Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC 'Lean Forward' Ad Rated 'Mostly False' By Politifact (VIDEO)

Gulliver's Island

I am shocked that Mr O'Donnell would stretch and manipulate the truth for the sake of a political message.

Shocked I say

:-o)

People (both sides) tend to try and discredit Politifact when it points out that their side is playing fast and loose with the truth

Have republicans called government assistance to go to college a form of "welfare" - yes.

Politi-fact is looking for payback on Maddow rightly calling them out on their partisan BS.

"Politifact looked at that record," Maddow said, "and they found that the chairman of the veterans affairs committee in the House at the time criticized the GI bill by saying, "The bane of the British Empire has been the dole system.'"

So...they're calling it mostly false because they didn't find any quote which used the specific word "welfare". They're being that literal in determining that O'Donnell "lied"?

OK, from the first two pages of a Bing search:

http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/gi-bill/
The economy boomed, suburbs burgeoned, and colleges and universities expanded because of the GI Bill. In reality, this legislation created a large federal welfare program, but one without most of the liabilities that critics often associated with government efforts to improve social conditions.

http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20120206/OPINION/202060308/End-pension-congressmen
An example: Recently, I heard a conservative praising the World War II GI Bill of Rights. I was taken aback! The lady sounded like Rachel Maddow. Only, she'd enjoyed the benefits firsthand. She's not alone. Most folks agree that the GI Bill was the best investment in history.

Yet at the time, some called it welfare.

http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/j_keene.htm
The GI Bill is rarely remembered as the final legacy of World War I to the nation. Yet ignoring Great War veterans' authorship of the GI Bill results in an imperfect understanding of why the law took the form it did when it did. Line by line, the most comprehensive piece of social welfare legislation the United States has ever known, it illustrated in vivid detail the struggles World War I veterans had endured to give meaning to their social contract with the state.

http://prospect.org/article/delivering-young-families-resonance-gi-bill
Once the New Deal was overtaken by mobilization for war, Roosevelt acknowledged that steps would need to be taken to compensate for the disruptions suffered by millions of young draftees. Yet the plans for postwar demobilization hatched by his administration and its liberal allies consistently sought to address the needs of veterans in the context of building a stronger welfare state for all Americans.

http://2164th.blogspot.com/2009/07/government-welfare-plan-to-be-proud-of.html
A Government welfare plan to be proud of, the new GI Bill

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jan/02/letter-welfare-worked/?print=1
I guess the writer doesn't remember one of the most successful so-called welfare programs of the last century, the GI Bill.

http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2011/11/bully-and-future-welfare-recipient.html
One of the biggest welfare programs in this country's history, the GI Bill, benefited a lot of white folks after World War II.

So there you have it, multiple references to the questioned phrase at hand, critics calling the GI bill welfare.