Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this.

How 'bout this, using the car theme:

You've paid the last 30 years of your life for a car on an installment plan. You've been promised that you're going to get you're own car at the end of this process. Now, the dealer says, we're not actually going to give you a car to own, we'll give you money to pay for a rental car or a bus pass.

This thread is now about bologna sandwiches

Show us your Marx: This thread is now about bologna sandwiches

[upload.wikimedia.org image 300x198]

Ugh. I'd rather talk about something less disgusting... like politics.

Since it's something that I think you can legitimately make the case either way for whether it's true or not depending on your interpretation of what you think they really meant, I think they should have picked something that was a little more clear cut. They really seemed to be hanging their hat on this one this year to appear impartial.

This headline, like PolitiFact's finding, is forced and incredulous.

Well they still call it Medicare so then it's not a like, right?

Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It's expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says "Ferrari," I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

"Where's my Ferrari?" the owner would ask.

"It's right here," I'd respond. "This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says 'Ferrari' right there on the back."

By PolitiFact's reasoning, I haven't actually replaced the car - and if you disagree, you're a pants-on-fire liar.

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So... you believe that SS was ended in the early 80s? After all key components of SS were changed.

This is what you are arguing.

PolitiFact is introducing its brand name to the lucrative wing-nut demographic. It's a cynical ploy on their part, and it shreds their credibility.

Shostie: sweetmelissa31: Eddie Adams from Torrance: Ok... so you have a bologna sandwich. Republicans come along and replace the bologna with a steaming pile of shiat and tell you to enjoy your bologna sandwich.

Now do you understand?

Medicare is not made out of bologna. Is it?

I think the analogy works, but is it bologna made out of beef, or bologna made out of pork and chicken?

As a person who has spent years investigating medicare fraud, the answer is "Yes."

Once again, reality takes a backseat toward "appearing" "neutral" and "unbiased" and "objective."

Let me tell you something: if one side is objectively worse than the other, you do no one any favors by pretending both sides as equally bad in some futile, misguided, ham-fisted ploy to pretend neutrality.

/That's the downfall of NPR as well.

Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It's expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says "Ferrari," I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

"Where's my Ferrari?" the owner would ask.

"It's right here," I'd respond. "This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says 'Ferrari' right there on the back."

By PolitiFact's reasoning, I haven't actually replaced the car - and if you disagree, you're a pants-on-fire liar.

I wish voting were enabled so I could officially +1 this analogy.

Boring choice and the 'lie' is completely open to interpretation. Not enough derp this year, I guess. The finalists all sucked.

Code_Archeologist: The sad thing is that for the first two years Politifact was a pretty good source for fact checking. But this year they have been trying to maintain the appearance of impartiality by artificially balancing their judgement on truthfulness.

They need to call them like they are, and stop worrying about the right wing whining or being labeled impartial. But labeling an argument of semantics lie of the year instead of choosing two other much more egregious and more widely spread lies is an act self invalidation.

It makes me wonder if in the current economy of information that fact checking can ever be a valid venture for a news source.

Funny how these sites are always "a pretty good source for fact checking" until the second they post something that you disagree with, then they've sold out.

Integrity: agreeing with me 99% of the time.

Dishonest shilling: the other 1%.

I saw this coming a mile away. Considering how many times they rated this statement over the past year and gave it a "False" or "Pants on Fire," I knew they were setting themselves up to make it "Lie of the Year" in order to give themselves the appearance of balance.

Polititfact has lost a lot of credibility in my eyes over the last year. They seem to have a hard on to prove Jon Stewart a liar. It seems like they keep mistaking him for a political figure.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this.

How 'bout this, using the car theme:

You've paid the last 30 years of your life for a car on an installment plan. You've been promised that you're going to get you're own car at the end of this process. Now, the dealer says, we're not actually going to give you a car to own, we'll give you money to pay for a rental car or a bus pass.

