Jack Kelly Sunday

Post-Gazette conservative columnist Jack Kelly and his columns are well known to the readers of this blog.  He's long known as one who skimps on delivering all the facts or (OR!) just making stuff up as he goes along - all while somehow avoiding the rigorous fact-checking necessary for a political column at such a prestigious newspaper.

This Sunday's column is no exception.  Here's how he starts:

It's illegal to solicit contributions from foreigners, but citizens of China, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Egypt have received emails seeking donations to President Barack Obama's campaign, according to the Government Accountability Institute, a private think tank.

Shanghai-based Obama.com is the largest of "thousands" of foreign websites which link to President Obama's official site. It's owned by Robert Roche, a businessman with ties to the Chinese government and a frequent guest at the White House. Contributions from Americans living in China are legal. But, according to Markosweb, 68 percent of Obama.com's traffic is from foreigners. The website is mostly in Chinese characters.

The Obama campaign doesn't require online donors to provide a CVV (the three digit number on the back of your credit card), as the Romney campaign and nearly all businesses and charities do. The fraud protection measure was omitted because the Obama campaign doesn't want to discourage small donors, a spokesman said.

Here's the GAI report, in case you wanted to check his work.

Let's get Jack's easiest mistake out of the way.  He's relying on the GAI report for information on Obama.com and he asserts quite unmistakably that it's "owned by Robert Roche."  However on page 66 of that same report it says just as unmistakably:

It remains unclear whether or not Roche himself continues to own Obama.com.

As of September, 2008 Obama.com was registered to Roche. About 2 years later (as in about 2 years ago) that registration was changed.

I found this error in about 30 minutes.  Isn't this something Jack's fact-checkers at the P-G should just as easily have caught?

However, let's get to the substance of Jack's argument, here.  Reading between the lines he's saying that not only is the Obama Campaign soliciting donations from foreign nationals but that it's accepting those donations.  That's what he wants you to come away with after reading his column on "Obama Campaign Scandals."

But does the report he's relying on actually say that?  Not according to David Weigel of Slate.com:

Last week the Internet learned of a coming expose of possible foreign money coming into the Obama campaign and other campaigns. The report, from Peter Schweizer's Government Accountability Institute, is up, and... not conclusive. How could it be? Schweizer's researchers spent six months trying to figure out what protections existed to keep illegal foreign donations out of American campaigns. But they ran up against the same fog as Michael Isikoff in a similar, shorter look at weird money to Obama from "Good Will" and "Doodad Pro." You can't easily determine whether a foreign national has given a donation. This report includes a series of blog posts from foreigners talking about the ease of giving, but not saying that they've actually given.

And what does Jack use as his final piece of evidence showing that the Obama campaign is circumventing campaign finance laws? In writing about how the Obama campaign doesn't require the CVV (the three digits on the back of the credit card) for identification he adds this:

The CVV also guards against what happened to Mary Biskup of Manchester, Missouri. When FEC records indicated she'd given $174,800 to Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign, The Washington Post called her, because it is illegal to give more than $2,300. She hadn't ever contributed to Mr. Obama, Ms. Biskup said. "Her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card," the Post noted.

But, as is Jack's habit, he leaves out the biggest part of this 4 year old story:

Now comes the story of Mary T. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. Biskup got a call recently from the Obama campaign, which was trying to figure out why she donated $174,800 to the campaign -- well over the contribution limit of $2,300.

The answer she gave them was simple. "That's an error."

Biskup, a retired insurance manager who occasionally submits recipes to the local paper, says someone used a credit card to donate the money in her name. No charges ever showed up on her credit card statement.

Wait, the OBAMA CAMPAIGN called her?  What happened then?  This:

Obama's campaign spotted the irregular donations, more than 70 of which all arrived on the same day, and aides to the senator said they refunded the money. The campaign began investigating immediately.

"As we reviewed our contributions and the more than 100,000 pages of our report, we noticed repeat donations from one contributor and proactively contacted the donor to verify whether the contributions were appropriate," said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. "We refunded all of the contributions and contacted authorities when we determined Ms. Biskup had not made them. While no organization is protected from internet fraud - John McCain was forced to refund more than $1.2 million in contributions and has accepted contributions from non-existent donors like 'Jesus II' -- our review system caught and rectified this issue." [Emphasis added.]

