Tchotchkes: Ah, the Ironies of Capitalism!

In three great cartoons courtesy of Bartcop!

Yes it's so!  Google Marinol or visit http://www.drugs.com/marinol



Remind you of certain somebodies (Walton, Gates, to name a few?)



Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Walmart Welfare 2012

Earlier this year, my former wingnut carpoolian buddy boasted in a comment section of my blog how he had annuitized his 401K through an insurance company: he expressed a seeming anger that if he had the opportunity to invest himself, he could have done much better over what he received from Social Security, to which he had contributed heavily over the years. Although I am highly dubious of the value of such annuities, he may be correct about “doing better” himself than through “forced” contributions to social security; however, the point is that in either case Social Security is an insurance annuity option for retirement income.

All this (and a little more) is part and partial to a statement by Rick Santorum which PolitiFact (PF) rated Mostly True, that “a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them." An excerpt from PolitiFact’s finding:

The Census Bureau found that a little over 147 million Americans received payments from at least one of these programs at a time when the U.S. population was just over 303 million. This meant that 48.5 percent of Americans received federal cash or cash-like benefits -- and it means that Santorum’s number is well-supported. In fact, counting such items as amounts refunded from the Earned Income Tax Credit or agricultural subsidies -- neither of which are included in these figures -- would push that number higher.

I believe Santorum’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details (Half True by PolitiFact): many of the entitlements are actually a form of insurance that have already been contributed toward through payroll taxes. Then there’s the point made by the Washington Post that “the usefulness of these numbers is weakened because they count everyone in a household as benefiting from a particular federal payment even if that payment is made in the name of only one person.”

Then, there’s the statement following which, taken in context, was a patently absurd one: that “After Obamacare….it will be 100%.”

Then there’s a problem I have with the states that Santorum won in the primaries: the “bite the hand that feeds them” states, in particular, Mississippi and Alabama, where we already know there are a higher percentage of food stamp recipients relative to other states, and where they receive more assistance than what they pay in taxes. As noted by Lee Pappas, the Rude Pundit:

Some conservatives see the social safety net as a calculated plot by liberals to make people dependent on the federal government, a way of controlling them. Of course, since the states where people receive more in government assistance than they pay in taxes vote Republican, that's pretty much demonstrably false.

Let’s get back to the first point, Social Security as insurance. Over 37 million people age 65 or higher receive Social Security. Almost 8 million people under 65 receive social security because of a disability. I would imagine the vast majority of the total 45 million contributed to the Social Security system. Even my conservative counterpart admits it’s a form of insurance. If that’s what it is, how can Santorum say those who receive it depend on it, when they planned to get it because they contributed to it in the first place?

Sidebar: Yet ANOTHER Reason for More Republican Fact-checking

And Another Reason I don't believe in the "Liberal Media"

(AND Things You won't see at those Anti-PolitiFact Blog Sites)

As soon as I posted "Another Reason For More Republican Fact-checking" the other day, I got yet another fine surprise from the Daily Beast (via Yahoo News) as a follow-up: yet another study, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which reported:

During the bruising Republican primaries, there was one candidate whose coverage was more relentlessly negative than the rest. In fact, he did not enjoy a single week where positive treatment by the media outweighed the negative.

His name is Barack Obama.

That is among the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington nonprofit that examined 52 key newspaper, television, radio, and Web outlets.

“Day in and day out, he was criticized by the entire Republican field on a variety of policies,” Mark Jurkowitz, the group’s associate director, says of Obama. “And he was inextricably linked to events that generated negative coverage”—including rising gas prices, the ailing economy, and the renewed debate over his health care law.

In short, while the president was being hammered on both fronts, his message was somewhat drowned out by the volume of news coverage surrounding the GOP candidates.

As my recent Politi-Score analysis of Mitt Romney's rulings revealed, many of his statements concentrated on "hammering" Obama and his policies as noted in the above quote, with the end result of bringing down his overall "truthfulness."   The study also evidences the reality of there being so many of these type of  "Candidate Bio" (Obama) statements being checked.  And it doesn't seem that PolitiFact's "setting the record straight" with many of the claims it found misleading and false (as well as the other fact-checkers) had much effect.

Overall, it was no contest. From Jan. 2 through April 15, Romney’s coverage was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, the researchers found. Obama’s coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral. That means Romney’s depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president’s. So much for liberal bias.

