Journalism in decline

I read this Reuters article on last night's bombing in Mississauga, Ontario, and the closing paragraph had me scratching my head:

India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet that the she was in constant touch with the Consul General in Toronto and the Indian High Commissioner in Canada and that the missions would work round the clock.

Um...why? Sure, the bombing took place at an Indian restaurant, but beyond that, there's nothing in the article hinting that that had anything to do with it, or that any Indian nationals were targeted or injured in the bombing.

Whatever happened to who, what, when, where, why, and how? This is lazy, incomplete reporting.

Outsourcing and offshoring

One of Obama's favorite attacks on Mitt Romney is that Romney "outsourced" jobs while he was in the private equity business at Bain Capital. That may be true, and in fact, it's pretty damned likely that it's true. But let's not confuse "outsourcing" with "offshoring".

If you decide to hire a plumber to fix your sink instead of fixing it yourself, you've outsourced that job. If a company reassigns a business function to an outside contractor, that's also outsourcing. It doesn't matter whether that outside contractor operates inside our outside the United States, it's outsourcing. If that contractor does operate outside the US, then it's offshoring, as well as outsourcing.

Let's take the example of two fictitious banks...Security First Trust, and Fred's Bank. Both banks have decided they can save money by focusing on their core competencies - banking - and letting someone else handle the IT business.

Fred's Bank is a regional bank headquartered in the Southeast United States. They own a single data center in Columbia, South Carolina supporting all of their operations but have entered into an agreement with Joe's Global Systems under which all of Fred's IT employees will transfer to Joe, and Joe will operate Fred's Columbia data center for a fee. Fred has outsourced his IT business.

Security First Trust is a global concern with subsidiaries all over the world, and they have a major data center in Mumbai, India. By consolidating all their IT functions in Mumbai, they can eliminate the bulk of their US-based IT staff and move all the US IT services to India. They've offshored their IT business, but because they own the Mumbai data center, they haven't really outsourced it.

There's a difference between "outsourcing" and "offshoring", and when Obama and his minions bring up the "outsourcing" charge, someone needs to make them explain exactly what they mean.

Liberal bias goes pathological

I've gotten pretty used to seeing liberal bias in the media, but at least it's usually fairly subtle. Not so with this breathtaking example by Emily Sohn in Discovery News:

Still don't see the bias? Ok, here...I've highlighted it for you:

I'm not sure why this piece hasn't picked up more traction on conservative blogs or conservative Twitterdom. In fact, I lifted this from one of my favorite righty blogs, Ace of Spades HQ, which doesn't even remark on the obvious bias. Maybe they've become so accustomed to this type of bias that they don't even notice it any more.

The bias is so deep and widespread now, it's become a pathology. When I tweeted a link to the Discovery article inviting people (sarcastically, I thought) to spot the liberal bias, I received this response from @LouYoungNY:

So pathological is this bias that it's taken by liberals as an absolute truth that conservatives are intolerant and close-minded. Keep in mind that this article (presumably) got past fact-checkers and editors before publication.

Oh, and you may want to keep an eye on what your kids are reading for science.

Closetgate: What if Cheney did it?

Yeah, I know...the whole "what if Bush/Cheney did it" thing is getting rather threadbare, and generally speaking, the answer is always the same: the media would be howling about [insert latest outrage here] for days.

But with "Closetgate", as the story of the hapless press pool reporter confined to a closet during VP Joe Biden's appearance at a fundraiser has become known by some on Twitter, the answer I think would be "it wouldn't have happened in the first place".

During the eight years of George W. Bush's administration, I don't recall this kind of deliberate isolation from the media. In the little more than two years that Obama has been in office, we've heard one story after another of "the most transparent White House in history" holding the media at arm's length or being prevented outright from covering White House activities.

