Washington Post: I'm Waiting...Where Are the Pinocchios for Mitch McConnell's January 18, 2019 Op-Ed In Your Pages?

Washington Post:  I'm Waiting...Where Are the Pinocchios for Mitch McConnell's January 18, 2019 Op-Ed In Your Pages?

I'm thinking that the same people who write Charles Koch and Koch Network op-eds for publication in corporate media outlets have written Mitch McConnell's January 18, 2019 op-ed in the Washington Post (WP).  Because, like those crypto-fascist propaganda-pieces McConnell's latest op-ed lies from the first sentence to the last.

First two sentences in Mitch's op-ed:

For the past two years, our united Republican government drained money and power from Washington and returned it to states, communities, and families.  From middle-class tax cuts to regulatory reform, we took this approach and watched the nation thrive more as a result.

Now, these two sentences take the nihilist-assassin's approach to the truth, wrenching its spine and twisting it around so that the truth faces backward while the lie faces forward, presented where the truth used to be.  It's a tortured, horrific sight, but when, like Mitch, you don't believe in anything, you don't bother to notice and you don't care.

So anyway, let's pretend that Mitch or whoever really produced this op-ed drank a truth serum just before beginning to write:

For the past two years, our plutocratically-controlled Republican party drained money and power from the American people's government and gave it to the super-wealthy who deeply resent being taxed (robbed) to pay for government programs that do not benefit themselves, but only benefit those they consider "looters," the lazy masses who want to leech off their moral betters in the plutocracy.  From tax cuts for the Republican party's plutocratic masters to regulatory reform accelerating environmental damage to American earth, water and air while hastening global-warming, but enriching our party's plutocratic masters, we took this approach and watched our wealthy masters thrive even more than they already do while the regular Americans who elected us continue to wither under our unrelenting hostility to them.

There!  Still ugly, but at least the truth.

We could straighten out right now the remaining deceptions in Mitch's bizzaro-world version of the truth, but, let's summarize: Every sentence in Mitch's recent WP op-ed is an outright lie or--when not that--deliberately misleading, not even a tip of the hat to the truth or genuine bipartisanship.  Mitch even misleads about hoping to "build on the bipartisan successes of last Congress."  The op-ed itself is evidence that Mitch is disingenuous about seeking bipartisanship--it is unrelentingly extremely partisan.  And of course, according to Mitch, if there is no bipartisanship it will be the Democrats' fault.  "This outlandish Democrat proposal is not a promising start [to bipartisanship.]")

The WP Fact Checker recently awarded four Pinocchios to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (meaning that the WP Fact Checker found that AOC told a "Whopper," in her erroneous tweet indicating that fixing Pentagon accounting errors could go a long way toward funding healthcare for all Americans.)  This seems that it might be in violation of the WP Fact Checker's own guidelines, in which it claims, "We understand that everyone makes mistakes, especially when speaking extemporaneously, so we do not play "gotcha."  However, it seems to me that tweeting is very close to speaking extemporaneously, (the president's unending attempts to govern by tweet should not be considered extemporaneous) and giving AOC four Pinocchios for her tweet just might be a "gotcha."

But, given that the WP Fact Checker claims to be in the business of fairly and objectively checking facts, why did the WP publish Mitch McConnell's brazenly mendacious January 19, 2019 op-ed?  Ok, maybe McConnell is deemed to be an opinion-leader and it is therefore appropriate to publish his op-eds from time to time.  But that shouldn't mean that McConnell is exempted from a bona fide fact-checker's determination that McConnell's op-ed shows that he is a High Priest in the Brotherhood of Pinocchio.  Just for instance.  In the first two sentences of his recent op-ed McConnell claims "our united Republican government...[cut] middle-class [taxes] and returned money to "families."  In my view, that qualifies as a true "Whopper," since McConnell doesn't breathe a word about the fact that the wealthiest Americans benefit most from the immediate effects of the 2017 tax cut and will continue to benefit long after the relatively small tax cuts for the lower and middle classes drop out completely in 2027.  (taxes for the lowest earners will even rise in 2027.)  Also, according to the Brooking Institution, middle class income has stagnated over the last four decades while incomes for the wealthy have risen 97% which means that if there really should be a tax cut, a truly democratic country would cut taxes for the middle class, and in view of the large national debt, pay for that tax cut with tax raises on the wealthy.

WP Fact Checker, maybe the American people need to keep an eye on you.