freeman3 wrote:Well since you are not going to leave it alone I'll point out that I made substantive points about the study: (1) it was only 100 statements over a four-month period of time, (2) there was no attempt to analyze each individual rating to see if it contained bias, and (3) the article buried the fact that it only a limited analysis. So my critique was not based on personal feeling but on an analysis of the article. I made points; you may disagree with them--although in fact you did not answer them--but they were substantive, legitimate points.

Now as to your further posts on Politifacts, the guy who did the Forbes article wrote a book about how Medicaid is failing the poor. How else are the poor going to be treated but for government subsidized health-care? The writer is clearly on the far-right fringe.

Anyway, he claims that Politifacts' rating as true with regard to Obama's claim that people could keep their health care under his health care plan "had a meaningful impact on the election." He could not possibly know this. That is just made up.

With regard to Politifacts' rating itself clearly such ratings are more problematic with regard to complex health care laws than with regard to other kinds of statements from politicians. We're just talking about a plan that has not even been written into law, yet. So if you want to make the point that any kind of fact-checking with regard to complex policy proposals may be problematic, that's a fair point.

But the guy makes a big deal that Politifacts' rating changed from true to half true once the bill was written. He contends the law was essentially the same as the plan so why the rating should not have changed. I think it is reasonable to think that once the details of the plan are written into law it's a lot easier to assess what is going to happen. Believe me if it is was that easy to see Republicans would have had an effective way to destroy that interpretation of Obama's plan in 2008

Finally, the writer really gets on Politifacts for in 2013 now saying that the plan was now a lie. Well, now that the actual law was put into practice and people could see what would happen.

Probably, Politifacts should have stayed out of rating this particular fact without having more certainly. I think it is understandable why they got it wrong but they should realize that this was a likelihood given the nature of a complex policy proposal that has not written into law, yet. But the writer also suggests that this is what Politifacts typically does. He claims that it "routines evaluates predictions about the future as facts." He cites no evidence in support of that contention. He tries to suggest that Politfacts is not very good in doing this sub-set of fact-checking , particularly with regard to complex issues like health care. But other than one example he does not prove his assertion that Politfacts does this sort of thing a lot or that it does badly. He just takes one example and tries to smear everything Politifacts does that with one example, and even that example really isn't that bad.

If you want to make the assertion that Politifacts is biased then you need to look at more than one fact. Taking issue with one fact check out of thousands is not very convincing.

What Cruz said was a lie. Hillary Clinton has never said that she supports women being able to have an abortion for any reason up to the point of birth. She has repeatedly said that late-term abortions may be allowed for the health of the mother. That is a limit. It is not upon demand. Sorry. The suggestion that she supports aborting the child as the mother is giving birth is awful hyperbole. Her support of getting rid of the Hyde Amendment simply has to do with allowing poor women to get an abortion if they cannot afford it; it has nothing to do with having the federal government pay for abortions of people who can afford them. So Polifacts was spot on in that rating.

freeman3 wrote:It could have affected the election; he just overstated it to say that it did.

But something even more troubling than liberal bias might be at work at PolitiFact. The Daily Caller News Foundation recently published a detailed investigation into a Clinton Foundation initiative to provide AIDS drugs in Africa and concluded that the program may have been responsible for dispensing ineffective "watered-down" drugs. PolitiFact turned around and "fact checked" the "conservative website," saying it "wrongly ties the Clinton Foundation to bad HIV/AIDS drugs." However, a subsequent response from the Daily Caller News Foundation pointed out quite convincingly that PolitiFact's critique was riddled with errors.

And that's not all. The Daily Caller News Foundation also dropped this bombshell: The Clinton Foundation initiative in question was funded with a $1 million grant from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pamela. Their charitable foundation, the Omidyar Network, also gave a $225,000 grant to the nonprofit journalism foundation the Poynter Institute, which oversees PolitiFact. And that grant was earmarked for a partnership between PolitiFact and another group "to fact-check claims about global health and development."

A lot of liberal groups and nonprofits might end up sharing donors by happenstance, but this points to a pretty specific conflict of interest and one that PolitiFact should address. It doesn't help that PolitiFact initially denied receiving any funding from the Omidyars. Besides, the conflict might help to explain why their attempt to undercut the Daily Caller News Foundation's investigation was so shoddy. Doing favors for donors, after all, seems to be fast becoming the new American way.

