Help me correct some National Review ignorance

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Tuesday August 11, 2009 · 2:58 PM PDT

2009/08/11 · 14:58

UPDATE: He posted the correction, as you can see if you click through to the National Review link. Good for Rich Lowry!

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Here is an excerpt from an email Rich Lowry received and chose to post over at the National Review. Frankly, I consider him to be better informed than many of NR's writers, so I'm a little surprised he would post something so flatly wrong (although maybe I shouldn't be):

Obama says the private industry can compete against the government. "They do it all the time," he says. "If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems."

This is classic. 1. the post office has a monopoly on first class mail. there is NO competition. 2. they lose gobs and gobs of money and are only kept around because they have a big union and a government balance sheet (our grandkids) to offset those mega-losses. 3. they are able to compete against Fedex and UPS because they can afford to operate at mega-losses.

ChiGuy

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Wednesday April 08, 2009 · 5:52 PM PDT

2009/04/08 · 17:52

Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, in his Washington Post column today (emphasis added):

Without Republican input or influence, the budget is a tax-and-spend caricature. Obama has complained of inheriting a $1.3 trillion debt. According to economist Michael Boskin, Obama's proposals would add $6.5 trillion in debt over the next decade -- about $163,000 for every American taxpaying family.

As I'm sure most of you know, the national debt Obama inherited is actually about $10 trillion, or an order of magnitude larger than Gerson's figure. The debt is "only" $6 trillion if you don't count intragovernmental holdings like what's owed to the Social Security trust fund, so sometimes you'll see that figure cited instead. In any case, it is many, many times larger than $1.3 trillion, which is an estimate of the deficit Obama inherited, i.e., an estimate of what the 2009 deficit would be if laws and policies in effect last year had been left in place. Here is a CBO doc that lays this all out.

ChiGuy

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Thursday October 02, 2008 · 9:10 PM PDT

2008/10/02 · 21:10

Please help me get something unfair to Biden fixed in the Washington Post Fact Checker column by politely emailing factchecker@washpost.com. Here's what it says as of 10:17 pm:

Biden claimed that Obama warned against the administration's decision to push for Hamas participating in Palestinian legislative elections in early 2005. Obama had only been a senator for a few days when the election took place, but if he made such statements they did not appear in news reports or transcripts that are contained in the Nexis or Factiva news databases.

If you look at the transcript, though, Biden didn't specifically refer to the '05 elections and was almost certainly referring to the elections in early 2006. Here's what Obama said in January '06, just prior to those elections:

ChiGuy

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Wednesday September 17, 2008 · 11:06 AM PDT

2008/09/17 · 11:06

The "sex ed for kindergartners" policy for which McCain has been bashing Obama is in fact a policy currently funded by the Bush administration and is a policy that has been recommended by state boards of education in conservative states such as Tennessee and Wyoming.

The Centers for Disease Control are currently funding an organization called the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) for the purpose of:

Providing HIV-related information and guidance to state boards of
education and other education stakeholders on policies that promote
effective HIV prevention for kindergarten through 12th grade students in
schools across the nation.

ChiGuy

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Tuesday September 16, 2008 · 10:18 AM PDT

2008/09/16 · 10:18

The latest pushback from Republicans on the McCain "sex ed for kindergartners" attack ad is that the bill Obama voted for wasn't only about inappropriate touching, since it also had language about HIV prevention education starting in kindergarten. Byron York of the National Review has a story out today pushing that line of attack.

Well, guess what I found out? HIV prevention education starting in kindergarten is a policy funded by the Bush administration right now.

The Centers for Disease Control are currently funding an organization called the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) for the purpose of:

ChiGuy

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Monday September 15, 2008 · 7:47 AM PDT

2008/09/15 · 07:47

Yesterday I wrote about how Giuliani supported McCain's sex ed attack ad even though, as mayor, his own school system had sex ed for kindergartners. The line Giuliani used has also been used by others such as Rush Limbaugh: the Illinois bill wasn't just about preventing inappropriate touching, since it also had language about HIV prevention education starting in kindergarten. Ew! Who could support such a thing?

Well, the Bush administration does.

