Thursday, August 30, 2012

Comparison of Falsehoods

With election season drawing nearer and nearer to November, many facts and figures are being thrown around by both sides of the party lines. I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the spin coming from members from both parties and from media with obvious bias towards one of the other. The same thing happened last time there was an election. I happen to follow MoveOn.org on Facebook and have seen stories posted by friends from other liberal leaning news websites. I've seen less on the Republican side because I have very few friends that are firmly Republicans and actually interested enough in politics to care to post stories. That being said, I do get a few in my newsfeed every once in a while.
What I've seen have been arguments from both with limited research, limited or no sources, and sometimes just outright falsehoods. What I've come to rely on heavily for actually facts and to what things are actually true that politicians saying are two websites: Politifact.com and Factcheck.org. I cannot even begin to explain why both are crucial to an informed voter. As a whole, we've become too lazy when it comes to researching our news and candidates. I'm guilty of it as well. For years, I only had one news source and that was MSNBC. While I think saying that MSNBC is the liberal version of Fox News is not a completely accurate comparison because Fox News (as evidenced by independent fact-checking organizations) are for more likely to bend the truth or just completely fabricate facts, MSNBC does have the similar distinction of have a absurd amount of spin and a very obvious liberal bias especially when it comes to their opinion talk show hosts. Keith Obermann (not sure if he's still on the air), Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews may not be nearly as radical as their Fox News counterparts but they don't typically have the other side on for comment, or if they do, it is an easy opponent to debunk. Ed Schultz in my eyes, however, can be directly compared to Bill O'Reilly. They both get way to fired up, make flimsy claims off the cuff, cut off guests to keep them from making any sort of rebuttal and ram their political agenda down the throats of viewers.

When all news outlets are starting to trend towards these editorial talk shows with obvious leanings rather than traditional news that is more fact— rather than opinion— oriented, these fact check sites become even more important in becoming informed. It's a lot of work but worth it if you're like me and want to be told truths so you can form you own opinions.

However, that's not why I'm writing this today. It should be obvious by now that I am pretty liberal. I'm not Hippie or Greenpeace or Peta liberal, but I'm pretty left. To demonstrate, I just retook the Political Compass test. To take it yourself, go here: Political Compass. My results are pretty crazy: 




That dot is where my views lay. I know some of the views I hold may be considered pretty radical by some but really, I just want every group of people to have all of their rights respected and access to equal treatment and opportunities. If you go to the Political Compass website, it shows where historical figures and the current presidential nominees lay. I'm more left and libertarian than Ghandi! I'm definitely not a libertarian, though. They are crazy mother fuckers. Typically, candidates for office lay in the upper right square. It's amazing how close Mitt Romney and Obama's dots are. They are about a millimeter apart with Romney's being slightly higher and more right. They seem infinitely different to most people in every ideological and political way. 

What I wanted this post to mainly be about was a theory I had. Now that you know my views, you know my bias but I had a thought earlier. I was wondering if Politifact had a section where you could look up politicians and see what sort of spread of lies to truths major players in both party had. I hypothesized that Republicans would be more even or trend towards false in their facts and that Democrats would have more of a truth trend but overall even as well. The results are pretty interesting but by no means do they really prove anything outright.

Let's start with Michelle Bachmann. She has a history of just pulling random lies out of her ass, as exemplified with her statements about the negligible amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and that it was a safe and natural gas we didn't have to worry about. By citing her own facts that the CO2 was at 8% of the atmosphere (water vapor is averaged about 4% to give to some scope here), I did a quick search and found that listed on the Dept. of Labor's website was a chart of acceptable to dangerous levels of CO2 in a work environment. At 8% the environment is considered to dangerous for humans to be laboring in. But I digress. She's interesting to me because of how bat shit insane she is. Glenn Beck even shakes his head at some of the things she says— specifically when she said the census might be used against citizens by rounding them up for internment camps like during WWII with Japanese Americans. Here's her Politifact rating: 






Not so much on the true side there, Michelle. With only 27% of her rated statements at half-true and above, I think this is a pretty accurate picture of Michelle Bachmann's propensity for outright lying. She is the only one I found with this skewed of a result. The Pants on Fire section of the politicians is what I'd like to highlight and Michelle Bachmann has a doozie. She made the statement
"After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true." Woo boy. I'm sure Politifact relished putting that story up. 

Let's skip over to the other side with another woman. Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House until 2011 and was and is the frequent target of attacks by the Republican side. Personally, I like her. She doesn't seem too crazy left and she's a very good role model as the first female Speaker of the House and as a strong woman. Here are her  results:

 She has less rated stories than Bachmann so the peak of her results is higher but I think it's still a fair comparison to make between the two. What we see here is a more middle of the road result. She doesn't outright lie all that often but she's not very good at making completely true statements either. Most of the time when you see half true on this site, the politicians are using outdated sources for their info. I chalk this up to cherry-picking data to evidence points rather than making solid arguments. Her worst Pants on Fire story was where she promoted a chart that said that Barack Obama had "increased the debt" by 16 percent, compared to George W. Bush, who increased it by 115 percent. It showed that one of the years used for old Georgey was actually a heavy debt year for Obama. I doubt that was a mistake.

