to his campaign promises?

Luckily, the folks over at PolitiFact have had a running ‘Obameter’ to track campaign promises and what has happened since the election. They have a specific subsection of the Obameter dealing directly with military issues.

The Obameter

The system used by PolitiFact is best described from their site:

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

The Obameter collected 33 campaign promises made by then-Senator Obama in his run for the office of the president that were specifically about the military. All 33 promises have been acted on to varying degrees and so far there hasn’t been a single one broken. Many have stalled, some have been kept, there has been one compromise and most are ‘in the works’. Here’s how those promises and ratings break down:

Promises Kept

• Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
• Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
• Make greater investment in advanced military air technology
• Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
• Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
• Bolster the military’s ability to speak different languages

Compromise

• Ensure the Guard and Reserves can meet their homeland security missions

In the Works

• Begin removing combat brigades from Iraq
• Increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps
• Increase special operations forces and civil affairs
• Make military deployments predictable for troops and families
• Limit Guard and Reserve deployments to one year for every six years
• End the “Stop-Loss” program of forcing troops to stay in service beyond their expected commitments
• Fully and properly equip troops
• Work with Russia to move nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
• Review weapons programs
• Modernize ships and invest more in small vessels
• Set standards for when the government should hire defense contractors
• End the abuse of supplemental budgets for war
• Create a system of incentives and penalties for defense contracts
• Work to end NATO restrictions on forces in Afghanistan
• Train and equip the Afghan army
• Better integrate efforts of federal agencies with the military through new Mobile Development Teams
• Spend $5 billion over three years on cooperative programs with foreign intelligence agencies
• Expand federal bioforensics program for tracking biological weapons
• Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy

Stalled

• Create a specialized military advisers corps
• Create a military families advisory board
• Restore 24-month limit on cumulative Guard and Reserve deployment time
• Make National Guard leader a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Establish transparency standards for military contractors
• Clarify legal status for defense contractor personnel
• Call for a consultative group of congressional leaders on national security

I strongly recommend that you visit the site here for more details on each individual issue above.

PolitiFact – Checking the source

While PolitiFact has proven extremely reliable over the years, there are always forces at work behind the scenes that are almost always partisan. So the source of ratings and information must be examined. From their site:

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in politics.

Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times examine statements by members of Congress, the president, cabinet secretaries, lobbyists, people who testify before Congress and anyone else who speaks up in Washington. We research their statements and then rate the accuracy on our Truth-O-Meter – True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True and False. The most ridiculous falsehoods get our lowest rating, Pants on Fire.

We also rate the consistency of public officials on our Flip-O-Meter using three ratings: No Flip, Half Flip and Full Flop.

So who is behind the St. Petersburg Times? We follow the rabbit hole down by taking the red pill, mixing analogies, and bring up Google, which leads us to wikipedia (sadly quickly becoming the most fact based source on the internet):

The Times traces its origins to the West Hillsborough Times, a weekly newspaper started in Dunedin, Florida in 1884. By 1912, the paper had been sold six times, had been relocated to St. Petersburg, and was published six days a week. Publisher Paul Poynter bought the paper in September 1912 and published it seven days a week. Paul’s son Nelson Poynter took majority control of the paper in 1947. Nelson Poynter died in 1974, having willed the paper to the Poynter Institute. In 2003, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the St. Petersburg Times as a “usually liberal” newspaper

Another brief stopover in Googleland takes us to a website curiously focused on Russian politics for a Florida newspaper. We kick ourselves for not noticing the .ru extension and click on ‘back’ (ok we checked out that one story first).

With an adjusted search term we find a reliable dictionary that confirms the belief that they are left leaning. Via NationMaster.com:

Encyclopedia > St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a daily newspaper based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that serves the larger Tampa Bay area. The Times sells 334,742 papers per day Monday through Saturday, making it the largest paper in Florida and the 23rd largest in the United States. On Sunday it sells 420,251 papers, and the Times estimates about 755,000 people read the daily edition, while on Sundays it is approximately one million.

It traces its origins a newspaper that started in Dunedin, Florida, in 1884. Its editorial leanings are generally considered to be liberal, in contrast to its more conservative-leaning competitor, the Tampa Tribune.

