UPDATE: Incredible, but Tapper is still defending the misquote. Worse, ABC has that 6 second video clip up, headlined: "Bill Clinton: 'Slow Down our Economy'" and consisting soley of the out-of-context quote, without even Tapper's bogus commentary.

ABC's Jake Tapper reports that Bill Clinton suggests that America slow our economy to deal with global warming. ABC links a snippet of Clinton saying those words. Drudge picks up the story.

But Tapper took the quote completely out of context, thus changing Clinton's meaning, which was that we shouldn't slow our economy to deal with global warming.

Last I checked at Tapper's blog, he was still pretending he was right.

Read the details after the jump.

Tapper writes, "[Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: 'We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.'"

Tapper continues: "At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? 'Slow down our economy'?"

But Clinton actually urges exactly the opposite -- as you can read for yourself at Tapper's own blog, beneath the sensational headline and the selective quote and the wrong analysis.

Clinton says, "And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy'...But if we did that, you know as well as I do..all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work."

Comments

[Bubba]

I can't begin to count the number of ways that an idea of "we have to slow down our economy to deal with 'global warming'" is wrong.

There's not enough time or space to list all the ways and all the details about just how wrong the idea is.

[Ed Cone]

Bill Clinton agrees with you that slowing our economy to deal with global warming is wrong.

[Bubba]

".....slowing our economy to deal with global warming is wrong."

The entirety of that is only one way out of many where the premise is wrong.

[Brian Clarey]

Taking quotes out of context is a dangerous, and ridiculously effective, business. A form of malpractice.

[Jon]

It appears Clinton is saying that is one thing we could do, but it's not really desirable because we could never get all those other countries to "agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren."

In all honesty, I cannot make much sense of what Clinton says here:

""The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. ... The only places in the world today in rich countries where you have rising wages and declining inequality are places that have generated more jobs than rich countries because they made a commitment we didn't. They got serious about a clean, efficient, green, independent energy future .... If you want that in America, if you want the millions of jobs that will come from it, if you would like to see a new energy trust fund to finance solar energy and wind energy and biomass and responsible bio-fuels and electric hybrid plug-in vehicles that will soon get 100 miles a gallon, if you want every facility in this country to be made maximally energy efficient that will create millions and millions and millions of jobs, [campaign pitch here]."

As best I can tell, Clinton is committing the broken-windows fallacy of economic analysis -- looking at the benefits only of a policy without considering opportunity cost (i.e., the "wrenching transformation" Gore spoke of in forcing all those changes involuntarily on society). That assumes he is not just stringing together campaign hot-topic phrases together in the fervor of the moment.

I hoped for a moment that perhaps he was going to make a case for adaption via economic growth, as was done by 100 climate scientists in their open letter to the UN Secretary General last month.

[Jon]

I misspoke. Make that 100 scientists and economists.

[Roch101]

"Taking quotes out of context is a dangerous, and ridiculously effective, business."

Indeed effective. Huh, Bob?

[Roch101]

I left a comment at Tappers blog saying that he didn't "parse," he lied and that if he wouldn't issue a retraction, ABC should fire him.

It got deleted.

[Bubba]

"Indeed effective. Huh, Bob?"

For you?

No. We're wise to that little technique.

[Roch101]

"We're wise to that little technique." -- Bob

You are? You swallowed it hook, line and sinker with: "I can't begin to count the number of ways that an idea of "we have to slow down our economy to deal with 'global warming'" is wrong."