So, consider this the next time you see those signs that say "Don't Believe the Liberal Media" often seen at some of the Republican presidential campaign events.  Because if the coverage of Obama has been found to be so negative, maybe those sign-holders are doing themselves a dis-service, because by extension they're telling anyone (i.e., swing-voters) reading the sign that what the media says about Obama is probably NOT true. 

Lil White Lies: Politi-Pedantry

PolitiFact has covered this twice, in November and in January, with the same "False" ruling.

A few months ago when my conservative counterpart was not yet blocked on Facebook, I used a word to describe his blog that I had never seen him use before, which was that it was “shlock.” Shlock means something which is of inferior quality, cheap and shoddy. Now I’ve seen him recently use it in both his blogs, as if he looked up “shlock” when he saw my use of it and thought to himself, “hey I got another good nasty deprecating word to use for PolitiFact!”

But shlock might describe this short little Grading PolitiFact ditty which doesn’t offer any further good explanation for why saving money and cutting expenses are two different things, and that is somehow proof that PolitiFact got this fact-check of Romney wrong. He can do his “You just don’t have a clue--I’m the only one who really gets it” routine all he wants on this, but I can even tell him from my years as an accountant that “reducing expenses” and “saving money” are often used interchangeably. And if context is so very important (as writer Bryan White alludes to in quoting PolitiFact Principles about context at the start of his post) he totally ignored the context of Romney’s claim.

As an example, let’s say my income was reduced to where I had to live off my credit cards (something like what our government is doing now). It would behoove me to start looking for ways to save money/reduce costs—to reduce the amount I was having to pay with the credit cards. For example, I might decide to get rid of my cell phone, or buy a “prepaid” one. That would save $35-50 (or more) a month I might be paying off my credit card. That would be reducing my costs, that would be reducing the amount that would be added to my credit card (my "deficit"), that would be saving money. Grading PolitiFact wants you to believe that cutting costs and saving money are “not necessarily the same thing.”

And if I said I was saving $50 a month in cell phone bills by getting a prepaid phone that would not be quite correct. Because I’d have to figure in the cost of the prepaid phone. That’s what is happening here. Romney is misleading because he’s expressing the $95 billion in absolute terms.

 Let’s try a little experiment here by word replacement: if the PolitiFact ruling had said Obama “ wants to cut government spending by rolling back President Barack Obama’s signature health care law” instead of “wants to save money by rolling back President Barack Obama’s signature health care law” would it have made any difference in the rest of the ruling and the ruling result? If they had done that, would anything in the rest of the ruling explanation needed to have been changed to coincide or force it to agree? You can see my point. Romney said in his USA Today op-ed “The federal government should stop doing things we don't need or can't afford” directly followed by the example of “Repeal ObamaCare, which would save $95 billion in 2016.” (Of course, had it been this way, I would expect that Grading PolitiFact would have a reverse position, reproving PolitiFact by saying “saving money” morphed into “cutting government spending.”)

So PolitiFact went with Romney’s precise statement—“which would save $95 billion”—yet Grading PolitiFact disputes that as a “morph” from reducing expenses, which is basically the same thing. This is not even splitting hairs, this is pedantry at its extreme.

Sidebar: Another Reason for More Republican Fact-checking

(...And Why I don’t believe in the “Liberal Media”)

Since I’ve started tracking PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter rulings, I’ve generally described an ongoing higher percentage of Republicans fact-checked as compared to Democrats. For example, when PolitiFact hit Ruling Number 5,000 this February, it was determined just over 53% of the 5,000 rulings were on Republicans /Conservatives, while only 39% were attributable to Democrats/Liberals. For the first quarter of 2012, it’s been even higher with almost 61% Republicans /Conservatives’ statements checked versus 34% Democrats/Liberals.

A recent article by David Ferguson of “The Raw Story” reports the results of a study (by media watchdog group FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Media and Reporting) on “guests featured in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions on the four main Sunday morning talk shows.” This is often where PolitiFact finds its “selections” of “facts” to investigate. And lo and behold, which party tends to dominate this format, which might very well explain the larger number?

…[The breakdown of guests were from] the four main Sunday morning talk shows, ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” from June 2011 to March 2012. The results skewed heavily Republican, white and male, with only token representation by blacks and Latinos, and virtually no appearances by guests outside of one of the two national political parties.