The Times is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school in St. Petersburg directly adjecent to the University of South Florida campus in St. Petersburg. The Poynter Institute is a school and resource for journalism, located in St. Petersuburg. The University of South Florida (USF) is a public university located in Tampa, Florida, USA, with branch campuses in Saint Petersburg.

In comparison to the rest of the pundit and pundit watch universe, PolitiFact is center of the road, especially in this partisan atmosphere. What’s more important however is their track record. And the information they have put out over the past two years especially has been solid, fair and analytical. Watching several sites constantly gives you a good feel for who to trust and who to visit to look for material. PolitiFact is certainly in the former category.

Conclusion/Editorial

So what does this mean to us? That depends on who you are and how you feel about President Obama. There are facts and there are lies, on both sides of the spectrum. But if people believe that President Obama is actively working to harm the military family they probably have not consulted the proper evidence available to them. That information likely came from sources of opposition to the president, and there has been no shortage of misinformation from those sources. By all evidence available and cross checked with other sources, President Obama has been pro-military and pro-military families in his first year and 4 months. The trust level seems to be rising slowly and subtly, but it is on an upward track. Facts have a way of making it out, and are pretty resistant to attempts to destroy them. Even if it takes a long time and usually, unfortunately, it is too long to make a difference and we all give ourselves a collective facepalm. History is full of examples.

(My pre-emptive apologies for offending anyone as well as the usual disclaimer that this is not necessarily an opinion of MOAA in this editorial is by now a tacit understanding, right? If not or you are new to the site, there you go.)

Our political and social leanings determine our level of enjoyment of sources, and we naturally trust those sources to provide correct information. We associate debunking and counter-propaganda with the ‘other side’. It is the nature of Americans to be as competitive as possible at all times. We don’t have a realistically existential threat to the nation right now, so as usual we become more competitive with each other and protective of the borders, and as we have seen recently we sometimes combine them for an extra level of strife. Let’s just keep the fringes on the fringe and make sure rhetoric doesn’t lead to violence and going places we won’t be able to come back from as a nation. So question everything, all the time. Post your counter evidence and speak your mind, or do like most people have and leave it all behind and speak from your gut with the assumption that the other person is lying. But at the end of the night, everyone turn off their computer and get some rest. We all need it.

Discussion

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Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Green Day, American Idiot

A Book Worth Reading

In researching the phenomena of political discourse and stretching of the truth, I came across a book released in June of 2009 that contains an amazingly insightful narrative about the current state of affairs. Written by Esquire magazine’s Charles P. Pierce, the short book lays out a history of ‘American Cranks’ and argues that what was once an intrinsically useful and very American concept of the ‘Crank’ has morphed into a dangerous global marketplace where ideas are accepted as truth due to their exposure to mass media.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free is equally harsh on the left and the right side of extremist commentary, although most cases brought up as examples can be thought of as right wing issues due to the nature of the mass media today. Pierce pieces together the story of the founding fathers and their intention to make America a land of free expression and thought, and argues that in our early years it was this welcoming of ‘out there’ ideas that helped us launch innovation in science, commerce and industry that vaulted us past other nations in the world. The problem with today’s media, in Pierce’s view, is that the ideas that the Cranks (a term used in a humorous and at times endearing manner) don’t have the societal checks and balances that were in place in a less instantaneous world. Ideas were vetted and argued on a small scale through various institutions and groups. The ones that were truly crazy did not gain significant traction while the ones that led to breakthroughs both technically and socially were then presented on a national stage.

Today we don’t have that community on a local scale and due to talk radio, cable news and the insufferable implications of instant communication via email, internet and especially social web platforms. A blog post and a group of followers can thrust any idea into the mainstream if there’s enough interest and it confirms peoples ways of thinking. Two excellent ideas are presented in the book. One of them is Pierce’s own and the other he sites from Andrew Cline of Washington University in St. Louis and both are excellent summaries of the problems with mass media.

The Three Great Premises

Pierce lays out the Three Great Premises that drive today’s political news stories (which he states observantly are more entertainment than actual news):

The First Premise – Any theory is valid if it moves units.
The Second Premise – Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough
The Third Premise – Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

There is so much truth to this theory that I’m inclined to doubt it just because of how fervently I believe it.

