l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 May 4, 2012 Posted by Warner Todd Huston
Apparently Obama and his administration operate under that old, underhanded
adage that if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough it becomes “truth
” because Obama has done it again by lying about how his jobs bill was to
have been instrumental in the repairs of bridges that span the Ohio River.
Back in September President Obama had another one of his campaign rallies
disguised as a press conference in downtown Cincinnati in front of the Brent
Spence Bridge, a span that connects Ohio and Kentucky. At that time he
claimed that his jobs bill and stimulus money was to pay for much needed
repairs on the bridge. Afterward, newspaper fact-checkers in Cincy as well
as Washington DC noted that Obama’s claims were simply untrue, no stimulus
money was going to any of the bridges over the Ohio river, much less the
Brent Spence.
The scolding of the media doesn’t seem to have deterred Obama, however, for
this week he’s done it again. Lied about how his stimulus money and jobs
bill cash was to go to repair bridges across the river.
Back in September, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog gave Obama its
Three Pinocchios rating for his false claims. Today the WaPo has upped the
ante giving Obama’s claims four Pinocchios for his newest assertions, this
time campaign rhetoric that Republicans are making the bridges unsafe by
blocking his big spending plans.
On April 30 in remarks made at a D.C. conference of the AFL-CIO’s Building
and Construction Trades Department, Obama made the direct claim that
Republicans “said no” to his jobs bill and this, he said, was making the
bridges across the Ohio unsafe. At the conference he said:
I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of
construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools,
transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and
firefighters, creating a new tax cut for businesses. They said no. I went to
the Speaker’s hometown, stood under a bridge that was crumbling. Everybody
acknowledges it needs to be rebuilt. Maybe he doesn’t drive anymore. Maybe
he doesn’t notice how messed up it was. They still said no. There are
bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican
leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour,
hour-and-a-half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don’
t work. They still said no.”
But is any of this true? The WaPo says no. The Post fact-checker said he
understood the need for symbolism but that need “does not give a president
license to stretch the facts.”
Obama’s lies this time were even more egregious than those of last
September. Last time Obama simply made vague claims that he was going to fix
the Brent Spence Bridge — claims that were not true as his federal money
outlays were not going to that bridge in the first place.
But this time he’s gone full-on liar-liar with his campaign rhetoric that
the Republicans have actually blocked funding that was to go to bridge
repairs.
In his remarks to the union thugs, Obama alluded to a bridge that “won’t
work” implying that it has been shut down. The only bridge across the Ohio
that fits this description is the Sherman Milton Bridge that connects
Indiana and Kentucky near Louisville. A crack was discovered in that bridge
last year but, as it happens, it was discovered that this crack had been
there since 1962. Further, the bridge was quickly repaired and none of Obama
’s jobs bill money or stimulus cash was used.
As the WaPo notes, “While Obama claimed ‘these bridges don’t work,’ the
Sherman Milton Bridge has already been repaired, ahead of schedule, and
motorists are driving over it again.”
Finally, Obama’s claim that it was only Republicans that blocked his jobs
bill is also simply untrue. The bill he was touting at the time had
bipartisan opposition and couldn’t even get past his Democrat controlled
Senate.
The WaPo concludes:
Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough,
given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the
Sherman Milton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from
the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous.
Perhaps the president was using outdated talking points, but that’s
little excuse. Given that the president earned Three Pinocchios before, we
have little choice but to up the ante this time.
Once again we see a president that makes outright false claims over and over
again imagining that if he just says the lies enough people won’t notice
that he’s lying any more. Still, Obama does know one thing. He knows that
most news outlets will uncritically report his words as “news” without
noting where he is lying and voters will hear his fantasy “facts” and
imagine that he is telling them the truth.
In that case, he’s right. All he has to do is tell any lie he wants and
most of the time his words will be taken as fact whether they are or not.
Bloomberg, for one, never noted that Obama lied in its report. Neither did
ABC News. And neither did the National Journal which happily noted Obama’s
attacks on Republicans but didn’t note his lies. In fact, only the WaPo
Fact-Checker noted his outright lies at the union event. Many other followed
suit reporting Obama’s words as if his claims were legitimate political
points.
As Obama’s preceding ideological father once said, “A lie told often
enough becomes the truth.” |
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