The biggest Pinocchios of 2013.

WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler has a top 10 biggest lies list.

President Obama ended up with three of the most misleading claims of the year. But, despite the urging of some readers, his statement that “I didn’t set a red line” on Syria is not among them. We had looked closely at that claim and had determined that, in context, it was a bungled talking point, so that statement actually earned no rating.

3 Pinocchios for "The White House effort to blame insurance companies for lost plans."

From WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, who, you may remember, gave 4 Pinocchios (the max) to Obama's "if you like your plan, you can keep it." Why did he back off a Pinocchio on this but not that? The official distinction between 3 and 4 is: 3 means "Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions" and 4 is "Whoppers."

What Kessler says today about blaming the insurance companies is:

First of all, the administration wrote the rules that set the conditions under which plans lose their grandfathered status. But more important, the law has an effective date so far in the past that it virtually guaranteed that the vast majority of people currently in the individual market would end up with a notice saying they needed to buy insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.

The administration’s effort to pin the blame on insurance companies is a classic case of misdirection. Between 75 and 95 percent of the problem stems from the effective date, but the White House chooses to keep the focus elsewhere.

WaPo Fact Checker gives 4 "Pinocchios" to Obama's promise that you can keep your health care plan.

Glenn Kessler rejects the excuses and weasling:

[A]s White House spokesman Jay Carney put it: “It’s correct that substandard plans... are no longer allowed — because the Affordable Care Act is built on the premise that health care is not a privilege, it’s a right, and there should be minimum standards for the plans available to Americans across the country.”

But such assertions do not really explain the president’s promise — or Jarrett’s tweet ["FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans."]. There may be a certain percentage of people who were happy with their “substandard” plan, presumably because it cost relatively little....

The president’s statements were sweeping and unequivocal — and made both before and after the bill became law. The White House now cites technicalities to avoid admitting that he went too far in his repeated pledge, which, after all, is one of the most famous statements of his presidency.

WaPo's Fact Checker gives Obama 4 "Pinocchios."

For the statement, made yesterday: "You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt."

3 Pinocchios to John Kerry for asserting that the U.S. is "below the Kyoto levels" on emissions.

WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler finds "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions." But look at what the problem is:

While Kerry noted in his comments that more needs to be done on climate change, his inaccurate recounting of U.S. performance on the Kyoto emissions targets leaves the wrong impression. Low natural gas prices and the economic downtown — not specific policies — have been the prime factors in the emissions reductions, especially for carbon dioxide.

There were supposed to be specific policies clamping down on the offenders, not a big recession that the government was (supposedly) trying to avoid/reverse.

Isn't it sad that in all of our suffering through economic malaise, we failed to rejoice and soothe ourselves with the knowledge that we were restricting the production of greenhouse gases? That was not the kind of suffering that the environmentalists had hoped for, and to proclaim the recession a good thing would not have played well in the political arena.

But how different would the environmentalists' specific policies have been? If we'd voluntarily submitted to specific policies, we could have prided ourselves in our virtue. To have inadvertently reached the same result doesn't feel the same.

But the climate change problem isn't about our virtue and our feelings. Is it?

"Bachmann’s absurd claim of a vast IRS health database of 'sensitive, intimate' information."

WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler gives 4 Pinocchios to Michele Bachmann's stirring up of deep fears about big government.

The picture she has sketched is pretty frightening — that the “most personal, sensitive, intimate, private health-care information is in the hands of the IRS” via a vast database....

Since the health care mandate is effectively a tax — most Americans will either need to have health insurance or pay a penalty — the IRS was given an important role in administering various tax credits and penalties that are part of the law....

[T]he official descriptions of the “Data Services Hub” show that it is not what would generally be considered “a database.” It will not actually store information, but will be used so that health exchanges, which are being creating [sic] for the purchase of health insurance, can ask questions about application information. The Hub will be built by the Department of Health and Human Services, with the IRS in a supporting role.

All right then... "official descriptions"... it's a "hub," not a database... IRS only in a "supporting role."

Kessler quotes congressional testimony from a "nonpartisan and independent" tax expert named Nina Olson who said this wasn't "an unprecedented expansion of IRS powers but rather an unprecedented expansion of IRS work." She said it was "my understanding... that we would get the information from insurers whether or not that taxpayer was covered, and essentially nothing else — the amount of the premium paid — and that would be it. Nothing about their state of health or anything like that."

 “The Affordable Care Act maintains strict privacy controls to safeguard personal information,” said Joanne Peters, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Service. “The IRS will not have access to personal health information. Application for financial assistance will be part of applying for coverage on the Marketplace and will take place in near real time."

It's not a great time for feeling reassured by assertions about "strict... controls" within the IRS. Obviously, we have reason to be skeptical and to fear abuse of power. With health care so intricately interwoven with the tax authority, we have to worry. That doesn't justify politicians like Bachmann misstating the facts, however.

[Bachmann spokesman Dan Kotman] also pointed to a recent lawsuit, described in a news report as “a lurid but vague class action accuses corrupt and abusive IRS agents of stealing 10 million people’s medical records without a warrant — including ‘intimate medical records of every state judge in California.’”  The claims are interesting, but they are simply unproven allegations at this point. It is not clear what the allegations have to do with the health care law.

We need to keep the facts straight. There are things to fear, and that creates political opportunities to aggravate fear in all sorts of screwy ways. Those who oppose "big government" might think they can get away with a lot more inaccuracy. Just foment mistrust, and you'll win people to your side. Those who promote big government desperately need our trust and must allay our fears... or maybe they think all they need to do is make us see Bachmann and her ilk as liars and nutcases.

