Prophecy Fulfilled...Ha ha!

Well, I guess they did it, as I predicted about a month ago.  I watched Angie Drobnic-Holan talk about it on Jake Tapper's Show on CNN (above pic is a snippet).  Now, I must say, if she's going to say previous rulings on Obama saying the same thing should  "both be Pants on Fire" I suppose she could go back and change the previous Half True to Pants on Fire so my conservative counterpart doesn't have a cow?  She explained it as a progression from an inconclusive to a verifiable, just as I did in my post. 

 

Anyway, this year it seemed pretty obvious and now I kind of see how they pick them:  notoriety associated with the claim seems to hold more importance than prevalence of fact-checking the claim; that is, even if it's repeated quite a bit (as well as fact-checked), if there's a lot of publicity surrounding it, or I suppose you might call it, getting a lot of Lexis-Nexis results may matter more.

 

But Obama's had a bad year in 2013, and perhaps PolitiFact wanted to give it some credence.

PolitiFact 2013 Lie of the Year?

As the end of the year approaches, I've started thinking about PolitiFact's 2013 Lie of the Year. Are they even going to do it again this year? Was it Bill Adair's "thing" and not Angie Drobnic-Holan's? Well, if they do, it seems to me there's one very, very strong candidate. That's Obama's repeated statement that under Obamacare, "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it"....conveniently changed to... "you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed." Making it Pants on Fire.

Let's look at the history of how PolitiFact rated the "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it" statement from Obama:

During Obama's campaign in 2008, he was actually given a True: but at that time, his vision of that which came to be known as Obamacare was much different than what it turned out to be. Things were a bit different at the fledgling PolitiFact as well, as this True ruling was a brief 267 words. The important paragraph which shows how things had changed was this one:

Obama has said he would like his plan to be universal, in that everyone has health care coverage. But currently it includes a mandate only for children. Obama has said that he did not include a mandate for adults so as not to penalize people with modest incomes.

This was a far cry from what it developed into after he was elected president.  "The mandate for adults" was practically the heart of the healthcare proposal which survived to the law itself, meaning that, at the time,"keeping your healthcare plan" was more likely than not. 

In 2009, before the ACA was even passed, and oops, Obama said it again. But now there was a mandate for adults  This was when there was a lot of debate in congress over adding a "public option", a sort of Medicare for those under age 65, and the details had still not been finalized.  This time the Truth-o-Meter throttled down half way on Obama:

Until the legislation gets closer to a final stage, it's difficult to say how many employers will likely opt to change coverage. But clearly some change is coming. It's not realistic for Obama to make blanket statements that "you" will be able to "keep your health care plan." It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe people that health care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one of the points of reform is to change the way health care works right now. So we rate Obama's statement Half True.

Fast forwarding to 2013, as the reality of Obamacare rolled out, he was prudently advised he had better "tweak" it and put some caveats on it...like, if your insurance has the coverages the ACA requires, you can keep it.  If your insurance company won't upgrade it, then you might get cancelled...or your rates adjusted accordingly. Obama chose to back peddle, however: "What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasn't changed since the law passed."

So it went from let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt (True), to we don't have enough information (Half True) to "oh no you don't!" (Pants on Fire).

The qualifiers having made it a Pants on Fire lie, and with PolitiFact in a special report including a compilation of 37 recorded occasions where Obama said it without the qualifier, what we now have is a pretty humongous lie. Along with the start-up failures of the healthcare.gov website we have quite a Lie of the Year combustible combination.

Last year, a Republican got the honor, and it was for something that was capturing the public's attention at the height of the presidential campaign. But this year, the Democrats are over due, and it might be okay to go back to the subject of healthcare, since that's dominated the Lie of the Year position since PolitiFact created the award. 

 

The announcement is right around the corner, and the timing could not be better. So it's my prediction. We'll see in a few weeks.