Andrew Cline’s Rules for Modern American Pundits

Cited in the book is another insightful theory that can be seen as a perfect description of today’s hyper partisanship. While it certainly does not describe all political pundits, it does help reinforce the idea of the entertainment centric version of most national level media figures. Cline’s rules are as follows:

1. Never be dull
2. Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity
3. The American public is stupid; treat them that way
4. Always ignore the facts and the public record when it is convenient to do so

As we celebrate more than a year of this blog, the daily lack of fact based media certainly seems to support this model. While I personally reject the notion that the American public is stupid with as much energy as I can muster, it is clear that some members of the media rely on this assumption.

Email Response

Not all email forwards or inquiries into Battle of the Bilge are presented here on the blog. A good deal of them don’t fit the model of military based interests, so I handle them on a case by case basis, providing answers and information back to MOAA members as best I can. This morning in response to a debunking that I did on a particularly inaccurate email forward regarding an immigrant in Florida supposedly with 8 kids and a $144,000 per year government subsidy, I received the following response (MOAA member’s name withheld):

Thanks for giving me the straight poop regarding the information forwarded to you by me. Too bad people who compose these messages cannot stick to the truth. There is enough truth available that can be communicated regarding the matter discussed in the message without spreading outright lies.

That is the best summary and statement about email forwards I’ve seen in a while, and could have been the forward to this book. It also supports my opposition to the idea that the American public is stupid. At least I know MOAA members aren’t…

Discussion

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“It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.” – John Steinbeck

Slow News Day?

A quick attempt to hopefully keep the viral emails from going around on this issue is in order. Although not directly related to the military, there are enough sport fishermen out there that this will catch their attention. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh stated plainly that the president was targeting people’s right to fish. A direct quote from Beck was “Forget about the frickin’ fish. People are losing their rights. Who’s more important: the fish or you?” Other samplings across the blogosphere have been equally knee-jerk:

From the SayAnythingBlog: “Because He’s Not Unpopular Enough: Obama Pushes Ahead With Fishing Ban.”

From RedState: Obama: The Will Of The People Be Damned – I’LL Decide Who Can Go Fishing

From GatewayPundit: Obama’s Latest Assault on Freedom– New Regulations Will Ban Sport Fishing

The story that sparked the commotion originally ran as a blog article on ESPN that cited Phil Morlock of the New York Times in saying that:

“Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

The issue is that the Obama administration has ceased accepting public input on a strategy to change the way our nation uses our water supply and natural resources. NOAA is leading the review and will give recommendations to the president. While there may be some changes to fishing sites and regulations, there has been no indication that any decision has been made. Task forces often close off public input at certain points in their mission to develop plans based on what has already been received. NOAA is extremely unlikely to recommend anything approaching a ban on sport fishing, and the president would have to be crazy to think a move like that would be politically viable. There are as many as 60 million voters in this country that enjoy fishing, and this would not be something easily forgotten.

That Smell is Not the Fish

As the rhetoric on the web and cable news got heated, ESPN took action to try to calm everyone down. Executive Editor ESPNOutdoors.com, Steve Bowman, issued this statement, which I’ll reproduce in full:

Firestorms get started in a variety of ways, especially on politicized issues.

ESPNOutdoors.com inadvertently contributed to a flare-up Tuesday when we posted the latest article in a series of stories on President Barack Obama’s newly created Ocean Policy Task Force, a column written by Robert Montgomery, a conservation writer for BASS since 1985. Regrettably, we made several errors in the editing and presentation of this installment. Though our series has included numerous news stories on the topic, this was not one of them — it was an opinion piece, and should have been clearly labeled as commentary.

And while our series overall has examined several sides of the topic, this particular column was not properly balanced and failed to represent contrary points of view. We have reached out to people on every side of the issue and reported their points of view — if they chose to respond — throughout the series, but failed to do so in this specific column.

This series started in October and has included several updates on how the creation of the task force and its actions could impact recreational anglers. ESPNOutdoors.com should have made it clear to all readers that this was part of a larger series, and — even though this was Montgomery’s opinion, and those of the sources quoted in the column — we should have taken more care to fairly represent opposing arguments.

We do feel it is our duty to cover issues surrounding outdoor sports to the best of our abilities, and given the nature of this task force and the potential impact on all fisherman, this was an appropriate topic to address for our audience. We take seriously the tenets of journalism that require we take an unbiased approach, and when we make mistakes in the presentation of a story or a column, it is our responsibility to admit them.

Any confusion on that part rests entirely on my shoulders as the executive editor of this site.