The story of Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers being confined to a closet -- and guarded -- during a fundraiser at which Biden was to speak is just the latest example of this administration's contempt for the media. This White House is like a college fraternity with a passel of pass-around chicks (if you'll forgive the crudity) who hang out for parties while the frat brothers take their turns with them in a back bedroom. This is effectively what happened to Powers...a low-level White House functionary kept him hidden away while all the beautiful people swilled cocktails and fed on delicacies until Joe Biden wanted to take him out and play with him for a few minutes, after which he was once again hustled off out of sight. But you can bet that just like the pass-around chick, that reporter will be back for more.

Maybe the reason there was so much media coverage of the Bush White House's various fumbles compared to those of Obama's is that the Bush White House actually let the press cover them.

CNN's subtle lie

CNN's web site betrays their editorial bias with this headline, screen capped here for posterity just in case they change it. The headline accompanies this article, which manages to contradict the headline right in the first paragraph:

P.J. Crowley abruptly resigned Sunday as State Department spokesman over controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.

So, over what issue did Crowley resign? Was it a principled protest over Pvt. Bradley Manning's treatment as the headline implies, or was it in disgrace over his comments about his treatment? Clearly, CNN would prefer you believe it was the former, and hopes you won't actually read the article which makes it readily apparent that Crowley was fired.

On inflamed rhetoric, media hypocrisy and unhinged gunmen

These are facts and are indisputable:

Fact: Far-left bloggers like Markos Moulitsas blame Sarah Palin's "targeting" map for the 2010 midterm elections for making Jared Loughner pull a gun and shoot 19 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Rep. Giffords was one of the Congressional seats targeted for takeover on Palin's map.

Fact: Markos Moulitsas' own Daily Kos blog used a similar targeting metaphor to target Giffords in 2008, presumably for not being reliably liberal enough.

Fact: In 2009, when Major Nidal Hasan gunned down fellow service members at Ft. Hood while screaming "Alahu Akhbar", we were lectured by the media for days not to jump to conclusions about Hasan's motivations.

Fact: Before Jared Loughner's spent shell casings had time to cool, the media jumped all over the Giffords shooting as inflamed Tea Party rhetoric coming home to roost, implying Loughner was connected to the Tea Party movement.

Fact: What little information there is about Loughner's political inclinations indicate he leaned left. (@caitieparker on Twitter attended high school with Loughner and played in a band with him.)

Given these facts, how can one not conclude that there is a systematic and deliberate effort by Democrats and their collaborators in the media to use this horrific incident to smear their political opposition? If these facts don't convince you, maybe this Politico piece will:

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

The Democrats and their allies on the far left are intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt and undeserving of any claim to leadership of this country. Meanwhile, their media lapdogs betray their bias beyond a shadow of any doubt.

I'm done with the whole lot of them.

Update: Another fact...Loughner set his sights on Giffords in 2007, long before Palin's map came about. But don't expect any such inconvenient facts to stop the narrative.

Shiva Obama

According to a Foxnews.com piece, Americans of Indian descent are a bit rankled over a recent Newsweek cover depicting Barack Obama as the Hindu god Shiva. (Cue obligatory jokes about media deification of Obama!)

The article to which the cover refers, though, is more of an apologia for Obama, rationalizing his administration's utter ineptitude in terms of the job being too big for any one person - even a deity! - to handle:

Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency? Obama has looked to many models of leadership, including FDR and Abraham Lincoln, two transformative presidents who governed during times of upheaval. But what’s lost in those historical comparisons is that both men ran slim bureaucracies rooted in relative simplicity. Neither had secretaries of education, transportation, health and human services, veterans’ affairs, energy, or homeland security, nor czars for pollution or drug abuse, nor televisions in the West Wing constantly tuned to yammering pundits. They had bigger issues to grapple with, but far less managing to do.

I guess I must have missed all the sudden changes that must have occurred during Obama's inauguration in January last year, because I don't recall a single Newsweek article laying blame for George W. Bush's supposed failures on the size of the presidency. So I guess Bush must have served during a completely different era when things were so much simpler.