Of course, conflicted or not, PolitiFact's work has been generally atrocious this year. They rated Hillary Clinton's claim that she never sent classified information over her email "half-true" and later flip-flopped when details of the FBI investigation exposed their defense of her as nonsense. As another measure of just how off the mark they can be, they somehow managed to get a "fact check" of Donald Trump decisively wrong. It's not as if he hasn't said many untrue things. But they rated false his claim that crime is rising, and official FBI stats agreed with him. Most recently, they attacked Mike Pence for a line during the vice presidential debate in which he accurately characterized as "ransom" a $400 million White House payment to Iran on the day four hostages were released.

When PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal in August of 2009, he explained how statements are picked:

“We choose to check things we are curious about. If we look at something and we think that an elected official or talk show host is wrong, then we will fact-check it.”

If that is the methodology, then why is it that PolitiFact takes Republicans to the woodshed much more frequently than Democrats?

One could theoretically argue that one political party has made a disproportionately higher number of false claims than the other, and that this is subsequently reflected in the distribution of ratings on the PolitiFact site.

However, there is no evidence offered by PolitiFact that this is their calculus in decision-making.

Nor does PolitiFact claim on its site to present a ‘fair and balanced’ selection of statements, or that the statements rated are representative of the general truthfulness of the nation’s political parties or the elected officials involved.

And yet…

In defending PolitiFact’s “statements by ruling” summaries – tables that combine all ratings given by PolitiFact to an individual or group – Adair explained:

“We are really creating a tremendous database of independent journalism that’s assessing these things, and it’s valuable for people to see how often is President Obama right and how often was Senator McCain right. I think of it as like the back of a baseball card. You know – that it’s sort of someone’s career statistics. You know – it’s sort of what’s their batting average.” (C-SPAN Washington Journal, August 4, 2009)

Adair is also on record for lamenting the media’s kneejerk inclination to treat both sides of an issue equally, particularly when one side has the facts wrong.

In an interview with the New York Times in April 2010, Adair said:

“The media in general has shied away from fact checking to a large extent because of fears that we’d be called biased, and also because I think it’s hard journalism. It’s a lot easier to give the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand kind of journalism and leave it to readers to sort it out. But that isn’t good enough these days. The information age has made things so chaotic, I think it’s our obligation in the mainstream media to help people sort out what’s true and what’s not.”

The question is not whether PolitiFact will ultimately convert skeptics on the right that they do not have ulterior motives in the selection of what statements are rated, but whether the organization can give a convincing argument that either a) Republicans in fact do lie much more than Democrats, or b) if they do not, that it is immaterial that PolitiFact covers political discourse with a frame that suggests this is the case.

In his August 2009 C-SPAN interview, Adair explained how the Pants on Fire rating was the site’s most popular feature, and the rationale for its inclusion on the Truth-O-Meter scale:

“We don’t take this stuff too seriously. It’s politics, but it’s a sport too.”

By levying 23 Pants on Fire ratings to Republicans over the past year compared to just 4 to Democrats, it appears the sport of choice is game hunting – and the game is elephants.

JimHackerMP wrote:This is probably the reason for the Redscape malaise: we keep saying the same stuff over and over again. Whether the election has done it, or it's what I just mentioned, who can say. But I got bored of the discussion board a while ago, just ducked my head back in a while later.

And speaking of a redscape presidential ticket, why not DF/Ricky? It would at least be interesting.

Doctor Fate wrote:

JimHackerMP wrote:This is probably the reason for the Redscape malaise: we keep saying the same stuff over and over again. Whether the election has done it, or it's what I just mentioned, who can say. But I got bored of the discussion board a while ago, just ducked my head back in a while later.

And speaking of a redscape presidential ticket, why not DF/Ricky? It would at least be interesting.

Shoot me now!

Look, he’s a nut and you know he’s a nut. I go to battleground states and talk to anyone, everyone. They all know Donald Trump’s a nut. Some will vote for him anyway. Many are in madman-versus-criminal mode, living with (or making) their final decision. They got the blues. Everyone does. They’re worried about the whole edifice: If this is where we are, where are we going?
I get the Reagan fantasy—big guy with a nonstandard résumé comes in from the outside, cleans out the stables, saves the day. But it’s a fantasy and does not apply to this moment. I get the Jacksonian fantasy—crude, rude populist comes in from the hinterlands and upends a decadent establishment to the huzzahs of normal people with mud on their boots. But it’s a fantasy, and doesn’t apply.
Because he’s not a grizzled general who bears on his face the scars of a British sword, and not a shining citizen-patriot. He’s a screwball. Do you need examples? You do not, because you’re already thinking of them. For a year you’ve been observing the TV funhouse that is his brain.