We have appended the original column to note that it was in fact a commentary, and we will institute more rigorous editing safeguards in order to prevent such issues in the future.

Discussion

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“Like recurring nightmares, conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily gone for good just because they disappear for a while” – David A Graham, Newsweek

Background – Newsweek‘s Blunder

If you intend to take on a list of conspiracy theories as a member of one of the largest news outlets in the world, you have to assume that it will draw major attention. Knowing this it would be a good idea to do your research and come up with thorough lines of evidence to support your conclusions. If there is one cardinal rule about discussing conspiracy theories, is that you bring as much information to the table as possible. The true believers on the subject are going to deny your research and conclusions anyway, but at least you’ll have specific points of information to start the discussion.

In a web exclusive article posted on February 12th, Newsweek breaks this rule with gusto, providing one or two sentence rebuttals to conspiracy theories with very little in the way of supporting evidence for their conclusions. Called the ‘Guide to Conspiracy Theories’, the article is a shotgun listing of various active theories that have permeated the web, most of which we have reported on in the past. The result of the article’s lack of evidence, although the conclusions are for the most part dead on, has been a thrashing of the article via its comments section, and believers and non-believers alike have expressed their feelings about the article in a massive way. Instead of putting these issues to rest, Newsweek seems to have successfully contributed to their durability and in some cases will no doubt breathe new life into (thankfully) dying theories.

First let’s take a look at the thirteen theories highlighted by the article and their short conclusions.

Newsweek’s List and Conclusions

1. Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Kernel of Truth? It’s fully debunked. Forged Kenyan birth certificates have been exposed, and—despite protestations to the contrary—Obama’s birth certificate has been certified by the state of Hawaii, and images have been shown on national television. And that’s leaving aside plenty of circumstantial proof, like birth announcements in both major Hawaiian papers from August 1961.

2. Anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.
Kernel of Truth? Deniers have long taken advantage of scientists’ cautious statements, and “Climategate” breathed new life into the movement, but the science stands: warming is real, and it’s caused by human actions.

3. Goldman Sachs intentionally created the economic crisis.
Kernel of Truth? Goldman undoubtedly did better than any competitor from the financial crisis, and CEO Lloyd Blankfein even admitted—albeit cryptically—that the company had “participated in things that were clearly wrong.” This theory is tougher than others to debunk fully, because there’s no empirical data available either way. Nonetheless, while Goldman may have profited, that alone doesn’t prove malice or conspiracy.

4. Democrats’ health plan will create death panels.
Kernel of Truth?[Sarah] Palin was apparently referring to a provision of draft legislation that would have funded consultation about end-of-life care. There was and is, however, no plan for rationing care as a cost-cutting measure, and fact-checking outlet PolitiFact named the theory the “Lie of the Year” in 2009.

5. Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.
Kernel of Truth? Nope. Obama belonged to a Christian church in Chicago (for which he ironically also caught flack) and has a record of unambiguous support for Israel and hawkish policies on eradicating Al Qaeda’s strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

6. Sarah Palin is not the mother of her 1-year-old son, Trig.
Kernel of Truth? No. Sullivan has couched the whole thing as just pointing out minor discrepancies and asking for reasons—not directly making accusations. Palin has understandably refused to dignify these questions with responses. No one else has picked up the theory publicly, although privately some liberals regard it as plausible.

7. ACORN is part of a liberal conspiracy to steal elections.
Kernel of Truth? The James O’Keefe videos showed questionable conduct at the very least, but neither they nor anything else proves a vast left-wing conspiracy between Democrats and ACORN to steal elections.

8. FEMA is establishing detention camps.
Kernel of Truth? Too silly to discuss.

9. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is trying to infiltrate Capitol Hill and spread jihad.
Kernel of Truth? CAIR has tried to place interns on Capitol Hill, but as it points out, that’s standard practice for advocacy groups of all types and allegiances. There’s no proof of sinister motives or an effort to encourage international jihad.

10. Obama wants to conscript Americans into a civilian defense corps.
Kernel of Truth? Liberal press watchdog Media Matters says the theory stems from a speech Obama made in which he argued for the importance of the Foreign Service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps. That’s a far cry from an American Gestapo—a claim for which there’s no support.