None of which Jack Kelly deemed necessary to tell you.

But it changes his entire argument, doesn't it?

He then drudges up this well-debunked lie:

The president plans to gut Medicare Advantage to help pay for Obamacare, which goes fully into effect in January. Medicare recipients this year must choose their plan for next year, so when "open enrollment" begins Oct. 15, the 11.7 million seniors enrolled in it should be told what's going to happen to Medicare Advantage.

And this is what the LATimes said about his this:

The president’s healthcare law does reduce future spending on Medicare, but those savings are obtained by reducing federal payments to insurance companies, hospitals and other providers, and do not affect benefits for people in the Medicare program.

And yet Jack was writing as if they did.

Facts matter, especially now.  Can't someone at the P-G get some into Jack Kelly's columns?

More Anti-Science From God's Own Party

From Representative Todd Akin, some more crazy nonsense:

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), whose Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has been largely disowned by national Republicans after his false comment that women's bodies can prevent pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape," said this week he also doubts the scientific basis of evolution.

"Well, I've taken a look at both sides of the thing. And it seems to me that evolution takes a tremendous amount of faith," said Akin, in audio of a tea party group meeting on Thursday, obtained by Think Progress. "To have all of a sudden all of the different things that have to be lined up, to create something as sophisticated as life, it takes a lot of faith. I don’t see it as even as a matter of science, because I don’t know if you can prove one or the other.

Then there's Representative Paul Broun (R-GA):

Evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are major underpinnings of mainstream science. And Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, a physician who sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, says they are “lies straight from the pit of hell.” [Emphasis added.]

And a paragraph later:

Here are his remarks:

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.” [Emphasis added.]

In case you didn't know it, Akin is also on the House Committee on Science Space and Technology.

Hardly surprising, then, that 58% of Republicans polled by Gallup dismiss reality and believe with no evidence whatsoever that God created humans in their present form sometime within the last 10,000 years.

As I've said before, if we are a nation in decline, this has to be one of the reasons: an ignorant, stubborn, faith based anti-intellectual retreat from science.

Who thought this photo shoot was a good idea???

Who thought this photo shoot was a good idea??? My guess: Paul Ryan, All-American Teenager! Leave your own captions in the comments section. Here's mine:

On combat in Afghanistan: "You'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?"

It was good to hear VP Joe Biden affirm that we will finally be out of Afghanistan in 2014:

Biden: “The fact is we went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans – Al Qaeda, we decimated Al Qaeda central, we have eliminated Osama bin Laden, that was our purpose. And in fact, in the meantime, what I said we would do, we would help train the Afghan military, it’s their responsibility to take over their own security. That’s why with 49 of our allies, in Afghanistan, we’ve agreed on a gradual drawdown so we’re out of there by the year 20 – in the year 2014.

“My friend and the governor say it’s based on conditions, which means it depends. It does not depend for us. It is the responsibility of the Afghans to take care of their own security. We have trained over 315,000 mostly without incident, there have been more than two dozen cases of green on blue where Americans have been killed. If we do not – if the measures the military has taken do not take hold, we will not go on joint patrols, we will not train them in the field, we’ll only train in the Army bases that exist there.

“But we are leaving, we are leaving in 14. Period. And in the – leaving in 2014 period and in the process we’re going to be saving over the next ten years another $800 billion, we’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed, now all we’re doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security it’s their responsibility, not America’s.

But, the part that really blew my mind in this debate was the very end of the discussion on Afghanistan. Paul Ryan simply couldn't or wouldn't get that it was desirable to have Afghans fighting in the worst combat zones instead of Americans. He kept repeating that there were less American soldiers fighting as if this were a bad thing. Biden kept explaining that there were less Americans fighting because there were more actual Afghans fighting:

BIDEN: No one got pulled out that didn't get filled in by trained Afghan personnel.

It was simply devastating, in my opinion, that Ryan wanted more Americans in harms way than less. That somehow, that was better:

BIDEN: R.C. East is the most dangerous place in the world.

RYAN: That's right. That's why we don't want to send fewer people to the...

BIDEN: That's -- that's why we should send Americans in to do the job, instead of the -- you'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?

You'll notice in the video below, that there were no smiles by Biden in that exchange -- just an incredulous look on his face that hopefully was shared by those who watched this.

