Clint Eastwood - Halftime in America
Claim:  Actor Clint Eastwood narrated an anti-Obama "Halftime in America" spot.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, June 2012] A second Halftime by Clint Eastwood was sent to me and it was not the same commercial message as the original by Clint Eastwood in the end he refers to Obama as your skinny ass Question is the second one a fake.  Half time in america is on you tube and claims to be by clint eastwood.  can you check the validity.  Looks like they cut and pasted abit...  I saw a video of Clint Eastwood talking about it being halftime in America and I wanted to know if it was a real video or a reworkedvideo.  It was supposedly on youtube.   Origins:  One of the most talked-about commercials to air during Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012 was Chrysler's controversial two-minute long "Halftime in America" spot, narrated by actor Clint Eastwood:  The commercial prompted a good deal of debate about whether it was more a promotion for Chrysler's products or an endorsement of President Obama and the federal government's bailouts of the automobile industry: People rarely pick a fight with Dirty Harry. But Chrysler's "Halftime in America" ad featuring quintessential tough guy Clint Eastwood has generated fierce debate about whether it accurately portrays the country's most economically distressed city or amounts to a campaign ad for President Barack Obama and the auto bailouts. The 2-minute ad holds up Detroit as a model for American recovery while idealistic images of families, middle class workers and factories  scroll across the screen. "People are out of work and they're hurting," the 81-year-old Eastwood says in his trademark gravelly voice. "And they're all wondering what they're gonna do to make a comeback. And we're all scared because this isn't a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now, Motor City is fighting again." Conservatives, including GOP strategist Karl Rove, criticized the ad as a not-so-thinly veiled endorsement of the federal government's auto industry bailouts. Others questioned basing a story of economic resurgence in a city that remains in fiscal disarray, with a $200 million budget deficit and cash flow concerns that have it fending off a state takeover. Within days of the Super Bowl a number of parodies of the "Halftime in America" spot began to appear on the Internet, including the one displayed in the Example box above, which edited the original and replaced Eastwood's narration with a sound-alike voicing anti-Obama sentiments, ending with the invocation "all that matters now is that we come together as one great nation and kick his skinny butt back to Chicago." parodies Eastwood himself indicated in a November 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times When I push back at his criticism of the auto company bailout, he flashes one of his trademark Eastwood squints, the kind of squint that has made hundreds of bad guys quake in their boots. "Look at me," he said evenly. "Ive had to make films for less money or go out and find my own money. On 'Mystic River,' I had to cut my salary and everyone elses to get it made. I know the score. If I start to grind out two or three turkeys, Ill be unemployed, just like anyone else." Last updated:  11 June 2012    Goldstein, Patrick.  "Clint Eastwood Talks Politics: Who's the Democrat He Voted For?"   Los Angeles Times.  7 November 2011.    Associated Press.  "'Halftime in America' Ad Creates Political Debate."   FOXNews.com.  6 February 2012.
Claim:  "Make the Pie Higher!" poem is composed of actual quotes from George W. Bush.  Status:  True. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2002] MAKE THE PIE HIGHERby George W. Bush  I think we all agree, the past is over.This is still a dangerous world.It's a world of madmen and uncertaintyand potential mental losses.  Rarely is the question askedIs our children learning?Will the highways of the Internet become more few?How many hands have I shaked?  They misunderestimate me.I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.  Put food on your family!Knock down the tollbooth!Vulcanize society!Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher! Origins:  We certainly didn't need to write a piece to inform the world that, like his father, President George W. Bush is not a strong public speaker.  Particularly when speaking   extemporaneously, he often uses words similar in sound but different in meaning to what he intends tosay (e.g., "vulcanize" for "Balkanize") or uses incorrect forms of words (e.g., "resignate" for "resonate"), garbles familiar phrases by transposing words (e.g., "where wings take dream"), and makes a variety of grammatical mistakes (e.g., "how many hands have I shaked").  The point here was not to rehash the numerous lists of "Bushisms" to be found in a variety of media, but to perform a sort of investigative experiment into the accuracy of information transmission in the Internet age. A common phenomenon in the world of the printed word is that once a public figure  whether he be an athlete such a Yogi Berra, an entertainment figure such as Samuel Goldwyn, or a politician such as Dan Quayle  acquires a reputation for spouting malapropisms, people quickly begin to put words into his mouth. All sorts of humorous misuses of words and phrases that sound like something that person might have said are soon attributed to him as something he "really said"; newspapers run the erroneous quotes without verification and are later cited as documented proof of their veracity, thereby enshrining apocrypha as  fact. Only when someone undertakes the chore of trying to track the quotes back to their sources are the misattributions discovered, usually far too late to dislodge them from the public consciousness. So, we thought we'd tackle a project to see whether the increased availability of information in the Internet age has had any effect on this phenomenon; whether quotes are less likely to be misattributed when nearly every utterance of a public figure as prominent as a presidential candidate is recorded and stored in one form or another.  As a test example, we chose the "Make the Pie Higher!" piece reproduced above (generally credited to "Washington Post writer Richard Thompson," a satirist and illustrator who produces the "Richard's Poor Almanac" feature appearing in the Post's Sunday edition) and attempted to trace every statement listed therein to its source to determine how many of them were actually uttered by George W. Bush.  Our standard was that in order to consider a statement to be a genuine "Bushism" we had to find at least one major newspaper article that quoted the actual words spoken (rather than paraphrasing them), included specific information about when and where the statement was made, and was printed within a few days of the event at which the statement was offered. In this statistically insignificant non-random sample of one, we found that yes, the accuracy of quote transmission was remarkably high: All but a couple of the items in this piece could be reliably traced back to the mouth of George W. Bush. Here are the results:  "I think we all agree, the past is over." In March 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush locked up the Republican presidential nomination, beating out his chief rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, in a rancorous primary campaign marked by personal attacks and charges of dirty tactics on the part of both sides.  Two months later Senator McCain somewhat reluctantly endorsed Governor Bush for president during a joint appearance at the Westin William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, where both men tried their best (somewhat unconvincingly) to assure the press that they had put their differences behind them: Both sides swapped charges of dirty campaign tactics. McCain aides accused Bush supporters of personal attacks, and Mr. Bush denounced McCain forces for suggesting that the governor was guilty of anti-Catholic bigotry. On Tuesday, the pair told some 200 journalists that they had discussed policy, not personal history. "There's no point," Mr. McCain said. "I hold no rancor. Others will be the judge of this campaign, not me."  Mr. Bush said the McCain challenge toughened him for the fall campaign against Mr. Gore.  "We had a tough primary," Mr. Bush said. "I told him point blank: 'You made me a better candidate.'"  Later, on his campaign plane, the governor described the discussion as "very cordial, very frank, very open." He added: "I think we agree, the past is over."1 "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." On the campaign trail in South Carolina while pursuing the Republican nomination in January 2000, Governor Bush spoke before 2,000 loyal Republicans at a well-attended oyster roast held on a plantation outside Charleston and mystified his audience when, during his discourse on the need for a strengthened U.S. military, he made reference not to "mental" losses (which itself would have sounded odd in the given context), but to "mential" (pronounced "men-shul") losses: During his visit to South Carolina this week, the first Bushism exploded as the governor painted a passionate picture of the military dangers facing the US, and the pressing need for protection against rogue missile launches. "This is still a dangerous world," he told more than 2,000 supporters at an oyster roast. "It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses." Bush's spokespeople could not immediately explain what a mential loss was, but it seemed only distantly related to missile launches.2 "Rarely is the question asked, 'Is our children learning?'" During that same South Carolina campaign swing in January 2000, Governor Bush committed another grammatical mix-up while wrangling a sentence containing both singular and plural subjects, this example occurring (with a modicum of irony) during the portion of his stump speech dealing with education: That's not to say Bush hasn't had his share of flubs. Part of his stump speech focuses on education. On Tuesday, talking to a crowd of several hundred at a cavernous civic center in Florence, S.C., Bush decried those who ignore educational programs that produce no results  inadvertently revealing a temporary shortcoming in his own grammar skills.  "What's not fine is rarely is the question asked, are, is our children learning?" Bush said.3 "Will the highways of the Internet become more few?" During his January 2000 push to win the first primary election of the campaign, held in New Hampshire, Governor Bush was asked to comment on the recently announced merger of media giants Time Warner and AOL, and he addressed concerns over its potential monopolistic effects with some unusual phrasing: When asked about the Time Warner/America Online merger, the candidate took an unexpected detour on the information superhighway. The key question in considering the merger, Bush said, is "will the highways to the Internet become more few?"4 "How many hands have I shaked?" By October 1999 Republicans were noting Governor Bush's relatively rare appearances in New Hampshire and were beginning to question whether he had assumed he had the nomination sewn up and could afford to take the February 2000 New Hampshire primary for granted.   When reporters persistently questioned him about that possibility on 22 October 1999, during his first campaign swing through New Hampshire since early September, Governor Bush expressed the notion that the important factor was not the number of appearances he made, but the number of people he reached during those appearances: Asked repeatedly today about why he had not been around more, Mr. Bush at one point interrupted a reporter's question to say, "The important question is, How many hands have I shaked."5 "They misunderestimate me." The misuse of 'misunderestimate' for 'underestimate' seems to be one of  George W. Bush's more common elocutionary mistakes.  We can't pin down exactly when he used 'misunderestimate' for the first time in a public statement as a presidential candidate; the earliest print reference we could find appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on 13 November 2000, but it didn't detail where and when he said it.  Nonetheless,  Bush was still using the word (and catching himself at it) after his inauguration as President, as demonstrated by this excerpt from a 29 March 2001 news conference: Look, it is in our nation's best interests to have long-term tax relief, and that has been my focus all along. I'm confident we can have it, get it done. I believe not only can we get long-term tax relief in place. Since our country is running some surpluses in spite of the dire predictions about cash flow, I believe we have an opportunity to fashion an immediate stimulus package, as well. The two ought to go hand in hand. Those who think that they can say, "We're only going to have a stimulus package, but let's forget tax relief," misunderestimate ...  or, excuse me,  underestimate  just making sure you were paying attention  underestimate our administration's resolve to get this done ...6 "I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity." This line is a retrospective statement Bush uttered during an interview about his involvement in a partnershipthat bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989: George W. Bush has frequently claimed to have cobbled together the deal to buy the Rangers in 1989. "I was like a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity," Mr. Bush said in a long interview about his past. "And I just grabbed on to it. I was going to put the deal together. And I did." The initiative, Mr. Bush acknowledges, came from Bill DeWitt, a businessman and friend of the family. Mr. DeWitt had heard that the Rangers were on the market and wanted to recruit Mr. Bush as a partner to buy the team.15 "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist." On Friday, 29 September 2000, Governor Bush was on the stump in Saginaw, Michigan, and deviated from his prepared speech to reassure the business community that he would not support the tearing down of energy-producing dams merely to protect threatened fish species, an issue he had recently covered while campaigning in the Pacific Northwest:    Friday, feeling the need to explain his statement during a speech on energy policy that he intended to maintain dams in the Pacific Northwest, he departed from his text and added, "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." He did not elaborate.7 Mark Crispin Miller noted in The Bush Dyslexicon that: This remark is striking not because it's silly but because it casts a threatened creature as a national enemy.  A relic of the Cold War, the phrase "peaceful coexistence" was a predtente Soviet coinage, meant to pitch conciliation between the world's two rival superpowers. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream." Swinging through Wisconsin in mid-October 2000 en route to a debate with Democratic presidential challenger Al Gore, Governor Bush was discussing the importance of tax cuts to American families when he transposed a couple of words in a well-worn phrase: The Texas governor and GOP presidential nominee tangles up words often enough that he sometimes jokes about it, and the phenomenon has acquired a name  Bushism. On the campaign trail Wednesday, he let one fly: "Families is where our nation finds hope," he said, "where wings take dream."8 "Put food on your family!" On 27 January 2000, speaking in Nashua just a few days before the New Hampshire primary, Governor Bush was trying to illustrate the economic plight of single working mothers and again transposed (and omitted) a few words in the familiar reference to putting food on the table for one's family: At a breakfast meeting with the Nashua Chamber of Commerce, Bush illustrated his brand of compassionate conservatism by urging his listeners to put themselves in the role of a single mother "working hard to put food on your family."4 Since these words are difficult to quote in the context in which they were offered, they were soon being rendered as the pithier "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." "Knock down the tollbooth!" Governor Bush's misuse of 'tollbooth' for 'roadblock,' in reference to eliminating tax obstacles that prevent the working poor from joining the middle class, comes from his New Hampshire campaign appearances in January 2000, but contemporary reports don't seem to agree on the exact words he used  perhaps there was more than one such incident: Things must be good here, because the mere mention of tax cuts is not enough to get the crowd cheering. What they like is when Bush worries about the working poor; they applaud vigorously when he complains that a single mother making $22,000 is being penalized by the tax system. "It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."9  "The hardest job in America is to be a single mom, making $20,000 a year," Bush declared at a recent Rotary Club lunch where he promised that as president, he would reduce the struggling woman's marginal income-tax rate and "knock down her tollbooth to the middle class."10   Last weekend, fire marshals were actually turning people away from political rallies. At a high school near Nashua, you could see folks forlornly peeking in the windows, yearning to be let inside to hear George W. Bush call for "a law that provides liability to teachers who enforce discipline in the schools." All the candidates are tired, but Mr. Bush's speeches are getting particularly unintelligible  at the same high school, he announced, "I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth." 11 "Vulcanize society! " At the very beginning of the 2000 presidential campaign, Ken Herman reported in a front-page story appearing in the 23 March 1999 edition of the Austin American-Statesman that Governor Bush had expressed his disdain for racial quotas as programs that "vulcanize" society: Sometimes this smooth operator is anything but. This was evident in a March 23 piece by Ken Herman, the Austin American-Statesman's chief Bush watcher, who wrote about the governor's "2-step around hot topics." Mr. Bush says he's against "hard quotas, quotas that basically delineate based on whatever. However, they delineate, quotas, I think, vulcanize society."12 In this instance Governor Bush of course meant to say 'Balkanize' (to divide a group into small, often hostile units) rather than 'vulcanize' (to improve the strength of rubber by combining it with sulfur in the presence of heat and pressure).  However, the issue was muddied a few days later when the American-Statesman reversed itself and issued a correction:  A front-page story Tuesday inaccurately quoted Gov. George W. Bush's position on quotas in college admissions and the awarding of state contracts. The story said Bush believes quotas "vulcanize society." Bush actually said he believes quotas "Balkanize society."13 Whether the reporter misquoted Governor Bush or whether Governor Bush really did say 'vulcanize' and the American-Statesman later printed an amended quote at the behest of his office is something we can't determine. "Make the pie higher!" This final item (a misstatement of the concept of putting more money into the hands of Americans by reducing taxes to grow the economy and enlarge the economic "pie" that everyone shares  i.e., making the pie "bigger" rather than "higher") is the phrase perhaps most often cited as an example of "Bushisms," so much so that it was used for the title of the poem quoted at the head of this page.  And it is a real quote, something Bush said during the course of a 15 February 2000 Republican debate (moderated by CNN host Larry King) in Columbia, South Carolina, between Texas Governor George W. Bush, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and former Reagan administration official Ambassador Alan Keyes: The difference between our plans is, I know whose money it is we're dealing with. We're dealing with the government  we're dealing with the people's money, not the government's money. And I want to give people their money back.  