Well there are these funny little standards, that used to be called "the Facts" back in the day.
Fact check: Florida GOP debate
by Brooks Jackson, usatoday, FactCheck.org -- Jan 27, 2012
Newt Gingrich falsely claimed he never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance.
Rick Santorum claimed five times more people are seeking free care at Massachusetts hospitals because of Mitt Romney's health care law -- a claim contradicted by official statistics.
Romney repeated a false accusation that President Obama failed to denounce Hamas rocket attacks in a speech to the United Nations.
And Santorum insisted that Muslim terrorists are seeking missile bases in Cuba -- a wild claim based most likely on mistranslations of an Italian newspaper report.
[...]
Those are a few instances of "the Facts" -- the negative instances. Non-existent instances.
I'd like to believe they -- Facts -- are not really the 'endangered species', that the Traditional Media, has the bad habit of making them out to be ...
Because that would be a very sad loss for all of us -- the day "the Facts" actually go the way of endangered species like this Cross River Gorilla ...
[Image Source: AFC African Conservation Foundation]
"The Facts" should have a right to exist ... a right to be heard ... a right to see the light of day, don't you think? Even if, they are the '800-pound Gorillas' ...
Well it's not like 'gorilla tactics' are something unheard of in this casual "Game of Politics" ...
[continuing from the previous USAToday, Fact Check ...]
'Language of the ghetto'
Asked about an ad running in Florida that claims Gingrich once said "Spanish is the language of the ghetto," Romney claimed not to know about the spot, adding, "I doubt that's my ad." It is. And that's not exactly what Gingrich said. He referred to "bilingual" education but not specifically to Spanish.
The Miami Herald reported this week that the Romney campaign released a Spanish-language radio ad in Miami that argues that Ronald Reagan would not have agreed with Gingrich. The Herald translated it as saying, "Reagan would have never offended Hispanics as Gingrich did when he said Spanish is the language of the ghetto."
The announcer says the ad was "paid for by Romney for President." And then Romney himself adds at the end, in Spanish, "Soy Mitt Romney. Estoy postulado para presidente y apruebo este mensaje." Translation: "I'm Mitt Romney. I'm running for president, and I approve this message."
That's "Politics", folks -- American-style.
for more similar Fact Checks from factcheck.org
[a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania]
For example, here's a handy one that actually checks "the Facts":
Newt’s Faulty Food-Stamp Claim
The FactCheck Wire -- January 18, 2012
Newt Gingrich claims that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” He’s wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures.
[...]
But Gingrich goes too far to say Obama has put more on the rolls than other presidents. We asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition service for month-by-month figures going back to January 2001. And they show that under President George W. Bush the number of recipients rose by nearly 14.7 million. Nothing before comes close to that.
And under Obama, the increase so far has been 14.2 million. To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama’s time in office than during Bush’s.
How can you tell when a GOP Candidate is Lying?
Well, if their lips are moving ... it would be a pretty good bet ... perhaps even a $10 thousand bet ...
Politics Is a High-Stakes Game
NYTimes.com, Jan 22, 2012
by Lynn Vavreck, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles
“All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu wrote. To talk about lying in politics, we have to begin by appreciating that for most candidates, elections are a lot like war. Winning is everything and anything else that comes from running for office (advancing a policy agenda, gaining notoriety, becoming secretary of state) is a consolation prize. They run to win -- and that makes the conflict epic.
[...]
Why do Americans tolerate politicians who lie? Because most political lies are exaggerations or contextual lies. They are lies of omission, or put the way a politician might, they are economies of truth. And while Americans might not tolerate lying from kindergarteners (for whom the setting of a moral standard seems very important) when a candidate from a particular party engages in a half-truth to win an election, it benefits that party’s voters -- and that’s the truth.
Partisanship is sewn up in the identity of most Americans who pay attention to politics at all. To call people Republicans or Democrats is to say more than what their positions are on policy matters. It is a statement about who they are and perhaps where they have come from or how they have “come up.” These partisan identities affect Americans’ perceptions of almost everything that happens in the political world.
We've been told, we've been taught this 'truism', that ...
"All is fair in love and war ..."
Perhaps it's time someone challenge that absurd 'political rationalization', eh?
Perhaps it's long past time ...
[Image Source: NRDC's Green Teacher kits in classrooms -- green gifts]
Afterall the children might be watching and learning from our so-called Debates ... and they might be hoping for a truly fair and honest world ... that they've been taught to believe in ...
Perhaps.
Perhaps ... "the Facts" do matter, afterall eh? Even in the Political arena.