Extra! points to November 6 of 2011 as typical of the ideological breakdown of the Sunday shows. CBS’s Bob Schieffer welcomed “a cross section of Republicans” to discuss the issues facing the primary that week. On ABC’s “This Week,” lone liberal Arianna Huffington was featured alongside conservatives Matthew Dowd, George Will and Niall Ferguson. “Meet the Press” featured Republican operative Alex Castellanos with Wall Street Journal conservative scribe Kimberly Strassel alongside a pair of middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists.

The study showed that one-on-one interviews with policy makers and other national figures, which are the ratings bread and butter of the talk shows, featured 166 Republicans to Democrats’ 70. Roundtable discussions welcomed 189 Republican guests and 109 Democrats.

It’s worth noting, also, that the liberals typically presented on these programs are mostly centrists with very few out-and-out progressives, leading FAIR to quip that “corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.”

The increase in Republican coverage in 2011-12 seems to have a similar explanation to mine for increased fact-checking of Republicans:

It could be argued that during this period the nation has been in the throes of a long and competitive Republican primary race, hence the heavy percentages of Republicans and right wing operatives. A similar study done by the group Media Matters during the 2004 Democratic primary race still found 56 percent of the guests chosen for the Sunday morning shows were Republicans to 44 percent Democrats.

So it appears what’s needed is an off-election-year study to make a comparison. In the meantime what this all brings to mind for me is when certain conservatives I know speak of the “Obama News Network” or that perennial favorite the “lame stream media.” Which is to say, this is just one more of the many facts that doesn’t seem to fit their narrative.

Politi-Scoring Romney Part 2: NOBama

Late last year I started including a brief description of the fact-check in my database. I wanted to make it easier to look for overlaps, contradictions, things that might be interesting to post, etc., and although it was a pain to do, it really helped, especially in this case, with Politi-Scoring Mitt Romney.

Mitt "Monty Burns"-style

There was one obviously repeating theme of topic throughout the fact-checks for all the presidential candidates, in particular front-runner Romney. PolitiFact often puts it under the subject of “Candidate Bio” (although not always) which is basically a statement about the “other” candidate they are running against. As I could see it unfold, I tried to make that subject the very first word (regardless of “subject”) so I could later filter them out: Obama.

Statements about Obama and his administration and policies comprised just over 30 percent of the Romney fact-checks. There were 56, of which half were PolitiFact rulings (so about 1 in 4 of the 125 PolitiFact Romney rulings dealt with statements about Obama).

The Romney Politi-Score for just “statements about Obama” was a negative 55.4, which almost triples to the downside his overall Politi-Score of negative 18.6. There were no Romney statements from any of the fact-checkers which could be ruled 100% True when it was about Obama; in fact, PolitiFact had no statement rulings True or Mostly True on Romney when Obama was the subject (their Truth Index in this category was a very “untruthful” negative 64.3). Most of the “Mostly Trues” were “1 Pinnochio” rulings coming from Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post Fact-Checker, some of them combination claims done on Romney speeches.

Some examples of “Mostly Trues”:

• Obama and “crony capitalism” (Washington Post)
• Did Obama say he ranked among top 4 U.S. Presidents? (Washington Post)
• Over 500,000 Californians have lost jobs since Obama became president. (FactCheck.Org)

Most of the “Half Trues” were numbers claims which were difficult to substantiate.  Two appeared to be duplications of each other by PolitiFacts National and Georgia on a statement from Romney about 25 million people out of work (I included this as an “Obama” claim because Romney is implicitly faulting Obama for so many unemployed).  One more looks as if it’s a Romney repeat very similar to the 25 million claim, but in that case it’s 20 million people, and was one of the three fact-checks from AZ (Arizona) FactCheck, done in July of 2011 (they found it “unsupported.”)  Other examples of statements found "Half True":

• Since Obama’s Stimulus over 1 million jobs were lost (PolitiFact Florida)
• Obama raised taxes 19 times (PolitiFact National)
• Obama added 135,000 bureaucrats to workforce (PolitiFact New Hampshire)

Play Mittsy for Me: Politi-Scoring Romney

Keep it under wraps, Mitt.

When I first became interested in politics as a teenager, I was particularly enamored with what was then called the Rockefeller Republicans. As I lived in the Midwest (Ohio) I was intrigued with Mitt Romney’s dad, George, who seemed to me to be one of those Republicans with a liberal streak, and at the time he was running for president, I thought he was just the guy America needed: socially liberal and fiscally conservative. But that was just me, and as it turned out, he didn't make it.

