PolitiFact: A Truth Index Video!

PolitiFact Detractors: Prediction Fulfilled (Part 1?)

About 1:21 p.m. yesterday, PolitiFact Bias published the same photo of Bill Adair in his office from the Nieman Journalism Lab article as written by Andrew Phelps, and yes, he did just as predicted in my last post (posted 10:32 a.m., or about 3 hours earlier) although patting himself on the back not in the way I had thought (although he left the door open to do so).

PolitiFact Bias’ Bryan White felt the insufficient exchange Phelps included between Amy Hollyfield, Bill Adair and Lou Jacobson was enough evidence to prove the “lack of objectivity” in deciding a Pants on Fire, as “hypothesized” in his “initial research study.” A highly limited conversation, with no other context, on ONE SINGLE ruling, to conclude an institutionalized dynamic liberal bias was afoot.

In terms of “objectivity” the review by Lou Jacobson which suggested a methodical, objective approach to determining the final ruling was totally ignored by White: 

• Is the claim literally true?
• Is the claim open to interpretation? Is there another way to read the claim?
• Does the speaker prove the claim to be true?
• Did we check to see how we handled similar claims in the past?

More than that, for all we know, the PolitiFact crew may have other objective point-by-point lists to guide them as to how to classify a ruling—and it could be when the claim does not meet all points, a meeting is called to decide; otherwise, it’s a no-brainer. And it’s more than possible Phelps didn’t get into that detail because it was “too much information” for his article.

That’s why I said in my first post on this that Bill Adair was setting White up. He thought it would be amusing to feed White’s false narrative, and White ate it all up:

Andrew Phelps of the Nieman Journalism Lab recently sat in on PolitiFact's formerly private deliberations and produces much the picture I have come to expect (pun not intended) during my years of increasing skepticism….The fact checkers doubtless assure themselves of their neutrality as nearby two-dimensional cardboard Obamas smile approvingly at their work….All credit to Jeff for spotting the President Obama cardboard figure in Adair's office that turns the statement about staffers' voting history into an absolute howler….But don't get the idea that Adair is biased or anything. 

White is also implying that, by saying “Obamas” (plural), all the PolitiFact crew have his image smiling at their work as part of his spin. I’m assuming this one was in Adair’s Washington office. So, does he know if Angie Drobnic-Holan has one down in Miami, or Lou and Amy have one in Tampa?

One of the concluding paragraphs of the Neiman article is very telling:

Unlike The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who awards Pinocchios for lies, or PolitiFact, which rates claims on a Truth-O-Meter, Jackson’s FactCheck.org doesn’t reduce its findings to a simple measurement. “I think you are telling people we can tell the difference between something that is 45 percent true and 57 percent true — and some negative number,” he said, referring to Pants on Fire. “There isn’t any scientific objective way to measure the degree of mendacity to any particular statement.”

So, White has his answer right there. Maybe the real problem is he knows there’s no scientific, objective way to measure it—that’s why he pretends to demand it. Just as he pretends to demand that PolitiFact find a way to control for selection bias, knowing there’s no way for professional journalists in an environment where the demand is for “newsworthiness” can do it. He even demands they publish their bias as a disclaimer, as if they were begging for the cardboard Obama's approval. He demands the impossible so he can falsely claim failure on the part of PolitiFact.

The only part of my prophecy “fulfilled” was that PolitiFact Bias would make a lot of hay from the cut-out of Obama; as PolitiFact Bias “mines” this article as it says it’s going to, I expect some of my other points will be repeated. More to come.

PolitiFact Detractors: So Simply Irresistably Predictable!

When PolitiFact posted an article from the Neiman Journalism Lab, a report on a sort of PolitiFact 2-Day Reality Show, it included the photo below, I couldn’t help but see what my conservative counterpart might do with it. Here’s my prediction: Bryan White now “thinks” he has some new evidence on which to base his claim that Bill Adair, the head of PolitiFact, must be liberally biased. Here’s my educated guess:

Yep, Adair's liberally biased!

That photo of Adair (right ) has an Obama cardboard likeness behind him, so Adair must therefore support Obama. Plus it appears Adair has given him a swag PolitiFact baseball cap. Not slung over Obama's head misshapenly, but to represent a "gift" from PolitiFact.

In the interview Adair says part of his inspiration to create PolitiFact came from when former Senator (formerly Democratic) Zell Miller “turned on” John Kerry at the Republican National Convention in 2004 and presented a highly misleading message of Kerry’s Viet Nam service—“...I didn't do anything about it,” said Adair. So, he wants to help the Democrats, then!

And this entire matter of  "adding more structure" to discerning a Pants on Fire in response to criticisms—it must be that Adair either read White's pseudo-research paper…or it relates to that PolitiFact Virginia debacle. Either way, White’s blog must surely be making Adair nervous.

To which I say—I think Adair is setting White up. (LOL)

The reality is that cardboard cutout tells us nothing about Adair’s political affiliation or “voting history.”  This is reasoning akin to saying those journalists who attend the annual Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner are Democrats because Obama is there--many of the same people were in attendance when Bush was president, does that mean they were Republicans back then?  Obama has been president almost four years,  so I’m guessing someone gave the cut-out to him as a joke. The cap slung over it shows the humor of it.

Note:  I composed the above on Tuesday, August 21. Unfortunately, I did not post it in time to prove my prediction correct, because White had this post on Facebook the morning of August 22:

Really?  Fellow conspiracy theorist Dyberg had to point that out?  Yea, right.  We'll wait and see what he does on one of this blogs.