2013: First Half "Overlapping Fact-Checks"

Of the 939 fact-checks published between (or among?) PolitiFact, the Washington Post FactChecker and Factcheck.Org in the first six months of 2013, there were 21 instances where two or more of the three fact-checkers did the same fact-check.  There were also cases where it was the same fact-check, but the statement being checked was made by different persons or organizations.  Sometimes a statement would be repeated (a "talking point") so it may have been fact-checked again at a later date (by the same fact-checker, which often occurs in the case of PolitiFact), which occasionally would change the rating.

 

At the end of 2012, with the Sandy Hook tragedy shortly before Christmas, guns and gun control suddenly became the hot topic politically, and the fact-checkers followed as 2013 began.  The most frequently overlapping topic concerned guns, followed by healthcare and the federal budget.  And as one might expect, significant nationally broadcast speeches, such as Obama's State of the Union address, were attractive fact-checking fodder.

 

Three statements had all three fact-checkers, PolitiFact, the Washington Post FactChecker, and FactCheck.Org, making a judgment.  One of them, by Barack Obama, had a differing outcome (the fact-checkers appear to be in disagreement), which I may be taking a better look at in another post.  In fact, in certain respects this was not a "triple" as I will explain.  The other two were by the same person, Michele Bachmann, who seems to be popular with the fact-checkers as far as what they believe are outlandish statements, and they were not disappointed.

 

The following are a selection of nine of those 21 instances, including the two three-peaters from Bachmann as well as those having some conflicts with ratings (my comments in italics).

Statement	"Other Fact-checker"	PolitiFact
Barack Obama: (SOTU on 2/13): "The U.S. has created half million manufacturing jobs in three years."	WaPo Factchecker: (in June when Obama repeated it)  Two Pinnochios:  "It's time to retire this talking point." Factcheck.Org: "The president was correct...but that's not the whole story."	True:  "...he has described the numbers carefully." This was by far the most contro- versial of PolitiFact's rulings, as it was technically correct but according to the other two fact- checkers, lacked context.
Barack Obama: (repeated) "40% of all guns purchased/sold do not require a background check." Repeated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Tom Barrett (D), and David Cicilline (D).	The WaPo started with an unrated "Verdict Pending" followed by Two Pinnochios a day later, then two months later Three Pinnochios. Factcheck.Org deemed this one an inconclusive "uncertain."	Half True:  Ted Cruz (R), Tom Barrett (D) and David Cicilline (D) all received the same rating. PolitiFact did not rate Obama on this statement.
Michele Bachmann: (3/19)  "70 percent of the food stamp budget goes to bureaucrats."	WaPo Factchecker:  Four Pinnochios. “There really aren't enough Pinnochios for such a misleading use of statistics." Factcheck.Org:  "...a grossly inaccurate claim."	Pants on Fire:  "That is ridiculously off base."
Michele Bachmann: (5/20):  The IRS is going to be "in charge of" a "huge national database" on healthcare with Americans' personal secrets.	“WaPo Factchecker:  Four Pinnochios.  "There is no evidence to support this assertion, and she is simply scaring people." Factcheck.Org:  "...falsely claimed..."	Pants on Fire: "She has mischaracterized the intent and limitations of the hub.  It's not a database."
Barack Obama: (SOTU on 2/13) The Affordable Care Act is "helping to slow the growth of healthcare costs."	Factcheck.Org:  "It may be helping, but the slower growth of healthcare spending began before the law was enacted."	Half True: "Obama is taking credit for more than he can prove."
Ron Johnson (R) stated that Obamacare has "$1 Trillion in hidden middle class taxes" which was denied as "untrue" at the same time by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D)  on ABC's "This Week"  3/10.	WaPo Factchecker:  Two Pinnochios for both: "Both lawmakers found themselves either a modifier too long or short." Factcheck.Org: "Wasserman- Schultz is wrong...(but) Johnson exaggerates."	PolitiFact did not fact-check either statement.
Barack Obama:  (SOTU on 2/13/)  The U.S. has doubled "the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas."	Factcheck.Org: "The (president's claim)...isn't remotely close to being true right now."	False:  "The statement was misleading and more importantly untrue."
Barack Obama:  (4/17) The NRA "used to support background checks."	WaPo Factchecker:  NO RATING.  "At the same time the NRA worked hard to defeat the proposals advanced by...other Democrats."	True:  "The NRA has acknowledged that it has since changed its position to opposition."  This was also a conflict in ratings as WaPo's "no rating" is much different than True regardless that it is "not" a rating.
Tom Coburn: (5/9 on MSNBC).  "After the national park gun ban was lifted, violent crime fell by 85 percent."	WaPo Factchecker: Three Pinnochios.  "...there is no evidence that crime has declined because guns have been permitted."	False:  "....far from clear."



