Sidebar: O'Reilly and Malkin Lie about Gitmo Lawyers

The Evolution of the Right-Wing Smear Machine

Lil White Lies: Bluffin' with Those Muffins

I haven’t even been looking at "Deff Jeff" Dyberg’s posts at Bewz Newz N Vewz for a while: for one thing, he doesn’t do much, for another, his words are rendered a bit too fetid and rank by his Ayn Rand libertarian bias. Lately, and I believe at the behest of mentor/co-dependent Bryan White, he has made some anemic attempts at PolitiFact (PF) ruling reviews to add to Bryan’s fruitless list of “anecdotal evidence of PolitiFact’s (liberal) bias.” I wanted to respond to one in particular just because the Lady GaGa/SNL Betty White sexual innuendo made for a great title; it was a critique of a PolitiFact ruling on Bill O’Reilly, who was highly critical of what he claimed was the government spending $16 a “muffin” for morning refreshments at “conferences for pinheads”. That was “his $16” he proclaimed loudly in his Talking Point segment on his Fox News show (or to Jon Stewart a week later, I’m not sure). I still didn’t feel looking at Jeff’s critique was worth it until Politifact reported that Stephen Colbert had satirized “MuffinGate” with Bill Adair featured in a video snippet explaining why the $16 wasn’t all for muffins—it was for other accompaniments such as coffee, tea, and also covered the cost of the conference room.

According to Dyberg, however, there was a single ulterior motive for PF selecting this particular Bill O’Reilly statement for fact-checking.

The answer is simple: Ratings.

PolitiFact isn't the benevolent truth seekers they portray themselves as. The facts are Bill O'Reilly made the statement on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If you've ever gone to PolitiFact's Facebook page you know that the number of commenters goes through the roof if they even mention Stewart's name. I also happen to know that my other blog experiences abnormally high traffic and search hits whenever Stewart and PolitiFact get in a tussle. The opportunity to make O'Reilly look bad while making an appearance on Stewart's show was a can't miss opportunity to gin up publicity from Stewart's followers.

First off, if you watch the video of it below, O’Reilly tells Stewart he “broke the story” on his Fox News show the week before. So this was the second time he said it.

Secondly, just before this quote Dyberg states that the source of O’Reilly’s story was ABC News, and that maybe ABC News (not O’Reilly) should have been subjected to the Truth-o-Meter since they made the false statement--or, the Department of Justice Inspector General who did the audit which reported this muffin expense "outrage.”

Politi-Express Half True Review

On February 21-22, in a “Statement of Principles” as written by Bill Adair, then followed up by PolitiFacts Texas, Florida and Oregon, Half True is defined in identical articles as: (italics added)

“The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.”

But the “About PolitiFact” link describes Half True as:

 "The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context." 

Snopes Truth-O-Meter for "Urban Myths" and other rumors it checks out.

Hat tip (as he would say) to my conservative counterpart for making that catch. I’m guessing Bill Adair decided to throw in that equivocating “partially” to make a better case for how “Half Trues” are judged. Most of the statements speak for themselves, although in a few instances, PolitiFact (PF) probably would have been better off not rating them at all because of the lack of information on which to accurately fact check.  In other words, something in the way of the Snopes rating key  (see above) would have been more useful because it has an “Undetermined” rating (Yellow bullet: "available evidence is too contradictory or insufficient to establish either True or False") as well as “Multiple Truths" (Multiple red/green bullets: "a mixture of truth and falsehood").  Let’s see how Snopes can be applied to these Half True rulings published by PolitiFact in the first quarter of 2011.  There were about 40% fewer number-related Half-True PF rulings to evaluate, so six examples will be presented here.

Barack-orama. This was one of Obama’s on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 in his State of the Union address:  "We are living with a legacy of deficit-spending that began almost a decade ago."

