Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: John Boehner and Finance Reform

In the “Lil White Lies” category, I have been giving structured criticisms of another person’s criticisms of PolitiFact’s ruling write-ups. The assumption is that the purpose of these criticisms (being critiqued), blogged in a very professional style by a conservative, of what he has asserted many times is a liberally biased fact-checking website, helps prove anecdotally its liberal bias.

But perhaps a different approach is warranted. That approach is to use the identical logic to prove what could be conservative bias on the part of PolitiFact. What does that prove? This is what the critiqued critic, Bryan White, might say, coming directly from a comment he posted at the PolitiFact Facebook page very recently (emphasis added):

@ Carol Ahrens, who wrote:

***Politifact is doing a great job! why else would both sides be accusing them of bias?!***

Well, both sides *could* accuse them of bias because they make mistakes--mistakes that sometimes favor one side and sometimes favor the other. But if you throw logic entirely out the window then I guess you can conclude that criticism from both sides simply means that PolitiFact does a great job.

(November 28, approx. noon EST)

Of course, Bryan fails to explain or elaborate (which is typical of his commentary) on “throwing logic entirely out of the window” except to take a jab at Carol Ahrens by implying she is not thinking logically.

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Final Observations

There are some who claim that my Politi-Score is far too generalizing, and there’s some truth to that, particularly from an individual viewpoint. Bryan White has recently written that unfortunately, PolitiFact (PF) does not include a “Disclaimer: These ratings should not be taken as a reliable guide to the subject's truthfulness.” Perhaps I should be including that in my Politi-Score.  As Bryan stated:

Many are tempted to look at the collected data and draw ill-founded conclusions, perhaps like "Kay Bailey Hutchison is just as likely to lie as to tell the truth!"

If this is true, then I would point out that Obama  received 268 PF rulings as of November 1, the largest number of all, and my Politi-Score says the same about him—he averages just over Half True, which means he, like Kay Bailey Hutchinson, is just as likely to lie as to tell the truth. It seems the higher the number of rulings for an individual, the more the Truth-o-meter as an average (Politi-Score) becomes a generalizing, middling, gray, almost equivocating measure, and basically doesn’t tell you much.

On the other hand, I think an example supporting “a reliable guide to” individual truthfulness might be his favorite anecdotal example of PolitiFact’s bias, Michele Bachmann. While I have found that PolitiFact has eased up on the "snark" factor he has so lamented since late 2009, she still is the biggest liar with pants on fire (has the lowest Politi-Score) among those individuals with a large number of rulings, whether by selection bias or not. Often her statements are re-confirmed as false or misrepresentations by more objective sources such as Factcheck.org. Now I wonder, after looking at the infant state-by-state ruling compilations, that if there was a Republican or Independent-leaning “PolitiFact Minnesota” Bachmann might get a fairer shake. In the meantime, yes, she looks to be a “chronic liar”….although it doesn’t seem to bother her constituency, since she keeps getting re-elected.

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Four

Data Analysis by News Source (State)

When compiling the data for this Politi-Score analysis through PolitiFact, I found that the “national” rulings page did not include those of the states. Therefore I had to go through each of the states’ rulings as well (which took a while!). I decided to include state affiliation in the data compilation because I wondered what the “political leanings” (and its affect on the rulings) of these other newspapers were as compared to the St. Petersburg Times, which is often accused of liberal bias by its detractors on the Facebook page.

To get a feel on their political leanings, I looked at who they recently endorsed politically, particularly for president in the last two election cycles. The following table shows the results: some blue (Democrat), one red (Republican), and some mixed (purple).

Location	Newpaper(s)	Endorsements
National	St. Petersburg Times	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Florida	St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald	Obama (08); Kerry (04); Miami Herald endorsed Marco Rubio (R) for Senate & Sink (D) for Gov. (10)
Georgia	Atlanta Journal-Constitution	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Ohio	Cleveland Plain Dealer	Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Kasich (R ) for Gov. (10)
Oregon	The Oregonian	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Rhode Island	Providence Journal	Obama (08); Bush (04)
Texas	Austin American-Statesman	Obama (08); Bush (04)
Virginia	Richmond Times Dispatch	McCain (08); Bush (04)
Wisconsin	Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel	Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Walker (R ) for gov. and Feingold (D) for Senate (10)

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Three

Data Analysis excluding Organizations, Blogs and Chain e-Mails

In this analysis, the lower overall ratings of organizations, bloggers and chain e-mails were removed from the Politi-Score averages to see what effect it would have between Republicans and Democrats. When PolitiFact made a Facebook request early in the election season for more liberal chain e-mails from its fan base, I thought perhaps there were a lot more right-wing e-mails, and that this might weigh the averages down for the Republicans thereby favoring the Democrats , since the blogs, etc., have already been found to be, on average, less truthful than the candidates themselves. But as noted in the previous analysis, the patterns were comparable, and although there were more right or Republican rulings, they weren’t enough in number, not too unfairly balanced with the Democrats (43 Republican versus 34 Democrat rulings), and their pants weren’t on fire enough, so to speak, to move the Politi-Score up substantially for the Republicans. In fact, the effect was almost nil, overall raising the "truthiness" scores for each party roughly five percent, using the wide measure. It was a miniscule under-one-percent using my previous grading scale.

