Politi-Score: Quibbling Potatoes, Very Well Done

Quite a cerebral Quibbling
Mr. Potato Head

I knew there had to be another blog, somewhere, someplace,  that was doing the same "Politi-Scoring" that I was. At least in the realm of assigning values to the PolitiFact (PF) Truth-o-Meter ratings and averaging them between Democrats and Republicans. After all, a few mainstream websites had been making some attempts at quantification, so it was an open idea that had been tried different ways many times.

I can’t recall exactly how this blog came up in a search result, but Quibbling Potatoes, a blog hosted by someone named Steve from Norman, Oklahoma, was doing almost everything I was doing, presenting similar graphs and quantifications of what became the PolitiFact Truth Index. He delved into some of the same issues with PolitiFact, and reached many of the same conclusions.

But the most interesting thing about Steve’s version of the Truth Index? I’ll put it in Steve’s words. 

This week PolitiFact announced a new feature on their mobile phone app...

They developed a chart of general truthiness against time so that trends could be seen more easily. ..

The feature is almost exactly like my PolitiFact Truth Index.

What did PolitiFact call this new feature? The PolitiFact Truth Index.

Coincidence? Who knows.

(Personally, I think it's more than a coincidence. But I can't prove that.)

As I said, Steve reached some of the same conclusions: that Republicans lie more than Democrats, that the lying increased, for example during the 2010 elections and the February Wisconsin protests, that the PF states have differences to PF National. I find Steve’s analysis more penetrating than my own, as I just publish what I find (or as he said in one of his posts, “charts ‘em as [he] sees ‘em”) and tend to leave more on conclusions to the readers. His post on subject analysis was excellent. Like me, he seems to be searching for a better way to graphically present his findings…yes, those murky clippings of Excel graphs (which is what his appear to be) aren’t the best. I appreciate his calculating the standard deviation but I’m doubtful how many readers have taken the necessary statistics to understand it.

But most of all, poor Steve was getting tormented by my conservative counterpart in his comments area, reaching the same impasse with him as everyone else. Steve referred to the blog PolitiFact Bias in one of his most recent posts: (emphasis added)

…One of the most thorough smackdowns of PolitiFact since the beginning of this year is the blog PolitiFact Bias whose writers have a beef not only with the selection bias, but also with the rating process, the final rating itself, and the selection of the “lie of the year”. In one post, blogger Bryan White tries to make an objective case for partisan bias (“bolstered by methods of science”) by compiling a list of errors in PolitiFact ratings going back to 2008 and pointing out that the overwhelming majority of them are unfavorable to Republicans or favorable to Democrats. But how does he determine which PolitiFact ratings are errors? He used his own (conservative-leaning) judgment, fraught with even more partisan bias than PolitiFact.

For which I have whole-heartedly agreed. Steve seemed to touch on, but did not quite get to, the part of Bryan’s “method” that took a while for me to comprehend: that Bryan White covers a conservative (or in reverse, a liberal one) talking point agenda in a cloak of reasonable “plausible deniability” when critiquing PolitiFact rulings—that, for example, where Steve responded to one of Bryan’s comments in reference to a PolitiFact fact-check on Rob Portman : (emphasis added)

…The Portman fact-check was less about Portman and more about a Republican talking point that gets repeated over and over, which is that expanded oil exploration would immediately reduce our need for foreign oil imports. I don't have any doubt that the "immediate" part of Portman's statement was part of the salesman-like pitch for drilling, which is why it is a necessary element to the claim.

The last comment Steve made in response to Bryan should get an honorary spot in the Bryan White Debate Responders Hall of Fame:

The bedrock of your conviction that PolitiFact errs a lot stems from your belief in your own infallibility, that you can detect errors perfectly, that what you say is objectively true and that others who disagree with your views are either irrational or will eventually come around to your way of thinking if you just leave enough comments on their blogs.

Bryan’s auto-response was of course “your assertion is blissfully free of supporting evidence” to which I say…really? Besides all the comments from Bryan on Steve’s blog, I’ve devoted numerous posts in my blog presenting the evidence of Steve’s assertion above, a few of which I’ll list here for Steve’s benefit:

• Here's where Bryan used the same denial-of-evidence-when-it’s-right-there-in-front-of-everyone excuse. Here’s my post responding to his admonishment of me on Facebook that I had "no evidence" that anyone in the Republican party had ever called Obamacare socialism (January 22). 

• There are Facebook commenters who have blocked him but found to their chagrin he was reading their comments on the public Facebook and responding to them (June 23).

• I have posted a compendium of many of the Bryan White Facebook Debaters for 2010, called “PF Facebook Page Commenter of the Year (or Maybe All Time)” (December 23, 2010).

• Steve’s reference to Ayn Rand in one of his comments to Bryan was spot on, and reminded me of a post done earlier this year on Bryan's argument method, which besides quantity of comments, appears to be a combination of something called Argumentum Verbosium and the "Randian" Argument by Intimidation (January 6).

• In other matters, here’s my take on a PF ruling on Michael Moore (that 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined)  explaining my agreement with Steve’s comment that everyone knew what Moore meant (except Bryan) (March 16).

• Factcheck.org “graded” a comment by Michele Bachmann as flat-out False, while PolitiFact went much easier on her. Would that be conservative bias on the part of PolitiFact?  Bryan touches bias on the "reverse" on it but it seems to me (and that's why I started a series of posts called Grading PF Liberal-Style) they should not just offset anything he comes up with, but show that a case can be made of  G.O.P. or conservative bias by someone who has "admitted" liberal bias.  Also, my blog includes a page (Guide to PolitiFact Detractors) where one can find many sources of both sides accusing PolitiFact of bias. (August 5)
• Finally, here's 30 of Bryan's reviews critiqued by me (and that number will continue to grow), including the Michael Moore one.  Sometimes I agree with him, most of the time I don't, because it's exactly as Steve states, this whole exercise is about 90% subjective.  I don't have to be as smart as Bryan or Steve to figure that out.

In the future, if I have a "Best Blog" listing on this blog, I'm definitely going to include Quibbling Potatoes.  When I think of Oklahoma, I now have more  than just Coburn and Inhofe (R--red-hot), I have Quibbling Potatoes and Bartcop.