PolitiFact Detractors: Virginia Night Cap

It seems my conservative counterpart was forced to reference my analysis of the recent mega-paper protest by the Virginia Republican Party to PolitiFact (PF) Virginia, basically presenting an overly voluminous case of why it was biased toward Democrats. Bryan White called me a person with “semi-daily clock-work accuracy” as far as my being “correct” in terms of the ruling “statistics” used in the paper. Gee, I was hoping for a battle of wits, but I guess he’s apparently unarmed.

But White did bring out one point with regard to “the Weekend Dump.” This was the Republicans’ contention that more positive Republican PolitiFact rulings were “buried” in the weekend editions of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, while negative ones were saved for during the week, on the premise there were more readers during the week. He felt that the Sunday or weekend news may have more readers, not less, which contradicts their “bury” allegations.

Dumping stories over the weekend can put them in the Sunday newspaper, which is often the most widely read portion of a major newspaper. No case is made for the significance of a weekend dump for either a daily paper or an Internet news site. If the Richmond Times-Dispatch literally publishes the most positive Republican stories in its least popular editions then the Virginia GOP may have a legitimate gripe, but that evidence does not appear in this document.

Where readership demographics are reported on the internet, four major markets (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco) separate weekday and Sunday readership, and it appears Sunday is always higher for all adults. This backs up White’s assertion.

On the other hand, let’s consider the growing group of people who get their news on line. For example, (it appears to me that) many more comments are made on line at the PolitiFact Facebook page during the week, as the rulings are generated. Less commenting is posted on weekends, although some rulings are published late Friday. This may not mean anything, but this would seem to infer that the rulings are read by the majority of on line news fans during the week. Of course, the only way to verify that is for PolitiFact to look at its website “statcounter.”

Click to enlarge:  You can
barely make out Virginia since both
parties are so close to zero.
Compare to Wisc. and Nat'l.

In reviewing the Republican Party numerical data, I computed the Truth Index for ALL rulings ever done by PolitiFact Virginia to evaluate against the Republican’s anecdotal contention that the rulings “on average” favored the Democrats. Warren Fiske reported a very similar result to mine using a different scoring method which gave equal weight to the Truth-o-Meter categories. I used the scoring method delineated by Bill Adair for the Truth Index about a year ago, which more heavily weighted the negative rulings. But the result was approximately the same: the Republicans and Democrats were in a dead heat at PF Virginia. As an update, however, I started running overall stats for 2011 to current, as I have more detail for those records to make more interesting analyses. In charting PolitiFact by state, it was found that for 166 rulings done by PF Virginia since the start of 2011, there was still a dead heat, but the Republicans were trending to a very slight advantage over the Democrats. In other words, the very slight advantage the Democrats have in their overall score was accomplished in 2010, when PolitiFact Virginia first kicked off, and then it reversed to the Republicans' favor since that time. But it’s more of a “margin of error” variance, so it does not mean much.

The snippet to the left shows the Democrats in blue and the Republicans in red.  I will be publishing the complete chart in a later post.  The baseline is "zero" on the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter, a rating of Half True.  Each line is 10 points on the Truth Index.  The Truth Index score was rounded for easier reading; in Virginia the Democrats were at a positive .78 while the Republicans were at a positive 1.56.  It should be noted that PolitiFacts Virginia and Wisconsin are the only two PolitiFact states to appear to favor the Republicans; all others have higher scores for the Democrats, as can be seen in the overall score at the right, where for 2,935 rulings, the Democrats are at a negative .81 and the Republicans are at negative 24.07.  (Perhaps the Virginia Republicans are looking in the wrong place for "bias" and this is something the Republican party should do on a national level.)

Nevertheless, White makes a brief admittance at the end of his post that the Virginia Republican Party’s paper was similar to his PolitiFact Bias blog: “… the report scores with the anecdotes and not much else.” He notes the last 32 pages of the 86-page opus were fluff, a simple listing of all the Republican rulings by PolitiFact Virginia. In other words, it’s right there in the same league as Eric Levine so aptly described: the Republican Party of Virginia report on PolitiFact is just one more Gish Gallop of anti-PolitiFact propaganda.

Postscript 7/24/2012:  I should also note that this puts a previous post on the weekday/weekend publishing of PolitiFact National in a different light.  It makes them look good from the aspect of the newpaper, but not so good from the aspect of on-line readers, in terms of a alleged "bias."

PolitiFact Detractors: Virginia Whine Drunk Deeply

Recently I did a post on what I believed to be right-wing bias by PolitiFact (PF) Wisconsin by looking at the timing—PolitiFact Wisconsin published very negative rulings on Democrats, and positive rulings (or nothing) on Republicans, in the period just before the June 5 recall election.

Well, PolitiFact (PF) Virginia’s detractors, in this case, the Republican Party of Virginia, published a massive tome in what they called an “Open letter to the Commonwealth of Virginia.” It can only be described as an 86-page collection of “sound bites/talking points” claiming something similar against PolitiFact Virginia as published by the Richmond Times Dispatch. I should say, it claimed A LOT of things.

The timing they claim is that PolitiFact Virginia buried Republican positive fact-checks in the weekend edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch when fewer people viewed the news and saved negative Republican fact-checks for during the week when more people would see them, and vice versa for Democrats.

Let me address each of the claims from the Virginia Republican Party before responding to that timing claim, the third item on this list.