And if you're going to have a tax cut, everybody ought to have a tax cut. This kind of Washington, D.C., view about targeted tax cuts is tax cuts driven by polls and focus groups. If you pay taxes in America, you ought to get a tax cut.  Under my plan, if you're a family of four in South Carolina, making $50,000, you get 50-percent tax cut. I've reduced the lower rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, which does this  and this is important. There are people on the outskirts of poverty, like single moms who are working the toughest job in America. If she has two kids, and making $22,000, for every additional dollar she earns, she pays a higher marginal rate on her taxes than someone making $200,000.  You bet I cut the taxes at the top. That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher. This one initially posed something of a mystery to us, because transcripts of the debate prepared by the Federal Document Clearing House and CNN attribute the block of text quoted above to Senator John McCain, not Governor Bush.  However, the immediately preceding question had clearly been posed to Governor Bush, and newspaper accounts the following morning noted the "make the pie higher" comment as something uttered by Governor Bush: Bush, shedding his sometimes goofy demeanor, was as animated and forceful as he has been in any debate, punching the air with his fist to underscore his words. He scored points among the party faithful in calling for an end to the Clinton era in Washington  one of the money lines of the night. On taxes and bringing prosperity to struggling working mothers, however, Bush mangled one metaphor: "We ought to make the pie higher."14 Moreover, at a Radio/TV correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C., a few weeks later, Governor Bush made humorous use of the item with no indication that the words weren't his own: Now most people would say in speaking of the economy, "We ought to make the pie bigger." I, however, am on record saying, "We ought to make the pie higher." As frivolous as this experiment may have been, let's hope it's a harbinger of more accurate information to come. Last updated:  21 July 2008    Sources:    7.  Allen, Mike.  "Bush's Gaffes Are Back As Debates Near."   The Washington Post.  1 October 2000  (p. A8).    11.  Collins, Gail.  "Savor the Moment."   The New York Times.  1 February 2000  (p. A21).     5.  Henneberger, Melinda.  "New Hampshire Warns Bush, 'Don't Be a Stranger Hee-ahh'"   The New York Times.  23 October 1999  (p. A12).    12.  Hunt, Albert R.  "George W. Can Run But He Can't Hide."   The Wall Street Journal.  1 April 1999  (p. A23).     4.  Hutcheson, Ron.  "Candidate George W. Bush Sometimes Mangles Words."   Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  29 January 2000  (p. A8).        Ivins, Molly.  Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.   New York: Random House, 2000.  ISBN 0-375-50399-4  (p. 19). Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush     1.  Jackson, David and Wayne Slater.  "Subdued McCain Endorses Bush."   The Dallas Morning News.  10 May 2000.    16.  Kristof, Nicholas D.  "The 2000 Campaign: Breaking Into Baseball."   The New York Times.  24 September 2000.    10.  Leonard, Mary.  "Fight Intensifies for Votes of Women."   The Boston Globe.  22 January 2000  (p. A1).     8.  Mason, Julie.  "Campaign Notebook."   The Houston Chronicle.  19 October 2000  (p. A38).    14.  Miga, Andrew.  "Tight S. Carolina Race Fuels Contentious Debate."   The Boston Globe.  16 February 2000  (p. 27).        Miller, Mark Crispin.  The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.   New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.  ISBN 0-393-04183-2. The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder     3.  Miller, T. Christian.  "With a Grin, Bush Answers Early Charges of Aloofness."   Los Angeles Times.  14 January 2000  (p. 20).        Smith, Zay N.  "A Small Comfort Amid Election Snafus, Quarrels."   Chicago Sun-Times.  13 November 2000  (p. 26).     9.  Von Drehle, David.  "12 Hours, 4 Contenders, Many Parallels."   The Washington Post.  15 January 2000  (p. A1).    13.  Austin American-Statesman.  "Corrections."   25 March 1999  (p. A2).     2.  The Financial Times.  "Bushed Again."   14 January 2000.     6.  The New York Times.  "In Bush's Words: 'Both Sides Must Take Important Steps' in the Mideast."   30 March 2001  (p. A12). It appears likely that come November Rhode Islanders will decide whether to expand the states two slot parlors into full-fledged casinos. State legislators have already approved holding a referendum on a proposal to allow table games at Twin River, in Lincoln, and are considering doing the same for Newport Grand.On March 6, before the House passed legislation to put the Newport Grand question on the ballot, Rep. Robert Jacquard raised concerns about allowing casinos in Rhode Island.Let's face it: there are a lot of casinos across the country that have gone bankrupt, the Cranston Democrat said. Just because you give them a casino license is not a guarantee that you are going to save all this money for the state and guarantee all this revenue. It is just not true at all. Management is the most important factor.But doesnt the house always win? Have a lot of casinos around the country really gone bankrupt?We called Jacquard, who explained that hes not necessarily opposed to casinos in Rhode Island, but he does want to make sure that if the state opts to go down that route, responsible operators with a lot of experience in the industry are brought in.He told us that hes read about a number of casinos failing around the country, and although he hasnt kept a list, he recalls bankruptcies occurring particularly in the South.I know what I read in the paper, Jacquard said.We couldnt find a central repository of information on casino bankruptcies, but we did come across numerous news reports about casinos and their financial struggles.Donald Trump has filed four corporate bankruptcies -- in 1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009 -- in connection to his casinos in Atlantic City, N.J. Tropicana Entertainment, which operates casinos in Nevada, New Jersey, Louisiana, Mississippi and Indiana, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 and 2009. Station Casinos, which owns or operates 18 casinos in and around Las Vegas, made a similar filing in 2009.And on a side note, Rhode Islanders will be familiar with the struggles of Twin River, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and emerged under new ownership the following year. Its not technically a casino, but it is a local reminder of the potential pitfalls of the gambling industry.I. Nelson Rose, distinguished senior professor of law at Whittier Law School, in Costa Mesa, Calif., who writes about gambling and legal issues, has kept a partial list of gambling companies that have closed or filed for bankruptcy protection in the last three years as the recession has dragged on. He has counted 18 companies so far.Rose said that other casino operators, including MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Foxwoods, may not be facing bankruptcy but have struggled because of mounting debts and falling revenues.David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said gambling revenues in all major U.S. markets have declined since 2007 as discretionary spending has dried up.He also pointed to heightened competition in the gambling industry as another factor thats squeezing casinos. For example, Atlantic City has lost business to newer casinos in Pennsylvania, whose residents can now gamble closer to home instead of making the trip to New Jersey.Its in that sort of competitive market when management can be particularly important. Rose referred to Colorados experience in the early 1990s when 68 casinos opened in two or three years. A third of them eventually went bankrupt, and, said Rose, it turned out that the operators of those failed casinos had no previous experience in the industry.Our rulingGambling is a boom or bust industry. Even when times are good, casinos fail. And when times are bad, even more fail.As Schwartz told us, casinos definitely are not a sure thing. Good management matters  -- a point Jacquard made as well.We rate Jacquards statement True. (Get updates fromPolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on ourPolitiFact Rhode Island Facebookpage.) Claim:  Photograph shows Mitt Romney posing with children whose shirts spell out the word "MONEY."  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, February 2012] I've seen this image floating around Facebook for about two weeks now. I was wondering if this is the result of photo manipulation, or if this was an honest mistake (or perhaps an intentional joke on the part of the Romney family). I can't trace the origin of this image.    Origins:  Former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has a net worth estimated (in his own words) to be "between $150 and about $200-and-some-odd million dollars," making him one of the wealthiest U.S. presidential candidates of recent years.  (CNBC rated  net worth him third on their list of "10 Richest US Presidential Candidates," behind Steve Forbes and Ross Perot.)   third Mitt Romney's financial assets (along with various finance-related comments the candidate has made during the 2012 presidential campaign) have often been the focus of political criticism, with detractors such as Republican opponent Newt Gingrich's terming the former Massachusetts governor a "'rich guy' incapable of connecting with working class Americans." comments The photograph displayed above plays on that image of a wealthy, unsympathetic candidate, supposedly showing Mitt Romney being so crass as to pose with a group of children (not his own  Mitt and Ann Romney have five adult sons) wearing shirts that spell out the word 'MONEY' against the backdrop of an American flag.   