I offer an observation from Newt Gingrich, Trump friend and supporter, on David Drucker’s Washington Examiner podcast. Mr. Gingrich lauded Mr. Trump because he “thinks big” and is a transformational character. But he spoke too of Trump’s essential nature. The GOP nominee “reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably” to “anything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability.” “There’s . . . a part of his personality that sometimes gets involved in petty things that make no sense.” He found it “frankly pathetic” that Mr. Trump got mad because Paul Ryan didn’t call to congratulate him after the second debate.
Mr. Gingrich said he hopes this will change. But people don’t change the fundamentals of their nature at age 70.
Mr. Trump’s great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its own base really thinks about the big issues. The party’s leaders didn’t know! They were shocked, so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn’t happening.
The party’s leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn’t want to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses. When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he’d opposed the Iraq invasion, the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn’t want to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.

The Republican Party will now begin the long process of redefining itself or continue its long national collapse. This is an epochal event. It happened because Donald Trump intuited where things were and are going.
Since I am more in accord with Mr. Trump’s stands than not, I am particularly sorry that as an individual human being he’s a nut.
Which gives rise to a question, for me a poignant one.
What if there had been a Sane Donald Trump?
Oh my God, Sane Trump would have won in a landslide.
Sane Donald Trump, just to start, would look normal and happy, not grim and glowering. He would be able to hear and act on good advice. He would explain his positions with clarity and depth, not with the impatient half-grasping of a notion that marks real Donald Trump’s public persona.
Sane Donald Trump would have looked at a dubious, anxious and therefore standoffish Republican establishment and not insulted them, diminished them, done tweetstorms against them. Instead he would have said, “Come into my tent. It’s a new one, I admit, but it’s yuge and has gold faucets and there’s a place just for you. What do you need? That I be less excitable and dramatic? Done. That I not act, toward women, like a pig? Done, and I accept your critique. That I explain the moral and practical underpinnings of my stand on refugees from terror nations? I’d be happy to. My well-hidden secret is that I love everyone and hear the common rhythm of their beating hearts.”
Sane Donald Trump would have given an anxious country more ease, not more anxiety. He would have demonstrated that he can govern himself. He would have suggested through his actions, while still being entertaining, funny and outsize, that yes, he understands the stakes and yes, since America is always claiming to be the leader of the world—We are No. 1!—a certain attendant gravity is required of one who’d be its leader.
Sane Donald Trump would have explained his immigration proposals with a kind of loving logic—we must secure our borders for a host of serious reasons, and here they are. But we are grateful for our legal immigrants, and by the way, if you want to hear real love for America then go talk to them, for they experience more freshly than we what a wonderful place this is. In time, after we’ve fully secured our borders and the air of emergency is gone, we will turn to regularizing the situation of everyone here, because Americans are not only kindly, they’re practical, and want everyone paying taxes.
Sane Donald Trump would have spoken at great and compelling length of how the huge, complicated trade agreements created the past quarter-century can be improved upon with an eye to helping the American worker. Ideology, he might say, is the pleasant diversion of the unworried, but a nation that no longer knows how to make steel cannot be a great nation. And we are a great nation.
Sane Donald Trump would have argued that controlling entitlement spending is a necessary thing but not, in fact, this moment’s priority. People have been battered since the crash, in many ways, and nothing feels stable now. Beyond that no one right now trusts Washington to be fair and wise in these matters. Confidence-building measures are necessary. Let’s take on the smaller task of turning around Veterans Affairs and see if we can’t make that work.
Sane Donald Trump would have known of America’s hidden fractures, and would have insisted that a healthy moderate-populist movement cannot begin as or devolve into a nationalist, identity-politics movement. Those who look down on other groups, races or religions can start their own party. He, the famous brander, would even offer them a name: the Idiot Party.
Sane Donald Trump would not treat the political process of the world’s greatest democracy as if it were, as somebody said, the next-to-last episode of a reality-TV series. That’s the episode that leaves you wondering how the season will end—who will scream, who will leave the drunken party in a huff, who will accuse whom of being a whore. I guess that’s what “I’ll keep you in suspense” as to whether he’ll accept the election result was about. We’re being teed up. The explosive season finale is Nov. 8. Maybe he’ll leave in a huff. Maybe he’ll call everyone whores.
Does he know he’s playing with fire? No. Because he’s a nut.
Sane Donald Trump for president. Too bad he doesn’t exist.

That starts in House of Representatives. The things you're hearing Trump say, they're said on floor of the House all the time. The Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives are repeatedly promoting crazy conspiracy theories and demonizing opponents,"
Trump is only claiming credit for a longstanding Republican mindset.
"Donald Trump didn't build that," "He just slapped his name on it and took credit for it."

freeman3 wrote:I don't know where Republicans go from here. They are a party of Big Business . . .

. . . and fiscal almost libertarian conservatives--low taxes, few regulations on business, free trade, entitlement reform . . .

The Republican Party had an easy route to becoming the majority party. Asians are a natural fit for the Republican Party, given their cultural values of respecting authority and hierarchy. There are now twice as many Asians that identity as Democrats than Republicans. Hispanics as well were a potential fit for the Republican Party, given their conservative social beliefs. Hispanics are now mostly Democrats. Both Asians and Hispanics have been driven away from the Republican Party because the party has catered to its Cultural Identity base. So the solution the Republican Party came up with was to try to lower minority vote through Voter ID and other voter suppression measures.

And now the base has bolted because they must have realized that at the end of the day money people were driving the party and were not interested in culture wars that would hurt financial stability. Hence the Trump candidacy because he was not perceived to be bought like the Republican leadership. I am curious what happens after Trumo loses (assuming he does). I don't think Republican Party leaders were surprised at the views of their base; they were surprised they could not control them and get them to do what they wanted to do.

By the way, just to show you how truly horrible the Citizens United decision was and to show the increasing dependence political parties have on big donors, the Koch Brothers and their organizations are going to spend close to a billion dollars (750 million) in getting Republicans elected in 2016. The Republican base probably had a point that their views were getting ignored.

For the good of America the Republican Party needs to build a bigger tent, one that non-whites feel comfortable in.

That's what parties do when they are losing votes; they adapt their positions to appeal to a broader swath of voters. The country is going to become less white no matter how many walls you build...better start figuring out to attract their vote. Hint: it's not by telling them to go home.

The anti-democratic trend transcends the usual divisions on the right. It’s been spreading in recent decades among conservative intellectuals, libertarian legal thinkers, religious conservatives, secular libertarians, and religious conservatives. You hear it from Trump fans and #NeverTrumpers alike.
Suspicion of the democratic system is so pervasive on the right because it’s driven by the fear that white Christian America is facing demographic doom. The evidence is right there in the election results: Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, and if current polling trends hold, the GOP will be batting one for seven when the results come in on November 8. Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans may hold on to a U.S. House majority for a while, and they’ll remain competitive in state capitols in the near future. But a whites-only party can’t win national elections. And over time, the GOP’s congressional and state fortresses will crumble if the party doesn’t change dramatically. Or if the democratic system doesn’t change dramatically.

One of the few positives about Donald Trump’s run for president is that he’s forced us to see aspects of American culture that many instinctively turn away from. His success has made it much harder to fall into post-racial and post-feminist fantasies—to imagine that hardcore racism and sexism are marginal and declining forces. The same is true of anti-democratic sentiment, a growing threat that is frequently minimized if not utterly ignored.

Beyond this election, beyond even the fate of the Republican Party, there is a significant minority of Americans who are giving up on democracy because it doesn’t serve their purpose of upholding a white Christian patriarchy. Trump is merely a symptom of this problem, and even if he fades as a political force after the election, the underlying disease will remain, and indeed will likely spread. The threat to the American system is not an armed revolt after November 8, but the growing number of Americans who are convinced that only “regime change” can save capitalism, Christianity, and America itself

Add this to the list of qualms Florida Gov. Rick Scott has with the nation’s health care law.

He says it will lead to increased premiums.

How? Through the part of the law that creates an online marketplace for individuals who do not receive insurance from their employers. Known as a health exchange, the idea is consumers can compare plans to get the best deal.

After the Supreme Court upheld the law, Scott announced he would not to set up the required exchanges, which means the federal government will step in to do it.

Scott -- who built his fortune running the nation’s largest hospital chain and his political cred leading an attack group opposed to health reforms -- says these exchanges "don’t work" and will lead to bigger bills for families.

"If it was such a great idea the private sector would do it," Scott said on Fox News on July 2. "And we know the Congressional Budget Office said if you’re going to buy your own policy with these exchanges you’ll be paying 10 percent more, or a family will. So about $2,100 more for a family. So you’re going to pay more with these exchanges."

We’re familiar with Scott’s comments, which have roots in this 2009 report from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research agency.

. . .

Scott said that the Congressional Budget Office said people would pay 10 percent more for policies on the exchange, "so about $2,100 more for a family." What he doesn’t say is that these policies will have to offer comprehensive coverage. So people will pay more, but they’re also get more benefits. Additionally, the federal government will offer subsidies to many of these people to cut the cost.

It’s also important to remember the CBO’s "apples-to-apples" comparison. According to the agency, people in the individual market will actually pay less for the required amount of benefits under the Affordable Care Act than they would for those same benefits under old policies.

We rate Scott’s statement Mostly False.

Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.

Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.

“Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period,” said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.