Note:  There were twenty additional rulings which could not be identified with either party.  They were included in the total average (#Rulings and Overall columns) but are not broken down.

So far, similar pattern. Looking at the news sources (PolitiFact states) might yield more results worthy of note. That’s next. 

Tchotchkes: Just in Time for Thanksgiving

Lil White Lies: How to Blow Up Blowing It (!)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve called Bryan White the Word Warden…..I’ve joked about his always having to have “more cowbell”—I’ve written about his “monolithic certitude”—but this one really takes the cake. Well, it just keeps confirming everything, in one orgy of narcissistic, unbending, not-so sublime bloviations.  I’m sure Bryan's aware of what happens when someone submits posts on Facebook; he’s “sharing” them.

Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsiblities: ...

This Statement of Rights and Responsibilities ("Statement") derives from the Facebook Principles, and governs our relationship with users and others who interact with Facebook. By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement.  ...

Sharing Your Content and Information

...

2.  When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).

When writing opinion letters to the editor of a newspaper in anticipation of their possibly being published, I assume that most all of them will tell you that your letter becomes its property and “may be edited”—

All submissions become the property of The Flint Journal; submissions may be edited and may be published or otherwise re-used in any medium.

So recently PolitiFact issued one of its occasional “mailbag” pieces, publishing comments from its Facebook fans and e-mailers, and entitled it “PolitiFact blew it again!” in what appeared to be a partial quote of a Facebook comment posted by Bryan. Of course, when he saw this he immediately went ape sh*t crazy over the fact that PolitiFact had “grafted an exclamation point on the end.”

Tchotchkes: Proposed TSA Checkpoint Sign

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Two

Data Analysis of Organizations, Bloggers and Chain e-Mails

Imagine this conversation in a Bill Adair PolitiFact Staff meeting circa late August this year: “Now this is how I want our rulings to work on anyone other than the candidates for the upcoming campaign season….they should be about 20 percent of all rulings..and try to keep it equal between the Republicans and Democrats if you can. Overall, they should probably be less truthful than the candidates, so don’t be surprised if you have a lot of Pants on Fire……hmmm…. maybe 3/8 False and Pants on Fire, about half in the middle, and the rest True or Mostly True?” Well, I can imagine him making every part of that statement (to get to an ultimate "Barely True") except the last one, after the thoughtful “hmmm.” 

At least that’s how it worked out, almost with an uncanny precision: Of the 414 PolitiFact rulings posted between September 1 and November 1, 80 of them, about 20%, were by organizations (ranging from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS to “Blue Oregon”), blogs (one simply called “Bloggers”), and chain e-mails (one also simply called “chain emails”). A little over half were from Republican groups. Ten percent of the rulings were equally divided between True or Mostly True, 52.5% were equally divided Half True or Barely True, and the rest (3/8 or 37.5%) equally divided between False and Pants on Fire.

Tchotchkes: Variations on Lisa Murkowski's Name

Lil White Lies: Parsing Ponzi 2.0

Well here we go again with the social security system as a Ponzi, this time with Texas Governor Rick Perry of the “secessionist crowd”, just after PolitiFact scored him on his most recent book's tales of the indescribable horrors of the government holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy a more efficient light bulb.

Social Security has a single similarity in common to Ponzi schemes: that is the “pay-go” or “zero balance” (ZBA) feature. As noted in the PolitiFact piece, many other journalists and pundits point to that single “Ponzi” identifier (emphasis added);

In a December 1995 op-ed article for The Washington Post, James K. Glassman (of late, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University) wrote: "Workers think that they are investing for their own accounts, but actually their payroll taxes go straight to current retirees. … In a 1996 article posted on the Slate website, liberal commentator Michael Kinsley agreed that Social Security "is a Ponzi scheme. Payments from later customers finance payouts to earlier customers. The ratio of retirees taking money out to workers putting money in is rising, due to 1) people having fewer children, and 2) people living longer."