Here's the transcript of those last couple of minutes on Afghanistan:

RYAN: We're sending fewer people out in all of these hotspots to do the same job that they were supposed to do a month ago.

BIDEN: Because we turned it over...

RYAN: But we took 22,000 people out...

BIDEN: ... we turned it over to the Afghan troops we trained. No one got pulled out that didn't get filled in by trained Afghan personnel. And he's -- he's conflating two issues. The fighting season that Petraeus was talking about and former -- and Admiral Mullen was the fighting season this spring. That's what he was talking about. We did not -- we did not pull them out.

RYAN: The calendar works the same every year.

BIDEN: It does work the same every year. But we're not staying there...

RYAN: Spring, summer, fall. It's warm, or it's not. They're still fighting us. They're still coming over the passes. They're still coming into Zabul, to Kunar, to all of these areas, but we are sending fewer people to the front to fight them. And that's...

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: That's right, because that's the Afghan responsibility. We've trained them.

RYAN: Not in the east.

RADDATZ: Let's move -- let's move to another war.

BIDEN: Not in the east?

RYAN: R.C. East -- R.C. East...

BIDEN: R.C. East is the most dangerous place in the world.

RYAN: That's right. That's why we don't want to send fewer people to the...

BIDEN: That's -- that's why we should send Americans in to do the job, instead of the -- you'd rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the trainees?

RYAN: No. We are already sending Americans to do the job, but fewer of them. That's the whole problem.

BIDEN: That's right. We're sending in more Afghans to do the job, Afghans to do the job.

Here's the video of the entire Afghanistan part of the debate:

Fun With Math

I happened upon this recently.  Can they really get away with this?  See if you can guess where I am going:

Authors Danforth Prince and Darwin Potter have spent years tracking down the scandalous details of the actress' romances and affairs and they have laid her love life bare in new tome Elizabeth Taylor: There is Nothing Like a Dame.

In the unauthorised biography, which promises "all the gossip unfit to print from the glory days of Hollywood", Prince and Porter claim Reagan was 36 when he invited a teenage Taylor to dine with him at his home in the Hollywood Hills - and she seduced him.

According to the book, she told a close pal, "Reagan was treating me like a grown woman, and that thrilled me. We sat on his sofa and I could tell he wanted to get it on but he seemed reluctant to make the first move. I became the aggressor.

"After a heavy make-out session on the sofa, we went into the bedroom."

While they are more or less exact with The Gipper's age (36) Prince and Potter are less so with Taylor's (she's characterized as a "teenager" - which could be as old as 19).  So let's run the numbers.

According to Whitehouse.gov, Ronald Reagan was born Feburary 6, 1911.  Which means he was 36 from February 6, 1947 to February 5, 1948.

According to biography.com, Elizabeth Taylor was born on February 27, 1932. Which means that she was 14 from February 6, 1947 to her birthday in 1947, when she turned 15.

The Daily Mail in the UK says roughly the same thing:

A NEW US biography, Elizabeth Taylor: There is Nothing Like a Dame, by Danforth Prince and Darwin Porter, claims actor Ronald Reagan, then 36 – later America’s 40th president – dallied at his Hollywood home with Elizabeth Taylor, then 15...

Whah???

These are some very serious allegations.  If this story is true, The Gipper, at the very least, participated in a "heavy make-out session" with a girl of (let's give him benefit of the doubt) 15.

And this was when he was 36 and married to Jane Wyman.

On "style"

I wake up this morning to find that VP Joe Biden was a terrible human being at the debates last night for being too aggressive and interrupting -- the exact same thing that Gov. Mitt Romney was praised for doing last week. Once again, IOKIYAR (It's OK If You're A Republican)

Puhleeze!

Mr. Biden, your rude behaviour leaves me with no choice but to ask you to leave Downton Abbey immediately!
— Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers21) October 12, 2012

Sums it up for me

I didn't get home from work until close to 11:00 PM and then had some more work to do when I got home, so just finished watching the debate about a half hour ago, so no long recap tonight. But this pretty much sums it up for me for now:

Hello 9 1 1? There s an old man beating a child on my tv
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 12, 2012

I'm sure I'll have more to add after some sleep.

