Media Matters Beclowns Itself Anew: Still Unable to Demonstrate a Single Fox News Lie After Four Attempts

The Soros-funded Marxist front group known as Media Matters has been busy trying to document a single lie by Fox News. The reason: they want the 1-oz. Krugerrand I pledged to the first person to describe a lie by FNC reporters. The rules are simple and Media Matters, to its credit, did try to follow them. Of the hundreds of other 'progressives' who responded, I think a grand total of two figured out what the grade-school-level rules were.

That said, let's examine Media Matters' track record -- the four lies they've attempted to document. Note, too, the nature of their entries -- they can't come up with real lies like the Dan Rather "Air National Guard Memo", or "If you like your health care plan you can keep it", or "Your premiums will go down an average of $2,500 a year", or the "Al Qaqaa" smears of our military or the "John McCain Lobbyist Affair" fabrication. Instead, Media Matters attempts to use slight variations in grammar or diction to document a "lie".

But don't believe me, check out their four attempts:

Attempt #1: Elena Kagan Never Banned Military Recruiters From Harvard Law

This was a particularly humorous attempt, since Kagan's ban of recruiters was well known and one of the more controversial aspects of her confirmation hearing. After I uncovered DOD emails from multiple branches of the service that described how they had been refused permission to visit and couldn't so much as even post a job opening on campus, I stopped hearing back from their representative, 'Matters' Gertz.

Attempt #2: The 'Slaughter Rule' was really a Democrat vote to pass health care

In the words of Media Matters, FNC "repeatedly reported that by passing health care reform through a self-executing rule, Democrats would be doing so 'without actually taking a vote'".

Of course that's precisely why Democrats attempted to pass health care reform without actually voting on it -- it was to avoid the scrutiny of voters if they could have deemed the bill as having been passed without a vote. Deem-and-pass, as it is known, had never been done with legislation this controversial, which is why it received so much attention in 2010 and was ultimately discarded as a tactic by Democrats.

But how were members of Congress, and other news reporters and analysts, describing this issue? Oh, gee, lookie here:

The New York Times: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is eyeing a strategy by which the Democrats include the Senate bill in the rule that will set the terms of the House floor debate on the health care legislation. Once the rule is adopted, the Senate bill would be “deemed” to have passed without House members actually voting on it."

The Wall Street Journal: "How Democrats may 'deem' ObamaCare into law, without voting... Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill."

John Boehner, House Minority Leader: "Democrats Prepare “Slaughter Solution” to Ram Unpopular Health Care Takeover Through Congress Without a Vote... House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday."

Daniel Foster, National Review: "The sense around here for the last week or so has been that 'only the House vote matters' in deciding the fate of Obamacare. But what if the Democrats can pass the bill with no House vote at all? Astoundingly, House Democrats appear to be preparing to do just that..."

Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner: "House Democrats looking at 'Slaughter Solution' to pass Obamacare without a vote on Senate bill... "

The Heritage Foundation: "Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) endorsed the rumored Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President without a direct up-or-down vote in the House. Don’t believe those on the left who are trying to argue that because Republicans used deeming resolutions when they were in power, it is okay for Democrats to use a similar tactic to pass legislation without a vote."

LifeNews: "House Republicans have unveiled a new move to force Democratic leaders to vote directly on the Senate pro-abortion health care bill. Democrats have been looking at using the controversial Slaughter Rule that would allow the House to adopt a procedural rule declaring the bill passed without voting on it."

In essence, Fox News Channel simply reported the Democrats' disgusting machinations regarding the Slaughter Rule using the same language that members of Congress (and others in the media on both sides of the aisle) were using.

Verdict: FAIL.

Attempt #3: ClimateGate Emails Really Didn't Show Scientists Trying To "Hide The Decline" In Global Temperatures

Gertz asserts that "Fox News reporters falsely claimed that stolen emails "reveal that scientists use, quote, 'tricks' to hide evidence of a decline in global temperature."

Unfortunately the real climate scientists agree with FNC.

So far one of the most circulated e-mails from the CRU hack is the following from Phil Jones to the original hockey stick authors – Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes [which states] ' I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline...'

...The e-mail is about WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999 -report, or more specifically, about its cover image.

...grafting the thermometer onto a reconstruction is not actually the original “Mike’s Nature trick”! Mann did not fully graft the thermometer on a reconstruction, but he stopped the smoothed series in their end years. The trick is more sophisticated, and was uncovered by UC over here...

...When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s Nature trick”).

...TGIF-magazine has already asked Jones about the e-mail, and he denied misleading anyone but did remember grafting... 'Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”... “That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”'

Actually, FNC got it precisely right, which is why in 2007 about 17,200 scientists signed a petition to Congress disputing anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming. Or should I say 'glo-bull warming'?

Verdict: FAIL.

Attempt #4: Using Budget Reconciliation to Pass Obamacare Wasn't a 'Nuclear Option' and Didn't Involve a Violation of Senate Rules

In the words of Matters Gertz, "Fox News reporters claimed that by passing health care reform using the reconciliation process, Democrats would be 'changing the rules' and using the 'nuclear option'."

This is a curious attempt indeed, since it involves (among other things) relatively obscure nomenclature. Avoiding the filibuster by using the reconciliation process has been called by many parties (not just Fox) a 'nuclear option'.

Here's The New York Times describing this exact situation in 2009.

Some Republicans have likened the building struggle over budget reconciliation to the 2005 Senate fight over Democratic filibusters against judicial nominees chosen by President George W. Bush.

Frustrated at the opposition, Republicans warned they would invoke the “nuclear option” and change Senate rules to ban filibusters against executive branch nominations. Democrats characterized that as an assault on the very nature of the Senate... But now that they are in the minority, some Republicans have begun suggesting that if Democrats insist on reconciliation, Republicans will gum up the Senate works to the greatest extent possible, using their remaining procedural rights to essentially shut down the Senate.

...Republicans have another hurdle as well. The so-called nuclear option represented a change in Senate rules...

In other words, even the Democrat National Committee's public relations arm uses the term 'nuclear option' to describe wrapping a conventional bill into the protective coating of a budget reconciliation process.

But perhaps Matters intended to concentrate instead on the Senate rule process. If they did, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, just before he passed away last year, described the real situation (much to Media Matters' chagrin).

Sen. Robert Byrd warned Democratic colleagues against changing filibuster rules in order to advance their legislative priorities... In a "Dear Colleague" letter dated Tuesday, Byrd, the longest-serving member of the Senate, said that the Senate's rules on ending debate shouldn't be changed, but he encouraged forcing senators to actually sustain debate in a real, live filibuster...

The frustration over the filibuster has been especially manifest in the healthcare debate, where all 41 Republicans, sticking together, have been able to sustain a filibuster.

So both The New York Times and Democrat icon Senator Robert Byrd effectively eviscerated this attempt.

Verdict: EPIC FAIL.

Say, Media Matters: what the hell are you doing with all of that money George Soros gave you? I do this for free, working on my blog perhaps 10 hours a week. You'd think all of that media watching would allow you to identify some real lies by Faux News.

If I were Soros, I'd ask for my money back.