In fact, this picture is a digitally manipulated rearrangement of an Associated Press photograph showing off the Romney campaign logo, with the young woman on the left wearing a shirt that bears the stylized red-white-and-blue 'R' of that logo, and the rest of the children's shirts spelling out the remainder of the candidate's surname.  The original AP photograph and caption were as follows: campaign logo original Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, poses for a photo with the Fisher family backstage prior to a campaign rally in Elko, Nev., Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Campaigning throughout Nevada on Friday, Romney sought to convince weary voters that he alone had the prescriptions for what ails the country, even as the government reported that a quarter-million Americans streamed back into the work force in January. Last updated:  6 March 2012 In August 2019, as many people took to the Internet to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote on paper, a piece of text started to circulate on social media that supposedly listed "9 things that women couldn't do until 1971":   The following list is of NINE things a woman couldn't do in 1971  yes the date is correct, 1971. In 1971 a woman could not: 1. Get a Credit Card in her own name  it wasn't until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband's signature. 2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn't be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant  that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of *1978*! 3. Serve on a jury - It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn't until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states. 4. Fight on the front lines  admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn't until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff. 5. Get an Ivy League education - Yale and Princeton didn't accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn't admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women's college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but, by and large, women in the '60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold. 6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977! 7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to  spousal rape wasn't criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again ... 1993. 8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn't outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don't mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010. 9. The birth control pill: Issues like reproductive freedom and a woman's right to decide when and whether to have children were only just beginning to be openly discussed in the 1960s. In 1957, the FDA approved of the birth control pill but only for "severe menstrual distress." In 1960, the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive. Even so, the pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. Some of those opposed said oral contraceptives were "immoral, promoted prostitution and were tantamount to abortion." It wasn't until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status. In short, birth control meant a woman could complete her education, enter the work force and plan her own life. Oh, and one more thing, prior to 1880 which is just a few years before the photo of this very proud lady was taken, the age of consent for sex was set at 10 or 12 in more states, with the exception of our neighbor Delaware  where it was 7 YEARS OLD! Feminism is NOT just for other women. KNOW your HERstory. A similar post on Facebook with tens of thousands of shares reported much the same in 2016 from user Lisa Bialac-Jehle. post on Facebook In general, the list above accurately reports nine things that women couldn't do in 1971. We'll take a closer look at each item below: Get a credit card in her own name As this post explains, banks were able to discriminate against women applying for credit cards until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in October 1974. Women could get credit cards prior to this legislation, but as The Smithsonian notes, they were likely to be asked a barrage of personal questions and were often required to be accompanied by a man to co-sign for a credit card. Even then, women often received cards with lower limits or higher rates: Equal Credit Opportunity Act Smithsonian Forty years ago, any woman applying for a credit card could be asked a barrage of questions: Was she married? Did she plan to have children? Many banks required single, divorced or widowed women to bring a man along with them to cosign for a credit card, and some discounted the wages of women by as much as 50 percent when calculating their credit card limits. As women and minorities pushed for equal civil rights in various arenas, credit cards became the focus of a series of hearings in which women documented the discrimination they faced. And, finally, in 1974  forty years ago this year  the Senate passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which made it illegal to discriminate against someone based on their gender, race, religion and national origin. Be guaranteed that they wouldn't be unceremoniously fired for getting pregnant Women faced a number of work-related consequences for getting pregnant prior to the passage of thePregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. On the 40th anniversary of this law, the ACLU posted a statement explaining how pregnancy often resulted in pink slips for working women: Pregnancy Discrimination Act statement Forty years ago, working women in the United States won the legal protection to become working mothers. On Oct. 31, 1978, Congress enacted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, making it illegal for employers to deny a woman a job  or promotion, or higher pay, or any other opportunity  because she is pregnant. The statute had an immediate, dramatic impact on women's ability to fully participate in the workforce. Although on-the-job sex discrimination had been outlawed more than a decade earlier, pregnancy wasn't legally recognized as a type of sex discrimination. As a result, a pregnancy often resulted in a pink slip. Some employers even imposed formal policies prohibiting pregnancy outright because their female employees were expected to project a certain image  for example, flight attendants, who were expected by airlines to convey sexual availability to their businessman customers, and teachers, who were expected by school districts to project chasteness to their young pupils. Serve on a jury Women's road to the jury box was a long one. While the state of Utah deemed women qualified for jury duty back in 1898, it took the other 49 states several decades to reach the same conclusion. The ACLU noted that women were excluded from jury duties for a number of reasons: noted Aside from the "defect of sex," women were excluded from juries for a variety of reasons: their primary obligation was to their families and children; they should be shielded from hearing the details of criminal cases, particularly those involving sex offenses; they would be too sympathetic to persons accused of crimes; and keeping male and female jurors together during long trials could be injurious to women. While this viral posts states that it wasn't until "1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states," we found that this battle was still being fought for at least another two years. In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that it was constitutionally unacceptable for states to bar women from juries. From a 1975 article in The New York Times: The New York Times The Supreme Court ruled today that shifting economic and social patterns of the last dozen years have made it constitutionally unacceptable for states to deny women equal opportunity to serve on juries. The 8to1 decision will have little practical effect on the makeup of juries. All states, including Louisiana where the case originated, now have laws that do not exempt women from jury service, although women are treated differently from men in some instances involving such service. But the majority broke important philosophical ground by acknowledging for the first time that the role of women is society was changing and that the courts must recognize their growing economic independence in assessing their legal rights. "If it was ever the case that women were unqualified to sit on juries or were so situated that none of them should be required to perform jury service," Associate Justice Byron R. White wrote for the majority, "that time has long since passed." Fight on the front lines Women in the United States have been aiding military operations as nurses, cooks, and in other non-combat positions since the Revolutionary War in 1775. However, it wasn't until 1976 that the United States Military Academy at West Point accepted women to the Corps of Cadets. Still, it would be several more years until women would find their way to the front lines. In 1994, the Pentagon restricted women from serving in "artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles." This ban wasn't lifted until 2013: several more years restricted 2013 The US military officially lifted a ban on female soldiers serving in combat roles on Thursday and said that anyone qualified should get a chance to fight on the front lines of war regardless of their sex. At a press conference in the Pentagon Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that women had already proved themselves in action on America's battlefields and the move was simply a way of catching up with reality. "Everyone is entitled to a chance," said Panetta, who is retiring form his post this year. At the moment women make up about 14% of the military's 1.4 million active members and more than 280,000 of them have done tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan or overseas bases where they helped support the US war effort in those countries. Indeed, some 152 women have been killed in the conflicts. Get an Ivy League education The Ivy League is comprised of eight universities in the northeastern part of the United States. While women were able to attend Cornell University as early as the 1870s, it wasn't until 1983 that the final Ivy League school, Columbia College, started to admit women: 1983 The last all-male school in the Ivy League became a coeducational one yesterday when Columbia College enrolled women for the first time in its 229-year history. It was a day of celebration at Columbia, with few alumni or students criticizing the change, and with college administrators saying the decision to admit women had resulted in the most talented freshman class ever. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. According to Time, the term "sexual harassment" was coined by a group of students at Cornell University in 1975. The term was popularized in a New York Times article published that same year, and in 1977, three court cases confirmed that a woman could take legal action against her employer for sexual harassment: Time New York Times The phrase "sexual harassment" was coined in 1975, by a group of women at Cornell University. A former employee of the university, Carmita Wood, filed a claim for unemployment benefits after she resigned from her job due to unwanted touching from her supervisor. Cornell had refused Wood's request for a transfer, and denied her the benefits on the grounds that she quit for "personal reasons." Wood together with activists at the university's Human Affairs Office, formed a group called Working Women United. At a Speak Out event hosted by the group, secretaries, mailroom clerks, filmmakers, factory workers and waitresses shared their stories, revealing that the problem extended beyond the university setting. The women spoke of masturbatory displays, threats and pressure to trade sexual favors for promotions ... ... By 1977, three court cases confirmed that a woman could sue her employer for harassment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, using the EEOC as the vehicle for redress. The Supreme Court upheld these early cases in 1986 with Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, which was based on the complaints of Mechelle Vinson, a bank employee whose boss intimidated her into having sex with him in vaults and basements up to fifty times. Vinson was African American, as were many of the litigants in pioneering sexual harassment cases; some historians suggest that the success of racial discrimination cases during these same years encouraged women of color to vigorously pursue their rights at work. Decide not to have sex if her husband wanted to This item is referring to spousal rape. The first person to be convicted of spousal rape in the U.S. was a Massachusetts bartender who broke into the home of his estranged wife in 1979 and raped her: convicted English common law, the source of much traditional law in the U.S., had long held that it wasn't legally possible for a man to rape his wife. It was in 1736 that Sir Matthew Hale  the same jurist who said that it was hard to prove a rape accusation from a woman whose personal life wasn't entirely "innocent," setting the standard that a woman's past sexual experiences could be used by the defense in a rape case explained that marriage constituted permanent consent that could not be retracted. That idea stood for centuries. Then, in 1979, a pair of cases highlighted changing legal attitudes about the concept. Until then, most state criminal codes had rape definitions that explicitly excluded spouses. (In fact, as TIME later pointed out, it wasn't just the case that saying "no" to one's husband didn't make the act that followed rape; in addition, saying "no" to one's husband was usually grounds for him to get a divorce.) As the year opened, a man in Salem, Ore., was found not guilty of raping his wife, though they both stated that they had fought before having sex. But, even as the verdict was returned, a National Organization for Women spokesperson told TIME that "the very fact that there has been such a case" meant that change was in the air  and she was quickly proved right. The case believed to be the first-ever American conviction for spousal rape came that fall, when a Salem, Mass., bartender drunkenly burst into the home he used to share with his estranged wife and raped her. It's not hard to see how this case was the one that made the possibility of rape between a married couple clear to the public: they were in the middle of a divorce, and the crime involved house invasion and violence. As TIME noted, several other states had also adopted laws making it possible to pursue such a case, though they had not yet been put to the test. Even though the first conviction for spousal rape occurred during the 1970s, it wasn't until 1993 that spousal rape was officially illegal in all 50 states. While marital rape has been technically illegal in all 50 states since 1993, advocates argue that there are still legal loopholes in some states that allow for marital rape to be treated differently than rape. legal loopholes Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as men This item refers to the practice of "gender rating" by health insurance companies, which typically resulted in higher premiums for women seeking individual health insurance. In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) sought to do away with the practice. Obamacare NPR reported: reported Any woman who has bought health insurance on her own probably didn't find herself humming the old show tune, "I Enjoy Being a Girl." That's because more than 90 percent of individual plans charge women higher premiums than men for the same coverage, a practice known as gender rating. Women spend $1 billion more annually on their health insurance premiums than they would if they were men because of gender rating, according to a recent report by the National Women's Law Center. Under the health care overhaul, the practice is banned starting in 2014. The birth control pill This post correctly states that the FDA first approved an oral contraceptive (a birth-control pill called Enovid) in 1957. However, at the time, the pill was only approved for use as a "treatment of severe menstrual disorders," and the FDA required that it be labeled with a warning that Enovid will prevent ovulation. A few years later in 1960, the FDA approved Enovid as a contraceptive. Still, the pill was only available to married couples. It wasn't until 1972 that birth-control pills were available to all women, regardless of marital status: 1972 Then came the landmark date, marking the biggest change to America's contraceptive potential in history. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved Enovid, an oral contraceptive pill released by G.D. Searle and Company. By 1965, almost 6.5 million American women were on "The Pill," the oral contraceptive's enduring vague nickname, which is thought to have stemmed from women requesting it from their doctors as discreetly as possible. That same year, the Supreme Court struck down state laws that prohibited contraception use, though only for married couples. (Unmarried people were out of luck until 1972, when birth control was deemed legal for all.) Ortiz, Erik.  "'It's Disgusting': Loopholes Remain in North Carolina's Sexual Assault Laws. Advocates Ask Why."   NBC News.  11 May 2019. Eveleth, Rose.  "Forty Years Ago, Women Had a Hard Time Getting Credit Cards."   Smithsonian.  8 January 2014. Thomas, Gillian.  "Employees Who Have Babies Are Still Getting the Axe."   ACLU.  31 October 2018. McDonald, Laughlin.  "A Jury of One's Peers."   ACLU.  18 March 2011. Harris, Paul.  "Women in Combat: US Military Officially Lifts Ban on Female Soldiers."   The Guardian.  25 January 2013. Rothman, Lily.  "When Spousal Rape First Became a Crime in the U.S."   Time.  28 July 2015. Weaver, Warren.  "High Court Backs Women's Jury Rights."   The New York Times.  22 January 1975. Bumiller, Elisabeth and Thom Shanker.  "Pentagon Is Set to Lift Combat Ban for Women."   The New York Times.  23 January 2013. Belkin, Lisa.  "First Coed Class Enters Columbia College."   The New York Times.  30 August 1983. Cohen, Sascha.  "A Brief History of Sexual Harassment in America Before Anita Hill."   Time.  11 April 2016. Nemy, End.  "Women Begin to Speak Out Against Sexual Harassment at Work."   The New York Times.  19 August 1975. NPR.  "Health Insurance Prices For Women Set To Drop."   17 July 2012. Gibson, Megan.  "The Long, Strange History of Birth Control."   Time.  2 February 2015. Editor's note: Shortly after this article was published, U.S. President Donald Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act. You can read more about Trump's veto here from the Associated Press. The original article continues below. Associated Press House Resolution 6395, or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA), was surprisingly controversial during the final weeks of 2020. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to veto the military budget bill, which passed the House and Senate with more than a two-thirds majority vote, because it did not call for the removal of Section 230, an unrelated piece of legislation that provides internet publishers legal immunity from third-party content.  threatened to veto Section 230 On Dec. 22, 2020, conservative commentator Chuck Callesto claimed that there was another reason Trump might want to veto the bill. Callesto wrote that the NDAA contained a provision that "Nullifies the President's use of the Insurrection Act."   