2012 PolitiFact Wacky Awards

PolitiFact has its Lie of the Year, but I don't think anyone's considered all the ones that were....just maybe too plain weird, wacky, dumb, or silly for a Truth-o-Meter ruling from PolitiFact.  So here are the Politi-Psychotic Awards for PolitiFact's Wackiest Fact-checks of the Year. (BTW, here's my prediction for 2012 PolitiFact Lie of the Year, posted in August.)

 

□  The "Really Bad Economic Indicator" Award.  If Rick Scott wanted to overplay the Florida economy with this one, he should have waited just a month more for Fat Tuesday and counted pazckis.  How many donuts you say you sold in one morning pretending to work at a donut shop is SUCH  a profoundly brilliant way to preface your state-of-the-state address and I can't wait to see the "donut sales indicator" in all econ books.  But seriously....

I bet PolitiFact enjoyed investigating this one.

□  The "Excuse To Go To Vegas" Award.  A PolitiFact ruling onTampa being the strip club capital of the world (uttered by Florida State senator Ellyn Bogdanoff) was written by Angie Drobnic Holan, who had to call around to find out for sure, besides, perhaps, I'm curious...did Bill Adair, Lou Jacobson and Alan Sharockman go on any field trips to determine that "evidence [was] lacking" to help Angie?

□  The "Who was Buried in Grants Tomb" Award.  Dave Weldon, a Florida senate candidate, said there was no wildlife in ANWR, which stands for Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.  PolitiFact's writer Katie Sanders quotes an interviewee: " With regard to the lack of animals, he appears to be very uninformed."   Well, DUH.

□   The "Best of the Birthers" Award.  So, the governor of Hawaii actually went to Kinko's in person to forge Obama's birth certificate?  Gee, he could have  had someone in his office do it instead of getting his picture taken while there.  I mean, I've got the Onion to read stuff like this, I don't know what it's doing in PolitiFact.

□   The "Terribly Twisted Taxonomy Award".  So a Congress is a bunch of baboons, or vice versa?  I still see this "fact" come up on Facebook shared by well-meaning friends.  It's another joke, and I don't know why PolitiFact wasted its time rating it.  While there's a lot of groupings of like animals I haven't heard of, I just don't think congress of baboons is one that merits a fact-check.  Leave it for Snopes, instead of being so monkey see, monkey do.

□   The "Flinging Poo Award."  Conservative firebrand Michele Malkin got a True for saying Gloria Steinem called Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison a "female impersonator" back in 1993.  While Steinem's characterization seems ill-formed to me, it's not a sufficient "tu quoque" argument by Malkin to defend Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" as "slut" carries a lot more baggage than a (female as a) female impersonator.  Other than that, if anyone's a female impersonator, it's Ann "Adams Apple" Coulter...

□   The "Too Much Information Award." Wisconsin state senator Joel Kleefisch got into trouble for voting on behalf of two state senators who were in the bathroom, on his (found Mostly True) claim that the bathroom is considered part of the chamber.  PolitiFact Wisonsin's James Nelson tries to answer the question we all want answered " Are Assembly members really considered in the chambers when they are, um, on the chamber pot?"   Um, I was expecting PolitiFact to tell me the two state senators Kleefisch voted on behalf of had constipation which was why they couldn't make it back on time to vote.  Well, maybe (not) the next time.

Tchotchkes: How to Read Your Losing Powerball Ticket

Quantifying the PolitiFact Quants

There's certainly a lot of people out there scoring PolitiFact rulings... I'm finding more and more of them every day.  Presented and scored in different ways, in studies, articles and blogs, I think it may be time to add them as a special section to my PolitiFact Detractors page, though "detractors" are not quite what they are.

While I hope I'm one of the better ones, I do need to make the case.  I have probably looked at these rulings in the largest variety of ways, and have done so on an ongoing basis for quite a while (since 2010, when I started this blog).  I've looked at the score in terms of writer, topic, local versus national, by individual compared with other fact-checkers, etc.   I'm looking for patterns.  For example, if Republicans lie more, do they lie about every subject?  (No, there are some subjects for which they are more truthful than Democrats)  Are lies more ideologically based? (Yes)  Do some PolitiFact writers appear to favor one party over the other based on the Truth Index? (Yes) Most of the other PolitiFact quants have looked at them in terms of just the presidential contenders or Democrat versus Republican overall.  Some qualify their rulings as far as sampling/selection bias while others take the rulings at face value.

