Patterico's Pontifications

9/25/2008

The Annenberg Foundation/Obama/FactCheck/Brady Center Connection

Filed under: 2008 Election,Civil Liberties,Constitutional Law,General,Scum — Patterico @ 11:11 pm



The other day I savaged a FactCheck piece on Obama and gun rights. I noted that FactCheck elevated Obama’s campaign rhetoric over his record. I couldn’t see how an organization allegedly devoted to “facts” could be so naive.

Xrlq joined in, and had plenty of links to others who also bashed FactCheck.

We now have a possible reason why FactCheck seemed to be in Obama’s pocket. Namely, FactCheck’s sugar daddy is a big donor to the anti-Second Amendment folks at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

FactCheck supposedly exists to look beyond a politician’s claims. Ironically, in its analysis of NRA materials on Barack Obama, these so-called “FactCheckers” use the election year campaign rhetoric of a presidential candidate and a verbal claim by one of the most zealous gun control supporters in Congress to refute facts compiled by NRA’s research of vote records and review of legislative language.

There’s another possible explanation behind FactCheck’s positions. Just last year, FactCheck’s primary funding source, the Annenberg Foundation, also gave $50,000 to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence for “efforts to reduce gun violence by educating the public and by enacting and enforcing regulations governing the gun industry.” Annenberg made a similar grant for $100,000 in 2005. (source)

Regardless of the cause, it’s clear that while FactCheck swoons over a politician’s rhetoric, NRA prefers to look at the more mundane details – like how that politician voted on a bill and what kind of impact that legislation had or may have had on law-abiding gun owners.

As Columbo would say: just one more thing.

The Annenberg Foundation? Doesn’t that sound familiar in the context of Barack Obama? Why, yes it does!

22 Responses to “The Annenberg Foundation/Obama/FactCheck/Brady Center Connection”

  1. Damn.
    I had noticed a general sketchiness in FactCheck lately, but I knew nothing about this connection.

    Teflon Don (0d1e49)

  2. I’m so disillusioned that I can’t believe everything I read on the internet.

    Signed, jharp

    Icy Truth (33a0bd)

  3. FactCheck is providing cover for Obama, they’re wrong on the facts, they know it, and they’re doing it anyway. Sound familiar?

    The Obama campaign is scared to death of the NRA’s ads showing just how opposed their candidate is to individual gun ownership. Obama’s record is clear and unequivocal, if he could snatch your guns, he do it, quick as boiled asparagus.

    If a ban on guns required that Obama lie and pretend his positions were consistent with 2nd Amendment protections, he’d do that with a smile on his face, knowing full well the true scope of his deception. He’d do it gladly, and feel perfectly justified in doing so. He’s trained to lie and has no compunctions about it because he sees the goal is so nobel, that the ends justify the means.

    Obama, like the Left in general, and MSM in particular, is bold and shameless in the audicity of deception.

    Ropelight (f4b89a)

  4. Who in this day and age is surprised that the Annenberg Foundation is a leftist organization. It has been from way back….I’ve disputed their “facts” on many issue tons of times over the years..just disputed one this morning…As I repeatedly tell my brother, if 95% if all media, academia, bureaucratic organizations within all levels of government, the staffs of the government officials at all levels Leftist and a goodly portion UberLeftists whom can you believe in this day and age? No one…except, yourself if you try to stay on top of it all.

    Sue (4d3ef7)

  5. All true, which isn’t to say that FactCheck sometimes gets stuff correctly, because it does.

    RATHER, I look at FactCheck and Snopes, which lean left, as one of those “Even They” entities. For example, “EVEN the LA Times is calling for Leahy to vote on the judicial nominees already.”

    A couple of weeks ago, EVEN FactCheck correctly debunked many misstatements about Sarah Palin.

    See? It (FactCheck) wears the adverb “Even” now when it gets something right.

    Mitch (890cbf)

  6. I’ve been feeding links of this article and the previous one showing the clay feet of Factcheck to the local rag’s Executive Editor, who also happens to be the Chair of the Iowa Editor’s Assn. Seems this editor is a lying bum when it comes to him being objective when shown evidence of bias in his favorite GOP debunking site.

