Chris Matthews lies about polling; creates false equivalence between number of Birthers & 9/11 Truthers
August 04, 2009 7:46 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Chris Matthews on Hardball today:
Remember the poll last week where a majority of Republicans said either 'No' or 'Not sure' when asked if President Obama was born in the US?
Well, here's a blast from the past, courtesy of Real Clear Politics. Back in 2007, two years ago, Rasmussen polled voters with a similar out-of-left-field question, asking whether they believed that then-President Bush, George W. Bush, had gotten the inside word that the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were about to be hit on September 11, 2001. We're talking hard intel as to what was coming that day -- how the hijackers were going to grab those planes and fly them into buildings.
Well, how many Democrats said either 'Yes, Bush knew' or that they weren't sure whether he knew about that? Not sure whether the president deliberately sat back while America's cities were attacked and thousands were killed? Well, think about it. Sixty-one percent, a majority. Evidence that both parties hold the darkest of suspicions about the other party and it's leaders.
No. This is not true. Chris Matthews is lying to you.
The Rasmussen poll Matthews refers to didn't ask anything like what Matthews described. Nothing. Like. It.
The poll asked "Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?" That's it. Many of those who answered either "yes" or "don't know" were likely doing so in reference to the presidential daily briefing Bush received warning him that al Qaeda was "determined" to attack the US. Even conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg acknowledged at the time that "Many Democrats are probably merely saying that Bush is incompetent or that he failed to connect the dots."
In any case, Matthews description of the poll is flat-out wrong. It is entirely made-up. The poll question said nothing -- nothing -- about Bush getting "inside word." It said nothing about "hard intel," and it said nothing about "how the hijackers were going to grab those plans and fly them into buildings."
Chris Matthews made all of that up. That is lying.
And it isn't a tangential lie: it's his whole point. Matthews lied about what the Rasmussen poll found so he could accuse Democrats of holding beliefs comparable to the Birthers. His entire point was a lie.
Remember this dishonest smear of Democrats the next time some right-winger -- or Howard Kurtz -- insists that Chris Matthews is evidence of MSNBC's "liberal bias."
61% of democrats were either confused by the question or they believed or 'did not know'... that Bush did know of the 9/11 attacks in advance.
But I certainly wouldn't venture to insist that most people felt the way I did. The idea's always been on the fringe.
To say that easily-dismissed fringe beliefs exist on both sides is correct, but to compare these two, especially on the basis of a manipulation of poll statistics, is erroneous. Making a comparison like this will only serve to alienate viewers on both sides of the issue.
Just an appalling, appalling lie on his part.
I happen to believe there is a great deal we are not being told about that day, and about the events leading up to it. I know when I am being lied to, whether overtly or by omission, and that report has less factual content than the average beer commercial.
It will take an independent investigation to get at any semblance of the truth, and that's not likely to happen any time soon. Was Bush complicit? I don't know. I'm at least honest enough to admit I don't know what really happened, but the fairytale presented in the report is not credible on it's face.
I'm also honest enough to admit that I'm probably in the minority, which is fine with me. I also don't believe the Warren Commission's report on Kennedy's death. I know too much about ballistics to buy the magic bullet.
We'll probably never know, and that's not really the point. The point is that the President's birth certificate has been produced, verified by the state of Hawaii, and he has been duly sworn in. Case closed on the birthers, but they will never let it go. I keep coming back to Frank Burns from the TV version of M*A*S*H: Do you have any papers to -prove- that these are your papers?
Some facts:
The 9/11 truth movement is grounded in anti-semitism. Like holocaust denial, it serves to misplace blame, absolving militant Islam of its role, as holocaust denial absolves the Nazis. 9/11 "truth" places blame for the atrocity on Israel, if indirectly. It is Israel, sponsored by America, that is responsible for the condition of Muslims in Palestine and beyond, and 9/11 was carried out to further American and Israeli oppression of Islamic peoples. Furthermore, if you read the literature, the attacks are part of a global Jewish conspiracy, based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which includes Jewish domination of the global financial system, and manipulation of world events for the purpose of extending global Jewish dominance.
For all of the "truthers" obfuscation and outright denial of reality, any reasonable person who read the 9/11 report came away confident that the basic outline of events was accurate and thorough, even if the role of Saudi financing was downplayed by the Bush administration... Yet some committed anti-semites came away saying, I knew it, it was a controlled demolition by the Mossad...
The birthers have a lot in common with the truthers. Both groups comprise a significant proportion of Ron Paul supporters; closed borders types, world currency conspiracy theorists, etc. A simple reading of the facts would disprove the claims of the birthers for almost any reasonable person. Both are hateful, racist conspiracy theories, born of similar ideological origins.