Absurdity Today: Obama Fantasy Cabinet

With Julianna Forlano

Confounded by Contextual Complications

It is our policy to make on-the-record email correspondence public where the content affects the context of a story.

Zebra Fact-check, January 7, 2013

 

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.

Sublime Bloviations "Grading PolitiFact", August, 2012

 

(For the second damn time, practice what you preach!)

 

 

Right wingers feel vindicated that Fiat/Chrysler has announced it will be building Jeeps in China, especially at those websites critical of PolitiFact. Instead of beating the same dead horse again and again, I'm going to take another look at this in the terms of the right-wing argument: that if any (even a very small) percentage of production at the Jeep plants in the United States is replaced by production in China, then Mr. Romney's statement (see above graphic) is true in all respects, and needs no further explanation.

 

The right-wing website Zebra Factcheck (ZFC) uses the word "context" in almost every one of its "fact-checks." It seems to feel that it's so important that  they even have a tile symbol for it. For example, in one of its more recent posts on Marco Rubio, it claims that " In effect, PolitiFact takes Rubio’s tweet out of context."

Zebra Factcheck's littered graphics has a white tile symbol for "Out of Context"

 On his review of Romney's "Jeeps to China" comment, anti-PolitiFact website(s) PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck writer Bryan White duly notes the "context" he feels is crucially important to Romney's claims.

That’s right. PolitiFact takes a preferred Obama campaign claim about its rescue of the auto industry and states it matter-of-factly in a fact check of Romney. No additional context needed, apparently.

The media treatment of the dispute between the campaigns misses the context while focusing on the particulars. Romney is not simply making statements about Obama’s role in the auto bailout. His campaign is answering the Obama campaign’s messaging and pointing out missing parts of its story.

The only context I can see that was missed (according to Zebra Factcheck) appears to be what was presented by one of Romney's spokespeople to the New York Times in response to Romney's ad:

The facts are clear: despite his false and misleading attacks, President Obama took the auto companies into bankruptcy,” said a spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg. “His mismanagement of the process has exposed taxpayers to a $25 billion loss.”

Romney had proposed "letting Detroit go bankrupt" in opposition to what President George Bush decided to initiate with a bridge loan to GM and Chrysler in 2008. He said the government "should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing." But even Michigan's future (Republican) Governor Rick Snyder and (Republican) Congressman Fred Upton, acknowledged that "there was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government." The respected, not really liberal Economist had this to say:

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.

Tchotchkes: Obama Responds to Secession Petition(s)

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.

Tchotchkes: Victory from Obama's Anger Translator

You can't touch this!

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."

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.

 

 

 

Truth Index: Obama-Romney One Month Out

Dreaming of a Michele anniversary gift

Recently I posted about Mitt Romney's 47% remarks, saying it might be the game changer and even though it was rated "True" by PolitiFact, it might be considered a candidate for Lie of the Year...unless, as I said "...Obama could make his own big gaffe" which would reverse Romney's course following that statement. Well did he ever. I got up Thursday morning hoping the first debate had just been a bad dream. But I did enjoy SNL's take on it, which was just about the whole show.