The AFL-CIO Answers The Question

Do I need an ID to Vote In PA?

(click the link to see their answer)

They also provide the answer to the following questions:

• Do I need a photo ID to vote in the election this November?
• Will I have to vote via provisional ballot if I don’t have photo ID? 
• Will I have to stand in a different line to vote if I don’t have a photo ID?

By the way, the answer to all these three questions is NO.

Mitt Vs. Mitt (It's not just abortion)

It's taxes, education and health care:

They just can't help themsleves

Via Dana Milbank at the Washington Post:

When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.  

The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to examine security lapses that led to the killing in Benghazi last month of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. But in doing so, the lawmakers reminded us why “congressional intelligence” is an oxymoron.  

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.

Hmm, Republicans leaking classified CIA info will trying to smear the opposition. Where have I heard that before?

Same as it ever was

Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.

Since they won't tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.

They approve of the American farmer-but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing.

They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.

They favor a minimum wage--the smaller the minimum the better.

They indorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them.

They approve of social security benefits-so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.

They believe in international trade--so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.

They favor the admission of displaced persons--but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.

They consider electric power a great blessing-but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They say TVA is wonderful--but we ought never to try it again.

They condemn "cruelly high prices"--but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

- President Harry S. Truman, October 13, 1948

Connellsville Lawyers Up

In the protracted agitation surrounding the unconstitutional placement of the 10 Commandments on school grounds in Connellsville, PA, there's some news:

Connellsville Area School Board members agreed on Wednesday night to appoint Andrews and Price LLC of Pittsburgh as special legal counsel in the legal battle over the Ten Commandments monument located near Connellsville Junior High.

They've lawyered up.

And I think they got some bad advice:

While there were a few dozen people who attended the board meeting to show support for the monument, Jeff Zito of Apollo was the only individual who spoke during public comment.

Zito told board members he read of the issue in the newspaper and was facing the same issue in New Kensington, which is near his hometown.

“You might say it’s just a monument, but if you let a secular organization win in our own hometown, what will happen when they come back again — and they will,” Zito said.

“I’m here in the opposition of the removal of the Ten Commandments monument.

“If you decide to fight and allow them to take you to court, realize that these battles have been won before,” he added.

Um, I don't think they have (but I could be wrong).  I'd think that since the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that posting the Ten Commandments in a public school has no secular legislative purpose and therefore violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, these battles are pretty much pointless.  Expensive and pointless.

But what do I know?  I'm not a lawyer.

WHAT'S GOING ON IN FOX CHAPEL??

An astute reader emailed in a curious document a few days ago.  This reader received this document from another resident of Fox Chapel who was looking to set up a neighborhood watch.

Why a neighborhood watch?  In Fox Chapel?

It seems that some folk there are a tad worried. From the letter:

We know a small number of families who live in our Forest neighborhood, but we are a distinct and circumscribed group of families who share a common border and neighborhood. We all value privacy, hence, we all keep to ourselves quite a bit. Despite this independence, We feel that it is time for us to come together in a loose organization of families. The political climate of polarity, the deepening income disparities, and growing unemployment are showing no signs of reversal. Many are saying that there is a very real possibility of civil unrest should the economic situation not reverse soon. [Emphasis added.]

For those who don't know, Fox Chapel Pennsylvania is not what one would call a financially depressed area.  The median income is $182,739 while the median income for the rest of Pennsylvania is just $49,520.  (For those without a calculator, that's about 3.7 times higher.)  The median income for 47.5% of the households in Fox Chapel is more than $200,000 per year.

The letter continues:

As a borough Fox Chapel has historically remained isolated from inner city issues and crime. However, such isolation may have persisted because the under-lying economic and social pressures have not been sufficient to affect it. The sad Truth is that We are in the midst of a different World from the one of the past, one of much more violence, lawlessness, and threat, both domestic and foreign. [Emphases added.]

Doesn't take long to see what they're scared of.  Poor people from the inner city coming up to Fox Chapel to make trouble.

And so as part of this neighborhood watch idea, they're looking to collect important information on other Fox Chapel residents - in order to "pool our resources should the need arise in our uncertain future."

