Sidebar: Clone Wars

From the What a CROCK Files

Jeff Dyberg is a regular Facebook PolitiFact (PF) commenter and one of Bryan White’s attack rats (4-b), a more humorous, casual, self-revealing Ayn Rand Libertarian /Objectivist . He seems to appear at opportune times on behalf of Bryan, when he comes up against solid debate opposition in a thread, and often will link to Bryan’s blog in his comments, one time even posting that if you are new to the PF Facebook page, Bryan’s Sublime Bloviations is its “instruction manual.”

A few days ago he made some comments to the effect that PF’s rulings were “inconsistent” on ruling claims that had “No evidence.” However, taking a good look at these rulings, one can see that PF’s conclusions were all reasonable, had some basis in fact, and were not inconsistent.

He first took issue with a Half-True ruling on Obama’s statement that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was receiving foreign contributions.

In his first comment, Jeff compares the Chamber of Commerces’ word with a presidential Executive Order when it comes to comingling of funds. Another word, used by PF, for what should have been co-mingling, was “fungible” which according to Legal Dictionary means: A description applied to items of which each unit is identical to every other unit, such as in the case of grain, oil, or flour.  Fungible, however, was not a good term to use (money is always fungible), because it could be applied to the other ruling Jeff cited; the comparison should have been the application of proper accounting principles and the legal weight behind them, and the differences thereon, which made one ruling Half True (Obama and his presidential order on abortion *funding* in Obamacare) and another False (the Chamber of Commerce and the foreign funds it collects).

So Jeff starts with a PolitiFact quote (Tuesday, October 12, 4:11 p.m.): **PF-"The campaign finance experts we spoke with said there's no way to know for sure if the Chamber of Commerce is keeping foreign money it receives separate from the pot of money used to fund attack ads -- other than the Chamber's assurances that it does."**

“…Money is fungible? And the Chambers word isn't good enough? My how things have changed since Politifact was rating taxpayer subsidies for abortions in Obamacare…”

Another PolitiFact quote: "The executive order puts the weight of the president's word behind providing a way to ensure two checks go to insurers every month, so that abortion dollars and federal dollars are not co-mingled."

The word fungible implies that the foreign/American contributions are comingled unlike private abortion/federal dollars. There is no way to tell, because there is no transparency and no burden except for GAAP, unlike the import of an executive order to further enforce Federal rules which meticulously disclose the separate checks. It merited a Half True because there was disclosure: PF could show a "non"-comingling, which could not be done with the Chamber of Commerce foreign funds essentially undisclosed and hidden from view, with only their word that funds were separately accounted for.  In Obama’s case, there was enough there to infer some truth to his comment, but there wasn’t enough for the Chamber of Commerce.

Next comment from Jeff followed at 4:47 p.m. with another PF quote: "And Obama and other Democrats have offered no evidence so far that it has. And so we rule his statement Half True."  Jeff  posts with a link:

“Sometimes not having any evidence gets you a bad rating-From PF: "We found nothing confirming Phoenix as No. 2 in kidnappings worldwide...for now McCain's statement is False."

This is the original quote from the LA Times: “It was Phoenix, after all: More ransom kidnappings happen here than in any other town in America, according to local and federal law enforcement authorities. Most every victim and suspect is connected to the drug-smuggling world, usually tracing back to the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Phoenix police report.”

McCain said “…“By the way, on that issue, why is it that Phoenix, Arizona, is the number two kidnapping capital of the world?...”

There may have been some confusion between “world” and “America”; on the other hand, PF stated “…McCain’s office didn’t immediately respond to our query, but he’s made the claim before.” So, besides a repeating of the claim by McCain, there was (1) a consistent lack of evidence with repeated verification inquiry efforts and (2) nothing substantive to infer otherwise.

Jeff then quotes and links to a PolitiFact article in the St. Petersburg Times (PolitiFact is a *project* of the St. Petersburg Times): "Law enforcement remains wary of spillover crime, but so far, there has been little evidence of it...We rated Brewer's claim Pants on Fire."

This was Jan Brewers’ infamous claim about “beheadings” in the Arizona desert near the border of Mexico, which, besides being ridiculous on its face, was clearly fear-mongering. In a previous post I have noted that the more “fear-mongering” a claim, the more likely PolitiFact finds it worthy of a “Pants on Fire” ruling. So besides being ridiculously false and fear-mongering, there was again a (1) consistent lack of evidence with repeated verification inquiry efforts and (2) nothing substantive to infer otherwise.

Finally Jeff links to another similar claim PolitFact ruled “False” on: "In fact, experts advise that such rankings can't be made based on available information...Punch line: Nothing confirms Phoenix as No. 2 in kidnappings worldwide...for now Dewhurst's statement is False."

This statement’s ruling by PF is consistent with the other ruling (both False) and reads almost the same as McCain’s ruling. Dyberg might have had more of a case of “inconsistency” had PF ruled differently on this one. It should also be noted that the writer O’Rourke stated in her conclusion that “We'll revisit this turf if compelling evidence surfaces.” Apparently it never did.  Maybe Jeff can dig it up.

Time for mutual congratulations/admiration of our male right-wing world domination by Facebook commenter and self-professed conservative Gene Domowicz in the same thread:

@PF Please comment on Mr. Jeff Dyberg's excellent compilation of your inconsistent ratings RE: how to rate claims with no evidence...Certainly gives this "fan" pause. The only conclusion I can draw, absent an explanation, is one that should be looked upon by you, as an entity claiming to be an objective evaluator of the "facts", as embarrassing.  (~8:00 p.m. EST on October 13, 2010)

Gene, falling for Jeff’s posts lock, stock and barrel, waxed jubilant about something that he probably believed supported left-wing bias at PolitiFact, for which it should be "embarrassed". But Jeff’s quotes and links only made a nice superficial dog and pony show. Examining the context and information on which PF based its rulings made Jeff’s “compilation” and conclusions come apart at the seams. He was not making any point here except to impress other right-wing posters with his ability to quickly cut and paste and make nice links, and make believe he can make some sort of point, without the substance of any explanation of why the rulings should be judged equally.  In other words, his comments were just a crock.