While Callesto presents his claim as if he is quoting directly from the bill, the phrase "nullifies the President's use of the Insurrection Act" does not appear anywhere in the NDAA (which numbers 1,480 pages, not 5,893 as Callesto claimed), the full text of which can be found here.  here Insurrection Act House Amendment 833 It's a bit of a moot point, however, as this amendment did not make it into the final bill. As of this writing, the NDAA does not include any language pertaining to the Insurrection Act.  The Hill reported on Dec. 6 that the amendment pertaining to the Insurrection Act was removed as Congress debated the NDAA: reported The NDAA also includes a modest rebuke of Trumps use of Pentagon funding on his southern border wall. The compromise includes House-passed language capping emergency military construction spending at $100 million annually for domestic projects. Trump took $3.6 billion from military construction funds to build the wall. The compromise jettisoned some rebukes of Trump, including House-passed language to restrict a presidents Insurrection Act powers and block funding for a nuclear test. But this year stands in stark contrast to last year, when most of House Democrats efforts to box in Trump on defense policy were stripped from the final product. In summary, the viral tweet claiming that the NDAA "nullified" the Insurrection Act is based on a House amendment proposed in July that would have restricted (not nullified) the president's use of the Insurrection Act. This amendment, which would have required the president to make certifications to Congress before invoking the Insurrection Act, did not make it into the final form of the legislation. In June 2021, as airlines experienced a surge in demand, multiple news outlets reported that American Airlines (AA) was cutting about 1% of its flights in the coming weeks amid bad weather and labor shortages. Reuters reported: "American Airlines said the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand also came at a time when bad weather caused multi-hour delays over the last few weeks, disrupting flight and crew work hours. The company said some of its vendors were also struggling with labor shortages, impacting the airline's operations." news outlets reported Responding to that latter reason for the cuts, one Twitter user authored the below-displayed tweet that makes several claims about the company's budgeting during the COVID-19 pandemic and allegedly explains why AA was struggling to fill job positions. one Twitter user COVID-19 pandemic   We contacted the tweet's author to learn their process for composing the post, as well as their potential connection to the airline. We have not received a response, but we will update this report when, or if, that changes. Nonetheless, the tweet includes the following claims: Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act Doug Parker But, before we proceed, let us note here: The airline's communication team's statements to news media regarding the upcoming flight cancellations through mid-July (see CNN's story here, CNBC's coverage here, and NBC's article here), including to Snopes, said "labor shortages [among] some of our vendors" (emphasis added) were affecting operations. See the statement we received, for example: here here here   That umbrella term, "vendors," could include companies that operate independently but have a contract with American to provide goods or services for its flights, such as aircraft equipment manufacturers or business that sell blankets or pillows for passengers. Snopes asked a company spokesperson what vendors, specifically, faced employment gaps and impacted flights, and he did not answer the question. While the spokesperson shared other comments (which we included in the sections below), he also did not share a response to critics who believed the company should shift around funds, including those provided by the federal government, so that the CEO received less compensation and rank-and-file staff earned higher paychecks. For that reason and others, this fact check does not address that underlying argument of the tweet. Not quite  but the airline company did take advantage of other federal grants and loans. Let us explain that conclusion. Only companies that qualified as a "small businesses" (criteria here), or had 500 or fewer employees, were eligible for PPP loans. American, on the other hand, documented about 133,700 full-time employees, ranging from pilots to flight attendants to mechanics, federal regulatory documents showed. here regulatory documents showed Rather, AA utilized the government's Payroll Support Program (PSP), a different financial boost established by the CARES Act that provided $25 billion for various airlines' payroll expenses. Payroll Support Program The U.S. Department of the Treasury distributed the money, in part, based on air carriers' payroll expenses from April 2019 through September 2019, and said it "must exclusively be used for the continuation of payment of employee wages, salaries, and benefits." U.S. Department of the Treasury According to that federal agency's database of recipients and AA spokesperson Matt Miller, American was budgeting with $12.7 billion from the program, as of this writing. The majority of that amount (almost double what was described in the viral tweet) was one-time grant money, while about one-third represented loans that the airline carrier needed to pay back. agency's database 12.7 "These funds ensured we could keep our team members on payroll throughout the pandemic despite the significant drop-off in demand for air travel," wrote Miller in an email to Snopes. Yes, Parker, who is paid almost entirely in stock awards, took home $10.66 million in total compensation in 2020, according to Miller and The Dallas Morning News. (The carrier's headquarters is located in Dallas-Fort Worth, making the Dallas newspaper a primary source of news about it.) The Dallas Morning News That compensation was based on the company's profits in 2019 (so it did not factor in the financial struggle of the pandemic), and was his smallest paycheck since taking the helm. The newspaper reported: "Parker's compensation has mostly hovered between $11.1 million and $12.3 million a year during his time as CEO, with the exception of 2013 when he made $17.6 million based largely on bonuses he had for merging his former airline, US Airways, with American Airlines." CEO Parker gave up his cash salary in 2015 to move to the all-stock compensation plan, along with benefits including flights and life insurance premiums. Miller told us: "Being paid in stock ensures his compensation is at-risk, based on the results the company achieves, and aligned with our shareholders interests," he said. "Dougs realizable compensation for 2020 was considerably less  approximately $2.9 million, or 23% of the target." This is false. While the company did cut some supervisor and support staff jobs, and it was true that its workforce overall declined by about 31,000 positions in 2020, it was erroneous to attribute that decrease exclusively to involuntary layoffs. According to annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission obtained by Snopes, AA's payroll indeed shrunk from about 133,700 full-time employees at the end of 2019 to roughly 102,700 such workers. That was a 23% workforce reduction, totaling about 31,000 positions. However, neither those regulatory documents, nor a news story by the Dallas Business Journal about them, said that decrease was because executives enacted widespread layoffs. news story by the Dallas Business Journal It was true American briefly furloughed 19,000 employees in fall 2020 and then brought them back weeks later, after the company secured more PSP funding from the federal government. furloughed 19,000 employees Then, months later, news reports said the company warned 13,000 employees of possible lay offs, pending the country's rate of vaccinations and interest in traveling. As of this writing, however, those worker remained in their jobs, Miller told Snopes. news reports But, as we noted, there were some permanent job losses during the pandemic. The airline cut about 30% of its management and administrative positions, totaling roughly 5,000 jobs, according to news reports and Miller. Those were the only involuntarily layoffs, based on our research. We found no evidence of widespread layoffs for employees who maintain the company's operations or deal with customers, like the tweet implied. Rather, Miller said, the company documented tens of thousands fewer workers in 2020 compared to 2019 because it had expanded its "early out program." A slew of front-line workers agreed to voluntarily terminate their employment to take advantage of severance benefits, or to leave the company for months on end for partial compensation. "Ultimately our headcount is smaller than it was before the pandemic, but the vast majority of that reduction is from voluntary departures," Miller said. "Any front-line employees who departed the company did so voluntarily via an early out program. The only involuntary departures were on the management side." In sum, we rate this multi-pronged claim a "Mixture" of true and false information. The only thing the internet loves more than a good prediction is pretending that a good prediction exists. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen some far-reaching attempts to claim that this contagious and deadly disease had been predicted by episodes of "The Simpsons," George Orwell's book "1984," the alleged soothsayer known as Nostradamus, alleged psychic Sylvia Browne, South Korean television shows, the video game Resident Evil, and a novel by Dean Koontz.  far-reaching attempts episodes of "The Simpsons,"  George Orwell's book "1984," alleged soothsayer known as Nostradamus alleged psychic Sylvia Browne, South Korean television shows Resident Evil novel by Dean Koontz In November 2021, as a new variant of COVID-19 emerged that health officials called "omicron," social media users started looking for old pieces of media containing the word so that they could claim that this variant had been "predicted." What they found was a movie from the 1960s:    There really was a movie made in 1963 called "Omicron." And that's where this movie's connection to the current COVID-19 pandemic ends.  