    PCD (1df2b5)

  7. Well I guess we will just have to rely on Media Matters now

    daytrader (ea6549)

  8. That was snark for the clueless who would not grasp such things.

    daytrader (ea6549)

  9. James Brady is a idiot for blaming the gun i mean someone should have pumped a few into JOHN HINKLEYS head and HITLER and STALIN were big time gun control advocates and RUN CONTROL IS RACIS

    Krazy Kagu (8c2752)

  10. Fact Check IS funded by Annenberg Institute..the very same William Ayers organizaton. They tell you they are not associated with them and they are at the University of Pennsylvania but if you go to the site for Annenberg Institute you will see where they have colleges and organizations set up at. The American people must wake up. Today with the vast media available..it is still hard to know what to believe. When I die God is not going to ask about my political party. Stop voting for a party and lets vote for America.
    I am Pro-Life and Pro America. How this media can ignore both is wreckless and dangerous. Don’t they know they will be the first to go under a Socialist regime.

    john (c4f2ca)

  11. You dummies — Annenberg was founded by Walter Annenberg, a noted conservative. It has a well-known conservative bent.

    It funds education programs.

    Molly (b1cfbc)

  12. It’s board releases these funds to “U.N. themed schools

    Eric (c718be)

  13. Thanks, Molly. It should also be noted that — just this week — John McCain got an endorsement, which he accepted gladly, from Leonore Annenberg. She is a trustee of the foundation and therefore also knows Ayres. McCain is playing with fire, and so are any of his supporters who bring this up.

    Aimee (ecbac6)

  14. To Molly: Yes, Walter Annenberg was a noted conservative. But his Foundation has been hijacked by liberals – just like Old Media (aka MSM) and FactCheck. And yes, the “even” label applies to FactCheck. If they get some things right (picking their battles, in essence) they can continue to fool (some) people into believing they actually are non-partisan when they plainly are NOT.

    KJ (119f79)

  15. Love all these “pro-lifers” … what about the children after they’re born, are they to be left on their own to survive while having a parent or parents who didn’t want them in the first place?
    Why aren’t you concerned with their lives after they’re born? It seems like you want them alive as a source of ever-cheaper labor.

    And then when they’re old enough you send them to war to be killed or, even worse, horribly maimed.

    Robbo (9f69db)

  16. As long as members of the media are still concerned with their poor stock portfolios, they do not qualify as “liberals” or “radicals” in my book. You can’t be a humanist liberal while you’re stealing from the pockets of working people. Wall Street is getting its just desserts.

    Robbo (9f69db)

  17. #16 & #17…

    WTF?

    Another Drew (e6d3fc)

  18. not sure why all of you are so into your right to bear arms. have been working in emergency departments for almost a decade and not once has someone come in and said “wow – a gun just saved my life!”

    the reality consists of homicide, suicide, paralysis, sepsis, icu stays for months followed by rehab, long limb fractures, intra-abdominal injuries, collapsed lungs, nerve damage, depression and thousands of young people not able to contribute at all to society.

    if you want to hunt then fine, have a gun, but seriously what worked in the 1700s really doesn’t work anymore. please enter the present, check the statistics and re-examine the basis of your views.

    ps (6db4d0)

  19. ps – Read some stories about people in Texas defending themselves and then cmon back. We’ll be here.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  20. Walter Annenberg died in 2002, and his widow Leonore is now president and chair of the Annenberg Foundation. Annenberg has donated to the McCain campaign, and on October 8, she publicly endorsed John McCain for president. McCain now lists her on his campaign website as a “former U.S. Ambassadors for McCain-Palin.” In fact, she’s second on the list. It’a a tangled web….

    Joe (cdb731)

  21. hey, PS, the reason no one ever came into your ER and said “a gun just saved my life!” is that the homeowner who shot the burglar is at home, sound asleep, with his gun on his nightstand.

    The girl who whipped out her 9mm scared off the guy who was gonna rape her. Now, even if she was raped, she might not go to your, or any, ER. Regardless, she didn’t need to go to your ER, she scared the guy off. The gun may or may not have saved her life, but she didn’t get raped.

    I don’t own a gun, but I’m smart enough to know criminals don’t care about gun laws. Gun laws are idiotic. A .44 evens the match against a 6’6 hood and a lil’ ole lady—if she’s trained to use the .44. Criminals will still have guns….or just simply be a 6’6′ hood against a lil ole lady.

    I am 100% certain if more regular people carried a six shooter on their hips, like in Wyoming, crime rates would PLUMMET!

    kelatious, from Texas

    kelatious (327015)

  22. Sometimes slow people needed things repeated to them. Need things repeated to them.

    Annenberg was well-known conservative billionaire. Nixon appointed him ambassador to Great Britain – a position for great fundraisers and poobahs in the party.

    Annenberg was also one of several Californians who literally sat around a dinner table and decided in the 19960s to finance Reagan’s rise to power.

    Pot stop calling the kettle.

    Sconehead (7fb757)


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