The biggest Pinocchios of 2012

[questionmark]

Virtually all of this year’s fact checking was focused on the presidential election. So, in selecting our biggest Pinocchios of the year, we spent days going though old columns and reliving an election that seems rather distant now.

In many ways, it was depressing reading. So much of the campaign was fought over trivial or inconsequential issues. For instance, we wrote nearly 20 columns dissecting every possible claim about Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital, which came under attack both from his Republican rivals and the Obama campaign.

Romney left himself open to scrutiny because he incorrectly claimed that he helped create more than 100,000 jobs at Bain — he mainly created wealth for his investors — but the attacks often were equally false. A candidate’s experience and background is certainly worthy of debate, but all too often in 2012 it just turned into a game of political gotcha.

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[CuriousGreek]

The world is full of liars unfortunately...

[AsteroidX]

Hard to get much out what was the biggest BS of the year. Id rather what were the facts.

[Taun]

Hard to get much out what was the biggest BS of the year. Id rather what were the facts.

It would have been a much shorter list...

[F3SS]

So the WaPo admits to only having time during such a busy election to carelessly write away and no time to analyze every claim. They'll just wait until 2 months after the election to write an unbiased article exposing what was a lie fest. Did they not have time to click on factcheckers.org or is it the fact checkers who take two months to figure it out? If the latter is the case then what good are they?

[supervike]

WHat? Romney stretched the truth throughout his campaign? Oh my... Good thing we Americans saw through it and made the right choice.

[RavenHawk]

There are things that are misleading and then there are just out right lies. The top lie is this one:

‘90 percent of the budget deficit is due to George W. Bush’s policies’

President Obama repeatedly reminded voters that he became president during a grim economic crisis. But he went too far when he claimed that only 10 percent of the federal deficit was due to his own policies. About half of the deficit stemmed from the recession and forecasting errors, but a large chunk (44 percent in 2011) were the result of Obama’s actions. At another point, Obama falsely suggested that the Bush tax cuts led to the Great Recession.

And then this one:

‘Mitt Romney closed my plant, I lost my health insurance and short time later my wife died.’

This ad by the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action featured a steelworker, Joe Soptic, who blamed Romney for the death of his wife after he lost his health insurance when the steel plant closed. But Romney was no longer actively managing Bain when the plant closed — and Soptic’s wife did not die until five years later. She also continued to have health insurance for a number of years after the plant closed. It is also quite likely that Bain’s involvement extended the life of a dying steel plant, in which case Soptic kept his insurance longer than he might have expected.

Priorities USA Action ad

This is how Obama won and hoodwinked America and many of the faithful still believe. Although the biggest lie that didn’t appear on this list is this fiscal cliff. Fact: raising taxes on the very wealthy isn’t going to do anything for bringing down the debt. Fact: If automatic cuts are made, it’s only $120B across the board. Fact: taxes are going up for everyone, not just $300 per person but at least thousands. Fact: The fiscal cliff is a ruse to blame the GOP for taxes going up by thousands per family and not just $300 per individual.

[F3SS]

WHat? Romney stretched the truth throughout his campaign? Oh my... Good thing we Americans saw through it and made the right choice.

Are you being sarcastic? I'm not sure you are but if the right choice is just another outright liar then yes you did. This article wasnt just about Romney lying. It's also about Obama lying.

[+DieChecker]

This last election was Brutal. Almost no one could be diverted from their Partisan position. Dispite facts showing many of these to be false immediately after they came out, people on one side or the other would wave them around as flags of Truth.

[Ultima Weapon]

I'm just about done with politics. Far too much anger, hatred, apathy, and far too less actual action.