Mitt was probably a lot like his father at one time; but since then he has been too much of all things to all people. Right now I am looking for him to veer back left in his winding road to trying to win the presidency, and I believe his right turn may (partly) account for some of his down turn in truthiness as I will show in this Politi-Score review (although I discovered something more specific, but related to that right turn). In the mean time he needs to work on his “Tin Man” image, and there are certainly some good ways to do that.

In my last post I was looking forward to scoring 184 Mitt Romney statements but in cross-checking everything found I had missed one, so make that 185 Romney statements, a pretty big number considering the other reviews I’ve done. There were 125 by PolitiFact, 33 from FactCheck.Org, 24 from the Washington Post Fact-Checker, and an extra 3 I threw in from AZ (Arizona) Fact Check. PolitiFact may have an even higher count now; my cut off for their rulings was as of April 10.

For comparison purposes, Rick Santorum had 45 rulings (although his were only from PolitiFact); Newt Gingrich, my last full Politi-Score before Romney, had 76; Rick Perry was 37, Herman Cain 34, and Michele Bachmann was my first with 50 fact-checks and rulings. So all in all, Mitt has had more rulings and fact-checks than all the other presidential candidates I’ve done combined, excluding Gingrich. That being said, there will be another post comparing the Truth Indexes/Politi-Scores for all Republican candidates.

For FactCheck.Org, it is much more difficult to gather as well as decide the “score” on claims. They do not have any nice neat lists like PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact-Checker. I must go through a name search and then evaluate each article and subjectively decide where it goes as far as a Truth-o-Meter ruling. For most purposes there is no “Pants on Fire.” For FactCheck.Org I decided to go as far back as early 2011. And I must evaluate the rulings from WaPo as well; the page that shows accumulated rulings for each politician also includes statements made by their superPACs on their behalf which I did not include. So including inevitable new rulings since this post, my numbers are slightly different than what you may see at the respective fact-check websites.

Overall. Here’s how the “current” Politi-Score looked overall for Romney: he’s at a negative 18.6, a relatively good score compared to the other presidential candidates, but with a lot of caveats.

Click to enlarge:  Romney's Politi-Score on 185 fact-checks

Fact-Checker comparison. It might help to take a look at the score he received from each fact-checking source. To make it more apples to apples with the other fact-checkers, I separated Romney’s pre-2011 PolitiFact rulings from those since early 2011, as the other fact-checking scores were also mostly for this current period. I did not include a Politi-Score for AZ-FactCheck for the three rulings they did as that does not mean much. For the record, they had one True, one False, and one they called “Unsupported” which I counted as “Half True.” This puts AZ-FactCheck’s Politi-Score right at zero for the three rulings.

Click to enlarge: Romney's combined PolitiFact Truth Index for 125  rulings is -12.9, almost the same as Washington Post's.

Find THIS PolitiFact (FactCheck) Ruling: Rick Santorum

About the time I published a Truth Index on Rick Santorum, he decided to drop out of the presidential race. It seems so far I have been right there as the 15-minute presidential candidate fame light dimmed for Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich. Keeping that in mind, I’ve just completed a review of 184 Mitt Romney rulings from all of the fact-checkers….don’t think it will work this time, ha ha.

Ron Paul is not pictured as he is already on another planet; Santorum is headed for deep space as well.

This post will combine a “PolitiFact versus FactCheck Number 3” review on Santorum, plus a few “nothing to be seen here”—i.e, “Find THIS PolitiFact Ruling” fact-checks done on Santorum but not by PolitiFact (or even FactCheck.Org).

(Note:  Google Blogspot does not appear to take too kindly to tables.  Please excuse the spacing/font errors.)

