Media Matters Latest Crap Sammich

Media Matters is good. Good in that building steaming piles of poo is a real strength for them. If awards were given out for making crap sandwiches, they’d win the blue ribbon every time.

Jeremy Holden is one of the better crap chefs at Media Matters and today he goes after Ari Fleischer for fact checking the bogus fact checker. Tommy covered that in detail.

This has more to do with Holden’s sneaky games with words to try and make what Ryan said look false when in fact, what he said was entirely true:

CNN contributor Ari Fleisher distorted the history of a Wisconsin auto plant that closed in 2008, a dishonest attempt to defend Paul Ryan from scrutiny over false claims he has made.

Ryan has been sharply critical of President Obama’s rescue of the U.S. auto industry in 2009, falsely accusing Obama of going back on a promise to save a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. Ryan returned to that claim during his convention speech Wednesday:

Pay particular attention to what Holden writes:

Independent fact-checkers have rated Ryan’s charge false, pointing out that the Janesville plant closed in 2008, before Obama took office. Fleischer, who appeared on CNN to dissect Ryan’s speech, rejected the analysis of those fact-checkers. Announcing his intention to “fact-check the fact-checkers,” Fleischer cited a September 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article and said.

Emphasis mine. It continues with what Fleischer said:

The Janesville plant stopped production of SUVs in 2008 and was idled in 2009 after it completed production of medium-duty trucks. Paul Ryan was right. The fact-checkers are wrong.

Then Holden just gets dumb:

But fact-checkers have already factored that evidence into their analysis. According to PolitiFact, which pointed out that the plant did in fact close before Obama took office, “Several dozen workers stayed on another four months to finish an order of small- to medium-duty trucks for Isuzu Motors.”

So Politifact admits that plant did not close in 2008 and Holden points to them and says, “See! Look!” as though this helps his argument. Laughably dumb.

But where Holden really goes off the rails is his next paragraph. Pay particular attention:

This evidence, already in the public record, does nothing to disprove the fact that the decision to close the Janesville plant was made before Obama took office.

See that? All of a sudden it’s not, “The plant closed in 2008!” It becomes, “The decision to close the plant was made in 2008!”

Watch for the the phrase “the decision to close the plant in 2008″ to start making its way into the Obama team’s reasoning for calling Ryan a liar over this.

They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.