For the Record: Fact Checking

Steve points out something that is very wrong about former Attorney General Barr deciding to tell the truth to Jonathan Karl, namely that he doesn't think there was anything morally wrong about trying to overthrow a democratic election, he just didn't think it was going to be successful. It occurred to me that there were a few other things:

I'd like to know more about how much of that he did, as with the multiple investigations of Crossfire Hurricane and its origins, harrassing people who Trump regarded as his personal enemies.

— Specter of Happiness (@Yastreblyansky) June 28, 2021

And of course if he want to start telling the truth let's hear about his role in surveillance of Times, WaPo, CNN, and House Intelligence Committee

— Specter of Happiness (@Yastreblyansky) June 28, 2021

He seems to have ordered up an awful lot of investigations for which there was no justification to satisfy his vindictive client. He looks more and more like John Mitchell to me.

A more complex thing was a very annoying "fact check" in Washington Post, where Glenn Kessler assigned four Pinocchios to Biden for saying that the 2nd Amendment didn't allow you to buy a cannon in the 1780s:

For the Record

This seems so much worse, and somehow sadder, than anything we're screaming at Maggie Haberman for doing:

This story is a truly remarkable effort to demonstrate that Trump has "empathy" and may intend to "do something" about the opioid crisis. https://t.co/ww9troaLEl

— Amazing!o (@Yastreblyansky) August 8, 2019

The president hardly seems involved in the story at all pic.twitter.com/OdsH5y0JZv

— Amazing!o (@Yastreblyansky) August 8, 2019

So that it reads like a specific assignment--"Demonstrate how Donald came by his passionate commitment to combat drug abuse"--for which the reporter was basically unable to find any material, though there are thousands of very interesting words.

— Amazing!o (@Yastreblyansky) August 8, 2019

Modest Proposal

Pope Francis "appearing to make amends" with President Trump. with two unidentified Spanish princesses visiting from 1957.

Washington Post's "The Fix" may be even dumber without Chris Cillizza than with him, as Armando points out:

Trump’s foreign trip didn’t solve his media problem, but it helped https://t.co/ekcHoT1aUE

— Callum Borchers (@callumborchers) May 29, 2017

Helped what? https://t.co/ijjdifvqS5

— Armando (@armandodkos) May 29, 2017

Indeed.

Borchers explains, for one thing,

The Designated Liar

Another courageous thing Fred Hiatt did once, in 1999. Fortuitously it should help him manage Wapo's opinion coverage of the Trump White House.

Fred Hiatt joins the #Resistance!

Et tu, Wonk?

Headline at Heritage's Daily Signal:

Aetna CEO Admits Obamacare Customer Numbers Worse Than Expected

Paragraph to which the headline refers:

Bertolini said the initial Obamacare enrollment numbers were worse than expected but younger enrollees increased in April in May, when Aetna picked up two-thirds of its customer growth through Obamacare.

I.e., the headline should have read "Aetna CEO Admits Obamacare Customer Numbers Worse Than Expected Until They Got Better".

Another headline at the same site announces:

The persistence of mummery

Dalií's timepieces simply lack a firm existential basis, and deserve much more scrutiny than chronometer-industry regulators have given them.

Speaking of propaganda/bad writing, does anybody know how someone paid to write for the Washington Post could be so poorly informed (I'm loooking at your headline writers more than at you, George Zornick) as to believe there is anything "stunning" about the fact that the vast majority of people whose health insurance policies were canceled this year were able to find alternative policies?

The Plum Line

Stunning new report undermines central GOP Obamacare claim

“This new report shows that people will get the health insurance coverage they need, contrary to the dire predictions of Republicans,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking committee member.... as is sadly too often the case, the arguments made by Republicans simply lack a firm factual basis — and deserve much more scrutiny that they’ve received in many sectors of the mainstream press.

I mean, I'm glad they got the story out there, but gobsmacked by the suggestion that this "central GOP claim" has or ever had any sort of validity or even meaning. How do you undermine a quicksand swamp?

Privateers

The Times coverage of the horrible hospital fire in Kolkata (olim Calcutta) suggests that one of its causes was the fact that the Advanced Medical Research Institute is a private hospital, which means apparently less heavily regulated than the public ones:

The blaze is sure to raise fresh questions about safety in India’s booming private hospital business, which, like much else in India, is poorly regulated.

The hospital had recently been named one of the city’s best by The Week, an Indian magazine that regularly ranks hospitals. Like many such hospitals in India, the Advanced Medical Research Institute offered expensive Western-style facilities to middle- and upper-middle-class Indians who have shunned government hospitals, which are crowded and less well equipped.

A great hospital in the aspects seen by its wealthy clientele, in other words, but not so much so in those seen by India's famously onerous, nitpicking regulators--like what are they storing in the basement (diesel fuel and motor oil), is the fire detection system regularly tested and the staff drilled,