They're looking to see who has "USEFULL (sic) SKILLS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY" including:

MEDICAL
DENTAL
VETERINARY
PLUMBING
ELECTRICAL
CARPENTRY
FIREARMS

And they're looking to see who has the following resources:

GENERATOR
PRIVATE WELL
STREAM ON PROPERTY
EFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION (SCOOTERS, MOTORCYCLES, BICYCLES)

Not sure how to put this, but what do they think is going to happen in Fox Chapel that they need to know who in the area is armed, who's a doctor, who can fix a broken tooth or rewire a house to accommodate a generator?  Who has a source of clean drinking water?

Only proves one thing:  Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're not batshit paranoid.

Video of the Day (for Mitt)

While Mitt Romney continues to flip-flop on his positions on reproductive rights, here's a video to remind everyone what's at stake. And, here's a link which shows that increased access to insurance for birth control under RomneyCare actually decreased the abortion rate in Massachusetts -- especially among teens.

 

There he goes again! Mitt Romney tries to flip-flop on abortion one more time.

In a not totally unexpected "shift" to the center, here's what GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the Des Moines Register Editorial Board in an interview yesterday:

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

Looks like Mitt wants to keep that gain he made with women in the polls after the debate last week -- a debate which utterly failed to address women's reproductive rights issues.

So who should women believe -- Mitt or Mitt -- when it comes to our lady bits?

Here's Romney on abortion...before he started running for president:

  Here's Romney at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in 1994 (he and Ann wrote them a check for $150 that year):

Here's Romney on Planned Parenthood in 2012:

  Here's Romney earlier this year saying he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and that he supports "a pro-life policy":

“I’m in favor of a pro-life policy. The legislation that relates to abortion which is something that is going to have to be approved by the Supreme Court and the key decisions I’ll take as the president will be number one, stopping funding for Planned Parenthood, re-instituting the Mexico City policy which says our funds can’t be used for abortion around the world and appointing justices to the Supreme Court that will follow the Constitution, hopefully reverse Roe v. Wade, and return to the states, the authority for making law with regards to abortion.”

Romney's folks are already walking back his comment to the Des Moines Register. Here's what Andrea Saul, Romney for President Press Secretary, tweeted yesterday via Katrina Trinko, National Review reporter and member of USA Today's Board of Contributors:

. @andreamsaul on Romney's abortion comment to DMR: Rom "wld of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life"
— Katrina Trinko (@KatrinaTrinko) October 9, 2012

So, again, who do women believe? Mitt or Mitt?

Was he lying to us earlier this very year or was he lying to the Des Moines Register yesterday?

  Who can believe one word that comes out of his mouth?

Happy Birthday, John

The Beatles


Cyndi Lauper


Cilla Black


Roger Waters


After Dark - An Cappella Group from Washington


10cc


Fiona Apple

Limitless undying love.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Even while gloating, Jack Kelly overreaches and gets his facts wrong.

Just take a look at this Sunday's column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

There's a clear consensus that Obama had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad debate performance.  As I emailed an astute reader a few days ago, I was hoping that Obama's plan was some sort if Aikido defense - stepping back, letting your opponent commit to an attack and then, using his own momentum, simply helping him off his feet and onto the ground.

Or, better yet, I was hoping it was a debate version of the Blackburne (or Légal) Trap, in which White sacrifices his queen for a checkmate 3 moves later.

Alas, it was neither.  It was simply a bad performance.  Though my partial Doppelgänger, Chris Potter, on Lynn Cullen's web broadcast had a slightly different view - the problem Obama had was that Romney simply lied about his positions. How do you debate someone who simply denies their own agenda?

And that brings me to Jack's overreach:

The Mitt Romney in Denver was knowledgeable, energetic, passionate, principled. He was aggressive, without being rude or mean. He seemed like a nice guy. He was in command -- of the facts and on the stage.

The OPJ has already touched on Romney's mendacity.  But let's go further.  What do the fact-checkers have to say about Romney's "command of the facts"?

From FactCheck.org:

Romney repeatedly claimed that a new government board was “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. It could make some binding recommendations about such things as what drugs or medical devices would be paid for by Medicare, but it has no legal power to dictate treatment or ration care.

The board is a 15-member panel that’s tasked with finding ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending. So, its work concerns Medicare, not everyone seeking health care. And, according to the law, the board can’t touch treatments or otherwise “ration” care, or restrict benefits.