Oh, and I'd be derelict in my duties if I didn't point out that Shiva is known in the Hindu religion as the "destroyer of worlds". Heh.

Another media fabrication

The howler monkeys in the media have done it again. Remember when Toyota cars by the score were suddenly accelerating on their own and it was all you heard about earlier this year? The media piled on, and eventually Congress hauled Toyota executives in for the rubber hose treatment.

Turns out, there was nothing at all wrong with Toyota's cars:

“There are a variety of causes -- pedal entrapment, sticky pedal, other foreign objects in the car” and “pedal misapplication,” Michels said yesterday in a telephone interview. Asked how many crashes were linked to pushing the accelerator when motorists thought they were pushing the brake pedal, he said, “virtually all.”

A nearly identical thing happened to Audi in the 1980s, and it was years before Audi successfully reentered the American market. From a 1990 Manhattan Institute piece:

The Audi story is by now, dismally familiar. "Sudden acceleration" accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of "park." The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiotproof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted.

But a story to the effect that cars accelerate when drivers step on the accelerator doesn't boost television ratings or jury verdicts. And driver error is understandably hard to accept for a mother whose errant foot killed her sixyearold son. So with the help of such mothers, CAS and CBS knitted together a tissue of conjecture, insinuation and calumny. The car's cruise control was at fault. Or maybe the electronic idle. Or perhaps the transmission.

"60 Minutes," in one of journalism's most shameful hours, gave air time in November 1986 to a selfstyled expert who drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn't see the drill or the pump—just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket.

How much did this media fabrication, aided and abetted by the most anti-business American government in history, cost Toyota?

Faisal Shahzad, heartbreaker

When the identity of last weekend's Times Square (would-be) bomber was revealed as an ethnic Pakistani Muslim bent on killing Americans, hearts all across the Lefty world were shattered. Oh, how their hopes soared when initial surveillance video suggested the perpetrator was a white male; surely this was their Great White Teabagging Hope who would prove their thesis that Teapartiers are a rabid pack of violent racists. Even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated idly (and spectacularly irresponsibly) that it might be “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something."

But when the distinctly non-WASPish sounding name Faisal Shahzad surfaced as the prime suspect, their hopes were dashed on the rocks of their own hatred. MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer - evidently as stupid as she is beautiful - actually gave voice to her incoherent thoughts of disappointment and frustration:

I mean the thing is is that and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.

And so there was part of me was really hoping this would not be the case that here would be somebody who is not the defined. I mean he’s accused he’s arrested you know I don’t want to convict him before it’s time to do so. He’s the guy authorities say is involved. But that being said I mean we know even in recent history you have the Hutaree militia from Michigan who have plans to let’s face it create terror.

Yes, Contessa, I do want to write off "people who believe in a certain way" if that "certain way" is that innocent people must die just for being Infidels. But in Contessa Land, it's just dandy to want to write off as violent, teabagging racists anyone who opposes their political agenda.

While Brewer was wetting herself over the possibility of a militia or Tea Party culprit, a contributor over at Lefty blog Daily Kos put up a now-embarrassing survey asking readers who they thought was responsible for the attempted bombing. The early results - before the suspect was known - are about what you'd expect:

An al Qaeda terrorist ---4%

An American sympathetic to al Qaeda ---5%

A militia wackjob ---30%

A teapartier ---32%

A religious (anti-abortion) wackjob ---9%

Got that? Before Shahzad was implicated, 71% of Kos readers were pretty excited about a right-wing connection to the Times Square bombing attempt. Here's a screen shot of the poll results from this morning, days after Shahzad became known...not a big improvement:

Even after the facts were known, there was too much stupidity to overcome to get the poll results to even approach reality.

But the poll is revelatory in one respect:

Religious whack-job (top or left depending on screen res) and not-a-religious-whack-job (right or bottom depending on screen res).

(Source: Leftist's Guide To Modern Thought)

Yeah, I made up that "source". So sue me.