3 Pinocchios for White House aide's assertion that Republicans "doctored e-mails... to smear the president."

WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler looks at something Dan Pfeiffer said on 3 Sunday talk shows relating to the development of the talking points that Susan Rice delivered on 5 Sunday talk shows last fall.

[T]he reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept. The fact that slightly different versions of the e-mails were reported by different journalists suggests there were different note-takers as well.

Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor e-mails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did). Clearly, of course, Republicans would put their own spin on what the e-mails meant, as they did in the House report. Given that the e-mails were almost certain to leak once they were sent to Capitol Hill, it’s a wonder the White House did not proactively release them earlier.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.

WaPo's Fact Checker "is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording..."

"... when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios."

Glenn Kessler reviews 3 key statements by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

3 Pinnochios to "Barbara Boxer’s claim that GOP budgets hampered Benghazi security."

"[I]t is almost as if Boxer is living in a time warp, repeating talking points from six months ago that barely acknowledge the fact that extensive investigations have found little evidence of her claim that 'there was not enough security because the budget was cut.' State Department officials repeatedly told Congress that a lack of funds was not an issue. Instead, security was hampered because of bureaucratic issues and management failures. In other words, given the internal failures, no amount of money for the State Department likely would have made a difference in this tragedy."

Writes WaPos Fact Checker Glenn Kessler.

Is Glenn Kessler evening up the Pinocchios — giving Obama 4 Pinocchios after over-Pinocchioing Issa with 4?

I'm skeptical! I appreciate WaPo's Fact Checker taking on Obama's May 13th statement about Benghazi — "The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism." Kesser assembles all the relevant quotes and makes fine comparisons, pointing out the discrepancies. This is very well done.

But 4 Pinocchios? That's the most Pinocchios given in the Fact Checker Pinocchio system:

One Pinocchio = Some shading of the facts. Selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods.

Two Pinocchios = Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.

Three Pinocchios = Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.

Four Pinocchios = Whoppers.

I've read Kessler's analysis — and you should too before commenting — and it supports a 2 Pinocchio rating. Even to go to 3 is a stretch.

What kind of game is going on here?  On May 7th, I wrote:

Last fall, before the election, Glenn Kessler gave Susan Rice a mere 2 Pinocchios for her infamous 5-talk-shows delivery of the miserably wrong talking points on the Benghazi effect. More recently, he gave 4 Pinocchios to Darrell Issa for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's signature on a document means she approved it.

Now, Kessler looks at the new information about the talking points....

Kessler had a new column on the Susan Rice 5-talk-shows lie, and but he didnot readjust the number beyond the original 2. Absurd!

And here's Dick Durbin on "Face the Nation" last Sunday:

[W]hen the Washington Post looked at the assertion as to whether Hillary Clinton should be held responsible and what came out at the hearing, they awarded it four Pinocchios, which means the lowest level of credibility that you can possibly have. It is unsubstantiated, and yet, the witch hunt continues.

Those Pinocchios become talking points. Kessler's fact-checking is high profile and powerful, but his game is ruined if it becomes apparent that he's pulling for one side. He needs to appear to be a neutral arbiter or the system of Pinocchios loses all meaning.

But suddenly loading 4 Pinocchios onto Obama? To my eye, it looks like Kessler is trying to rebalance a 4 that should have been a 2 with another 4 that should have been a 2.

I'm skeptical!

WaPo's "Fact Checker" on about the Benghazi talking points.

Last fall, before the election, Glenn Kessler gave Susan Rice a mere 2 Pinocchios for her infamous 5-talk-shows delivery of the miserably wrong talking points on the Benghazi effect. More recently, he gave 4 Pinocchios to Darrell Issa for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's signature on a document means she approved it.

In his interview, Issa presented this as a “gotcha” moment, but it relies on an absurd understanding of the word “signature.” We concede that there might be some lingering questions — such as whether anyone in Clinton’s office saw this cable before it was issued — but that does not excuse using language that comes close to suggesting Clinton lied under oath.

Now, Kessler looks at the new information about the talking points:

The key new disclosure is that senior levels of the White House and State Department were closely involved in the rewriting of the talking points. Previously, Obama administration officials had strongly suggested that the talking points were developed almost exclusively by intelligence officials....

The biggest unknown is whether the “building leadership” in the State Department who objected to the initial talking points included anyone on Clinton’s immediate staff. (One presumes that nit-picking over wording would not have risen to Clinton’s level.) Certainly, someone senior made a call to the White House that resulted in quick action....

Clinton, during her testimony before the Senate and the House in January... stressed it was an “intelligence product” and said she was not involved in the “talking points process” and she “personally” was not focused on them — odd locutions that leaves open the possibility that she was aware of the internal debate at the time....

As more information emerges, we will continue to track how the administration’s statements hold up over time and whether more Pinocchio ratings are appropriate.

ADDED: As Instapundit puts it: "WaPo Fact-Checker Rowing Back Previous Support For Hillary, White House."

"Four Pinocchios for White House claim on Capitol janitors' overtime."

Glenn Kessler at WaPo.

First of all, we should note that the White House’s story kept evolving as we reported last week’s column. It’s almost as if the president’s aides had to scramble to come up with reasons why the president could be correct, without actually knowing the facts....

 AND: A round-up of sequester fact-checking.