The pay-go feature was part of Social Security’s initial setup back in 1935. Other than that, nothing is the same. Consider these three most common “red flags” that a potential investment is a Ponzi scheme other than the fraud component:

Tchotchkes: The Grim Reaper is Here

The last time I discerned the Reaper's presence was two months ago, the last time I saw my father alive, the day before he passed.  As much as I didn't like Cheney's politics, seeing him like this is very sad.  I'd much prefer to see him as his former snarling self.

How Dummies Show Off Their Boehner

Tchotchkes: I voted Republican and all I got was this lousy TEA shirt

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part One

Data Averages Overall

PolitiFact (PF) recently published its own evaluation of the recent mid-term election campaign, calling it, in Truth-o-Meter terms, a "Barely True."  So, was it?

Well, a bit of time was spent was going through the ratings one by one from September 1 through November 1 (the day before the election) to see if I could validate Bill Adair's calculations.  My numbers came out a bit different than his.  Since he published his evaluation on October 27, I probably counted additional rulings that slightly changed the percentages that he calculated.  I counted 414 rulings in total.  This was a bit different from the way I had initially surveyed, which was by selecting only those individuals who had over five (5) rulings by going through the list as shown under PF's "People" tab.  This time it was a total cross section of two months of all rulings, including organizations, bloggers and chain e-mails.

The result was an agreement with PolitiFact on "Barely True" in total.  But further dissection of the numbers to divide them between Democrats and Republicans revealed who was, as judged by PolitiFact, more than Barely True.

Tchotchkes: On one Issue, There's Bi-Partisanship

The Vince and Jules of PolitiFact Detractors

Reading Jeff Dyberg’s Bews, News N Vews posts is much easier than Bryan’s dry and detailed Grading PolitiFact or Bashing Blumner blog series. As a Bews (booze) accompaniment, Bryan does twisted pretzels proud while Jeff just goes for simple pretzel sticks with a lot more salt (here's my first post on some of Jeff's commentary). Jeff is so easy, I’m probably only going to do a few more posts on his write-ups, because it’s getting boring already.  One of his particular blog posts stands out, however, because not only does he make his usual feeble, fabricated arguments along with bashing PolitiFact, he uses the post to give free false advertising for Sublime Bloviations.

The subject of Jeff’s post a PolitiFact (PF) ruling on RNC Chairman Michael Steele, where he alleged Obama was a hypocrite when it came to undisclosed foreign campaign contributions:

When President, then candidate, Obama was asked to disclose some of his donors because there was suspicion of their being the foreign source of money into his campaign, they refused to do it. So don't give me this high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou attitude about special interests flooding the political marketplace.

Bryan would call this a classic tu quoque argument (although now that I’ve said this, if he ever reads this, he will disagree just for the sake of disagreeing, and claim it’s some other fallacy). In other words, two wrongs don’t make a right. That certainly doesn’t stop Jeff, but that’s okay, he’s prepared to, in the same way he accused PF, go into *cheerleader* mode to make PolitiFact look like it’s on an underhanded mission to reward Democrats and punish Republicans.

Lil White Lies: One Dim Bulb

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists:

CAFE standards were effective in increasing new car and truck fuel economy by 70 percent between 1975 and 1988. In 2000 alone, CAFE standards saved American consumers $92 billion, reduced oil use by 60 billion gallons of gasoline, and kept 720 million tons of global warming pollution out of our atmosphere.

In terms of light bulbs, there are lots of “Energy Savings” calculators available on line to show you how much you save with the new CFL’s over regular bulbs. I now have, at last count, eight 75-watt CFL bulbs in my home. According to one energy saving calculator available on line, over the life of those bulbs, I’ll get $538 in energy savings, prevent 6,496 pounds of CO2 from being added to the air, which is the same as taking half an average car off the road.

But who cares when it is the equivalent of forcing you to choose what kind of car or, in this case, light bulb to buy, as Bryan White claims in his latest grading of a PolitiFact ruling on a claim made in a book by Texas Governor Rick Perry about the reach of the Federal government extending to telling consumers what kind of light bulbs they can buy.

Sidebar: Sugar in Disguise

It is well known that there are often conflicts in drug maintenance.  I found this out all too well  in the past year as I experienced my father going through failing health, hospice, and finally, in September, myocardial infarction (heart attack) from which he could not be revived.  He was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes (controlled with pills) in 1995; found to have a blood clot in his leg in late 2009 for which he was treated with Cumadin, a blood thinner (which in turn so adversely affected his blood that he quickly went to a Type 1 Diabetic--daily injections).  The prolonged treatments caused him to develop HIT--Heparin Induced Thrombocytopenia, or extremely low blood platelet count, which could not be reversed.   His arms had to be bandaged up from his hands almost to his armpits because the blood pooled under his skin there so severely, which is a typical symptom of leukemia (also stemming from the HIT), for which he was diagnosed in the last two weeks of his life.   Drugs have *contra-indications*--negative side effects, and to be blunt, the Heparin basically slowly killed him.  A friend of mine who does health advocacy told me not long after his death, that he could have been treated with daily aspirin and chelation therapy, which would not have caused thrombocytopenia.  That's what I get for not staying in touch with her, but I don't know if I could have gotten that changed for him.