Cheap shot

I've said before that one constant in life is that liberals always feel themselves intellectually superior to their ideological counterparts. Always. A column on the special senate election in Massachusetts in today's Boston Globe by Brian McGrory is a case in point.

McGrory starts by spinning Democrat Martha Coakley's free fall in the polls as nothing more than crappy campaigning on her part. While that's certainly true in part, the idea that voters in such a deep-blue state are weary of Democratic policies isn't even considered.

Then, while describing Republican Scott Brown's effective and tireless campaigning, McGrory just can't help himself...he's got to slip this in:

And, let’s be honest, his nights probably aren’t tied up with Mensa meetings.

Cheap shot from a cheap journalist.

Reuters: Good thing for Haiti Bush no longer president

It amazes me how deep and enduring is the Bush hatred in the media. Since no amount of mental gymnastics can link George Bush to the earthquake in Haiti, Reuters has to content itself with singing hallelujahs that Bush isn't around to handle the American relief efforts.

The administration urgently sought to show it had learned from the mistakes of Obama's predecessor, who was criticized for the initial U.S. response to a tsunami disaster in south Asia in 2004 and for his handling of Hurricane Katrina's onslaught on the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005.

The White House also took pains to show Obama was staying on top of events, in contrast to Bush, widely seen as detached as Katrina battered New Orleans for days more than five years ago.

So on top is Obama that he spent the whole day yesterday talking health care reform with Democratic cronies.

Actually, I don't recall any real criticism over the US response to the tsunami in 2004. Sure, other countries will always bitch that we don't do enough while they themselves do nothing, but we're used to that.

Retailers: "Won't you please help?"

Just an observation on this Black Friday in the midst of the depression recession recovery.

It hasn't always been the case that the news media obsessively covered the Christmas shopping season. I'm thinking maybe for the past 15-20 years or so. But in all that time, I don't think I ever heard someone say "Wow! We're selling crap like there's no tomorrow and we expect a record year!". Not once. Instead, every report is all doom and gloom with retailers seeing anything from "disappointing results" to "the worst Christmas retail season ever".

Now why do you think that might be?

Speaking truth to power, Obama-era version

I knew we were in for, er, change when Obama took office, but I didn't think that change would include changing the definition of some relatively simple words.

Obama administration hack Valerie Jarrett insists that their jihad against Fox News is a simple case of "speaking truth to power". This reminds me of the guy I see at open mic night every now and then who sings Dylan-esque "protest" songs...about Bill O'Reilly.

Just a reminder to the lefties...you won! Your guy is in office, and you've got nothing to protest about. If you want to speak truth to power, tell Obama what a dilettante he is.

Fact-checking as it's supposed to be

CNN thoroughly beclowned itself a few weeks ago when Wolf Blitzer fact-checked a Saturday Night Live sketch poking fun of Barack Obama's near-total lack of achievement since his inauguration in January. Today the AP partially redeems the mainstream media with a pretty tough fact-checking of the left's demonization of the health insurance industry.

Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

This is similar to the demagoguery the Democrats indulged in last year to smear Exxon-Mobil as another "rapacious profiteer" by tossing around the amount of their "obscene" quarterly profit, which was only around 8% of their revenue at the time.

The ability to turn a profit is a good thing. When companies are making healthy profits they're able to expand and employ more people. When profits are anemic or non-existent, they contract and lay people off. It's really pretty simple. Democrats are the enemy of a good business climate and a healthy economy.

A war on three fronts

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star's Clay Jones gets in a poke at Obama's ill-considered war on Fox News with this cartoon. Clay's a friend of mine and a I know his political sentiments lie to the left of mine, but he's, er, fair and balanced in his observations.

Is it possible that Obama is even more Nixonian than Nixon?

Jake Tapper puts Gibbs on the spot over war on Fox

Jake Tapper today put White House spokescritter Robert Gibbs on the spot, asking him why it's appropriate for the Obama administration to decide what is and is not a news organization.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

Typical Obama White House response: "Because shut up."