Straight Politi-Quant websites.  The website Who's More Full of Sh*t (authored by J. Kalgreen) graphically rates the same....with an ongoing feed from PolitiFact.  It uses a score heavily weighted to the negative rulings.  It also gives an overall Democrat versus Republican rating.  While it's a pure rating website, its website set up is quite sophisticated.  As noted by Benjamin "Brash Equilibrium" Chabot-Hanowell, "I seriously wish I could code CSS and PHP as well as J. Kalgreen [WMFoS author] can."

While a great site, Who's More Full of Sh*t might not be linked by PolitiFact because its name might offend some.

Instead of saying who's more "truthier" or "honest" it goes in the opposite direction--scoring zero for True down to 200% for Pants on Fire.  So if my conservative counterpart decided to try to troll-comment the site (which he can't because no comments are enabled) he'd have to complain that PolitiFact's selection bias is the cause for Democrats being less full of sh*t, or for Republicans to be more full of sh*t.  Because, you see, both are still full of sh*t.

Malark-o-Meter is more of the nerdy Nate Silver variety of  meta/probability analysis and in that respect is like no other PolitiFact quantifier.  A newer website based on (I'm guessing) Joe Biden's outburst at the vice presidential debate, author Benjamin "Brash Equilibrium" Chabot-Hanowell is interested in mathematically determining a possible "bias" factor as well as the probability of how much each claimant is prone to lie. He includes the Washington Post Factchecker rulings in his analysis as well.

"Serious" Studies.  I've posted about and often referred often to Eric Ostermeier's 2010 study of 511 PolitiFact rulings  where he concluded with the infamous selection bias statement.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs did a study of both PolitiFact and Washington Post Factchecker rulings but did not really reach any other conclusion ("[took] no position on their accuracy") as to why Republicans score as less truthful than Democrats.

And of course, the website PolitiFact Bias did a research paper on PolitiFacts False/Pants on Fire rulings, coming up with a percentage factor that I often use in my blog.    There are others who have looked at the Pants on Fire, some in a humorous way, or a lot like PolitiFact Bias.

Website Articles.  One of the very first to quantify PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter rulings was the pseudonymous "Cinematical" at the Daily Kos, back in 2009....and arrive at the conclusion as so many that would follow, that conservatives were less "honest" than liberals.  There's also been several scorings at the Daily Beast, as well as a nice quant review by the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight.com (Nate Silver's blog).

Blogs.  Anyone math-oriented knew the moment they saw the Truth-o-Meter that it begged to be measured.  I imagine there's a lot more than just those mentioned here. So (besides myself), here's three very good ones:

In 2011, I came across the blog Quibbling Potatoes authored by Steve, who had some great ideas for categorizations of the rulings that I now use for my data.  He also had a name for his score which he called...the Truth Index.  While I don't think PolitiFact took the name from Steve's site, one can certainly say Steve had a bit of clairvoyance.  It's obvious he put a lot of work into his charts and graphs and it would be nice to see him do it again.

Pandering Politicians is a blog (turned website like PolitiFact Bias) by someone who calls himself "PanderBear" and the Truth Index here is called the "Truth Quotient."  He has a lot of charts, especially time trendlines, and begs people not to even read chain e-mails because of their dismal "TQ."  And of course, in one of the comment sections we see the ubiquitous question from my conservative counterpart asking what he does about selection bias.  No answer from PanderBear.  At least as far as I could see.

Allen Allermann in a namesake blog entitled "Random Human Neural Firings" did a quantifying review about the same time as Steve called "Who do You Trust?"  He scored PolitiFact rulings in the opposite direction that many tend to do--he gave higher weight to the True and Mostly True instead of False and Pants on Fire.  He uses a "sports" analogy for what Brash Equilibrium terms the report cards of those rated by PolitiFact; he calls them "at bats."

So there we have, including my own, about a dozen attempts to quantify PolitiFact rulings.  Perhaps two qualifiers can be added: (1) None of these websites/studies/blogs are affiliated with or approved by PolitiFact (as far as I know) and (2) all numbers should be interpreted with caution.  And if you come across any websites/articles/blogs that quantify PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter rulings, please let me know in the comment section.