Lil White Lies: A Review of *Grading PolitiFact* (15 of Them!)

Some time ago, I made a comment on a Facebook PolitiFact page comparing Bryan White’s debate methods to Chinese food. It seems tasty and filling at the time, but a short time later one is hungry and has a headache from all the MSG. His  blog's Grading PolitiFact series has a similar *nutrition.* It sounds good, but later you say to yourself, after thinking about it…"Hey, wait a minute….that isn’t quite right…” and you're feeling a bit empty and kind of sick.

Or you might say, "…something smells here, and I don’t know what it is.” Keeping that *odor* in mind, at this point, 15 of Bryan White’s “Grading PolitiFact” series’ analyses have been evaluated in my blog. I’ve given (most of) them my own grade (I started out with peanuts, but found this much more demonstrative), namely anywhere from one to five of that famous cartoon skunk Pepé LePew. Why Pepé? Because of the strong whiff of Bryan’s personal “selection bias”, the reek of his incredibly subjective opinion passed off as “reason” and “logic”, and the overwhelming stench of his excessive use of logic fallacies. Because once past that, Pepé LePew’s initial charm is understood to only be the bait of the sting.

Out of this fifteen, there have been three cases where I’ve actually agreed with Bryan’s analyses. The best example of the three is a recent PolitiFact (PF) ruling on a statement made by perennial political candidate Christine O’Donnell, the loser in the Delaware senate race, in a debate with Chris Coons, concerning the increase in the unemployment rate in (one county in) Delaware from 2008 to 2010. I agreed with Bryan to the point that I made a comment at PolitiFact’s Facebook Page for this particular ruling, supporting his contention that PF did not thoroughly look at the unemployment statistics. The rate had indeed doubled from 2008 to 2010 as O’Donnell had claimed. It had doubled in the way Bryan had measured it , and in the way I thought it should be measured, which was slightly different than his, and totally different than PolitiFact’s, which was unwittingly (or wittingly? sayeth Bryan) too precise.

Tchotchkes: Sports Edition

Wolverines: 67, Fighting Illini: 65

Judging from the score, I thought this was a basketball game.....

Views Stewd n Skewd

There’s a new and *oh so exciting* link headlined at the Sublime Bloviating blog called Bews News n Vews, just another Blogspot published by *JD* aka Jeff Dyberg, who has partnered up with Bryan White to collectively stew up misrepresentations and aspersions of all things liberal, including even more unremarkable contemplations of their view(s) that PolitiFact is skewered left in its fact-checks.

But before getting to Jeff’s PolitiFact *skewered* left bias allegations, let’s see what I’ve learned about him since observing him debate on the PolitiFact (PF)  Facebook Page. Although he looks like a college-kid-in-his-dorm-room in his avatar, unshaven with that goofy green tuque and yellow T-shirt, he seems to like all things “fifties”—Ayn Rand, Lawrence Welk, and having sex with Golden Girl Blanche. But I’ve witnessed his behaving like a "kid" in one respect—if a debater is too hard on him, for example, PF commenter Garret Fitzgerald, Jeff will rat them to PolitiFact. So go easy on the little guy.

Along with that, he seems to conveniently appear in PolitiFact Facebook threads whenever the tough gets going for Bryan White, or vice versa. It’s “tag-team obfuscation” (as Bryan terms it) at its finest.

Sidebar: Notes on the 2010 Election

U.S. "Personhood" Party:  As I voted yesterday, I noticed a party on my ballot which had candidates in every category, called the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party (USTPM). That day, a friend of mine told me she had voted for their candidates because they actively promoted a “fair and flat tax" on individuals as well as corporations.   I thought I’d look into it, but I found that it appears my friend has the wrong party or has them confused with somebody else. All that the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party of Michigan says with regard to taxes is “The USTPM and the Constitution Party opposes any taxes in excess of the minimum needed to fund the enumerated functions of government.” That’s it--one sentence. But the Constitution Party, with whom the USTPM is affiliated, states with regard to taxes (italics added):

We are opposed to the flat-rate tax, national sales tax, and value added tax proposals that are being promoted as an improvement to the current tax system. The Sixteenth Amendment does not provide authority for an un-apportioned direct tax.

Moreover, it is our intention to replace, with a tariff based revenue system supplemented by excise taxes, the current tax system of the U.S. government (including income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate taxes.)

Tchotchkes: On Voter Enthusiasm This Voting Day