Truth Index: 2,788 Reasons? How 'bout 4,707?

Or: How I spent My New Year’s Eve

Unless PolitiFact’s (PF) writers publish a flurry of rulings today (yea, right!), I now have some final figures for PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter ratings through the end of 2011. As I’ve done before, I'll start with “everything including the kitchen sink” and then I’ll be honing down to just 2011 and more detailed analysis. I also plan to publish something on “best/worst/most/least” of the year 2011.

So here's the Truth Index in its "cool" and 3-D PolitiFact app format, in a way PolitiFact won't show it: of the 4,707 statements, 2,475 (52.6%) were by Republicans/ Conservatives/Tea Party/Libertarians; 1,863 (39.6%) were by Democrats/Liberals, and 369 were by independents, non-partisan or unknown political affiliation. These statements include all those made by individual politicians, as well as pundits, advocates, media, groups, websites, PACs, blogs and chain e-mails.

Click to enlarge

There are some who don’t like PolitiFact’s signature “Pants on Fire” designation because of its subjectivity—deciding what makes a statement go from False to “ridiculously” False. So, just for sh*ts and giggles, here’s what it would look like if all the Pants on Fire statements were moved to False.

Click to enlarge:  Pants on Fire rulings are included in False.

The Republican’s overall Truth Index improves (from a negative 23 to a negative 18); the Democrats improve by fewer points (from just under a positive 1 [.7] to 3.4) but a greater percentage. Just a third of their statements are false, for Democrats it’s a little over one fifth or 22 percent.

Relating to this post, and to one of my blog’s main features (the Truth Index and Politi-Score), a FaceBook comment piqued my interest for a number of reasons. It was made by someone with an interesting shark profile icon by the name of Robert Hannah, kissing up to my conservative counterpart about his generic, ad nauseum comment concerning PolitiFact’s “selection bias!” in regard to Rick Santorum’s Truth-o-Meter review:

@Bryan exactly! I personally think he's a lunatic, but these report cards are meaningless. They're only going to rate statements that are controversial or divisive. So basically, out of the controversial things that Santorum has said that have attracted the attention of PF, most are untrue or half true.

Of course, since Hannah is profusely agreeing with Bryan, he has conveniently neglected responding up to this point. The Facebook format only displays these final two comments on the page (see graphic) which makes them readily viewable which I suspect is why he’s not besides the fact that Hannah is not disagreeing—he’s automatically “smart” and “right” in Bryan’s world. No need to copy/paste/parse and repeat as quickly as possible until oblivion, or make projecting complaints of “personal attacks.”

Tchotchkes: 2011 in Review

Parody of Stereo Hearts by Gym Class Heroes
(By Chandler Dean of Shocking Productions)

Politi-Scoring the "Newty Professor"

Because Newt Gingrich likes to refer to himself as a “professor” and “historian” I thought it might be interesting to take a look at his claims among the fact-checkers involving history just to see how “accurate” he is.

Newt the Professor often gets the cartoon treatment as part of our pop culture.

Selecting out those PolitiFact statements by Gingrich designated to the topic “History” in order to take a look at how truthful he is as an “historian” was not enough. Some statements didn’t seem “historical” enough in a contemporary context. Gingrich statements reviewed by the other two fact-checkers needed to be evaluated as relating to “history” as well. So I settled on a few caveats in selecting fact-checked statements with a “history” perspective: I left out Gingrich’s biographical history, and recent history, in particular, during the period of time in 1990’s in which he was Speaker of the House. In other words, I left out Gingrich’s personal history, the history he conveys about himself. I left out only one statement of the seven total which PolitiFact designated in the topic “history” for him. Many of the statements chosen were comparative, such as “there are more in the U.S. in poverty than at any time since the U.S. Census Bureau began keeping records” (i.e., in U.S. history—this was given a Half True by PolitiFact) or his only Pants on Fire “The U.S. spends less on defense today as a percent of GDP (than) since Pearl Harbor,” where PolitiFact Georgia writer M.B. Pell concludes thus:

A better way to compare defense spending, or any kind of government spending over a long period of time, is to use dollars adjusted for inflation, Adams said.

The United States spent $700 billion on defense in 2010, $300 billion more than the adjusted Cold War average, Adams said.

Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project, said defense spending also does not include funding for other agencies that contribute to national defense such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the State Department.

"It’s a distorted way to think of it for the sole purpose to pimp for more money," Wheeler said.

Gingrich tweeted that the country now spends less on defense as a percentage of the GDP than at any time since the start of World War II. That’s a firm statement, but since the Cold War ended, and in a few other years as well, the percent of GDP used for defense has been consistently lower than current spending levels.

Further, experts say the concept is highly misleading.

Gingrich gets our lowest rating on this one. Pants on Fire.

It came down to 12 statements; here's how the PolitiFact app would look in "3D":

Click to enlarge:  No True, Lots of Half True and Mostly False. Compare History Politi-Score to Newt's overall -53.

Next, I'm going to display a portion of the Excel spreadsheet where I work the ratings to derive the above chart, to show the statements selected. Gingrich had only one rated Mostly True (that “[O]n the day of the New Hampshire primary in 1980, the top 13 people of Ronald Reagan’s staff quit.") out of the 12. Eight of the 12 statements were Mostly False or worse.

Truth Index: PolitiFact 2011 "Very" Preliminary

PolitiFact National and  a few regional PolitiFact (PF) rulings are still trickling in during the last week of 2011.  Right now I'm sitting at a little over 1,900 rulings for the year 2011.  PolitiFact peaked with the gross number of rulings in the second quarter of 2011, hitting over 500, and I thought with New Jersey coming on board that the number would increase.  However, in the third quarter it dropped to 476 rulings, and this quarter, perhaps due to the holidays, it will be around 450 to 455.

Click to enlarge:  Number of Republican rulings has increased as a percentage throughout 2011.

