万花筒 2009-12-17&12-19 年度“谎言”榜新鲜出炉

It’s a competition in US politics that nobody wants to win. Yep, talking about who had the biggest lie of the year (and the results are in ), ya, (Josh Levs here with that answer.)

-You guys get your own drums going around.
-I'm trying, I am trying with that. So the biggest lie of the year. That’s, that’s not something anyone wants to hold the title to.

Yeah, it’s dubious¹ distinction and you know where it comes from, it comes from PolitiFact.com. It’s that reality checking website from the St. Petersburg Times that give ruling to what the politicians say. They are constantly looking at new assertions that goes from true, through half-true , all the way down to the pants on fire, difference I will show here. They polled out some what they called the biggest lies of the year, so here is what I am gonna do, I'm gonna show you a couple of candidates and then the winner, one of the candidates was this.

“The reforms, the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” “You lie.”. “It’s not true.”Representative Joe Willison famously yelled "you lie" at that moment. PolitiFact say, while there has been a debate, there wasn't a debate over how illegal immigrants will be impacted by health care legislation, there was not enough to make the case that prove President Obama had lies so they make Willison's accusation² a candidate for "lie of the year". But another candidate was this from President Obama saying why insurance company should be required to cover preventive care.

“Because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching³, diseases like breast cancer and colon⁴ cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money and it saves lives.”

Preventive care does help save lives and it is important but PolitiFact say it actually does not save the country money. Congressional budget office says that, it adds to overall cost.

All right, so there’re a couple of the other examples, but in the end, the lie of the year by far according to Politifact.com, here’s the drum ball, was this: say, it was from the former Alaska's governor Sarah Palin saying “Senior and the disabled ‘will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats⁵ can decide… whether they are worthy⁶ of health care”. PolitiFact said the health care bill she was talking about did not establish anything like that, so the editors of Politifact chose it for their "lie of the year" and they hold a poll on their website in which people could vote. They got her five-thousand vote as 61% named it top lie of the year.

And to be fair, Politifact points out, she stands by this. Last month she told this in a national review of Conservative Publication. She said the terms should not be taken literally⁷ . She called “a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet⁸ Union as the ‘evil empire’. He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective, she said the same thing with the ‘death panels’. I would characterize them like that again, in a heartbeat.”

What do you think? Here is how you can weigh in. We’re talking about that in the blog of facebook and twitter, JoshLevsCNN, the blog is CNN.com/Josh, tell us what you think, Was it the biggest lie of the year that have the biggest impact ? Do you view it as a lie, what do you think about all these? So there you go. Betty and Rob, Politifact’s choice and the viewers’choice on their website for lie of the year.

 

1 dubious   

adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的

参考例句：

• What he said yesterday was dubious.他昨天说的话很含糊。
• He uses some dubious shifts to get money.他用一些可疑的手段去赚钱。

2 accusation   

n.控告，指责，谴责

参考例句：

• I was furious at his making such an accusation.我对他的这种责备非常气愤。
• She knew that no one would believe her accusation.她知道没人会相信她的指控。

3 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

4 colon   

n.冒号，结肠，直肠

参考例句：

• Here,too,the colon must be followed by a dash.这里也是一样，应当在冒号后加破折号。
• The colon is the locus of a large concentration of bacteria.结肠是大浓度的细菌所在地。

5 bureaucrats   

n.官僚( bureaucrat的名词复数 )；官僚主义；官僚主义者；官僚语言

参考例句：

• That is the fate of the bureaucrats, not the inspiration of statesmen. 那是官僚主义者的命运，而不是政治家的灵感。 来自辞典例句
• Big business and dozens of anonymous bureaucrats have as much power as Japan's top elected leaders. 大企业和许多不知名的官僚同日本选举出来的最高层领导者们的权力一样大。 来自辞典例句

6 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

7 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

8 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。