A Totally Dishonest Quote Produced by Cutting and Pasting

People who object to being quoted often complain that their remarks were taken out of context. They aim to insinuate that the meaning of the quotation was distorted by removal of needed context. Usually, this insinuation is bogus. However, it is possible to misquote someone using cut and paste.

For example (and I really don't recall many examples this egregious of the top of my head) Ben Armbruster uses cut and paste to make the careless reader believe that Ivan Volsky wrote something definitely different from what Volsky wrote. I quote Armbruster misquoting Volsky.

Regardless, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky notes that the opt out provision won’t lower costs like a stong public option will:

But a state-based approach won’t have the ability to significantly lower health care costs or change delivery patterns.

[snip]

Volsky did indeed write the quoted words in that order. However, he was definitely explicitly *not* writing about opt out. The quote in context clearly refers to trigger not opt out

At this point, Reid may not have the votes to move a national opt out off of the floor; he is introducing a national opt-out with the understanding that it would become a state-based ‘trigger’ when the Senate formally takes up the measure. The maneuver is meant to satisfy progressives — Congress tried — but the final bill will include a mechanism that triggers a state-based public option if a certain affordability threshold is not satisfied (if 5% of the state population does not have access to at least two “affordable” options, for instance). The policy will then be presented as ‘the best deal we could get’ and embraced by both Reid and the White House.

But a state-based approach won’t have the ability to significantly lower health care costs or change delivery patterns.

I don't see how Volsky could possibly have made it clearer that the quoted criticism was *not* a criticism of the opt out compromise but a criticism of the different bill which Volsky claims that Reid predicts would pass if Reid were to propose opt out.

I think Armbruster could have run the quote past Volsky ? The both work for CAP and the Volsky statement and the totally distorted misleading quotation appear on siste web sites.

At this point, I think CAP is not up to Fox News standards. I mean Fox News tends to quote Fox News correctly.