What can be reported preliminarily at this point is that in 2011, Republicans dominated.  The percentage of Republican statements being ruled on increased as the year progressed, most likely due to covering the numerous Republican presidential debates.  This final quarter of 2011, for example, the number of Republican statements being rated for all PF regions including National exceeded Democrats by 70 percent (overall, it's less than 60%).  PolitiFact National brought the percentage up with a two-for-one emphasis on Republicans. Above is how it all looks on a bar chart: the number in parentheses is the total number of rulings for that quarter.  This is subject to additional review for any errors (see below) I may find as I scour it for any dupes and miscategorizations when I do the final charts.  But it's not expected to change greatly.  Below is how PF National looks:  almost 2/3 of their rulings were on Republicans in the fourth quarter.  Today they added two more Republican rulings not included here:  they were both on claims in Gingrich attack ads being done by a Romney super PAC.

Click to enlarge:  The run-up to the Republican primaries brought the PF National/New Hampshire
percentage of Republican rulings to over 66 percent in the 4th quarter of 2011.

In the meantime, I have to note I found a "dupe" on the part of PolitiFact.  I get the impression they have some sort of software for publishing their rulings, like a template where there are drop-downs for the subject, the sources, etc., as well as for "which" PolitiFact.  Because I found one somewhat "local" Ohio ruling by an Ohio writer which somehow ended up in both the PF Ohio....and PF Texas listings?  Oh well, it was just one out of 1,900-plus.  But I found it only because this quarter I have started recording the statement, which is what prompted me to discover it.  So I am wondering if there may be more. 

Josh Mandel is running for office in Ohio.  This "Half True" ruling was counted twice by PF (see link).

Here's where it's in its proper place.  How it ended up in Texas as well, I have NO idea.

Tchotchkes: 2011, Buh-Bye!

Worst Fox News Anti-Atheist Spin of the Year?

Politi-Scoring Newt Gingrich: Newt So Fast

So far, my blog has looked at Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain at approximately the peak point of their 15 minutes of presidential potential fame. I’m trying to “save the best for last” based on these peaks and valleys, although I never expected to see this happen with Newt Gingrich. From the looks of recent polls, I may even be doing Ron Paul as well!

The increase in statements being rated for Newt Gingrich were commensurate with his rise in the polls; as one Democratic advisor said he was climbing higher on the “pole” and more people could “see his butt” and where better to see it than with the fact-checkers.

Currently at PolitiFact (December 26) Newt Gingrich has a total of 39 statements rated which is an increase of 33 since the end of 2010, when he only had been ruled on six times. At that time, with only six rulings, he stood at a Truth Index of negative 50, with two of the six statements rated Pants on Fire. Today he’s added six more Pants on Fire, but his Truth Index has remained somewhat steady at a negative 52 (with a negative Politi-Score of -53 overall) a little worse than Mostly False on the Truth-o-Meter.

While a lot of PolitiFact followers think Michele Bachmann is the biggest liar, so far in 2011 she’s scoring more truthier than Gingrich and Herman Cain. Newt is the Number Two Liar to Number One Herman Cain (followed by Bachmann, with Perry in last place). If you preview the “See Them All” rulings for Gingrich on PolitiFact, you can see that lately, he’s been hard pressed to score higher than Half True.

There were 76 statements rated for Newt (as noted in the above Politi-Score graphic) between the three fact-checking organizations. There were seven statements which I term “re-covered”: that is, the same statement was covered as a fact-check by more than one fact-checker.

Balancing Act. Gingrich’s false claim that he balanced the budget for four straight years and had a $405 billion surplus was the most re-covered claim, showing up five times as a fact-check throughout 2011.  PolitiFact and FactCheck.Org actually covered it twice, because despite the fact-checks he kept repeating it.

"Wrong then, wrong now" indicates PolitiFact's second review of this oft-repeated, most-rated statement by Gingrich.

Even a fourth fact-checker, the “CNN Truth Squad”, not included in my Politi-Score numbers, got in on this one, giving it a “verdict” of false.

Tchotchkes: The Christmas Gingrich

(Perfect preview for upcoming post on Newt's Politi-Score!)

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Raise Malaise

Do an internet search on “will not take pay raise” and you will get a lot of results. One of my first search results on this phrase came right close to my home state of Michigan: it was something on the newly elected Michigan governor Rick Snyder:

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder today pledged to take a $1 salary this year as the state wrestles with a budget deficit.

The promise was reminiscent of former Flint Mayor Don Williamson, who also had pledged to take $1 a year when he took office.

Snyder is unveiling his proposed budget to the Legislature this morning.

He listed "shared sacrifice" as one of the budget's guiding principles, which is when he announced his salary plan.

Scott Walker, the incoming governor of Wisconsin in 2010, wasn’t a self-made millionaire like Snyder, so he didn’t have the financial resources to do the same. But does the automatic pay raise which went to his position when he started merit a “False” ruling from PolitiFact Wisconsin because he technically didn’t give it to himself?

The question should be is it true that there was a pay raise for the governor’s position—regardless of whether it’s a Democrat or Republican taking that position. The answer is yes, it’s true.

And can the governor through the majority Republican state congress, re-set his pay? YES. Can the governor return the $7,300 as a symbol that he is sharing the burden with state employees? YES. Can he give $7,300 to charity as a symbol of shared sacrifice? Yes. And, if he was a millionaire like Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, could he give himself a $1 annual salary until he brought Wisconsin out of its financial doldrums? I’m sure he could.

It’s not true that he rewarded himself, or that he “gave himself” a raise. But technically, he received a state-approved increase to his salary over the person who held it previously. I don’t know how that can be deemed a false. Even the ruling says: (emphasis added)

PolitiFact 2011 Lie of the Year: Guest Post

By Lee Papa, also known as The Rude Pundit

CAUTION:  Language used in this guest post can be profane and very offensive.  That's why the Rude Pundit's by-line is "Proudly Lowering the Level of Political Discourse."  This post was copied from his blog.