1. PolitiFact Virginia “disproportionately” targets more Republicans. This was also addressed by the response to the Republican Party by PolitiFact Virginia writer Warren Fiske, but let’s review it with more specifics: 

According to Wikipedia page for Virginia “Of the state's 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans hold eight and Democrats hold three.” There are two Democratic U.S. Senators, but a Republican Governor (Bob McDonnell) and a Republican Lieutenant Governor (and Attorney General). And of course, Eric Cantor (R) is the House Majority Leader. The lower house of the Virginia General Assembly is 67% Republican. The upper house of the Virginia General Assembly is split 50/50 for forty Senators.

Counting all seats held, there are currently 98 positions held by Republicans and 57 positions held by Democrats in the state of Virginia. That means the Republicans hold 70 percent more positions.

Based on that percentage, you’d think PF Virginia would likely do more fact-checks on Republicans in a similar proportion. They’ve actually done less, about 50 percent more instead of 70 percent. So it can be argued that maybe PF Virginia doesn’t do enough on Republicans.

2. PolitiFact Virginia gives more negative rulings to Republicans.  In 2010, I posted a finding that PF Virginia actually favored the Republicans in what was then my version of the Truth Index, and tied that into the fact that the Richmond Times-Dispatch endorsed McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004 (and that Eric Cantor’s wife was on the board of the company that owns it).

PolitiFact Detractors: WatchDog? More Like Watch-Mutt!

The latest in PolitiFact detracting, in this case  PolitiFact Ohio detracting, comes from something called Watchdog.Org which is part of “The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.” Of course, my conservative counterpart starts out his post with the Franklin Center’s honorable-sounding name as the sentence subject to give his post some false stature even though the Watchdog.Org website includes this disclaimer:

The Franklin Center is not responsible for the information that appears on the watchdog sites. The organization serves as a capacity builder and networking agent for independent, state-based journalists and organizations…”

Most of the PolitiFact-is-opinion-parading-as-fact series they’ve done, by two “journalists” Jon Cassidy and Will Swaim, consist of some very narrow interpretations of the ruling along with a lot of condescension toward PolitiFact….about adding numbers, understanding economics, finance, etc., as if the authors were some sort of experts themselves, for which there was pretty scant evidence. Usually only one link, to the PolitiFact ruling, was included in their “article.”

PolitiFact Bias, however, takes no notice of the excessive snark (their own name for it) and does their usual cheer leading routine: “Jon Cassidy blasts PolitiFact Ohio….” in one and “absolutely clobbers” them in another. I guess snark is okay by writers for the “Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity” when talking about PolitiFact, but a slight implication of it from PolitiFact is a seering indictment of bias.

In some of them, Swaim or Cassidy argue the difference between True and Mostly True. Now, to find something categorically false, or to argue the degree of falsity, is one thing, but the True to Mostly True or vice versa is sort of like arguing which horse is the best horse in the glue factory. I’m only going to cover a few of their criticisms here, but will include links to all of them. I liken some of the writing to my own: I consider myself an amateur at “journalism” because I have no education or training in it. In other words, Cassidy and Swaim aren’t very professional….well maybe professional hacks, you never know. They all start with the identical copy and paste intro:

PolitiFact Ohio practices opinion journalism under the guise of fact-checking. They often get things wrong — particularly, we’ve noticed, in their coverage of U.S. senate candidates Sherrod Brown (Democrat) and Josh Mandel (Republican). So we bring you PolitiFact or Fiction, a semi-regular review of pronouncements issued by PolitiFact Ohio, a blog run by staff at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and supported by Politifact.com.

They hit the ground running with their penchant for snark in the very first critique by Jon Cassidy, comparing two statements related to the same subject by Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate (State of Ohio Treasurer) running against Democrat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, with “Does anyone at Cleveland Plain Dealer understand finance?”   It's in the flimsyTrue-or-Mostly-True venue first mentioned.

A Case for PF Wisconsin Right Wing Bias

While some try as best they can to prove that PolitiFact National has a left wing bias, there are a number of good reasons why it most likely doesn’t exist at national level.

1. The selection bias allegation is assumed to be only a party-related bias, contrary to PolitiFact’s repeated claim that is a newsworthy bias, and that ALL PolitiFact National writers/researchers/editors are liberal (and have dispensed with journalistic training in objectivity), for which one of its most vocal critics has provided NO evidence except for his own opinions of an anecdotal review of its rulings,  tainted with his own admitted conservative bias.

2. That other fact checkers, such as FactCheck.Org and the Washington Post FactChecker, check many of the same claims and (about 99% of the time) make similar findings, so therefore, it would have to be proven they are liberally biased as well in reaching the same conclusions.

3. There appears to be no obvious agenda cited by the critics except the sweeping generalization of selecting only statements favorable to Democrats and not favorable to Republicans.

IN WISCONSIN, however, using the above three points, there’s a very compelling situation which makes a good case for Republican (or right-wing) selection bias: .

1. A limited number of writers (they could be biased—but again, there’s no evidence they are, but it seems it would be less possible where there are more than just a few writers, as at PolitiFact (PF) National).  As to the question "who checks the fact-checkers" PolitiFact Wisconsin Senior Editor Greg Borowski could only say "all of our sources are listed and linked.  So check away."  But is having sources listed sufficient?

2. No one else fact-checking same claims because they are local to Wisconsin. .

3. An obvious agenda (the recall election) reflected by a Pants on Fire on the Democrat contender for governor on the eve of the election, with no claims checked on the Republican, and a few days before, particularly June 1, claims reported rated much more positively for Republicans.

4. And I’ve already noted that Republican-leaning news organizations in the PolitiFact domain tend to have truth indexes which favor the Republicans more. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which sponsors PolitiFact Wisconsin, is a somewhat mixed publication in its endorsements: it endorsed Walker, but also endorsed Obama in 2008 and did not endorse either Bush or Kerry in 2004.

