I have to say, the Mitt Romney tax return kerfluffle is a veritable gold mine of examples of how the left is held to insanely different standards then the right.
Here’s Politifact’s ruling on Harry Reid’s accusation that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for ten years:
Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source. Romney has denied the claim, and tax experts back him up, saying that the nature of Romney’s investments in Bain make it highly unlikely he would have been able to avoid paying taxes altogether — especially for 10 years.
Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up. Pants on Fire!
Now, here in the real world, I cannot definitively say you are lying unless I have evidence to the contrary. I can say you’re probably lying, but that’s about it.
But the real question is: How is this different than claiming that Obama is a secret Muslim? Both are unsubstantiated, right? Well, almost all of the charges made by the right against Obama are impossible to disprove. How do you prove a negative? How would Obama prove he isn’t secretly a gay, Kenyan Muslim? He can’t. How can he “prove” he’s not planning on taking everyone’s guns away after his reelection? He can’t. How does he “prove” he’s not a alien from the planet Kolob? He can’t The point is, the right constantly makes stuff up and the onus is on them to prove their theories.
On the other hand, Harry Reid’s allegation CAN be disproven. That Mitt Romney chooses not to does not reflect in any way on Reid. Politifact uses a lot of suppositions and assumptions about Romney’s taxes to “prove” Reid is lying. In other words: they have no goddamn idea if Romney paid a dime but they’ll be damned if they’ll let a Democrat get away with wild accusations even if they CAN be disproven but haven’t.
Or, as Rachel Maddow puts it, “He’s [Reid] taken criticism from left, right, center, and stupid in the form of PolitiFact.”
Politifact is so invested in making sure they “get” both sides they’re completely useless.
Great. Now we’re gonna hafta call them “Politifaux”
As a free thinking liberal, I use Politifact for the very reason that they do show both sides. It is useful to know when debating a conservative where they might be coming from in advance. I have used Politifact articles to jump start more research into bills, bios, and other web sites. As a liberal, I don’t always have to agree with other liberals, because it would be like cattle path of conservative thinking.
There’s agreeing and then there’s turning a blind eye to deliberate false equivalence. They’ve spent far too much time trying to “prove” they’re not biased by making ridiculous rulings for the sake of balance. If you want to know what the right is going to say, read a RW website and don’t give false equivalence the cloak of respectability is doesn’t deserve.
Politifact keeps making false comparisons, they are worthless for true information