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[TheBiggerFish]

That's surprisingly scary now that I think about it.

[Willfor]

TIL bush did 9/11, the mexican government is sending drug dealers and rapists into the US, thousands of Muslims were cheering when the towers came down, and Trump's business ventures have never been in jeopardy because he's a winner in everything he does. All because politifact can't be trusted.

[Spehss _]

TIL bush did 9/11, the mexican government is sending drug dealers and rapists into the US, thousands of Muslims were cheering when the towers came down, and Trump's business ventures have never been in jeopardy because he's a winner in everything he does. All because politifact can't be trusted.

Not saying Trump is absolutely right in everything he says, man.

[Powder Miner]

argumentum ad shitpostum?

In all seriousness, as much as I do despise trump, the way Politifact works IS pretty well set up for slant, because what qualifies as "half true" or "mostly true" or such can become a slim distinction that the author's word (likely) decides it.

[mainiac]

I at least have heard it's slanted towards the left,

No, man, it is skewed waaaaaaaay to the right.

They made their lie of the year this:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/

They didn't just say it was political or anything.  They made it their LIE OF THE YEAR.  The reason why democrats made that accusation is because they took literal quotes from republicans at face value.  Most famously:

Wither On the Vine

  But also the year after year of budgets that called for privitizing medicare, thus ending medicare as we know it as the democrats say.

So yeah, it does not skew to the left.  It skews to the right, just not enough to overcome the fact that reality has a well known liberal bias.  You need to accuse liberals of lying by quoting republicans exact words in the context they were meant just to reduce that bias.

[Aklyon]

Meanwhile on youtube, amusing politics.

[mainiac]

Is it supposed to be funny in an observational humor way or something?

[SalmonGod]

I had to walk on eggshells today when my manager and I got on a small political tanget, and his boss came in and started glowing about how Trump is going to fix everything with his business sense and negotiation skills.  When will this nightmare be over? 

I need out of Indiana so badly.  The political atmosphere here makes me feel like a commie spy who could be found out and executed at any moment.  And yes, it would be bad if she found out my political beliefs.  My manager is lefty like me (more moderate) and has been shit on in the past by his boss and the rest of the management group when he let slip some of his true political opinions.  Apparently, he was used as office scapegoat for months for shit he didn't deserve because if there is a liberal available, then they are to blame for anything by default even if complete non-sequitur.  There's types around who will literally do stupid shit just because they know they can blame it on the liberal with no further questions asked.  He warned me to be careful in situations like today's.

[Aklyon]

Is it supposed to be funny in an observational humor way or something?

Pretty much. Old guy from an old film comments on recent events, subtitles reworded to fit.
I was actually expecting this thread to completely ignore it, you guys being too busy being the serious US politics arguing thread and all...

[lemon10]

Here, I just checked politifact. Draw your own conclusions about who is least truthful between Trump and Hillary:

Politifact is biased as hell and I've heard it's notorious for skewing "facts". It's like taking Fox seriously. Or HuffPost opinion articles. I at least have heard it's slanted towards the left, so go figure that they'd have Sanders and Clinton as mostly truthful and Trump as mostly lying. Probably other republican candidates as well. I'd take their information with a grain of salt and then check other sources rather than rely on them solely for a scale of "who's the biggest political liar".

The republicans say that literally every news source besides fox news is biased, so I would take what they say about it with a grain of salt.

After checking wikipedia some republicans claim its biased because an analysis of its data over a certain period (Jan 2010-Jan 2011) showed that it says republicans lie more often and is more likely to grant them a worse rating. That doesn't actually show that its biased though, rather that republican politicans are simply more likely to lie and lie worse.

I at least have heard it's slanted towards the left,

No, man, it is skewed waaaaaaaay to the right.

They made their lie of the year this:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/

They didn't just say it was political or anything.  They made it their LIE OF THE YEAR.  The reason why democrats made that accusation is because they took literal quotes from republicans at face value.  Most famously:

Wither On the Vine

  But also the year after year of budgets that called for privitizing medicare, thus ending medicare as we know it as the democrats say.

So yeah, it does not skew to the left.  It skews to the right, just not enough to overcome the fact that reality has a well known liberal bias.  You need to accuse liberals of lying by quoting republicans exact words in the context they were meant just to reduce that bias.

It doesn't really skew to the right either. Cherry picking individual things that the website said that are wrong or support republicans/democrats is easy.
And the lie of the year in 2011 being that doesn't show that its biased, all it really shows is that 2011 was a pretty boring year by lying standards and they had to pick something.

[Harry Baldman]

Is it supposed to be funny in an observational humor way or something?

Why bother making actual jokes or putting in any effort when you can just let Hitler do the heavy lifting for you? It's a lot like political debate in that respect.

[SalmonGod]

Spoiler: This makes me feel slightly better (click to show/hide)

[Spehss _]

I at least have heard it's slanted towards the left,

No, man, it is skewed waaaaaaaay to the right.

They made their lie of the year this:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/

They didn't just say it was political or anything.  They made it their LIE OF THE YEAR.  The reason why democrats made that accusation is because they took literal quotes from republicans at face value.  Most famously:

Wither On the Vine

  But also the year after year of budgets that called for privitizing medicare, thus ending medicare as we know it as the democrats say.

So yeah, it does not skew to the left.  It skews to the right, just not enough to overcome the fact that reality has a well known liberal bias.  You need to accuse liberals of lying by quoting republicans exact words in the context they were meant just to reduce that bias.

It doesn't really skew to the right either. Cherry picking individual things that the website said that are wrong or support republicans/democrats is easy.
And the lie of the year in 2011 being that doesn't show that its biased, all it really shows is that 2011 was a pretty boring year by lying standards and they had to pick something.

Ok. So I've heard that it's skewed toward the left, mainiac is saying it's skewed toward the right. I guess it balances out to the middle then?

I admit I don't use politifact much, mostly due to what I've heard from others about it, so I'm probably not the best person to be calling it out for one bias or another. I just saw Shadowlord referring to politifact in an earlier post and thought I had something to add/discuss.

In all seriousness, as much as I do despise trump, the way Politifact works IS pretty well set up for slant, because what qualifies as "half true" or "mostly true" or such can become a slim distinction that the author's word (likely) decides it.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say. A scale of "truthiness" seems like a rather vague quality to quantify. If the site just used "true" or "false" I'd probably have less of a problem with it, but a sliding scale of "how true or false is this statement" from "true" to "pants on fire" just sounds gamey.

[penguinofhonor]

The thing is that politicians specialize in saying things that fall between "true" and "false".

[mainiac]

It doesn't really skew to the right either. Cherry picking individual things that the website said that are wrong or support republicans/democrats is easy.

But it's not a minor fucking detail.  It was their lie of the year.  They said that of all the falsehoods in politics, this is the one they wanted to stake their reputation on.  They chose to be judged on this so it's not me picking on them to judge them on the thing they put front and center.  And it wasn't just a slightly bad call, it was complete and utter bullshit.  They completely and utterly mislead people about one of the most enduring and extensively documented parts of american political debate.  That isn't something that happens by accident.  They know exactly what they are doing.  If they did nothing but call republicans out on their constant falsehoods then they would be as irrelevant as media matters.  So they treat democratic puffery as lies in order to position themselves.

The thing is, this makes the site not only useless but actively harmful.  The entire point of having a referee is to punish the guys who break the rules.  If you make sure to punish both sides then the referee isn't putting the rulebreakers at a disadvantage.  Having a self appointed referee who isn't actually a referee just makes it harder to punish actual lies.