5. Individual Truth Index trends: Prior to the 3 month period before the June 5 Recall, Scott Walker’s Truth Index was a negative 43, while in that three month period it improved modestly to a negative 21. Tom Barrett’s Truth Index up until that three month period was a negative 9. In the three months prior to the Recall, it plummeted to a negative 62. Mind you, this was for only eight fact-checks.

Sidebar: Christmas in July

I did not read the full SCOTUS Opinion issued June 28 on “Obamacare”; I read most of the dissent to see what the four conservative justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy had to say. Most of it was about the narrow interpretation that the consequence for not getting health insurance was a penalty (in lieu of a tax), and in their view the congress could not compel commerce (to purchase insurance) through this penalty. But I came across a most interesting analogy that provides a fantastic example of how my conservative counterpart operates, both in his critiques of PolitiFact rulings as well as his commenting style on the PolitiFact Facebook page.

 The “Obamacare dissenters” described why the entire healthcare law needed to be struck down: it was because it had lost its heart with their invalidation of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. They compared it to a Christmas tree: the tree itself was the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, while all the other requirements laid down by the massive ACA bill were merely ornaments on the tree, and that without the tree, the ornaments were now useless.

This perfectly describes the manner in which he argues: he cleverly ignores the tree, the foundation, while arguing incessantly about one of the ornaments. You take that ornament off, yet the tree is still there, but White thinks because he’s successfully (in his mind) reasoned that since the ornament should come off, the tree should be ignored.

He argues that PolitiFact deserves a False because Obama did not describe the wage gap for women correctly, but there’s still a wage gap. He argues that PolitiFact misses specifics of a fantasy Paul Ryan budget proposal but ignores that, as I explained, that budget might as well be made of green cheese. He argues that PolitiFact failed to recognize that Obama’s spending gets a false lift from “negative spending” (later shown to only have been recorded once) though the spending was the result of factors for the most part out of Obama’s control. He argues about felons and non-citizens voting in Florida, when it’s really about those who should be able to vote getting kicked off the voter roll (as one Republican congressperson from Pennsylvania recently proudly admitted).

So, to that end, I have decided to graphically present this (deliberate) error in thinking each time it occurs: with a “White” Christmas ornament. What better way to show that removing that White ornament leaves the tree still standing; the tree White wants you to pretend not to see.

Grading WaPo Liberal Style: 3+3, Six or Half Dozen

In an initial review of the blog counterirritant it was found that it doesn’t just review PolitiFact rulings, it looks at other fact-checkers. It recently did a review that’s sort of cut short on Glenn Kessler’s Washington Post FactChecker, of Mitt Romney’s statement that a normal economic recovery consists of about 500,000 jobs created per month (i.e., Romney really thinks people will believe that’s what he can do?)

Click to enlarge:  Crucial descriptors ignored by counterirritant (and PF Bias) circled.

Kessler looked at employment stats in the course of Romney’s lifetime, so counterirritant’s first complaint is this is not a “logical” period of measure.  Kessler was most likely using this period in terms of Romney's experience.  Maybe Kessler should have said “post World War 2” when the United States achieved its greatest manufacturing boom--and a period where those types of job creation numbers may most likely be if they were anywhere in the course of America's economic history.  In other words, using this period would be the most advantageous to Romney.

He (or she) then disputed Kessler’s “methodology” of counting every time in Romney’s lifetime the monthly number was near or exceeded 500,000, even counting those numbers as much as 10 percent below it (another very "charitable" accommodation). Since it very rarely exceeded this number, it proved that Romney was greatly exaggerating.

Counterirritant’s methodology consists of determining the median in monthly job creation numbers, that is, the number at which half the monthly job creation numbers are above, and half the numbers are below, for Romney’s lifetime, which he determined to be 146,000 per month. He then quotes liberal economist Paul Krugman who says this number (or even 200,000) is not adequate. But that’s where he stops. In other words, according to counterirritant, since 500,000 is a lot more than 146,000, Romney must be correct, unless there's something I'm misunderstanding.

But counterirritant never says anything about what a normal “recovery” number should be, since that was what Romney was talking about—a recovery. For example, if it was 325,000, then 500,000 is a gross exaggeration. We know it’s likely to be a number like 325,000 or 350,000 just because of the few times it’s approached 500,000.

Another method would be to look at the average for all recovery periods (beyond the period Kessler looked at) and then compare Romney’s 500,000 to that. You could just as well look at the median for all recovery periods, but in counterirritant’s case, this would make Romney probably look more like the liar because those might be lower than the average (so we have another "charitable interpretation" from Kessler).

PolitiFact Detractors: Irritable Fact-Checker Syndrome

This past year I’ve kind of laid off looking for PolitiFact Detractors—most of the time, I find short pieces which don’t amount to much (although here’s one I found recently that’s pretty good). PolitiFact Bias is often a source for me, because its authors are more focused on the greater amount of criticism directed at PolitiFact for being liberally biased.

A new wordpress blog published “anonymously” called counterirritant (lower case) does some “conservative” reviews of PolitiFact rulings from what appears to be the same venue as PolitiFact Bias; however, it’s the kind of criticism that should attract more readers because unlike PolitiFact Bias/Sublime Bloviations' often incoherent rhetorical excesses, counterirritant is more like a PolitiFact Bias for Dummies. At least so far, it hasn’t used questionable, self-aggrandizing logic. It just uses the facts as it sees them, with a simple and easy to read presentation, although one might not necessarily agree the facts are being used correctly. It’s only done three reviews of PolitiFact (it also reviews other fact-checkers).