11. Time magazine wants to restrict the Internet to licensed users.
Kernel of Truth? Time published a story reporting on a Microsoft executive who’d like to see licensing to combat anonymity. Broadcasting such a controversial proposal—regardless of its merits—is quite the opposite of censorship, as Time’s Michael Scherer rightly explained.

12. 9/11 was an inside job.
Kernel of Truth? Not even the staunchest mainstream George W. Bush bashers believe this one. Enough said.

13. The Omnibus One-World Government, Unified Currency, Dollar-Abolishing, Free Trade–Advocating Theory of Everything:
Kernel of Truth? Eh, sounds plausible to us.

For the full background on each conspiracy theory in the article, go to: http://www.newsweek.com/id/233518/

Comments on, Attacks and Denials Incoming

The article itself, by its very nature, is going to get a lot of heated comments and the usual rhetoric of believers on both sides. But the way it was written, in an apparent vacuum where supporting documentation and evidence, assumes there are no dissenting beliefs or outstanding questions for most of the issues. Instead of spelling out the evidence and creating a clear rebuttal of each, Newsweek basically painted a big target on their site for the attack of the legions of believers of these theories. Thus not only emboldening the spread of false information but also given their readers a chance to attack Newsweek as the often cited ‘part of the machine’ and demonizing their report as misinformation fed to them by the nation’s elite.

Let’s take a quick look at a few of the more out there comments:

Hahaha, wow newsweek has now hit a new low in my book. This is clearly a liberal article. Was there even one conservative “conspiracy theory” that this so called author even talked about?
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Newsweek is such an intelligent publication. This one ranks up there with when they said the Internet would never catch on.
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This article isnt worth even wiping my A$$ with!
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Wow! This article truly is a joke…whoever wrote this should punch themselfs in the face because its been proven that “global warming” is natural…its the earth’s way of reaching equalibrium.
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Propaganda from the New World Order… this “article” is laughable. 9/11 was indeed an inside job.
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Fodder for the masses, Newsweek strikes again! WOW! 11 for 13. And that’s only because Goldman-Sachs was just the catalyst for the “crisis”to occur. And who gives a rodents back-side about Palin’s reproductive and family problems? The only people who would believe this drivel are children and fools! The facts prove every one of these to valid.
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I admit to only skimming the comments on this ridiculous Newsweek fluff but I didn’t see ONE that supported the article.
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Newsweek. Your lies perpetuate myths which cause us to focus on the wrong problems while actual problems threaten our very existence. You really stink.
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This article is a complete joke. Complete subjective journalism without any revelation or examination of facts and evidence. I will never read Newsweek again. Hear that advertisers?
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Newsweek is pure propaganda. This pathetic excuse for an article is proof, and I am complimenting you by calling it an article!

Almost all of the comments are like this, with some groups attacking Newsweek about specific issues like 9/11, birthers, global warming and ACORN. It seems that everyone still has very strong feelings about these issues, and Newsweek poured oil on a large stack of wood just waiting to find a spark. Birthers are sick of being called racists and anyone that believes 9/11 was an inside job is an idiot, if you read the comments.

My absolute favorite comment came from an exchange between “grossmutter” and “MNPatriot79″:

Posted By: grossmutter @ 02/19/2010 7:33:42 PM
No one gives a rat’s ass anymore. People are sick of hearing the whole Muslim thing. Find something else to spout off about.

Posted By: MNpatriot79 @ 02/19/2010 8:29:01 PM
Obviously, a LOT of people care, soooo… you’re dumb…

Commenting on the Internet

As a very smart man once told me, to paraphrase ‘the great part about the internet is that it gives people a release that they would normally internalize and let it burn until they took real world action. Better to have them angry sitting behind a computer than angry on a rooftop with a weapon’. Very true, and this article and the hundreds of comments it has produced illustrates that. I’m not going to go over each theory and debunk or support them, I’ve touched on many here before. I just want to point out how much distrust there is in the government and the media to illicit this sort of response. I’ve held back most of the more virulent attacks in the comments of the article, but take a look and think about what this tells us about our country.

As for Newsweek, hopefully a lesson learned. While you can’t reason people out of anything that they didn’t reason themselves into, you can’t just dismiss what people believe in without a good amount of information to back it up. Something I’ve learned the hard way. Anyway, thank you Newsweek for giving me material for the 100th article of Battle of the Bilge.

Discussion

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