What’s officially called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, made up of appointed health care experts, medical professionals, and consumer representatives, would make binding recommendations to reduce the growth of spending. Congress could override them with a three-fifths majority in each house.

An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation determined that the IPAB was limited to finding savings from “Medicare Advantage, the Part D prescription drug program, skilled nursing facility, home health, dialysis, ambulance and ambulatory surgical center services, and durable medical equipment.”

In case you couldn't hear it, this was a "dog whistle". Romney's talking death panels here.

Then there's this $716 billion fact that Jack got wrong:

Romney went on to say, “I want to take that $716 billion you’ve cut and put it back into Medicare.” But the fact is, the money isn’t being taken away from Medicare. Instead, Medicare would spend it, but over a longer period of time than was expected before the health care law. The law extends the solvency of the Medicare Part A trust fund.

Then there's factcheck summing up Romney's performance:

Romney sometimes came off as a serial exaggerator. He said “up to” 20 million might lose health insurance under the new law, citing a Congressional Budget Office study that actually put the likely number who would lose employer-sponsored coverage at between 3 million and 5 million. He said 23 million Americans are “out of work” when the actual number of jobless is much lower. He claimed half of all college grads this year can’t find work, when, in fact, an AP story said half either were jobless or underemployed.

Here's the fact-checking from the Washington Post:

“Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut — on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts — that’s another trillion dollars”

— President Obama

“I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut”

— Governor Romney

How can both facts be true? The $5 trillion figure comes from the fact that Romney has proposed to cut tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax and alternative minimum tax. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that would reduce tax revenue by nearly $500 billion in 2015, or about $5 trillion over 10 years But Romney also has said he will make his plan “revenue neutral” by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, although he has not provided the details.

The Tax Policy Center has analyzed the specifics of Romney’s plan thus far released and concluded that the numbers aren’t there to make it revenue neutral.

In the debate, Romney countered that “six other studies” have found that not to be the case, but he’s wrong about that. Those studies actually do not provide much evidence that Romney’s proposal — as sketchy as it is — would be revenue neutral without making unrealistic assumptions.

And if we take a look at those "six other studies" we find they're not what Romney presented them to be.  Factcheck, again:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney claims that his plan would balance the federal budget in eight to 10 years. But so far, he has not made public the details on how he would be able to do that, and one neutral budget expert calls it “an unrealistic goal.”

Also, Romney and running mate Paul Ryan exaggerate when they say “five different studies” prove that all of the stated goals of Romney’s revenue-neutral tax plan could be accomplished without raising taxes on middle-income taxpayers. Two of the five “studies” were blog items. And none of three other studies was nonpartisan: Two were written by Romney campaign advisers and a third was by a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush.

And they don't know where that sixth study came from.

And then there's this from politifact:

Romney said his health care proposals include protections for pre-existing conditions What he didn’t say at the debate -- but which his website states and advisers confirmed after the debate -- is that people would be protected from denial only if they have been continuously insured.

The health care law, though, offers protections whether people have current coverage or not, so it offers more robust protection. The law also includes a requirement that everyone have insurance or pay a tax penalty. Romney’s plan doesn’t have that requirement.

Romney did not mention the qualifier that people have to stay insured to get the protection. That’s a significant omission. We rate his statement Mostly False.

And yet conservative columnist Jack Kelly said that Mitt Romney was in command of the facts.

There have to be people at the P-G (sincere, hard working, intelligent people, no doubt) looking over Jack's shoulder to make sure he doesn't repeat his fact-free Van Jones writing style. Perhaps they're even asking him for deeper research to justify each sentence he writes.

But you have to know he still gets things very very wrong.

And you're still letting him.

Help

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania is this Tuesday, October 9th. Help register people to vote:

Volunteer in Pennsylvania: http://OFA.BO/FxCvgG  

(Gotta vote? Go here: http://OFA.BO/JPJfoT )

New Yorker Cover

Quietly grumbling...

Unemployment Rate Falls Below 8%

Via the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON— The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month, dropping below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years. The rate declined because more people found work, a trend that could have an impact on undecided voters in the final month before the presidential election.  

The Labor Department said Friday that employers added 114,000 jobs in September. The economy also created 86,000 more jobs in July and August than first estimated. Wages rose in September and more people started looking for work.