I'm sorry, but when I started this payment plan, was I expecting a car worth 100k more than I contributed? (Link (new window))

The Ferrari comparison is very apt.

Shostie: Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It's expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says "Ferrari," I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

"Where's my Ferrari?" the owner would ask.

"It's right here," I'd respond. "This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says 'Ferrari' right there on the back."

By PolitiFact's reasoning, I haven't actually replaced the car - and if you disagree, you're a pants-on-fire liar.

Link (new window)

Medicare is hardly a Ferrari.

The analogy works perfectly well with a Rolls Royce as well, and Medicare is rather like a Rolls Royce (expensive, difficult to maintain, but people love it)

I have to agree. Completely replacing a program with another program that happens to have the same name, is, in fact, killing the original program.

politi-false-equivalency.com

Yawn.

Krugman already explained this.

And the Best part is, last year's lie of the year wasn't a lie in the same way this lie isn't a lie.

Medicare is a system which provides discounted, guaranteed-issue insurance to retired people who have paid into the system while working. The Ryan plan would not have changed that, not even a little.

Converting the discount into a free voucher that partially covers the cost changes nothing.

Complaining that the voucher may not cover future growths in costs is intellectually dishonest. Under the status quo, the premiums were going to go up, and the value of the discount was going to decrease. The only difference is that the Ryan plan makes this reality more transparently obvious.

People who complain about the Ryan plan are like people who blame the heavy (bot not overweight) truck for breaking the highway bridge.. the cracks were there all along due to faulty bridge design, but in their mind it was the truck's fault.

watson.t.hamster: Funny how these sites are always "a pretty good source for fact checking" until the second they post something that you disagree with, then they've sold out.

Integrity: agreeing with me 99% of the time.

Dishonest shilling: the other 1%.


Oh the irony.

HeartBurnKid: Shostie: Dusk-You-n-Me: I've been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It's expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says "Ferrari," I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

"Where's my Ferrari?" the owner would ask.

"It's right here," I'd respond. "This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says 'Ferrari' right there on the back."

By PolitiFact's reasoning, I haven't actually replaced the car - and if you disagree, you're a pants-on-fire liar.

Link (new window)

Medicare is hardly a Ferrari.

The analogy works perfectly well with a Rolls Royce as well, and Medicare is rather like a Rolls Royce (expensive, difficult to maintain, but people love it)

It could be a Prius and it will still stand. It's only when you get down towards a Kia when you really start asking "Is that really all that different from a golf-cart?"

And like people with a Prius (or a Rolls, or a Ferrari), Medicare recipients are smug and look down on you.

If Republicans destroyed Medicare and opened a gift shop in the Smithsonian named "Medicare", according to Politifact, the Republicans have not destroyed Medicare.

Eddie Adams from Torrance: Ok... so you have a Health Care system. Democrats come along and set up a plan to take over that system by trying to force insurance companies out of business and tell you to they aren't trying to take over the healthcare system.

Now do you understand?

I understood it then, did you?

To be fair.. it's debatable how much the republican plan would weaken medicare. I definitely don't believe that their plan is workable or even remotely a good idea, but I can see Politifacts reasoning.

Weakening something is not getting rid of it, even if one of its fundamentals is somewhat changed.

Let's use Obamas health care reform act as a comparison. It did weaken some private insurers (mostly by mandating that at least 80% of revenues are assigned to medical care, ensuring that certain procedures are always covered and removing pre-existing condition restrictions - all very good things) but it would be an absolute lie to say that the act "destroyed or removed or seized or abrogated private insurers".

A lot of critics actually did try that line... remember the "Obama is taking over one sixth of our economy" nonsense?

The republican plan greatly weakened medicare, and I agree that's a very bad thing...but saying that that Republicans were ending medicare when in fact many/most of its benefits would still exist and even under the same name... is dishonest.

.....Lie of the year though? I can think of quite a few others that I think qualify much more than that however...