Truth Index+: The PolitiFact Saga on Obamacare

In the history of PolitiFact rulings, from its beginnings in 2007 to the election of 2012, the most covered subject was healthcare. PolitiFact currently has 42 pages of rulings related to healthcare. While there's a lot of overlap with other subjects (particularly fiscal ones) as designated in every ruling, my counts for 6,535 PolitiFact rulings show healthcare and Medicare were the "main" subject(s) for over 10 percent of them.

 

In 2007, the very first characterization of a Democrat national healthcare reform plan as "socialized medicine" which earned a False was from budding 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. PolitiFact called it "pure hyperbole."   In early 2008, eventual 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first person fact-checked for what would become the PolitiFact 2010 Lie of the Year--that "Obamacare" (the meme not yet invented for healthcare reform) was a "government take over" of the healthcare system.

Click to enlarge:  Low number of Democrat rulings caused larger swings

There were very few fact-checks (12) evenly divided between party on healthcare reform as it related to Obama's proposals in 2007 and 2008, compared to what happened after he became president. So the Truth Index+ at that time did not tell us much. Indeed, as I noted in a previous post on what caused the big increase in Pants on Fire assignments to Republicans, the year 2009 was a very big ruling year when it came to healthcare reform and Obamacare. In that year, over 1/4 of PolitiFact rulings related to that topic.

Obamacare, however, was the leading PolitiFact ruling topic in 2009: healthcare was the subject of over 30% of the rulings with about 27% relating to healthcare reform, and made up over 1/3 of the Pants on Fire. With the majority coming from Republicans, this was for the most part what drove up the Pants on Fire factor against them.

The year 2010 was not as important in terms of PolitiFact's concentration on Obamacare; it was a pivotal year, however, in terms of the Republicans doubling down on attacking it. Republicans dominated on dubious healthcare claims as 64 fact-checks brought their Obamacare Truth Index+ down to under 34. It continued into 2011 and worsened in 2012. The number of Obamacare-related rulings doubled from 2011 to 2012, when it seemed as if the Republicans thought the public dislike of it would get them the same type of election results as in 2010.

Truth Index+: Are Election Winners More "Truthful"?

Since PolitiFact has been through three national election cycles and a few minor ones, I've always been curious as to whether the fact-checking matters in regard to who gets elected. Or to put it another way, are those who win more "truthier" according to the Truth Index.... or less? So as an experiment, I went through the PolitiFact rulings and keyed in whether the candidate/official won or lost in a pending election from the time he or she made the statement.

But first I had to do a lot of filtering of my list of 6,535 rulings (all rulings through 11/5/12).  All the non-official people (like pundits and advocates) and groups (like websites, bloggers, chain e-mails, PACs etc.) had to go, of course. I also didn't include (or partially included) the rulings of those who retired or lost in the primaries (good example: Dennis Kucinich). There were some who won and lost, like John McCain: I rated his statements prior to his 2008 presidential election loss as a "loser" and those since as a "winner" since he won re-election as Arizona senator in 2010. Local and state elections are also excluded except for governors races. And just for the heck of it, I also keyed in those who were in the Tea Party caucus. When I got done, I was down to 2,937 rulings.

Click to enlarge:  Winners appear to make fewer False/PoF statements regardless of affiliation.

As of November 5, 2012, for all 6,535 PolitiFact rulings, the Truth Index+ is 54.2. For the 2,937 candidates making campaign statements, it was about 5 percent higher at 57. However, the "all" includes everything along with the kitchen sink. A better comparison might be to the Truth Index for those were in office at the time of the statement, which is similar to those facing elections, which was a tiny bit higher 57.7. Compared to the overall, however, what this says is that individuals and those in official positions tend to be more truthful on their own than groups or those who advocate for them. I've already shown this to be the case when I've posted calculations of the Truth Index separately for office-holders versus the various categories of advocacy groups, party boosters, media pundits, etc.

