Next time I feel like calling someone a dirty, rotten, stinking liar, I’ll just tell him I think he’s only being 99% honest instead. I’m sure that won’t piss him off in the least.

Add the Leningrad Times to the list of so-called journalists willing to sink their own reputations to defend Obama’s risible claim about tire inflation. For new bloggers interested in learning to fisk: this is I good article to cut your teeth on.

Via Instapundit, the New York Times has an article on the the high cost of a “free credit report” from FreeCreditReport.conm. This site is not to be confused with AnnualCreditReport.com, the one site where you really can get a free credit report. Except that it is to be confused with that site. That’s the whole point of calling the not-so-free site “FreeCreditReport.com.”

Now, I’m sure some of you armchair lawyers (and maybe even one or two real ones) will come back and say “But Xrlq, the statement is true, at least technically. You can get a free credit report from FreeCreditReport.con … er, I mean, com. All you have to do is sign up for a worthless service no one in his right mind would want, wait until your ‘free’ credit report arrives, and then call an AOL-esque ‘you don’t really want to cancel this valuable service, do you?’ maze to finally cancel the worthless service you never wanted in the first place, all to obtain a credit report you really could have gotten free from the site they hoped you’d confuse them with.” To which I say hogwash. Having to go through the trouble of canceling a service you never wanted in the first place is a cost, and correspondingly, a huge value to Experian for running the scam. That’s why they do it. The whole point of FreeCreditReport.con is to give away credit reports that are not free, while trusting that a significant portion of their victims will end up shelling out real dollars in the end. In other words, for those of us dinosaurs old enough to remember Joe Isuzu, the entire business model of FreeCreditReport.con is Joe Isuzu, minus the funny. [OK, maybe you think a Yugo, a pirate suit and a series of annoying songs are "funny," but that's beside the point. There's nothing humorous about calling a service "free" when it isn't, especially when done to con people out of using the site where they really could get that same service for free.]

Ah, you say, but the fact that you have to sign up for this not-free service is buried in the mice-print somewhere, so at worst, that makes the ad merely misleading and not, strictly speaking, false. Surely there’s no law against that, right? Wrong. 15 U.S.C. 55(a) defines a “false advertisement” as:

an advertisement, other than labeling, which is misleading in a material respect; and in determining whether any advertisement is misleading, there shall be taken into account (among other things) not only representations made or suggested by statement, word, design, device, sound, or any combination thereof, but also the extent to which the advertisement fails to reveal facts material in the light of such representations or material with respect to consequences which may result from the use of the commodity to which the advertisement relates under the conditions prescribed in said advertisement, or under such conditions as are customary or usual. No advertisement of a drug shall be deemed to be false if it is disseminated only to members of the medical profession, contains no false representation of a material fact, and includes, or is accompanied in each instance by truthful disclosure of, the formula showing quantitatively each ingredient of such drug.
[Emphasis added.]

Note that the basic rule of false advertising is that the statements made be misleading, not that they be false. Nearly everything Joe Isuzu said in the advertisements (including his name) was false, but the ads were not “false advertisements” because they were obvious jokes, not statements likely to mislead anyone with a high enough IQ to be able to afford an Isuzu. The only situation in which literal falsehood is even relevant to the analysis is the limited exception for drug advertisements, and then only when they are disseminated only to members of the medical profession and certain other stated criteria are met. In any other situation, even if one were to take the position that an ad like this

Call now for three free ounces of cocaine!!!!!!

Offer void were prohibited by law.

is technically “true,” it would clearly be a false advertisement for purposes of federal law. And so too is an ad for “free credit reports” coupled with a mice-print disclaimer to the effect that the product they are actually selling is neither a credit report, nor free.

As a conservative, liberatarian-leaning Republican, I’m generally among the last to scream “their oughta be a law” about anything. But in cases like this, where the fraudulent intent is clear, and where there already is a law, a little enforcement might be worth considering. And yes, that goes for you, too, Apple. Do you really think anyone would “buy” those things if you disclosed the fact that you are retaining ultimate control over a product they thought they had just bought and therefore was now their property rather than yours?

The original Messiah selflessly died for his disciples’ sins, so it’s truly touching to see how eager today’s disciples are to return the favor. The new meme seems to be to ignore whatever outlandish claim the Obamessiah may make, and pretend he said something far more sensible instead. The virtual ink had barely dried on Powerline’s fact-checking of Time’s lame defense of the Gaffemaster when Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune chimed in with an even more outlandish defense of the same:

After all the grief that Obama has taken from the RNC and from rival John McCain this week over the Democrat’s comment that motorists could save some more oil if only they put some more air in their tires, it turns out a search of the clips — conducted by a motivated party — has found that the administraiton [sic, three layers of editors notwithstanding] of President Bush — George H.W. Bush — was telling Americans the same thing back in 1990.

Note how easily and effortlessly this alleged journalist managed to convert Barack Obama’s howler about proper tire inflation supposedly saving “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling” into a common-sense observation that it could save “some more oil.” No, duh. Of course it can save “some more oil.” If all Obama had said last week was that proper tire inflation could save “some more oil,” or that good maintenance is generally a good idea, there would be no controversy now. Math may not be Mr. Silva’s forte, but here’s a free clue: “some oil” does not equal “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off,” nor does it come close.

This sleight of hand is reminiscent of the Gorons who defended their Messiah’s outlandish claim to have “[taken] the initiative in creating the Internet” by pointing out that he had sponsored some legislation to promote it, decades after others had taken the intiative in creating it. Gore was never the media darling that Obama is, so he took his share of ridicule over that infamous quote, tempered by the fact that it was frequently misquoted and for some, the fact that he was widely misquoted was bigger news than the goofy quote he had actually made. As for Obama, one has to wonder if there is any claim so outlandish that he could not make it and expect his disciples in the media to try. If anyone working for the Obama campaign is reading this, here’s how to test my theory: feed some line into Obama’s teleprompter stating that all experts agree that an apple a day will increase your life expectancy by 230 years. We’ll have our laughs for a few days, buttressed by even more laughs when Barack tries to turn it around by claiming Republicans are opposed to healthy diets. Within a week, some “journalist” from Time, Newsweek or the Chicago Tribune will come back claiming Obama was right after all, because some obscure bureaucrat from the Eisenhower Administration made a vague pronouncement that apples really are good for you.

But did some some obscure bureaucrat from the Bush-41 Administration actually say “the same thing” as Obama is saying now? Per this alleged journalist’s article, the answer would be … mmmmmm … no. We didn’t have YouTube in 1990, so the PSA itself is not on the web, but according to the N.Y. Times article:

The new public service announcements give drivers tips on how they can save gasoline. One television ad, which will be broadcast later this year, shows a gigantic oil gusher that is not coming from a well, but bursting forth from the valve on a tire. The announcer tells viewers that by slightly increasing the air pressure slightly in their tires, they can save 50,000 barrels of oil each day.

Well, hey! There’s your smoking gun right there, as 50,000 barrels of oil a day constitutes “some” oil, and so does “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off.” Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to quantify that “some” by determining how many years it would take us, at a rate of 50,000 barrels a day, to save as much oil through proper tire inflation as we would hope to obtain from the shale and the Outer Continental Shelf combined. [I deliberately left out ANWR since Obama's "they" presumably includes McCain, who is scared to death of that place.]

UPDATE: Dave Price has more.

Via Scotusblog, Kevin Russell et al. have recently filed a petition for certiorari asking the Supreme Court to decide the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1), which defines aggravated identity theft to occur where the thief in question “knowingly transfers, possess, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.” At issue is whether the scienter requirement (“knowingly”) extends merely to the act of transferring, possessing or using the means of identification, or whether it also requires the individual to know that the means of identification belongs to another person. Apparently, the Eight Circuit, along with several others, has ruled that knowingly modifies the verbs “transfers, possesses or uses,” and presumably modifies the part about a means of identification, but does not modify the part that says “of another person.” I’m not sure which is more worse, the legal implications of this theory or the grammatical ones.
(more…)

Mary Winkler essentially got away with murder, passing of dubious, evidence-free accounts of “abuse” an excuse to murder her husband, Matthew Winkler, in cold blood while he slept. Convicted of voluntary murder instead of manslaughter, she served a whopping 12 days in jail for killing her husband, which is a lot less time than O.J. served for being acquitted of the same.

Now, adding insult to injury (and, given Winkler’s violent streak, probably adding new injuries as well), some brain-dead judge awarded her custody of their kids. DRJ and Glenn Sacks aren’t happy. Is anyone? Other than Mary Winkler, that is. Even if I were to suspend disbelief and pretend that all of Mary Winkler’s tall tales were true, she’s still a cold-blooded killer who could snap and kill any of her kids the next time they “abuse” her (i.e., sass back). There isn’t a shred of evidence Matthew abused her physically, and even if he had, what would allowing her kids to live with that abusive monster, for all those years in which she knew him to be abusive since he was abusing her) say about her fitness as a mother? Or does Tennessee even have the concept of fit vs. unfit parents?

A new ad by John McCain alleges we are worse off than 4 years ago. I can’t say that I disagree with that as a factual statement. Certainly my part of the economy (financial companies generally, that is – insurance to a lesser extent) is in worse shape in 2008 than it was in 2004, and recent GDP figures suggest that the economy as a whole is, too. Of course, it’s one thing to ask how the economy is doing, and quite another to ask what, if anything, government ought to do about it. Crediting politicians with booms and blaming them for busts is an age-old tradition, but that doesn’t make it accurate or fair. Yes, Carter did a lousy job on economic issues (along with practically everything else) and yes, Reagan’s fiscal policies, particularly with regard to taxes, were much better. Did that change in policy affect the move from stagflation to a booming economy? Sure, but the key word is affect, not effect. In other words, the change in policy played a role in improving the economy, but it didn’t account for all of the improvement or even most. An early Reagan Presidency likely would have left the 1977-80 economy in better shape than what actually existed in the Carter years, but it wouldn’t have brought the boom we saw in the early to mid-1980s and beyond. Most of that was the result of activities on Wall Street, not at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (though those helped).

Good vs. bad policy alone can’t explain everything, or even most things, about the economy. If it could, the elder Bush would have had no trouble delivering on the “four more years” pledge simply by operating on autopilot, with no need (real or imagined) to go back on his infamous “read my lips” pledge, let alone the inevitable 1990-91 recession, which Bush himself denied at the time that it occurred, and which everyone else thought we were still living in more than a year and a half after it ended. As for the younger Bush, I don’t doubt that our economy now is currently weaker than the one he defended four years ago, albeit stronger than the one he inherited four years before that. But the real question, politically, is not whether we’re better or worse off in 2008 than we were in 2004. It’s whether we are better or worse off in 2008 than we would be in 2008 if the Swift Boat Veteran Against Truth were in the White House. That’s a very different question, I think, but it’s the only question we should ask when considering the political implications of a good vs. bad economy, as opposed to merely discussing the economy as a topic in its own right.

Q: When is it appropriate to dial 911?
A: Not when someone serves you a sandwich you don’t like.

From NK:

If Bill Clinton can be the first black president why can’t Obama be the first woman president?

To those who argue that we can absolutely, positively NEVER have a recession that doesn’t involve two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, I have two questions:

1. What has to happen for you to stop asking “Dude, where’s my recession?” and start saying “Dude, there’s my recession,” and for how long?
2. Does the answer to #1 depend on which months of the year are involved?