Santorum Statement	FactCheck	PolitiFact
"The Obama administration prohibits people who work with at-risk youth from promoting marriage as a way to avoid poverty."  (January, 2012)	"Santorum was right about abstinence not being part of this particular program, but he was wrong about marriage.”	“The change under Obama…was about what could be taught regarding abstinence -- not marriage… Santorum simply got it wrong. His statement is False.”
"… a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion.” –Rick Santorum, during a Republican presidential debate (March 29, 2011).	“But Santorum was wrong when he said that a third of pregnancies end in abortion…”	False:  So we find Santorum is significantly overstating the frequency of abortions…”
"Barack Obama has raised a 'stop sign' on oil exploration."  (June 6, 2011)	“Santorum was wrong when he said the Obama administration is 'against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska.'  The administration has approved 296 new permits...”	False:  "Just because the pace isn't as fast as some would like doesn't mean that Obama 'has put (up) a stop sign.'"
"...there were requirements put on other states when they came into the union that English be the principal language…”  (following similar statement in Puerto Rico, March, 2012)	“Rick Santorum greatly overreached when he claimed that Congress required English be the principal language and that it be taught and spoken universally” in several Southwest territories, Oklahoma and Hawaii as preconditions for them attaining statehood."	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact. Possible Half True or Mostly False, as they are not saying he is "wrong."
"I didn't vote for a steel bailout." ( February 26, 2012, on Meet The Press).	But in fact, the former Pennsylvania senator voted in 1999 for the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program, which was dubbed a “bailout” by multiple news organizations at the time.	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact. Possible Mostly False or False.  It was $400 million dollars of taxpayer money, not anything like the billions for the automakers (also loan guarantees) but a substantial sum nonetheless.
“The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is,” Santorum said at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Miss., on March 12, [2012]. He made similar comments in early February in Colorado Springs, Colo., saying that global warming was a “hoax” and that “man-made global warming” and proposed remedies were “bogus.”	"...how dangerous can carbon dioxide be? Too much is definitely a bad thing. …97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers ‘most actively publishing in the field’ agreed that climate change was occurring.”	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact. In fact, nothing listed at all (as of today) on Santorum's view of global warming.  Given other rulings it's done, however, it would probably merit a False.
"In the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you’re elderly and the bracelet is ‘do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick." (February 3, 2012,  forum at Grace Bible Church in Columbia, Mo.)	This was a 3-part debunking:  (1) "Government statistics show euthanasia is climbing, but represented only 2.3 percent in 2010, according to the most recent data."  (2) "A representative of the Royal Dutch Medical Association said 'there are no forced cases of euthanasia.' " (3) "...the Dutch government and medical association say no such bracelets exist."	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact. The multiple-lie voracity of this claim would have made a great Pants on Fire to hang on Santorum.  But they didn't....why not since they're supposedly so liberally biased?
"The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. ... –Rick Santorum, campaigning for president in South Carolina (February 2011)	NOT CHECKED by FactCheck.	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact, even though it might be considered a candidate for one of those "push polls"-- "does the American Left hate Christendom?"  Definitely a good "False" ruling.
"I think the Democrats are actually worried he (Obama) may go to Indonesia and bow to more Muslims.” –Rick Santorum, Fox News interview (May 2010)	NOT CHECKED by FactCheck.	NOT CHECKED by PolitiFact.  This would have gone hand in hand with Romney's "Obama Worldwide Apology Tour" claim which garnered a Pants on Fire.



Sidebar: Is Broccoli Like Health Insurance?

Truth Index: How the Occu-PIE is Sliced

In order to further refine the Truth Index statistics, I decided that instead of “Office Holders” and “Non Office Holders” to define each person or group getting rated by PolitiFact precisely in terms of “who they were” and “what they did”—what some would term their “occupation”--their specific current position. In other words, if they were a person in congress, I would indicate that as “Rep (State)”, if they were a state legislator, it would be “State Rep (State)” or “State Sen (State).” And then there were the presidential candidates.

I still left a position for office holder and non-office holder. I must say this allowed me to determine that there were some people who appeared to be office holders but were not (former office holders were classified as office holders until now). So, now this category is a little more accurate. But a few thorny issues came up and here is how they were resolved. A few of the Republican presidential contenders are also office holders, the best example being Ron Paul who is also a congressional representative from Texas, as is Rick Perry as governor. For purposes of this charting, they are not being classified as presidential contenders, but in their respective “occupations.”

Earlier I did a sort of “down and dirty” estimate on advocacy groups and PACs which was determined after the rulings had been added, those with more rulings getting more research as to whether they were a PAC, advocacy group, etc. Now I am doing each individually as I go, which will hopefully give a more accurate result.