The "bias" factor would not be as relevant here because I am not looking at this in terms of Democrat versus Republican. But it's evident from these statistics that the "winners" are found more "truthful" by the PolitiFact fact-checkers than are the "losers" by about 8 percent in terms of the Truth Index+. It's about 6 percent if you re-adjust the Pants on Fire category to False.

Comparing Republicans and Democrats gets a wee bit trickier. Democrats have always held a higher Truth Index in general, and even though some say it's due to selection bias, something did emerge from the analysis of interest concerning the Republicans that can't be totally attributed to bias. While the Democrats had a pretty substantive variance between winners and losers (63.6 versus 55.8, or 14 percent), the Republican's variance was insignificantly small--53.5 versus 52.8, or about 1.5 percent. What this says is that the Republicans have about the same level of "truthiness" based on statements evaluated whether they win or lose. What this means, I don't know.

Tchotchkes: Obama Responds to Secession Petition(s)

Truth Index+: Adjusting for Pants on Fire

The Pants on Fire factor as developed by anti-PolitiFact propaganda website PolitiFact Bias (PFB) leaves much to be desired--specifically, it does not take the other four rulings (True through Mostly False) into account.  Their reason is the more "subjective" nature of the Pants on Fire ruling as defined by PolitiFact itself (not just inaccurate but "ridiculous").  Basically it measures how much more (or less) Pants on Fire is assigned to Republicans when a ruling is false.  But when the Pants on Fire are taken out completely (and are calculated as False), the rulings still favor the Democrats on average about 17% (for all 2012 rulings through election day) using PFB's own baseline methodology (adjusting for intra-party, chain e-mails, pundits, PACs and party boosters).  Regardless, the Pants on Fire effect is very minimal, as recently pointed out by Brash Equilibrium's Malark-o-Meter and in an earlier review I did in 2011.

A better method might measure the overall percentage change in the (newly formulated) Truth Index+ when the Pants on Fire are removed and categorized with the same score as False.  In the example data above, the Democrats' Truth Index+ is improved 1.4% by eliminating Pants on Fire, while the Republicans Truth Index+ is improved 3.5%.  This percentage could be called the Pants on Fire Bias factor.

One could then either take the remaining Republican to Democrat difference in the Pants on Fire adjusted Truth Index, which in this case is 16.8%, as what would be the undefined or non-subjective "bias" variance.  One could also measure the difference between the 1.4% and the 3.5% which would be about 2.5.  This is a Pants on Fire bias factor which incorporates the other rulings.

In other words, in terms of ALL rulings True through Pants on Fire, the Republican Truth Index is effected 2.5 times as much by Pants on Fire than is the Truth Index of the Democrats.  All because Republicans are assigned Pants on Fire about 74% more than Democrats when a ruling is false (to use the PFB factor).

It's ironic that I came out to 16.8% since Brash Equilibrium's statistical testing of a sample of PolitiFact rulings hypothesized there may be as much as 17% variance in the rulings due to bias.  But that is a qualified "as much as" so it doesn't really tell us anything.  More to follow as I apply this to all rulings through election day, 2012.

PFB Unskewed: Slipping Up on the Wage Gap

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) posted what it deemed to be an "outstanding" contradiction in PolitiFact rulings having to do with the gender wage gap in the United States. They declared they had received a post from an anonymous source which pointed out a "glaring" inconsistency between a ruling on Mitt Romney and one on Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette on just that subject.  Apparently they rushed to publish it in their partisan glee, while neglecting to see what they already had done.

Click to enlarge: This might be Grading PF Liberal Style's comparative ruling to prove
right-wing partisan leanings from PolitiFact, by same logic as PFB.

So let's see what PolitiFact has done before on these types of rulings. PolitiFact has awarded Mostly False to Obama and Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline for saying (back in June) that women earned 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same job.

 

On the other hand, Diana DeGette and Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine both get Mostly True because they make the distinction that it's 77 cents (or 79 cents in Virginia) on average or overall. So in four rulings on wage disparity, PolitiFact has shown itself to be consistent. The Romney statement, however, is not the same as any of the four cited above.

PolitiFact Bias, through its companion site Sublime Bloviations, has previously posted on the disparity in the case of Obama's statement. They appear to be saying that they believe Obama deserved a worse rating than Mostly False:

The Obama campaign made a claim about disparate pay for men and women doing the same work and tried to support it with a statistic that doesn't take into account the type of work done. That's a flatly wrong approach, perhaps even "pants on fire" if one believes in applying subjective judgments to rulings on matters of fact.

