Politi-Score: Wrapping Up Bachmann (Jumping the Snark Part 5)

Here’s the rest of the statements by Michele Bachmann which have been fact-checked at least two times.

Bachmann: "My husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm." (June 26)

PolitiFact (PF) ruled False, and there was this from FactCheck.org:

Bachmann falsely claimed that she and her husband "have never gotten a penny" from a family farm that received federal subsidies. But she reported income from the farm in 2006, 2008 and 2009 — the most recent year available — on her congressional financial disclosure statements.

Bachmann:  “The president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve.” (June 26)

PolitiFact ruled False, while the Fact Checker included it as the "blended" Mostly False, expressed thus:

This is a huge overstatement. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has 727 million barrels of oil, and the Obama administration announced last week that the U.S. will release 30 million barrels of oil from the reserve. (Another 30 million barrels will be released by European countries.)

So she’s off by a factor of 25.

Bachmann:  “One. That's the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office.” (March 26)

PolitiFact gave this one a Pants on Fire, while FactCheck.org said “not even close”:

This claim is not even close to the truth. A query of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement’s online database shows 276 permits were approved for "new wells" — both developmental and exploratory — from the time Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009 to the date of Bachmann’s speech.

Bachmann:  "The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8 percent." (January 25 following President’s State of the Union address)

PolitiFact awarded this statement a Mostly False.   From the Fact Checker:

The president never made any statement suggesting that the stimulus legislation — which totaled about $800 billion, not $1 trillion — would prevent unemployment from going up beyond 8 percent. Bachmann is referring to a projection issued Jan. 9, 2009 — before Obama even took the oath of office…

It should be noted that the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler fact-checked a different version of this statement (for which he awarded the blended “Mostly False”) which Bachmann made on CBS’ Face The Nation on June 26, about five months following the first time she said it: (emphasis added)

“No, I haven't misled people at all. I think the question would be asked of President Obama, when you told the American people that, if we borrow $1 trillion from other countries and spend it on a stimulus, that we won't have unemployment go above 8 percent, and today, as we are sitting here, it's 9.1 percent and the economy is tanking — that is what's serious. That's a very serious statement that the president made.”

Sublimely Bloviating Passing Grades.

In the interview, the question from CBS’ Bob Schieffer that elicited this answer in part was about all the statements she had made that PolitiFact had found “not factual,” and  what we got was more evasion along with “No, I haven’t misled people”….while continuing to repeat the falsehoods—not just found false or misleading by PolitiFact, as I have shown here.

This was also one of the few statements I’ve examined in this series on Bachmann that my conservative counterpart was actually in agreement with. He gave PF writer Robert Farley and Editor Martha Hamilton a “C”, whatever that means, and seemed to indicate that perhaps PolitiFact was going too easy on her--in the opposite direction of what he'd normally be trying to affirm from them:

I think I agree with the sense of the final finding. Bachmann's statement had a basis in fact but tended to mislead without additional explanation. The final ruling surprised me a bit considering the content of the story. PolitiFact often labels statements with a foundation in the truth "False" rather than "Barely True."

I remember back the 90’s when William Safire called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar.” Well, Mr. Safire should be turning over in his grave.

 

Do I look Politi-Psychotic?