Hitchens on the Hillary Lies.

WHERE DO WE EVEN START?

New Zealand mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary
is the subject of one of Hillary Clinton's most ridiculous
lies; unless you're one of the morons that believes
she's incapable of lying.

Sometimes the measure of a truly unbelievable liar is that they begin to tell lies about topics that make no sense and seem otherwise irrelevant. This is one.

Christopher Hitchens marveled at one point that Hillary Clinton had lied about the fact that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) of New Zealand, the first westerner to scale Mount Everest in 1953. The lie falls apart on even the most elementary inspection: Hillary Rodham was born on Oct. 26, 1947 in Chicago, Ill, the expedition to scale Everest started in March 1953 and reached the summit on May 28 of that year.

Over the years, this falsehood has been overshadowed by the Clinton family's far more serious legal issues, as well as the Bosnia sniper fire controversy that cropped up in 2008 and was a major embarrassment in her race against Barack Obama, because there was video evidence that proved she was lying.

Deciding who the liar is

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
brought up the Clinton lie in July during the RNC. Himself
now unpopular with the Republican right, McConnell was n
nevertheless absolutely correct in including this among four
other Clinton lies.

What did Politifact say about this lie though, which Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell accused Clinton of?

Answer: That it was "Half True" because Sir Edmund had been famous for years prior to the scaling of Everest. Politifact cited ANOTHER fact-checker Snopes.com, one accused repeatedly of exhibiting clear pro-Clinton bias:

"When the urban-legends checking site Snopes.com looked at the controversy, it noted that it actually wasn’t impossible that Clinton’s mother could have heard about Hillary by the time her daughter was born. It noted that he was already gaining some renown as a mountain climber prior to 1953, and even as early as the pre-World War II period."

Unfortunately, the Snopes story itself brings further doubt to the claim made by Clinton in 1995 during a face-to-face meeting with the mountain climber. It glosses over the fact that Bill Clinton repeats the lie in his 2004 autobiography My Life. It also tries to frame it in the context that Hillary Clinton was TOLD by her mother that this was why she was named after Sir Edmund, not that Sec. Clinton was STATING it as such, and that therefore it was not Hillary Clinton's lie to fact check.

Let's be clear here:

• Prior to 1953, as Snopes and Politifact both admit, Sir Edmund was virtually unknown worldwide, and certainly not in HRC's hometown of Chicago. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/19/mitch-mcconnell/did-hillary-clinton-lie-about-being-named-after-si/
• Prior to 1946 Edmund Hillary was an enterprising mountain climber, mostly in his native New Zealand and the Alps. But that was by no means of world news quality. It's not as if he had Charles Lindbergh level notoriety by any means.
• Sir Edmund served from 1943-45 in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the southern Pacific theater of WWII. He had until then been a conscientious objector, but in the end served honourably and was even wounded in a boating accident. But his military career by no means made him a household name.
• Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton made a point of telling Sir Edmund the bogus statement that he was her namesake in 1995 during an apparent coincidental meeting in Nepal. It took until 2006 for Clinton's senatorial reelection campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley to disavow the story to the NY Times by stating obsequiously that it was just an inspiring tale told by Clinton's mother in order to inspire her, which had worked "to great results".
• Instead of calling Hillary Clinton to task for this bit of, not just falsehood, but utter and complete NONSENSE that doesn't even hold water at first inspection, Snopes declares Mitch McConnell's accusation FALSE and Politifact cites Snopes and gives it the Half True designation. The author of the Snopes analysis? None other than site founder David Mikelsson.

This "fact-checker" Mikkelson continues to claim that there's no official bias on his part, but then why is it that he can define a statement by Hillary Clinton that is clearly false is not really a lie based on some pretend notion that the context absolves her?

So instead of attacking the person that stated this bit of complete idiocy, the so-called fact checkers attacked Mitch McConnell. This is just one more example of a multi-tiered media that is sworn to protect an agenda. They will allow the Clintons as a pair to behave as they please, spread falsehoods, and pretty much deceive the public, but the Clinton opponents (and McConnell is himself no straight character) get the full court press. Luckily Christopher Hitchens called foul on this in 1999.

So then where is the value of fact-checkers when they are clearly willing to hold different politicians to different standards?