We all know how it goes. We've seen it in a million movies, TV shows, books. We've experienced it again and again. You can be a major cocksman, someone who can walk into a place like the Tampa Mens Club, ripped and hung, and, great glory hole, find a willing mouth in no time flat. But there's that one dude, that one buff, spiky blonde who just rejects you outright. He shuts down your game, he ignores your jokes, he doesn't glance at your pecs while you do some awesome lifts. Nothing. In fact, he tells you flat out in the locker room that he thinks you're full of shit, that you don't turn him on, and "Can you get those shaved balls out of my face?" Now, of course, you could just tell him and his friends, who laugh at his rejection of you, to fuck off, that you don't need 'em, and just ride another pony, but, goddamnit, how dare he not want you? And then you start doing stupid shit to try to get him to see that you are suck-worthy. You tell others how hot you think he is. You try to let him see how much you're checking him out. You laugh at jokes he tells across the room. In other words, you become a pathetic ass. And however cool or hot you may have been, you're just blowing it all away on someone who just doesn't want to fuck you.

This game plays out all the time in Washington, DC. What has a significant part of Obama's first term been other than a sad attempt to get Republicans to see him as worthy of their votes? How has that shaken out? And you remember when National Public Radio decided to start "balancing" its news broadcasts with more conservative viewpoints (which meant really just offering someone to spin the facts All Things Considered was reporting) because Republicans were threatening to defund it? That was actually back in the mid-1990s. Did that end all the "controversy" over its funding?

Back in February of this year, the blog Smart Politics, of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, released a study that said that PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning effort of the St. Petersburg Times to rate the truth of the words of politicians' and others, had assigned "'Pants on Fire' or 'False' ratings to 39 percent of Republican statements compared to just 12 percent of Democrats since January 2010." Another way to put that is that, of all the statements rated so low, Republicans made 76% of them, compared to just 22% of Democrats. You can flounder around for excuses if you want, but the study showed that the nearly the same number of statements from each side was analyzed. So, in order to attack PolitiFact, you can only say that its editors are biased and deliberately choose statements by Republicans that they know will be proven false. It's either that or it's just that Republicans are generally lying motherfuckers, which would be the easy answer.

Of course, like so many who are afraid of being perceived as too liberal and need desperately to be loved by Republicans, PolitiFact has now overcompensated with a completely fucktarded choice for its "Lie of the Year" for 2011: that Democrats lied when they said that "Republicans voted to end Medicare," despite the fact that Republicans voted to make a government-run health insurance program into a private insurance voucher system and just call it "Medicare," when "Medicare," as we know it, would cease to exist. In other words, they voted to end Medicare.

Others have dissected how this supposed "lie" is actually true, and it's been roundly mocked in Left Blogsylvania and Twitterburg.

But PolitiFact's own defense of its decision is obscenely absurd: Democrats are lying because current old people will still have Medicare? But that's called a "phase-out," which you do when you are, you know, ending something. And that it was an "overreach" for Democrats to use the words "kill" or "end" because the program would still exist? Except that it wouldn't exist. It's like PolitiFact used logic out of a Family Guy episode: just because actor James Woods stole Peter Griffin's wallet, he could claim he was Peter Griffin, and everyone is forced to believe it or be accused of lying. (Yeah, yeah, but the Rude Pundit was trying to find an analogy that everyone else hadn't used.)

In fact, one could make the case that in order to call this a "lie," PolitiFact itself has to, for lack of a better word, lie about how Paul Ryan's newfangled Medicare is the same as current Medicare.

Mostly, though, it's pathetic because the whole thing is such pandering to Republicans. And, sorry, dear newspapers concerned about things like "facts" and "reality" and "truth," but they're not gonna fuck you. They tend to only want to fuck themselves.

Uncle Jay Explains: 2011 Singing Year In Review!

Lil White Lies: Advocacy Sophistry

For all their carping about ‘liberal dreamers,’ there are no more impractical and wild-eyed dreamers on the planet than Gingrich and his fellow Conservative Utopians. They love coming up with the kinds of ideas that college students used to have in the sixties when they were getting high in their dorm rooms. The difference is that the college students were straight again in the morning.

But in the halls of conservative think tanks, the lava lamps never stop burning.

Herman Kahn wrote a book called Thinking the Unthinkable in which he argued that the US could attack the Soviet Union and start a nuclear war and “win.” That laid the foundation for decades more of a pointless and costly arms race, and spawned a whole industry of intellectual agents provocateurs whose role was to challenge conventional thinking with “rule-breaking” brilliance – even when , especially when, the conventional thinking was right.

An entire right-wing think tank industry was spawned. That network generated many ideas that served large corporations, including the concept of an “individual mandate” compelling citizens to buy health coverage from an industry dominated by for-profit insurers. That’s why Newt endorsed the idea, when it was created for the purpose of undermining the Clintons’ health reform project. He’s only rejected it now because it undermines an even more important objective: defeating Obama.

-- Richard Eskow

Advocate is a stronger word than suggest: while “suggest” has a thesaurus comparable of advocate, with words such as propose, advise and recommend, the word advocate has such words as “supporter, promoter, believer” associated with it that are not included with suggest.

In this critique of a statement by David Brooks concerning Newt Gingrich once “’suggest[ing]’ building ‘a mirror system in space’ [that] could improve the Earth’s habitability,” my conservative counterpart (Bryan White) pulls a switcheroo with the words advocate and suggest. He also tries to pull off a faulty comparison with a “similar statement” made in a chain e-mail about Cass Sunstein in 2009, concerning suggesting a fairness doctrine for the internet.

In a way, Bryan White is trying to look like he is being “fair” and only arguing journalistic “standards” by inferring that a Republican should get less of a True while a Democrat should get more than a Half True. But his reasoning is that PolitiFact (PF) is trying to make it look “True” that Newt Gingrich has “crazy” ideas while downplaying less crazy ideas of Democrats to a more equivocal Half True. The answer is that while Bryan keeps asking “where’s the advocacy” the question for him should be “Where’s Newt’s disavowal?” For which he has no evidence.

