They are not fact-checkers, they’re political operatives with bylines.Please visit Hoystory and read it all.
The point Hensarling was making, which is obvious to anyone with half a brain (which explains Politifraud’s problem), was not that no one was getting subisides, but that Congressional staffers, many of whom make north of $100,000 a year, would be the only ones at that income level who get subsidies from the federal government.
In their effort to protect their lord and savior, Barack Obama, from himself, Politifarce conveniently disregarded two of their own rules on what statements deserve their attention:
In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:
- Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.
- Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?
It was a lie. Anyone with half a brain knew it.Hoy then zeros in on the way PolitiFact interpreted, and assigned a new meaning, to Obama's specific words:
...
Since I don’t think that [PolitiFact editors] Angie Drobnic Holan and Bill Adair are slack-jawed drooling idiots, that makes their assessment of Obama’s promise evidence that they are dishonest, lying hacks.
Politifraud:In all fairness to PolitiFact, subsequent to Hoy's post, they
Obama often said during his 2008 campaign for president that if people liked their health insurance, they wouldn’t have to change it under his proposal, and he continued to say it as president.“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” he said at a 2009 town hall meeting.Stop there for a moment and think about that quoted statement. When you as an English-speaking individual read those 14 words, do you think Obama’s saying this:
What Obama was talking about was the way his plan left in place the current health care system in the United States.Seriously? So, according to Politifraud, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” = “We will not institute a single-payer system.”
Well, if you’re going to twist the plain meaning of Obama’s words into that, then I suppose Politifraud should make Humpty Dumpty its mascot.
We have adjusted the statement to clarify that we are fact-checking the Crossroads GPS claim that "millions could lose their health care coverage and be forced into a government pool." The ruling is unchanged.This PolitiFact rating is only the latest in a long string of examples showcasing their defense of ObamaCare. (Not to mention their symbiotic defense of RomneyCare). Readers would be hard pressed to find unfavorable ratings of the law in PolitiFact's archives. It's enough to leave discerning observers with the impression that PolitiFact loves the ACA and is willing to protect it with the sophistry and semantic hair-splitting common among partisan actors.
[Boehner] spokesman, Michael Steel, told The Hill that Boehner had no intention of reconsidering a decision he previously made to forgo the use of a private jet for transportation to and from his Ohio district.Promise Kept, right? Hoy fills us in on the promissory particulars:
When we contacted Steel about this pledge, he said Boehner still flies commercial, and the only time he has flown on a military jet was for an overseas congressional delegation.
His spokesman says he’s flying commercial. They’ve gone through his travel records and have uncovered no evidence that he’s using military jets.Poor Boehner. If only he had been rated back in the olden days of eight months ago when PolitiFact's standards for Promise Kept weren't so high.
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So, they’ve got zero evidence that he’s not flying commercial. Zero evidence that he has failed to keep his pledge.
And the best they can muster is: “In the works?”
We will continue to seek more concrete records of Boehner"s travels and follow this pledge. If readers see him flying commercial -- or on a military jet -- please let us know.PolitiFact's inability to maintain consistent standards for the statements and people they rate offer a great example of how the editors' and writers' personal bias creeps into their work. PolitiFact is a collection of partisans convincing each other of their own impartiality. They should not be trusted as a news source, let alone as a fact checkers.
After honestly analyzing the rule and the law, Politifraud labels Gingrich’s charge “mostly false” as they engage in an amount of hand-waving that would enable human flight without the aid of wings, engines or the other commonly required tools.Parsing words is nothing new for PolitiFact. But that's not the biggest flub Hoy spots:
Still, if you consider a Catholic church to be a "Catholic institution," or a synagogue to be a "Jewish institution," Gingrich isn’t correct that the recent federal rule on contraceptives applies. Those nonprofit religious employers could choose whether or not they covered contraceptive services.It’s pretty clear that Gingrich chose his words carefully here and Politifraud is muddying the waters. When I hear the words “Catholic institution” I think of everything Catholic that isn’t the church. I think of hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, adoption services, the Knights of Columbus, etc. Maybe it’s just because I’m likely more familiar with religious terminology than the (snark on) godless heathens (snark off) who populate many newsrooms, that I interpret it this way. But if the difference between a “True” or “Mostly True” ruling and a “Mostly False” ruling is over whether the word “institution” includes the church or not, then there’s way too much parsing going on.