ChiGuy

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Sunday September 14, 2008 · 4:16 PM PDT

2008/09/14 · 16:16

Rudy Giuliani appeared on Meet the Press this morning and defended McCain's "sex ed for kindergartners" attack ad on Obama. He tried to make his case by noting that the bill wasn't only about protecting kids against child molesters by teaching about inappropriate touching. Doing his dishonest best to make the bill sound as icky as possible, he noted that it also mentioned HIV-AIDS education starting in kindergarten (never mind that the bill said any such education should be age-appropriate).

Well, guess how things worked in the New York city school system as of 1998, i.e., right in the middle of Giuliani's tenure as mayor:

ChiGuy

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Thursday September 04, 2008 · 8:51 PM PDT

2008/09/04 · 20:51

Republicans have repeatedly been caught using the songs of artists (e.g., Jackson Browne) who don't agree with them politically. Shortly after the end of McCain's speech just now, the Heart song Barracuda was playing. The usage of the song is probably intended as a reference to the moniker "Sarah Barracuda", Sarah Palin's nickname from her days as a basketball player. Are Ann and Nancy Wilson, the core members of Heart, OK with this usage? Maybe, but I doubt it, considering their history of activism in support of Democrats and environmental causes.

ChiGuy

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Saturday May 10, 2008 · 2:22 PM PDT

2008/05/10 · 14:22

Did John McCain tell the truth about WMD intelligence in the leadup to the war? During a Washington Post live discussion, I asked Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest, and here's what she had to say:

Chicago: McCain was quoted in Feb 2003 as asking "is there any doubt in anybody's mind that if Saddam Hussein thought he could harm the United States that he wouldn't give any terrorist organization some weapon of mass destruction?" My impression is that that is not what the intelligence said at the time. The probability of Saddam initiating an attack against the U.S. without being provoked was deemed to be low.

The National Intelligence Estimate described the idea of him passing WMD to Islamic terrorists as the kind of extreme, desperate step he might only take as a last measure of revenge if he were invaded and he wanted as many others as possible to be taken down with him. Do you agree that McCain's statement seems at odds with the intelligence at the time?

Here was her answer:

ChiGuy

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Sunday April 20, 2008 · 9:33 PM PDT

2008/04/20 · 21:33

So now McCain is criticizing Obama's association with William Ayers.

Is he aware that the Chicago Tribune has published multiple pieces by Ayers over the years? This is the paper that endorsed him during the Republican primary. This is a paper which hasn't endorsed a Democrat for President since 1872. You would have thought they would know better.

ChiGuy

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Saturday April 19, 2008 · 9:23 PM PDT

2008/04/19 · 21:23

John McCain has a problem.

Here is what he said in a February, 2003 speech that was quoted in a 2/19/03 Arizona Republic editorial sympathetic to the proposed Iraq invasion:

"Is there any doubt in anybody's mind that if Saddam Hussein thought he could harm the United States that he wouldn't give any terrorist organization some weapon of mass destruction?" McCain asked in a speech last week sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I don't think he would discriminate."

This was directly contradicted by the available intelligence at the time.

ChiGuy

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Friday August 31, 2007 · 4:14 PM PDT

2007/08/31 · 16:14

So Karl Rove has written a retrospective on the Bush presidency in the National Review, and I think I've caught him making a numerical claim that is flatly, demonstrably, straightforwardly false. Now, now- don't just shrug your shoulders and ask "What else is new"? When an error is this cut-and-dried, you can often get a correction with polite-but-persistent email (and I'm sure it's more effective with multiple emailers). Believe me: at different points I've gotten Powerline, Instapundit, and Jonah Goldberg all to change their posts to indicate that a previous claim was in error. Wouldn't it be fun to get Rove (or the National Review, by proxy) to an admit an error? Let me present my case:

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Help me correct some National Review ignorance

Jaw-Dropping Factual Error in Gerson WaPo column

WaPo FactChecker Hits Biden Unfairly

Bush currently funds "Sex Ed for Kindergartners" policy

Devastating revelation which undercuts "sex ed for kindergartners" attack

Bush funds sex ed for kindergartners right now

Giuliani defends ad but oversaw "sex ed" for kindergartners himself

Did McCain get permission from Heart to play "Barracuda"?

WaPo: McCain not truthful about WMD intelligence prior to war

Ayers published by right wing Chicago Tribune repeatedly

A question McCain needs to answer

Let's get a correction from Karl Rove