So in view of that, let’s take a look at how the PolitiFact ruling Occupational pie (the Occu-Pie) was apportioned, along with the Truth Indexes shown in parentheses (no Republican versus Democrat considered):

Click to enlarge

It seems to be a very proportional slicing of the “pie” (for those in office, president excluded) all things considered, except maybe for the Republican presidential candidates. If I included Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson (Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain were not rated through March of 2012), “Republican presidential candidates” would make up the largest percentage of rulings at just over 20% (105 rulings out of 516), with a total first quarter Truth Index of -27 instead of -31. So other than those in the media (which made up a very small percent), the presidential candidates have the highest negative Truth Index. Seventy-five of the rulings were done by PolitiFact National and New Hampshire; the presidential contenders represented over 61% of all the rulings they did in the first quarter of 2012.

Other explanatory detail: “State governing bodies” were state legislators; “local government officials” included mayors, sheriffs, county commissioners, etc. “Other” was mostly former officials and those running for office not holding any official position.

It should also be noted that this position can obviously change for each person should they win or lose an election. That would be another interesting trend indicator to look at: does it change any once that person wins the seat? Does the campaign catch one’s pants on fire more (or less)? One more item to add to my list of “potentials.”

Tchotchkes: Absurdity Today! with Julianna Forlano

Lil White Lies: Pay NO Attention to those Conservative Commentators

My reaction to a feature on PolitiFact Bias called “Nothing to See Here,” which publishes statements designed to show those important claims it thinks PolitiFact is not selecting (after all, the lynchpin of  where PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter rating system fails is supposedly "selection bias") because they’re less favorable to Democrats (or more favorable to Republicans), was to show other rulings PolitiFact could have done but chose not to, those which PolitiFact Bias conveniently skips over (i.e., biasly doesn't select)  since they don’t help their case. But I could do this another way: there had to be a time when their proclamation that PolitiFact wasn’t checking something turned out wrong, and PolitiFact did check it. And that time is now.

The statement came from Obama on the Supreme Court’s review of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”):

Ultimately, I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

PolitiFact Bias’ Bryan White ends his brief prediction for a claim which should be unfavorable to Democrats with “It's perhaps even money that PolitiFact will address this statement. If it does, I'll be interested to see the spin (if any).”

Within 48 hours, PolitiFact did address the statement, and awarded it a False in a 1,700-word tome by Molly Moorhead (which may have explained the short delay, and why the Wall Street Journal beat them to it).

I noted this in a Facebook comment with only one word “Really?” PolitiFact Bias’ Bryan White responded to me directly (despite my blocking) that he put a disclaimer on it with the “even money” bet, and that he already explained in introducing the feature “Nothing to be Found Here” that PolitiFact could ultimately do a fact-check. But that’s what anyone would do (myself included), and is a poor excuse. He wants to be known for his predictive power because of his underlying belief in PolitiFact’s liberal-leaning bias, and when he’s more often wrong than right, it doesn’t serve him well. If he had eight predictions in a row and PolitiFact produced a fact-check for all of them, he might as well throw his new feature in the garbage can. He needs to point out those statements for which he has more certainty that PolitiFact would likely not be checking them.

But PolitiFact Bias’ hack-on-board did not stop with his excuses for a wrong call: he later added his promised spin in his analyses of PolitiFact’s False ruling at co-blog Sublime Bloviations, claiming it was not only False but ridiculously so, and should have been rated a Pants on Fire, therefore assuring himself of PolitiFact’s liberal bias. Naturally, he ignored the most important underlying context he lauds so often about the rest of his remark emphasized here:

And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I'm pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.

I believe PolitiFact recognized this underlying context to Obama’s message, but did not explore it and kept the context narrowed, because reviewing what conservative commentators have said about lack of judicial restraint would have revealed Obama's real message and could have lifted the ruling from False, implicating “PolitiFact’s Bias” as writer White so craves. Obama’s comment was obviously directed at Conservatives in a slam at their complaints about judicial activism, for which there are numerous, numerous examples. But that underlying context to Obama’s remark, so often strongly stressed as something PolitiFact "missed" by Grading PolitiFact, was totally ignored.

Writer White starts out by showing how Obama greatly exaggerated the “strong majority of a democratically-elected congress” passed the ACA law. He boasts that even some Blue Dog Democrats voted against it, to which I say, that’s how it’s supposed to be, should they be voting in lock-step because that is how the Republicans do it? We all know the answer to that. But good enough, Obama did exaggerate when he said “strong majority.” However, that was not the point.