It doesn't surprise me to see Tapper, never squeamish about holding the Obama administration to account, call them out on this. But even ultra-lib Helen Thomas is objecting to the White House war on Fox News. She's been around long enough to know that this is a bad precedent and once they tire of Fox News, they can turn their ire on any news organization not toeing the Obama line.

Update: Awesome. Via Breitbart.tv, Brit Hume wonders how CNN and company "like being patted on the head and given the seal of approval by the White House". The line comes at around 0:51 into the clip.

Update 2: Add the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus to those chiding the White House for their idiocy.

Man claims he has 'proof' balloon incident was a stunt

I was traveling home from the west coast Thursday and awaiting a connecting flight in Atlanta when I caught the non-stop coverage of the "balloon boy" incident. Like everyone else, I was horrified that a 6-year-old kid might be stuck in a runaway helium balloon. I would learn later, of course, that Falcon Heene was hiding inside his own house the whole time.

Even when word got out that Falcon's parents had been featured on the TV show "Wife Swap" and Richard Heene was looking more and more like a publicity hound, I was still a bit skeptical that Falcon's parents deliberately tricked the world into believing that their son was in mortal danger. Now? Hmmmm.

The student, who remains anonymous, told The Business Insider that he worked with Heene in 2009 on potential reality show proposals to pitch to ABC.

He says that he and Heene pitched a show that would include several pranks, one of which was similar to the high-flying balloon incident, according to The Business Insider.

"When Mr. Heene is denying having any involvement with this being for a show — when the little kid, Falcon, says 'Dad, you said to go hide in the attic, we're doing this for the show' — and then he's adamantly denying that, that's when I started cracking up because I have proof that that's not true," said the student, according to The Business Insider.

A lot will depend on the nature of the prank they'd planned, I guess. It's possible that Heene did intentionally let the balloon get away as a prank, but unless the plan included the bit about a kid being trapped in the balloon, it's not a smoking gun.

Much is being made about Falcon not appearing in the home video released yesterday showing the moment when the balloon "got away". Well, duh. That's the whole point, isn't it? Let's just say that the planned hoax was simply a runaway balloon. If at the moment the balloon "accidentally" gets away Falcon is nowhere to be seen, why wouldn't mom and dad at least initially fear the worst? On the other hand, a runaway balloon - even one as weird-looking as Heene's - is hardly an attention-grabbing hoax. But a runaway balloon with a kid trapped inside? Media feeding frenzy!

Update: The original plan did NOT include a kid trapped in the runaway balloon. No smoking gun.

Bias? What media bias?

NBC's Saturday Night Live has been skewering politicians - particularly Presidents - since they went on the air in the mid-1970s. To varying degrees of success, they've lampooned Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But since taking office nearly nine months ago, Barack Obama has been largely exempt from SNL's sometimes funny, sometimes not ridicule. Until last Saturday, that is, when SNL's Fred Armisen goofed on Obama's record of having done diddly squat relative to his voluminous campaign rhetoric. Within 48 hours, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Yahoo News' Brett Michael Dykes rushed to the defense of Barack Obama and fact-checked the SNL sketch.

Fact-checking Saturday Night Live? Really? That's just pathetic. I don't recall a single instance of any news organization fact-checking a comedy sketch of any kind before. Whichever side of the political aisle one falls on, one usually has the wisdom to dismiss such pieces as the exaggeration and hyperbole they are. But not when it comes to the Dear Leader. All such slanders must be met with a swift response.

Does Blitzer even realize just how ridiculous this makes him look? Er, probably not.

Heroic heroes heroically shout down 'racists'

The German edition of The Local reports that "thousands" turned out to counter an anti-Islamization demonstration in Cologne, Germany. Headlined "Thousands turn up to boo racists in Cologne", the lede goes on to say:

Several thousand people turned up in Cologne to protest racism and xenophobia at a far-right extremist rally in the city on Saturday.