Writer Angie Drobnic Holan explains the Half-True ruling this way: (italics added)

Politi-Express Mostly True Review

It was difficult deciding how to classify or tag this post: it’s not a criticism of one of Sublime Bloviations’ Grading PolitiFact (PF) series, so it’s not a Lil White Lie; it’s not really about another PolitiFact Detractor. It’s not about the Politi-Score (although my conclusion takes it into account), but since it is about PolitiFact, it doesn’t really belong under the Sidebar tag. It’s also not Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style, as I’ve noted some Democrat rulings to be lacking. I’ve decided to include it under the PolitiFact Detractor category, as sort of my own PolitiFact Detraction.  It's also being called "Politi-Express" since this one post covers 13 rulings briefly and "expressly" instead of one detailed post for one ruling.

My goal was to look at “numbers” claims to see just how far they off they could be to make the grade as a “Mostly True” ruling. Here I am examining 13 Mostly True rulings of 8 Democrats/Liberals and 5 Republicans/Conservatives done during the first quarter of 2011. What I found was at least two designations or categories of Mostly True judgments. The first one is the one most subject to allegations of selection bias, and the most contentious as to the validity of the ruling--these are claims where the number is essentially correct, and often very close or right on the money, but is used to misrepresent or distort another point.  The second one is fairly straight-up numbers claims where the message or point is more in keeping with the number.

Saved by Zero. NewsMax, a conservative news website, sent out an e-mail in January stating: "The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually.". PolitiFact ruled Mostly True, although the number was right on, off by “zero.” But their using the word “refusal”  is what pushed it from True to Mostly True.  PolitiFact:

The GAO's methodology doesn't delve into the question of the employee's motives when seeking a premium-class flight, so we think '"refusal" is too strong a word for Newsmax to use when describring how the federal employees reacted to the idea of flying coach.

Besides spelling describing “describring” there can be a number of reasons for not flying coach which would not come under “refusing”: if the travel arrangements were done at the last moment, it could be that first class was all that was available. There are also security considerations, which is why most businesses fly employees “business” class overseas. If the employee is carrying special, crucial equipment which was checked, first class would guarantee the “luggage” would not be lost, since that’s (usually) part of first class service. There may also be time considerations.

PolitiFact was generous (or should I say, charitable) in giving NewsMax a Mostly True on this one. But I also have mixed feelings on a Half True ruling.

Not so fair and balanced. Bill O’Reilly, who calls himself a political Independent, but we all know better, said on his Fox News show in February: "The right-to-work states have much lower level of unemployment than the union states do."

Sidebar: Book Report on the Fly

While Amazon.com seems to have a virtual monopoly on discounted books, Kindle downloads and such, it still can’t beat going to a local bookstore (in my case “Books a Million”) to look them over in hand. Although I’d never buy a book by one of these authors (or even one from someone who shares my political views), it’s still a good idea to read what they have to say.

So I looked over three books today that I’m going to discuss here; they all had certain similarities. They were prominently displayed in the “New Releases” non-fiction section at the front of the store, and naturally they were by people who were not “liberals” who seem to dominate in this area:

•  “Broke” by Glenn Beck
•  “Pinheads and Patriots” by Bill O’Reilly
•  “America By Heart” by Sarah Palin

Un-Broke my Heart. If I was going to buy any of these three, it would be Beck’s “Broke”. Wide paged, highly glossed with lots of color, it was replete with charts and tack notes; it seemed like a “Conspiratorial Libertarians for Dummies” kind of book in the way it was laid out. The “tack notes” were often entitled “Teachable Moments.” Now that the word “Liberal” has been successfully demonized and mischaracterized, he has now moved on to the word Progressives in order to do the same.

But on Page 120-1, he doesn’t celebrate Republicans either; he has a laundry list of the “bads” that George W. Bush accomplished during his administration, such as the Medicare prescription bill of 2003 which added hundreds of billions to the national debt, and the Homeland Security Act which added 100,000 government employees.

Of course, he spends a lot of time on Social Security and Medicare as the focus of the blame for America’s “broke” condition. Here’s a notable block quote on Page 205 called “Mr. Ponzi Would Be So Proud”: