Tag: fake news watch

• While July 27 is a particularly important day for me, the planet Mars will not be making an approach close enough to make it appear bigger than the moon. Being that close would probably mean a Roland Emmerich movie is about to happen.

• Pretty soon I’m going to have to create a separate category for Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories. This week’s stupidity centers on the murder-suicide of FBI agent David Raynor, who was witnessed killing himself in front of police after stabbing his wife to death. He had absolutely nothing to do with the so-called Fast and Furious operation, which also had nothing to do with Clinton and the State Department. Also, he was not scheduled to testify in anything, much less a federal investigation.

• Wait, what? The meme spread that “for the first time in the 242-year history of the U.S., a one-year-old child appears in court as a defendant.” However, this is not true. It happens all the time –  to immigrant children. And sometimes without an attorney.

• Former FBI attorney Lisa Page did not testify that China hacked the DNC server in contradiction of the Russian allegations. It was posted by Your News Wire, a well-known fake site, but Breitbart, The Daily Caller and others ran with it. Of course.

• Despite DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s statement that there are billboards in Central America on how to sneak into the U.S., there is no evidence of any such thing, much less one advising them to “grab a kid.”

• No, Clint Eastwood isn’t leaving his millions to the Trump 2020 campaign.  That would be illegal.

• The mayor of San Juan is not facing fraud charges over disaster relief funds. Another mayor has been accused of fraud, but unrelated to disaster relief. Sabana Grande Mayor Miguel Ortiz-Velez allegedly took kickbacks for overestimating construction project costs. Why target Carmen Yulin Cruz with Ortiz-Velez’s alleged crimes? Cruz is a vocal opponent of President Trump and the relief efforts following Hurricane Maria, and that was apparently enough for Fox News.

• Last week the word “treason” was all over the interwebs, so Politifact dug into what actually is and is not treason. Legal experts say despite the plethora of memes, the legal definition of treason is far too narrow to be applied to anything that happened last week. It has to be during war, and while it doesn’t have to be a declared war (we haven’t declared war since WWII), just saying nice things about another country doesn’t count. Adam Gadahn was an American citizen charged with being an al-Qaeda spokesman, but was killed by a drone strike before trial. That was 2006, and the most recent indictment. As many pointed out, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, not treason. And Trump’s appearance with Putin doesn’t count, according to a unanimous collection of experts.

• I’m embarrassed that this one is the third most-searched this week on Snopes. No, ABC News did NOT ban flag lapel pins after 9/11. Seriously??

• Pick of the Week: No, the Obama family did not wear Che Guevara shirts in Cuba. And yet, 20,000 shares on Facebook. Again: Seriously??

It’s Actually True: A Russian asbestos company actually did place a seal with the face of President Trump alleging it had been approved by him. Uralasbest is one of the world’s largest producers of asbestos, and apparently extrapolated from pro-asbestos comments in Trump’s 1997 book and pulling the EPA off asbestos control.

 

Note: This feature does not take a stance on political issues. It is solely in favor of fact over fiction, at least in the public discourse.

Attempting to debug the internet… emptying the ocean with a thimble.

• John Fugelsang’s tweet about the Secret Service and  President Trump is going crazy online. Here’s the deal: The Secret Service cannot accept gifts from a subject they protect, not even hotel rooms and travel expenses or renting tables and lights near Mar-a-Lago. The Trumps are not directly sending the SS a bill, but the SS is required to pay for it, including rent in Trump Tower for their security station. What has never happened before (that I’m aware of) is a president who owns multiple resorts and golf courses and goes there often. The SS is therefore indirectly paying the Trumps, but it’s required by law.

If you want more data, the Washington Post tracked how much of Trump’s travel has been at his own resorts. As of that report, he had been in office 346 days and spent 116 of them at a Trump property, or 33.5 percent.

• Oh for the love of… No, the senior-citizen couple who died in New Jersey on July 7 were NOT scheduled to testify before a grand jury against Hillary Clinton. Neither of them had a damn thing to do with the pharmaceutical industry, much less the company that blew up the price of EpiPens, which also has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, which never seems to faze 4chan. The house blew up because of natural gas, possibly caused by poor installation of a new stove.

• The Fourth of July meme that showed Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump celebrating Independence Day by visiting troops in three cases and golf in the fourth is not accurate. None of the photos were taken on any Fourth of July, and the Trump image on the golf course is several years before his presidency.

• There is no Congresswoman Ateesha Nubbins, and no one is proposing a law to establish an upper-age voting limit declaring no one over age 60 can vote.

• Immigration fun: No, immigrants cannot apply for asylum at U.S. embassies or consulates, no matter what happens in the movies. This one was repeated by a sitting Congressman. Asylum claims must be made while physically present in the U.S., and they have a year to do so. Also: No, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters did not tell CNN that Trump should “nominate an illegal immigrant” to SCOTUS. It’s a doctored image, and your first clue should be that “illegal immigrant” is not AP style. No, California does not have “39 percent illegals” in public school. It’s about 3 percent, about 12 percent parents. The same idiot meme that’s been circulating for decades says 66 percent of California births are “to illegals on Medi-Cal.” It was 15 percent in 2011, dropped to 12.6 percent two y ears later and keeps dropping.

