Lil White Lies: 'Til Death Panel do we part

[Note:  This blog author offers apologies that this review is a little out of order date-wise, it is a PolitiFact fact-check from June.]

According to Wikipedia **The heart of the slippery slope fallacy lies in abusing the intuitively appreciable transitivity of implication, claiming that A lead to B, B leads to C, C leads to D and so on, until one finally claims that A leads to Z. While this is formally valid when the premises are taken as a given, each of those contingencies needs to be factually established before the relevant conclusion can be drawn. Slippery slope fallacies occur when this is not done — an argument that supports the relevant premises is not fallacious and thus isn’t a slippery slope fallacy.**

PolitiFact has fact-checked various versions of this topic many times, starting with their "2009 Lie of the Year,"  Sarah Palin's death panels, as well as on others who are not as much in the public eye as Sarah.  This topic has also been covered by FactCheck.  This particular one was from a video on a website for a candidate by the name of Dan Fanelli who is running against Florida congressman Alan Grayson.

Tchotchkes: Female Talk

This is an "actual letter" from an Austin, Texas woman, Wendy Arons (a former Austin , TX copywriter) sent to Proctor and Gamble regarding one of their feminine products. The true focus of her complaint : P&G’s packaging of it’s “Always” brand feminine pad:

She really gets rolling after the first paragraph:


Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your 'Always' maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts.

But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there's a little F-16 in my pants.

Politi-Score: Suddenly PF is number-crunching

After I wrote that email to PolitiFact, they had a self-congratulatory third anniversary article where PF (Bill Adair) decided for some unknown reason to do a little number crunching. Well, maybe he did it when they hit two years or on their first anniversary, so I should just stop speculating.

And in reading my email to them, I did not send them my spreadsheet, nor did I say anything about the percentage of each “Ruling” category. Although I had done that right from the beginning, because it just seemed logical. Here is how my numbers compared to theirs. Apparently, the better-known and more rated politicians and pundits are a little more honest than organizations and emails, because the most noticeable percentage variances are between the True and False/Pants on Fire categories.

Lil White Lies: Partition Definition Edition

‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' --Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass”

This is how Bryan began his critique of PolitiFact’s (PF) ruling on Joe Biden’s statement “I never called for a partition of Iraq.” But it’s obvious Bryan has Humpty Dumpty upside down. In other words, for whatever Humpty Dumpty chose ‘a word’ to mean, if it always meant the same thing, does that make Humpty Dumpty wrong? Especially if it was how others chose what the word would mean, not necessarily him?

The following is a point-by-point summary of Bryan’s argument as to why Joe Biden’s statement is “disingenuous” in denying he called for a partition of Iraq in an interview with Jake Tapper on “ABC’s This Week”:

1.  Biden makes statement X “I never called for partition--I called for a central government and three autonomous regions”

2.  Bryan says Joe’s wrong, it IS partition (Y)

3.  Bryan attacks Y, citing all these other sources calling it partition, deducing that Biden (and others) have re-defined partition (“employing euphemisms”) to suit his purpose.

4.  Therefore X is wrong: it is disingenuous for Biden to deny that he never called for partition (And furthermore, you guys at PF are covering for him by using only ONE definition for partition!)

Do you see something here? If I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers….oh, excuse me I digress…..

Politi-Score: PolitiFact is not interested

PolitiFact *advertises* to Facebook commenters that it would appreciate any suggestions.  So I emailed the "Truthometer at PolitiFact" a few weeks ago, and asked them what they thought of the averages as I described in my previous post (although that is only the pundits--I have calculations on the non-pundits as well), and asked if there was any way they could be utilized.

It took about a week, but I received an email from Lou Jacobson with the following response:

Politi-Score: Sean Hannity most truthful pundit

My method (see above clip of my Excel spreadsheet): Went through PolitiFact (PF) ruling page by Person/Group and included those with 5 or more PF Truthometer rulings (with the exception of Michael Savage and Ed Schultz). True ratings= 100 points, Mostly True= 90, Half True= 80, Barely True= 70, False= 60, and Pants on Fire= 50. I then multipled by the number of rulings made for the category, added up the points, and divided by the total number of rulings.

Sidebar: People will say we're in love

Somehow, Bryan White found this blog.  I assume he looks at updates at Blogspot of new blogs pertaining to his area of interest, and mine came up.

“A new blog appeared recently by name of "Politi-Psychotics" and with the subtitle of "Because Bloviations aren't that Sublime."

The author, presumably Karen Street (based on the blatant similarity to her comments at PolitiFact's FaceBook page), has begun a series of criticisms of my criticisms of PolitFact. Despite the ghastly formatting of her blog posts, I'll probably bother to explain the problems with her criticisms from time to time.

Why anyone would bother to target the little-known commentary I publish is beyond me ... unless it's love."

Sidebar: FactCheck has a Vermeil Standard?

Bryan White has commented many times about the objectivity of FactCheck in its reporting; he calls it the "Gold Standard."  In fact, it seems he may be trying to discredit PolitiFact because he simply thinks it would be easier with what he sees as their inherent bias, and because of comments such as the above.