The first problem with the 2009 chain e-mail Cass Sunstein statement comparison is feasibility: it’s not as feasible to put mirrors in space than it is to impose a fairness doctrine on the internet. That means the issue which can actually be done (“We also wanted to know whether this was ever a mainstream idea -- and whether it’s technologically feasible…”), which has no technological or cost factors impairing it, something more in line with conventional thinking, should come under greater scrutiny. If there was technology to cheaply put mirrors up into space tomorrow, we might have less than a true, because there’s more for writer Jacobson to check out. Then, there’s the fact that Newt Gingrich has made his niche in such “out of the box” thinking, as shown in my leading quote by Richard Eskow, a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future.

The Dummies' 12 Days of Conservative Christmas

Sidebar: Has the Flip-o-Meter been a Flop?

Working through the task of compiling the last quarter of the year PolitiFact (PF) Truth-o-Meter ratings, I noticed another “cookie cutter” group of them: on the DNC (Democratic National Committee) pertaining to its claims in a single web video directed at Mitt Romney and his flipping on a variety of issues as the 2012 presidential campaign goes into full gear.

This was a nice multi-purpose bunch of rulings for PF: not only was it easy to do, it helped beef up the number of rulings on Democrats, which were really lagging because of all those coming out of the Republican presidential debates. On the other hand, this particular group only pertained to a Democratic Party boosting group, not an individual.

But the question becomes: why weren’t these just applied to Mitt, over time, as he made the flips, as part of the Flip-o-Meter? How did the DNC deserve all these rulings? We do have Jon Huntsman rated for statements that Mitt’s flipped, but other than that, in reviewing Mitt Romney’s associated rulings, I see nothing, nadda, zilch, with the Flip-o-Meter for Romney himself. You’d think there’d be at least one. Instead, it appears they’ve all been put on the regular Truth-o-Meter system under the “Candidate bio” subject: determining whether “gossip”-- something said about another candidate-- is true.

I occasionally see Flip-o-Meter rulings in the state associated rulings as I’ve compiled them this time, but these as well seem to be few and far between . Maybe the folks at PolitiFact feel a little over-extended on all the “meters” and are phasing them out. Maybe the Flip-o-Meter has been deemed a flop.

The youtube-posted video from which PF harvested most of these Democratic rulings is shown here, in a trying-to-be-amusing piece called MittvMitt: The Tale of Two men Trapped inside the same Body. There’s also another shorter preview version. It’s all done to attract attention to a website called “Mitt v Mitt” where e-mail addresses are solicited to “hold Mitt accountable.” Here's the long version:

Here’s a review of what the DNC “says” in this video along with PF’s judgment. The topics are highlighted, and the date and writer is noted in parentheses. Going to the Democratic National Committee’s PolitiFact statement page, one can see those eight statements in a row beginning “The DNC…

 Says Mitt Romney flip-flopped on abortion….True. (November 28 - Jacobson) Here’s the same claim, also covered by Lou Jacobson, from opponent Jon Huntsman (and from Rick Perry as noted by PolitiFact Texas).

 Says Mitt Romney flip-flopped on supporting "the president's Recovery Act” (the Stimulus)…Mostly False. (November 28 - Jacobson)

 Says Mitt Romney once supported President Obama’s health care plan but now opposes it…Mostly False. (November 28 - Holan)

 Says Mitt Romney flip-flopped on an assault weapons ban…Half True (November 29 - Jacobson) This was also covered by opponent Jon Huntsman earlier in the month, also done by Lou Jacobson.

 Says Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on his support for President Reagan’s policies…Mostly True. (November 29 - Moorhead)

 Says Mitt Romney flip-flopped on a taxpayer protection pledge…True! (November 29 – Jacobson)

 Says Mitt Romney has said different things about whether global warming is caused by humans…Mostly True. (November 30 - Holan)

 Says Mitt Romney has changed his position on supporting the TARP program…False! (November 30 – Moorhead)

The combined Truth Index for these statements by the DNC is a positive 12.5. In other words, the DNC averaged a bit better than Half True in this video as determined by PolitiFact’s rulings. But what it really says is that it’s on the True side (a little over half) that Mitt Romney is a flip flopper, when you analyze eight campaign issues.

The overlap/redundancy between the Truth-o-Meter and the Flip-o-Meter comes full fore here. It doesn’t seem consistent when Flips are not being measured by the Flip-o-Meter when PF comes right out and says they’re reviewing flips, but puts them on the Truth-o-Meter instead. My other problem with this is that they are not rating Democrats, they are rating Republicans based on what Democrats say. So while they built up the quantity of Democratic rulings since they had so many on Republicans, they were still rating Republicans.

Which a certain someone is going to call more liberal bias on the part of PolitiFact.

The Ironic News Report: Newt's Gone Wild

With Juliana Forlano

Tchotchkes: A Godless Heathen Approved This Message

Lil White Lies: Seriously, Like This

“Obamacare”—the derisive pejorative used to describe the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act)—became operative for me this year on April Fool’s Day. As an early retiree, or someone who retired before the age of 62, my monthly premium was waived for the rest of the year starting with that date. The premiums will also be reduced for 2012. My healthcare plan also pays for certain preventative care and wellness exams which is part of the law, although it did the same before the law was enacted, due to the fact that many insurers already did so, because it’s obviously a good idea.

It should be noted I was informed of this in late 2010; in other words, my employer was preparing for this eventuality over a year ago. In March, 2011, I received an official notice of how my premiums would be covered.

Because my employer is headquartered in Michigan, the PPACA benefits were provided almost by default. A Florida State employee who was of a similar age to me, however, might have reason to be concerned about being treated differently, for example, by having benefits delayed, reduced, or blocked, looking at this ruling by PolitiFact (PF) Florida on Governor Rick Scott who’s not implementing /planning for the new healthcare law because he says “it’s not the law of the land (yet).”