 

But life must go on and it's time again to look at the Truth Index trend line for Romney and Obama. It hasn't changed much (unlike the polls), so I thought I might add something to show what appears to be the "Truth Index trend" for presidential candidates during their campaigns, i.e., the Truth Index of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain. We see how all three candidates had slipping Truth Indexes as their campaigns went on. In my last post on this, and as can be seen in the chart below, Romney had a higher Truth Index than Obama until after he announced his candidacy in 2011, after which it deteriorated substantially.

Click to enlarge: All 3 candidates' Truth Index fell off during the campaign period

This chart represents 427 rulings for Obama (which may explain why his Truth Index has not fallen as much in 2012), 183 for Romney, and 169 for McCain, from about June of 2007 to present. Today Obama's Truth Index has bumped down a bit to a positive 11.48, and Romney is at a negative 16.12. John McCain's Truth Index, most of his rulings from the 2007-8 period, is a negative 8.88, roughly half that of Romney based on a similar quantity of rulings. For what it's worth, looking at the infamous "Pants on Fire" factor on an individual basis, Pants on Fire were assigned nearly three times as much to Romney than Obama (PoF 3.86), and twice as much to McCain than Obama (PoF 1.97).

Tchotchkes: Obama Needs an "Anger Translator"

Truth Index: Obama-Romney 6 Weeks To Go

And a Peak at the Congressional Quarterly

For reasons to follow in this post, I thought it might be a good idea in this update on Obama and Romney's running PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index, to get a better look at what happened before 2010. So I haven't been posting as much, because it meant I had to go through 272 rulings for Obama and 44 rulings for Romney to date all the rulings...and do a few other things. 

Click to enlarge:  Until Romney veered way right, he had an admirable Truth Index

This latest chart shows the accumulated Truth Index for Obama and Romney quarter to quarter starting at the end of the third quarter of 2007, when the PolitiFact operation was really gearing up, since at that time as Obama fought for the Democratic presidential nomination, Romney also tried unsuccessfully to do likewise as a Republican. A note on the chart (brackets indicating the flat trend line) indicates the result at PolitiFact once John McCain became the presumptive 2008 Republican presidential nominee: from the end of the first quarter of 2008 until early in 2010, Romney was not subjected to the Truth-o-Meter at all. In early 2010, he was interviewed as the Affordable Care Act was being signed into law by Obama (perhaps because of his "Massachusetts" knowledge), which instigated a few rulings, and here it was that Romney perhaps hinted at one his future campaign talking points when he stated that he thought Obama was too soft (full of "apologies") in his foreign policy. He disappeared from PolitiFact's prying Truth-o-Meter until early 2011, and from then on he was a fairly regular PolitiFact fact-check target until his nomination put the fact-checks on (maybe temporary) steroids. He now has 174 rulings, which I believe is the second highest for PolitiFact.

 

But the trend shows, just as my last post with monthly trends showed, that Romney's Truth Index fell off considerably once he announced his candidacy for the second time in 2011. Of seven Falses awarded Romney between April and September, six of them were bad enough to be made Pants on Fire. He had only one True ruling during that time. By 2012, his average leveled off somewhat around negative 15.

 

Obama's Truth Index has been pretty steady in the positive 12 area (with 416 rulings as of this post), although the pre-2010 trend indicates he got off to a rocky start. He started with a very respectable 30 and then plummeted in the very next quarter to a negative 11. His Truth Index for that quarter only was a negative 62.5, with four Falses, with not one True nor one Mostly True. Must have been that the PF honeymoon with Obama was over.