"PolitiFact backing Smiley" as counterirritant claims doesn't go with the Half True ruling he received.

However, thus far they don’t seem to bridge the gap in refuting PolitiFact’s ruling(s): for example, in his post called “Poverty Makes Men Ridiculous”--about a PolitiFact ruling on PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley who stated "one out of two Americans … are living either in or near poverty"-- he said that “PolitiFact backed Smiley’s use of the SPM number in the equation used for the traditional poverty threshold.”

Well, not quite: they made it very clear that they thought the number was slightly misleading:

So Smiley has support for his number from Census Bureau statistics. However, in the context of a fast-paced television interview, some nuance got lost.

The statistic has not been received neutrally, said Douglas Besharov, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland who specializes in children and poverty. He said that "liberals like" the SPM while "conservatives dislike" it.

Given the nature of the statistic as new and unofficial, economists we interviewed agreed that it would have been more appropriate if Smiley had specified that he was using an alternative measure. Otherwise, viewers would think he’s talking about official poverty statistics.

Basically “counterirritant” is showing its “conservative dislike.” If PolitiFact in fact supported this Census Bureau Statistic, it would have awarded Smiley a True or Mostly True. Half True indicates that they are not supporting it precisely in the context that counterirritant is complaining. Half True is a sort of “this is a bit misleading but we can’t make a determination” ruling. To say it was Mostly False or False would probably put this one in my Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style series, because what Smiley said has more than an element of truth: it is more like “partially true but leaves out important details.”

The suggestion from counterirritant that PolitiFact wasn’t checking all its sources is a bit absurd. It almost looks like counterirritant never looked at PolitiFact’s list of sources. It’s apparent that those writers Lou Jacobson communicated with in e-mail interviews (Michael Wiseman, Arlec Sherman, Andrew Biggs and Douglas Beharov) alerted him to the same thing that counterirritant is talking about, since it’s alluded to in the ruling.

Lil White Lies Extra: DAY 121...AND COUNTING!

On February 8 I noted a post made in comments by Bryan White at a PolitiFact Bias-critical blog called Content in Reality, on January 16, 2012:  

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication.

Here’s a screenprint of the empty page of his blog where I would anticipate such a study would most likely be published. It’s not dated, so to prove the time of the screen snip, I included the blog archive which shows it’s at the eighth post for May (see yellow highlight arrow).

Click to enlarge:  It's been "Coming Soon" since January.

So here we are in the middle of May, about 4 months or 121-plus days since he said this, and there’s STILL nothing out there on the PolitiFact Bias Research page. I thought he might have a different blog where he was hiding his “study objectively verifying PolitiFact’s ideological bias” but all I found was something called “Beyond the PolitiFact Matrix” where he had blogged some paranoid pinings mid-2011 about what he believed was PolitiFact censoring his Facebook comments, which abruptly ended when he discovered it was some glitches with Facebook itself.

I’m sure a HUGE deal would be made out of the publishing of such of study by Bryan and his ilk….but it doesn’t seem there is any. Post activity at both blogs had diminished greatly early in the year, so I was highly expectant and interested in seeing what he came up with. Supposedly, from what I could glean from his blog and Facebook comments, it was a comparison of the degree of “ridiculousness” in Pants on Fire rulings, although I’m sure if my post was read, there’d be a different spin on it. But there’s been no links at Facebook at either the PolitiFact or PolitiFact Bias page, no big announcements at the Sublime Bloviations blog…nothing.

I do recall as well, but cannot find, comments also made early in 2011 that he was doing the same sort of research project. I wish I could find them…because if he does this sort of thing early in 2013, I may be onto something.   However, if he does eventually get something out there, I will be the first to say "well, it's about damn time" and then take a good look at it.

Sidebar: Fear of Fact-Checking

Recently I got into a huff with my conservative counterpart on PolitiFact’s Facebook page. I was so frustrated, I ended up blocking him and deleting my comments in the thread because I felt it was useless to have any discussions at all given his reaction.

Under the Facebook heading of a link to an article about PolitiFact (PF) by Nate Silver at his New York Times Blog Five Thirty-Eight, I told Bryan White that in 2011 PolitiFact’s Truth Index for Republicans was more “truthier” in the context of local rulings, as well as advocacy groups and PACs. Although I thought I might get some partisan reaction of (in so many words) “of course, Republicans are more truthful, why are you telling me, you idiot!” or “This proves their inherent liberal bias (you idiot!)”…instead his response was, as I recall, a summary dismissal that “it didn’t follow (you idiot!)”.

I now realize I’m getting an answer from him in this Jeff Dyberg post at PolitiFact Bias. The fact is he didn’t want to hear this conclusion. He wants to portray Republicans as the victim of PolitiFact’s bias. He wants others to believe the Truth Index is “shtick” and “junk.” And therefore all those stats must be irrelevant and bad, whether favoring the Republicans or not; in fact, he doesn’t want to hear that in certain circumstances they favor the Republicans because it goes against what he’s trying to do: if the Truth Index at a local level says Republicans are truthier, then it belies the notion that “PolitiFact's ratings provides far more information about the ideological bias of PolitiFact's editors.” But that ideological bias must be to the left, or his “findings” go out the window.

Furthermore, because I’ve done a lot of data manipulation (along with others like Steve at Quibbling Potatoes) of the PF Truth-o-Meter stats, it would make sense to trash me. I’ve noticed when he comes across the same data manipulation of others, he notes it in his blog; although I’ve done probably the most extensive analysis of the Truth-o-Meter database, I get ignored (with an occasional peak every now and then exposed at my Stat Counter account—unless of course he has a proxy server). I guess he doesn’t like my criticisms of his Grading PolitiFact series (which he also trashes in a separate blog).