So....I attempted to rate FactCheck, to determine how it compared to PolitiFact, and perhaps come up with a similar average rating strategy (stay tuned for Politi-Score at Polit-Psychotics!). However, comparing to Factcheck is a bit apples to oranges. PolitiFact has rulings which allowed me quantitativeness, Factcheck does not. Factcheck also checks facts that may not necessarily be political while PolitiFact restricts itself to politics.

Lil White Lies: Incredabble! (Updated 2x)

When PolitiFact (PF) recently put out an item on Facebook asking readers to send them “liberal emails”, it had some major implications. For one, this would seem to say that PF is not getting many for review. For another, this particular ruling would be one of those liberal emails that they did--so they could claim they rated liberal emails! Bryan White said in his review that this one should never have seen the light of day—well, clearly it must be that this is the reason PF did this piece. I’m assuming that’s why he said “Mind your checks and balances, gents.” Well, they ARE minding their checks and balances, if this is what he is referring to.

Lil White Lies: I've been framed!

President Clinton: "My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that 2 million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits." That must be why we see 22 million and 21 million, no one knows how many right-wing pundits are actually in the number.

Joking aside, one of Sublime Bloviation’s conclusions to its review of a PolitiFact fact-check on President Clinton's statement above (as stated by Sherrod Brown) is “…it should be obvious that Brown's intended point--that tax cuts do not create jobs--cannot find reasonable support in the Clinton/Bush comparison.”

To expect PolitiFact (PF) to provide “reasonable support” for tax cuts not creating jobs was beyond the scope of their stated purpose: To verify Brown’s quantitative claim of 22 million jobs created during the Clinton years.

It should be noted that this claim is consistent with other PF reporting as well as FactCheck:

“…Clinton saw a gain of nearly 21 million jobs during his tenure (January 1993 - January 2001)…Certainly Clinton deserves some credit for that remarkable economic growth, but just as certainly he can't claim all the credit."

Lil White Lies: Nefarious Factoids (Updated)

Sarah Palin seems to get a lot of mileage out of items she posts on Facebook. So recently she published a “factoid” there on excerpts of a speech she gave : “Did you know that U.S. actually only ranks 25th among major world players on defense spending as a percentage of GDP?" PolitiFact (PF) picked it up, and wanted to verify this ranking, and then determine if it was a valid measure. For the record, re-evaluating quoted statistics found technically true for comparison to “peers” isn’t something that’s only been done with Sarah Palin:  When it comes to global stats—be it health, climate change, and in this case, defense, we can almost always count on Republicans to suspect the source as biased or in error. Bryan in his Blog reviews is no exception. 

Bryan begins with a quote about how the media has a “deep anti-military bias.” Bryan claims that Palin wanted to show her audience that … ‘there is no "gusher" of defense spending.” Clearly, both Palin and Bryan want to justify US defense spending, and Bryan’s preconception with that justification was demonstrated throughout his critique.

But getting back to Palin’s statement, how DOES the US compare to the rest of the world?

Sidebar: Arianna and Sarah on PolitiFact Rulings

Recently there were two responses from opposite camps on PolitiFact’s Fact-Checking rulings, namely, Arianna Huffington (“Democrat”) and Sarah Palin (“Republican”). I thought it might be worth checking both of their responses, as well as their fact-checks, to see how both compared as an experiment in looking at PolitiFact’s supposed “bias.”

Palin’s original claim: “ …this is going to result in the largest tax increase in U.S. history.” (in response to Chris Wallace question on tax cuts expiring FOR TOP 2% [he WAS very specific])

What PolitiFact (PF) checked: ….” her claim that the Democratic plan would result in "the largest tax increase in history."

Gist of Palin’s response: “There is NO plan” by Obama or the Democrats. PF are the pants on fire liars.

My summary: (1) She conflated top 2% tax with *everyone* tax. (2) She refused to recognize (or didn’t know about) *unofficial* proposals and (3) she still thinks it’s 2008 and she’s campaigning (or maybe she’s campaigning for 2012, who knows).

Huffington’s original claim: “Halliburton defrauded the U.S. government… hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq.”

What PF checked: “…we decided to fact-check Huffington's statement that Halliburton defrauded the U.S. government of "hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq.”

Gist of Huffington’s response: “…PolitiFact's facts clearly supported a conclusion different than the one its editors came to.” PF is “equivocating.”

My summary: (1) Inefficiencies are not the same as fraud, but Arianna clearly implies they are the same (2) She does not address the security problem (which KBR procured and illegally billed for because the military often did not protect their workers) and (3) Concluding with her emotive “Workers of the World Unite” complaints with regard to AIG and BP sort of misdirects her anger at PF’s “equivocation.” That being said, PF could have easily gone with Mostly True. But I would not go with True.

Analysis of both:

Lil White Lies: To "B" or Not To "B"

Some people know “how to say it”…Derek Grass, a frequent Facebook PolitiFact commenter, is one. Maybe because it’s “manno a manno”, I don’t know. But Derek makes the point that Bryan is a “DIP”—demander [of] impossible perfection—when it comes to judging PolitiFact’s (PF) fact-check articles.

This is a portion of their debate over August 12-14, 2010. I have corrected some of Derek’s capitalization/spelling errors as it appears he was communicating from a cell/blackberry. I have put the most significant comments in bold type.