The word "omicron" isn't new, and it's use in a 1960s movie isn't all that surprising. "Omicron" is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet and has been in use for thousands of years. In academic fields, it is often used to represent the 15th item in a list. The World Health Organization announced in May that it would be naming new COVID-19 variants as they emerge by using the the Greek alphabet. While the "delta" variant made headlines, there have been several other variants, such as epsilon, Iota and lambda, that didn't warrant too much concern. When the latest variant emerged, WHO skipped two letters, nu and xi, as they are common surnames, and named the new variant omicron.  World Health Organization announced in May skipped two letters WHO has assigned simple, easy to say and remember labels for key variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, using letters of the Greek alphabet. These labels were chosen after wide consultation and a review of many potential naming systems. WHO convened an expert group of partners from around the world to do so, including experts who are part of existing naming systems, nomenclature and virus taxonomic experts, researchers and national authorities. The word "omicron" is also frequently used by astronomers to name stars. Omicron Persei, Omicron Andromedae, and Omicron Ceti are all real stars in the galaxy. It's not far-fetched to see how a fiction writer could name a fictional planet or a fictional alien "Omicron." Omicron Persei Omicron Andromedae Omicron Ceti In fact, when some social media users encountered the name of this new COVID-19 variant, a number of people noted how "omicron" would make a great name for a sci-fi movie. Some even created and posted fake movie posters. Here's one fake "Omicron" movie poster (left) next to the original movie poster (right) it was created from: original movie poster   While a few fake "Omicron" movie posters were circulated on social media in November 2021, there really have been a few movies with this title. In 1963, Italian writer and director Ugo Gregoretti made a movie called "Omicron" about an alien that took over a human body in order to learn more about earth. Here's one scene from the satirical film:  This is a real movie, but it has practically nothing to do with the current pandemic. Furthermore, using "omicron" in a work of fiction isn't all that uncommon. In 2013, "The Visitor from Planet Omicron" explored how an alien invasion could be thwarted by really good cooking. The plot of "The Visitor from Planet Omicron" would probably make better conspiratorial fodder as it involves a botanical virus and a corrupt government, but this low-budget comedy in no way "predicted" COVID-19.     The animated show "Futurama" also features an alien character named Lrrr who is the ruler of the Planet Omicron Persei 8. While one could build a conspiracy theory around Lrrr and the other Omicronians starting the COVID-19 pandemic, Lrrr would probably rather eat humans (or force them to make more sitcoms) than kill them with a plague.  ruler of the Planet Omicron Persei 8  Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is not a work of fiction. It wasn't predicted by old sci-fi movies and it wasn't planned by nefarious forces. The latest variant was named "omicron" because that was the next usable letter in the Greek alphabet. The next variant will likely be called "Pi," the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet, which will undoubtedly lead people to claim that the pandemic was predicted by movies like "Life of Pi" or by Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse who was the first to calculate an accurate approximation of pi.  Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse     How Futurama Is Related to the New Omicron COVID Variant. MARCA, 28 Nov. 2021, https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/tv-shows/2021/11/28/61a327fe268e3e001c8b4576.html. This Is How the Number 3.14 Got the Name Pi. Time, https://time.com/4699479/pi-day-history-origins/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021. WHO Announces Simple, Easy-to-Say Labels for SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Interest and Concern. https://www.who.int/news/item/31-05-2021-who-announces-simple-easy-to-say-labels-for-sars-cov-2-variants-of-interest-and-concern. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health, suicide or substance use crisis or emotional distress, reach out 24/7 to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) by dialing or texting 988 or using chat services atsuicidepreventionlifeline.orgto connect to a trained crisis counselor.  suicidepreventionlifeline.org On June 24, 2021,John McAfee, an eccentric security software pioneer, was found dead in his prison cell hours after Spain approved his extradition to the United States to face tax evasion charges. While officials from the Catalan government said in a statement that "everything points to death by suicide," social media users started sharing the hashtag #McAfeedidntkillhimself and pointed to a 2019 tweet in which Mcafee showed a "$WHACKD" tattoo as evidence. found dead in his prison cell    This is a genuine tweet from McAfee. The security software pioneer truly had the "$WHACKD" tattooed on his arm (you can see another image of the tattoo here) and he truly did write "If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd" in a tweet.  tattoo here However, this message from November 2019 was more than a year before McAfee was facing the very real possibility that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. While McAfee's November 2019 tweet may have summed up his mentality at the time, it does not necessarily provide any insight into his state of mind at the time of his death.  November 2019 It should also be noted that McAfee did not get this tattoo solely to signal that he was not suicidal. This tattoo also promoted a cryptocurrency token on the now defunct website McAfeedex.com. McAfee promoted this cryptocurrency token on his site by connecting it to another death, that of Jeffrey Epstein, which many have claimed (with little evidence) was an assassination disguised as a suicide.  cryptocurrency token Jeffrey Epstein McAfee, 75, was arrested in Spain in October 2020 as he was about to board a plane to Turkey. McAfee was wanted in the United States for various tax evasion charges. The BBC reported: BBC reported In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain when he was about to board a plane to Turkey, and accused of failing to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions from consulting work, speaking engagements, crypto-currencies and selling the rights to his life story. The US justice department alleged that McAfee evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees. He was also accused of concealing assets, including a yacht and real estate property, also in other people's names. McAfee was being held in a jail near Barcelona while he awaited extradition. On June 24, 2021, a Spanish court approved his extradition to the United States where he would face charges. If convicted, McAfee could have been sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison.  could have been sentenced Hours after McAfee's extradition was approved, however, the software pioneer was found dead in his prison cell. The Justice Department for the government of Catalonia said that an autopsy would be conducted before officially determining a cause of death. At the moment, however, the Spanish government says that "everything points to death by suicide." autopsy McAfee's lawyer, Javier Villalba, also told Reuters that McAfee died by suicide.  Reuters British-born U.S. technology entrepreneur John McAfee died on Wednesday by suicide in a Barcelona prison after the Spanish high court authorized his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges, his lawyer told Reuters. McAfee's lawyer, Javier Villalba, said the anti-virus software pioneer died by hanging as his nine months in prison brought him to despair. An image purportedly showing NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield holding a bag of marijuana aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was posted by the "Pictures in History" Facebook page in November 2018, along with a caption stating that the astronaut was testing the effects of the drug in space: Facebook   Although followers might expect to see genuine historical images being posted by a social media page named "Pictures in History," that account frequently shares manipulated or miscaptioned images. In this case, an image of Hadfield holding a bag of Easter Eggs was doctored in order to make it appear as if the astronaut were showing off a pouch of marijuana frequently shares manipulated miscaptioned The genuine image was originally posted to Hadfield's Twitter account on Easter in 2013: posted   Not only is the image of Chris Hadfield holding a bag of marijuana fake, but it's unlikely that any similar (but genuine) photographs of astronauts with drug paraphernalia exist, as NASA has been a drug-free workplace since at least the mid-1980s.  drug-free workplace Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has also warned against drug use aboard the International Space Station, arguing that it could be deadly for astronauts to get stoned in space: warned "The problem is, in space now, many things will kill you. So, if you do anything to alter your understanding of what is reality, that's not in the interest of your health. If you want to get high in space, lock yourself in your cabin, and don't come out. 'Cause you could break stuff inadvertently." Koren, Marina.  "Reefer Madness at NASA."