As I recall, he kept asking for a conclusion based on the data and would neither recognize nor accept the conclusions I had given him. So I tried to soft pedal it, saying these conclusions can only be taken with a grain of salt, at which point he accused of me of flip flopping. Well, damned if I do and damned if I don’t—so the hell with him. It was clearly a waste of time.

Yes, there probably is a certain amount of selection bias, to which I say SO WHAT. As I've heard before, if a politician says “The sky is blue” (and it could be Mitt Romney or Barack Obama) PolitiFact doesn’t check it out. That’s because the bias is not to check out statements that are obviously true, or would be impossible to verify, or that are simply insignificant. Neither Bryan nor Jeff has ever satisfactorily answered why other fact-checkers, the great majority of the time, select many of the same statements and reach the same conclusions. In other words, their entire argument relies on this selection bias claim. To me it’s like a person who has a fear of flying; it’s like PF is the jet, but PF Bias wants you to use their car because they have evidence of a few plane crashes. Even though statistically speaking you have more chance of getting in a car crash than a plane crash.

Bryan and Jeff complain that there’s a “vast ocean” of rulings aside from what PF has selected. But among close to 5,000 PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter rulings, they repeat the few anecdotal exceptions they’ve “uncovered” thus far… so why don’t they have anything new, or a larger series? Jeff repeats these ten or so examples: that’s two tenths of one percent of everything PF has subjected to the Truth-o-Meter during its existence. Does that make PF misleading? Bryan White has done somewhere around 200 or so “Grading PolitiFacts” tainted by his own bias, which he has admitted are weak as far as evidence: does that make PF misleading/biased?

Early in 2011 Bryan White claimed he would be publishing some important research on PolitiFact’s bias, and he made that claim again this year. If you go to the link on his PolitiFact Bias page called “Research” you get a “Coming Soon” with nothing else. At another hard-on-my-eyes but having lots of great stuff about the PolitiFact Bias blog called “Content In Reality” Bryan White commented on January 16:

…I've been busy conducting a study that objectively verifies PolitiFact's ideological bias. I've got all the information for the national operation collected and sorted, and I'm in the process of readying it for publication

Okay, I’m still waiting!

Let’s take a look at recommendations for avoiding sampling bias for researchers and see how it can be applied to PolitiFact's rulings:

Sidebar: Political Fact-Checking Under Fire at NPR

Recently NPR did a call-in segment on the fact-checkers, which you can listen to at the link below (or here).

Here is the article called "Lies, Damned Lies, and Fact-Checkers" by Mark Hemingway in the Weekly Standard, and here is the link to read the transcript.  My conservative counterpart is pretty adept at keeping up to date with the latest PolitiFact (PF) related posts and pieces published.  This one is  extremely interesting in that Glenn Kessler speaks directly about how he selects statements: that he is more interested in verifying those in prepared speeches and written pieces and such because the person saying them should have "vetted" them before coming out with them, which should make them more prone to fact-checking.  He does not sound like he is "deliberately" making biased selections, and as I have noted, more often than not, the same statement will be checked by FactCheck.Org and PolitiFact.

The other item of note is that Kessler does not rate pundits, and for the most part, neither does FactCheck.  This seems to be a niche at PolitiFact.  And I do agree that PF's Truth-o-Meter ratings can easily be deemed (as Hemingway called them) pseudo-scientific, and even a "marketing gimmick".  By virtue of their quantity accumulated (as we approach 5,000 PF rulings), however, it seems the Truth Index averages can soften the "hard edges" of those rulings in the trends revealed.  The study  by Eric Ostermeier of 522 rulings was referred to several times, which I examined in detail and compared with my database of 1,330 rulings from the same time period.  While he had 76% of Republican rulings either False or Pants on Fire on the 522 rulings, I had calculated  64% (on the 1,330).  On the Democrats, while he had 22%, I had calculated 34%.  So his database was somewhat skewed against the Republicans, and Hemingway was basically using it as a weapon to claim it raised suspicions that PolitiFact was liberally biased because it appeared to be targeting False statements by Republicans.

Postscript Caveat:  I'm going to have to do a more up to date re-calculation (to include all of 2011 and New Hampshire) to see how these numbers are holding.

PolitiFact's Politi-Choice, Part 2

The number of PolitiFact (PF) detractors who yelled “foul” at its choice for 2011 Lie of the Year could make a whole new blog page, there were so many. In Part 1 of this post, there’s displayed a cartoon someone even created about it.

In the course of my research, I found what is believed to be the first “claim” that Medicare was ending, before the Democrats decided to really publicize it. It was from the Wall Street Journal in an article by Naftali Bendavid: (emphasis added)

…The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans, as a program that directly pays those bills. Mr. Ryan and other conservatives say this is necessary because of the program's soaring costs. Medicare cost $396.5 billion in 2010 and is projected to rise to $502.8 billion in 2016. At that pace, spending on the program would have doubled between 2002 and 2016.

Then there were some (like Dave Weigel at Slate), as noted by PolitiFact, who believed the choice of PLOTY was because of the lobbying efforts of Paul Ryan, who upon learning of the nominees, posted a YouTube video asking viewers to vote for the Ryancare ending Medicare claim in PF’s poll. It seems he might not have known that it was the PF editors who make the final selection, not the winner of the poll. But we don’t know that he may have called PF’s Washington Bureau, or asked constituents to call, or made other lobby efforts behind the scenes.

Along with Weigel, Matt Ygelsias at Slate had a pretty good review called “PolitiFact lies about lying.”