PolitiFact Florida found Rick Scott “False” on that statement, because:

The Governor's Office argues the law's not "the law of the land," because several significant provisions haven't yet taken effect. But that misses the point. It's telling that the governor has resisted implementing all parts of the law, not just those slated to take effect later or that have raised constitutional questions.

My conservative counterpart (Bryan White) contends that (1) it’s not PolitiFact’s point to make (or miss), it’s Scott’s, (2) there’s no evidence that the governor has resisted implementing all parts of the law, or has “blow[n] off the federal law” as he puts it, and (3) Scott “has a good argument that provisions that have yet to take effect are not the law of the land.”

Mandatory use of seat belts is used as a (very weak) example of “I don’t have to wear my seat belt until the law goes into effect.” But the PPACA with its multiple tenets and grants is not the same as seat belts. Moreover, just wait until the person not using the seat belt gets into a severe accident—I’d be interested to hear what the insurance company has to say when the victim says “I don’t have to wear my seat belt until the law goes into effect” as an excuse for not buckling up. That is, once over the whiplash and other more serious injuries that occurred because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

Nevertheless, let’s start with the first item. Has Rick Scott missed the point? Is the PPACA not the law of the land until its significant provisions take effect—namely, the insurance mandate portion? Note, Scott has made a self-contradicting statement: he says it’s NOT the law of the land because he is certain the Supremes will overturn it. But if it’s not the law the law of the land, how can it be overturned?

Sidebar: Keeping On Keep On Talking

Since my last Lil White Lies “critique of the critique” of the Mitt Romney campaign ad where a quote was lifted out of context by Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, which was Obama quoting something said by the McCain campaign (“If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose”), other analyses have surfaced which permit a more thorough examination of this Pants on Fire ruling by PolitiFact.

FactCheck.Org received an unusually large amount of e-mail on this which it published in its weekly FactCheck Mailbag, for two weeks running. Most writers-in viewed this as outright misrepresentation by Romney, although FactCheck continued to maintain a “let the readers decide” stance. One letter, from a Matt Shepardson of Romeoville, Illinois, was particularly expounding:

What makes this ad deceptive isn’t the Romney people misleading people as to WHEN this quote was made, though the “when” could add to the overall level of deception in the end. The issue with the ad is that it appears that it is Obama who is making the assertion, “If we talk about the economy, we lose.” Obama didn’t make that statement in 2008, and he didn’t make that statement since. Obama was quoting the McCain campaign when he said this. Quoting someone else, and having the fact that someone else is being quoted be omitted, is by the very definition deception. ...

Jackson references the fact that the Romney campaign released a press release where they admitted Obama was repeating the McCain campaign’s comments, and I credit him for at least mentioning this, but the press release in no way excuses what is seen on the TV ad (unless, perhaps, they were to make sure that everyone who saw the ad was also somehow exposed to the press release). Presenting the statement regarding the economy AS OBAMA’S is the issue, and the issue is that it’s a deceptive presentation.

When an independent fact-checking organization leaves such a straight-forward case “to opinion,” it gives permission to those who would obfuscate the truth to do so. Spin is one thing, and it has already made the public cynical, but making assertions with no basis in fact must be called what it is when it happens. If we are ever to restore the faith in our politicians and political process, ads like this must be called out for what they are. And what they “are” are lies.

FactCheck published a response to this (and the other letters of a similar vein) as follows:

We clearly failed to convince these and several other readers of our main point. In our judgment, the ad’s claim that the new health care law is “killing jobs” is far more consequential than the out-of-context editing of Obama’s words. The truth is that independent experts predict only a “small” or “minimal” impact on employment, which is a major concern of voters at a time when unemployment is so high.

Regarding the out-of-context editing, we noted the fact that Obama’s words were shown out of context and gave the full quote from 2008. We said: “It is possible that a viewer might be misled into thinking that Obama said this about his own campaign in 2011, since the quote comes 23 seconds after a graphic cites Obama’s comments as being uttered in 2008.”

But we left it to viewers to decide whether or not to agree with the Obama campaign’s harsh characterization of the video editing as “dishonest” or “deceitful.” Our view is that such pejorative terms should be avoided without clear evidence of malicious intent. In this case the Romney campaign’s stated intent was not to deceive, but to make a case that Obama now faces an even worse economy than John McCain did in 2008. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not to accept that. And we’ll continue to be cautious about using such emotionally loaded terms as “dishonest” or “deceitful.”

In the meantime, a New York Times article addressed the same quote, and an interviewed “top operative” for Team Romney stated that “everybody does it” and that these ads are merely “manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”  It should be noted the New York Times referenced the PolitiFact ruling, followed by: (emphasis added)

Sidebar: The PLOTY Thickens

PolitiFact (PF) has just announced its finalists for the “non-coveted” 2011 Lie of the Year. It has led to some interesting speculations by my conservative counterpart and his partner in crime.  So, it's time for my own.

There are ten candidates: four Democrat statements and six Republican. Earlier this year, I had speculated on one of them, a Democratic (DCCC) claim that Republicans had voted to end Medicare, and it indeed made it to the list of nominees:

My educated guess is that PolitiFact (PF) might just make this the 2011 Lie of the Year because they can show (1) Democrats can make PolitiFact Lie of the Year as well, (2) its “inverse” relationship with the 2010 Lie of the Year (that “Obamacare” is a government takeover versus the privatization in “Ryancare”), and (3) the similar label (Obamacare versus Ryancare). The $12,500 is incidental; it is the “voted to end Medicare” that is the focus of the lie and makes it a "contender."

The "ending Medicare" part continues to make the rounds among various Democratic politicians as a “talking point”—for example, at PF Rhode Island and PF Wisconsin—and their debunkings by PolitiFact have caused it to face an avalanche of bias charges from both sides—Conservatives on Obamacare and Liberals on Ryancare.