 

The CQ Connection: A theory set forth in a PolitiFact Pants on Fire analysis by my conservative counterpart was that the Congressional Quarterly had influenced a less biased approach to the rulings, that PolitiFact had gone wild with Pants on Fire once the CQ partnership "was dissolved" at the end of 2008:

When PolitiFact first launched, it existed as a joint venture between the St. Petersburg Times newspaper and the Congressional Quarterly magazine, both owned at the time by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. The numbers for 2007 and to a lesser extent for 2008 demonstrate tendencies not present in later years. Some of the differences may stem from the vigorous Democratic primary season or from the removal of input from CQ staff when the partnership was dissolved after the 2008 presidential election. Simply put, PolitiFact’s bias against Republicans as measured by its use of the “Pants on Fire” rating has intensified since the separation from CQ. Republicans during the more recent era receive a “Pants on Fire” rating 143% more often than Democrats (see Fig. 2).

Part of my effort is not just in dating the PolitiFact rulings, but determining which ones were written by a Congressional Quarterly writer. My interest was to see how the writers treated Democrats and Republicans in terms of the Truth Index, to see if there's any correlation to support PF Bias writer Bryan White's claims. But to do so is an enormously tedious exercise, because PolitiFact National has roughly 1,780 rulings to go through for almost a four year period.

 

So to start I did Obama and Romney (for purposes of this post), with John McCain in my sites to next do a "presidential candidate trend" comparison; but at this point I've only done less than 20 percent of the rulings, so it will be a while. That being said, a few points about the Congressional Quarterly (CQ): between Obama and Romney CQ writers wrote about 15 percent of the rulings: 39 for Obama and 9 for Romney. The Truth Index as computed for only the Congressional Quarterly writers was within half a point: a positive 5.1 for Obama and a positive 5.6 for Romney. The Pants on Fires seem to defy White's contentions, however: Romney received only one from a CQ writer, while the three Pants on Fires Obama received were all from PolitiFact writers.

Tchotchkes: Homer Votes 2012

Lil White Lies Extra: One Context for You, TWO for Me

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.
-- Sublime Bloviations/PolitiFact Bias

And fact-checkers of fact-checkers should bring out those elements as well. Of course, if you're a biased fact-checker like PolitiFact Bias' Bryan White, you'd do it for the side you ideologically prefer and not the other. Here's a most excellent example.

 

In a recent review of a hotly-contested-by-the-right PolitiFact ruling on a statement by Paul Ryan that Obama promised to keep a GM Plant in his Wisconsin home district open, White formatted in bold the last words of Obama's speech "that's the future I'll fight for as your president" to prove it was a "pledge" as compared to Ryan's word "promise." He then said:

Importantly, Obama opened his speech with references to the plant. He then sketched his vision of America before mentioning how the Janesville plant could stay open if the government provides support. In that context, Obama pledged to provide that support. Does Mr. Obama use the specific term "promise" in his statement? No, certainly not. Does he guarantee the plant will remain open? Again, no. However, there is little doubt that every person in Janesville listening to his speech took it as a pledge from the president to work to enact policies to keep the plant open. Mr. Obama did, in fact, pledge to do just that.

Here's the complete context that preceded Obama's statement at the Janesville Plant in February, 2008, that was available on the internet, but White decided to "bury":

I believe that we can create millions of those jobs around a clean, renewable energy future. A few hours northeast of here is the city of Manitowoc [MAN-a-ta-WOC]. For over a century, it was the home of Mirro manufacturing – a company that provided thousands of jobs and plenty of business. In 2003, Mirro closed its doors for good after losing thousands of jobs to Mexico.

But in the last few years, something extraordinary has happened. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Doyle and Mayor Kevin Crawford, Manitowoc has re-trained its workers and attracted new businesses and new jobs. Orion Energy Systems works with companies to reduce their electricity use and carbon emissions. And Tower Tech is now making wind turbines that are being sold all over the world. Hundreds of people have found new work, and unemployment has been cut in half.

So Obama was talking about how a "sweeping energy policy could give the town the resources to produce something else." Since the plant was still producing (the biggest gas-guzzling) vehicles at the time, with the future unknown, this naturally follows and makes the most sense.