PolitiFact's conclusion suggests that the Obama campaign was trying oh-so-hard to simply convey that men and women are paid differently irrespective of the jobs they do and (oopsie!) just happened to get a little mixed up in the delivery. There's one way to keep the statistic from earning a "False" rating or worse: Find out the real number and determine whether the 77 cent figure is somewhat close.

So in this ruling on Mitt Romney that's precisely what PolitiFact did--find out the real number. The four rulings above were quite generic, but this one was about the wage gender gap working in the White House, so they could actually find out with some precision. And this access to precise data enabled them to do exactly what PFB lamented: breaking it down respectively by job and title.

 

So let's try and answer the question posed by PFB: " What was the difference that allowed DeGette to earn a Mostly True versus Romney's Half True?" In the two claims PFB tries to equate, PolitiFact matched the (general statistical) data on DeGette, and found it close to correct, while it found the (specific White House) data on Romney wasn't as close, so found him Half True.

Zebra Factcheck is the PolitiFact *Unskewed*

(OR "Fact-checking you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better"....)

If there's one thing to be learned from the elections, it's that creating one's own realities doesn't work. From Salon.com:

Conservatives will hear that Hurricane Sandy and Chris Christie delivered the election to Obama, that Mitt Romney wasn’t a true conservative, and that mainstream media bias blinded Americans to the truth. A few voices may acknowledge that the state of polling science is actually pretty good, and the demographics of the U.S. have fundamentally changed, but don’t hold your breath for a widespread reappraisal of the dangers of listening only to what you want to hear. The right-wing echo chamber is built of stronger stuff than the left’s.

And along with "mainstream media bias," fact-checkers must be 100% liberally biased as well! And Zebra Factcheck will unblind you to "the truth"! But I digress.

Current TV's Cenk Ugyur reported how much 26 polls were off in predicting this past election, listed in terms of accuracy: it almost came as no surprise to me that one of those near the bottom was the conservative Rasmussen--while the top poll was the liberal Public Policy Polling and one from the Daily Kos.

 

There were a number of polling analysis outfits, the most prolific being Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, along with Real Clear Politics. But then a website called Unskewed Polls became well known, especially with Republicans, with over 25,000 fans on Facebook, as authored by Dean Chambers who was very highly critical of Nate Silver. It essentially based its election prognostications adjusting for what it believed was over-sampling of Democrats by the other polls (and under-sampling Republican enthusiasm)--because those polls were part of the "main stream media" and that by "showing results unrealistically favorable to Obama that they are leading to a perception among voters of the inevitability of Obama's victory in the election." 



Unskewed Polls electoral map Nov. 4: Romney to win 52% to 47%

And so, the weekend before the election up until election eve, Unskewed Polls was basically predicting a Romney sweep of 342 electoral college votes to 196 for Obama, as shown above  in a screen-snip from its website. Sometime Election Eve Monday Dean Chambers did some quick back-pedaling (strangely, with almost all the polling done) on his electoral map to make it look like he only failed to predict four states for Obama, changing the electoral counts to 275 for Romney and 263 for Obama. Meanwhile, people like Karl Rove and Dick Morris were making similar errors to Dean Chambers on Democratic over-sampling, in predicting a Romney landslide on Fox News. Everyone ended up eating a lot of crow failing to discern the voter suppression backlash and growing minority demographics.

 

So you can see where I am going with PolitiFact Bias (PFB) and its new "project" Zebra Factcheck. I believe the writers at PFB commit the same type of cognitively dissonant blunder, insisting that PolitiFact is "Democratically skewed" like Chambers claims all the polls are. And they think they are unskewering PolitiFact's rulings at their websites, just as Chambers says he does.

Tchotchkes: Victory from Obama's Anger Translator

You can't touch this!

Giving ZFC a KO on CKDs

This first check of Zebra Fact-Check (ZFC) is also a postscript on something just posted as a response to PolitiFact Bias--on the misleading information in a late Mitt Romney campaign ad being used to rile autoworkers in Ohio.