The other currently popular topic that will be the issue in the coming presidential election campaign is job creation. PolitiFact actually has two contenders (from “Facebook posts” and from the National Republican Senatorial Committee) dealing with job creation: I wouldn’t put it past them to announce a bi-partisan “tie” between these two party-competing fibs. Remember, according to PolitiFact, the winner chosen will be “the one that played the biggest role in the national discourse.”

My money's on "zero jobs" or a tie between
these two.



If it can only be one, the edge would go to the NRSC “The Stimulus created zero jobs.” It should be noted that this one goes back to 2010; Rick Scott, the current Governor of Florida, also received a Pants on Fire for saying something similar, and it was nominated for the Lie of the Year in 2010. Like 2009 and 2010 winners, they were frequently repeated “talking-points” which PolitiFact rated more than once throughout the year.

The Republican side has played this “zero jobs from the Stimulus” to the hilt, and since job creation is a popular meme right now because of Occupy Wall Street, it has eclipsed the so-called Pants on Fire Statement that Ryancare is ending Medicare. It should be noted too, that after a few congressional town halls where the real people (as opposed to tea partiers) showed up to complain, Paul Ryan and those espousing his plan suddenly got pretty quiet (since they knew those were real people/voters complaining).

The problem for PolitiFact is that they have given the Lie of The Year award for two years’ running now to Republicans and now it’s time for a Democrat. In a way, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: it looks like they’re deliberately trying to convey they are non-partisan by choosing a Democrat statement, but sticking by their best objective judgments if they give it to a Republican, although looking even more liberally biased. So if they did a tie, they could sort of have the best of both worlds: "we're objective and we're non-partisan."

Tchotchkes: The Principled* Pachyderm

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Deficit Obfuscation

PolitiFact (PF) Ohio starts out this recent ruling with a question: “If you cut out cigarettes and coffee but used the money to pay for a vacation, would you really be saving money?” My answer: yes, especially if you would have had to put the vacation on your credit card if you hadn’t cut out the cigarettes and coffee.  But we are not talking about vacations here.

Republican Representative Jim Jordan was awarded a Mostly True by PolitiFact for an allegation along these lines in an op-ed piece in U.S.A. Today. Specifically, he said:

Politicians are so addicted to spending, they can't even avoid the temptation to spend savings from relatively minor budget cuts. President Obama's recent plan to cut $100 million of waste within his administration won't actually save money because he's going to spend it elsewhere.

What is the “mission” of Obama’s initiative? From his executive order:

The mission of the Initiative is to monitor and promote agency progress in making Government work better, faster, and more efficiently.

The New York Times also pointed out that the “savings” were going to be used elsewhere and not to relieve debt.

On Wednesday, President Obama signed an executive order cutting federal spending on things like promotional plaques and mugs, cellphones and iPads, official travel, and chauffeured cars for senior officials.

“It doesn’t replace the importance of the work that Congress needs to do in coming up with a balanced, bold plan to reduce our deficit,” Mr. Obama said in a ceremony in the Oval Office, “but it indicates once again that there are things we can do right now that will actually deliver better government more efficiently.”

In fact, the administration said, only a small portion of the $4 billion in annual savings will go toward reducing the deficit. Rather, the money will be spent on other programs, like helping veterans re-enter the work force or improving the nation’s infrastructure, which the White House contends are more worthwhile.

I guess the Republicans have two competing party views of the nature of money, especially if you have a Republican who’s both a social and fiscal conservative. Because it’s fungible when it comes to paying for abortion (the social side), but in this case, it’s not fungible when it comes to paying off debt (the fiscal side). To which I say, you can’t have it both ways.

On the abortion side, the fungibility factor is much more convoluted because it mixes public and private. Government funds cannot pay for abortion, but the argument goes  that because some women have the government paying the rest of their medical insurance, they now have the money available to pay for abortion coverage if they want to buy it privately from the insurance company.

Tchotchkes: Why the Herman-ator Terminated His Campaign (To Music)

Politi-Score: It may be His-[s]tory, but It’s He[u]r-istic

A college student by the name of Peter William Hurford published an interesting review with his own PolitiFact (PF) Politi-Score/Truth Index calculations. He titled it “Rating Presidential Candidates by the Polifact Heuristic.” While he’s spelled PolitiFact badly as Polifact, I’ve rarely heard the term heuristic. Anyway, Hurford adds the same type of graphics, although his analysis isn’t as sophisticated as my Truth Index/Politi-Score counterpart Steve at Quibbling Potatoes.

In “mass communication” a heuristic is defined this way:

In the study of media effects, judgmental heuristics have been shown to play an active role in the simplifying of news and political communication. Use of these cues and other signals from elites allow average people the opportunity to achieve a modest level of rationality in reaching a decision. This can be accomplished without having to devote any significant measure of cognitive effort normally required to arrive at thoughtful and considered choices. The limited capacity theory model and other information processing models have been influential in the study of how people encode, store and retrieve political information. Most people maintain a minimum level of interest in public affairs, and therefore employ simplifying shortcuts to arrive at political judgments. Common examples include referring to the complex military and intelligence activities by NATO forces in the Middle East simply as “the war on terror,” a reversal of a specific policy or position as a “flip-flop,” and the homogenization of any type of broad government assistance program as “socialism.”

In other words, PolitiFact acts as a “cue” or “signal” with its Truth-o-Meter (and its popular brand “Pants on Fire”) to simplify news and political communication.

What Hurford does is basically work up to the weighted average as employed by the Truth Index, only assigning double the value of the Truth Index:  instead of 150 points for Pants on Fire, or 1.5, Hurford assigns 300 points or 3.0, by 100-point (or 1.0) increments between each instead of 50 points (or .5). He starts with some of the presidential candidates and looks at the False and Pants on Fire as a percentage, then looks at the True and Mostly True as a percentage, and then adds other political figures, columnists and pundits who’ve been frequently rated by PolitiFact. He finally gets into a weighted average assigning his own scores (as described above).