To conflate 9/11 truth wackos with the ideological left-wing in any way is misleading. Yes, there is a strain of it on the left, but the virulent strain of it, with significant birther overlap, is a child of the right wing.
I happen to have doubts about the real events of 9-11, but it's not based on anti-semitism. There are a number of problems with the official report in my opinion, and I'd like to simply leave it at that. Too big an discussion to have on this thread. :)
His whole show today seemed designed to bring him back into the cuddly arms of the Right-- or, er.. his sponsors? most of whom are health care companies.
Or maybe a little organized, scripted "balance" for Olbermann's screed the night before?
Then again, I'm one of the "unsure" folks, not one of the "I know for sure the Bush administration sponsored/turned a blind eye to the attacks and nothing will convince me otherwise" folks.
You wouldn't believe how many people have demanded to know if I thought the moon landing is a hoax, too (for the record, I don't). Any conspiracy theory automatically gets tied to all others. If someone thinks you're a wacko, they'll run with the idea.
Whoa. Maybe not so glib with wholesale characterizations of folks who have questions.
First, in preface: 1) I, too, thank MMFA for 'bringing this up,' when it has gotten to be almost 'daring' in these days of anti-9/11truth vitriol; 2) this is not the place for the 9/11truth points of discussion; and, 3) the matter is Matthews is LIAR, but, y'know, it has sorta felt all along that a main motive for (Dobbs's) resurrecting the 'birther baloney' has been aiming to use it as preemptive 'delusional' inoculation -- such that when inevitably 'birther-ism' is dispelled (in the soon future), then any 9/11truth pursuits (in an open-minded Obama era?) may be superficially and falsely 'contaminated by association': 9/11truthers are as deluded as 'birthers,' and applied antidote of 'birther' results: and we saw how nutso 'birthers' were ... that is, juxtaposing 'birther' delusion to apply falsely as 9/11truther 'delusion' exactly as LIAR Matthews did.
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However, there are two significant points in 9/11truth consideration which you might consider, all your eyes.
First, where you see "... and 9/11 was carried out to further American and Israeli oppression of Islamic peoples," events indeed show some contradiction of purpose, (purpose = motive, presumed, for Bush et al. to stage 9/11 mass-traumatizing production). The whole of Mike Ruppert's 'Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil,' [New Society Publishers, 2004], goes to show the motive for 9/11 being to deflect public opposition to military invasion for oil conquest as the planetary supply depletes to exhaustion. (Which happens to occur in Arabian lands, which incidentally entails an Israel involvement, both of which are not necessarily 'besides the point,' just, Islamism and Judaism affects is neither one the MAIN point, NOT the true 9/11 motive.)
In public allowance for American military atrocities and war crimes being committed in the Middle East, mass-trauma worked, didn't it?
Secondly, the Congress appropriated funds for a 9/11 Commission Report explicitly to "explain the physical manner of structural collapse of 9/11 buildings." And the obtained Report omitted and failed to fulfill that requirement in the public funding, and so lawsuit has been brought for defrauding public treasury.
In point of fact, rather ordinary 'high school' Physics calculations -- ever since Newton determined that, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction -- show exactly and courtroom-quality proof (i.e., reproducible consensus of expert witnesses) that the energetic reaction of skyscraper collapse was at least 100 times greater (NOT equal) than all known energy in action, (which the Report attested was gravity, only).
And it has nothing to do with Jewishness ... beyond inflaming emotions in a religiosity dimensions.
I was amazed that Matthews completely LIED about this old Rasmussen poll by claiming that the question said that Dems believed Bush knew THAT DAY of the attack.
One tip-off that Matthews was lying? He made the queston about 100 words longer than it was.
This false equivalency between the "left wing" and the birthers was phony, but worse: since when is Broooks Brothers "middle class?"
Most of those people wouldn't know the difference between the Brooks Brothers and the Smith Brothers.
I was suspicious today just hearing the way Matthews slipped out the actual numbers, collapsing across response categories in a dishonest way. It's also worth noting that these two instances are virtually incomparable: Compared to the simple birther delusions, the events surrounding 9/11 are so much more complex and so poorly known that it would be extremely easy to phrase a question that skewed responses one way or another. Apart from Matthews lies, no statistician would ever try to make this kind of comparison.
The best comparison is one across time that takes into account the many, many delusional episodes adopted by the right: Obama the Muslim, Obama the Socialist, Hillary the murderer of Vince Foster, Clinton the raging sex fiend, Clinton and Whitewater, and Filegate, and Travelgate, and so on and on. Then we also have the widespread paranoia at work within right-wing militia groups: they'll take our guns away, socialized medicine, government takeover, euthanasia, and so on.
There's nothing remotely close on the left.