Fact Checking A Randy Bish Embarrassment

It's been a while since I fact-checked Trib Editorial Cartoonist, Randy Bish but I knew I had to when I saw this cartoon today at the Trib:

I realize it's just an editorial, blah-blah-blah, but that shouldn't mean he can get away with the dishonesty.

The conservative story line can be traced back to this editorial in the Washington Times:

Another day and another of President Obama’s campaign boasts bites the dust. While out on the hustings last year, Mr. Obama pummeled Mitt Romney for writing a 2008 op-ed column in The New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

The Republican nominee sensibly argued that bankruptcy would force the city to go through a drastic — and necessary — restructuring of its finances. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, boasted, “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers … and that bet is paying off.” Until Tuesday.

The Washington Times doesn't link to Romney's op-ed (why not? you'll see in a second) so I will.  Here it is.  And here's Mitt's opening:

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself.

See that? Mitt Romney wasn't talking about the city of Detroit, he was using a rhetorical device called metonymy  to discuss the automobile industry.

If there's any doubt about what President Obama was talking about take a look at what he actually said (and you should have done this, Randy.  You'd've saved yourself some embarrassment):

Every year around this time, American car companies start rolling out their newest, shiniest models, hoping to entice you into buying one. It’s Detroit’s chance to show you what they’ve been working on – the latest and greatest. And this year is no exception. They’ve got some pretty good-looking cars coming out.

But something is different this time around – and it starts with the auto companies themselves.

Just a few years ago, the auto industry wasn’t just struggling – it was flatlining. GM and Chrysler were on the verge of collapse. Suppliers and distributors were at risk of going under. More than a million jobs across the country were on the line – and not just auto jobs, but the jobs of teachers, small business owners, and everyone in communities that depend on this great American industry.

But we refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt.

See that?  Detroit, the auto industry not Detroit, the city.

The Washington Times lied to its audience by conflating the two and Randy Bish is extending the lie by quoting it.

You're better than this, Randy.  You really are.

The Empire Strikes Back (or Tries To).

Remember this from Thinkprogress?  It's about how Judicial Watch is at the forefront of the conservative push for "VoterID" laws and about how Richard Mellon Scaife has thrown serious amounts of money at Judicial Watch.

Well, now that the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court has issued its ruling, sending the case back to the Commonwealth Court, the Scaife braintrust responds accordingly:

Under the standard set by the state Supreme Court in remanding Pennsylvania’s contested voter ID law to Commonwealth Court, there never can be such a law in Penn’s Wood.

The high court, ruling 4-2 on Tuesday, gave Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson until Oct. 2 to determine if the state is providing “liberal” access to new photo ID cards or if any voter will be unable to cast a ballot because of the voter ID law. (It was Judge Simpson who, in August, declined to enjoin the law’s implementation.)

But by the Supreme Court’s standard, any voter — perhaps someone who’s never voted and has no intention of voting but is recruited by any anti-voter ID sympathizers? — effectively can scotch the law.

The fix is in.

Yes.  They have it exactly right.  By making sure that no one (NO ONE) is disenfranchised by this law, "the fix is in."

They even try an old, unsupported attack:

Thus, the Supreme Court’s ruling is a poison pill bordering on a Hobson’s choice that will guarantee that elections in Pennsylvania will continue to be loosey-goosey affairs.

"Continue to be..."?  "Loosey-goosey"???

That's the case only if one assumes a reality that doesn't, in fact, exist.

Randy Bish even gets into the act:

Um, do I need to remind my friends at the Trib that (as USAToday reported):

In a pretrial stipulation, Pennsylvania officials said they would offer no evidence that "in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere" or that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of a Photo ID law."

Pennsylvania officials, who responded to the News21 public-record requests, also reported no cases of Election Day voter-impersonation fraud since 2000. [emphasis added.]

So when the braintrust posits a history of "loosey-goosey" elections in Pennsylvania or when Randy Bish raises the scary spectre of in person voter fraud in the future as a result of this ruling, they're just simply lying to you.

Just simply lying.

I Really Hate To Do This, I Really Do

Look at today's Tribune-Review editorial cartoon:

It doesn't say so explicitly, but it's yet another attempt by the Tribune-Review to undermine the credibility of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Look at the signs the non-Jeffersonians are holding ("Tax the Rich" and "Who will pay for my student loan?") and now look at the sign the Jeffersonian is holding ("The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.").

By setting the two sets of quotations in opposition and by tagging one of them as by Thomas Jefferson, the non-Jeffersonians are, well, non-Jeffersonians.

But what about that quotation?

For that we go to Monticello.org, the official website for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  On a page titled "Spurious Quotations" we find:

This exact quotation has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It bears a very vague resemblance to Jefferson's comment in a prospectus for his translation of Destutt de Tracy's Treatise on Political Economy: "To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, - the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, &  the fruits acquired by it.'" [emphasis added.]

Yes, very vague.  There's no mention, for example, about how the cessation of  democracy is brought about by giving "to those who would not" work.

You gotta do your homework better there, Bish.  Either that or you run the risk of having some balding blogger point out your mistakes for the whole world to see.  It's gotta be especially embarrassing today since today you used a spurious Jefferson quotation in an attempt to undermine a group's political credibility.