In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Thanks for the info on the trump lawsuits re: politifact; I'd say they dfo a decent job, and they do provide good citations so you can assess their ratings. I do find that they have some questionable calls on exactly where they classify some statements.
legal -> does free CC cover continuing ed? I'm not familiar with it.
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
On that subject:
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Clearly that website that won the Pulitzer is not reliable. You know better than them how Trump is honest and Hillary is a crook.
Good thing with fact checking is, you can check. So make yourself a favour, go on Trump page and READ the stupid dumb lies he has said over and over and over and over again. And then only, I listen to you when you have the guts to call Clinton dishonest while supporting him. A bit of intellectual integrity won't hurt.
They aren't reliable for comparing the trustworthiness of different people. They have a database of statements, but the selection of those isn't random. They have many repeat/similar statements for Trump especially, they have a lot more statements in general from him considering he's only been in it for a year. And they inevitably have to interpret what they quote, what side do you think they're more lenient on?
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
The more rational Trump-voters would probably argue that even if it's true that Hillary has less scandals than Trump, Trump's scandals are less problematic than Hillary's in magnitude
On August 09 2016 02:24 zlefin wrote: legal -> does free CC cover continuing ed? I'm not familiar with it.
It's a work in progress, so there's no real system fully in place yet. As far as I understand it, the goal is to make CC free in general.
Not that CC is particularly expensive anyways. Usually affordable to go to school even without being free. The biggest cost is the opportunity cost of not having a salary in the meantime.
"Facts," someone once said, "are stubborn things." If there is one thing that is gnawing the marrow out of political coverage in America today, it's the so-called "fact checkers" whom editors of some of the nation's most prestigious publications have appointed to evaluate the veracity of statements made by candidates for public office.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, the definition of "fact" is: 1) Knowledge or information based on real occurrences; 2) Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed; or 3) A thing that has been done, especially a crime. The last is especially interesting since the way fact-checking has been employed in the last two election cycles is as near to a crime as a journalist can commit.
Now comes a study from the George Mason University Center for Media and Public Affairs that demonstrates empirically that PolitiFact.org, one of the nation's leading "fact checkers," finds that Republicans are dishonest in their claims three times as often as Democrats. "PolitiFact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims during President Obama's second term," the Center said in a release, "despite controversies over Obama administration statements on Benghazi, the IRS and the AP."
"Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama Administration," said Dr. Robert S. Lichter, head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party."
As the first person to empirically demonstrate the liberal, pro-Democrat bias in the Washington press corps, Lichter's analysis is worth further study and comment. His study – and in the interests of full disclosure, he was once a professor of mine at the George Washington University - "examined 100 statements involving factual claims by Democrats (46 claims) and Republicans (54 claims), which were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com during the four month period from the start of President Obama's second term on January 20 through May 22, 2013." The conclusion: Republicans lie more.
Or do they? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has consistently reported, the fact checking business often – too often for anyone's good – turns on matters of opinion rather than matters of "fact." One recent example that drives the point home is the Washington Post's recent fact check that gave President Barack Obama "four Pinocchios" for asserting that he had, in fact, called what happened in Benghazi an act of "terrorism."
According to the Post's Glenn Kessler, Obama did in fact refer to it the next day in a Rose Garden address as an "act of terror," but did not call it "terrorism." Is this a distinction without a difference? Hardly, at least as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney might be concerned. It will be a long time before anyone forgets how the second presidential debate turned into a tag team match with Obama and CNN's Candy Crowley both explaining to the mystified Republican that Romney was, in fact, wrong when he accused the president of not having called the Benghazi attack a terrorist incident.
The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
There is a "truth gap" in Washington, but it doesn't exist along the lines the fact checkers would have you think. It was Obama who said you could keep the health care you had if you liked it, even if Obamacare became law. It was Obama who said the Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of foreign money into U.S. campaigns. It was Obama who said Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video. It was Obama's IRS that denied conservative political groups had been singled out for special scrutiny. And it was Obama who promised that taxes would not go up for any American making less than $250,000 per year.
All of these statements and plenty more are demonstrably false, though some people still pretend there is truth in them. As the Lichter study demonstrates, it's not so much fact checkers that are needed as it is fact checkers to check the facts being checked.
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
"Facts," someone once said, "are stubborn things." If there is one thing that is gnawing the marrow out of political coverage in America today, it's the so-called "fact checkers" whom editors of some of the nation's most prestigious publications have appointed to evaluate the veracity of statements made by candidates for public office.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, the definition of "fact" is: 1) Knowledge or information based on real occurrences; 2) Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed; or 3) A thing that has been done, especially a crime. The last is especially interesting since the way fact-checking has been employed in the last two election cycles is as near to a crime as a journalist can commit.
Now comes a study from the George Mason University Center for Media and Public Affairs that demonstrates empirically that PolitiFact.org, one of the nation's leading "fact checkers," finds that Republicans are dishonest in their claims three times as often as Democrats. "PolitiFact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims during President Obama's second term," the Center said in a release, "despite controversies over Obama administration statements on Benghazi, the IRS and the AP."
"Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama Administration," said Dr. Robert S. Lichter, head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party."
As the first person to empirically demonstrate the liberal, pro-Democrat bias in the Washington press corps, Lichter's analysis is worth further study and comment. His study – and in the interests of full disclosure, he was once a professor of mine at the George Washington University - "examined 100 statements involving factual claims by Democrats (46 claims) and Republicans (54 claims), which were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com during the four month period from the start of President Obama's second term on January 20 through May 22, 2013." The conclusion: Republicans lie more.
Or do they? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has consistently reported, the fact checking business often – too often for anyone's good – turns on matters of opinion rather than matters of "fact." One recent example that drives the point home is the Washington Post's recent fact check that gave President Barack Obama "four Pinocchios" for asserting that he had, in fact, called what happened in Benghazi an act of "terrorism."
According to the Post's Glenn Kessler, Obama did in fact refer to it the next day in a Rose Garden address as an "act of terror," but did not call it "terrorism." Is this a distinction without a difference? Hardly, at least as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney might be concerned. It will be a long time before anyone forgets how the second presidential debate turned into a tag team match with Obama and CNN's Candy Crowley both explaining to the mystified Republican that Romney was, in fact, wrong when he accused the president of not having called the Benghazi attack a terrorist incident.
The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
There is a "truth gap" in Washington, but it doesn't exist along the lines the fact checkers would have you think. It was Obama who said you could keep the health care you had if you liked it, even if Obamacare became law. It was Obama who said the Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of foreign money into U.S. campaigns. It was Obama who said Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video. It was Obama's IRS that denied conservative political groups had been singled out for special scrutiny. And it was Obama who promised that taxes would not go up for any American making less than $250,000 per year.
All of these statements and plenty more are demonstrably false, though some people still pretend there is truth in them. As the Lichter study demonstrates, it's not so much fact checkers that are needed as it is fact checkers to check the facts being checked.
And to continue down the rabbit hole, Peter Roff is a reasonably known conservative writer and member of a conservative think tank. And we could go back and forever with people complaining about bias in the media that does not conform with the way they would like to see facts presented. And he is free to double check the fact checkers if he wants.
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
I think the vast majority of trump supporters in this thread regularly accept his flaws, and ridicule him for the same things the left does. He should be up 10 points on HRC right now, but due to his incompetence/inexperience he is down 10 points which could have completely been avoided on his own. Some of the HRC supporters in this thread are so delusional that they cannot confront their candidate, instead point to trump for some easy attacks. I wonder how accepting they would be of HRC if trump wasn't the opponent. Congrats guys, your candidate has fewer scandals than trump, that's really a remarkable accomplishment and deserves some critical acclaim. Let's also assume that the 33000 emails have no important information and were all personal too, because why not?
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist.
People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils.
"Facts," someone once said, "are stubborn things." If there is one thing that is gnawing the marrow out of political coverage in America today, it's the so-called "fact checkers" whom editors of some of the nation's most prestigious publications have appointed to evaluate the veracity of statements made by candidates for public office.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, the definition of "fact" is: 1) Knowledge or information based on real occurrences; 2) Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed; or 3) A thing that has been done, especially a crime. The last is especially interesting since the way fact-checking has been employed in the last two election cycles is as near to a crime as a journalist can commit.
Now comes a study from the George Mason University Center for Media and Public Affairs that demonstrates empirically that PolitiFact.org, one of the nation's leading "fact checkers," finds that Republicans are dishonest in their claims three times as often as Democrats. "PolitiFact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims during President Obama's second term," the Center said in a release, "despite controversies over Obama administration statements on Benghazi, the IRS and the AP."
"Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama Administration," said Dr. Robert S. Lichter, head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party."
As the first person to empirically demonstrate the liberal, pro-Democrat bias in the Washington press corps, Lichter's analysis is worth further study and comment. His study – and in the interests of full disclosure, he was once a professor of mine at the George Washington University - "examined 100 statements involving factual claims by Democrats (46 claims) and Republicans (54 claims), which were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com during the four month period from the start of President Obama's second term on January 20 through May 22, 2013." The conclusion: Republicans lie more.
Or do they? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has consistently reported, the fact checking business often – too often for anyone's good – turns on matters of opinion rather than matters of "fact." One recent example that drives the point home is the Washington Post's recent fact check that gave President Barack Obama "four Pinocchios" for asserting that he had, in fact, called what happened in Benghazi an act of "terrorism."
According to the Post's Glenn Kessler, Obama did in fact refer to it the next day in a Rose Garden address as an "act of terror," but did not call it "terrorism." Is this a distinction without a difference? Hardly, at least as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney might be concerned. It will be a long time before anyone forgets how the second presidential debate turned into a tag team match with Obama and CNN's Candy Crowley both explaining to the mystified Republican that Romney was, in fact, wrong when he accused the president of not having called the Benghazi attack a terrorist incident.
The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
There is a "truth gap" in Washington, but it doesn't exist along the lines the fact checkers would have you think. It was Obama who said you could keep the health care you had if you liked it, even if Obamacare became law. It was Obama who said the Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of foreign money into U.S. campaigns. It was Obama who said Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video. It was Obama's IRS that denied conservative political groups had been singled out for special scrutiny. And it was Obama who promised that taxes would not go up for any American making less than $250,000 per year.
All of these statements and plenty more are demonstrably false, though some people still pretend there is truth in them. As the Lichter study demonstrates, it's not so much fact checkers that are needed as it is fact checkers to check the facts being checked.
And to continue down the rabbit hole, Peter Roff is a reasonably known conservative writer and member of a conservative think tank. And we could go back and forever with people complaining about bias in the media that does not conform with the way they would like to see facts presented. And he is free to double check the fact checkers if he wants.
I agree, this writer clearly has his own set of biases. Nevertheless, it comes from a pretty neutral period in the election cycle (2013) so I thought it worth looking at to show that this isn't just something being said right now to cover Trump or Bernie.
"Facts," someone once said, "are stubborn things." If there is one thing that is gnawing the marrow out of political coverage in America today, it's the so-called "fact checkers" whom editors of some of the nation's most prestigious publications have appointed to evaluate the veracity of statements made by candidates for public office.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, the definition of "fact" is: 1) Knowledge or information based on real occurrences; 2) Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed; or 3) A thing that has been done, especially a crime. The last is especially interesting since the way fact-checking has been employed in the last two election cycles is as near to a crime as a journalist can commit.
Now comes a study from the George Mason University Center for Media and Public Affairs that demonstrates empirically that PolitiFact.org, one of the nation's leading "fact checkers," finds that Republicans are dishonest in their claims three times as often as Democrats. "PolitiFact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims during President Obama's second term," the Center said in a release, "despite controversies over Obama administration statements on Benghazi, the IRS and the AP."
"Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama Administration," said Dr. Robert S. Lichter, head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party."
As the first person to empirically demonstrate the liberal, pro-Democrat bias in the Washington press corps, Lichter's analysis is worth further study and comment. His study – and in the interests of full disclosure, he was once a professor of mine at the George Washington University - "examined 100 statements involving factual claims by Democrats (46 claims) and Republicans (54 claims), which were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com during the four month period from the start of President Obama's second term on January 20 through May 22, 2013." The conclusion: Republicans lie more.
Or do they? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has consistently reported, the fact checking business often – too often for anyone's good – turns on matters of opinion rather than matters of "fact." One recent example that drives the point home is the Washington Post's recent fact check that gave President Barack Obama "four Pinocchios" for asserting that he had, in fact, called what happened in Benghazi an act of "terrorism."
According to the Post's Glenn Kessler, Obama did in fact refer to it the next day in a Rose Garden address as an "act of terror," but did not call it "terrorism." Is this a distinction without a difference? Hardly, at least as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney might be concerned. It will be a long time before anyone forgets how the second presidential debate turned into a tag team match with Obama and CNN's Candy Crowley both explaining to the mystified Republican that Romney was, in fact, wrong when he accused the president of not having called the Benghazi attack a terrorist incident.
The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
There is a "truth gap" in Washington, but it doesn't exist along the lines the fact checkers would have you think. It was Obama who said you could keep the health care you had if you liked it, even if Obamacare became law. It was Obama who said the Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of foreign money into U.S. campaigns. It was Obama who said Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video. It was Obama's IRS that denied conservative political groups had been singled out for special scrutiny. And it was Obama who promised that taxes would not go up for any American making less than $250,000 per year.
All of these statements and plenty more are demonstrably false, though some people still pretend there is truth in them. As the Lichter study demonstrates, it's not so much fact checkers that are needed as it is fact checkers to check the facts being checked.
I honestly feel sick when shills defend things like this, knowing that if the tables were turned they would just get up and walk to the other side of the table
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist.
People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils.
The problem with the "lesser of two evils" argument is that if it is applied consistently, then you make no progress. It just tells politicians that they can be as bad as they want, but as long as they're slightly better than "the enemy" then you have to vote for them. The "lesser of two evils" argument has been consistently applied for many election cycles now, and while it's valid for any one of them it starts to become a real problem if you keep on applying it over and over again every single election, slowly voting against any real progress.
On August 09 2016 01:43 zlefin wrote: I've been pondering how to address the issues caused by the ever more rapidly changing economy, and globalization. I'm thinking that, just as educational availability has expanded over time; it may be time to have some sort of public, free, continuing education option, to ensure that everyone can retrain to get the skills for whatever jobs are available. Not at all sure yet that it's the best approach, but it seems like a better idea than protectionism; and people switch jobs and careers so much more these days, that a continuing ed approach seems worthwhile. And I'm not sure how many poor people would be able to afford the private continuing ed options that are available, so it may be better for society to offer such options free, just as we have free K-12 for everyone. These days so much just changes from when you were last in school that continuing ed is more important than it used to be.
That sounds more like a free certification program, an addendum to high school. The internet already provides all the opportunity people need to learn knowledge skills like coding, math, engineering, and I'm not really sure what skills you have in mind other than those. It would be nearly impossible to effectively certify the acquisition of experiential skills like working in productive occupations without just giving them job experience, and I haven't seen much evidence that providing more opportunities to people to gain these factory- or site-oriented skills would change much at the population level.
Hierarchically organized education won't solve the core problem with the economy, which is inequality leading to positive feedback loops of differentiation through class (via social-proofing, educational opportunity, etc.) for a limited number of "middle-class" or professional jobs. Especially as you consider that vast numbers of non-Western people are entering and competing in the labor market for any product or service that can be outsourced effectively (i.e. an increasing number). So further educational improvement is, at best, a short-term national modulation that doesn't affect the trend line.
It seems clear to me that we are approaching some serious barriers to the reproduction of capital worldwide, and that this is increasingly reflected in what passes for politics in the West. Capital has overcome these hurdles for more than the last hundred years, so its quite possible that something will give and it will find a way to go on growing. Given that this is an amoral process, it also quite possible that it will achieve that by moving towards a fundamentally less just society. Technocratic solutions for providing job skills to increase productivity and labor participation within countries is only a stop gap measure. The once-liberal dream of an educated citizenry has been disfigured into the grotesque facade of a meat-packing plant, where the masses are stuffed full of marketable skills that mainly serve to enrich potential employers. It's nothing new, of course, but, like Dorian Gray, education continues to parade around in public with the hopefulness of youth, while its true visage continues to fester. There needs to be a fundamental restructuring of how resources are distributed. The democratization of knowledge via the internet definitely brings some hope, but I think further certification programs only play into the inherent problems in our overly hierarchical education system.
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote: [quote] Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist.
People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils.
The problem with the "lesser of two evils" argument is that if it is applied consistently, then you make no progress. It just tells politicians that they can be as bad as they want, but as long as they're slightly better than "the enemy" then you have to vote for them. The "lesser of two evils" argument has been consistently applied for many election cycles now, and while it's valid for any one of them it starts to become a real problem if you keep on applying it over and over again every single election, slowly voting against any real progress.
That would be an issue if the president was the entire government. It is just one of many offices we get to vote for on election day. The ticket is larger than just that office and we can vote for other people that more closely reflect our world views. The president is supposed to represent all of the US, not everyone will get everything they want.
On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote: So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument.
Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked.
Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another.
But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked.
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views.
That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him.
Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we?
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased.
Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. .
This
They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful'
But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased.
Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation!
Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton?
Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me".
This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections.
Uh, you do realize that the Clinton Foundation has to file with the IRS as a charity and they undergo an audit by a public accounting firm each year and these are all available on their website, right?
On August 09 2016 01:43 zlefin wrote: I've been pondering how to address the issues caused by the ever more rapidly changing economy, and globalization. I'm thinking that, just as educational availability has expanded over time; it may be time to have some sort of public, free, continuing education option, to ensure that everyone can retrain to get the skills for whatever jobs are available. Not at all sure yet that it's the best approach, but it seems like a better idea than protectionism; and people switch jobs and careers so much more these days, that a continuing ed approach seems worthwhile. And I'm not sure how many poor people would be able to afford the private continuing ed options that are available, so it may be better for society to offer such options free, just as we have free K-12 for everyone. These days so much just changes from when you were last in school that continuing ed is more important than it used to be.
That sounds more like a free certification program, an addendum to high school. The internet already provides all the opportunity people need to learn knowledge skills like coding, math, engineering, and I'm not really sure what skills you have in mind other than those. It would be nearly impossible to effectively certify the acquisition of experiential skills like working in productive occupations without just giving them job experience, and I haven't seen much evidence that providing more opportunities to people to gain these factory- or site-oriented skills would change much at the population level.
The internet isn't very good at teaching you math compared to a college level education. Contrary to the stereotype it's actually fairly difficult to acquire tons of calculus and LA stuff purely by yourself and from my experience what helps people most are the exercise classes that go over the lecture in groups. Can't really replace the formal education with self taught internet stuff, it's way too hacky.
As far as practical knowledge is concerned the internet is quite good, but if you want a fundamental education from the bottom up you need lots of peers and a teacher.
Depending on the definition of knowledge being used, the internet hasn't actually democratized knowledge so much as pretend to. Personally, I think understanding knowledge as an inherently trust-based, contingent hierarchy of communication makes the most sense, and in thinking along those lines, the Internet is hardly a wholly positive phenomena. Call me a bad Marxist, but I think that some hierarchies are helpful and even necessary, particularly with regards to education. This is not to say that education in the US is not overly-hierarchilized
On August 09 2016 01:43 zlefin wrote: I've been pondering how to address the issues caused by the ever more rapidly changing economy, and globalization. I'm thinking that, just as educational availability has expanded over time; it may be time to have some sort of public, free, continuing education option, to ensure that everyone can retrain to get the skills for whatever jobs are available. Not at all sure yet that it's the best approach, but it seems like a better idea than protectionism; and people switch jobs and careers so much more these days, that a continuing ed approach seems worthwhile. And I'm not sure how many poor people would be able to afford the private continuing ed options that are available, so it may be better for society to offer such options free, just as we have free K-12 for everyone. These days so much just changes from when you were last in school that continuing ed is more important than it used to be.
That sounds more like a free certification program, an addendum to high school. The internet already provides all the opportunity people need to learn knowledge skills like coding, math, engineering, and I'm not really sure what skills you have in mind other than those. It would be nearly impossible to effectively certify the acquisition of experiential skills like working in productive occupations without just giving them job experience, and I haven't seen much evidence that providing more opportunities to people to gain these factory- or site-oriented skills would change much at the population level.
The internet isn't very good at teaching you math compared to a college level education. Contrary to the stereotype it's actually fairly difficult to acquire tons of calculus and LA stuff purely by yourself and from my experience what helps people most are the exercise classes that go over the lecture in groups. Can't really replace the formal education with self taught internet stuff, it's way too hacky.
As far as practical knowledge is concerned the internet is quite good, but if you want a fundamental education from the bottom up you need lots of peers and a teacher.
There are a ton of conflating variables that make the picture murkier than you present it. People usually pay for college courses. People may not work through the problem sets because they don't have extrinsic motivation to go through the uncomfortable process of learning something. People may not know how to access online communities who can provide instant feedback or explain thorny issues. People who are motivated enough to attend college courses about it might just be more motivated than those who attempt to learn it entirely on their own (and this, in turn, may be incentivized by the value of the certificate itself--most jobs don't actually require that much math in daily use, even engineering jobs, and so the amount of investment to learn math properly may not seem to make much sense without the labor market value of the certification at the end of the tunnel). My point is that the internet can provide all those things, even if in practice it doesn't.
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