It seems the most “noticed” and quoted PolitiFact detractor was Paul Krugman at the New York Times, who stated that this choice was “awful” in a memorial obit entitled “RIP PolitiFact.” Without much ado, he hit upon the real reason:

The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

Well, perhaps useless and irrelevant to Paul Krugman until the next time they make a Democrat statement Lie of the Year? Or call a blatant Pants on Fire on whoever the Republican candidate is next year as he campaigns against Obama? Because to dismiss PolitiFact on the basis of this one ruling is vastly under-rating it, however one may agree with Krugman’s assessment.

Media Matters published quite an extensive response to PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year, lending support to my contention that the Stimulus creating zero jobs claim should have been the winner, by not just pointing out the other PolitiFact rulings on it as uttered by others, but linking an additional ten examples, such as the publications Washington Times (9/7/11) and Washington Examiner (8/22/11), and well-known conservative pundits like Sean Hannity (video 7/13/11), Laura Ingraham (video 2/4/11) and Charles Krauthammer (video 5/31/11).  From the Media Matters article:

When asked about his explanation about the "zero jobs" lie by Media Matters' Joe Strupp, Adair said that the Lie of the Year "is a subjective decision of Politifact editors. ... [I]t's not based on data points."

Given how often the lies about the stimulus and the Obama apology tour were repeated by conservatives, it may have been helpful for Politifact to look at "data points" rather than just their editors' "subjective" sense of how widespread the lie was.

Data points? How does one determine how “widespread” a lie is without data points? I discussed data points in terms of the number of rulings in my previous post. The number of rulings that PolitiFact does relating to the economy, such as jobs, taxes, budgets, the deficit, far exceed those about healthcare and Medicare. I suppose the judgment of how “widespread” a lie is has to do with what might be termed its “urban mythology”—how it seems to have made an impact culturally, how much it has become accepted as a common belief. The first Lie of the Year, Sarah Palin’s death panel claim, is definitely in that genre.

But how does the public get informed in order for a myth to get rooted? I’m thinking it’s perhaps an “image” that the claim conjures up in peoples’ minds. The “image” makes the claim compelling, gives the claim a unique “brand”. In 2009, it was this board of faceless people having a meeting and saying who would live and who would die. In 2010, it was the incompetent socialist government taking over, bullying doctors and allowing the patient no choices. In 2011, it was…grandma getting thrown over the cliff. The “stimulus creating zero jobs” does not have any memorably associated image except maybe a Democrat congress and Obama throwing money down a toilet, but that’s not unique in that it could be associated with the debt ceiling or the deficit as well. So maybe I’ve seized upon a possible reason for its choice, on the other hand, it doesn’t always have to be the“granny off the cliff” lie that’s the most widespread.

But I digress. The list of complainants is extensive. I’ve already recorded a few of them above: Slate, Media Matters and Krugman at the New York Times. Many of the others have already been included in my page PolitiFact Detractors, although not linked to their latest PolitiFact “detraction.” Here they are in alphabetical order.  There's probably many more, but these are some of the "best" ones.

PolitiFact's Politi-Choice, Part 1

My only response on this blog so far to PolitiFact’s 2011 Lie of the Year was a “guest post” by my favorite vulgarian “Rude Pundit” Lee Papa, who over all the colorful expletives called it over-compensating and pandering by PolitiFact.

I should have listened to my original gut feeling back in July that the Democrat claim that "RyanCare" was ending Medicare was a choice by default for 2011 PolitiFact (PF) Lie of the Year because of its sort of inverse relationship to the 2010 Lie of the Year (that Obamacare was a government takeover). But the Republican claim that Obama’s Stimulus created zero jobs—in the year of Occupy Wall Street and what seemed to be the paramount issue with voters--unemployment--as the Republican primary candidates made their bids, appeared to overshadow the RyanCare claim. It won in PolitiFact’s voting canvass as well. But as I noted in my prediction, PolitiFact may surprise us all…and they did. Although I was hoping the liberal-bias-complainers would be ignored, they weren’t. While it was a good choice, the stimulus created zero jobs was a better one. It was just that this was more of a “politi-choice” decision, pure and simple.

Paul Ryan and Bill Adair in this cartoon version of an analogy by Steve Benen of theWashington Monthly

Making my case from PolitiFact’s own rulings for the year 2011, there were 33 PolitiFact rulings on the subject of “Medicare.” The total number of rulings under the subject “stimulus” was 21 and for “jobs” it was 85. In other words, there were three times as many fact-checks devoted to jobs and the stimulus than to Medicare. If you include similar major topics, for example, healthcare along with Medicare, and the economy along with jobs and stimulus, jobs, stim and economy (246 fact-checks) still outnumber Medicare and healthcare (166 fact-checks). So clearly, jobs was a hotter topic this year than Medicare and healthcare. The economy, in fact, was the number one most fact-checked topic at 140 rulings.

On the other hand, PolitiFact might make its case by virtue of the Truth Index: Medicare scored the lowest, a negative 43.06, of the 20 topics that comprised just over 75% of all 2011 PolitiFact rulings. The topic stimulus had 21 rulings with a very close negative 40.48; jobs, however, scored a negative 12.35, which aligns with the overall 2011 Truth Index average of negative 14.38.