His conclusions:

First, comparisons may be invalid because of statement sample biases. Again, it may be that 90% of every statement made by Glenn Beck is trustworthy and accurate, it’s just that of the specifically interesting things he says, his statements appear to be largely untrustworthy and inaccurate.

Second, comparisons may be invalid because of person inclusion biases. It certainly does look like Democrats appear seem to be more truthful than Republicans, but this probably isn’t true because of the large number of currently campaigning Republicans placed next to the large number of non-campaigning Democrats, and the propensity of people to utter falsehoods while under the pressures of the campaign trail and not in other locations.

Third, generalizations may be invalid because of an insufficient sample. It certainly looks like columnists (George Will and Paul Krugman) are far more trustworthy than pundits (Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rachel Maddow) and politicians (nearly everyone else), but the fact that we only included two famous columnists out of hundreds might mean that we have an unrepresentative sample, and columnists are largely inaccurate.

So what does this add up to?

When we acknowledge that we’re using a heuristic, and thus may not have accurate results but instead results that we consider accurate enough, we might not want to consider supporting or voting for Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain on the basis of their continual habit of lying or being misinformed.

Hurford's "Politi-Scoring"

At the left is the weighted average "Truth-Score" Hurford came up with for individual politicians/ pundits/ columnists.  The results are somewhat similar to mine.  He lists them least truthful to most, with the names in red font being the Republicans, the blue Democrats.  At the bottom of this post I've put my most recent individual 2011 Truth Index calculation for comparison.  There's also one I did previously encompassing all PF rulings, not just those for 2011.

My conservative counterpart begs to differ, of course, in that he believes Hurford has made the error of “trusting elite opinions.” As I have gathered PF’s rulings statistics, I’ve made it a rule to qualify individual truth indexes by noting that a few rulings don’t mean a lot—what Hurford would term “an insufficient sample”. My last individual ruling rating was for those with 15 rulings or more, because I also believe that any conclusions reached should be based on “results that we consider accurate enough.” In addition, comparing those rulings to similar rulings done by other fact-checkers for the same statements provides a certain amount of validation to the accuracy of those results. All biases are not equal.  That's the reason for what I call the "Politi-Score."

Finally, the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter rulings as quantified offer other statistical categorical “heuristics” beyond individual on a macro level, such as those critiqued in this blog and by Steve at Quibbling Potatoes: calculating each PolitiFact state’s  heuristic average, or a local versus national heuristic, one by subject, office-holder versus non-office-holder or month-to-month  as related to those political variables which might be affecting it. In other words, while individual rankings may be where the most interest is, we shouldn't consider them until there IS a sufficient sample to do so.  Given the quantity of rulings, these other areas of interest can be looked at in the mean time.

This chart only includes 2011 PF rulings on politicians (Rick Perry would be lower if ALL his rulings [pre 2011] were
included, so would more closely approximate Hurford's "heuristic" ratings).

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Poor is More

Newt Gingrich, who with a blessing from even Bill Clinton, has now taken the lead in the Republican presidential polls as the contender who may be the last resort before Mitt Romney. He recently had this statement rated by PolitiFact (PF): Under President Barack Obama, "more Americans are in poverty ... than at any time since the Census Bureau began keeping records on it over 50 years ago."

It seems it’s pretty cut and dry, and that is writer Lou Jacobson’s approach:

Gingrich is right that the numbers go back more than half a century, to 1959, and that the absolute numbers of people in poverty in 2010 -- 46.1 million -- is at its highest since the statistic has been recorded.

However, Gingrich ignores population growth since 1959. Over that period, the U.S. population has increased by 73 percent. So today’s poverty rate -- that is, the percentage of people in poverty -- is 15.1 percent, compared to a high of 22.4 percent in 1959. Between 1959 and 1965, the poverty rate was higher every year than it is today.

That paints a somewhat different picture than what Gingrich suggested.

Still, the poverty rate in 2010 was higher than it’s been in every year for more than four decades save one -- 1983, when the rate was 15.2 percent -- and that’s largely in tune with Gingrich’s larger point.

PolitiFact ignores, however, how the Conservatives/Republicans define poverty: they don’t believe there’s as much as Democrats—or the “lame stream media”-- would like you to believe. And it’s more and more important these days for them to cast such an image to the public because it can (and will) be used to justify massive government spending cuts. It’s also a useful weapon against the Democrats in the battle of winning the “class warfare” that the Republicans proclaim the Democrats engage in.

In July, the conservative Heritage Foundation published a research report called “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?”

Yet if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the more than 30 million people identified as being “in poverty” by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.[2] While material hardship definitely exists in the United States, it is restricted in scope and severity. The average poor person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines….

Regrettably, annual Census reports not only exaggerate current poverty, but also suggest that the number of poor persons[5] and their living conditions have remained virtually unchanged for four decades or more. In reality, the living conditions of poor Americans have shown significant improvement over time.

Here’s the first paragraph of a previous Heritage Foundation report from 2004:

Tchotchkes: How Dummies Usurp A Party

...Reciting their allegiance to the Grover Norquist Pledge.

Lil White Lies: Sorting out Solyndra--THE Novel

Coming across a PolitiFact ruling that arguably could be one category higher or lower, particularly those in the center spectrum of rulings, is not a particularly good way to prove PolitiFact is biased, or that a particular rating is incorrect.  Even my series Grading PolitiFact Liberal-Style suffers from that.  I'm trying my best to "tell 'em like I see 'em."

One method my conservative counterpart and his partner in crime try to prove a PolitiFact (PF) rating deserves more than just one move or two is what I would call “dramatic writing.” The words you use, the tone of your writing, can make things look much worse than they are. Those of us who “journalize”—particularly when we have a political axe to grind—can make it look like suspicious connections or behavior, even when they can be shown to be historically common and/or not unusual, are hugely criminal. In other words, there’s not just smoke, there’s a gigantic fire burning down the city, and everyone is just not as smart as Deff Jeff to see it.