ZFC writer Bryan White offers us this "these-are-jobs-in-China-from-the-U.S." citation from the Toledo Blade to back up the veracity of Romney's literal statement that Fiat/Chrysler is going to build Jeeps in China.

Jeep currently exports U.S.-made vehicles to China, which is Jeep’s largest market outside of North America. Last year, Jeep sold 22,294 vehicles in China. The company is expected to exceed that this year.

He then asks "If a Chinese Jeep plant takes over production of some or all of the more than 20,000 vehicles Jeeps sells in China then how does this not affect workers in the United States?"

Let's first start with the 22,294 vehicles from a relative perspective. One Detroit Jeep plant produces about 950 vehicles per day in 2 shifts. That means if the plant was working a normal 5-day work week, this would be roughly one month's production. Not very much, less than 10% of total annual production, and would be even less if the plant was at maximum production (3 shifts) or was working overtime. The Chinese production is what is called low volume. Even the 33,463 vehicles cited from the Business Standard fit the same definition: not enough for full production, not enough for a plant.

ZFC might counter that this could still be 10 percent of the workers being replaced....but that's not quite so black and white. If ZFC had been thorough in its fact-checking like it claims it is, it should have noted the paragraph at the bottom of the Toledo Blade article:

That commitment means Chrysler will not fully build and assemble Wranglers outside America. The automaker does currently ship low volumes of what the industry calls “knock-down kits” for final assembly in Egypt. Mr. Bragman said that's fairly common in the automotive industry, and the kits are not equitable to full-scale production plants. Parts would still have to be made and partially assembled elsewhere.

Knock-down kits (CKD = Complete Knock Down) contain "the parts needed to assemble a product" and are used when there is a low volume for export as "a method of supplying parts to a market, particularly in shipping to foreign nations, and serves as a way of counting or pricing." That is how Jeeps were produced in China up until 2009. The kits are assembled in the United States...and guess who does the assembly of the parts in those kits here for shipment to China? Now, if ZFC or counterirritant want to call Chrysler to find out if fewer workers are needed for CKD kit assembly than for full-scale assembly, they're more than welcome to find out. And, it is possible the kit assembly could be outsourced to a local supplier--but then, additional jobs would be created there to replace any auto plant jobs. 

So when Aaron Bragman, a senior automotive analyst at IHS Automotive, was quoted to say that the Chinese production "doesn't take any jobs away from anyone else" he was correct. Romney is not correct, and neither is ZFC nor counterirritant.

Finally, the original Bloomberg article said that Fiat was in "detailed conversations" about making Jeeps in China. It wasn't definite nor confirmed. So, what happens if the deal with Guangzhou Automobile Group doesn't materialize? I didn't mention this in my original criticism, but it is another large gray area on the Zebra. Because while Romney himself said the Italians ( I could do another post on that one as well) were "thinking" of moving the production to China, the ad (which was aired much more) said it was a sure thing...which it wasn't. That alone makes Romney's literal statement false.

But what else would one expect from right-wing fact-checkers.

Lil White Lies: Read It and Jeep

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) gleefully joins with the anti-PolitiFact blog counterirritant in misrepresenting a blatant misrepresentation by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as we enter the last 100 hours of the 2012 presidential campaign.

PolitiFact awarded a Pants on Fire (and WaPo FactChecker and Factcheck.org agree in line with it) when the Romney campaign released an ad which said:

Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact checkers confirm that his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He is supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.

It basically was "piggy-backed" (Glenn Kessler's words) from a very similar statement Romney had made during an Ohio campaign stop: " “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America."

 

That's pretty much everything....so PFB and counterirritant decide that "building Jeeps in China" is technically true as parsed waaaaaaaay out of context, and the fact-checkers need to fact-check more, as the loud and clear, self-evident implication isn't enough. They need to actually verify that the Chinese production is replacing (at least some of) the American production. Counterirritant thinks he knows the fact of the matter, and he condescendingly tells us: "For those slow on the uptake: Jeep vehicles that will be produced in China by Chinese workers are currently produced in the U.S by U.S. workers."

