Last Call

And everyone knew this was coming considering the lengths Politifact went to in order to include it in their short list for the year's biggest whopper:  the fact check site has indeed named the DCCC's claim that the GOP voted to end Medicare as we know it their Political Lie of the Year.  But there's a distinct reason they did so, and they were happy enough to include it in the text.

"Both parties use entitlements as political weapons," Ryan said in an interview with PolitiFact. "Republicans do it to Democrats; Democrats do it to Republicans. So I knew that this would be a political weapon that the other side would use against us."

Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

"According to (PolitiFact's) logic, if the FBI were replaced with a voucher program wherein citizens would receive subsidies for hiring private investigators to look into criminal activity, but the agency running the voucher program were still called the FBI, it would be unfair to say that the FBI had been ended," wrote Jed Lewison for Daily Kos. "I guess it's their right to make that argument, but it's transparently absurd."

In a blog post, the DCCC stood by its claim, saying the ad accurately stated Ryan's plan would "abolish" Medicare.

And it does.  Politifact's argument about Medicare is absurd, because only an absurd argument can justify such an awful conclusion.  It would be like replacing sugar with asphalt, then writing "sugar" on the side of the container.  You can argue that there's sugar in there, but try selling cookies made out of what's in there and see how long that lasts.

The Kroog was merciless again this morning:

The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

Way to go, guys.

And as Dave Weigel points out, the actual lie that Politifact attributes to the DCCC actually came from...Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

Getting somewhat lost in this discussion is where the "ends Medicare" line came from. It was not birthed like Athena from the skull of Nancy Pelosi. It came from an April 4, 2011 preview of the Ryan plan by Naftali Bendavid, writing in the Wall Street Journal -- that simmering pot of liberal bias.

Yep, the fact checkers can't get their facts straight on this one...all the way to calling this the lie of the year, just to play "See, both parties tell massive evil lies!"  Politifact really is useless, irrelevant, and as of now, no longer cited at ZVTS.

See ya.