Meanwhile, we usually don’t bother with things that are true, but people have been yelling Fake News at the word that a new ICE task force is charged with investigating and revoking citizenship from naturalized citizens. Sorry, folks, it’s absolutely true and it IS a new initiative, not people freaking out over something that’s always existed. It hasn’t happened since McCarthyism.

• Did Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh say presidents shouldn’t be investigated while in office? Analysis says: Sort of. In 2009, he wrote an article for the Minnesota Law Review in which he cited his experience with the Starr Report and opined that Congress could consider a law exempting the president from criminal prosecution because of the dangers of politicizing. However, legal experts say in context, the statement was about temporary immunity as granted by Congress, which has not been passed. Instead, U.S. v. Nixon still holds, which upholds that the president is not immune from subpoenas. Politifact has much more detail and rates it half-true.

• Speaking of SCOTUS, that pic of Sens. Schumer, Warren and Booker saying they don’t want a judge who follows the U.S. Constitution is rated “pants on fire” by Politifact, as the only source showing any of them saying these quotes is “The Babylon Bee,” which describes itself as “your trusted source for Christian news satire.” And no, of course the Notorious RBG  did NOT write that “pedophilia is good for children.” It’s a gross misinterpretation of an attempt to make a statutory rape law gender-neutral, in recognition that any gender can commit sexual assault.

• Of 98 statements of fact at President Trump’s campaign rally in Montana last week, 76 percent were false, misleading or unsupported by evidence, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker database. They focus only on material fact, not trivialities or opinions. Some are perhaps just misleading – calling on Sen. Tester a liberal Democrat when he’s voted with Trump more than one-third of the time – while others are… um. Read it here yourself – it’s long.

• My Favorite Fakery of the Week: No, Disney is NOT planning to build a new theme part in Escanaba, Mich.

Trufax: Walt Disney DID consider building a second Disneyland in St. Louis. It was to be called Riverfront Square, incorporating prototypes for Pirates and the Caribbean and New Orleans, among others based on Davy Crockett and the Meramec Caverns, etc. It’s not far from Walt’s hometown of Marceline, Mo., after all, and the famous Main Streets of Disneyland and Walt Disney World tend toward a stylized impression of Marceline.

So what happened? Beer. Legend has it that August Busch Jr. publicly insulted Walt after the MouseMan declared they would not sell beer in a St. Louis park. Financing and ownership were probably also factors, and then Walt started buying up acres in central Florida….

Note: This feature does not take a stance on political issues. It is solely in favor of fact over fiction, at least in the public discourse.

Note: I’m giving this a shot. I will continue it as my time permits, and how long I continue with it will be directly tied to how much hell it gets me. Snopes and Politifact (as well as other sites) already do a spectacular job at this, but I still seem to spend a lot of time debunking stuff on the internet. So here goes.

FAKE NEWS WATCH

• Sorry, fans, Back to the Future IV is not a thing. An unverified account pretending to be Michael J. Fox posted a pic of the actor with Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd, announcing that they started shooting last summer. Despite the gleeful squees across the internet, multiple sources confirm it was a hoax, including Snopes.

• I understand that Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is a terrible blow to many. But the conspiracy theories are out of control. He was about to expose a pedophile ring! He was murdered by operatives of Hillary Clinton! Assassinated by Mossad! He was a #MeToo sympathizer and his girlfriend had accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her, so he was silenced to stop him from speaking out against sexual abuse! I’ve seen several say “I just don’t believe it was suicide,” but there is no legitimate source yet giving any evidence to doubt the preliminary conclusion of French authorities. Ordinarily I am not a fan of dwelling on details due to the risk of suicide contagion, but here they are, almost tastefully for the NY Post.

If you have thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255. Their line is available 24 hours, every day.

• No, Mitt Romney did not state that President Trump has “very serious emotional problems” and must resign. The news piece circulating that he said this on Anderson Cooper 360 is fiction, since it’s been years since Romney appeared on the show. The quote is cobbled together from various statements by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, including a December 2017 appearance on Anderson Cooper 360, according to Politifact.

• You’ve seen the picture of the crying toddler in a cage. The photo is real, but the boy is not in an ICE holding cell. He’s part of a protest against the practice of separating children from their parents at the border and keeping them in cages. He saw his mother and couldn’t figure out how to immediately get to her, and started to cry. So the photo is real, but miscaptioned, as Snopes points out.

Who’s NOT Dead: No one was pronounced Dead By Social Media this week! As far as I know, anyway.

Untimely Death: The obits for Ruby Lee and Malcolm Young are making the rounds; they died in 2014 and 2017, respectively.

Note: This feature does not take a stance on political issues. It is solely in favor of fact over fiction, at least in the public discourse.