 

Nope, not quite. Because when Chrysler or Fiat talk about this Chinese production, it's added production, not replacement. Chrysler built Jeeps in China--for the Chinese market--before Fiat acquired it in 2009. And Romney's fearmongering came on the heels of this report from the Detroit Free Press:

In fact, Chrysler is investing $500 million at its Toledo North Assembly Plant and plans to add 1,105 new workers by the third quarter of 2013 to build an all-new SUV that will replace the Jeep Liberty.

Production of the new SUV will begin next summer and the hiring process for the new workers, who are scheduled to start by the next fall, has begun, said Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson.

In other words, as noted succinctly by the New York Times: "Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States."

Absurdity Today Super Storm Sandy Aftermath Edition

With Julianna Forlano

Lil White Lies Extra: PFB prefers the GOP

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) has recently posted on a comparison of rulings which it insists are very much alike, but totally inconsistent when it comes to the Truth-o-Meter grade, having to do with congressional pay raises. Its recent post states the supposed contrast:

If the PolitiFact Ohio rating is accurate [a False ruling on a Republican] then the PolitiFact Florida rating is wrong [a True ruling for a Democrat]. And if the PolitiFact Florida rating is accurate then the PolitiFact Ohio rating is wrong.

So let's take a look at these rulings, plus a few others, to see if PolitiFact, according to PFB, is really being (unfairly) inconsistent. It turns out, PolitiFact Bias may have selected the wrong rulings to compare....which isn't too unusual.

 

The difference is the specificity.

The PolitiFact Ohio "False" rating is on senatorial candidate Josh Mandel, who said that his opponent, Senator Sherrod Brown, "voted six times to raise own pay." Now, it needs to be mentioned that the Brown campaign responded to Mandel's accusation by stating that it was just the opposite, that Brown had instead voted against pay increases seven times...which turned out not to be quite the case, either, when PolitiFact Ohio checked it out. These votes, from 1997 through 2012, were part of "broad pieces of legislation...[not] focused purely on the pay raise issue."

 

The PolitiFact Florida "True" for the Florida Democratic Party (FDC) said that 2010 governor candidate Bill McCollum voted for a pay increase four times, by the specific amount of $51,000, as well as having a $75,000 pension. This was based on an ethics law passed in 1989, which put automatic pay raises into place, as well as the amount of the raise received at the time as specified in the ad ( actually $55,000) along with the congressional pension. All following raises were automatic unless freezes were put into the "broad pieces of legislation" mentioned above--and if the broader bill was voted against, it was deemed voting "for" a pay raise.

Truth Index+: Obama-Romney FIVE MORE DAYS

Five more days...unless of course, something happens due to Super-Storm Sandy and voting gets delayed somewhere in New Jersey or New York City or New England....or Romney wins the vote but loses the Electoral College and sues...you never know.  The only "poll" I really pay attention to is one and even though it's now almost 80% favorable to Obama, that still means, because the fellow who calculates it used to do odds in Vegas, that, like any table in Vegas, the 20% can still come in.  And I'm very superstitious when it comes to being overly hopeful when gambling or making predictions.

But here's where Obama and Romney stand with regard to what was in the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter count for them as of October 30, 2012:

 

 

Obama is about 22.8% more "truthful" based on PolitiFact rulings than Romney.  PolitiFact is 3.6 times more likely to elevate a False ruling for Romney to Pants on Fire than they are for Obama.

 

For the trend line, I'm going to add a period-to-period average (in the dotted line) along with the accumulated average (shown in the solid line).  This is so you can see where the Truth Index+ made any significant movements:

Click to enlarge:  Romney's 2011 28.6 Truth Index was from his presidential announcement (see below)

And what did Romney say that got his Truth Index down so low in early 2011?  Well, a few of the things he said then he continued to repeat, and stated during the October, 2012, debates.  He also re-stated one of PolitiFact's Lies of the Year:  that "Obamacare" was a government take-over.  He also made the comment about Obama's worldwide "Apology Tour" and that the United States was inches from being a free economy.

 

But it looks like--for the last 4 months, at least--that even here Romney has narrowed the gap on the Truth Index+.  Since June Obama rates only 12% more "truthier" than Romney with the PolitiFact rulings.  Of course, there are some that say this is all for naught because PolitiFact has a left-leaning bias.  But so what...because there are also some that say that's malarkey, and back it up.

Three Pants on Fires in a row didn't help Romney's Truth Index in 2011.