John Boehner is the current Speaker of the House and former Republican minority leader in the house. I don't know much about him besides a few tidbits I've seen on some talk shows and his stunning auto-tuned voice in Auto-Tune the News #6. I think he looks like a plantation owner and, despite having lived in Ohio all of his life, for some reason speaks with a Georgian drawl. I also thoroughly enjoy how close his last name is to boner. I actually thought that was how it was pronounced when I first saw it until my parents corrected me. Here are his results:

His results are pretty interesting to me because of the outlier. A slim majority of his statements are true but he trends towards false without much spread in between the two. I'm not entirely sure why this is but if I had to take a crack, I'd saw it's probably that for the most part he tries to be factual but when he really wants to drive a point home, he abandons what his research has found. He only has one Pants on Fire story (which is rare) saying the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adopted last year contains "a series of slush funds, set up to stay on the books automatically, with little or no oversight." I think that confirms to a degree what I said about using lies when driving points home.

 Now I'll show you the results from both the VP and presidential candidates. They have many more stories than those I've shown you before so their results are much more evenly distributed but they still have curves that show where a majority of there statements lie. Let's start with Joe Biden.

I like Joe Biden. He seems very kindly and what I would hear about him before he was even nominated for VP was always good. I know it's bad to judge a politician on how they seem and look but I think it's pretty accurate in Joe Biden's case. Results: 

The results here are what I would have expected of Joe Biden: even but skewed more towards true. It kind of shows, to me at least, that he's a genuine person and isn't trying as hard to play the political game. He has his beliefs but he's not going to lie intentionally to mislead people into agreeing with him. His worst Pants on Fire is this quote "The president is brain-dead," in reference to old dubya. I think Politifact posted this one as a bit of a joke since Joe Biden was clearly just making an off the cuff statement that wasn't meant to be taken seriously. I think most people felt that way about Bush though. I would say more of a meat puppet than brain-dead.

Next we have Paul Ryan. I'm not going to lie, I despise this man. It burns me to the core that someone who believes that abortion should just be outright illegal in all cases might be in the White House. I read somewhere that he also wrote legislation, while old, that would make a woman have to prove she had a medical condition to use birth control; women that just wanted to control pregnancy were not eligible for it. I'm not sure how true that particular story was but from the interviews I've seen with Ryan and his previous involvement with Todd Akin in forming a bill with the language "forcible rape," as the only means to an abortion, I would not doubt he was opposed to birth control or thought that it was just another form of abortion. Even Romney isn't that crazy on the subject despite being a Mormon. If you have a penis, you will never know the burden that any of your ideas will have on a woman.  Let's see his ratings:


There aren't a lot of stories for Ryan because he's just recently become prominent in the media sphere. What his limited results show, to me, that he's not very good at telling lies or truths and is just a standard politician. His worst Pants on Fire story is that President Barack Obama "has doubled the size of government since he took office." This was on his own website. It's not some off-the-cuff comment, it's something he took the time to write and include in his platform. To me, that's a whole lot worse of a lie. He had the opportunity to fact check what he was writing before he put it on the website but I think this is clearly a case of trying to sway voters with purposeful misinformation.



Fuck that guy.


Anyway, where do the presidential nominees stack up.

I voted for Obama in 2008. I realize most of the things attributed to him, good and bad, have nothing to actually do with him but part of his staff or congress. I know he has good ideas but wants to compromise with Republicans and because of that it's really difficult to get much done. Both parties are too stubborn and play the political game hard rather than try to actually make the country better. 



Obama is obviously going to have the most stories attributed to him and because of that, we get a far more accurate picture of where he truly stands. The results are actually quite interesting. A majority of them are half true and above and despite having so many stories, he's only had 6 Pants on Fire lies. That's pretty amazing for a politician. I feel like it might be because he is the president. Everything he says is scrutinized more and far harsher than any one else. He also has access to more staff to research and fact-check. I'd just like to think Obama's a kind of genuine person who would never try to mislead the public. However, that's probably not true.

I really don't know much about Mitt Romney. I vaguely know things he did while governor of Massachusetts and I know that he is a massively wealthy man who has been involved with many major corporations. I also know that he is the caricature of every politician ever. He says whatever the people want to hear and what he thinks will get him elected but doesn't really care much about those things when actually in office. I think that he is a businessmen and that he will do whatever is in his own self-interest if elected. I don't trust corporations like he was in and I think they stand to make a lot of money by his election. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if he's elected, the distribution of wealth is going to get even more concentrated at the top.


Romney's results are very similar to Ryan's. No surprise there. All of his Pants on Fires are pretty bad. Like REALLY bad. No semblance of truth in them and an inherent amount of animosity. They are like something a teabagger daytime radio show host would say. It's very Rush Limbaugh. The worst would be in one of his negative ad campaigns which asserts that "Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."I feel like there is just a touch of racism in that. From the point of view of a middle class or working class, middle-aged white man, they are paying taxes to support lazy black people. That's what I've experienced when talking to them. That's what they legitimately think. It easy then to say that they also think a black president would try to keep that welfare state going. I think that's probably who they are targeting with this ad and it's just fucking stupid and infuriating and false.

 This is why I've been trying to avoid politics. It's just plain fucked. We keep electing stubborn people who are playing a game in order to get a paycheck and we're not seeing any progress.

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