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: The Egg-ception

I expected PolitiFact's ruling on a twittered statement by Obama's campaign about Republican vice presidential Paul Ryan regarding abortion to be a fairly straightforward, simple one:

Make sure the women in your life know: Paul Ryan supports banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

PolitiFact's Dave Umhoefer agreed with the statement in principle, except for an implicit "except for" for which he made it unduly complicated--where the life of the mother is at stake. But for that it is ruled as a Half True? According to the website Reproductive Health Reality Check, the reality is that Ryan wants it both ways:

Abortion rights supporters say that his previous vote on a "no exceptions" late abortion ban, the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban, means that he does not believe in exceptions ever. Ryan apologists claim that he has never stated he would ban abortion in all cases, and his support of "personhood" bills is simply an affirmation that the issue of whether abortion should be legal or not should be returned to the states.

Can Ryan have it both ways?

Polifact tries to give him cover. At the same time that they report that both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the National Right to Life Committee agree that the only exception Ryan supports is in the case of the "life of the mother" being at risk, they also point out that the "Sanctity of Human Life" bill that Ryan supported in 2011 doesn't actually do any banning of abortion.

That's true. More likely to actually ban abortion would have been another bill sponsored that year, called the "Life At Conception" Act. It too declared "life" began at fertilization, but that there was a right to life from that point on.

It goes on to note that Ryan received the ready vice-presidential endorsement of the Catholic pro-life group CatholicVote which stated that Ryan understood Catholic "social teaching" which in the case of CatholicVote included no exceptions, even for rape.

 

Umhoefer failed to take note of Ryan's avoidance of taking a stand on that exception by making it implicit--or I should say, hiding it beneath the language of personhood at conception: (emphasis mine)

And while right wing pundits helpfully point out that Paul Ryan doesn't want to make abortion illegal (which: hahahahahahah), he just wants to give states the right to make abortion illegal, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum notes that Ryan's Sanctity of Human Life Act states,

(B) the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and

(2) the Congress affirms that the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions.

Which actually means that states would have the right to ban all abortions with no exception for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Further, in those states, if a woman was raped and wanted to have an abortion in another state, her rapist could theoretically sue her to stop the abortion, and Drum suspects that he'd probably win.

Further, yesterday another Mother Jones columnist pointed out that if the Sanctity of Human Life Act had become law, it likely would have made many forms of IVF illegal, and since Mitt Romney's two newest adorable grandbabies are the product of IVF and a surrogate mother, Ryan's big idea would turn Romney's kids into criminals. Most awkward political bromance ever.

The Republican Party Platform states under the sub-heading "The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life"-- "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children." This has been the pro-lifer legal loophole: “Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" with that person being the newly fertilized egg.

Obama Hates God? (Fox News Politicizes 9/11)

Tchotchkes: WHOSE in the tank for Obama?

Truth Index: Romney and Obama Update

Through the end of August, with about two months plus one week left until the election, Obama and Romney's accrued Truth Index scores have remained about the same since my last report.

Click to enlarge: Romney was "truthier" than Obama until he announced his candidacy for president.

Both Romney and Obama have experienced a slight uptick to their Truth Indexes as the election campaigns rev up; Romney's has stabilized, and he's actually been awarded quite a few "Trues" lately, with the exception of one Pants on Fire, a repeat of his "Obama Worldwide Apology Tour" claim.

Obama just surpassed his 400th ruling (the chart is based on 403 rulings as of August 31); he has been the "most ruled on" person at PolitiFact for obvious reasons.  Mitt Romney is far behind with 162 rulings and he has a few more to go before he surpasses John McCain (at 169) which will then make him Number Two.  That should happen very soon. 

My plan is to update this Truth Index chart again at the end of September, although my feeling is it will look almost the same. 

Oh yes, and lest I forget, PolitiFact is almost four times as likely to make a False "Pants on Fire" for Romney as it is for Obama, according to a certain PolitiFact detractor's dubious measure.