Another review by Deff Jeff Dyberg called “Sorting out Solyndra” does just that. He calls it a “clusterfact”—borrowing from “cluster” as a group with the four-letter “F” word replaced with “fact”, which means “a chaotic mess with multiple problems.” You kind of wonder why he even goes to such lengths in writing such a “magnum opus” (3,600+ word count) if that’s indeed what it is. He appears to have been apprenticed by who else but my conservative counterpart to take the review apart sentence by sentence, with complaints not always justified.

Another opus could be written to show how he jumped the shark and “cluster-facted” himself, but I don’t have all day to comb through everything. So I’ll just make a few points about his most strident “facts” of himself.

Speaking of “Tu Quoque Memes”. A large part of Deff Jeff’s novella centers around the tu quoque complaint: that Obama referred to the Solyndra loan process as having started under President Bush, and the Democrats likewise following suit as defense. But there’s another “tu quoque” that he artfully ignores in keeping with his conclusion that the “Solyndra scandal is a rotting pile of stink in a bucket of corruption.” Because if Solyndra meets his definition of “scandal” there’s more scandals in the stink pile. Remember the Koch Brothers, those big Republican contributors?

Koch Supply and Trading, LP, one of the world's largest crude oil trading companies, will become the newest supplier of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) under President Bush's plan, announced last November, to fill the nation's emergency oil stockpile to its full capacity by 2005.

Of course, by people like Bryan and Jeff, no correlation or causation there.

Or how ‘bout our former VP, Dick Cheney and his company Halliburton? No, no causation or correlation there, or even cause for accusations of “scandal” or “corruption”:

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the former chief oversight official of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, has reached a $970,000 settlement six years after she was demoted for publicly criticizing a multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton—the company formerly headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Greenhouse had accused the Pentagon of unfairly awarding the contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Testifying before Congress in June 2005, she called the contract the worst case of government abuse she had ever witnessed in her 20-year career.

Wait, there’s one more! One that comes out and just says it!

An inspector general's report charges that top U.S. housing official Alphonso Jackson urged staff members to favor friends of President Bush when awarding Department of Housing and Urban Development contracts.

Favor friends of President Bush? Nah! No cronyism or scandal there! This was in 2006, at the peak of the housing bubble. I wonder if any friends of President Bush went belly up when the housing market crashed, and how this affected their HUD contracts. But that’s okay by Deff Jeff.

Live on Arrival. Deff Jeff also incorrectly states that the loan to Solyndra was “dead” and “had been rejected by the Bush administration.”

Fox News Misreports Pepper Spray Legality?

More on that Christmas gift that just keeps on giving...

Tchotchkes: Christmas Gift List Suggestion

Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray

Best of the customer reviews:

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When I feel threatened by students, no matter how unarmed, peaceful and seated they may be, I know that Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray has got my back as I casually spray away at point blank range.

It really is the Cadillac of citizen repression technology.

Buy a whole case!

D-Bag of Liberty

I saw Megyn Kelly on Fox News say that this was a food product, so I went ahead and bought it to use as a condiment. I find that if you have a vermouth spritzer like Martha Stewart's, you can just spray it in the bottom of a glass before you mix your other ingredients for your Bloody Mary. It was a good deal hotter than Dave's Insanity Sauce, which is also a fine choice. I was still coughing up blood four hours after I finished my Bloody Mary. Also works great for getting peaceful students off your lawn!

Kara Synhorst

I brought this with me on my tour of the Arab Spring and let me tell you that it works just as well overseas. No converters needed! Whether it was "war widows" in Libya, wounded protestors in Syria, or uppity students in Tahir Square, they all succumbed to the natural goodness of red pepper oils aerosolized into a fine mist. We should put a big American flag on each and every canister so oppressed people around the world know the quality of our non-lethal products.

Word Hack

Ar[e] you an armed, law enforcement officer -- with a helmet, face shield and body armor?

Do you feel "threatened" when "surrounded" by a group of seated, peaceful protestors?

Do you think a badge and a gun gives you the right to lift up your leg and pee on the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States?

Why merely step over those peaceful, seated students when you can spray the crap out of them with a Defense Technology 58695 MK-9 Stream pepper spray blaster?

Yes, that's right. You'll be the envy of all of your jack-booted thug friends when you deal out some major pain and suffering to people who have the nerve to exercise their right to peaceful protest in Amurca. Be a YouTube hit! Become a meme! With a little luck, you could even become the world-wide poster boy for fascism.

Supplies are limited! Act fast!

D. Hobby

I live in one of the wealthier neighborhoods in my town. Each year hoards of kids would come to my mansion seeking handouts of Halloween candy. It was costing me a fortune! Thankfully this year a good lieutenant friend of mine recommended Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray. When those grubby little kids rang my doorbell and said "trick or treat" I yelled trick and gave em a good spray of Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray right in the eyes. Fortunately, Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray is just a food product, essentially! So everyone got a good laugh out of my little prank. Well, maybe they didn't laugh so much but I know I was laughing! And it saved me from having to share any of my hard earned inheritance with those young ruffians! Thanks Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray!

C. Perkins III

If you are ever facing non-violent docile young students sitting down on the ground, and you hate "liberals", you can adjust it to the highest settings, and walk back and forth like you are spraying pest killer on your roses. It makes you feel so good! Even if you are a 260 pound strong man facing 145 pound unarmed American citizens practicing their right to peacefully assmble, you can easily spray the crowd of hippies that need to take a bath and get a job. Highly recommended for hippie control!

Craig Richard Gillette

I casually used this product to try to disperse a small band of non-violent campers who had locked their arms together. Although initially it seemed to be effective, it took two applications! The worst part is that the next day they multiplied exponentially! Now what?

One positive outcome, I did receive a paid vacation for my efforts.

“100yrsold”

I was told that this product was essentially a food item used to spice food. This pepper spray, instead, ruined the first meal I used it on due to being approximately 1,000 times hotter than the jalapenos I normally use. For the first time ever I think Fox News may have lied to me.

“Hookertime”