In the video Politifact links to of Gingrich’s statement (provided by none other than Think Progress), Gingrich makes it clear that he is talking about the rule issued “last week.” The rule issued last week was the one regarding religious employers covering contraceptives in their health plans. Politifraud dishonestly expands that specific criticism of that specific rule into states can set their own benchmarks. No, they can’t. Not when it comes to the rule that came down “last week.” That rule says they MUST cover contraceptives.Once again Hoy is spot on, though as usual our brief review doesn't do his work justice. Head over to Hoystory and read the whole thing.
You guys screwed up. Congratulations. Read the whole context (which you provide) and it's ambiguous -- he very well may be referring to nuclear-powered AIRCRAFT CARRIERS -- which they don't have yet. Also, during Vietnam, Cain was working ballistics for the Navy, studying the range and capabilities of China's missiles. He knew they had nukes. It was inartfully said. Not a mistake. According to your own rules, you don't fact check things like this: "Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue."That about says it all, but I'll just add one helpful informational link.
Like magic, Politifraud sets aside all of the additional taxes that would make Obama’s lie even more obvious and will only concern itself with the one that can bump the lower-income tax rate closer to the upper-income one.As with all of Hoystory's PolitiFact posts, well said.
Why?
Because it’s hard.
And they’re lazy.
And dishonest.
Here’s Mitt Romney:
"It’s been a failure in the last several years to get America back on track again. It’s taken longer to get Americans back to work than it took during the Great Depression. This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover. It breaks my heart. I want to get us back to work."Politifact has rated this statement “false.”
Here’s GOP Senate candidate from Florida, Adam Hasner:
"Obama-Nelson economic record. Job creation … at slowest post-recession rate since Great Depression," Hasner tweeted on May 23, 2011.Politifact has rated this statement “mostly true.”
"The cost of the first day or first couple of days was largely Tomahawk missiles and maybe some other munitions, but for the most part that’s why it was so expensive," Cooper said. "The cost in the long term of a no-fly zone is typically fuel and operational costs so the two are very different. The upfront cost of imposing a no-fly zone are typically substantially higher than the week-to-week cost of flying planes above Libyan territory.""So What?" asks Hoy. PolitiFact has taken an irrelevant point about the dynamic nature of military action and labels West less than totally honest. Because the initial 36 hours had higher costs than on-going operations, according to PolitiFact, West's statement wasn't True.
West’s point is that the Libyan intervention has not insubstantial costs. He uses an easy-to-comprehend and admittedly accurate line item to illustrate those costs. The fact that the amount of money being spent changes from hour to hour is irrelevant.As the anecdotes continue to mount, the answer appears to be "yes".
Is giving a Republican a simple “True” so hard?
On Fox News West said that the United States launched about $115 million worth of missiles within the first day or day and a half in Libya. That's about $6 million less than the figure we received from the Navy. And West didn't note that some of the Tomahawks were fired by U.S. allies. But still, close enough. But there are a couple of caveats -- namely, that the U.S. already had those missiles in stock, so it doesn't represent new spending. And initial costs in a military intervention are always higher, experts told us. We rate this claim Mostly True.It seems totally irrelevant that the U.S. had the missiles in stock already. If they're not replaced with new ones then the number we have is decreased by the operation in Libya. As for the "initial costs are always higher" caveat, West did nothing at all to suggest that the initial costs were representative of day-to-day operations.
Normal people might conclude that being off by 98 percent would earn you a false. You’d be wrong. Politifact deemed this statement “half-true.”Visiting Hoystory to read the whole thing is mandatory.
Why?
Well, Politifact writer Louis Jacobson and editor Bill Adair apparently really wanted to believe Hoyer, so they allowed themselves to be convinced by this ridiculous explanation:
But when we spoke to Hoyer’s office, they said he was actually using a different yardstick for the first figure.Not only was Hoyer comparing apples to oranges when he made his statement—conflating annual deficit numbers with the overall national debt—but his extended explanation to Politifact suggests he meant to compare apples to kumquats. That apparently makes it half-okay.
They said Hoyer was referring to the $5.61 trillion in surpluses that the Congressional Budget Office — the nonpartisan number-crunching arm of Congress — had predicted in January 2001 would materialize over the next 10 years, based on the fiscal outlook at the end of Clinton’s tenure. (Hoyer’s office confirmed our conclusion about the second figure.)