According to Deutsche-Welle, police put the turnout at around 1,600. But they, too, know who the villains and heroes are:

Police in Cologne say about 1,600 people have protested peacefully against racism and a controversial "anti-Islam" rally held by right-wing groups that oppose the building of a large new mosque in the city.

At the heart of the matter is a plan to build a massive mosque in Germany's "Cathedral City". The mosque is big, but its minarets are still dwarfed by the spires of the city's largest churches. But what I find disturbing about this is the universal demonization of the protesters and the glorification of the counter-protesters, evident in both The Local's and Deutsche-Welle's coverage.

Reuters appears to exercise considerable editorial consistency in the captions accompanying five photos on the subject (photos viewable at the link):

A German far-right youth carries a German national flag and anti-Islamic placard during an anti-Islamic demonstration of the far-right group Pro-Cologne in the western German town of Dormagen near Cologne May 8, 2009. The group Pro-Cologne called a rally for the weekend to oppose a decision by local authorities in the nearby city of Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city and famous worldwide for its gothic Cathedral, to allow the construction of a mosque with a high dome and minarets.

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German far-right youths carry German national flags during an anti-Islamic demonstration of the far-right group Pro-Cologne in the western German town of Dormagen near Cologne May 8, 2009. The group Pro-Cologne called a rally for the weekend to oppose a decision by local authorities in the nearby city of Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city and famous worldwide for its gothic Cathedral, to allow the construction of a mosque with a high dome and minarets.

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A far-right supporter of the anti-Islamic group Pro-Cologne waves a national flag of Austria during a demonstration in the western German town of Dormagen May 8, 2009. The group Pro-Cologne called a rally for the weekend to oppose a decision by local authorities in the nearby city of Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city and famous worldwide for its gothic Cathedral, to allow the construction of a mosque with a high dome and minarets.

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A man wears a cross and the logo of France's far-right political party National Republican Movement (Mouvement National Republicain or MNR) during an anti-Islamic demonstration in the western German town of Leverkusen May 8, 2009. The group Pro-Cologne called a rally for the weekend to oppose a decision by local authorities in the nearby city of Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city and famous worldwide for its gothic Cathedral, to allow the construction of a mosque with a high dome and minarets.

The one photo of counter demonstrators carries this caption:

Anti-fascists carry a banner reading, "Europe. Germany. Cologne - De*Nationalize - it's all shit!" in front of the famous Cologne cathedral during a demonstration against the far-right anti-Islamic group Pro-Cologne May 8, 2009. Pro-Cologne called for a rally over the weekend to oppose a decision by local authorities in the nearby city of Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city and famous worldwide for its gothic Cathedral, to allow the construction of a mosque with a high dome and minarets.

Can Reuters possibly be more biased? The people protesting construction of the mosque are scary "far-right" wingnuts while the counter demonstrators are heroic "anti-fascists". Reuters further demonizes the protesters by referring to their flags as "national" flags, subliminally linking them to the "anti-fascist" exhortation to de-nationalize. And "anti-fascists"? Puh-leease. A group calling for "de-nationalization" of Cologne, Germany and Europe and calling them all "shit" is pretty obviously a fringe anarchist group.

Liberal spin on Tea Parties soundly refuted

Lifted from Hot Air. This is important because it gives lie to the leftists' and media (but I repeat myself) spin that the Tea Parties were all about opposition to Obama and Democrats in Congress.

South Carolina Rep. Gresham Barrett is roundly booed by the crowd - beginning to end - at the Greenville, SC Tea Party for his less than stellar voting record on spending. He's a Republican, and he voted for TARP.

Yes, the Tea Parties were kicked off almost exclusively by conservatives and it's very much a conservative cause. But dismissing them as Republican party populism and propaganda is very much complete and utter bullshit. The lefties know this, but it better fits their narrative to push that lie.