  The Atlantic.  21 November 2018.  Specktor, Brandon.  "Neil deGrasse Tyson Reminds Us Why Smoking Weed in Space Is a Bad Idea."
  Live Science.  17 September 2018. The sculpture pictured below is real, and it was indeed crafted by an Iraqi sculptor from bronze recovered by melting down statues of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but the accompanying explanatory text is quite misleading: The Iraqi sculptor was not "forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam," he did not produce the memorial shown because he was "so grateful that the Americans liberated his country," and the monument was not his idea. Members of the U.S. Army paid the sculptor, who had previously worked on a few other Saddam statues, to create the work pictured according to a design of their choosing: Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004] This picture of the statue was made by an Iraqi artist named Kalat, who for years was forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad. This artist was so grateful that the Americans liberated his country, he melted 3 of the fallen Saddam heads and made a memorial statue dedicated to the American soldiers and their fallen comrades. Kalat worked on this night and day for several months. To the left of the kneeling soldier is a small Iraqi girl giving the soldier comfort as he mourns the loss of his comrade in arms. It is currently on display outside the palace that is now home to the 4th Infantry division. It will eventually be shipped and shown at the memorial museum in Fort Hood, Texas.  As part of the U.S. Army's Task Force Ironhorse, the 4th Infantry Division was deployed in Iraq for most of 2003, participated in the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, and saw many of their comrades killed and wounded in the violence that followed the end of major combat operations. In mid-2003, while the 4th Infantry Division was headquartered in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, Command Sgt. Maj. Charles Fuss, the division's top noncommissioned officer, headed up a project to commemorate the unit's dead and conceived of a memorial featuring the figure of a forlorn soldier kneeling to mourn before empty helmet, boots, and rifle  an array of objects that traditionally represents a fallen compatriot: Task Force Ironhorse 4th Infantry    Needing a sculptor to carry out his vision, Sgt. Maj. Fuss and other Americans asked around for local talent, and an Iraqi contractor recommended a 27-year-old artist named Khalid Alussy to them. As it turned out, Mr. Alussy was one of several artisans who had worked on a pair of 50-foot bronze statues of Saddam Hussein on horseback that flanked the gateway on the main road into the presidential palace compound in Tikrit, the site of the 4th Infantry Division's temporary headquarters. Commissioned by 4th Infantry Division officers to fashion the memorial conceptualized by Sgt. Maj. Fuss, Khalid Alussy (whose first name is also rendered in English as 'Kalat') took the assignment not out love for Americans, but because he needed the money: The officers didn't question Mr. Alussy further about his political views. Had they pressed him, they might have learned that he's harshly critical of the U.S. and bitter over an American rocket attack during the war that killed his uncle. In an interview, he says he thinks the war was fought for oil and holds the U.S. responsible for the violence and unemployment that have plagued Iraq since."I made the statues of Saddam  even though I didn't want to  because I needed money for my family and to finish my education," he says, reclining in a room decorated with several of his paintings. "And I decided to make statues for the Americans for the exact same reasons." Mr. Alussy's initial asking price was far higher than the officers had expected. He blamed the steep price of bronze. So the Americans decided to recycle the bronze Hussein-on-horseback twins. "We figured we were going to blow them up anyway, so why not take the bronze and use it for our own statues?" recalls Sgt. Fuss. "That way we could take something that honored Saddam and use it to remember all of those we lost getting rid of him." Without having to supply the metal, Mr. Alussy agreed to do the job for $8,000. By comparison, the former regime paid him the equivalent of several hundred dollars for his work on the Hussein statues. To finance the project, Sgt. Fuss publicized it in the task force's internal newspaper and asked officers to get soldiers to contribute $1 each. Within weeks, he raised $30,000.1 In July 2003, Army engineers blew up the two Saddam statues, cut them into pieces, melted them down, and delivered them to Mr. Alussy's house. (The delivery was done furtively in case Mr. Alussy's neighbors proved to be less than thrilled about his being in the employ of the American military.) Using a photograph of 1st Sgt. Glen Simpson as a model for the depiction of the kneeling soldier, Mr. Alussy began his work on the monument; near the end, another segment was added to his task: As the work neared completion, Sgt. Fuss and the division's commander, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, decided it needed a clearer connection to Iraq. The general suggested adding a small child to symbolize Iraq's new future, Sgt. Fuss says. When they told the artist they wanted another statue, Mr. Alussy demanded $10,000 more. "He learned capitalism real fast," Sgt. Fuss says.1 After four months' worth of night and weekend labor, Mr. Alussy completed his assignment, and the statues were installed in an entranceway inside the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit. In February 2004 the statues were flown to the 4th Infantry Division Museum at the unit's home base of Fort Hood, Texas. Museum Fort Hood Somewhere along the line, this coda was added to the original e-mail: Do you know why we don't hear about this in the news? Because it is heart warming and praise worthy. The media avoids it because it does not have the shock effect that a flashed breast or controversy of politics does. But we can do something about it. We can pass this along to as many people as we can in honor of all our brave military who are making a difference. As Steve Blow of the Dallas Morning News pointed out in a later column, the Kalat story and photo ran in that paper on 27 March 2004 and was afterwards picked up and reprinted by newspapers all over the U.S. Additional information:   <!-- Original changelog: Last updated:  25 February 200616 January 2004 Updated: 16 February 2004 11 June 2004 - updated 17 October 2005 - added info about media reporting of story 25 February 2006: reformatted 16 December 2009 - updated Add'l Info links -->   Blow, Steve.  "Sometimes, Facts Get in Way of Media-Bashing."
  The Dallas Morning News.  23 January 2005  (p. B1).   1.  Dreazen, Yochi J.  "In This Monument to Dead, the Medium Really Is the Message."
  The Wall Street Journal.  8 March 2004  (p. A1).   Kibbey, Spc. Benjamin R.  "Changing Faces: Statue Honors Fallen Heroes."
  Army News Service.  6 January 2004.   Miles, Donna.  "Memorial to Honor Fallen Task Force Ironhorse Troops."
  American Forces Press Service.  20 February 2004.