The next complaint by writer White is PolitiFact’s over-charitableness (read: left wing bias) in its interpretation of Obama’s remarks regarding “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law.” When writer Moorhead writes that this part of his statement “puzzled us” White elaborates:

It's probably a puzzling head-scratcher because of its ridiculousness (read: "Pants on Fire") if PolitiFact was not aware that Obama is the smartest person to live in the White House since Hillary Clinton. Since Obama is so smart, there must be a logical explanation.

Saying “Obama is the smartest person to live in the White House since Hillary Clinton” is, to use White’s own term, snark….cynical snark. He is making his contempt for PolitiFact known, and nothing else. But to provide a better “perspective” on what was meant by “unprecedented and extraordinary”, here is Jon Perr of the blog Perrspectives:

Truth Index: Rick Santorum

I incorrectly discounted Rick Santorum as a potential presidential candidate of standing when he started his campaign—I think a lot of others did as well (many of us had our money another Rick—Rick Perry, until he opened his mouth).

He sort of reminds me of a male Michele Bachmann with his religious inferences (it should be noted that so far in 2012, Bachmann has not been subjected to the Truth-o-Meter). While I have to give him some credit for standing up for what he believes in, there’s not enough voters who believe in what he believes in to get him elected, which is why it appears that many are starting to line up behind Mitt Romney. Not swaying is what could defeat him: if Santorum was nominated he would stick with his strong conservative ideals, while Mitt would sway left again for that necessary swing vote. (Marco Rubio might say the majority of Americans are conservative, but it’s mostly what they say and not what they do, and the Republican party is well aware of that..)

But enough of my political banter. After winning the state of Iowa (after being called for Mitt Romney) and his rising star of being the “true conservative’s choice” MUCH more attention, of course, has been given to him. And yes, as PolitiFact notes, Rick Santorum’s Truth Index has fallen since 2011.

Out of 23 Santorum statements earning our lowest ratings -- Mostly False, False and Pants on Fire -- 17 have occurred since the beginning of the year, nearly three-quarters.

In contrast, of 10 statements earning our highest ratings -- True and Mostly True -- only half have occurred since the beginning of the year.

But instead of looking at numbers of Trues and Mostly Trues versus Falses and Pants on Fire, let’s get into a little more of the nitty gritty. Up until March of 2011, Santorum had not been fact-checked at all by PolitiFact. By the end of 2011, he had 13 Truth-o-Meter rulings with a negative 19.2 Truth Index. So far in 2012 he’s had 32 more rulings, for a grand total of 45 through April 3, and his Truth Index for the 45 is a negative 31.1. This chart shows how Santorum’s Truth Index declined month to month as his number of rulings mounted.

Here’s what his chart looks like for 2012 only, which Truth index-wise at almost negative 34 is slightly worse than the cumulative above.

Click to enlarge: Mitt Romney's 2012 PF ruling count and Truth Index are almost identical, at 33 rulings and -31.8 Truth Index.

The most covered subject from rulings on Rick Santorum was healthcare, over 20 percent of them (ten) mostly about “Obamacare” and in attacking Romney, about the similarities to what he did in Massachussetts. However, that Truth Index of negative 15 is higher than his overall average. Here’s how he did on healthcare graphically:

The second part of this analysis compares claims with FactCheck.Org but should be more accurately categorized as “Find THIS PolitiFact Ruling” (“Nothing to See Here”) since many of them were not covered by PolitiFact. That post will follow shortly.

Truth Index: 2012 Weekly Trends

Instead of doing a monthly Truth Index trendline, I thought for 2012 I’d try a weekly. The weekly tells about as much as the monthly (not much) except it’s a bumpier ride. I also thought I could look at recent political events (such as the “attacks” on contraception and Planned Parenthood) and see if they could be tied in through review of Pants on Fire and False statements. But I couldn’t really find any correlation.

Click to enlarge:  Is each month starting (or ending) about even or is it just me?

In the monthly review it was rare that the Republicans Truth Index exceeded that of the Democrats, however, and that is certainly not true when one looks at the weekly. The Republicans started off 2012 well ahead of the Democrats, then both reversed course of each other, only to be even by the end of the month. It seems to have happened in February and March as well. It almost looks like when month end approaches, the PolitiFact writers take measure of their Truth Indexes and try to even everyone up …but it can mean anything as this is only three months’ data, and it may not be there the next time.