PolitiFact also listed nine rulings about the same subject that had been published, along with the original one by the DCCC. While I don’t have nine to refute PF’s nine exactly, the “stimulus created zero jobs” message as a PF fact-check on the Republicans has been going on for almost two years now, starting with Scott Brown...then later with Rick Scott when he was running for governor of Florida, which was one of the nominees for PolitiFact’s 2010 Lie of the Year...then Eric Cantor in May said the Stimulus failed to get people back to work, which is pretty much the same thing...then Rick Perry on the campaign trail in September...before the National Republican Senatorial Committee used it in an ad, which was PF's official nomination of the fact-check for the 2011 Lie of the Year. Most recently New Jersey governor Chris Christie used it, but in a different tack, as if there never was a stimulus.  Or, there were just claims that not only were zero jobs created, but jobs were lost.

And then there was a blatant flip-flop in the respect that there were a couple claims about the “high” Stimulus cost per job: the number $278,000 is bandied about a lot by John Boehner and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is a bit confusing since saying it cost that much per job means admitting that 2.4 million jobs were saved or created.  So, which is it?

My own review of this claim, called “RyanCare: Pay or Die” back in April, placed this claim firmly on the roll of “Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style”—because “the available evidence is insufficient to establish it as either true or false.” I wondered in my write-up what it would be when the last baby boomer died off; I also wondered about the “voluntary” aspect of the program. If years out, you have a lot of Medicare-eligible people without insurance, has it not ended for them?

PolitiFact 2011 Lie of the Year: Guest Post

By Lee Papa, also known as The Rude Pundit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sidebar: The PLOTY Thickens

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Another [Wacko] PolitiFact Detractor on YouTube

Someone named “TheDrRJP” recently published this detailed youtube video about a “conspiracy” involving the fact-checkers (PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, etc.) who are deceiving the public that Obama’s birth certificate is real. I’ve always maintained that there’s a very fine line between intelligence and insanity; and here’s but one more great example of what really smart crazy people are capable of.

“TheDrRJP” starts with a self-congratulatory spin describing his youtube creation, not quite "clear concise and clever," but more like "crazy, cracked and cuckoo" or what someone might call self-stultification with downright arrogant aplomb:

Clear, concise, and clever, "It's the conspiracy, Stupid!" takes you behind the scenes of the greatest birth certificate fraud in history and exposes the four groups who collaborated in hiding Obama's real birth certificate passing off a fake one instead to deceive and defraud the American public. The whole point of calling it a "wacky conspiracy theory" is to prevent people from finding out what's really going on. It is no different than the guilty saying they are innocent. For the first time anywhere, here are the facts and evidence gathered during my two year investigation that clearly explains the rationale for doing it, the propaganda they used to pull it off, and the campaign they have mounted to discredit conservatives.

He doesn’t really come out and say he’s a “can’t stop disbelieving” birther, I think because he knows it might turn some people off. You don’t know until you get about half way through that he believes that Obama is a “Kenyan born Muslim” etc., etc. He tries to use something he calls the “Liars Paradox” to prove that PolitiFact (mostly) is covering up Obama’s true identity, that is, they combine a provably false statement with a true statement that they want to be perceived as false by connecting it with the false statement by the conjunctive “and.” In one of the cases, however, he showed two separate rulings and claimed they were connected by an “and.” In another case it appears he took a PolitiFact side article and claimed it was an “unsourced” ruling.

He has other videos with “evidence” that Obama’s birth certificate (short or long-form) is a “fraud.” All I can say is, I bet he makes Orly Taitz proud.

Sidebar: Gini is Out of The Bottle

My conservative counterpart was told he was welcome to “knock himself out” again when some of his comments didn’t come through to this blog (according to him) responding to my post critical of his post on a PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Alan Grayson, concerning the Gini co-efficient of wealth. He indeed self-immolated with a bunch of non-sensical points: his usual sentence-by-sentence parse in order to falsely complicate and conceal the over-riding issue of Alan Grayson’s remarks about wealth inequality as evaluated by the Truth-o-Meter.

Saying “You've been proved wrong on point after point and you simply dismiss it without addressing the arguments” is arrogantly absurd on its face…if it’s proof, it’s proof by verbosity. Just because HE says I’m proven wrong doesn't mean that I am, that's just what he thinks. Talk about  self-stultification (with admirable aplomb)! But OK, I’ll give him a break, he does offer one somewhat worthwhile point:

“As I pointed out, Grayson has no real argument unless wealth inequality has demonstrably ill effects.”

Either Bryan is out of touch with reality or just choosing to ignore the obvious for the sake of argument. I think I’d choose the latter because of his frequent intransigence when debating people (as I’ve provided many examples of in previous posts).

The recorded history of our planet is replete with the demonstrably ill effects of wealth inequality, as well as the apathy of the “1%”: from the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned to that of Marie Antoinette’s telling those without bread to eat cake, which was said to have sparked a revolution. Only this time through the skillful use of propaganda, some of those in the 99% ( I am assuming) such as Bryan are defending those telling them to eat cake.

Bryan referred me to such propaganda with a PBS video of an interview with Richard Epstein, a “libertarian” law professor, who claims there’s a “good side” to wealth inequality. If you read Epstein’s bio, by the way, nowhere does it say he teaches or has a background in economics. His background is law. Now, at the undergraduate and graduate level, he might have taken some economics courses (and note, this was during the 1960’s before the advent of Reaganomics/supply side economic theories), but that limit to his qualifications makes me somewhat wary of his economic opinions. Other than that, Epstein is also an “Adjunct Scholar” at the conservative Cato Institute, and his writings have been warmly regarded at the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute’s website.

But even with this background, I’m certainly not in a position to provide the correct explanation of the other side, why economic inequality “isn’t good for America.” So for this, there’s a video as well, an interview with economist Richard Wolff, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. You can watch it below. His three pronged counter-argument to that of Epstein: