If the majority of Iowa voters fall for that old bullshit tactic then I suppose they deserve what they are gonna get.
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PolitiFact is wrong as often as it is right, making it useless for actual fact checking.
Referencing it as a reasonable source for accurate information is a waste of time.
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Too bad the fact that Politifact has no credibility makes this meaningless. Theyāve repeatedly judged things as āhalf trueā or worse when they compare reality to a statement and find it to be accurate but not properly intentioned or it doesnāt feel right to them for some reason.
Martina Navratilova is a great example. She says that in 29 states you can be fired for being gay or even your boss just thinking youāre gay. They check it out and find 29 states have no laws barring that kind of firing and come back with a rating of āhalf trueā because, come on, you know they arenāt going to actually just fire people for being gayā¦I mean that just doesnāt sound right even thought they checked it out and it was true.
āIf you frame this statement in the context of blanket protections by states, sheās correct. Still,ā¦Half Trueā.
They suffer from the same problem a lot of media does in trying to act non-partisan by splitting the baby. When you research it and it turns out reality does have a strong liberal bias, they recoil from that because it spoils the false equivalency they require for their costume of non-partisanship.
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Good fences make good neighbors.
If only some intrepid reporter would ask her something like: āYou have said that Braley is not legally allowed to force his neighbor to keep her chickens off his property. Would that also apply in the case of dogs? Or Elephants?ā
So, Braley couldnāt come up with this response in real time?
Actually they are not 100% accurate, but they are quite accurate and give lots of info. Care to cite all these times they are wrong, or did a talk show host tell you that?
Politifact seems to be the enemy of talk show hosts, mostly from FOX, but also at times MSNBC. They are to be commended for that.
Wow, you totally misrepresented Politifacts response. Totally. In those 29 states you CANāT be fired just for being gay if:
- You are a government employee
- Localities have anti-discrimination laws
- Individual employers may have policies that bar discrimination based on sexual orientation, even if their state or city does not.
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act provides protection for employees who are subjected to gender-based stereotyping (gender based stereotyping can include elements that overlap significantly with an employer āthinking you are gayā).
So that makes your statement that those states have āno laws barring that kind of firingā actually FALSE.
Hayley Gorenberg, deputy legal director of Lambda Legal, cited the 1989 Supreme Court case Price Waterhouse vs. Hopkins. In that case, a woman sued the accounting firm where she worked because she was not offered a promotion after a senior manager told her she should āwalk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.ā The plaintiff convinced the court that sex stereotyping constitutes sex discrimination, Gorenberg said. This precedent could protect a straight person who appeared to an employer to be āgayā and suffered discrimination as a result.
Gorenberg said that despite these exceptions, Navratilova has a point. She said that calls to her groupās national legal help line include a āvery high percentageā of workplace discrimination complaints. āWithout specific national protection, people are fired based on their sexual orientation far more easily,ā she said.
So, the ruling of half true was quite accurate. While in some cases you can be fired for being gay, in MOST cases you canāt. While blanket national protections are a better step, most people CANāT be fired just for being gay in those states. That does not make her statement trueā¦or falseā¦
You make a lot of assumptions, but at least you only made an ass out of one of us.
I donāt listen to talk radio, donāt watch FOX or MSNBC, and only get The Daily Show in a few clips a month. I get my info by reading many news sites and listening to a good bit of NPR news shows (though not much else, and the Takeaway drives me nuts).
But for examples, how about the 2011 ālie of the yearā PolitiFact gave to Democrats? Dems were saying the GOP wanted to end Medicare, and the GOP plan would have done exactly that while keeping the name. The keeping of the name was enough for PolitiFact to call that the lie of the year, http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/22/144136535/with-lie-of-the-year-controversy-fact-checking-comes-under-scrutiny
Hereās a local NJ political site with multiple critiques of PolitiFactNJ where the facts are just wrong, the conclusions are slanted and they dig so far into the weeds as to muss the point that is actually made. Granted, itās a subsite of PolitiFact the national, but it operates under the same rules and benefits from the assumption of independence that the national has.
My primary issue with PolitiFact and its local sites is that it will take one aspect of a larger argument, find that it is not completely accurate, and use that to take down the entire argument. The ālie of the yearā is a great example, where in fact the name āMedicareā was continued but a single payer entitlement health care program for the elderly and disabled was replaced with vouchers and private insurers. The reality was that the Medicare people overwhelmingly support would have been eviscerated, but because Democrats used a sound byte instead of a white paper PolitiFact labeled it the wost equivocation of a 12 month period. Thatās the norm on PF sites, taking a small misstatement of fact and tearing down a larger argument that the mistated fact doesnāt impact.
The fact is that PolitiFact plays the nuance game, and plays into the widespread false equivalence out there. They are so careful to be even handed in calling politicians liars that they bend over backwards to be sure they get both sides.
The Ryan Plan (which I did not favor at all) had NO CHANGE to ANYONE currently in Medicare, or even to people 55-65 who would join in the next 10 years. NO CHANGE whatsoever.
Additionally, the referenced ad showed people who were clearly too old to be affected by the plan, including an ad that showed an elderly man who had to take a job as a stripper to pay his bills (just real stupid stuff).
If the program itself still exists even though privatized, it has not been āendedā, it has been āalteredā.
Sounds like it was fear mongering to me. And on something as important as Medicare, you tell the truth, you donāt lie. The ad gave the impression Medicare would end, when in reality the plan had NO EFFECT on ANYONE 55 or over. You know, people on Medicare, or eligible in the next 10 years.
Yes, it was a HUGE lie. Maybe not āLie of the Yearā, but EASILY a Pants on Fire lie. If you canāt make a point without distorting facts, especially on an issue like Medicare, you have become FOX News. Sound Bytes are usually BS.
Itās no different than when Republicans talked about Death Panels. Yes, in reality the legislation made āend of lifeā (aka DEATH) consultation pretty much mandatory. So technically it is a āDeath Panelā. But Politifact stepped up to the plate and called it the Lie of the Year in 2009, as they should have. Republicans used the same ālogicā you are using in defending that claim, āhey, it was a Panel that discussed Deathā. Yes, that is true. But the impression they were giving is that it was a Panel of people who would decide when you die!! Yeah, another sound byte. And more BS.
Your link to the Jersey site was actually to a google search. Just give me another example of Politifact being way off?
By the way, Fact Check (also a good source) called out the Dems on that one too.
In fact, even the link you sent me did not argue it was a huge lie, they just wondered if it should have been ālie if the yearā.
I donāt always agree with the āratingā of the lies or truth on PF, but they and Fact Check have been damn good on presenting facts, much better then the politically slanted sites who criticize the āother sideā for things they do themselves. All this nonsense needs to stop. Make your point with facts, not rhetoric.
Youāre making a similar argument to #notallmen and similarly missing the point.
When someone makes an affirmative argument, itās not intellectually honest to assume definitions that are outside the reasonable intent of the speaker and operationally defined by the argument being made. Even as they admit, the protections are partial, and yes, in fact, there are people who can be fired thusly because there are no laws barring that kind of firing in the state. As in, there are no laws that protect everyone, but just a select portion of the population. Iām sure the people who arenāt protected totally appreciate you parsing that and missing the point of the initial argument calling attention to their situation.
Instead of judging the argument in the context it was made, you and Politifact redefine the argument so as to find a way to deem it less than true. You apply an absolute criteria that is not required for the truth of what is being argued to be significant and valid to the point of being considered ātrueā.
There are limits to reasonability. For example, saying, āthe US has not torturedā, should be challenged when it hinges on redefining what has traditionally been ātortureā and not, instead, āenhanced whateverā. So, in that case, reasonable operational definition becomes something that should be questioned because of how far standard definitions are being stretched. However, in this case there are people who can be fired just as stated. They actually exist, so saying, āin 29 statesā¦ā, is pretty freaking viscerally true. Seriously, if you canāt figure out if her statement is ātrueā¦or falseā¦ā, go ask someone who isnāt protected and faces firing on a whim what they think.
Iād argue Politifact does this to maintain ābalanceā and an image of non-partisanship. Reality siding with one party instead of the other more often is very inconvenient for them.
Great. Using your ālogicā about if a statement is true or false, the Republicans said the ACA had āDeath Panelsā, which Politifact called the Lie of the Year. BUT, in your world, that statement is actually true. There were in fact Panels put together to discuss Death. That is a fact. So in your world, that statement is 100% true, yes?
In ārealityā, YOU are the one who wants such sound bytes to be trueā¦if you agree with them. If not, they are of course liesā¦
I choose to say such tactics are not true, they are BS.
The whole point of Politifact is to call politicians and pundits on their bullshit rap. And they do a damn good job.
Everyone who has ever paid into Medicare has done so on the promise that they will receive Medicare as it exists today. As a person in his late 40s who has been paying payroll taxes since he was 13, the idea that it would be a different program when I was eligible 12 years later meant they were ending Medicare. And the program was not āalteredā but fundamentally changed from a guaranteed entitlement benefit to a private insurance voucher. Itās not the same program.
Had the Ryan plan passed Medicaid as we know it would have been gone in less than a decade as people aged into the program, and in 40 years or so for everyone after the last current 55 year old died. Thatās simply a fact, whether there are old people in the ad or not.
The same is true for Social Security. If Iāve been paying in for 30+ years to a system that has sent me annual letters estimating my payments which then completely change the system to a stock based one rather than a defined entitled payment then itās not Social Security anymore. Itās a retirement benefit, but not Social Security.
As for the Google search link, each of those stories in the link is from Blue Jersey, as you can note because the Google search contains āsite:bluejersey.comā and each link is to the domain bluejersey.com. Itās obvious you didnāt take the time to look at what I sent but just dismissed it when you saw Google. I sent you that because the search on that site sucks. Just follow the links and youāll see the examples.
Then it should have been presented as being changed to a privatized system in 12 years. Or āRyanās plan will affect people 55 and under when the reach 65 by privatizing Medicareā. THAT is an accurate statement. How hard would that be? Why give the BS impression that as soon as it was approved, it would take effect and all Medicare would stop?
Simple question, do you consider the statement that the Affordable Care Act had āDeath Panelsā to be true? Politifact called it the Lie of the Year, and I agreed with them. But in reality, there are now Panels that have been created to discuss Death. So using your logic, the Republican statement was true, right? Iād like to see your answer to that simple question, and if you think it is a lie, tell me why please.
Well the āimpressionā being given on how that was presented was that there would be Panels that would be put together to put you to Death when they wanted to!! So PF called it a lie, even though there were in fact Panels put together for the subject of Death. Same thing with the BS about Medicare being āendedā. Fear mongering has to stop. Itās divisive and serves no useful purpose.
PF is there to stop both parties from making fear mongering statements. They are doing a damn good job.
And no, I looked at the search and found nothing. So give me an instance where you say PF was totally wrong in evaluating an issue. Just one, and Iāll have a look.
I specifically addressed this in my first response already. So, you are saying you honestly think the intent of ACA detractors is to define āDeath Panelsā as end of life counseling instead of a panel of bureaucrats who will decide who lives and dies and ration healthcare away from the elder and otherwise less healthy? The definition of āDeath Panelā, you are arguing, is reasonably planning for your own end of life? So, according to you, not only is that the intent of the detractors but itās also a reasonable way to use and define the term? Thatās the basis of your argument.
Iād say that is plainly not true, on either point. Conversely, with the Navratilova statement, there is no such stretching of definitions or need to warp intents (you have to do that to make it anything but true, in fact).
Just to humor me, letās quickly examine the two examples with the criteria I outlined. Letās take for granted the intent of the statements being made and allow for reasonable definitions as the argument uses them.
āThEre aRe DeaTh PaNels!!11!!1!!ā, is that true? No. There are no ominous councils the weak and infirm will be sentenced to death in front of in the ACA. āDeath Panelā = āend of life counselingā is not reasonable in definition, and entirely about being scary in intent. The point is to say there are boards of bureaucratic executioners. Thatās what the detractors are intending to say, without question, and it is false.
āIn 29 statesā¦ā, is that true? Yes. There are unprotected people in 29 states that can be fired as described. The intent is to point out that unprotected people exist because there is no blanket protection by the state. There is no requirement there, to get that point across, that all people be unprotected. There is no need to assume the intent is that all people are unprotected for the point to be significant and valid. There are also no contortions of definitions.
What is so freakinā hard about this?
Yes, there are Panels of people that have been put together to discuss issues related to your Death. This is a fact.
And by the way, Medicare being Privatized does NOT mean elderly people would not get Medical Care. While Medicare under the original Ryan plan would have been essentially privatized, and many seniors would have had to pay more than they do now as health care costs increase, government-supported health insurance coverage for seniors would not have gone away away. And under Ryan and Romneyās proposals, a traditional Medicare plan would remain an option. Medicare is currently administered by the Federal Government, and uses Private Insurance companies. NOTHING about either of those two things would change, that those are two HUGE parts of Medicare. Even under the Voucher Plan, the government would still regulate Medicare Plans. So to give the impression Medicare is āendingā is just pure BS. When policy in the past changed prescription drug coverage for seniors in the past for instance, what you are saying is that also was āending Medicare as we know itā. Except that is also nonsense.
Yes, in a 30 second advertisement they should have parsed words and been exact as if they were presenting a white paper.
Or not.
But regardless, you have now admitted that at worst there was some exaggeration and hyperbole, and no lying. The fact is Medicare would be gone in a dozen years for anyone eligible, and it is hardly a lie ā much less the lie of the year ā to say āRepublicans voted to end Medicare.ā
As for the Death Panels you are doing exactly what Politifact does ā parsing words to make a points. The GOP didnāt claim that there were panels that would discuss death, but defined Death Panels as government bureaucrats who would override physicianās orders to deny care and let people die rather than pay for care.
Hereās Sarah Palinās Facebook post on it:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obamaās ādeath panelā so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ālevel of productivity in society,ā whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
The difference here is that the GOP ā and especially Sarah Palin as the most recent VP candidate ā made up the name Death Panels as part of a lie that discussions of end of life care and whether to pay for experimental treatments that are not found to be efficacious are really efforts to base care on whether a citizen is a productive member of society.
But Medicare is a 50 year old program that billions of people have participated in and even more have paid into, and every single one of them understands that Medicare means a single-payer government funded health insurance program for seniors and the disabled that every American citizen is entitled to receive. The Ryan plan would have kept the name but fundamentally changed the program so that it was NOTHING like what people understood it to be.
The GOP making up an imaginary function and giving it a name that could ā with a lot of effort ā be applied to a completely different and real function is not the same as fundamentally taking apart a 50 (and 60 year when itās done) year old program but keeping the name.
Regardless youāve admitted that the Democrats are right that the Ryan plan would have ended Medicare, so itās not a lie much less a lie of the year. And youāve admitted that what the GOP named Death Panels are not what the GOP alleged they were but rational efforts at managing end of life care was a lie.
So Politifact was wrong once, and right once. And that makes my point from my first post: they are too inconsistent to be used as a source of valuable ratings .
So, please, stop with the nitpicking.
SO you compared a 30 second ad withā¦a Sarah Palin Facebook post? Precious. Any reason why you did not compare it to the ad where it showed a Paul Ryan look-a-like pushing a lady in a wheelchair off a cliff?
Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care ābecause Republicans voted to end Medicare.ā
Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head of the DCCC, appeared on cable news shows and declared that Republicans voted to āterminate Medicare.ā A Web video from the Agenda Project, a liberal group, said the plan would leave the country āwithout Medicareā and showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. And just last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a fundraising appeal that said: āHouse Republicansā vote to end Medicare is a shameful act of betrayal.ā
After two years of being pounded by Republicans with often false charges about the 2010 health care law, the Democrats were turning the tables.
PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.
By the way, another claim in the ad from the Agenda Project said the plan would āprivatizeā Medicare, which received a Mostly True rating from PolitiFact. Hey, I thought you said that was not possible in an ad??? Gee, they did it, and it was rated Mostly True. Because it was.
But none of that is relevant?
And no comment on Fact Check also saying the claim was silly.
Precious.
No, I did not compare a 30 second ad to a Sarah Palin Facebook post. I used the Facebook post as evidence of what the right meant when it said Death Panels. Iām not writing a dissertation where I research 500 different examples, but you know that Facebook post is EXACTLY what the right meant by Death Panels every time they mentioned it. The first sentence of your post is simply dodging that fact because you cannot admit that PolitiFact is inconsistent and therefore not reliable.
Iām not sure why I spent this much time on this. Farewell.