For some reference on the chart, I thought I’d add the weekly index for the four presidential contenders (Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul). The yellow line on the chart seems to follow the red Republican line except for the second week of March. It should be noted that the bulk of PolitiFact rulings on the four candidates were done in a three week period from February 12 to March 3 (about a third of them in three weeks out of 13) and that they then trailed off during March, with only five done in the last three weeks. So those last few weeks would have seriously distorted Truth Indexes because of the number, truth indexes with little relevancy.

Next up, another way to look at the “source” of PolitiFact rulings.

Sidebar: Liberal Proof of PolitiFact (Liberal) Bias

This started out as a “Lil White Lies” follow-up post, but actually, I’m not picking on Grading PolitiFact here. I may even be giving the "enemy" some ammunition, but in this case, PolitiFact kind of deserves it.

When I spotted these two rulings, the question occurred to me why Tom Feran at PolitiFact Ohio AND Angie Drobnic-Holan at PolitiFact Florida would basically cover the same statement. Above are the banners at Pat Boone’s page on PolitiFact, and the "difference" is highlighted. They were published four days apart.

I also thought I may have confused the two because I recall mentioning PolitiFact Ohio’s Tom Feran in my Lil White Lies post—but I had removed the reference in my final review. Of course, my conservative counterpart at Sublime Bloviations wouldn’t have made that mistake because his critique preceded the publishing of PolitiFact Ohio’s ruling by a few days. If he had known, I think he might have done a review covering both.

If you read them, the emphasis in both is on the so-called rationing of the IPAB, while the “wasteful spending” is secondary. Writer Feran leads into his article on how the Pat Boone video via the anti-AARP 60 Plus Association has been advertised in the state of Ohio. But the pieces are pretty redundant; I’ve noted before where this has happened, sometimes very obvious, and sometimes with an easy topic.

But there’s one other interesting aspect of this, besides the perhaps unnecessary repeat of a Pants on Fire claim perpetuated by Republicans (to refute one of their known talking points); it’s the fact that I’ve noticed that Angie Drobnic Holan and Tom Feran have both had the distinction of being the most Democrat-favorable PolitiFact journalists (through computing and comparing the Republican versus Democrat Truth Index by PF writer). When I noticed Angie last year I called it “Angie’s List Left” although she has gotten more upright in that comparison. Tom Feran’s left list, however, tilts way over to port since the data I used encompassed a full year; Angie’s was three months’ worth.

But what makes matters worse as a matter of comparison is a PolitiFact ruling from earlier this year (above) done by Eric Stirgus of Georgia, which looks like a definite conflict with the two Pat Boone rulings:

Truth Index: 2012 First Quarter

For the first three months of 2012, PolitiFact labored to produce 516 Truth-o-Meter rulings.  This brings the grand total number of rulings, since PolitiFact began, up to 5,223 as of March 31 (with the milestone 5,000 passed in the latter half of February).  Since I started tracking the Truth-o-Meter ruling by ruling beginning in 2011, this is the highest number of PolitiFact rulings done in one quarter.  The last time 500 was exceeded was in the second quarter of 2011.   The addition of PolitiFact Tennessee and the work of PolitiFact New Hampshire supplementing PolitiFact National helped put them over 500.

 The Truth Index for all the rulings has changed very little from the overall Truth Index rating at the end of 2011, of negative 13.3; it's gone up microscopically to a negative 13.2, and indicates a very flat trend line up (sort of like the downward trend of national unemployment, ha ha).  Here is how the distribution of the rulings by party broke down: 

This breakdown has improved somewhat since the end of 2011 when fact-checks on Republicans reached a heady 67 percent while only 24 percent were on Democrats and Liberals in December.  Compared to overall, however, there has still been more emphasis on Republican fact-checks (overall for Republicans it's about 53 percent and for Democrats, 39 percent).  The obvious explanation, of course, is the coverage of the Republican primary candidates as well as the domination of Republican governors/governments in the states.

Click to enlarge.

The Truth Index "Report Cards" for the quarter (above) show the Republicans held steady, moving up a point at a negative 22 while the Democrats improved very slightly from about a positive 1 to just over 5.  As a point of reference, the Republicans' score shows a very average spread of Truth-o-Meter rulings (one in each category) while the Democrats, at a score close to zero, are slightly better than average, as if they were spread equally across all categories except Pants on Fire.

Next up is a new and improved feature:  instead of a month to month Truth Index, it will be week to week for the first quarter...although it doesn't tell you much.